Wausau Whitewater introduced me to many people who I would never have met otherwise. One of those people is Shawn Feddema from the Hammock Shop in Langlade, Wisconsin. I met Shawn on the Wausau Whitewater course in 2000-something. He donated some hammocks to be used as prizes for one of the freestyle rodeos. He gave demonstrations throughout the weekend, hanging a hammock or two in various places for people to try out.

Shortly after, Shawn’s business was started. As he says on his website, “Our business was founded in 2004 when we decided to “go public” with some great fabric hammocks. Response was immediately overwhelming. Starting from a friend’s basement, we now have a nice shop, this website, some wonderful fabrics and equipment, a monthly newsletter, and we continue to grow.”

Here’s a little about his business philosophy: We use heavy, industrial sewing machines and commercial quality fabric to create our unique and one-of-a-kind products. We pride ourselves on making soothing fabric hammocks in a wide variety of eye-popping colors and fabric combinations.

You have to work to find The Hammock Shop. It’s not in the large shopping mall or frontage strip and the manufacturing process isn’t down in an industrial park. It’s located in Northern Wisconsin in a fairly unpopulated area. But Shawn doesn’t let that get in the way. He gives complete Bing map and directions on his website including the ability to map directions from your location to the shop.

He recently created a new website complete with a shop online option. In fact, there isn’t much you can’t find on his website, such as how to Hang your Hammock, a page describing options for custom hammock designs, a portfolio of photos, and more.

Just look at the fabric selection:

Shawn is on Facebook and I just found him on Twitter the other day, where he is just figuring out if Twitter will work for him. Integrating a unique business strategy with online and social media promotion is going to take this little business that started in a friend’s basement to a potential global business level. He offers his Hammock of the Month newsletter to feature a different hammock and package combination each month. You can opt-in on his website.

I find myself admiring people who take an idea and run with it. People who do something well (like Shawn’s ability to make hammocks) and turn it into something bigger while still maintaining the character that made them unique to start out with.

Shawn is already diversifying. He is offering fleece blankets for those people who are not into hammocks. A business that started by creating a product that met the needs of the paddling community has tremendous potential for a much broader marketplace.

This is a tough economic time but I believe that if you analyze the market, create a quality product, use the myriad of marketing options that are ever-evolving, a business no matter how small can thrive.

What do you think? Is there some idea that you threw away because it just didn’t seem feasible?

Talk to me, I talk back!

2010 is a year of experimentation for me. As my regular blog visitors know, I have made some dramatic changes in my life this year. 2010 is my year to focus on my business, my 25+ year old business, Design Resumes. It is also the year for me to take my research in social media to the next level and make sure that I am using it in the most effective way.

Let’s take Twitter for example. When I joined Twitter, initially, I was amazed that people were following me, people I didn’t follow. I felt wanted and somewhat honored. When people talked back to me, I was amazed. I grew the numbers I was following by researching interesting people and to some extent following back the people who followed me.

During the past summer, I got busy and didn’t tweet much. When I came back, I felt disconnected and thought it was because I wasn’t there and people didn’t know me any more. To some extent, that might have been true, but there was another cause. I had gotten to the point of following 1500 people. Most of the people were clueless that I was even following them and I hadn’t really communicated with most of them.

On the advice of Jim Connolly, I decided to decrease the numbers I was following so that I could actually see the conversation happening. I knew that would have an effect on my follower numbers but it didn’t really matter because I wasn’t conversing with most of them anyway. When I am creating resumes for the sales profession, one of the keywords that often comes up is relationship building. For example, this bullet point from a Territory Manager:

• Generated over $3 million in annual sales through interaction with builders, building strong long-term relationships, which created repeat and referral sales.

You know how that client did that? He met with the builders. He built their trust. He shared their pain, rejoiced in their successes, and they in turn continued to buy his product. Relationship Building. It happens one connection at a time not in masses.

By letting the numbers on Twitter  that I was following grow too big, I couldn’t connect any more. There was too much input. Too many voices. It was like one of those movies where a person is surrounded by voices talking, yelling, and screaming and after awhile, it just becomes one loud roar… no thread of conversation is left, just a constant roar, a constant din.

I am only a few days into this experiment but do you know what is happening? I am talking to people again. I hear their voices (ok, their tweets). I find myself getting to know the people I follow better. I can rejoice in their successes, like HRMargo celebrating her new position. I can share snow shoveling strategies with InterviewAngel and TheJobQuest. I can see new posts from my favorite bloggers, like Robin Easton.

I would guess that everyone has different levels in input they can handle. For me, 1500+ was too many, I needed to reduce my numbers. Right now, I am following 240+ people which is probably still a few too many but I can hear the conversation.

If you were to use Twitter for job search using my old strategy, you would fail. You would get lost in the shuffle and you would not be able to network. You couldn’t build relationships. Relationships are built through little interactions, building familiarity, confidence, and trust. However, if you would try my experiment and keep your following down, you will find yourself getting to know a community and communities network.

What do you think? How much input can YOU handle?

Talk to me, I talk back.

As I review incoming resumes for my clients prior to starting a new project or run across resumes posted online, I find some cardinal rule breakers, like:

“Happily married, with two beautiful children.” As much as that sounds nice, you set off red flags for HR directors with that kind of information. Putting your birthdate, marital status, number of children, disabilities, and other information on your resume are just going to set you up for rejection.

Why? Just as employers are not supposed to discriminate against you in the hiring process, they don’t want to be unduly influenced by seeing information that could bias them. Apart from that, a resume is a selling tool and you want to refine your resume to sell you in the best possible way.

So if you can’t put that personal information on the resume, what should you put there?

Previously, I talked about the need for keywords in a resume, at the same time, you are constantly on the outlook for accomplishments. You know the famous real estate phrase: “location, location, location!”, right? My clients often hear me say the resume industry phrase, “accomplishment, accomplishment, accomplishment!”

Here’s some accomplishment-based bullet points from a client seeking a Food & Beverage Director or Executive Chef position:

Showcasing both his skills and his willingness to be part of community involvement projects:

• Selected as Top Chef by patron vote at “A Black Bib Event”, the March of Dimes Signature Chefs auction, featuring six area chefs.

Quantifying his accomplishments:

• Developed and bottled family recipe pizza sauce for outsourcing to Italian specialty stores in Wisconsin and Illinois, resulting in new revenue of $500,000+ in the first year.

Featuring an unusual marketing venture:

• Developed funeral brunch service, resulting in new revenue stream of 6 groups per weeks, ranging from 25 to 300 patrons.

Don’t Let Your Resume Fall in the Black Hole! Gasp! Think about your resume as a marketing tool to sell you, the product! Does that help you rethink what you need to focus on to create your resume?

Talk to me, I talk back!

Those of us who have been part of the career world for years take some things for granted. We tell people to fill their resumes with key words or we do it for them. But we don’t often take the time to say why.

In Key Words to Nail Your Job Interview, Wendy Enelow of Resume Writing Academy writes: KeyWord: “The “hot” words associated with a specific industry, profession, or job function… generally a noun, short phrase, abbreviation, or acronym. When used effectively, a KeyWord or KeyWord phrase can communicate an entire message with just a simple word or two.

Today many positions rely on online applications at least to start out filling a position. Those applications scan for the keywords to determine if you should move forward in the selection process. If you have carefully selected keywords that first of all fit your particular field, your particular talents, and most importantly, the job description or job posting, you will be more likely to move to the group to be called for a telephone interview.

With the economy as it is, employees are spending more time eliminating candidates than actually interviewing them. Talking with a college Campus Director recently, she said that their human resources department is receiving over 1,000 applications or resumes weekly.

Here’s a smattering of keywords I used in a Sales Manager’s resume:

Sales Forecasting | Territory Management | Cross-Selling | New Product Launches | Pricing & Sales Analysis

Those keywords are woven into the resume accomplishment statements:

Example: Directed an aggressive reorganization and profit performance program for the region. Successfully re-engineered sales and operations, resulting in increased revenue of 55%.

Do you see how keywords play into a successful job search and make you the candidate of choice?

Talk to me, I talk back!

Creature of habit that I am, I wake up and head to the computer. This morning, Twitter locked me out. Checking my e-mail, I found instruction to change my password, which I did, not once but twice since TweetDeck didn’t want to let me change my password on it.

Using Twitter just from the Twitter application is fine but to optimize it, I use TweetDeck to see multiple columns at once. TweetDeck keeps evolving adding more with every update.

Twitter let me in quickly but the block from Tweetdeck meant that I couldn’t quickly check to see what my friends were saying. I watch both people and specific lists using Tweetdeck. Finally, I must have waited long enough or entered the right combination of passwords and syncing to make everything work again.

