Meet me in Houston!

Meet me in Houston! Howdy cowboys and cowgirls! Ive been in Houston for a week and will be here for another week its been a blast. Ive eaten enough Mexican food to last me the entire year (not really, Id eat it every day if I could), and love the Houston weather vs. the Utah winter. Ill be at a couple of public forums and would love to invite you the only requirement is that you come and introduce yourself to me! I am also doing a couple of closed-door meetings and would love to hook up with career coaches, recruiters, HR specialist, career counselors, etc. If you know of anyone in that category that lives in Houston please drop me a line at jason@jibberjobber.com (an e-mail introduction would be better :)). Wednesday Jan 3 9am Ill be presenting at the Between Jobs Ministry this is a group that has been holding meetings for over 20 years to provide networking and job search help. Im excited about this opportunity and understand there might be a $2 cover charge. Info about where can be found at this Between Jobs Ministry link. Note that I will not be doing a demo of JibberJobber (you may have heard of my job search tool? Its free!) but I do have a presentation that Im preparing that Im pretty excited about! Wednesday Jan 3 6pm Ill be meeting with fellow blogger Daniel Sweet (of the FRACAT blog) to host a very informal networking session at Jillians restaurant. Daniel says Ill be doing a short presentation you can count on it being VERY SHORT but I hope to make it inspirational! Click over to Daniels blog for details (and a suggestion on what to order). Ill also be in Auston/San Antonio Thursday/Friday (Jan 4/5) and would love to hook up with you. Im meeting with my favorite Austin bloggers (Thom Singer, Liz Handlin, Scott Ingram and maybe Scott Allen doesnt that sound fun??) and then hope to hit some career/HR professionals. This will be a cozy group but if you are dying to chat with these elite folks shoot me an e-mail Again, if you know of anyone that I should meet with please introduce us via e-mail. Heres to an excellent 2007! Meet me in Houston! Howdy cowboys and cowgirls! Ive been in Houston for a week and will be here for another week its been a blast. Ive eaten enough Mexican food to last me the entire year (not really, Id eat it every day if I could), and love the Houston weather vs. the Utah winter. Ill be at a couple of public forums and would love to invite you the only requirement is that you come and introduce yourself to me! I am also doing a couple of closed-door meetings and would love to hook up with career coaches, recruiters, HR specialist, career counselors, etc. If you know of anyone in that category that lives in Houston please drop me a line at jason@jibberjobber.com (an e-mail introduction would be better :)). Wednesday Jan 3 9am Ill be presenting at the Between Jobs Ministry this is a group that has been holding meetings for over 20 years to provide networking and job search help. Im excited about this opportunity and understand there might be a $2 cover charge. Info about where can be found at this Between Jobs Ministry link. Note that I will not be doing a demo of JibberJobber (you may have heard of my job search tool? Its free!) but I do have a presentation that Im preparing that Im pretty excited about! Wednesday Jan 3 6pm Ill be meeting with fellow blogger Daniel Sweet (of the FRACAT blog) to host a very informal networking session at Jillians restaurant. Daniel says Ill be doing a short presentation you can count on it being VERY SHORT but I hope to make it inspirational! Click over to Daniels blog for details (and a suggestion on what to order). Ill also be in Auston/San Antonio Thursday/Friday (Jan 4/5) and would love to hook up with you. Im meeting with my favorite Austin bloggers (Thom Singer, Liz Handlin, Scott Ingram and maybe Scott Allen doesnt that sound fun??) and then hope to hit some career/HR professionals. This will be a cozy group but if you are dying to chat with these elite folks shoot me an e-mail Again, if you know of anyone that I should meet with please introduce us via e-mail. Heres to an excellent 2007!

