thecareerbeat.com Blog

Surfing the waves at lunch hour

I love the read the New York Times on Sunday.

Today’s paper had a few work-related articles worth noting…

“Working Life (High and Low)” highlights some of the dangers and risks for people who are independent contractors, as exemplified by the infuriating chain of events in Jean Capobianco’s tenure with FedEx. But there’s also an interesting profile of Patagonia and how it values work-life balance for its employees — some of whom go out surfing during their lunch hour.

There’s also a column about the deluge of email, which is a common frustration for many workers. Alas the piece doesn’t offer much in the way of advice, so you might want to look here. (In fact, I need to do some inbox-clearing today…)

And the big investigation of military “analysts” that are trotted out on TV news revealed some disconcerting tendencies among the men (usually retired officers) who have this gig.

Job-hunt lessons from the campaign trail

Can you imagine going through hundreds, if not thousands, of job interviews for more than a year for a coveted position?

We’re all involved in that sort of hiring process right now, and over the past year we’ve whittled down the field of candidates to three senators, all of whom badly want to be the next U.S. president. Looking at the presidential candidates as job applicants, we can learn some basic lessons about how to successfully conduct a job search.

I recently wrote an article about six do’s and don’ts from the campaigns, and one example of a lesson is that a job candidate must differentiate herself or himself. Sen. Barack Obama is a good example of that, with his message of “Change We Can Believe In,” which helped establish his early momentum.

Career expert Alexandra Levit (author of How’d You Score That Gig?) suggests: “Find your niche, or an area of the organization where something is broken that you have the unique expertise to fix. Clearly outline why your offering is different and better than what’s already being done, and build a business case for it.”

Many career experts also suggest that job seekers should have a personal brand identity, a 30-second “elevator pitch,” or a single slogan or summary sentence that distinguishes you.

In the case of the two remaining, dueling Democrats, they seem to have narrowed their differentiators to one-word themes: “solutions” (or possibly “experience”) for Sen. Hillary Clinton and “change” for Sen. Obama.

Can you summarize what you are about — or what you bring to the table — in a single word?