I hate it when technology doesn’t work for me. Today, it was TweetDeck and my camera isn’t communicating well with my laptop either. I admit I am spoiled. I use a ton of tools, applications, peripherals, and I communicate continuously online through e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, this blog, blog comments, and much more. If one piece breaks, I get cranky. So I suppose I have an addiction and I would guess it is to more than Twitter or Tweetdeck. It’s an addiction to being able to talk to people all over the world whenever I want. I love getting ideas, motivation, new thoughts, new leads, and yes, doing business online.

My name is Julie, and I am a………………

Talk to me, I talk back!

Job Stickiness #3
a series to help you keep jobs or tips to make you sticky in the next one.

Recently, my colleague, Dawn Bugni wrote two posts that both touched on the computer skills that job postings often require. In her first post, Ya But, Dawn said, “I spend a good deal of time on the phone speaking with potential clients. During those conversations, I generally offer a bit of guidance to help the caller, whether they use my services or not. Sometimes they get it. Sometimes, they “ya, but…” themselves right out of an opportunity for greatness.”

One of her Ya, buts was this:

You really need basic computer skills to compete in today’s market.
Ya, but …
I never really needed to know how to use a computer in my last job.
I don’t have time to go to school.
I’ve tried. I just don’t get it.

Dawn followed that post with Basic Computer Skills, please define in response to a Facebook readers question. She gives pointers on what she defines as basic, like: “This would include, for example, knowing how to send and receive emails, as well as attach documents to an email and open them when attached. It also includes an ability to know how to copy and paste information and use the Web for research.” Go read her post for more of her suggestions.

Her posts resonated with me because my clients have had the same concerns and same Ya Buts for years. Here’s some of my thoughts on this.

You really need a computer in today’s job search. Laptop prices have dropped considerably in the last few years. I would consider a laptop over a desktop for today’s job seeker for a number of reasons. A laptop is portable. It can go with you anywhere, letting you work in coffee shops or hotel rooms and keep your figure on the pulse of your job search. A laptop lets you take notes after an interview in the car or even give a presentation in the interview using PowerPoint. You can network using LinkedIn on your laptop.

Microsoft Word at the minimal must be on the computer. Why? Most resumes are created in MS Word and it is still the most popular software in your hiring manager’s office. I have had clients who don’t know what is on their computer or assume MS Office is standard issue. It is not. Often they have confused it with MS Works which is not compatible with MS Word and then they wonder why their new resume doesn’t open for them. Or worse, they open it in Notepad and wonder where all the formating went.

As Dawn says, you need to know the basics about word processing for today’s job search. You need to know enough that your perfectly formatted resume has to be converted to a text resume for many of the online applications. The text resume (ASCII), however,  should be opened in Notepad.

Your typing speed should be fast enough to meet the basic office requirements. Many staffing agencies such as Kelly Services and even prospective employers test candidates on typing / keyboarding speed and accuracy. Recently, I had a client ask about that. Her ya but was that she used a laptop and was too slow. I use a laptop too but I use an additional cordless keyboard and mouse. I encouraged her to invest in a set for herself and then find one of the online keyboarding games and practice so she could boost her speed for the next time she takes a test at a company

If you spend a little time and perhaps a little money investing in technology, you will be much more able to handle the challenges of today’s job search. Any other suggestions on how to be computer savvy?

Talk to me, I talk back!

Job Stickiness #5
a series to help you keep jobs or tips to make you sticky in the next one.

Today’s challenge was the bathtub drain, a reoccurring problem related to many factors: the normal hair, soap, and dirt that build up over time. A house perpetually under construction inhabited by remodeling contractors means more drywall dust and other debris gets washed down the drain.

More than one plumber suggested tree roots from our Linden tree contribute. Whatever the cause, the reality is that the bathtub drain was once again backing up and the swirling water around my feet was starting to get deeper every day.

Armed with a plunger, I bravely attacked the back up, getting an upper body workout in the process, but to no avail. I gathered the baking soda and vinegar and created a mini-tornado and plunged some more. The baking soda and vinegar were going into standing water, making my solution less effective. I gave up for awhile and walked away. Coming back to a drained tub with no confidence that I had solved the problem.

At that point, I realized I was wearing my new white sweater. Once in awhile, I actually plan ahead. I put an old sweatshirt back on, lined up a bigger bag of baking soda and the bottle of vinegar, and wiped up the debris created by my last plunging exercise. I covered the drain with baking soda once again and poured vinegar watching for the mini-tornado effect, followed by warm water and more plunging. Success!

The right tools, using them properly, and being prepared for the project helped make it go smoother. The job seeker often skips planning ahead, rushing to find opportunities without the right tools.

Examples:

1. Any resume is good enough, after all, it is just a list of former jobs.
2. Accomplishments, I don’t have any.
3. Posting a resume online will solve the problem and land the new job.
4. Networking doesn’t matter.
5. I don’t have anything that even vaguely resembles a network.
6. What hidden job market?
7. Prepare for the interview, how?
8. Send a thank you letter?

Success comes to those who plan ahead. Those that don’t find themselves watching other people succeed. It’s still a tough market out there but opportunities are growing for those that plan ahead.

Job Stickiness #4
a series to help you keep jobs or tips to make you sticky in the next one.

I couldn’t even write this post until I ate. I was looking for a food photo and could feel the hypoglycemic response building in me. Irritability, anger… crabbiness, wow, is that all food-related? For me, it is!

The doctor I saw last agreed that the symptoms I have fit the diagnosis of reactive hypoglycemia. If I don’t eat regularly, I end up first feeling very irritable, then I get a headache, and then I feel ill. To avoid all of that, I need to eat within an hour or so from when I get up, eat high fiber, minimal sugar especially on an empty stomach, and eat frequently.

Whether you deal with reactive hypoglycemia or not, nutrition is still critical to your success and your Job Stickiness. Many people skip breakfast, some people find it hard to eat first thing in the morning, others simply don’t make the time. WebMD’s link states that: “”When people skip meals, especially breakfast, changes in brain activity in response to food may hinder weight loss and even promote weight gain.” Not a good thing!

I find that I do better with frequent meals, my metabolism works better, I think better, and I am more productive. When I stall off eating, all kinds of bad side effects happen and for those around me, I am not fun to be around.

In this busy work world where we are often glued to the computer, we may find that it is hard to go get the nutrition we need. We make excuses… “I skipped lunch, I had too much work.” In reality, we may be jeopardizing our jobs because we are not working at our peak energy levels and we are not feeding our brains.

What about you? Do you see a relationship between what you eat and your productivity? My goal is to help you in your job and to help you find career paths you love. If you struggle with nutritional chaos, you might be hurting your career.

As Always, Talk to me, I talk back!

Job Stickiness #3
a series to help you keep jobs or tips to make you sticky in the next one.

For anyone who really pays attention, there was a different blog post here this morning. But after reflection, I decided I didn’t like the post enough to keep it.

I’ve never done that before, annihilated a whole post after it was published but today I changed my focus and no longer wanted it to be out there.

This means that there are Twitter references to a post that is now non-existence. There are Facebook references to a non-existent post. But there were no comments or RTs so I don’t think that I messed up anyone else’s day.

I just changed my focus. Do you ever do that? Change your mind midstream?

Let’s ponder that today instead. What do you think? The post is gone, there is no copy, it is gone… I hit delete. What would happen if you changed your focus? What are the consequences? Would changing your focus help you with job stickiness like Maximizing your energy levels or Colored Pen To-Do Lists?

Talk to me, I talk back!

Job Stickiness – #2 - a series that can help us keep jobs or tips to make us stick in the next one.

What do colored pens have to do with Job Stickiness? The previous Job Stickiness post talked about Maximizing Your Energy Levels, how finding what your best times to work (and sleep) can make you more effective both at work and as you are looking for work.

Today,  we will discuss what Reeta Luthra called “The Humble To-Do List” in her comment yesterday. Reeta said, “I noticed that when the energetic moments come (esp when they’re later on in the day) people can tend to “waste” that period by trying to fit everything in… What works great to minimise the risk of this happening is the humble to-do-list… Making a to-do-list in the less energetic moments means that when you’re feeling peppy, you know exactly what you really want to focus on.”

I used to-do-lists all of my adult life and tried multiple variations. I have used a Daytimer since 1982. I tried using Outlook but found I ignored reminders. I never used a PDA or BlackBerry but I’ve watched others and decided using a little keyboard isn’t for me. At least, right now. I have tried other variations but am back to writing a daily to-do list. Writing it daily and transferring forward the undone things lets me see my progress and reminds again of what wasn’t done.

