I wondered Will I ever walk again

I wondered Will I ever walk again Last summer I ripped my calf pretty bad in a sports accident.  Well, the accident was that I was a out-of-shape dude playing capture the flag with a bunch of eight year olds. I hobbled around on what I thought was a pulled muscle for a week.  At the end of that week I lept in a heroic effort to save my amost 3 year old from burning herself when she got something out of the microwave. That leap did my calf in. I went to urgent care to learn I had ripped it probably 30-60% (can you imagine having your calf ripped 60%??), and that this was common in men my age, even if they are active. I ended up on the couch, and crutches, for 6 weeks.  As far as I can remember, this was the most intense physical pain Ive experienced.  For most of those 6 weeks I questioned if I would ever be able to walk again. I felt like I was in prison.  I felt helpless. I was discouraged pretty much the whole thing sucked. Finally I made myself take my first, and then second, and then third step.  I ditched the crutches and just made myself start walking around (very, very slowly). This year Ive set a goal to walk 500 miles.  Im already up to 85 miles the most I have walked in one day is a little over 6 miles.  I cant feel any pain or weakness in my calf.  Its good as normal, and by the end of this year it will be great. Relate this to your current job search, or job loss.  You will likely be in transition longer than six weeks, and you dont have to sit on the couch and be depressed the entire time. Even though you wonder if your career can ever get back on track, and doubt that it wont, I bet you it will. Just like my muscle healed, your career will heal. One day it will be stronger. One day you might not even remember the hardships you are going through today. You will heal. I wondered Will I ever walk again Last summer I ripped my calf pretty bad in a sports accident.  Well, the accident was that I was a out-of-shape dude playing capture the flag with a bunch of eight year olds. I hobbled around on what I thought was a pulled muscle for a week.  At the end of that week I lept in a heroic effort to save my amost 3 year old from burning herself when she got something out of the microwave. That leap did my calf in. I went to urgent care to learn I had ripped it probably 30-60% (can you imagine having your calf ripped 60%??), and that this was common in men my age, even if they are active. I ended up on the couch, and crutches, for 6 weeks.  As far as I can remember, this was the most intense physical pain Ive experienced.  For most of those 6 weeks I questioned if I would ever be able to walk again. I felt like I was in prison.  I felt helpless. I was discouraged pretty much the whole thing sucked. Finally I made myself take my first, and then second, and then third step.  I ditched the crutches and just made myself start walking around (very, very slowly). This year Ive set a goal to walk 500 miles.  Im already up to 85 miles the most I have walked in one day is a little over 6 miles.  I cant feel any pain or weakness in my calf.  Its good as normal, and by the end of this year it will be great. Relate this to your current job search, or job loss.  You will likely be in transition longer than six weeks, and you dont have to sit on the couch and be depressed the entire time. Even though you wonder if your career can ever get back on track, and doubt that it wont, I bet you it will. Just like my muscle healed, your career will heal. One day it will be stronger. One day you might not even remember the hardships you are going through today. You will heal. I wondered Will I ever walk again Last summer I ripped my calf pretty bad in a sports accident.  Well, the accident was that I was a out-of-shape dude playing capture the flag with a bunch of eight year olds. I hobbled around on what I thought was a pulled muscle for a week.  At the end of that week I lept in a heroic effort to save my amost 3 year old from burning herself when she got something out of the microwave. That leap did my calf in. I went to urgent care to learn I had ripped it probably 30-60% (can you imagine having your calf ripped 60%??), and that this was common in men my age, even if they are active. I ended up on the couch, and crutches, for 6 weeks.  As far as I can remember, this was the most intense physical pain Ive experienced.  For most of those 6 weeks I questioned if I would ever be able to walk again. I felt like I was in prison.  I felt helpless. I was discouraged pretty much the whole thing sucked. Finally I made myself take my first, and then second, and then third step.  I ditched the crutches and just made myself start walking around (very, very slowly). This year Ive set a goal to walk 500 miles.  Im already up to 85 miles the most I have walked in one day is a little over 6 miles.  I cant feel any pain or weakness in my calf.  Its good as normal, and by the end of this year it will be great. Relate this to your current job search, or job loss.  You will likely be in transition longer than six weeks, and you dont have to sit on the couch and be depressed the entire time. Even though you wonder if your career can ever get back on track, and doubt that it wont, I bet you it will. Just like my muscle healed, your career will heal. One day it will be stronger. One day you might not even remember the hardships you are going through today. You will heal.

