career guide - Don Huse's Blog

Considering contract work?

The unemployment rate currently stands at about 8.5 percent, with 13 million people unemployed. Nationwide, there are only about 3 million new jobs available. That is an average of more than four applicants for every job opening—twice as many applicants per job opening than when the recession began in December 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Clearly there have been recent signs of improvement in the economy and some states, like Texas, have not been hit as hard as others. Nevertheless, with the current high unemployment rate, you may want to consider contract work, freelancing, and consulting—at least until you can find a more permanent position. Consulting, contract work, and freelancing are especially popular among professionals who can work out of their homes, requiring modest start-up money. They can sometimes acquire former employers as their new clients. Some see it as an opportunity to become their own bosses.

Here are some tips if you are thinking about exploring contract work, consulting, or freelancing arrangements: 



• Reach out to those who know your work best, and inform them about your new self-employment enterprise. Prime targets would include your former employers, particularly your most recent company, and networking contacts.


• Try to specialize in a few subject areas. Choose subjects that you know best and can successfully compete for business in.


• Assemble a portfolio showcasing your talents and experience. Customize the portfolio to highlight your relevant experience within the same industry and/or with the same type of company as each business prospect you contact.


• Price yourself competitively. Find out what the prevailing hourly or project rate is in your area for your type of work. Choose an hourly rate or project cost that will enable you to be profitable. But you also want to ensure that you get in the door and start doing business with your target. If your industry reputation and personal brand are strong you will be able to charge more.


• Before spending money on advertising or direct marketing, use social networking websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and others to announce your new venture. Also spread the word via e-mails and text messages to your networking contacts, former colleagues, friends, and family.


• Volunteer your services to a nonprofit, civic, or religious group to make business contacts and promote your enterprise.

• Build a website that will give you an Internet presence. Don't expect to initially get much business from the Internet, but refer potential clients to your website for more information about what you do.


• Closely investigate and comply with all applicable local, state, and federal permit, license, and tax rules and laws. Hire legal and accounting professionals to ensure compliance with these if needed.


• Consider taking a part-time job during non-business hours, if necessary, until your self-employment arrangement is generating sufficient income.

What difference can you make?

In the current economy, companies now seeking or planning to hire employees may want to more closely examine how candidates can immediately contribute. Therefore, you must know and articulate the difference you can make in helping an organization achieve its objectives.

Here are some tips:

• Conduct research into the potential employer's recent business results, sales and earnings forecasts from the company and financial analysts, its management style, and human resources policies.
• Talk with as many people as possible until you can get an accurate assessment of what skills and abilities are most in demand now at the targeted employer, and what its business culture is.
• Communicate how you meet, and exceed, the immediate business needs in all phases of your contact with potential employers - resumes, cover letters, telephone interviews, personal interviews, and follow-up communication.
• Be as specific as possible about how your career achievements demonstrate your ability to help the potential employer right away.
• Demonstrate that you not only have the skills and abilities desired, but also match the company's business culture.

The work to execute these steps will be rewarded as you distinguish yourself from the competition who is either unaware of the importance, or unwilling to make the effort to do this kind of preparation.

Are you overdoing your strengths?

For years we have been hearing about how important it is to discover and maximize our strengths. But is it possible to overdo your strengths with detrimental results?

In a recent HBR article, Stop Overdoing Your Strengths (executive summary here), Robert Kaplan and Robert Kaiser say "more is not always better, and executives lose their jobs when their strengths become weaknesses through overuse."

Kaplan and Kaiser describe the negative impact of overused strengths:

In our research we tested the effects of overused strengths on two aspects of team performance: vitality (defined as morale, engagement, and cohesion) and productivity (quantity and quality of output). We found that taking a strength to an extreme is always detrimental to performance, but even a mild tendency to overdo it can be harmful. Be a little too forceful, for instance, and your team’s output may improve some—but vitality will take a hit, and weakened morale will eventually undercut productivity. Be a little too enabling, and you may shore up vitality—but productivity will suffer over time, which will in turn erode morale. In general, overdoing it hurts your effectiveness just as much as underdoing it.

. . . it may be time.

The more you advance in your career the less likely job boards are going to be any help. Fortunately, that doesn't keep them from spending lots of money to create ads that entertain us. Below is Career Builder's 2009 Super Bowl ad.

Message in a bottle

Randy Pausch, born October 23, 1960, was an American professor of computer science, human- computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University.