One strategy from my online friend, Micki, who loves pens and lists even more than I do, is to use colored pens. One day when I was talking about my list, she mentioned this tip and I embraced it.

I bought my colored pens and started color-coding my list. I keep a comprehensive list that covers all aspects of my life. I have one color for Design Resumes projects, one for household tasks, one for the recurring items on my list (like Read Bible, exercise, take vitamins, review financials) and one for remaining Wausau Whitewater tasks.

After implementing this strategy for awhile, Micki mentioned she uses a red pen for urgent / have-to-do items. I then started using the red pen… however, I have to confess that I have way too many red items on my list.

Using a list properly also means you need to understand your limitations and only put so much on your list that you can accomplish in a day. For awhile, I also had a general list I wrote to transfer later to the right day, as a reminder to me. As I write this, I think I need the general list again and I need to color code it.

Keeping a list at work through whatever means works best for you will help you stay organized and result in “Job Stickiness” What do you think? What works for you? How about strategies that I haven’t mentioned here that you use to track your to-do list? We’ll come back to this topic again in another post.

As always, talk to me, I talk back!

Conviction, a creed to live by, putting your faith in God’s hands, a code of honor… where do values fit in with business and where do values fit in with your career?

Everyone has to make a decision about how they form their values. You might as well learn early on the source of my values. As the song says, “I’m A Believer.” This is what forms how I look at the world, how I have always looked at the world. But I firmly believe everyone has to make their own choice and develop their own set of values and their own source for their values.

I’ve been thinking extra hard about this values thing a lot lately. It’s all over the news, Wall Street, Main Street, Elections… but in my case it comes from something else. It is stewardship time at my church. I understand the need for stewardship campaigns. I should, as a one-time committee chair who created the campaign materials. This year is different. A new pastor is in place and I am sensing change in not just the type of campaign or how it is promoted. It feels different. I’m fully invested in hearing every word. I don’t think I’m alone either. I see the people around me wiping their eyes. Me too.

Today’s lesson was on the widow’s mite. It carried the theme from prior Sundays one step further. The lesson is about faith. Pastor Tim explained that we are willing to sacrifice for the things we value. In the widow’s case, she so valued the kingdom of God that she was willing to give all she had. So I am thinking about my faith and my values. As the pastor said, these are tough times. Could we be like the widow?

I think this is a time when we need to examine our values, whether they come from believing in God or some other source. Employers are going to be looking values, especially honesty and ethics more than ever before. Companies have fallen because of poor choices, poor ethics, and the willingness to look the other way.

If you have waffled in your ethics or values, one set at home and one set at work, or even another set at church perhaps, you might find yourself needing to think about how your values impact your future.

Is it different now? Where does honesty and ethics fit in your career?

Postcards on the road

Sometimes we are blessed to have someone come into our lives who changes it and then we can’t find enough ways to say thank you. Today I want to introduce you to one of those people in my life.

Note: This post was sent out last year about this time. The things I have learned about blogging and communication since then makes me want to let it go again. Enjoy! (Mike was also Wausau Whitewater’s President this year and he took most of the year off from his career to make things work and deal with the economic challenges of the year. If you like his instrumental music, you can buy from MySpace Postcards and all his Contemporary Christian music with vocals is at his regular MySpace page or direct from Michael.)

(Mike’s not on Facebook or Twitter so unless someone reading this tells him, this stays my secret, but you can let it go viral, order music if you like it, and help me pay him back for giving so much time to Wausau Whitewater and decreasing my load.)

The rerun part: Though I’m a professional resume writer with 25 years experience, 11 of those years have also been tied to Wausau Whitewater as the Operations Manager. It was through Wausau Whitewater that I met Michael Schroeder (Mike). He came first as a freestyle competitor in the days when Wausau’s freestyle events were mainly Pro Rodeo events around 1999 – 2001. Pros such as Eric Jackson, Jimmy Blakeney, Tanya Shuman, and Eric Southwick put on a really good show and I just figured that was the way freestyle events were meant to go. But Mike and other paddlers really wanted to have an event geared for citizen level freestyle paddlers. Mike lobbied me and the board of Wausau Whitewater and before I knew it, he was running the first ever freestyle citizen’s event in 2002. He followed that up with the freestyle side of Wausau Whitewater Weekend and then in 2004 founded the Midwest Freestyle Championships. Along the way, we grew to be good friends.

I was really fuzzy about what Mike did for a living for awhile. Normally, I’m pretty curious about occupations. It just never came up. At some point though, I learned that he was a professional musician. During our many conversations, I did find out that he was a Christian. In 2003, he recorded his first CD, A Witness. My life had more downs than ups back then and his music as well as his phone calls helped me turn the corner.

Mike continued to expand his contemporary Christian music with more projects (Fuel for the Soul, the Way, and the Christmas release, The Reason for the Season) as well as tours throughout the country, www.michaelschroeder.com

It has been fun being his friend through all of this, watching his career grow. In summer 2008, we were taking virtual walks together, he was in his city walking in the woods and I was in Wausau walking to the river, and we would meet on the phone to walk and talk about Wausau Whitewater projects and some of our own endeavors. It was during those walks that he told me about this new project, a total instrumental project inspired by a trip he took to Europe some years ago. He called it Postcards from the Road and promised I could have a demo of it when it was ready.

I’ve always loved the contemporary Christian music and didn’t know how I would feel about a project without any vocals. But I love this one as much as any of the others. My friend’s musical voice comes out just fine without any words. The jazzy selections like Amsterdam make me smile. Ones like Nadine made me relaxed and thoughtful. You can hear some of the selections from his MySpace page for the project, http://www.myspace.com/michaelschroeder2

Perhaps in another post I will share some of the lessons I learned from Mike. For now, it is enough to say that meeting him blessed my life.

My other hat with Wausau Whitewater starts playing a major role in the spring and summer months. We are finalizing the fundraising campaign and even in these tough times our sponsors have come up with significant funds to help us keep Wausau Whitewater Flowing.

But we have a shortfall of $20,000. How can you help? Use ChipIn to donate to Wausau Whitewater.

What does Wausau Whitewater do, I’ll let our President, Michael Schroeder tell you:

Welcome to Wausau Whitewater!

Wausau Whitewater is a non profit organization of volunteers dedicated to managing the events, competition, training, recreation and more that happen each year at Whitewater Park in downtown Wausau. Let me take a moment and share with you the many ways this world-class whitewater course provides value to our community.

Competition: Every year Wausau Whitewater hosts regional, national and international canoe and kayak events starting with our own Wausau Whitewater Weekend and Midwest Freestyle Championships that attracts competitors from the Midwest and beyond. Our events are always open and we encourage the public to register and compete for awards and prizes. Wausau also typically hosts national or international events each year and our international event this year is the North American Canoe Championships, with the Jr. World Championships coming to Wausau in the near future.

Recreation: You can bring your boat and paddle at Whitewater Park during any of the 10 recreational releases scheduled this year. Enjoy a day of fun on the Whitewater course for an extremely reasonable price, $10 a day, plus $5 for ACA insurance.

Compassion: Our compassion event this year takes place in June when Wausau Whitewater hosts a First Descents Camp – an outdoor adventure for young adults with cancer. The camp gives everyone a day of fun and fellowship at Whitewater Park.

Training: From our Ray McLain Training Camp to Open Canoe and Freestyle Clinics, we offer training for all types of boating. This year, through partnership with Bear Paw Outdoor adventures, we’re offering a two- to three-hour Introduction to Basic Kayaking class during recreational releases. For $35, Bear paw provides instruction, kayak and equipment. You’ll need to register in advance for this fun-filled class.

While the Swift Water Rescue Clinic, held each year, is open to the public for boaters and non-boaters alike, it also provides a valuable resource to firefighters and first responders from across the state. Seven counties have already taken advantage of this important swift water training.

This world-class resource at Whitewater Park is yours, all yours. They’re your events. Compete, volunteer or sit back and watch the excitement – no matter what you choose, you’ll be glad you got involved. Join us for a day of fun on the water during recreational releases or take it to the next level at a training camp or clinic. Consider this your invitation to join Wausau Whitewater – the local paddling community with an international reach. Learn to paddle. You won’t be sorry you did!