Out With The Old, In With The...Well, You Get It!

Out With The Old, In With The...Well, You Get It! Oh. My Gosh. Becky. Its a New Year! I get pretty excited about the New Year, mostly because it means NEW (Hint: its in the name). Here in the middle of the United States, we had new snow, which only underscored the illusion of a clean slate. Lets talk about NEW. New Stuff In 2017, you get new stuff. You know what I mean: a new calendar, a fresh desk, a new set of books. I, like a lot of people use this time to get organized. Label your folders (on line or offline), create more organized to-do lists or assemble a calendaring system youll actually use. My resolutions are that I will actually use Evernote (for white papers and in-depth articles) across all my devices and that I will use Shoeboxed to keep track of my traveling receipts. New Processes You know whats hard? Change. Especially when you are working within a team. If everyone goes around changing their processes all the time, it makes for a very disorganized team. Thats why the first week in January makes everyone a little nuts; everyones personal goals are either not aligned or vocalized with corporate ones. What if you called your (virtual or in-person) team together for a bit of accountability and support? Is the manager going to work out over lunch instead of hearing complaints? Is Becky trying to have a no-email zone from 7:00-10:00 am? When you share your new processes with others you work or consistently interface with, you increase your chances of success. My new process for the year is no phone calls after 4 pm. When I take these calls, my children are often home from school and I either forget what was said or am worried about noise on the line. When I take calls early in the day, I remember to send notes and really focus on the call itself. Ive already notif ied my coworkers and clients. New Tech Even if you arent one of the lucky ducks that received a new phone, computer or tablet this year, you can still take advantage of the new tech 2013 has to offer. In fact, much of it isnt really new at all. I have found that I dont really adopt new tools at the rate I used to and I believe that is to my detriment. Voice to text apps while Im on my morning walk? Yes, please. With constant upgrades on software, new consumer and enterprise apps being developed daily and constant must-have lists, there is surely one new tech change you can make to your daily routine. I have been trying to incorporate Google+ into my sharing routine and took the last day in 2012 to go over the software and systems I am using and make all the updates. I also decided to print out and laminate shortcut cheat sheets that have saved a great deal of time. Need some ideas? Check out followup.cc and IFTT to automate likeeverything.  Make sure you check out the user manuals for your enterprise software or ask your rep to take you through a fresh demo, I bet there are new features youre dying to try. New Space Clean, clear desktop. Fresh lines of notebook paper. Even my Facebook timeline somehow seems clearer. Even if you didnt have a chance to de-clutter before 2012 was over, you can still organize your space and get rid of detritus post haste. The obvious tidying up has to do with real life but what about creating a new and organized Dropbox folder or using unroll.me to tidy up your inbox? Is your desktop looking cluttered with screenshots and to-do items? If so, take 15 minutes to de-clutter so that you can start 2013 with a clear mind (and PC). My number one item? Begin syncing my project management tool of choice, Asana with Dropbox folders. They offer the integration now and its a no brainer. New Ideas Ill be the first to tell you that the predictions lists are kind of meh this year. That is, they say the same things as last year, basically. However, there are some gems out there. Jobcast has an interesting one, as do I (yeah like Im not gonna put mine in here) and Ihrims, while long, is good.  New ideas are everywhere and as a cutting edge recruiter (which you are right?) you should want to pay attention to these. I work with a ton of vendors. Their primary goal in life is to get you, yes YOU, on a demo. So call up employee referral vendor Zao or Video Interviewing platform Wowzer or ATS vendor RecruiterBox or RMS provider Skillstream. Dont get gamification? Call Badgeville. Confused about social sourcing? Check out Entelo. Need CRM tips? Ping Avature. My point is, all these companies (and many, many more head to Software Advice and Capterra for list after list of HR Tech Products) are interested in educating you. Sure, they want to sell but they also want to get their concepts o ut to market and if you understand them you only bring valuable knowledge back to your firm or organization. Carve out 20 min a week for a new product demo. At the very least, it will give you questions to ask your OWN vendor community. New Goals I know that its a bit passe in some circles to create goals, but its my favorite part of the New Year. If you believe, even for just a few days, that you can radically alter something about yourself, thats still pretty impressive! Its a childlike feeling. So give it a shot. Cant lose 20 lbs? How about 10? Dont want to make 40 new calls a week? Maybe try for 15. Scared to attempt to learn a language? What about planning a trip to that country instead? My point is, goals have the inherent, beautiful quality of giving you new faith in yourself and that will impact your work positively for sure. Im trying the  Daily Burn. Happy New Year!

