The focus of my topic was to create awareness at an early age of the lasting impression of digital footprints, the importance of reputation management, personal brand building and how to use new media to advance one’s career goals.

Very few of the 40 or so students were familiar with anything other than Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and last.fm. The were not aware they could join niche industry groups, search blogs by professionals in the fields they’re interested in, create an online portfolio, host an internet radio show, be a citizen journalist.… so many things.

I applaud LIU18, Luzerne County Community College, the Tech Prep team and the sincere remarks made by President Tom Leary about how the college will be ready and welcoming to each and every student in the auditorium today when they are ready. I know it’s true, I am an alum.

I have a heavy heart however. There were students who had no clue, had no guidance, had no role models. It was so apparent. Some nodded off no matter how animated I was and how many questions I asked. Some filled out the evaluations saying the presentation was “stupid”. I can only imagine these students have no one encouraging them to stretch their imagination, be innovative or explore how technology can benefit them.

I’m asking you to become involved in your school system & community based groups that deal with youth. Offer your expertise to young people who may not have anyone at home to give them the guidance they need to the obtain an education that will enable them to attain employment at a wage that will be family sustaining. Mentor them, be their friend and role model.

Volunteer.… it takes a village. Tomorrow I’m going back. What will you do?

Fantastic, your offer letter will arrive shortly. When you come in on your first day get settled in your office. You know, look around, go through the drawers in the file cabinet, find where everything is. We’ll set you up for lunch to make sure everything is going well. Welcome aboard!

This must be a script passed around like a scammy email chain to upper level execs — because I have personally heard it no less than 3 times in my career. Maybe I passed the litmus test and got those jobs precisely because I am a self starter, don’t need hand holding and like to work independently. Maybe I was easy because I wear my Special Agent badge on my sleeve like a scarlet letter — less work than other candidates would have been had they been hired.

It’s no way to intro someone to their job though.

Walk into said dark office early the first day after guestimating where to park because you wasn’t assigned a spot yet. People looking at you like you broke in the joint because no one was told you were hired.. No PC log in, no phone extension, no key to your own desk drawer?

No welcoming committee… or card on the desk signed by the team saying they are grateful to have someone to pick up the work they have been burdened with since the last chicken flew the coop…

I’m looking for examples — both good and bad, for a presentation I’m writing this weekend for THE Conference on attracting and retaining top talent.  What’s your story?

Oh… and if you would like to come to THE Conference, a whole day of business learning and fun in Wilkes-Barre, PA, with 6 tracks and 30 sessions for $99. –> Sign up, what are you waiting for? ~ SA Porter

Sunday night..

How do you answer the question, how do you feel on Sunday night? Do you dread Monday, the boredom or monotony of the workweek, dislike things about your workplace or the people there, or are you overwhelmed by the work itself? If the slump is serious maybe it’s time for a new act.… Maybe a multiple career act.

Maybe it’s our culture of stoic old world work ethic that still lingers and makes us think a successful career means one job till retirement, like my uncles who went from school to the automobile industry in Detroit to retirement. I don’t remember hearing about how much they loved their jobs, just how good the benefits and retirement plans were. Why do we feel the need to defer our happiness?

It that all there is? Working for the future? Spending 40 years — the prime of our life — trying to get ahead not loving what we do? I started thinking of celebrities and athletes with multiple income streams. OK, maybe they aren’t in the chemistry lab concocting the fragrance themselves or proficient in auto cad, designing the next indoor grill between movie gigs and concerts… But, how many of us are well known enough to be asked to endorse products and be paid for it or have enough money to invest in a new venture? Well, not many for sure, but the book puts down every excuse known to mankind for not doing what you love and making a career out of it. The book walks you through how to do it.

Paula Caligiuri, Ph. D., writes about investing in yourself and analyzing your options for simultaneous career acts and taking steps toward career freedom. She deftly points out that turning a passion into a career cannot be only a dream, it can be a reality.

I think it was the example of Monica and her multiple career acts that most resonated with me, though there are plenty of real life examples for inspiration. Monica was unfulfilled by her career as an organization development specialist when after 6 years she was laid off and turned her passion for gardening into being a gardening coach and now combines that with a few days a week of management coaching and some website development on the side.

