John Lennon perhaps said it best: “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” And for many, that about sums up how career directions come to be. Life requires making plans, both large and small, and among the big ones is how one is to make a livelihood. 

It is surprising, given the enormity of such a life decision and given the fact nearly everyone needs to make it, that a clear and customary process to career decision making is not commonly accepted. Most often it seems that people just fall into careers, which sometimes work out splendidly, but can often lead to years of wasted potential. 

So, how do we end up doing the work that we do? Since as a society we cannot seem to agree on a single career-choice process, how are we to impart useful information to others, both young and old, who need assistance? 

I have been tracking for some months now threaded discussions on the topic of career choice that have run on some of my career counselor groups in LinkedIn. I have identified some recurring themes that may be of interest to those of you who are also intrigued by the forces that are at play in career determination. Here is what I see at present: 

Childhood – Clues for future career direction are often detectable in childhood. There can be obvious signs like the little girl mixing and matching her mother’s clothes while playing dress-up, who goes on to become a fashion designer, or the little boy consistently organizing his playmates into undertakings of one sort or another, who in later years works for the YMCA as an activity director. Although the innate interests in children may not be readily predictable as career catalysts, chances are quite good that future competencies are beginning to be played out in the activity choices occurring in kids’ lives. 

Influencers – Career guidance often originates with individuals who hold significant value in one’s life. Family members and good friends, among other high-quality role models, provide direction and powerful suggestions about career goals. Sometimes this is intentional, but often it is not. The feedback and observations given to us in the natural course of having relationships from people we honor and respect can carry a huge amount of weight. 

School – the subjects you liked in school, the encouragement you were given by teachers, and the observations you made about what defined success among your peers in an education and social setting can all play a part in how you structure your world view. As you assess the functional parts of the world, you begin to see how you might fit within it. In my judgment, schools, in general, do not emphasize career development strongly enough. The good news, however, is that by their very nature, schools provide an environment where careers can be made despite their other priorities. 

Practicality – It has been said that when young, we use our heads to choose work, but that when we are older, we are driven more by our emotions in choosing jobs. Using your head means that you are looking at a career pragmatically, i.e., as a means toward an end. And that end typically involves considerations such as rate of pay, working conditions, commuting distance, benefits, childcare availability, and whether you can take the dog to work. These concerns are important, but they begin to pale somewhat as we mature and start realizing that concepts like career/life fit, advancement, professionalism, and retirement planning are as or more important. 

Happenstance / Opportunity / Luck – One of the most powerful drivers of how our careers develop, if not our entire lives, has nothing to do with planning. It can be just dumb luck. Being in the right place at the right time, being born when you were, or living where you do can position you to take advantage of a confluence of events that makes great things possible. Knowing that luck can always be just around the corner makes successful people ever mindful and open to positive circumstances. 

Even though there is an entire profession dedicated to career decision making, not many people take advantage of it. Doing so would certainly help greater numbers of people land more meaningful and fulfilling careers sooner. Nevertheless, it is worth knowing how career selection occurs for many of us, because these ways can also hold value. 

The term “professional brand” is thrown around frequently these days when it comes to job searching, career advancement, and business opportunities. As is the case whenever a term begins to become trite, we want to be careful that the original impact of its meaning does not become lost or mushy with overuse or misuse. Ever since 1999, when Tom Peters launched the use of brand to encapsulate the worker migration from corporate cog to independent provider of value, one’s professional brand has built substantial importance and cache.  

Part of the workplace adjustment brought on by the Great Recession has been the intense need for workers to distinguish themselves in the face of heavy competition for fewer jobs. It is a buyer’s market for employers and to get noticed in the sea of applicants requires job searchers to communicate their worth and focus more than ever. The good news is that managing one’s online presence with social media and other means allows professionals to disseminate their brands very efficiently. The challenge for many, of course, is knowing what kind of brand message to project. 

It all starts with identifying your value proposition. Being able to summarize your skills, competencies, and in general, what makes you an asset. Your unique value proposition serves as the basis for your brand and for how you express yourself using all the communication means at your disposal. Try containing this message in a short paragraph of no more than five sentences. This will discipline you to articulate your worth economically and pointedly. 

Another concept that helps you to button down your brand is to consider your personal mix of talents, experiences, aptitudes, values, and proficiencies that make you who you are. Separate yourself from the herd by letting stakeholders know the one-of-a-kind package of qualities that you are made of and can offer.    