For a complete calendar of competitive events, recreational water release schedule, sponsorship and volunteer information please visit www.wausauwhitewater.org

Michael Schroeder
President

Wausau Kayak/Canoe Corporation

Photo by angegreene,

Though I have two sons who are 22 and 23, Mother’s Day always brings memories of the children that are not mine. Last year, I got a huge singing card signed by 6 young people. Yes, my two were on there, a girlfriend of my oldest son, and three other young men. The other three have all been part of the family for so many years that they feel like my children. But there are even more children of other mothers that have honored me with calls, cards, gifts, and flowers over the years and most of all conversation and hugs.

What are my favorite times? I have several of the young men who love to cook and will either take over my kitchen or cook with me. Both my sons will cook, my youngest loves to cook and has a number of signature recipes that usually involve spices… like scrambled eggs with onions and super chilis, or an extension of that where it becomes a total skillet breakfast (though he makes the components separately). Dan browns grated potatoes, onions, and bacon, and mixes them with his eggs, more onions, and super chilis. The concoction is quite tasty as he would say. Last week, Lee (not my child) took over the kitchen and made tenderloin steak sandwiches, complete with sauted vegetables and Habenero cheese.

Other favorite times is when they all pitch in and tackle one of the ever-looming construction projects on our house that was bought 17 years ago as a remodel and move on project. Last night, one of the young men (also named Dan) remarked that we need to finish the deck project. The over the roof deck above the garage and next to my office was started by my oldest son to stop the leaks in the garage that was ruining the insulation job he and a friend did last fall. So far, my two sons and at least one friend have tackled the project. I look forward to a finished project and deck.

And of course, there is the favorite time when the children that are not mine come into my office, sit down, and just want to talk. The latest is Tyrus, who has been a friend of my oldest for about 5 years but left for Colorado in 2007 to go back to school with my encouragement. He came back to Wausau at a horrible time in the economy but worked hard to find a new job. He’s working as a cook in a new restaurant at lower wages than the manufacturing job he had before he left for Colorado but he is grateful to have a job. He stops in most days after work just to touch base and I quiz him on his goals to help him focus on what he needs to do next to reach them. No, he’s not my child either. He’s a grown young man of 25.

For about four years, there was always at least one extra plate set at the table and it still happens but not as frequently as the young people have grown up, moved away, or just been busy with jobs and college. It hasn’t been an easy time because the path that my own two and the others have taken is not the one I would choose for them. Too frequently, parties, alcohol, and other things have dominated their choices. It is hard to not continually be in a mode of trying to change them but I have learned that they have to do that themselves. Though the years, I have tried to be the listening ear when any of them — mine or others want to talk about direction.

Maybe that’s what all children need. Not just good parenting, which is critical but not infallible, but other adults who welcome them into their lives, accept them for where they are and try to listen and respond when they are open. Transitioning to adulthood is not easy and we all can use someone to listen.

The children who are not mine will always be welcome in my home and heart.

Photo by Jovike, http://www.enkil.demon.co.uk/

Do you struggle with taking on too much or just saying yes because no one else will? My personality has always been that way. Initially, it is fine and then I start being resentful that no one offers to help. I handicap myself by thinking I will be stuck doing it alone and no one would ever help me. I’m not good at asking for help. This behavior crosses all of my life and surrounds me, from home to my business to my relationships with others.

For example, I have moved my office upstairs into what was the family room. This room is about 25×17 and surrounded by windows. Our home is on top of a hill overlooking the west side of Wausau and from the south, I see Granite Peak Ski Area through the trees. All of that is great! Birds land on the branches outside my window and I have been treated with visits from chickadees, cardinals, blue jays, robins, upside down nuthatches, and this morning a mourning dove.  The squirrels tightrope walk on the electrical lines, sometimes stopping to look back at me through the window.

So what’s wrong? I had my sons and husband install a new patio door. It slides well and lets me take a break out on the large multi-level deck outside but no one finished the framing around it. It was installed in September. The gas fireplace stopped working and after 5 service calls, my vendor says that at 15+ years, it needs replacement. Son took the piping apart to check to make sure it wasn’t a bird’s nest blocking the airflow and now there is a poster covering the hole in the wall. By fall, I have to figure out a replacement or wall rebuilding plan. Until then, the chaos surrounds me. To top that off, son #1 decided that the front deck over the garage was ruining the insulation he installed last fall, so he started to tear it apart to be rebuilt. As it goes in remodeling, one thing led to another and it has become a major project because the old T-111 siding is also leaking and will have to be replaced. Now both sons are back working their construction industry jobs fulltime and my husband has been the fulltime caregiver for his dad for 3 years so he is only home after 7pm and on Sundays. The project isn’t done, when it rains, there are at least 6 leaks in the garage and the tools were left on the floor of my family room office.

I finally brought up a tub and packed up all the tools, nails, caulk, and other related construction items because the mess is driving me crazy. I don’t know how I will get my team back to work or find money to pay an outside contractor (which I know would get me in trouble but the job would get done). I don’t want an Extreme Home Makeover, I just want a functional, peaceful house.

My chaos grew when I spent the last few weeks working on Wausau Whitewater 2009’s annual 60 page promotional book. Determined to meet the May 13 deadlilne, I worked 16 1/2 hour days and struggled to work with the sponsor base who is also challenged by this economy. The non-profit uses the book to showcase its sponsors. My job is to coordinate fundraising and communicate with corporate marketing departments to plan their ad placement in the book. I also select interesting people from the paddling community to write feature articles on. This year I realized that publications rarely are created by only one person and was smart enough to ask @DawnBugni, a resume colleague of mine who owns The Write Solution to contract to copy write for me. Dawn intuitively understood the focus of each article and refined the wording to maximize the impact. Letting someone help me was hard at first, but I quickly learned that trying to do everything myself was hurting the project and damaging me in the process.

I will tame this office so I can keep working on the many Design Resumes projects and the other projects for Wausau Whitewater  but I am starting to learn that unless I take those steps, I can’t help the many people I serve. Do you find that  you fail to ask for help or chaos overwhelms you? I haven’t solved all my issues yet but I know that taking the first step will free me to be more effective for everyone and give me peace.

Talk back to me. Share your solutions for managing your lives. We all learn better together.

Photo By John Morgan, http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/rjmorgan/

Progress report on my yesterday’s post. I managed to pick up all those tools, etc., vacuum, and find the floor. Since my not much sleep journey continued this morning with waking at 4am, I opted to start sorting a box of paperwork that I thought contained a form I couldn’t find. I ended up with two wastepaper baskets of trash, a bag of recycling, more than one load for the shredder, and more to file.

The floor, unfortunately, at this writing is littered with more piles. Now it feels overwhelming again. I could avoid this feeling if I just handled it when I first got it. The Do It Now principle, touch it once… none of that is unfamiliar to me but yet it feels impossible most days.

There are so many demands on my time from both the Design Resumes side and the Wausau Whitewater side that time seems to fly away. Add in financial management, laundry, eating (it is good to find time to do more than make a sandwich), I’m exhausted by nightfall. I have good intentions to keep working until bedtime and most nights I do but I am still working on the urgencies which are not necessarily the priorities and maintenance of filing, mail opening, etc. are still left for another day.

This post sounds rather whiney and it isn’t intended to be… Consider it more a cry for help or at least a cry for a cheerleading squad to encourage me to push on for a few more minutes every day and try harder to succeed with the
Do It Now Concept. So I said my piece, your turn to help give me peace!

I am so good at making excuses. It is not that I really put off work and anyone who knows me knows I have too much on my plate, fail to delegate, and often take the hard way to get something done. Not always, but too many times. If you read backwards in my blog, you will find this topic resurfaces. I’d like to tell you I am making progress and maybe I am but I still see the signs of wanting everything perfect and if it is not, getting all bent out of shape. Blogging is one of those things. I procrastinated starting, I procrastinated once I started because I needed the perfect time, the perfect place, couldn’t find the right pictures, on it goes.

Solved the picture problem after agnognizing over whether to buy a camera or not and finally giving in and letting my son, Dan go to Best Buy to pick one up for me. I told him what I wanted and gave him a range and knew he was techno-savvy and worked well in Best Buy environments so it became his job. I could even say I delegated. What a difference the little camera in the pocket made! No, it wasn’t immediately reflected by more blog posts or amazing creative projects but it did make me appreciate the world around me much more. I found myself seeing with different eyes, as I spoke about before and shooting and sharing on my Facebook page

Another goal was to move the office outside so I wouldn’t miss the sunshine and I ran into all kinds of issues there too. I bought a new Wireless N-Router to replace my older wireless router but I left it in the same location as the old one. I was too afraid to take the next step of moving it into the new upper office room with the deck outside. Finally, after my system crashed repeatedly for days, or maybe weeks, I messaged a friend of a friend on FaceBook that runs PC Confusion Solutions and asked if she could come solve that problem. She happened to be free and came over that afternoon. In less than an hour, she had the router moved, the modem and router set up and my wireless printer that I had working with the old router but was stubbornly refusing to connect for me, all humming along.