Confessions Of A House Plant Killer

Confessions Of A House Plant Killer Yes, Im a house plant killer. Im not sure what happened, but I never learned about the care and feeding of house plants.  It doesnt matter whether I get a healthy, mature plant or some poor little young and promising plantling.  What I can tell you is that the chances of either surviving more than a month are virtually zero. I love the look of greenery and the occasional flowers.  So its pretty disheartening to know that the poor things are probably terrified as soon as they enter my home.  Somehow, Im sure they know its like a death sentence and theyve just been put on death row.  And Ive lost count of the number that Ive sadly abandoned as they gasped for their last ray of sunshine. So I surrendered to reality and now just do fake plants.  No, please dont laugh.  Thankfully, theyre not the ridiculous looking ones that I used to see in my grandmas house.  You remember those, dont you?  They looked more like someone had cut out a picture from a magazine and pasted it on some cardboard than anything at all like a real plant. House Plant Killer:  Reformed Somewhere along the line, I convicted myself of being a plant killer and sentenced myself to never being within 50 feet of them again.  In that moment, there was joy and relief in plant nurseries around the world.  But I am ok with that. Because of what Id seen in my grandmothers house, Id avoided fake plants for a long time.  My first venture into fake plant parenthood was the adoption of a little Bonsai that caught my attention in a department store.  It was kinda off by itself, and at first I actually thought it was real.  So I figured if it could fool me, maybe it was worth a spot in my home where normal people have real plants. Ive been amazed by the number of people who go up to it to take a close look, and ask is that real?  Which of course means they dont know! Artificial Plants Today After that small success, I started looking around.  And I was pretty impressed by both the quality and variety of artificial plants.  The designers and manufactures of whats available today are nothing less than artists.  Still, you probably wont find a brick and mortar shop that does nothing but artificial plants.  The good news is, like everything else, you can find specialty suppliers online who have just about anything you can imagine. One of my favorites is www.permaleaf.com.  They have a huge selection of both indoor and outdoor plants and schrub-like artificial plants.  Heres the most recent item I selected from their catalog: So if youre like me and have given up on growing anything other than mold on the cheese you forgot you had in the back of the fridge, take a look.  These arent your grandmas fake house plants.  And, care and feeding is as simple as an occasional shower to freshen them up!