Once you have determined your professional brand you are then ready to market it. Be specific in presenting what you are good at. How are you better than your competition? What kind of mid-level manager, or salesperson, or engineer are you? Can you point to achievements that speak to your effectiveness? Getting the word out to your industry about your expertise through various web-based and face-to-face networking methods increases your chances of coming out on top. 

Be ready to direct and manage your carefully crafted message, especially online. Make sure that there is not conflicting information about you that could confuse or, worse yet, turn off those searching for you. You have worked hard to make something of yourself and there is still more growing to do. You take pride in all that you have accomplished to date, so do not hesitate to shout it out loud. Your future ambitions will benefit from the effort. 

It is quickly becoming conventional wisdom for professionals to realize the importance of establishing and maintaining a robust and communicative online profile. As has become the case with searching for knowledge of all manners and types, most individuals go first to the Internet — and of those who do, approximately 85% go to Google to get the information they need. 

It is no different for recruiters, hiring managers, potential employers or contractors, and other stakeholders who need to carefully examine the history, qualifications, and relevant attributes of alleged talent with whom there is potential to forge a professional relationship. 

Whether we want it to or not, our cyber presence is being developed. Even those who deliberately shy away from social media networking may still have a bio posted on their company’s web site or one could be listed on an association’s site as having given a talk at a conference. Maybe you or your company have been reviewed on one of many consumer review sites, or someone’s cell phone camera snapped you at a social event which is now on YouTube. To think your name and reputation can or should remain hidden from the web today is naïve and potentially harmful to your career. 

Getting out in front of how your character is to be perceived by the world will give you the advantage of crafting and determining the message and image that accurately and powerfully presents you to those who may offer opportunities, which could result in career enhancement. Although you may not be able to control all the content about you that gets caught in the web, there are some steps that can be taken that will anchor your message of core professionalism that can optimize ahead of any weak or worse material that may be out there about you. The target outcome is simple — to have an online profile that displays your value and talent. 

The place to start, however, is with a document that may never make it to the Internet and that is your resume. If this is well written, it will be economically and succinctly capturing your value proposition with supporting competencies, achievements, skills both hard and soft, education and training, and any other information highlighting your qualifications. With this foundation in place the professional is ready to communicate a self-appraisal with a variety of online means. Here are four recommended ways to accomplish this: 

1. LinkedIn – With 85+ million users and growing this is the strongest place to establish your presence. The profile components are designed to give you a well-rounded professional look and it is easily updateable. You control the message entirely and it should mirror the value as described in your resume. There is the added advantage of linking to a wide network of colleagues, associates, and groups that increase your exposure and intellectual capital.
2. Twitter – This microblogging service is a great way to build your reputation through sharing relatively frequent commentary on industry insights and promotion of web-based content. It is simple to use and once you learn about the # and @ communities you can target your messages to people who care about what you have to offer.
3. Your Own Web Site – Controlling your image in a positive and creative way can be done by having your own site designed by yourself or by one of the gazillion boutique webmasters that are around. Here you can write a profile; add pictures; link to other relevant sites or blogs; post a video of yourself talking about what you do, which can be recorded using your webcam or by a friend with a digital camera; include an audio podcast and post your own blog.
4. Blogging – A wonderful self-promotion technique is to share your professional expertise. Doing so projects knowledge, experience, confidence, and legitimacy. Including your blog as part of your web site by using a sophisticated blogging tool such as WordPress eases the process. Blogging takes commitment, though. Keep posts often and current to get the most impact.

Taking these four steps will position you well for managing your online profile. Remember that your value proposition is the theme that ties all these tactics together. Be consistent in communicating what great things you offer and be prepared for the career benefits this effort will yield. 

Recognizing the new year is a great tradition. Having that one time each year to reflect, take stock, and plan for the future is a valuable practice for progressing our growth and development. Well, it is that time of year again to look back over what has transpired, but more importantly to gaze ahead at the year to come with anticipation and a plan. 

When it comes to making our lives meaningful and satisfying over the next twelve months, our thoughts should turn to making some impactful decisions regarding the direction of our careers. 

If you are considering, as I recommend you do, determining some new year resolutions for your career, then here is my list of the six most helpful practices for refining your livelihood. A word about the current economic context before I begin — the cruel grip of the Great Recession is starting to ease. The fear that has slowed employment mobility for the past two years is lessening. Although the latest 2011 consensus of economists in a recent New York Times article was bullish regarding business growth for the upcoming year, there will remain a stubbornly high national unemployment rate. 