What did that do? I could move my office outside on good days and enhanced my desire to be productive. It brightened my attitude and I finalized some other projects. Simple things, I know but it is how I work best.

My goal is to get back on task on so many things I make hard. I was reading Sue Thompson-Murphy’s post this morning on Creativity 101 and everything she said rang true to me. Sue has been an inspiration many times since I found her on Twitter last fall but I thought I would share this one with you since it fit in with what I was thinking. I actually had the title of this post saved from a day when I was going to write it but I put it off. Listen to Sue for a minute, “We have lots of excuses for our lack of creative energy. I make them all the time. Someone once told me that procrastination is a direct result of not having enough information. If you don’t know, you can’t do. Kinda makes sense, eh? So how do we get over the hurdle and get into a creative mindset? Here’s a few things I’m trying…” and then read the rest of her post.

I don’t promise that I will conquer this making excuses or suddenly get caught up and amazingly creative in blog posts, new energy, or anything else. I know that is tough for me. But I will keep working on this goal setting, moving forward trend, and really try to stop making excuses.

Are you with me on this? Do you do it too? I’m waiting to hear your solutions. What project are you putting off?

Most people who either know me or who have read other blog posts know that I play a dual professional role of being a professional resume writer with my own business, Design Resumes, while also being the Operations Manager for Wausau Whitewater.  The Wausau Whitewater role is a subcontract which was originally designed to provide year around income when the resume business ebbs and flows. However, my passion for everything I do, turned Wausau Whitewater into more than fulltime.

Today I was faced with the challenge of the www.wausauwhitewater.org website being down right before both a recreational weekend and a major event, Midwest Freestyle Championships, next week. I needed to communicate how to get forms and see the schedule. Then I realized I have an independent blog for Wausau Whitewater, http://wausauwhitewater.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/midwest-freestyle-championships-2009-schedule/ and I could post the schedule, the form (maybe not a PDF) and relay the information about our lodging partners, http://wausauwhitewater.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/lodging-partners-for-wausau-whitewater-codeword/

Not only that, I could use http://www.facebook.com/WausauWhitewater and my Facebook page, http://www.new.facebook.com/juliewalraven?ref=name to direct people to the blog. I then used the boater boards, http://www.bsbs.org/messageboard/index.php and http://www.rapidsriders.net/ plus several boater e-mail lists like Chicago Whitewater Association and Pure Water Paddlers to post references to the event and links.

My frown turned to a smile as I realized that I had once again found a solution that would leave communication open. Thinking about the resume side, how many times do jobseekers give up before they take the time to see if there are other options? How many times do they fail to use the best resources available? and most importantly, how many times do they fail to network or think they have none?

If you are blaming others for not having a job or avoiding taking action, step up to the plate and look at your options, there are more than you think.

I’ve lived in the same house with the same view since March of 1992. For most of the past two years, I have moved my office upstairs into the family room and looked out the same window. But until I agreed with myself that I would break my rules about buying things for me and bought this little camera that fits in my pocket, I never saw the sunsets that have happened every day for the past 17 years.

For the last 5 days, I have been deliberately shooting the sunsets and posting them on my facebook page. None of them look alike, each night they have been slightly different, different clouds, different colors and different lighting. And all of them have been beautiful. I have realized that the sunsets were always there but I didn’t take the time to see them until I started using the camera’s eye.

Suddenly I am seeing many things differently. Everything isn’t changing all at once but I am finding that I see many things I never saw before and taking the time to see them. Flowers are more complex, birds which always fascinated me, I spent more time looking at than ever before.

All because of the little camera in my pocket. Though I have used the camera out on the river and let other people take Wausau Whitewater pictures with it, mostly I have used it in my house or yard and found that I am looking at things very differently.

Orginally I bought the camera for this blog. I got tired of having topics with no photos and having to search for photos on the web. For my other blog, I have lots of wonderful photos from my Wausau Whitewater photographers but for this one, I was always procrastinating writing because I had to search for photos. The camera made it easier.

But the real benefit to buying the little camera is that now I am seeing with a different set of eyes and it isn’t only sunsets I am seeing for the first time. My perspective is changing on many things. How about you? Have you changed your perspective? Is it time for you to have a different pair of eyes?

If job seeking is one of the things you are working on, trying using a different pair of eyes, implementing new strategies, and seeing if you get different results.

Talk to me, I talk back!

Getting all wrapped up in the cares of the day, I lose sight of making sure that I appreciate life in general. I don’t think I am unique. Overwhelmed was a search word on Twitter and frequently is a response I hear from people all around me. I’ve been coached to take time for myself, to find balance, to just let things go, but it is hard.

At this moment, life slowed down a bit. Oh, I have a to-do list as always, even some items that really need priority but today, I have been in an appreciation mode.

I had a great talk with a resume client this morning about the jobs he likes and the jobs he doesn’t. He’s very employed and very much in demand but is just in a reflective mode of wanting to look at alternatives.

He told me there are things he knows he can do well but he doesn’t like doing them. I told him he should pay attention to that feeling because though we all have to do things we don’t like sometimes, if that is the essence of a job, we will end up frustrated and probably overwhelmed.

I find myself listening to the advice I give others and finding it resonating with me. It is time to take time, to appreciate, to stop running to play catch-up, to stop to smell the roses, appreciate the sunsets, read a good book, and enjoy a good fire.

Time to slow down, to regain balance, so that the “me” is refreshed and ready for the next challenge. This is hard for me to do and I think hard for many people to do. But if you find that “overwhelmed” is your word too, maybe you need to look for that balance with me so that your career becomes manageable instead of it managing you.

Talk to me, I talk back

I had them all along. I knew I did too. I had the right tools to conquer the weeds in my garden. The most important tool was the pitchfork and second came the gloves. The combination was a winner.

But I knew I had them. The gloves I used a lot. But alone the gloves weren’t enough. I could pull out weeds but they broke off and the roots were still in the ground. But I never used the pitchfork. It was around the corner in the garage. It wasn’t hard to put the door up and it wasn’t hiding. It just wasn’t convenient.

Today, I went and got the pitchfork and put on the gloves and the weeds that had broken off and stuck in the ground stubbornly before popped right out. I worked for an hour and cleared a whole section, just like that!

I had the right tools. And I knew I had them all along. But I didn’t take the effort to use them.

How often does that happen to you? Do you stubbornly stick to doing things the hard way or not doing them at all because the right tools are just not in your hands at the right time? I don’t just do this in the garden. I do this in other areas of my life too and I see my clients doing it too. They have the right tools, but they don’t always use them right. And stubbornly, they too are convinced that there are no jobs out there, they are being eliminated, no one likes them… but did they use the right tools, the right way? Many times they used their well-written, accomplishment-driven resume but they were missing the right tool, their network. Combined they make the job search go easier. Are you using your network or are you leaving it behind because it takes a bit of work to put it together?

I had the right tool but I wasn’t using it. Are you?

Yesterday, I was cleaning the refrigerator and my mind was going a million miles a minute. I kept thinking of things I needed to do, things I wanted to write, I even took a few minutes to jot down some potential blog post titles so I wouldn’t forget. I tend to think the best when I am either walking or when I am doing simple tasks that require little concentration.

Cleaning the fridge was one of those things. I didn’t have to think hard, I just had to keep moving, scrubbing, tossing, and reorganizing. I’m not sure that I am really that much more creative but it seems like if I stop trying so hard, I get better results. I know I’m very tough on myself. I set unreasonable conditions for projects, even as simple as blogging. I have to have other projects out of  the way, I have to have the right moment, I can’t be tired or hungry or a thousand other things.

I also have to see results. It was fun with the fridge because I knew that I could see results immediately. It didn’t hurt that my son, Dan, went out of his way to find me and say, “Mom, the fridge looks awesome.” I didn’t think they noticed but obviously they do. I love results. I love success. A fridge cleaning episode might be a funny place to think but I bet you might find that results change when you stop trying so hard.

Do you need a specific atmosphere before you can think beyond your present moment? Share your place to do your best thinking.

When I moved my office upstairs to the family room, I moved partially because it was too cold in the office I had occupied for over 15 years. Around 2006, we started burning wood in the new living room fireplace, I knew then that I had to either find another source of heat for the lower office or find a new home upstairs.