Checks For Your Profile Post LinkedIn Password Hack

Checks For Your Profile Post LinkedIn Password Hack We reported in a previous article about 6.5 M LinkedIn passwords having been stolen. A day later, and we start seeing the first damage. These quick tips will help you review your LinkedIn profile. 1. Check If Your LinkedIn Password Is In The Wrong Hands You can now check if your LinkedIn password has been compromised or not. The tool created by Lastpass will ask you for your LinkedIn password and computes its SHA -1 hash  and sends the result to LastPass.com to search the list of 6.5 million leaked password hashes. A hash is a mathematical function that is simple to perform in one direction, but very difficult to reverse. Meaning, the tool will convert your password into a series of characters in such a way that it will be very difficult to re-construct your original password. You can use it here. 2. Change Your LinkedIn Password It is generally good practice to constantly keep changing your passwords on any website, but since LinkedIn has been compromised in part, it is strongly recommended to change your LinkedIn passwords. You can change your LinkedIn password by following the following steps: a. Go to your Settings page available under your name once you login. b. Once you click on Settings, you will be asked to enter your username and password (old) NOTE: This might not be required if you are already logged in at that session. c. Once you log-in, you will be redirected to the back-end of your profile. On the page click on Account and then Change Password Thats it, in 3 simple steps you can change your password. It hardly takes 30 seconds, PLEASE SECURE YOUR LINKEDIN PASSWORD if you can now! [ALSO READ: How and What Happened in LinkedIn Password Steal?]  If this post has been helpful, please use the sharing buttons below. If your password has been compromised, we would like to hear from you. 2

What Do UK Jobseekers Search For On Job Boards

What Do UK Jobseekers Search For On Job Boards Have you ever wondered what people are searching for on Monster UK? Your sleepless nights are over, with the brand new Monster journey infographic you can see some fascinating trends from what days are the most popular for searches to how many graduate positions are searched for every week in Great Britain. Takeaways: 17,778 job searches made every hour 164 job postings viewed every minute 2,126 new job postings per day 3 sales jobs searched for every minute 3,283 CVs viewed by employers per hour 2,671 marketing jobs searched for every day 12,870 graduate positions searched for every week Tuesday and Wednesday are most popular job hunting days 52% of job seekers have a bachelors degree Other revelations include that banking is the preferred career choice for teenagers, almost a third of jobseekers spend time at their current job looking for a new one and that ‘sales’ is the most searched word on the Monster site RELATED: How To Search for Jobs on Facebook (Infographic). Source: Monster.co.uk

Interview Series - Career Experts - Adrienne Tom from Career Impressions CareerMetis.com

