I hate my job! How will I find a new job and not make the same mistake again?

July 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I hate my job!

This is a common story I hear all of the time. I was talking to a group last weekend and I was asked:

How do we keep from making the same mistake again?

It is all about knowing what you want in seven components:

  • Boss
  • Team
  • Rewards
  • Variety
  • Rules/Structure
  • Emotional Environment
  • Activity

We will create a complete picture of what you want in your work environment. Once you know what you want, you can ask for what you want!

On July 30th we start the next session of the Cure for Career Insanity. This is a five week webinar series where we take you through:

  • Defining the Problem: What are you running away from in your current position or role? Is it the boss? If it is the boss what about the boss causes you to want to run away? Is it the work environment? What about the work environment?
  • Defining the Goal: What do you want to run towards?  What do you want in your next job that at least fixes what you are running away from?
  • Learning to Ask for What You Want: How do you ask for what you want? How do you use strategic networking and interviewing techniques to ensure you get what you want in the next position?
  • Framing Your Job Search for Maximum Effectiveness: What do you tell your next prospective employer when he asks why you want to leave your current position?  If you tell him the job stinks and your boss is an ogre, he will say: ”NEXT!”
  • Negotiating From Strength: How do you negotiate for what you want and IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT MONEY!!

If this sounds like it is for you please click here to learn more about the Cure for Career Insanity. The series is priced for a limited time at a very modest price of $97.  Class size will be limited to a maximum of 15 people.

Here is what some of the participants got from the last session

  • Feeling motivated and inspired after each session.
  • Listening to other’s stories and feeling less alone in my next career steps.
  • A  structure for thinking about what I like and don’t like in a job.
  • Identifying the seven key work areas, thinking about what they mean to you and then communicating that information to others.

My favorite was

I learned that 1) you have to know what you want, 2) you have to be willing to ask for it, and 3) you have to be able to articulate why certain things are important to you. This was all valuable to me because, while I am always thinking about what I don’t want in a role, I rarely take the time to think about what I do want. I appreciate that my thinking has been reframed to look for the things I do want.

Looking forward to seeing you in the Cure for Career Insanity

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career Insanity Tagged With:

1st Year Anniversary – A Time for Reflection – Part Deux

June 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

I have completed one year in business.  In my last post – 1st Year Anniversary – A Time for Reflection I wrote about the terrific team that I had assembled to support me.

I have come a long way in just one year.  I encourage everyone to periodically look back and reflect back on their accomplishments.  That is what I want to do with this post.

I started a year ago blogging.  This will be my 151st blog post. I have gotten compliments in the last year on my writing.  This is the first time in my 56 years of life that I have gotten compliments on my writing.

Did I know anything about blogging? Heck no!

I wrote posts in series.  These included a series on:

  • Strategic Networking – I wrote about my philosophy of networking
  • Making a Career Pivot – My story of going from high tech to teaching high school math in an inner city Texas high school
  • Cure for Career Insanity – I wrote a 30 part series on my holistic method for changing jobs.
  • Baby Boomer Fact Sheet – I hired a college intern to do some research on the plight of baby boomers.  I shared those facts in the blog and released the fact sheet.  The numbers are very scary

One thing I did discover was writing the blog was very therapeutic. It forced me to reflect a lot on what I had accomplished in my life. I now have a much better understanding of who I am and appreciation of the ups and downs of the previous decade.

In January, based on the fact sheet the “Baby Boomers and Retirement Infographic” was published.

In February of 2012, I rebranded under the current name of Career Pivot. With this came the new website

At the same time, my white paper “Don’t Retire Even if You Can – A Baby Boomer Manifesto” was released.

In March of 2012 I was featured in a article on SunsetChasing.com.

In April of 2012, I announced the “Cure for Career Insanity” webinar series.  The first iteration of the series will complete June 26th.  I had a video produced to explain my unique method of systematically but holistically determine what you want in a job and how to get it.

I am now working on a book that will be released this summer on a recipe to make a career pivot.  Remember recipes are meant to be modified and seasoned to taste.

I have been interviewed twice for articles in magazines that will be published later this year.

I am developing a whole series of workshops called The Art and Science of Using LinkedIn.

Oh yeah, I helped over 50 clients in the last year make career decisions.

My client list continues to grow and a second iteration of my Cure for Career Insanity webinar series will be announced shortly.