The family room had always been underused ever since my sons grew up. Our living room, dining room, and kitchen all blend together and that is the area we use the most. The family room was largely being ignored. One of the pluses of the upstairs family room is that it has its own source of heat, the gas fireplace. Unfortunately, shortly after I moved upstairs, the fireplace decided to die. I had our supplier’s repair people in multiple times and despite replacing a critical part, it kept failing.

Finally, I spoke to Jim Hurtis, with Hurtis Heating & Air at a Christian Business Leaders Breakfast that we both attend regularly. I asked if Hurtis also installed fireplaces. He said they did and I took his business card with a plan to call him. After a consultation appointment to discuss my needs, he offered to send his repair team to assure that the existing one was dead or maybe get it to limp along for a few more years. His team came and assessed the old fireplace but between the rusted bonnet, the cost of potential replacement parts and the uncertainty of the life left in my old one, we agreed to buy a new unit. Monday, September 14 was installation day. Mark and Rick arrived in the morning and removed the old unit and installed the new one which looks much better even without being finished. My family of carpenters is charged with the finishing but if they take too long, I will be hiring someone else.

The true test will come when the weather turn cold but I am already feeling pleased that I chose Hurtis to solve this problem. Rick and Mark were patient throughout the process and taught me how the unit worked including demonstrating how to turn the pilot off and on so that we can save that gas and heat until we really need it. My office that I have loved so well in these warm months with the adjacent deck and large windows overlooking the city will once again be a warm place to work in the winter months.

Choosing the right partner to work with you to solve your problems makes a big difference and I am careful to select people who go the extra mile with their customer service, Jim Hurtis and his team did that for me! I would not hesitate to refer them to anyone else who needs heating, air conditioning, or even a new fireplace.

In December, I detailed how I started with LinkedIn, since then my LI community has grown and I periodically take time to see what is happening with my contacts.

As a career professional, I value the way social networking enables people to understand networking in general. When I am speaking with my clients, I often promote LinkedIn (LI) as an opportunity to see who you are connected to and to understand how networks work.

Common issues I see people struggling with on LinkedIn:

• How do you create or write your LinkedIn profile? Many people seem to have a problem figuring out how to use the application and if they get that far, they seem to struggle with how to build an effective profile. I have seen profiles with just a listing of jobs or schooling without any details. Much like a resume, LI profiles need to be well written to be effective.
• How do you connect or build your network on LinkedIn? I understand this because it was the way I handled LI in the beginning. As I said in my initial post about LI, I left myself alone out there for a long time until I was rescued by some friends who chose to connect with me. I didn’t understand it, there weren’t many tools out there to help you understand it at that point in the early days either.
• Privacy rules: Some people have chosen to lock their network. I know that I have colleagues who are recruiters who lock their network so they won’t get raided or to protect the privacy of their connections. At the risk of opening a can of worms, I will comment on locking shortly.

Solutions:

How to build your profile:

• Resources: My colleague, Jason Alba wrote the book, “I’m on LinkedIn, Now What?” and recently updated it with the 2nd edition and he also recently released the new DVD, “LinkedIn for Jobseekers”. I encourage jobseekers who are confused to get a copy of either the book or the DVD which walks you through how to optimize LinkedIn. Jason’s blogs also give excellent advice on continuing to build your LI knowledge and your overall career and networking success.
• Career professionals: Many career professionals, like myself will work with you to write and create your LinkedIn profile. Just check the services page of a career professional’s website or go to one of the professional organizations like Career Directors International and seek out members who offer LinkedIn Profile development or optimization. Getting the right words out there makes all the difference.

How to build your network:

• LinkedIn makes suggestions of who you might know that are already on LinkedIn. Its powerful search engine seems to be able to find commonality between your interests or your location. At times, I add to my network using that list.
• LI’s search engine also can be used to search for people who you might like to connect with. You might search your old place of employment, specific people, your city, companies you would like to work for, schools, or any number of potential connection points.
• Your existing network in your address book can be uploaded to LI. I have a broad Outlook database I connected to LI and I get suggestions from LI when one of my contacts becomes part of LI and I can choose to send an invitation at that time.
• LI’s Dashboard. I let LI’s Dashboard application become part of my Outlook application. It lets me know which of my contacts are part of LI already and I can choose again to connect through an easy built-in invitation.

Privacy Issues

• You might have a legitimate reason for locking your network and I don’t pretend that I know all the answers. I know that I asked a recruiter friend why she locked hers and it was to protect her connections.
• In my world, the power of LinkedIn is the understanding of who is connected to who. If everyone locked down their networks, it seems like you might as well just keep people in your address book because there is no benefit to LI if you aren’t gaining an understanding of who is connected to who and what their special talents are. I welcome disagreement here because I know that there are other people who may have great reasons for not sharing their LI network.

LinkedIn is a tool that helps you understand networking. If you need help with your LinkedIn profile, contact me at JulieWalraven@designresumes.com. I would be glad to help!

When I hear of people successfully getting interviews but not getting offers, my first question is, “Did you send a thank you?”

I coach my clients to send thank yous when we are discussing interview strategies but I know that even I am lax on writing thank you notes. We get busy and forget how powerful a thank you is in any facet of your life. In a job search though, it can be the make or break factor between launching that new career, getting the next promotion, or getting a job at all.

Let’s start with the basics:

1. Should I e-mail, hand write, or type? I have listened to my career colleagues discuss this for years and the most recent dialog came to the consensus that the hand-written thank you is totally acceptable and with some hiring managers, it might give you an edge because so much is digital these days. For the same reason, an e-mail is ok because it shows a desire to communicate quickly and you can show that you have a command of technology.
2. Who do I send it to? In these days of team interviews, everyone you interview with should get a thank you. You can exchange business cards if it feels like an appropriate thing to do, write their names and titles down during the interview as you take other notes about the position and you will be demonstrating that you care about the job when you take notes as long as you are also answering questions and using eye contact at the same time, or if those options fail, you can check back with the receptionist for the names and proper titles of the interviewers.
3. When do I send it? Most experts recommend within 24 hours of the interview. And no, you cannot prepare them prior to the interview and hand them out when the interview is over. Why not? See #4.
4. What should I say? This is the perfect time to show your value to the organization and prove your understanding of the position. You are reselling yourself at this point. What did you learn about the company at the interview? What solutions could you provide to their problems? What impressed you about the company? Was there a product or process that struck you as being innovative? Did you like the team atmosphere and feel that you would be a great fit? Make it count, think sales, and you are the product. Say something that will sell you once more as the interviewer reads the thank you.

Now for the twist!

1. Send that thank you to the job you didn’t get! What? You heard me right. They said no, and you are going to send them one more thank you.
2. Why? There are times when the first candidate doesn’t work out or backs out or maybe there is another position coming up (perhaps in the hidden job market) that you may fit. By sending a thank you for the “no”, you keep the door open.
3. What should you say? In a thank for the no, you will say something like: “I realize that at this time, you have found a different candidate but I want to thank you for the opportunity to learn more about your company. I appreciate the value XYZ company has in the field of _________ and I learned…. In the future, I would like to be considered for opportunities you have for XPosition. Thank you again for spending the time with me in the interview process.”

When else is a Thank You note appropriate?

I really think that we have forgotten the art of the thank you. We say we are too busy, we are overwhelmed, or we are just absent-minded. But those two words are so powerful and combined in written form, they can change the way people think of us, they can make us the one who is remembered, and they can propel us on the road to success.

Not only should we say the words more often, we need to write those thank you notes, not only in the job search process but we need to say them and write thank yous to the colleagues who help us out with great ideas, to the friend who takes time to listen, and to the customer or client who is faithful in tough times to still buy your services or products.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog!

I do it. Other people I know do it. You probably do it. We play the blame game. It’s an easy out and has complicated side effects.

At points, I blame others and more often, I blame me. Neither of these are productive.

A young man I know well has chosen to make this the game of his life. He’s stuck, he knows he’s stuck but he is unwilling to take any action to change his patterns. When we repeat the same pattern, we get the same results. In this young man’s life, he is struggling with substance abuse and it has permeated every facet of his life. He once dealt with a complete range of substances and experimented with almost everything that was out there, including meth. He was smart enough to realize the danger in all of the extraneous substances but not willing to put forth the effort to exclude all substances from his life. His drug of choice now is alcohol.

This young man, like many I know, has parents that love and care for him and was active in many positive things in his early life, Boy Scouts, Youth Group, organized sports, and more than his share of positive role models. He also had a bright academic future and was accepted to multiple colleges throughout the country. A talent for writing, he showed the ability to string words together very well.

