5 Career Benefits from Journaling

A daily practice of journaling is one habit you might consider adding to your life to see some immediate improvements to your career and work life.

Simply setting aside as little as ten minutes each day to write can help bring a focus and clarity to your life and provide several unexpected dividends.

Here are five ways journaling can benefit your career and enhance your life.

Journaling allows you to process your thoughts and feelings. Writing provides an organized way for you to gain some understanding of the events of the day, and the emotions that accompany them. This can aid you in working through situations or circumstances that contribute to difficult emotions--such as fear, anger, or sadness--and can help provide an honest look at factors contributing to success or failure.

Journaling helps you set your focus for the next day. When you take a few minutes at the end of the day to write you can spend some of that time setting your priorities, listing a few of your major tasks for the next day, and enabling you to be more focused and prepared when you awake the following morning.

Journaling helps you recognize your successes and accomplishments. When you commit to a daily practice of writing you have a record of your accomplishments and can look back over time to acknowledge your successes and appreciate your achievements.  

Journaling can be a way to recognize the good in your life. Life is busy and many times we rush through life without taking account of the good we experience and the things we can be grateful for. Journaling is a great opportunity to take stock of the good you encounter daily, and enables you to read again regularly as a reminder.

Journaling helps you retain what you’ve learned. When you take the time to write down some insight or knowledge you’ve gained during the day, you are better able to recall it and apply that knowledge later.

   

You don’t have to be a prolific writer to benefit from journaling. Try spending ten to fifteen minutes a day writing and you’ll likely soon recognize some of the advantages to your life and career noted above.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: How Do I Figure Out What I Truly Want?

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

In the video below Mel Robbins discusses one of the most common questions she gets: "How do I figure out what I truly want?" Mel believes we do know what we want and offers suggestions for clarifying our vision. Learn more by watching the video.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: Stay Focused

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

The video below discusses the importance of staying focused and persistently pursuing your goals.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: The Secret to Career Happiness

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

© Bellemedia | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

• Why All Managers Must be Leaders: "Management and leadership need to be taught in schools as interconnected disciplines that cannot exist without the other. Leaders within organizations should be mentored so that they know how to properly manage."


• What is the Secret of Career Happiness?: "If you know you're playing to your strengths, in an environment you can thrive and feel your work is rewarding, that really is happiness at work."


• 7 Social Media Tips to Boost Your Job Search: "As more companies turn to researching their candidates online, it’s more important for job seekers to understand their online presence as well as how to improve it."


• The Pros and Cons of Doing One Thing at a Time: "When you juggle, your tasks interact with each other, and that can be a good thing. As they compete for your attention, their specific problems come into sharp relief, and new solutions present themselves."


• Improving Communication Skills for Job Seekers: "Employers use email to ask for more information, request interviews and provide status updates. This vital business communication vehicle is another chance to highlight your strengths in written communication."

Are You Making One of These 3 Critical Job Search Errors?

You have a great resume, you have purchased the perfect interview suit, and you have practiced all your interview responses. You are ready and your job search is foolproof, right? Not so fast! If you are making one of these three errors, you just may be sabotaging your own success.

Failure to Add Networking to Your Job Search
You already know that your applications are all made online - usually through a company's website or an online job search engine. However, if your only means of looking for open jobs is surfing the web for openings, you are missing out.

I spoke recently to a global recruiter that told me 80% of the positions she fills are never even posted. She searches LinkedIn, asks her existing staff for referrals, and reaches out to her network to find candidates before she even considers posting a job. Don't discount networking - both social networking and in-person networking - as a critical factor in your job search success.

Failure to Use a Cover Letter
The cover letter is a professional introduction to the resume and is still expected by hiring managers and human resources professionals. The cover letter will most likely not make or break whether you get an interview. However, not sending a cover letter is definitely a strike against you.

Human Resources may not read the cover letter during the screening process. However, they will pass your letter along to the hiring manager who uses this tool to get to know a little about you, your personality, and communication style before the interview.

Failure to Focus Your Search
There is no such thing as an effective generic resume. In order to do its job well, the resume must be focused to a specific job, industry, and company. Don't make the HR person work to see how you will fit in their company. Chances are, if you don't make your targeted presentation of how you fit in within the top third of the resume, you will never even get close to an interview.

