10 Ways You Should Never Describe Yourself Picture this: You meet someone new. "What do you do?" he asks. "I'm an architect," you say. "Oh, really?" he answers. "Maybe," you reply. "Oh wow," he says. And you're off. You sound awesome. Now picture this: You meet someone new. "I'm a passionate, innovative, dynamic provider of architectural services who uses a collaborative approach to create and deliver outstanding customer experiences." And he's off, never to be seen again... because you sound like a pompous ass. Do you--whether on your website, or more likely on social media accounts--describe yourself differently than you do in person? Do you use hacky clichés and overblown superlatives and breathless adjectives? Do you write things about yourself you would never have the nerve to actually say? If so, it's time for a change. Here are some words that are great when used by other people to describe you, but you should never use to describe yourself: "Motivated." "Authority." If you have to say you're an authority, you aren't. "Innovative."
How To Evolve Your Career Call it vocational Darwinism: Seeing similarities between the Galapagos Islands and our recession-era ecosystem, Nacie Carson wrote The Finch Effect to help you be more like those titular birds--which adapted their beaks to environmental changes within a single generation--and less like the species that have perished around them. Fast Company spoke with the author about the evolutionary benefits of owning your career, the intersecting axes of personal branding, and why natural selection is not survival of the strongest. This interview has been condensed and edited. FAST COMPANY: The Finch Effect is all about adaptation. What is it that we need to adapt to? NACIE CARSON: What we need to adapt to as modern professionals is the rapid changes that we're seeing in the job market. The truth is that because of different factors like outsourcing and how fast communication happens, the pace at which changes in the job market happen is not going to slow down. How do you take that responsibility?
5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic No matter how much quality information or witty repartee we send out into our social networks, first impressions are almost always visual. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that the first thing we see when checking out a new Twitter follower, Facebook friend, or LinkedIn connection is a profile photo. And in a world of quick clicks and divergent attention, if the photo you present isn't eye-catching, or illustrative of your personal brand, you may miss your shot at making a positive first impression. We asked social design experts for their take on what makes for a killer profile pic, and they've provided some strategies on implementing your personal brand, and a few tools for snazzing up that boring Facebook self-shot you've been clinging to. 1. This may seem obvious, but we've all come across countless social profiles with blurry, dark, or low-res images. 2. A rule of thumb touched on by many is consistency. "Don't change it every few days. 3. 4. 5.
Sheryl Sandberg's Full HBS Speech: Get On A Rocketship Whenever You Get The Chance Top 10 tips on how to create a successful CV When it comes to applying for a new job, your CV could be just the ticket to get you that initial foot in the door and secure an interview. But how do you ensure your CV is added to the ‘interview pile’ rather than straight to the bin? Putting together a successful CV is easy once you know how. 1. There is no right or wrong way to create a CV but there are some common sections that you should cover. 2. A successful CV is always carefully and clearly presented, and printed on clean, crisp white paper. 3. A good CV is clear, concise and makes every point necessary without waffling. 4. The clues are in the job application, so read the details cover to cover. 5. When you’ve established what the job entails and how you can adhere to each requirement, create a CV specifically for that role. 6. Under the skills section of your CV, don’t forget to mention key skills that can help you to stand out from the crowd. 7. 8. 9.
Clayton Christensen On How To Find Work That You Love Back in 1976, two economists, Michael Jensen and William Meckling, published a paper looking at why managers don’t always behave in a way that is in the best interest of shareholders. The root cause, as Jensen and Meckling saw it, is that people work in accordance with how you pay them. Many managers have come to believe this, too: you just need to pay people to do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it. The problem with thinking about incentives in this way is that there are powerful anomalies that it cannot explain. For example: some of the hardest working people on the planet are employed in charitable organizations. They work in the most difficult conditions imaginable; they earn a fraction of what they would if they were in the private sector. So how do we explain what is motivating them--if it’s not money? Well, there is a second school of thought, which turns this thinking about incentives on its head. The Balance of Motivators and Hygiene Factors Clayton M.
