[The Talent Game] Coffee with Amy

It’s great when good people do well.

It’s even better when good people, talented people navigate a career bump or two and end up in a better role with a better boss and culture than they left behind.

Someone I’ll call “Amy” is one of those people.

I know her through community work we’d done together, and my coffee with her this week was to catch up on her new job, and to debrief on how she got there.… Read the rest

When Did SM – Social Media – Turn into Slimy Media?

Caveat Emptor – something Stephen Colbert translates as tuff tittie – should be the motto for any buyer.

Looks like it should be the same for any job hunter using social media to find their next gig.

While many a job hunter has seen the Craiglist Scam Alert  (“affiliate scammers are posting bogus ads promising (nonexistent!) employment, paid research trials, or other compensation, but then notifying repliers that they’ll need to jump through a hoop first.Read the rest

When is the Best Time to Build Your Professional Network?

My colleague John Rehm – fresh from a tour of duty in Asia with IDEO leading innovation projects – flagged a post at HBR.com by Campbell Soup Company CEO and President Doug Conant titled Five Steps to Building Your Network.

If you’ve read Conant’s book with Nette Norgaard,  Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments, you know that his candor and personal openness is unusual (unfortunately) for most senior executives.… Read the rest

The Job Hunt: When the Shoe Fits

An example of bar lacing on a stompy shoe
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Most everyone wants a job or role that “works:” sufficiently challenging to keep you engaged, room for growth, pays fairly (aka “well”) in the form of monetary or psychological (if it’s volunteer work) compensation, fits in your schedule, fits with your geographic preferences, and comes with a boss and co-workers that you like and respect.

In other words, we want to it all.… Read the rest

“How long should I wait until I look for another job after realizing the one I just got isn’t the right fit for me?”

Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in ...
Image via Wikipedia

My twitter friend Hutch Carpenter noted (tweeted actually) that “Quora is the new black” – always a signal that something may become popular – the website provides an interesting mix of questions and answers in a quasi-curated format. Co-founders Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever and the rest of the team have created for the moment a site what provides a rich collection of questions and answers on a host of topics.… Read the rest