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Are You Unemployed – Take action – ANY action

February 4, 2012
Are You Unemployed – Take action – ANY action

Many years ago, the U.S. economy was suffering through a recession.  It was not as bad as many previous recessions, but to be honest, if a recession has affected you, the size of it isn’t really important.  Whether unemployment is 5%, 8%, or 10%, if you are unemployed, it is 100% for you. During that recession, I remember articles about the lengths unemployed people will go to to get jobs.  I was impressed with the guy who volunteered at the YMCA a few hours a day to stay busy.  I loved the guy that decided to help out at his church, or simply the woman who contacted her kids school to read to little children.  The one story that really impressed me was the unemployed executive. This unemployed executive reportedly spent more than a million dollars of his savings to cover his and his family’s expenses while he was looking for work for more than a year.  That million dollars represented all of his savings.  When the article was written, he bemoaned the fact that if didn’t find a job in a month, he would be out of money, have to cut back, and put his house on the market.

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Do you always live your values?

January 14, 2012
Do you always live your values?

Do you always live your values?  Now that is a difficult question to answer. What are your values? Wikipedia says that values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of action or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person’s sense of right and wrong or what “ought” to be. “Equal rights for all” and “People should be treated with respect and dignity” are representative of values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior. For example, if you value equal rights for all and you go to work for an organization that treats its managers much better than it does its workers, you may form the attitude that the company is an unfair place to work; consequently, you may not produce well or may perhaps leave the company. It is likely that if the company had had a more egalitarian policy, your attitude and behaviors would have been more positive. Many people have two sets of books where values are concerned.  One set of books contains the values they live with their family, in front of their spouse, and their children.  They are “God fearing” people who have a clear sense of right and wrong.  They live in a

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Your boss’s dog house

January 13, 2012
Your boss’s dog house

Does your boss have a dog house? No, not the kind that he keeps his Black Lab in. I mean does he need to keep someone in the figurative dog house all the time – the one you go into when you are in trouble? Woof I have worked for several bosses that keep a dog house. They seem to need to keep someone in the dog house to stay focused. They target a person or an area of the business with all of their energy, and as long as someone is in the dog house, everyone else is just fine. Sit! I remember working for one such guy. He was one of the meanest people for whom I’ve ever worked. He was belligerent, insulting, and had a very short fuse. When he would get upset with anyone, they basically went in and stayed in his dog house until someone else messed up. I remember spending almost all of my spare time working to stay out of the dog house. What a waste of time, but it did make me better. So, how do you stay of out of the dog house? First, keep to your commitments. If you sign

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Just Another Manic Monday (and your job search)

December 7, 2011
Just Another Manic Monday (and your job search)

I got up this morning and had a somewhat odd flashback to a time about ten or fifteen years ago. Like most people, I never liked Monday’s. After spending a weekend doing what I wanted to do, and maybe sleeping a little late, I had to get up early and head back to work. The only exception to that rule was when I was looking for a new job. In the old days (or back in the day as they say now), I would be somewhat excited about Monday, because I had spent Sunday pouring over the Sunday want ads looking for jobs. Because newspapers ruled the day at that time, the Sunday classifieds was where you would see America’s largest companies advertising for their best jobs. You could search the ad in alphabetical order or by job class and find the best openings. The companies would give you the skill set and experience for which you needed to apply, and their contact information to submit a resume. Most wanted resumes via “snail mail” (the post office) or via fax. Some really advanced companies had email, but few had any online application systems. The Monster But all that changed when

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