Thank you to everyone who made this last year a wonderful experience!

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

P.S. I am tired just reading this.

Filed Under: Baby Boomer, Career Insanity, Career Pivot Tagged With: , , ,

Do you manage your career like you manage your weight?

May 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I was talking with a friend today about how to market my Cure for Career Insanity webinar series. I was explaining to him that it was all about understanding what you want and then being able to implement and execute a plan to find the job you will enjoy.

My friend stated this is like managing your weight.  Most of us will gain weight until we decide that we need to lose the weight. We then decide to go on a diet to lose the weight.

Another option is we put on the pounds and we just accept we are overweight and are willing to put up with the consequences or maybe we just ignore the consequences (high blood pressure, elevated risk of heart attack….)

You could, instead, just implement a healthy lifestyle.  Eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly, and maintain a healthy social life. Easy right?

The same is true about managing your career.  Many of us, when we left home and started our careers, did one of two things:

  • Did exactly what our parents told us to do
  • Took whatever was available at the time

Many of us chose our careers by this default method.  We then continued down the same path and  only made changes when opportunities appeared.  We were reactive in our career management. If we got really miserable in our job we went on a diet , looked for a new job. Recently, a lot us were laid off and we had to find a new job (crash diet).  This was worst kind of dieting because we were under stress with the need to generate an income.  We all are too familiar with what stress does to our waistline.

What many of us have done is accept the status quo. We accept that we are not happy because it is work!  Work is not suppose to be fun, fulfilling or satisfying. It is work! We just accepted the fact that we were overweight and accepted the consequences.

The world has changed.  The reactive approach no longer works.  Being proactive in your career management will keep you gainfully employed and most likely happy. We can add a healthy career lifestyle or career health to our list.

Do you want be happy at work again?  How about implementing a healthy career lifestyle?

I will be scheduling the next round of the Cure for Career Insanity very soon. The first people who sign up will help pick the actual dates for the next session. Go the the Cure for Career Insanity page or just click here to put your name on the list for the next session.

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Please check out my one on one coaching packages or the Cure for Career Insanity webinars

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career Insanity, Employment Tagged With: ,

Knowing Your Value or The Stealth Competitor

May 29, 2012 by 7 Comments

I have a female client who sent me the book “Knowing Your Value” by Mika Brzezinski and told me that it would help me understand some of my female clients.

The book is by a television journalist who never negotiated for what she was worth or, in the terms I use, for what she wanted.  This ties in directly into Step 5 of the Cure for Career Insanity which is “How do you negotiate for what you want and IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT MONEY!!”

In the book Ms. Brzezinski interviewed President Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Ms. Brzezinski writes:

——–

As a female and an African-American, Jarrett says she always expected to face obstacles in the workplace: “My parents raised me to think because I was a girl and because I was black I was going to work twice as hard. They did it with no chip on their shoulder — it was a just a fact of life, get used to it. Don’t try to change what it is, just work twice as hard.”

So she says that’s what she did.  She worked hard and kept her head down.  But Jarrett didn’t expect that working hard would not automatically lead to advancement and better pay.

“I felt like if I was deserving, then my boss should recognize that I was deserving.” — Valerie Jarrett

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This is a trend I call the Stealth Competitor. It is almost exclusively a female issue and the book covers this topic in detail.  What I have found is that many–not all, but many–women will work hard and expect to get  recognition without ever having to ask for it out loud.  They are stealth because their efforts to compete in the workplace are almost hidden. One can assume that they have no need of personal gain. They’re just working hard for the common good.

What is worse is the book documents over and over that the worst abusers of these diligent women were female managers of female employees.

It is interesting that as a guy I saw myself in this book.

In my last corporate gig, as I was completing a major assignment pay raises were handed out.  The pay raise was puny.  I made it very clear to my boss that he would have to do much better than that.  After all, I had taken a major pay cut to work for this startup, then I had saved my boss’s butt by rolling out my project on a shoe string budget with excellent quality. I want to be paid fairly.  He made good with a 30% pay increase that got me parity with what I had made before in high tech.  I later learned I was still paid much less than my peers.

Brezinski clearly states men will stand up for themselves but women need to learn to do this in their own way and not imitate men.

Ladies, does this ring true?  What have you experienced?

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career, Career Insanity Tagged With: , ,

Career Pivot Webinars and Workshops in May

May 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The second half of May is loaded with offerings from Career Pivot.