However, in New Hampshire, where we now show an unemployment rate that is little more than half of the national rate, there is cause for more optimism. Hiring will likely be more robust here than in many parts of the country. Not great but improving. And given the reported amount of pent-up desire among currently employed workers to shift to new employers as soon as possible, this will be a year when we should see a pick-up in hiring. Given this scenario, here is how you can prepare: 

Know What’s Going On: Be knowledgeable about your industry or chosen line of work. Research, read, and listen. Be on top of trends, practices, and opportunities that matter for industry growth and for your own bottom line. 

Step Up Networking: Make sure to invigorate professional connections by maintaining genuine communication with those you respect. Offer to help and share. Show more interest in them than you expect to receive. 

Assess Your Career Track: Ask yourself, are you really doing what you want to for work? Is it time to consider a course shift? There is no better time than now to make these critical decisions and to plan for change. 

Got Social Media?: One way to advance all three of the above is to engage with social media, in particular LinkedIn. Gathering information, networking, and processing the quality of your career can all be helped along with social media. 

Building Your Online Profile: A huge advantage of participating in social media at a professional level is that it positions you for establishing and maintaining a strong online profile. Controlling your presentation, to the extent you can, is becoming increasingly important. 

Resume Rewrite: It is a rare person that does not need to revisit their resume at least once per year. It is equally as rare to find a resume that does not need at least a little improvement. Whether you need to tweak, upgrade, or completely revamp this important document, the present is a time to get started. 

Sure, there is more that could be done to improve and advance your career. Careers are like properties — there is always something else that can be worked on. But, if you are looking to break inertia and get the most from your career in 2011, then taking on one or more of these suggestions may be just the thing to help make the new year one of significant and sustained growth. 

Nothing that you do should ever be arbitrary. That is what I was told in professional resume writer training. When writing a resume, every word, every bit of positioning, every design element must have an intentional reason — a purpose behind its use. Think about the value in completing a process, in which everything you do, every step you take is premeditated and not wayward. 

Do you think this methodology is reserved just for highly programmed code writers or artists? Perhaps, but there is a lesson in approaching pursuits both small and large with deliberation and with mindfulness. When searching for a new job or planning and following through with a career development decision, being random or inconsistent decreases your chances of achieving your goal. Getting what you really want and need from your work requires focus and sound decision making. 

Easily said and understood, right? Yet, the reality seems to be that most of us feel like we are chronically afflicted with attention deficit disorder when it comes to putting into action one of life’s most important undertakings — achieving a career of meaning. 

It becomes easier to approach career development systematically when you have a framework of best practices within which to operate. Professional people have all they can do to stay current and productive with their fields of expertise, plus all the activity life in general throws at them. Expecting that career management will come naturally or be fully understood with just conventional wisdom is not reasonable. 

Acquiring the necessary resources to comprehend the career process is desirable if you want control over the direction of your life. The good news is that the study of career development is not particle physics. You can prepare yourself or get a professional consultant to help. But either way, devising a customized plan that yields a career which optimizes life should be deliberate, purposeful, and not arbitrary. 

The issue arises, however, that just because we have the needed information to plan a career development direction, moving forward effectively is something else. Decision making, the base skill required, is a complex concept. How we orient ourselves to the world and its inhabitants and how we take in information both factor greatly in how we make decisions. 

It is helpful to reflect and to observe the way in which we make important choices. Just as there is no one optimal personality, there is no one best way to choose. But refining our skill in decision making is paramount if we are going to act strategically and not randomly. 

When helping clients think strategically about career related options, I like to get a sense of their desired outcomes. It is useful to know what kind of ball one is keeping their eye on. Achieving outcomes that lead to fulfillment, satisfaction, stimulation, and contentment can form the basis for individual strategic planning. 

Giving personal shape and meaning to these objectives is the first step in acting purposefully. Whether the goal is to simply extract pay and benefits from an employer or whether it is to satisfy intrinsic motivators, having a clear idea of what you want from your work is key. 

Sure, there is plenty to be said for the role serendipity and good luck play in how our lives go. But acting deliberately and shunning poorly thought out and arbitrary decisions can go a long way in helping us to live lives of full measure. 

Among the things in need of consideration when preparing your resume, especially if it is to be sent or posted electronically to recruiters or hiring managers, is having it ready to pass unscathed through Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). 