Interview Series - Career Experts - Adrienne Tom from Career Impressions In this interview series, we caught up with Adrienne Tomfrom Career Impressionswho shares her expertise and insights about job search, career change,etc.in today’s marketplace.Tell us a little bit about your company evalFor over a decade Career Impressionshas been providing executive resume writing, LinkedIn profile creation, and job search strategies to top professionals and executives across North America â€" helping astute business leaders level up, land faster, and increase their earning power!How did youget started? I always wanted to be a writer.evalWhen I graduated from University I thought I would pursue a role in copywriting or technical writing but there weren’t a lot of opportunities in my city at that time.Fortunately I ended up working in career services helping students with resumes and job search.After recognizing a gap in the local market for high touch resume assistance and job search support I launched Career Impressions in 2008 and haven’t looked back. It qui ckly expanded from being a local resume writing provider to a national and then international executive resume writing firm.Full circle: I’m a writer.More specifically I’m a career storyteller who writes kick-butt resumes and LinkedIn profiles for some of the world’s biggest and brightest business minds.The career files I’ve written have helped top professionals differentiate themselves from the competition to land higher-level positions and secure increased compensation.Is this something you decided early on in your career? When I first graduated from University, being an entrepreneur, or working in the career services industry, never crossed my mind. I was focused on a traditional job path.evalHowever, I soon realized that I needed more flexibility in my work schedule after the birth of my first child. After recognizing a gap in the market for resume writing and job search support, I decided to take a leap and open my own company. This allowed me to manage my own schedule while focusing on a service I was passionate about. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.What is the best Career Advice you’ve ever received?The best career advice I’ve ever received was encouragement to follow my own path and not get overwhelmed with the details â€" simply give things a try. Trying is learning. When I first considered branching off on my own and launching my own company there were a few very key individuals who said ‘give it a try’. evalOver the years when I was faced with difficult choices or new opportunities that scared me, these same people said ‘give it a try’. Trying always resulted in learning and more often than not led to some amazing results.What is the most exciting part of working in thisindustry? evalIt is extremely validating to guide a client through the extraction of their unique career stories.I am honoured when business leaders turn to me for support with unearthing their value and positioning themselves strategically ‘o n paper’ to make their next big career move.After our work together, I commonly hear from clients that the greatest benefit they received in our work together wasn’t just the end result or product, but the process it took to create it.Helping business leaders take a long, hard look at their value and understand the importance of their skills in relation to their career goals is what makes me proudest. When they read their resume and get to see their amazing offerings compiled in one space and they say “wow!” â€" that feels good.How do to stay abreast of the industry as an expert? Continuous learning is critical for all career levels and job types. I am no different. I approach my work with a goal to invest in ongoing professional development and learning as often as possible to ensure I am providing the best possible services and support to my clients.For me, learning includes:Involvement with professional associations. I am a member in good standing with 3 major association s and an active volunteer, certification assessor, and advisory board member with Career Professionals of Canada.Reading books. I am currently reading Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters and The Motivation Myth â€" with a stack of other books on my desk waiting to be read.Remaining active on social media What are the common mistakes that you see them do? Often, people put too many eggs in one basket’, thinking that *just*a resume is needed for success, or *just* searching for jobs online will yield results. It rarely does.A multifaceted strategy is required and there needs to be less focus on online job trolling and more focus on relationship building and networking. At the end of the day people hire people so work to identify who those people are and get connected with them.How should job seekers approach job search today?Although a job search strategy can be different for each person, I advise job seekers to start with a clear goal and plan. Build a roadmap and be open to diversi fied approaches.evalMeaning, know where you want to go and how you are going to get there and don’t put too many eggs in one basket’.If you aren’t sure how your plan should be compiled, seek assistance. There are many professionals available in the industry who know exactly how to build a customized job search strategy