But early in his life, he had chosen the blame game and coupled it with substance abuse and wrong choices. Once in awhile, he regrets those choices and briefly thinks about turning things around but there have been so many wrong turns that it gets more difficult every year. Financial missteps, legal hassles, relationship issues, all compounded by the substances interfering with his processing. He’s had his share of interventions, counseling and even rehabilitation but until he stops the blame game, nothing will take.

Meanwhile his attitude, actions, and choices impact those around him and they play their version of the blame game. He’s still employed but sporadically and the choices he makes have to be impacting his work. He’s not alone. There are many people who play the blame game and it takes work to get past it. It takes a level of determination and a desire to change that some people will never find. Until this young man gets to the point of abandoning the blame game, he is unlikely to be able to move forward in life.

How does the blame game influence the job market? If you play it continuously, you are unable to take the steps forward to make changes. If it is always someone else’s fault, your co-worker, your boss, the economy or even yourself, you will never be able to move on. If you want success, you have to admit that the blame game is standing in the way, acknowledge it, write it down if need be and then look objectively to find the first step you need to take to make a change.

If substance abuse (drugs or alcohol) is standing in your way and you are ready to make a change, tell someone and ask for help. There are counselors and programs ready to help. It might take some searching to find the right fit and it will not be easy, but it can be done.

If you are miserable in your job, start figuring out what steps you need to take to find a new one or find a way to make your current job more positive.

If you are out of a job, stop the blame game and seek out the resources you need to find a new one. Step out of the blaming, list your talents and think deeply of where you would really like to work. Don’t look where everyone else is looking, strategically seek out connections and resources to find the hidden job market.

The first step is to stop the blame game… and take a step forward.

In this day of social media overflowing into almost every aspect of our lives, many are drawn to it because of numbers. Now don’t get me wrong, I love some numbers. For me, with blog posts, numbers are something I watch. I do check my stats and even cheer them on. But what it means to me is that someone at least clicked on the link and if I wrote something that mattered to them that day, they may have stayed long enough to read it. For a writer, being read matters.

We are bombarded by too much information these days and there is no way that everyone can spend time to read everything that comes to them in the form of e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, direct mail, or a thousand other forms. I get that! But getting read matters to me. Getting comments on the blog itself matters to me. When I started investigating social media, the blogs I liked best had a community of people much like Facebook or Twitter that regularly talked. It was because of that community that I made many of the following choices later on other social media formats. A few examples:

Kim Woodbridge caught my attention early on both because of the conversation on her blog and because I learned things. Kim is a WordPress expert and I followed her as she explained many of the tips of working with a WordPress blog and her adventure as she decided to become a freelancer. The post I linked to in this post is about Broccoli Soup. Look at the comments Kim gets on a topic of Broccoli Soup and notice the community Kim keeps her blog real and interesting by giving great information and at the same time keeping it personal. Out of that initial contact, I hired Kim to move my blog from an independent WordPress location to my website and to give it a facelift to match the website. I would hire Kim again (and probably will soon) because she understands the WordPress world far better than I do.

As you might have realized, Jason Alba has influenced me tremendously. We met on career industry e-lists and his willingness to be personable, caring, and helpful struck me. I read his blog posts then and still do. And follow his tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn growth. Jason has always been the example I cite for my clients when they worry about being unemployed. If you don’t know Jason’s story, click here. I’ve called him “the lemons to lemonade guy” more than once.

Joe Jacobi gave me the first introduction to social media when he and Bob Campbell invited me to LinkedIn. He has consistently led by example by the way he uses Twitter, Facebook, his video blogs and more to communicate and grow community. His most recent video blog with Jessie Stone from Soft Power Health is inspirational and really reflects the Joe I have grown to know so much better since we started talking through social media. Joe came to Wausau for Wausau Whitewater this summer to coach at one of our training camps and by the time he got here and we went to dinner, we had so much more common ground than we had in the days when we only met on the river when he came to compete or coach.

Danny Brown was another of the people I met early in social media. From Danny, I learned how social media and fundraising can integrate and be successful. His project 12for12K is a clear inspiration of how to bring causes that many people never knew about and get community involved in working together, showing that even small amounts can do great things. He has a great way of communicating and building community and like Jason, even though I know he has much to do, he has commented back to me. I am always amazed when people do that.

I could go on for pages of people who have expanded my horizons and given me joy through social media. But I won’t. Before I end, I will say that if I had one person that has amazed me beyond believe through my social media connection, it would be Marcel Murrell who at 95, has mastered Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook and has entertained, counseled, inspired, and taught those of us who follow him along the way.

Numbers, no, not number of followers, numbers of friends, numbers of connections, not numbers… lessons, friendships, community, and amazement have been the reason behind my forage into social media.

How about you? Who inspired you and why are you here?

Back in April, my husband who never gets calls from unknown people on his cell phone fielded a call from  Consumer Direct Warranty Services selling a warranty product from Vehicle Services, Inc. that cost us $495 and could have ended up costing much more. The caller told him his warranty was ending soon and to save on costs, would he like to sign up for a new warranty. Mind you, I manage all of the paperwork, financials, insurance, and related correspondence and he didn’t ask me. Actually, he didn’t tell me about it at all.

A box came in the mail that looked like something you might find with sample products like shampoo or dryer sheets in it. He had left it open and I was curious. Once I realized what the paperwork said, I called him to check what he signed up for but really thought it was at most a $39.95 problem.

The van in question is a 2000 and we wouldn’t put extensive repairs into it so a warranty extension was not something we needed. When I asked, he told me that he was trying to cancel it. Alarmed by then, I asked him to get the process moving and called to initiate the process myself. We were instructed to mail the package back and we followed the directions. We were assured we would get the money back.

As a precaution, I called my credit card provider and cancelled the card it was charged on to prevent future charges. The agreement my husband signed had a cancellation clause but the end costs could have been over $3000 according to MSNBC’s Herb Weisman’s research, much more than the car itself is probably worth. At the same time, I initiated an investigation with the credit card provider. They set up the paperwork and instructed me to work with the warranty company first. I also googled and found out I was not alone and tweeted and found that people were being targeted all over the country with these warranty calls regardless of whether they had warranties or not.

Normally, I wouldn’t post about a company in this way but we have done due diligence to try to get our money back, calling regularly to hear things like, “the computers are down”, “We should be able to refund your money next week”, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone and told him that I’ve been blogging again and I already knew he had been reading them. I was telling him that I was getting traffic and wondering if he was going to tell me I was wasting time. But his comment surprised me a bit, he said, “You know, as a person who spends most of his time in a creative mode (he’s a musician), I know that there is something in a person who is made like you and me that just blossoms when we are allowed to be creative.”

He went on to say, “If I was raising children again, I would want them to experience creative outlets and let them explore in various fields like music, art, and writing until they found the niche that fit them best and they were happiest.” There’s a lot of wisdom in those words. He knows me well. He can hear the smile in my voice when I am writing or creating something. It doesn’t matter if it is a blog post, a client’s resume, someone’s LinkedIn profile, a newsletter, marketing piece, or an article for publication, when it comes together, I just feel delighted. I can hear that in his voice when he writes a new song or performs a concert.

What ever your passion is, when you are doing what really makes you happy, it changes you. For me, I bounce around and smile a lot when I feel like I am using the gifts God gave me. I guess in many ways, I have been blessed in my life because though there are things I do that I don’t enjoy, like processing paperwork and posting data, much of my life is spent doing things I love.

I know that many people don’t find a way to use their passion in what they do and they see work as drudgery and a burden. For me, I would find it hard to stay in a job that I hated. I would work very hard to put myself in a position where I could have enough money saved up so I could move into something that made me happy. For me being happy in whatever you do is critical.

How about you? Are you joyful in what you do? I don’t think it needs to be isolated to writing, art, or music. I’m also happy when I am cooking or gardening because both bring out my passion and creativity. I know  people whose joy comes from solving complex math problems or analyzing scientific data. Whatever makes you feel that intense level of happiness or joy is most likely your passion and you will do best working in an environment where a good part of your time is spent on that area.

So what makes you happy? (The picture above is our dog, Teddy, and he always makes me happy!) And are you doing it right now? If not, are you thinking of how the thing that makes you happiest can be a focus of what you are doing for the rest of your life?

Doug Jackson - Photo by Lori Woldt, Larimar Images

Oops! Sometimes the many hats I wear get tangled and I forget critical issues. This morning, I was working with Lori Woldt, a friend that I have known for many years. She had been wanting to update her LinkedIn profile and knew that I offer that service to my Design Resumes clients. She is a realtor, who has owned Keystone Realty for sometime and has also been gradually expanding into photography. I was really unaware of how much she was expanding until we met this morning.

