As you might have noticed, I have been slacking on keeping the blog active. Its been too long since my last post. The good news is that I have landed in a very good place professionally which is keeping me from blogging on a regular basis.
I have to admit that how I ended up in that place had a lot to do with this blog, but also had a lot to do with not burning bridges.
I will post more soon.
~DK
How often do you feel your talent is wasted where you are? Or how do you know someone who flourished upon a job change?
Recently, I visited a few colleagues of mine at their new place of employment. We all worked together in the past and I was struck by what I noticed and what I observed in my meeting with them. I have a deep admiration for all three folks to whom I am referring. They are rock stars at what they do. They are highly engaged, proactive professionals who amaze me constantly and they are simply great and kind people. But, when we all worked together in the past, it seemed that something was holding them back. They did their jobs well, had great attitudes…great employees. The difference became clear to me when I saw them together in this new place…a new job.
Change. We have all signed up for change and a lot of it this year. As a culture, we elected change in our government on the basis of “change we can believe in” and we are undergoing a massive financial and cultural change in our country. Change is a word that seems to be inner-twined in every conversation, yet change is often rebuked and even feared in basic parts of our lives. Its ironic, really… but this rebuke of change seems especially tied to technology that we use everyday.
Recently, Ikea decided to change its font for its print and online content from Futura to Verdana to better standardize its print and online design. You would think that font changes would not be contriversial, but there was indeed a backlash. “Ikea fans were outraged, finding Verdana less elegant than Futura,” according to Associated Press Writer Stephen Nasstrom. What this shows you is that a large part of your customer base will respond negatively to any design change, regardless how minor.
Like many of you, I have received notifications that my credit limits have been cut on my credit cards. While this may seem to have little to no impact on me financially, I have learned there is an inherent credit score impact with these credit card company credit cuts.
Let’s take a look at how this is effecting small businesses negatively and how it hurts the consumer. I also have some ideas on how to deal with this by pushing business to smaller, more local institutions that may alleviate your pain and also the pain that these banks created and continue to create in our economy.
Being unemployed is depressing. For many of us, work is part of our identity. I frequently am asked by others I meet about what I do. But what is the answer when you have become part of the latest unemployment wave that is plaguing our economy and society? A loss of a job is a loss of a part of your life and with that, it is normal to go through the emotions of dealing with a loss of almost any kind. Recently, I was reading some posts online where people actually became suicidal because of their lack of success finding work. When life and death issues are at stake, we have to take notice and that is why I am writing about this topic. All things in life are temporary, but depression clouds that understanding and can lead to terrible decisions if it gets out of control.
Conventional wisdom will tell you that web product development needs to follow specific steps; prescribed phases and deliverables of industry guidelines may prove valuable in many cases, but also may impede progress and creativity. The cost of starting with pre-developed tools and just getting the idea down in code may be high and might lead to discovery that original presumptions were wrong. To off set or avoid undo expenses, the product manager may elect to work in the abstract and put ideas on paper in a technical vacuum before making choices on platform or functionality. While I agree that buying a technology platform before a good RFP and requirements analysis will almost certainly lead to undo costs, open source platforms might just be the thing that frees the web product mind from abstract analytical constraints and allow you to get your idea on the screen as you iterate through discovery and assumptions.
The buzz around social networking seems to have slowed a bit, but the ubiquity of discussion about social media is still very much alive. As major media outlets like cable news, network television, radio and producers of goods and service find social networks invaluable sources to keep in contact with their audiences, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Bebo continue to find ways to monetize their traffic and network data. Will there ever be a solid financial model that will support the continuation of free, ad supported social networks?
Believe it or not, being unemployed for an extended period of time may make you less employable. I recently was speaking with a colleague of mine about a hiring manager who was less likely to consider a candidate for a position if he/she had been unemployed for an extended period of time. Both my colleague and I thought this state if mind was short sided and actually flat out wrong. Why would a hiring manager eliminate a candidate from the interview pool because he/she was unemployed for an extended period? Is this simply recession think?
This recession has forced me to take a new look at how approach career development. It has never been more important to network and take a pluralistic approach to the job hunt. But networking often “feels” disingenuous and superficial. When you lack employment and are seeking to fix it, you are at a disadvantage and you want something of someone and have little to return the favor. And these days, there are a lot of people out there caught up in “recession think” on the job hunt who are just trying to get an inside to gain some sort of advantage over the masses with whom they are competing.
The outcome is a short-term contact cycle where if your networking efforts fail be productive, you have to move on quickly. In a normal economic situation, it might be best to continue to grow the networking relationship for longer term goals, but today, people move on and the contact stops. This is not a healthy approach to building up a profile and reputation in the workforce. And, unfortunately, when you have a sense of eternal instability, its too easy to use people and burn bridges for your own gains.
Were you laid off months ago and still cannot find a job? You are not alone and your efforts to figure our how to succeed might not be what is needed to re-enter the employment market. Things are different, but we are not sure exactly what changed, so adjusting is more a guessing game of trial and error until you get a result of some kind.
Cheers! Sandra. R.