The Best Path to Success is Your Own - Gianpiero Petriglieri by Gianpiero Petriglieri | 9:00 AM May 11, 2012 If you’re wondering what to do next in your career, you’re hardly alone. The debate about where and how we may best feed our hunger for mastery, service, prestige, approval, safety, achievement — whatever we’re after — is fiercer than ever. Do you go after, or hold on to, a corporate job or strike out on your own? Daniel Gulati and Lucy Kellaway recently offered contrasting views. That is a crazy thought, rebutted Kellaway from her column in the Financial Times, where she has worked for a quarter of a century. The two perspectives make for an informative debate on the changing sources of prestige, and on the best strategy for the ambitious to gain recognition in this day and age — be it from employers, local and virtual communities, or inner critics. Take these two New York Times essays, arguing that young Americans are too complacent to hit the road to find work, and have the passionless and eager-to-please attitude of salespeople.
The Most Connected Woman In Silicon Valley? Even in the fail-fast-or-get-acquired world of Silicon Valley startups, Ellen Levy is a master of reinvention, turning a succession of relatively brief stints in private companies, academia, NGOs, and venture capital firms into a unique role as a super connector, a Lois Weisman of the tech world. Recently departed from LinkedIn, where she was VP of Strategic Initiatives for the past four years, Levy--who holds a PhD not in computer science but in cognitive psychology--started her career at Apple, pre-Steve Jobs’s return. From there, the 42-year-old went on to roles at search engine WhoWhere, Stanford University, the Clinton Global Initiative, and countless advisory boards, becoming a one-woman bridge between the people who are looking for the next big idea in technology and the people creating it. She spoke with Fast Company about her nomadic career, building an authentic network, and why polymaths are the future of innovation. And what are you doing right now?
Multiple Talents, Multiple Passions, Burnout - Part 2 [See Part One if you haven't read it already.] Motherhood and creative work “I’d be in the middle of a sentence and someone needed to go to mall for new shoes, so the sentence would be lost.” That is a quote by Amy Bloom, who has worked as a psychotherapist, taught at Yale University, and is Wesleyan University’s Writer-in-Residence. In an interview about being a mother and writer, she commented, “When I started, I wrote late at night, after they were in bed. “I could do that and get away with it because I’m not much of a housekeeper and I didn’t need much sleep. “I liked my kids and didn’t care much about my house, so it worked.” But, she admitted, “writing with children present is not productive. From “Mothers Who Write interview” by Cheryl Dellasega, PhD. See the Amy Bloom author page for a list of her titles. “They are constantly driven to learn, to create and to be intellectually productive even while raising young children. Mass chaos A rage to achieve In another article, Dr. Peter C.
7 Ways to ReWire Your Brain and Become a Better Leader Over the last few decades, studies in neuroscience have shown that you can literally physically rewire your brain. You can change the “default network” you were born with, the one that ensured the survival of our primitive ancestors who lived in a very different world. Our “fight-flight” reaction and strong memory for painful experiences are hardwired from birth. Our brains detect negative information faster than positive information and are drawn to bad news. This hardwiring is further reinforced as we grow up because our negative experiences leave an indelible trace in our brain. The good news is we are capable of over-riding our primitive reactions that don’t serve us well, and creating new neural pathways that reduce stress and irritability and generate more happiness and wisdom in our lives. These 7 practices create incremental, accumulative changes in the neural structure of your brain and can improve the effectiveness of your leadership and the quality of your life. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs His saga is the entrepreneurial creation myth writ large: Steve Jobs cofounded Apple in his parents’ garage in 1976, was ousted in 1985, returned to rescue it from near bankruptcy in 1997, and by the time he died, in October 2011, had built it into the world’s most valuable company. Along the way he helped to transform seven industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. He thus belongs in the pantheon of America’s great innovators, along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney. None of these men was a saint, but long after their personalities are forgotten, history will remember how they applied imagination to technology and business. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” —Apple’s “Think Different” commercial, 1997 In the months since my biography of Jobs came out, countless commentators have tried to draw management lessons from it. Focus