Does that type of variety intrigue you?

Having multiple career acts based on what fulfills you, your motivations and how you like to work is what Get A Life Not A Job is all about. Is it really achievable? I think that if you can live with the fact that Paula points out -

The best career acts require you to take some risks or make some investments in yourself

The answer is yes…

I was intrigued when I saw the call via social media for area experts to talk about Intern and entry-level opportunities in their cities, regions and MSA’s. I’m focused on creating The Greatest Internship on Earth in 2010 so how could I not want to promote the great place I live and work in and everything it has to offer?

Come Recommended Comes to Your City is a new podcast series produced by Heather Human, Founder & President of Come Recommended. Heather walks the talk too with a fine team of Interns and entry-level professionals who work on something near and dear to me, matching talent with opportunity.

During each episode, a member of the Come Recommended staff interviews a local expert about his or her city, addressing questions like:

• Overall, what are three words you would use to describe the internship and entry-level job market in your city?
• What would you say are the flagship industries of your city?
• Can an entry-level professional or intern live comfortably in your city based on their industry’s average salary?
• What networking opportunities are available in your city?

It was my pleasure to answer these and other questions today when Come Recommended Comes to Your City came to northeastern PA.

Thanks Heather & Team!

There are many flaws in the way current internship programs work.

There are several national internship websites that act as information portals and “job boards”. Many employers are not familiar with these websites and when career services offices tell them they need to create employer accounts and jump through hoops they quickly get frustrated and don’t follow through.  Because these websites are national, companies don’t necessarily attract local students. At the same time, most students manage classes and internships during the same semester so they need to stay local. It’s important to manage internship programs locally to allow for supervision of and assistance with the intern and employer experience. Introducing students to opportunities with local employers also helps aid in the retention of regional talent and prevention of “brain drain”.

Students and employers scramble to find each other. Employers willing to provide an opportunity to a student shouldn’t have to work hard to find one or have to reach out to multiple college career services offices to advertise. Student’s should understand employer expectations and how to conduct an internship or job search.

Another challenge is the concept many employers have of what an internship is. While there are companies that look to recruit entry level college grads and recognize that “try before you buy” is an excellent way to do it while assisting in the student’s education, many times what companies are looking for is cheap labor. Errand boys, envelope stuffers and filing clerks do not require college educations and internships shouldn’t be framed around these functions.

The goal is to enlist companies with a mission of community partnership and good corporate citizenship as extensions of higher education. That means that through this program they’ll pledge to do their part and take on a certain number of interns per year under specially crafted intern work plans based on job descriptions and goals that will be approved and provide meaningful experiential learning for students.

Students won’t just walk into an internship either. They’ll apply, interview and go through a selection process just like if it were a regular position they were going after.To help them prepare, they’ll attend program administered career preparation workshops to assist them with resumes and interview skills. They’ll learn the difference between non-exempt and exempt employees, go through mock orientation and non-harassment training and review and discuss example employee policies and handbooks.

Employers will provide an orientation, an intern mentor and regular coaching and feedback that is documented. Mid and end of semester formal performance evaluations will be conducted and delivered.

Students need to have tools and experience to set them up for career success. The program will provide a one semester real world career experience and the tools to be successful. Employers will have a more productive and functioning junior careerist on board, the opportunity to experience a potential addition to their team and a huge hand in the development of community talent in exchange for their commitment to act as “career labs”.

The logistics of the program require centralization to a regional common career services center shared by all area institutions of higher education and employers. This means students from all participating colleges will seek their internships from one source. They won’t have to be concerned that not all companies willing to provide internship opportunities haven’t reached out to recruit at their particular school. Conversely, employers will no longer have to reach out to many career services offices to announce internship opportunities. They’ll also have one contact, one source, to manage their talent search. College career services offices will serve as on campus liaisons for the program and have more time to focus on working with students to identify their career goals and provide resume preparation and interview skills assistance.