Money Makeover Series New to the Workforce

Money Makeover Series New to the Workforce Recent college graduates often spend so much time looking for work after graduation that they forget what to do with their money when they finally land that first professional job. The first thought is to go crazy!  After years of getting paid by the hour in high school and college, a salary might feel like a windfall.  But with this new phase in life often comes new responsibilities such as rent and student loan debt. Read on to find out how our Money Makeover Participant, Krystle, is preparing for her financial life now that she’s new to the workforce. When I first spoke to Krystle, she was still looking for her first professional job and doing temp work to make ends meet. She went through some difficult times financially and emotionally, wondering if she’d ever achieve her dreams as so many college graduates do. By the time I’d spoken to her again, she’d just landed her first job! We could then figure out how to allocate her new salary to prepare a solid financial future for herself. Getting Everything in Order The first thing Krystle and I had to do was find out what her financial picture really looked like. Working as a temp couldn’t possibly pay all of the bills so tough decisions had to be made but now there’s an opportunity to get it all in order and start paying things off. However, the process of getting everything in order is harder than it seems! Luckily Krystle had a good idea of what she owed and to whom, but if you’re not so sure in your own life, then a great place to start is your credit report. By pulling up your credit report you literally have a list of your debts and creditors and therefore a starting point. Since Krystle already had this information, our next step was to find out how to optimize her payoff strategy. Optimizing the Debt Payoff Strategy The first thing I noticed in Krystle’s list was that she had smaller bills which weren’t attached to a credit card company and therefore could be put on a payment plan such as medical debt. Believe it or not, most hospitals will give you a payment plan on your medical debt if you call and ask them. It may not always be the simplest process, but it’s totally worth it if your monthly budget is limited! Another option is to consolidate debt into one loan if you need to pay off multiple credit cards. There are some very helpful federal government programs for student loan borrowers. If you have student loans like Krystle does you can look into programs like the IBR or Pay As You Earn Program to help lower your payments once your grace period is up. Remember, there’s no point in setting up a debt payoff strategy until you’ve found every way possible to optimize your debt situation. That means looking into programs that could help, asking your lender to lower your interest rates, and setting up payment plans when possible. Once you know you have the best possible debt situation, then you can move forward with your debt payoff plan. Creating Balance and Making Hard Decisions After working to optimize her debt in every way possible, Krystle and I started talking budgets. We listed the things that she pays for each month and deducted each and every one from her new take home pay. Unfortunately, her new take home pay came up slightly short. Something needed to be cut. Since Krystle wasn’t spending frivolously on anything and, in fact, was quite frugal, this was a pretty tough decision. I then realized that one of her bills was monthly tithing  money she sends to her church. I asked her if it would be possible to put that on hold for a few months until she had some of her smaller debts paid off. Now bear with me, asking Krystle that question wasn’t an easy thing to do. Giving to charity is a decision that no one who does it takes lightly, and I didn’t want to take this away from her. However, I couldn’t see any other way to make her budget balance. Still, Krystle was firm in her stance that she needed to continue making this donation. One might think that cut our budget talks cold, but it didn’t! That’s where the balance comes into making hard decisions. If you aren’t earning enough money to cover all of your bills and there is literally nothing you can cut from your list, then it’s time to think about what else you can do. If you have the right background, you can try to find a job that would cover the expenses for one.  There are some firms that do the hard work of job placement for you and some of them are quite specialized for more advanced professions. For example, if you are looking for a psychiatric position, you could contract with a psychiatry recruitment firm. However,  in Krystle’s case, earning extra money is the best option. Luckily, she still had a relationship with her temping agency and has even been taking on some extra shifts! We determined that if she picked up one extra shift every other week, she would have plenty to cover her tithing. If she picked up one extra shift every week, she would have even more money to apply to her debt payoff. Now comes the second phase of making hard decisions. How hard are you willing to work and at what point is it too much? Krystle has just started the job of her dreams and if working an extra day per week causes her to lose sleep and thus her performance at work to suffer, then she will lose rather than gain in the long run. But if she’s still used to the grad school lifestyle of lots of work and little sleep, she may be able to pull it off just fine. At this point, she has a week or two to really think about it and decide because this isn’t an easy decision to make! To Be Continued As Krystle spends time thinking about how much extra she can work while still performing well at her day job, think about what you can be or are doing in your own life. Do you need extra money but haven’t considered taking on a side job? Or maybe you’re working a side job but you’re working so much that you’re burning the candle at both ends. Following the extremes never works. Consider what you need the most and find ways to achieve that without letting everything else suffer and also without making the goals so large that you’re scared to even try to pursue them. Krystle is taking her financial future one step at a time, and in doing so, taking her mental and financial health seriously. Soon we’ll know exactly what she plans to do!

Beware of burnout Take the test

Beware of burnout Take the test Burnout is as much about your dreams as it is about your work, because burnout is the gap between your expectations and your ability to meet them. Jennifer Senior has a great article in this weeks New York Magazine about about burnout, which I will quote from here. Burnout is not about how many hours you work, (contrary to Lisa Belkins New York Times column this week), but if the hours you work bring you desired results. For example, if you have very flexible hours and can go on an early date and then go back to work after dinner and you get eight hours of sleep, a 100-hour week might be fine for you. In fact, Ayala Pines, professor at Ben-Guiron University at the Negev, found that serial entrepreneurs, known for working very long hours, were the workers least prone to burnout. (Those most prone are pediatric nurses in burn units.) Burnout doesnt come from overwork but from an inability to get what you need from the work, according to Christina Maslach, professor at University of California, Berkeley. She created the wideley used Maslach Burnout Inventory to test ones level of burnout. Senior describes the six areas of burnout to watch for: 1. Working too much 2. Working in an unjust environment 3. Working with little social support 4. Working with little agency or control 5. Working in the service of values we loathe 6. Working for insuficient reward, whether the currency is money, prestige, or positive feedback The effect of burnout is depersonalization, according to Barry Farber, professor at Columbia University. He says, its not that people are uncaring, but their level of caring cannot be sustained in the absence of results. Senior describes it more poetically, People who are suffering from burnout tend to describe the sensation in metaphor of emptiness theyre a dry teapot over a high flame, a drained battery that can no longer hold its charge. This is no small thing, and we should all be watching for it. What can you do? Align your expectations with reality. Senior reports a body of research that shows younger people burn out faster because of thier unrealistic expectations, and older people have more perspective based on their experience. But this is hard to control, because if you dont have experience what can you do except build it up over years? Fortunately there is a bit you can control no matter how old you are, because like most research about happiness, it comes down to your connections with other people. Maslach found that married people burn out less often than unmarried because a spouse provides another means for fulfillment besides a job. And Pines found that people are more prone to burnout in a society that values the individual way above the family or community. So make sure you are reaching your goals and maintaining close friendships, and you probably wont burn out.