and help you execute it.Unemployment is at the lowest levels, why do you think that is? Likely just the current state of the economy and an uptick in hiring in different industries. As nice as this is we all know things can shift and change at any time so everyone should have their career management plan in place â€" regardless of the type of job they hold or how secure they currently feel. Being prepared is no longer an option.What is the biggest trend(s) you see that job seekers will face in the next 2-3 years? The future of work and employment projections stress the importance of continuous learning, upskilling, and reskilling in order to keep up with workpla ce reshaping and rapid transformation.Every 2-3 years out job seekers will need to demonstrate that they are able to meet the demands of changing workplaces. Skills development, upgrading, and ongoing learning should be a regular part of career goals so that if you find yourself suddenly out of work, or wanting to make a change, you are armed to position yourself as the best candidate.Those that don’t prepare won’t be able to compete in a job search at the same level.What is one advice you would give someone just out of college today? Start building your network and never stop. It can be challenging for new grads to even think about networking but this skill is proving vital in today’s job search process.Create a robust LinkedIn profile and start strategically connecting with people of interest, or people who work in your industry. Attend events.Reach out to decision makers to learn more about their companies or hiring processes. Ask good questions. Build relationships.What is one advice you would give someone who is switching careers?The same strategy I mentioned for new grads can apply to career changers. Build and leverage your network to support a transition.In addition, research your targeted industry and audience and learn how to align your unique offerings with their requirements. Decision makers need career changers to clearly connect the dots for them.They need very specific skills and abilities, so how does your seemingly unrelated background relate to their needs? Cut out anything unrelated in your communications and zero in on demonstrating return on investment.How should job seekers get the most out of LinkedIn?My top LinkedIn tip is to write your profile with a future-focused approach.Most people write their profile as a summary, looking back at all of the things they’ve done throughout their career. Instead, flip the script and compose profile content focused on where you want to take your career. Identify that next level role and create a robust profile that demonstrates alignment of skills and abilities in relation to that role’s requirements.A future-focused approach accomplishes two things.First, it raises visibility on the site by ensuring SEO and keywords are properly formulated for desired roles, helping the right people (recruiters/hiring managers) find you on the site. It acts like a beacon, signaling fit for target jobs.Second, it makes it easy for readers who land on the profile to understand your value and the ROI they would get from hiring you. Itspeaks their language, sparks their interest, and keeps them engaged.What is the biggest trend(s) you see that hiring managers will face in the next 2-3 years?I think social recruiting will continue to rise and hiring personnel will continue to research and vet candidates through a variety of platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. This means that job seekers need to have a strong, well-managed online presence.One of the hiring trends that I hope sta rts to gain more traction is hiring for potential versus hiring ‘ready made’. As the world of work continues to evolve, employers need to as well.More employers need to invest in the provision of competency-based training to develop potential talent and have them grow with the company, versus looking for an elusive perfect fit at the start.Adrienne, what are your currently working on?Even after being in business for over a decade I still regularly revisit my offerings and business model to make adjustments and improvements.Currently, I am working on a complete website overhaul. When it launches this summer I will also be releasing a new workbook series for both executive-level and professional-level job seekers who prefer a do-it-yourself resume writing resource.What are the best resources you recommend to job seekers? First and foremost, being active on LinkedIn is recommended. Build a strong, future-focused profile and engage on the site frequently! LinkedIn is a gold mine of information and opportunities.The book Guerilla Marketing for Job HuntersbyJay Conrad Levinsonand David E. Perry has good modern strategies to consider and leverage. In addition, a great podcast is:Resume Storytelling with Virginia FrancoFinally, my own blogwhere I enjoy writing and sharing posts on a variety of executive resume writing and job search topics each week.What is the best way for our audience to reach you? Email â€" [emailprotected]Connect with/Follow Adrienne Tom on Social Media:LinkedInTwitterFacebook Page YouTube PageAdrienne Tom and Career Impressions have also been featured in our recent compilation of the most resourceful career experts and career blogs â€" Top Career Advice Websites.