In April, I launched the first LinkedIn workshops targeting small business owners and solo entrepreneurs. The workshop was titled The Art and Science of Using LinkedIn for Small Business. These workshops were offered in Austin, Texas where I happen to live!

On May 10th, I will be offering a webinar titled 5 LinkedIn Tips from the Art and Science of Using LinkedIn for Small Business. This webinar is FREE, which years ago I had a salesman refer to as the 4-letter F-word.  You can register for this by clicking here.

 

Cure for Career IinsanityOn May 22nd, I launch the Cure for Career Insanity webinar series. The Cure for Career Insanity is for anyone who wants to change jobs, roles or even careers and needs a new approach that works. We are going to embark on a five-step strategy to get past Career Insanity and make your next move count. This is a series of five webinars spread out of 5 weeks and is priced  to be affordable at $97, a lot cheaper than hiring a career coach. For more information and to register click here.

 

Finally on May 23rd AND May 24th, I will be offering The workshop The Art and Science of Using LinkedIn for Small Business in Austin twice. This now a 4 hour workshop and each session is limited to 6 people. Bring your laptop and you will have ample time to work on your LinkedIn profile.

This hands-on, four-hour seminar will teach you:

  • The anatomy of a successful personal profile, including LinkedIn applications
  • How to manage your activity feed and control the reach of your activity broadcasts
  • How to mine the activity feed for valuable information about your connections and potential customers
  • How to leverage LinkedIn groups to cultivate business relationships and promote your brand
  • The Art of Connecting using simple techniques

For more information and to register click here.

Over the next few months, I will be blogging on how to use Social Media and specifically LinkedIn to build your credibility, research and help you get to the next step in your career.

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career Insanity, LinkedIn, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Announcing the Cure for Career Insanity Webinar Series

April 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I have been writing about the Cure for Career Insanity for the last two and a half months.  If you read the last post, I wrote 31 articles on the topic.  I did not realize it was so many! The nice people at Core Media Enterprises created this video for Career Pivot on the Cure for Career Insanity program.

We are now ready to launch The Cure for Career Insanity Webinar Series on May 22nd.

Cure for Career Insanity is for anyone who wants to change jobs, roles or even careers and needs a new approach that works. We are going to embark on five-step strategy to get past Career Insanity and make your next move count.

The five steps will be covered in five 45-minute presentation (15 minutes for Q&A) sessions (All sessions will be recorded):

Week 1 – 22 May 2012 – 7 PM CDT

Defining the Problem: What are you running away from in your current position or role? Is it the boss? If it is the boss what about the boss causes you to want to run away? Is it the work environment? What about the work environment?

Week 2 – 5 June 2012 – 7 PM CDT (we will skip Memorial Day week)

Defining the Goal: What do you want to run towards?  What do you want in your next job that at least fixes what you are running away from?

Week 3 – 12 June 2012 – 7 PM CDT

Learning to Ask for What You Want: How do you ask for what you want? How do you use strategic networking and interviewing techniques to ensure you get what you want in the next position?

Week 4 – 19 June 2012 – 7 PM CDT

Framing Your Job Search for Maximum Effectiveness: What do you tell your next prospective employer when he asks why you want to leave your current position?  If you tell him the job stinks and your boss is an ogre, he will say: ”NEXT!”

Week 5 – 26 June 2012 – 7 PM CDT

Negotiating From Strength: How do you negotiate for what you want and IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT MONEY!!

I am limiting enrollment to 25 for this first session.  Contact me for special discounts
Eventbrite - Cure for Career Insanity Webinar Series

I am very excited about the launch of this program.  The goal is to provide a very affordable way for people to change their habits and to take control of their career choices.

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles. If you “like” my page you will be able to download the “Baby Boomer Fact Sheet” with 24 important facts about the challenges that face baby boomers today.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career Insanity Tagged With:

31 Articles on the Cure for Career Insanity

April 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It is time to summarize the five steps of the Cure for Career Insanity.

I have spent the last two month going over each step. Please take the time to review the posts that you may not have read.

On Monday I will be announcing details of the launch of this program.

I will be offering significant discounts in the program to anyone who goes to the Cure for Career Insanity webpage and signs up to get updates on this program.

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

 

Filed Under: Career Insanity Tagged With:

Career Insanity – Summary of negotiating for what you want!