As a nonprofit organization at the helm, we’ll be happy to share our model with other like minded organizations everywhere who want to improve the ways talent meets opportunity. I’m asking you to reflect and comment here on the positive and negative aspects of your college internship and also about internships at the company you work for.  If you have great ideas about what would work better or what not to do I want to hear them. Your comments will help to create the greatest internship program on earth!

Someone called me today to ask how to do it. How to move on, not take it personally, make wiser decisions about engagement in conflict, how to avoid it, how to choose which battles are worth it. I don’t think she expected what I told her.

Transitioning back to the U.S. after 11 years of work in Mexico and Spain I took an entry level customer service rep position at the 15th largest on shore call center with full confidence I wouldn’t be in the seat for long. They wouldn’t hire anyone in a management role that didn’t have call center experience.  The fact that a company of that size and importance didn’t have an onboarding or new manager training program is fodder for another post in the future — promise.

After having managed a vacation club (OK sure, it’s really timeshare) sales room of 50 sales people and closers on the  Mayan Riviera and a mega buku bucks budget, I was taking customer service calls about $4.00  products for the world’s largest food manufacturer tethered to my cubicle by the umbilical cord of a headset. I spoke with people who purchased frozen entrees and claimed chicken uteruses in their food, not enough peas, misleading photos on the packaging and every foreign object imaginable and unimaginable on their fork or in their mouth.

To say that it was not the job for me at that point in my career would be an understatement. But I made the choice to get my foot in the door. I was keenly aware of what I was doing, it was a strategy.  The place was only 5 minutes from my house! I gave myself 6 months to learn everything I possibly could about the biz and move up or out. It worked out exactly that way I intended and in 8 years I climbed up the rungs of the ladder 4 times. But that’s not really the point of the story.

What IS the point?

Learning the business was fun and challenging. I went way above and beyond product information and procedures. I was interested in growth, remember? Yet the majority of stint in the seat was taking those calls and after a very short time they started to get on my nerves. Tons of nice people called too but soon I was answering calls in my dreams and on remote control during the day. I quickly had had enough of that front line stuff…

One day I took my doodling to new heights while on the job. I cut black construction paper into small tombstone shapes and stacked them like a memo pad next to my PC. While listening to nasty, stupid, entitled, A-driver types I would grab a colorful gel pen and write the caller’s initials and an equally colorful epitaph.

“Loser logic got him nowhere”

“She proved that the customer is not always right”

“He accomplished his goal to irritate others”

“Incapable of a real life“

“She made chicken uteruses in food desirable”

“He financed college with free coupons“

A little additional glitter pen action and each offender of common sense was quickly and firmly tacked to my cubie wall graveyard. And then I was done with them. I put them out of my misery to their final resting place. It was cathartic and I could move on with a smile on my lips for the next mystery caller.

I shared other innovative methods of moving on too like reward from the voices in my head. This technique works awesomely. The voices ask me questions like,

“Do you really need to argue about this or would you rather a latte?”

“Is this relationship worth the effort or would your time be better spent checking Facebook?”

“Will this be important tomorrow?”

If the battle is that important to engage me it is revealed by being more important than having a latte and checking my friends status updates. That’s rarely the case.

What techniques do you use to deal with unwanted situations, make wiser decisions about engagement in conflict, or choose your battles carefully, or do you just dive in with eyes wide open?

P.S. Those little voodoo dolls work too

Inside a Creepy Global Body Parts Business is an investigative reporting piece on how body parts become sterile commodities as they are harvested, processed, assigned prices, distributed and marked up at great profit. Immediately, I began to see parallels to talent as a commodity.

We obsess over grades in school, career paths and success and consider it a failure to not reach objectives and goals in our personal and professional lives. Based on supply and demand, salaries and wealth easily become a status symbol and who we are.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, the struggle to get ahead, the desire to achieve affluence  and keeping up with the Joneses, we fail to see that in the end we are all equal in the most organic of ways. In death we are stripped of our sex, race, ethnicity, disability, age, social class.….

Why don’t we live our equality in death in life?

In death there is no difference in the value of body parts, no matter who they belonged to, a peasant farmer or a wildly successful CEO,  to include the dura mater. The value is €9.70.