6 Tricks to Nail an Interview for a Position in Sales CareerMetis.com

6 Tricks to Nail an Interview for a Position in Sales â€" CareerMetis.com Photo Credit â€" depositphotos.comThe world of sales is highly competitive from day one, and interviewing for a sales position is no exception. Understanding the competitive nature of a sales interview and approaching it with a winning mindset can help you to wow the interviewer and give you an advantage over your competitors in the job market.If followed precisely, the following six tips can put you on the top of an employer’s list of prospective sales candidates and move you one step closer to landing the job of your dreams.1) Display ConfidencePerhaps more than any other position, a sales interview will test your mastery of the actual skills you will use on the job. Use the interview as an opportunity to showcase the very skills you will use when speaking to the company’s customers. Use eye contact appropriately. Display confident and open body language. Speak clearly and in a positive tone.evalPay attention to details such as a strong handshake, and use active listening techn iques to move the interviewer towards a “buying sign” the same way you would an actual customer. Be confident enough to include a call to action, showing a confident belief that you are the right person for the job.For example, you might say something like “This seems to be a great fit. I can start as soon as Monday if you’re feeling the same!”2) Know the Company’s ProductsFamiliarize yourself with the company’s product line before entering the interview. Showing that you fully understand how the organization’s brand and product offerings stand out from their competitors can give you a significant advantage over others who have not shown the same level of initiative.Inadequate preparation is oftentimes a leading contributor to failing a job interview. Avoid becoming a part of this trend by walking into the interview fully informed and knowledgeable. Although this can take a bit of extra time, it can truly pay off.3) Know the Company’s CustomersJust as you familiari zed yourself with the company’s products, do the same for their target market. If you can show that you understand the needs and buying patterns of the company’s customers, then you can show that you’re ready to step right into the position and begin speaking the customers’ language in ways that resonate most effectively with them.If you have the opportunity, describe your strategy and approach for gaining the confidence and trust of buyers in the target market, and how your approach can be more effective than others.4) Use of Industry LanguageIn addition to displaying your soft skills and strong communication, show your academic understanding of sales methodologies. For example, ask questions about the average conversion rates of the current sales force, and discuss commission structures. Discuss the roles that sales plays in the organization’s overall marketing strategy.evalAsk if the company uses a specific sales model, such as the relationship model, the problem-solvin g model, or the consultative model.5) Cite Your AccomplishmentsThe sales world is highly driven by accomplishments and results, so make sure to showcase what you have accomplished in the past. Cite any peer-recognition awards, top-earner bonuses, or other achievements that made you stand out in previous sales roles. Talk about your goal-oriented mentality and how it drives you to reach new heights of success each and every day.If you are interviewing for your first sales job, cite any academic achievements you’ve earned to show that you are a goal-oriented and highly driven individual. In sales jobs, it is especially true that simply graduating with a business degree does not guarantee your success.Show the interviewer that you are a go-getter ready and willing to put your new skills and education to use in the real world and that you are open to coaching and mentorship for continuous personal development.6) “Sell” YourselfevalThroughout the interview process, remember thatyou are the product and the interviewer is your customer. You’ve walked into the meeting with a goal in mind: getting the interviewer to give you a “yes” to your proposition of securing employment.Craft your messaging around the benefits that you can provide to the interviewer and the employer, and how your unique strengths can best meet their specific needs.For a confident and experienced salesperson, nailing an interview and securing a job can be approached exactly like speaking to a customer and securing a large sale. However, unlike other sales conversations, this one could be the most important a salesperson ever has.If you bring all of your training and skills to bear on the goal of selling yourself to the prospective customer (the interviewer), then you can gain a major advantage over competing salespeople lining up for the same position.