April 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Negotiate for what you wantOnce again, before I get started please go and watch my Cure for Career Insanity video.  I need two things from you.

  1. Watch the video as long as it interests you.  YouTube will not give me statistics until there are 300 views. Please give it view!
  2. Please let me know what you think either by commenting in the blog or send me an e-mail.

Summary of negotiating for what you want

This completes step #5 of the process. If you have not read all of the posts and the comments (There have been some great comments) please take a moment to read the whole series.

Money though it is important, it is not what usually gives us job satisfaction and we usually leave jobs for reasons other than money.  Therefore, why do we focus on money in job negotiations?

When given a job offer be prepared to negotiate all of the important stuff first!

  • Vacation
  • Office versus home
  • Travel
  • Work schedule
  • Child care
  • Elder care
  • .
  • .

This completes step #5 of the Cure for Career Insanity.  I will be summarizing the program in my next post and be announcing the launch of the program next Monday April 30th, 2012.

I will be offering significant discounts in the program to anyone who goes to the Cure for Career Insanity webpage and signs up to get updates on this program.

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

 

Filed Under: Career Insanity

Career Insanity – Negotiating for what you want – Real Examples

April 21, 2012 by 2 Comments

Negotiate for what you wantOnce again, before I get started please go and watch my Cure for Career Insanity video.  I need two things from you.

  1. Watch the video as long as it interests you.  YouTube will not give me statistics until there are 300 views. Please give it view!
  2. Please let me know what you think either by commenting in the blog or send me an e-mail.

Real Examples

It is pretty amazing but I have had a couple of people respond to me that my last couple of posts came exactly at the right time for them.

Example #1

I am currently working with a client who expects an offer in the next week.  He has been working for the same employer for over 30 years.  I have him very focused on the work environment and following his gut instincts. He is currently working on the intangible/non-financial requirements so that when the offer letter comes he is prepared.  This includes vacation with specific dates, office and home office requirements, his exact start date (he is relocating and wants to take a month off) and other non-financial requirements.

I will have him negotiate all of this including the exact dates for his vacation before he gets to the financial numbers.

Example #2

A good friend just received a job offer.  He had a family vacation planned for this June to one of the large theme parks. The first thing to be negotiated would be that vacation.

The big thing is you have to have a clear list of what you want from a non-financial perspective before you get the offer. 

Start making that list now!

Check out the Cure for Career Insanity webpage and sign up to get updates on this program.

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career Insanity Tagged With: ,

Career Insanity – Negotiating for what you want – money!

April 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Negotiate for what you wantBefore I get started please go and watch my Cure for Career Insanity video.  I need two things from you.

  1. Watch the video as long as it interests you.  YouTube will not give me statistics until there are 300 views. Please give it view!
  2. Please let me know what you think either by commenting in the blog or send me an e-mail.

Negotiating for what you want!

In a previous post, I asked you to develop a list of non-financial items that you want in your next position.  This could be anything from childcare options to a proper desk chair.

Next comes financial requirements.

Never ever tell them what you currently make or what you want! Never! Never! Never!

Know what you are worth!  Talk to peers.  The world has changed and people will talk about compensation.  Look at the entire compensation.  Salary, benefits, 401(k) match, stock option, employee stock purchase plans……..

Check some of these websites for salary comparisons:

If you have other sites that you like Please write a comment.

When you are given an offer never ever accept it on the same day. If they insist on a immediate answer, then walk away as fast as you can!  The answer is no.

If the offer is low, tell them you want more.  If they ask how much more do you want, you respond I want to be compensated fairly.  If they insist on an answer tell them you want to be compensated fairly. Do not take the bait!

Remember the non-financial requirements are likely more important than the financial ones!

Negotiate on the non-financial items first!

Once they have made an offer, they have made a commitment to hiring you.  They will not easily walk away. Use it to your advantage. It often turns out money is the least important negotiating point but the one we put the most emphasis on!

We will finish Step 5 in the next post.

If you would be willing to give me input please read the post on “The Cure for Career Insanity – Looking for your input!” and make a comment or fill out the form with your e-mail address for me to contact you.

Check out the Cure for Career Insanity webpage and sign up to get updates on this program.

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles. If you “like” my page you will be able to download the “Baby Boomer Fact Sheet” with 24 important facts about the challenges that face baby boomers today.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career Insanity Tagged With: ,
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