The Importance of Focus in a Job Search

I spent most of my day today at a career fair for veteran's, transitioning military members, and their family members. I looked at more than 40 resumes today and talked to many job seekers. In more than half of these conversations, when I asked them to name their career focus, they either said they were looking for anything or they named three or four different career fields that had nothing to do with each other.

I spent much of my day explaining the importance of focus in the job search, so I decided to repeat myself, one more time, here on my blog. As I explained again and again today, the job search and resume writing process is like strategic marketing. These are the three stages of strategic marketing as they relate to your potential employer being the "customer" in the job search process.

First - Identify your Customer
In order to create a compelling marketing statement, you must first clearly define your customer. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as an effective, generic resume. When we try to appeal to everyone at once with our resume, we end up appealing to no one. Clearly define your target industry and profession before you even begin writing your resume and launching your job search.

Second - Identify your Customer's Needs and Wants
In order to create a targeted marketing approach with your resume and interview answers, you have to know what your customer wants to hear. Once you know your target, you can define key words, skills, and qualifications that must be in your resume and discussed in the interview. You can also focus on the accomplishments in your past experience that will demonstrate the type of results that will appeal to your target industry.

Third - Define What you Can Do to Meet your Customer's Needs
This is the step where you define your transferable skills. Those all-important marketable skills and accomplishments that show you can add value to your potential employer's organization. In this step you think about how you will be cost-effective as an employee and the benefits your employer will receive from adding you to the team. Once again, these are determined by the specific needs, wants, and interests of the potential employer.

So you see, it is nearly impossible to complete step 2 and step 3 without successfully accomplishing that first critical step of defining your customer or your target job. Have you ever tried to aim for a target or walk in a straight line with your eyes closed? It is nearly impossible to be successful. It is just as difficult to be successful in the job search without a clearly defined goal in mind.

Ways to Keep Your Post Grad Mind Sharp

When you graduate college and you're no longer taking classes, reading textbooks and surrounded in an academic world, it can be hard to keep your brain sharp and ready to go. Especially if you haven't landed a job yet and you're quickly burning out from the elusive job search. Here are some ways to keep your brain muscles fit:

1. Join a book club. Be on the lookout for book clubs near you, especially ones filled with post grads. You can choose based on a genre of book you enjoy or perhaps find a club that featured challenging books to really get the brain juices flowing. This is also a great way to network and connect with others. If you can't find a book club in your area, start one!

2. Download "mind friendly" Apps. There are so many brain teaser, word search and other similar Apps available for iPods, iPads or even simply online. Check out word games that you will enjoy playing and you won't even realize you are working that noggin!

3. Exercise! Working out isn't only good for the body but the mind. Research shows regular exercise helps you learn faster and increases blood flow to the brain. Just another great reason to lace up the sneakers.

4. Take a class. It doesn't matter if it is an academic class or a cooking class, but learning something new will help challenge your brain and keep you from getting bored with a routine 9-5 or the monotony of job searching. Bonus points if you can use the class knowledge towards your potential career.

Even though you may not be working your brain as hard as you were in school, you can use these simple tips to challenge your brain and keep your mind sharp. Remember the old saying: if you don't use it, you'll lose it!

Pushing Your Career Muscles to the Limit

The only way to grow muscle when strength training is to lift to a point of exhaustion…then go a little beyond that point. It makes sense, if you think about it, because of the body’s remarkable ability to adapt to the physical stress presented upon it. More stress makes the body grow; less stress keeps it the same.

Have you looked at your career in the same way? What pressure have you put on yourself to create a career that is rewarding, fulfilling, and makes a difference in the world? Think about these three areas of your work life and the focus questions after each.

Work performance: You begin a job not knowing how to “do” it, gradually moving to level of competence that becomes second nature. This is a good thing because it demonstrates competence and productivity, but there’s a temptation to hit a “peak” and not progress from there. Going beyond that peak-challenging and questioning your status quo and the organization’s status quo-leads to more personal engagement and fulfillment.

• Have I mastered what I currently do?


• Are there improvements that I can make in the procedures or processes of my current position?

Challenging projects: Challenging projects-beyond what you are doing now-will help your career grow through giving you new skills, putting these skills (and your current ones) to test in new environments, and allow you to show your versatility.