Next time you call a customer service hotline, have impatience with the cashier at the grocery store or roll your eyes at the wait staff, remember… at the end of the day we’re all worth the same.

You ‘re a Class A whiner — about everything. No one wants to hear it. Life is tough enough, no one needs you to make theirs miserable. You’re argumentative about the the sun being a planet and you belittle and berate your boss/coworker/employer and blab it everywhere for the world to see. SMKB™, you  never have  anything nice to say ever.

If you think life is horrible and unfair, you do nothing to improve yourself or advance and everyone is an idiot but you, your issues are sizable, your ego off the charts, your potential less than promising and your future predictably bleak. I’m here to help with this wake up call. You can ignore it, or you can listen and save your immortal virtual soul.

I have news for you SMKB™. Success only comes in one flavor — POSITIVE.

Your rants reach eyes and ears in a way you must not be imagining and they will live on for your grandchildren to Google. If you are making the Recruiter’s mouse go into alert mode from your displays of nastiness don’t expect an interview. 

Take the case of Administrative Assistant, C.K. Dexter Haven. Six paragraphs, a few stand alone sentences and 7 bullets as to why the job sucks and is practically intolerable. The ball and chain gig is only worthy of being there for the benefits.

C.K., what is wrong with you? You don’t see the writing on the wall, do you? And the majority of your readers who commented are the misery loves company type… toxic crew you have gathered there. If you stopped wallowing in the mire and looked up you might be able to see sunlight. You’re going to end up staying there in that bottomless pit of a job you so detest because anyone that figures out you’re not really Olive Oil or a Gnome is neva gonna touch you with a ten foot pole. You have condemned yourself to career suicide unless you snap out of it and redeem your evil ways.

What kind of future do you think Trina Thompson has? Three months out of college and whining she hasn’t been placed in the worst recession since the Great Depression when seasoned experienced people are unemployed.

I have to ask, Trina, why are you special? You’re a brand spanking new grad who put yourself out there in the public light talking smack and proving you are litigation happy. I don’t foresee an interview in your future, I see the candidate witness protection program and a major attitude adjustment or soda can recycling.

OK Trina, you weren’t tweeting about it but this falls into social media because that’s where I learned about it. So, you became a SMKB™ by association. It counts. 

What can the 2 of you do except tweet-up and cry on one another’s shoulder? You can rejoice that your examples have taught a lesson to others, learn from your erred ways and pray.

P.S. I’m running to the Post Office (before they close it down) tomorrow morning at 8am to ™ SMKB™.… don’t anyone dare!

There was some discussion recently over at CollegeRecruiter.com in a post by Dan Schawbel about whether you should introduce yourself at a networking event by what you “do” at your job. I posted a blog comment there and 4 days later I am still thinking about who we “are”, how some people shape their professional identity and how others are shaped by it. Today’s career savvy professionals position themselves as commodities via strategic personal branding. Dan and others specialize in helping others brand who they are, if they need guidance. 

But, is your professional brand who you are?  Unless you grew up with a “calling” probably not. For most people, what they do during the weekly 40+ is a means to a certain income that provides a certain lifestyle. While they may be passionate about what they do, their true passions lie elsewhere, not where the bread and butter is.

If you do something you love you will do everything you do better. It’s about balance.

John Surma, Chairman and CEO of U.S. Steel Corporation plays and coaches ice hockey. Peter Weiler, Penn State Vice President in development and alumni relations participates in ironman competitions. I have an incredibly gifted friend with an amazing marketing mind whose photography is absolutely stunning, network with a Recruiter who is a lifeguard at the beach on weekends and a customer service guru who is a scrapbooker.

None of these successful professionals are likely to turn their passions into income streams. But, these passions bring balance, joy and a much needed dimension to their lives. Additionally, passionate hobbies fuel curiosity, fresh and generous thinking, and the ability to look at questions from more than one perspective. In other words, their personal passions help them to be highly successful in their careers.

So, go ahead, be passionate about something, work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching. You’ll be happier and it will improve your game.

Note: Mrs. Cronauer was my very passionate 5th grade English teacher.