June 29th, 2009 ·
I still smile just thinking about this. I was watching Top Chef Masters on Bravo the other day, and one of the contestants, a passionate and outspoken chef from France, reminded me of a man I once interviewed for a major university. Let’s call him Jacques.
Jacques seemed highly qualified for the manager position, at least according to his resume. He was also well-spoken and personable. I did the initial phone interview and decided to bring him in for a group interview with other managers and his potential boss. He was as charming in person as he was on the phone, and when it came to the technical questions, he aced every one. It looked like I had found a good one. Yay!
And then I asked the interview question that did him in. [Read more →]
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June 24th, 2009 ·
I was just watching one of my favorite Woody Allen films, Broadway Danny Rose. It’s one of his lesser known films I think, but for me he hits it out of the ballpark.
At one point in my career, I wanted to be an agent, just like Allen’s character Danny Rose. The trouble was, I wanted to be almost exactly like him - helping actors and performers whom no one else wanted to represent. This idealism, while of course worthy, didn’t go over big with my boss, a top agent who believed in representing people who could actually make him money. But that’s another story.
Anyway, last night I was watching this movie for the umpteenth time and heard something I never heard before. [Read more →]
Tags: Broadway Danny Rose·Woody Allen
June 17th, 2009 ·
A few years back I was amused by a study that explained why stupid people continue to think they’re smart. Clearly, the study concluded, stupid people don’t have the intelligence to accurately assess just how stupid they are.
Kind of makes sense.
Of course, there may be ways to figure it out. As the indomitable and arguably stupid Forrest Gump learned from his beloved mama: “Stupid is as stupid does.” That’s certainly one way to look at it. From that definition, Forrest wound up being anything but. [Read more →]
Tags: career advice·Forrest Gump·work
June 15th, 2009 ·
I love my readers!
I recently posted what I called the “Joe Series” based on a reader’s experiences being out of work for longer than he ever imagined - and how he finally found a job he likes even better than the one that let him go. The idea for these posts started with a comment Joe left on one of my posts.
Well, another reader, the delightful MusEditions, left her own comment about what Joe said in Being Out of Work is Just Plain Scary regarding the social aspects of work . Here’s what she said: [Read more →]
Tags: Social Networking·work·work-life·workplace relationships
June 8th, 2009 ·
This past weekend, I was listening to Speaking of Faith on public radio, and heard some of host Krista Tippett’s 2003 interview with Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnamese Zen monk, poet, and peacemaker. While I’m not a Buddhist (lord knows), a lot of what “brother Thầy” says rings true for me. (Thầy is Vietnamese for teacher and they call him that affectionately.)
One thing in particular he talks about is the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, kind of paying attention to whatever is happening in your life while while staying in the moment. Some people think it’s about removing yourself from reality, but in fact, to paraphrase what he said:
True mindfulness is not an evasion of any kind.
It’s a serene encounter with reality.
Even in the workplace, mindfulness has great value. [Read more →]
Tags: mindfulness·Thich Nhat Hahn·Zen·zen at work
June 3rd, 2009 ·
This is my 3rd and final post in the “Joe Series”.
In my June 1, 2009 post, we met Joe. He lost his job and was surprised that for the first time a new job didn’t simply come his way. Months passed without a job in sight. Out of work. Money running low. A very scary time. And he offered us some great first-hand advice on how to handle this totally unsettling experience.
Well, he and I continued our discussion via e-mail and I want to share more of his thoughts, including some great advice he got from a friend in HR about how to handle the job interview process. It changed his entire job hunt. Here’s what he told me: [Read more →]
Tags: HR·job hunt·out of work·Resumes
June 2nd, 2009 ·
This is post number 2 in my three-part “Joe Series”.
We first met Joe yesterday in my June 1, 2009 post. Out of work. Money running low. Months passing without a job in sight. A very scary time. He’d always gotten work so easily. But not this time. And it wasn’t an easy thing for him to make sense of. Wanting to help others in the same situation, he offered us some great first-hand advice.
We continued our discussion via e-mail and I’d like to share more of his thoughts about how even a talented, otherwise confident person can get thrown for a loop by a prolonged period of unemployment. Something all too many people are unfortunately going through right now. But there is hope!
Here’s what Joe told me: [Read more →]
Tags: job hunt·out of work·personal finance·unemployment·waiting game
June 1st, 2009 ·
This is the first in my 3-part “Joe Series”.
Sometimes my readers say it better than I ever could. Here are Joe’s own words of wisdom based on his many months out of work. As the weeks ticked by, this same confident guy who up until then had always felt sure he could get a job started to lose hope and worry he’d never find work again. (Fear not…there is hope!)
Hi Ronnie Ann!
Your post Days Off Are Way Better If You Actually Have a Job! summed up my job hunting experience last year perfectly. At first I was nonchalant about the whole thing. Jobs had always sort of fallen into my lap, so why would this time be any different? [Read more →]
Tags: job·job hunt·out of work·waiting game
May 27th, 2009 ·
In most cases the answer is a resounding “yes”. If they re-post the job, odds are it’s time to kiss it good-bye!
But there are also exceptions to the rule, which I’ll discuss later on. Unfortunately, the letter I got from a reader asking me that very question probably isn’t one of them. Here’s her story…
Hello Ronnie Ann!
I’m actually crying right at this very moment only because I can’t seem to understand why people who do job interviews can be so calloused. [Read more →]
Tags: Job interviews·waiting game
May 20th, 2009 ·
Follow your passion. Stay true to yourself. Don’t give advice. Don’t take advice.
Along with her usual funny take on life, this is what Ellen Degeneres told Tulane graduates in a recent commencement address. And then, of course, she proceeds to give them her own unique melange of career advice anyway. And she lets us in on some of the things she went through to get where she is. [Read more →]
Tags: Ellen Degeneres·LGBT·success·Tulane graduation·YouTube