• Do I proactively seek out new projects that will allow me to do so?


• What projects do I currently know of would benefit from my involvement?


• How would these projects help grow me professionally?

Relationships: There are relationships that you naturally cultivate at work-such as ones with your supervisor and coworkers-but going further to grow relationships with those outside your immediate work unit is indispensible in creating a network of peers that can attest to your great work performance.

• What relationships do I need to cultivate to position myself for the next step in my career?


• Who have I tried to get to know outside my work unit?


• What reputation do I want to cultivate with those outside my work unit?

Career improvement is a journey; not a destination. Fight complacency by challenging yourself to go beyond the normal and what’s comfortable. Your career muscles will thank you for it.

Renew Your Vows to Your Career

This weekend my wife and I were honored to attend our friends' wedding. The ceremony-set in a local park on a warm, postsummer evening-was a simple and elegant testament to the values and personalities of the couple. They gazed lovingly into each others' eyes and made public vows to each other to fully commit themselves to the new relationship they were creating. Within half an hour it was over; everything was different. There was a new couple standing before us with new priorities and a new level of devotion to each other.

But, really, nothing was different. Their living situation remained the same, they had the same jobs...their lives-practically-were going to continue pretty much as it had before.

Different, but not different...I was struck by this paradox and how relatable it is to our careers.

Day in and day out we go to our place of work more out of a sense of obligation to our lifestyles than a sense of devotion to our lives. Further, we treat our careers as a sacrifice of time rather than a celebration of it. Imagine how we would feel if we considered marriage the same way.

In a strong marriages, the couple devotes themselves to the relationship and focuses on it to guide their choices so that they are optimally fulfilled. In strong, fulfilling careers, you need to devote yourself not to the how of what you're doing (your job) but the why: your goals, sense of purpose, those that you serve, and the art that you create through your actions. A stronger sense of responsibility fuels your actions, not a sense of obligation.

What are you going to take a stand for? What will you devote yourself so that you are engaging with your career dream? And how will you carry it out? Make your stand public in the comments below.

3 Steps to Help Focus Your Military Transition

Military members preparing to transition to the civilian work force often feel as though they are a “jack of all trades, master of none.” As you prepare transition from the military, it is easy to become overwhelmed. The key to avoiding frustration and ensuring success is simple. You must define your career path before you even begin the process of leaving the military.

Find the best way to leverage your military skills.
You can leverage the skills you have gained in the military either directly or indirectly. If you choose to directly leverage those skills, you will stay in the same field, but change your career path to the civilian sector. For example, if your military career focused on logistics management, you can leverage the knowledge, training, and accomplishments you gained in the military to market your logistics expertise.

If you choose to indirectly leverage your skills, you will define the transferable skills you gained in the military that can be of use in a civilian career. For example, if you were a recruiter in the military, you gained extensive sales, presentation, and prospecting skills that would transfer to a sales or account manager position. In this case, your skills don’t change; they are just applied in a different way.

Identify your skills and recognize your strengths.
Your skills are based on the specific tasks that you performed on a daily basis. Your strengths are your talents, or those things that come naturally to you. Project management is a skill, while leadership is more of a talent. Take an inventory of your skills and strengths and make a list of at least 50 of your skills and strengths. If you find this process difficult here are some resources:

Books:
Do What You Are, By Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron
Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton What Color is Your Parachute, By Richard Nelson Bolles

Websites:
http://www.jobhuntersbible.com/ – an online job search resource hosted by Dick Bolles, author of What Color is your Parachute

http://humanmetrics.com/ – an online assessment of your characteristics and work preferences based on Myers-Briggs personality typing

Discover what makes you happy.
During your military career, you did not have much control over your career. You took the jobs you were assigned and lived where you were sent. Think of your post-military career as the opportunity to discover your passions – or what makes you truly happy. Recent studies show that the average adult changes careers – not just jobs – 5 to 7 times in their lives. Life is too short not to enjoy what you do for a living. Granted, we all have bills to pay. However, if you find the career that makes you happy, it is no longer work because you are doing what you love.