ATS are software applications for managing large volumes of recruitment, resume, and job application data. They may be a subset of a Human Resource Information System or a stand-alone app. Either way, an ATS is a database of recruitment data configured to the specific needs of the hiring end-user. Although in rural areas many resumes still make it to human eyeballs, you still must be prepared that it will be screened with an ATS. 

For the job applicant, ATS presents a particular challenge. Either ATS will accept or reject your resume. It should be expected that ATS will be designed to only accept resumes that contain keywords and phrases specific to the open job position. When using a single resume to try landing interviews for multiple job descriptions the applicant runs the risk of getting rejected too often by ATS, because their resume may not contain enough keywords and phrases pertinent to what the employer wants. 

Getting around this problem may require more work, but it is not unmanageable. The goal is to obviously have your resume address as closely as possible the job description to be filled, while staying true to your value proposition. Therefore, being mindful of keywords that make up the job description you are interested in should be included in your resume. If you notice a lack of keywords in your resume, then decide if the job is really a good fit for you or if your resume is inadequate. 

Following are some techniques to consider when getting ready to send your resume electronically to firms or agencies that require digitally formatted resumes:   

• Follow up your contact information at the top of page one with a well-written and terse professional profile or executive summary. It should contain keywords and phrases for the kind of position you are best qualified to perform, and which aligns with what the employer is seeking. 
• Include an achievement or significant accomplishments section, which is again sensitive to keywords pertaining to desired functions. 
• ATS are becoming more sophisticated and may include a contextualizing ability. When using keywords, include them in the context of skills and functions that demonstrate your knowledge and command of the job. Do not just insert a list of words. 
• Be wary of fancy text or graphics. They will not impress a machine and may confuse it. 
• In many cases, do not send your resume as an attachment to an email, but rather paste it right into the body of the email. The website you are responding to may specify file type. If you are given a choice between pasting and uploading, however, go with the upload. It will retain your resume structure more reliably. Do not be surprised that you may be asked to paste a Plain Text (.txt) file format into the message body. I recommend having your resume in three formats: Word (still the industry standard), PDF, and Plain Text. 
• Be careful of misspellings and abbreviations. They should be avoided. Assume the ATS will be programmed to pick up fully and correctly spelled keywords. And do not get cute with all capitals or all lower-case letters. Standard capitalization still rules. 
• When completing an online application, you may be asked to repeat information that you know is included in your resume. That’s okay. Fill in all fields, even if you are repeating yourself. 

With some care and attention to keywords and phrases you will increase your chances of having your resume and its accompanying job application make it to the all-important hiring manager inbox and avoid the screening filters of ATS. 

It has been reported that 32% of U.S. manufacturers are reporting skill shortages during the current Recession. Projections are that this number could increase to 62% soon. 

Corporations are also reporting that there is a lack of leadership talent from which to choose. Among the workforce areas claiming that jobs are available are in the skilled trades, sales representatives, technicians, engineers, accounting & finance, administrative & production assistants, and laborers. And this list is not complete. 

Despite an unemployment rate stuck at 10% one of the great ironies of the Great Recession is that there is a shortage of high quality and desirable job applicants. There certainly is no shortage of sad, demoralized, and desperate Americans begging to be hired. But when it comes to potential hires who meet the valued qualifications of many employers there is a dearth of possibilities. How can this be? 

Logic and supply & demand theory dictate that a necessary workforce adjustment should be occurring whereby industry needs are accommodated by a willing and resilient population of workers. Given these atrocious employment times you would think the migration of the unemployed to fill vacancies would be rapid. But it is not, and it is not expected to be anytime soon!   

So, what’s going on? At this point in time, I’m seeing two issues: 

Matching: Along with just about everything else in the 21st century the nature of work and the needs of industry are quickly changing. For potential employees keeping up with and being prepared for the new, innovative, and hybrid positions now in demand is not being efficiently handled. The skills needed are not possessed by enough workers. 

A requirement for any professional is to continuously build knowledge capital. If you snooze you lose. The better you know your industry the less chance you have of being caught unprepared. 

But industry too has a responsibility here. Identifying, recruiting, and developing talent creates win-win situations. Succession planning, quality onboarding, and timely training can enhance employees’ careers and company productivity. 

Both parties need to do a better job of discovering one another. 

Searching: Following from the above point is the issue of how these parties go about finding one another.  For many, the value and necessity of networking has just become apparent over the past couple of years. For those who have cultivated a rich set of contacts there is a relative ease in learning about new work opportunities, including the hard-to-fill positions. 

