Saturday, January 27, 2007

Confidence

Confidence= Trust or faith in a person or thing.

Your ability to sound, look and feel confident is paramount to your next opportunity. The definition above is short yet sums up what I want to stress. The person in this case is you!

All of your schooling, degrees and past work experiences are great, yet if you don't speak, or in this case interview with confidence you may find someone else has taken your coveted slot.

Communication with confidence doesn't mean sounding arrogant or pompous, it is more sounding passionate about your topic. Have you ever had a teacher, motivational speaker, minister, or coach speak in a manner that motivated you to do something? Did they sound like they knew what they were talking about? Were they passionate?

You will find hiring managers are impressed by someone that not only has the technical skills but also knows what they are doing and likes it. Self confidence is definitely a character trait you should seek to emulate.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Attitude

Attitude=A state of mind or a feeling; disposition
That is one, of numerous definitions, for attitude. How does attitude affect your job search?

In many ways actually. Having the proper attitude is probably the single most important element of moving on to your next opportunity. The ironic part of this is when your attitude changes you'll find everything else changing.

This reminds me of two stories: When my son was about to come home on his first leave after boot camp, in the Marine Corp., he was reminded by his Drill Sargent that when they got home they'd be noticing how everyone was different. When in all reality it was them that had changed.
Number two is when I teach a safe driving class we talk of frustrations. Normally the first frustrations discussed are cell phone drivers, trucks, and people doing stupid and/or dangerous maneuvers on the roads. Having watched the roads for years and paying even closer attention now, due to the class, I have found that the majority of folks drive decently and that includes trucks. We get extremely frustrated when someone cuts in front of us, or tailgates etc. As humans we seem to remember those and not all the courteous drivers. Pretty soon we find ourselves thinking all drivers are dangerous, stupid and rude.
The flip side is I pay attention to good deeds and don't dwell on the irritating ones, rather I use the acronym FIDO, forget it and drive on, to relieve stress. Since I won't be able to correct the miscreants and rude drivers there is no reason to stress over it. By looking at the positive side I find my attitude has changed. Now that my attitude has changed it sometimes seems as if others have changed too, on the road.

Over the years some folks have stopped by the group and shared the same fact, they found things began to changed when they changed. Ergo the idea of Having fun, Meeting people and Learning something, when we change so does everyone else.