Having a Job vs. Building a Career

College students: have you ever had someone tell you that he decided that he will never work a day in his life? You may ask yourself “how is that possible? EVERYONE has to work!” The operative words in the sentence are “work” and “decided.” Work is generally associated with an obligation, something that you have to do to survive. However, the decision you can make is to see work for what it can be: a stepping-stone in your career, a path to personal and professional fulfillment. If you feel that you’re going to work every day, follow these steps to start building your career:

• Understand your reasons: If you are employed during college you most likely will not be at that job for the rest of your life. Engage in some self-assessment: why are you working there? Perhaps it’s the only work study job that you could find close to your residence hall, or maybe the pay was greater than the alternatives. The idea here is to get clear with your reasons why you took that job, to think about this decision critically. Once you are clear about your reasons you can make some new decisions. What are your most important needs right now? Is it to pay loans? Maintain a lifestyle? Work close to your residence hall room? Or maybe you now want to find something that fits more with your academic interests?



• Make the decision: When you have achieved clarity regarding why you are working where you are and your needs, you can make the decision to stay or go. No job is meant to last forever and your needs not being met could be a sign that you are not feeling fulfilled. But if you decide that this position truly is meeting your needs, there’s only one thing left to do…



• Excel: Blow away your boss, your boss’s boss, and your coworkers with your ability to perform, your upbeat demeanor, and your willingness to take feedback and criticism. Show initiative and put thought into your job, looking for ways to improve it and improve yourself. The skills that you are accumulating and the attitude you are displaying are now part of your career and will carry you for years to come.

To paraphrase author James Allen, circumstances do not make you: they reveal you. By putting thought into and assessing your employment needs, you can create a foundation that will bolster your chances of success no matter what career field you choose. Choose career success today.

Mind Your Brand

When you hear “Trump” what words come to mind? You may think of “luxury,” “success,” or “business.” The associations that you make are no accident; Donald Trump has intentionally created them through vigorous attention to his personal brand. Personal branding is the process by which you deliberately create, control, and maintain your professional reputation. It touches on nearly every aspect of your career life, from how you dress and communicate with others to your social media presence and the knowledge, skills, and abilities you have at your disposal.

Anyone in any profession can create and maintain a personal brand; it is not limited to white-collar workers or CEOs. While there are plenty of resources at your disposal in print and online to help you start shaping your brand (the works of Dan Schawbel and Tom Peters are a great place to start), here are some questions to guide you in your journey of self discovery and professional control.

• How do those I work with describe me professionally?


• What do I think I am currently doing that makes me a strong professional?


• What knowledge, skills, and abilities do I need to further my career?


• What do I do to show others that I enjoy my career?


• How does my online reputation project the professional persona that I want it to?

Transitioning Out of the Military: 5 Steps to Success

Step 1 – Find a Focus

Whether you have served four years or dedicated your entire career towards service in the military, you may face some obstacles in your transition. Over the next five weeks, I will tackle some of the issues you will face and provide you with five steps you should take in order to expedite the transition process.

This first step is very important; it will determine the effectiveness of your military transition. In order to get results, a job search and a resume must have a target or focus. One of the biggest errors made on military transition resumes is a lack of focus. There is no such thing as an effective generic resume. A resume that tries to appeal to everyone ends up appealing to no one.

Military personnel learn a wide variety of skills and often have countless additional duties on top of their duty title. It would be nearly impossible and certainly ineffective to fit all your previous military experience into one resume. Studies show that the reader affords your resume 10 to 15 seconds of attention. The reader will not sift through all the irrelevant information to get to the most compelling information. Your relevant, transferable skills must be easy to find, not buried among the unimportant information.

For example, a jet engine craftsman whose focus is contract and finance management will never be effective in their search with a resume that focuses on jet engine maintenance. In addition to mechanical knowledge, this candidate has project management, customer service, budget planning and allocation, documentation management, and supervisory experience. Their mechanical knowledge has no place on their resume, as it is irrelevant to the target employer.

Before beginning your transition, determine the career field you will pursue and identify the local companies that have jobs. Discover what qualifications and education you need and define your transferable qualifications. Some research resources are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook (http://www.bls.gov/oco) and the Department of Labor’s O*NET site (http://online.onetceter.org).

Making the decision to target your job search will enable you to eliminate irrelevant information from your resume and accelerate your job search. This may mean leaving out some skills and experience or possibly having multiple resumes targeted to different careers.