Yet, if you are not a great networker, and many people are not, you may be reduced to looking at job boards and other web site postings. I do not have to tell you how frustrating and ineffective that can be. 

So, a big part of the problem is that the means of searching for elusive positions are ineffective. Even networking can be hard to apply systematically. Good real-time ready and solution-oriented databases, which are dedicated to critical shortage job positions, are not yet there. If industry marketed more effectively what their hiring needs are in the short and long-term, then I am confident more of the workforce would prepare themselves to fill those gaps. 

Adapting to this Recession is difficult in many ways. One of the most egregious is in trying to accept that a) corporations are not allocating huge amounts of cash reserves to hire new workers, and b) that available positions are not being filled because talent is not being found. As a country we are suffering, in part, because we cannot seem to fit square pegs into square holes! Responsibility for remedying this mess should be shared. 

Workers, whether employed or not, need to do a better job of tracking industry current trends, projected needs, and best practices. Excelling in a rapidly evolving work environment requires nothing less. 

And industry needs to do a much better job of communicating in an accessible way talent and skill inadequacies, which will alert the American worker to this urgency and to where good jobs can be found. 

The pace of reconciling America’s unemployment dilemma needs to quicken. It is simply not acceptable for critical shortages and high unemployment to exist simultaneously. Solving this mismatch is everyone’s responsibility. 

A spot-on career choice can be judged as so because it results in certain outcomes. Among these is that a happy worker feels stimulated and continually interested in what they are doing, enjoys the compensation and recognition they receive, is content with a well calibrated work/life balance, and thrives on being productive. Satisfied workers do not have to be told to get busy. They are internally motivated to do so. 

It is no secret that employers want motivated employees. Companies get high productivity without the intrusive burden of having to implement excessive oversight and punitive incentives. Having inspired employees can make it easier for management to retain talent and maximize performance. Given these potential advantages and benefits it would be expected that recruiting and keeping these intrinsically motivated workers would be a high priority for company management. 

So, why does it seem that front offices miss the mark so often as evidenced by too many workers being largely unhappy with their jobs and who are just going through the motions to get a paycheck? The conventional attitude has been and continues to be among the general workforce that work stinks and is done only because it needs to be and is not because people love their jobs. 

It is in the interests of employers and employees alike to reverse this situation. To do so, it may be worth examining characteristics of the motivated employee at the workplace. 

To be fair, it is not simply a matter of employers alone creating a magical set of conditions which result in a motivated and positive workforce. Motivation, and its close cousin engagement, are the co-responsibility of employer and employee alike and should be delivered in equal parts from both. 

Regarding the individual worker, successful ones bring to the workforce an innate and compelling belief to be independently conscientious, dependable, and efficient. They want to do fascinating and highly interesting things and are energized by a sense of accomplishment. Driven by values and vision, the motivated working person strives to produce quality products and services that are desired by managers and customers alike — both to satisfy stakeholders and themselves. 

Fulfillment with career choice and direction comes largely from within and is not principally from what others can consequentially provide for them. These are the kinds of employees or contracted independents who add value beyond implementation of an organization’s stated business. They are keepers for sure. 

The obvious objective for companies is to figure out how to populate their workforces with as many motivated and engaged employees as possible. It should begin with management recognizing that motivation is at the core of performance and that they share in the responsibility of fostering it among their employees. 

In practice, this means partly devising the right mix of meaningful rewards and extrinsic motivators. Competitive monetary compensation, attractive fringe benefits, generous vacation time, family care and leave flexibility, job security to the extent that is possible these days, and internal and public recognition all significantly contribute to workforce motivation. 

However, employer facilitation does not end there anymore. There is an intangible consideration that more workers are expecting from their employers, and it involves sharing an emotional and purposeful connection that what is collectively being done at work matters. It is easier for everyone to feel as if they are being treated right when there exists a shared belief that the organizational mission and vision holds great value for others, the community, even the planet. 

For employers to actively express appreciation in as many ways as possible to their workers for participating in a common ambition will enhance employee involvement. Reducing or eliminating any discrepant gaps between an employer’s business and their individual employee’s career goals, including intrinsic motivators, will necessarily result in a high engagement and more productive work environment. 

When employers can begin moving away from thinking that the traditional carrot and stick, if-then, extrinsic-only approach to incentivizing is their only responsibility in creating motivated workforces and alternatively accept and embrace the internal drive, values, and career intent of their workers, then companies and organizations will yield more gain from colleagues who are only too glad to contribute.