In August 2006, Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He pursued a very aggressive cancer treatment that included surgery and experimental chemotherapy; however, in August 2007 he was told the cancer had metastasized to his liver and spleen, which meant it was terminal. He then started palliative chemotherapy, intended to extend his life as long as possible. At that time, doctors estimated he would remain healthy for another three to six months.

In the face of such circumstances, Pausch did something.

Pausch decided that in the midst of his tragedy there was an opportunity.

On September 18, 2007 Pausch said goodbye to his students and faculty of Carnegie Mellon with one last lecture called "How to Live Your Childhood Dreams," a lecture about his life's journey and the lessons he's learned.

Pausch insisted that both the lecture and later, the book, were designed for an audience of three: his children, then 5, 2 and 1. "I was trying to put myself in a bottle that would one day wash up on the beach for my children."

Pausch talked about his battle with pancreatic cancer. "So in case there is anyone in the room who wandered in and didn't know my back story, my dad always said, 'If there is an elephant in the room, introduce him.'"

"If you look at my [CT] scan, there are approximately 10 tumors in my liver. The doctors told me I had three to six months of good health left. That was a month ago so you can do the math."

The diagnosis was a grim reality, but Pausch isn’t into grim nor self-pity.

"I've never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion," Pausch told Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America". "We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn't matter. Life is to be lived."

Pausch’s dreams included: being in zero gravity, playing in the NFL, authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals and working as a Disney Imagineer.

Though he achieved most of his childhood dreams, or at least a revised version of some (meeting Captain Kirk rather than being him), Pausch flashed his rejection letters on a screen and talked about career setbacks and then voiced one of his most profound lessons: "Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls aren't there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show us how badly we want something. Brick walls stop the people who don’t want it badly enough."

Other lessons include:

• Don’t bail; the best gold is found at the bottom of barrels of crap.
• Get a feedback loop, and listen to it.
• Show gratitude.
• Don’t complain, just work harder.
• Be good at something. It makes you valuable.
• Find the best in everybody, no matter how long you have to wait for them to show it.
• Be prepared: “Luck” is where preparation meets opportunity.

Randy Pausch died July 25, 2008. But his impact lives on.

Faced with a terminal illness, Randy Pausch decided to do something and gave a talk about life that was designed first for his kids and then for his students & colleagues. It has become a blessing to the world. Delivered originally to about 400 people at the university, his message about how to make the most of life has been viewed by millions on the Internet. Pausch gave an abbreviated version of it on "Oprah" and expanded it into a best-selling book, "The Last Lecture."

Video below, 76 minutes of time well spent.

"Don't do that thing"

To help you in your quest for meaningful and satisfying work, the Most Interesting Man in the World has finally given his sage advice.

Aiming too low

I was looking through some old Tom Peters notes and found this quote:

The greatest danger for most of us
is not that our aim is too high
and we miss it,
but that it is too low
and we reach it.

-Michelangelo

The problem with your resume

Seth Godin is right. If you really believe you have something remarkable to offer, your resume is not likely to help you much. As Seth says:

I think if you're remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn't have a resume at all.

Here's why: A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, "oh, they're missing this or they're missing that," and boom, you're out.

Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords, and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine. Just more fodder for the corporate behemoth. That might be fine for average folks looking for an average job, but is that what you deserve?

Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for... those jobs don't get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.

The truth is most people don't have the courage to go without a resume. Nevertheless, you need the wisdom and courage not to lead with it.

Try this...1) List the companies you would like to work for. 2) Figure out the problems you can solve or key objectives you can accomplish. 3) Send a letter to the person you would be working for, stating your interest in the company along with your value proposition. DO NOT sound like a job seeker, this is not a cover letter. DO NOT send a resume (if you do, you're done).

Over confident

A recent Business Week poll of executives and middle managers found that "an impossible 90% of respondents believe they're in the top 10% of performers." This does not surprise me. Many of these people probably were in the top 10% of performers. That's why they were promoted. The problem is that they assume or desperately want to believe that they are still top performers at their new level.

Not every high school quarterback goes on to be Brett Favre or Peyton Manning.

Essential reading

Todd Sattersten at 800-CEO-READ has provided his list of leadership classics.

The list includes:

1. Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
2. Execution by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck
3. In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman
4. Good to Great by Jim Collins
5. The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

This is a great list. I'd put The Effective Executive #1. It is still hard to imagine a list of classics without Covey's Seven Habits.