Lori takes this world of photography very seriously. She is almost a graduate from the New York Institute of Photography. New York Institute of Photography is the world’s largest photography school. Instruction by respected real-life photographers combined with their online magazine and featured tips provide an unparalleled level of support to guide students through the amazing landscape of traditional or digital photography. Lori has learned web-based media strategies and is continually expanding her offerings.

With her real estate background, Lori partnered with RealTour Vision software, a recognized leader in interactive 360° panoramic virtual tours, when she launched Larimar Virtual Tours. This partnership enables her to offer technology which is the perfect solution for anyone trying to sell anything via the web and is not limited to real estate tours. Larimar Virtual Tours can customize the look and feel of her tours to create a professional grade virtual tour of any type of property or item including but not limited to:

• Homes, Condos, New Construction, For Sale by Owner Properties, Apartments, Land
• Hotels, Restaurants, Casinos, Resorts, Bed & Breakfast Facilities
• Wineries, Golf Courses, Campgrounds, Scenic Areas
• Schools, Universities, Churches, & Convention Centers
• Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Retirement Facilities, and Medical Offices
• Commercial Real Estate, Factories, Industrial Parks, and Corporate Offices
• Libraries, Museums, Malls, Shopping Centers, and Historic Buildings
• Automobiles, RVs, Motor Homes, Luxury Yachts
• Ski Resorts, Stadiums, Theme Parks
• Health Clubs, Malls & Shopping, Downtown Attractions,
• Floor Plans-not yet built properties

As a freelance photographer with Larimar Images, she grew her business to include LinkedIn Profile headshots, business portraits, event photography, pet photography, architectural photography, on-location photography, and more.

Now to the oops! In 2008, Lori gave me an image she shot at the whitewater course during Midwest Freestyle Championships. But what an image it was! Unfortunately, in the flurry of putting Wausau Whitewater 2009, I lost track of the fact that it was her image. I work with many great photographers that I can talk about in a later post, but today’s post is about Lori. The image above creates the drama on the front cover of Wausau Whitewater 2009 (the promotional book that I create for Wausau Whitewater annually). I asked Lori if she had seen the 2009 book and she said, “that’s my photo!” OOPS! Big lesson to make sure I track whose shots I am using. I list our photographers in the book but I didn’t list Lori because I didn’t know it was her shot.

This is my oops post to give Lori credit and it really is a great shot of Doug Jackson, whose claim to fame is paddling without a paddle. The lesson learned is that I have to give credit to the talented photographers supply amazing images to Wausau Whitewater. Thank you all, but special thanks today to Lori!

A client, who is a project manager with a background in IT, insurance, and finance, talked with me about my blog and social media in general. He thinks as a career professional I should share more of my social media tips with the people who read my blog.

To me, it seems everyone is talking about that so other than an occasional LinkedIn article, like My Journey with LinkedIn or the post, LinkedIn or LinkedOut?, I have blogged about other things. His point though was that yes, everyone is talking about it but not everyone understands it. He said people don’t even get that the rules of looking for a job have changed dramatically and the way companies look for prospective employees have been transformed by social media. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you feel like your experience with LinkedIn is fruitless?

Question:

I don’t seem to be getting anywhere with LinkedIn. What should I do?

Answers:

1. Is your profile complete? Here’s my LinkedIn Profile Look it over. If yours has only where you worked and no details, just realize that you aren’t using the power of LinkedIn. Think accomplishments, tell the story: CAR, Challenge, Action, Result — what did you do at each position that made you valuable.
2. Are you branded? Look at this one for Lori Woldt: “Creative photographer bringing passion to your photo needs: portraits, pets, events, architectural & virtual tours.”
3. Do you have a profile picture? Lori could shoot one for you if you are in Central Wisconsin. If you are somewhere else, seek out a reliable photographer who can capture your image and help you look professional.
4. Are you connecting with other people? – if you sit up there all alone, it won’t work. The world will most likely not come to you. I know I did it at first, I still say thank to the people who bailed me out. To find out who, check out My Journey with LinkedIn
5. Are your connections open? If you lock your connections, in my opinion and Jason Alba of “I’m on LinkedIn, Now What?”, you shouldn’t. I suppose there are special exceptions but if you do, you have minimized the effectiveness of LinkedIn. If you are worried about privacy you probably shouldn’t be on LinkedIn anyway. If your connections are unlocked, they will be found with the LI search engine anyway if someone searches for them. Just Don’t! Set your connections, like this:

   Account & Settings

   Go Back to Account & Settings

   Connections Browse

   You can control whether or not your connections are able to view the people you are connected to, although they will always be able to see shared connections.

   Learn how browsing connections works.

   Allow your connections to view the rest of your connections list?

   • Yes, show my connections list
   • No, hide my connections list

   or Cancel

6. Are you giving recommendations and requesting them? A recommendation makes you more valuable. Giving them to people you think highly of increases the odds that they will give you on back.
7. Are you using LinkedIn to make real life connections? Local people: invite them to lunch, coffee, or breakfast. Remote connections: talk by e-mail, phone, Facebook, or some other social media. Connecting in real life grows the relationships.

Does that help? Ask me if you have other questions about LinkedIn or social media. I am happy to write your LinkedIn profile or revise your existing one.

I was just reviewing my checkbook online and saw the six month fee for Hostgator who hosts Designresumes.com and wausauwhitewater.org. It reminded me what a good investment the hosting move was. Previously, both sites were hosted by someone down in Texas who was very cost-effective – he often forgot to bill at all and a year was only $50.

When Kim Woodbridge was moving my Wordpress hosted blog over to the newly launched Design Resumes site this spring, she was having trouble getting it to port. Kim’s a WordPress pro who has ported sites before and it was obvious that my old host couldn’t handle the special needs of the blog. She made the move for me.

This summer Wausau Whitewater’s site crashed during a critical registration ramp up time and we were punting trying to direct people over to the independent blog, Wausau Whitewater Flows and using the Facebook page for information. Kim had no access to the files but she helped remind me what I needed to do to move the site myself and I moved Wausau Whitewater over to Hostgator.com too.

Sometimes we try for the cheap solution or the lowest cost possible but we realize later that for a few more dollars, we could have saved much more in the long run. We do this with just about everything including our career management service choices, opting for the lowest cost when an investment could have made things easier for us in the long run.

Since the move, there have been no crashes and everything I wanted to do with either site has worked. Worth the investment? Oh, yes!

- I will be back to talking more about social media and job searches soon.

Are you committing fatal errors with LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has the least amount of interaction compared to Twitter or Facebook, but there are multiple ways of making it more interactive than it initially appears.

Fatal Error #1: Don’t fill out your profile

LinkedIn’s profile has integrated parts that work together. You need to complete all of them and write it professionally to make it work for you. Think of the summary section as your sales flier. Without completing the summary, you (the Product) are not stating your value. The summary needs to promote the value you bring to an organization. The Specialties area is meant to be a keyword section much like you incorporate in your resume. What message are you wanting to share in this section? Job listings. Don’t just post the place and your title. What value did you bring to each position? Don’t know, can’t think? Ask someone who knows you well and whose opinion you value. Give tidbits of your value on the LinkedIn Profile. Your profile is not static and you can get back in there and edit whenever you want.

Fatal Error #2: Don’t invite anyone

Though I talk about this frequently, I see many people who don’t realize that you do have to invite people to increase the benefits from LinkedIn. People who open a profile and sit there without connecting have lost a viable resource. Start by connecting with people you know who are using LinkedIn. LinkedIn gives suggestions from similarity in the fields you fill out.

Fatal Error #3: Use the standard invitation

The “I’d like you to join my professional network on LinkedIn” sounds great the first time you get the invite but after getting it from everyone inviting you, it gets stale quickly. Make each invite personal. Erase those words or add on to them. LinkedIn just put limits on invitations and the character count is very short. Using creative strategies and personalization though you can still make the invitation inviting. I try to think a connection or memory that the person I am inviting brings to me.

Example: “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. Hi Anne, it was nice getting to know you a little yesterday through our Dental Hygiene exchange. We’ve both been part of PARW for a long time but I haven’t added you to my network.”

Fatal Error #4 – Don’t use the answers feature

I’m guilty of not using the answers feature or the discussion feature of groups too. But every time I use them, my connections grow because the person who asked the question often choses to connect with me.

Example: “Adding LinkedIn profile link to the Resume – What’s your opinion

Your answer was selected as a Good Answer

I don’t do it on purpose and I don’t plan it… but I have this helping personality and it is always out there. If I see a need or see a friend reaching out, I figure out if I can help. Maybe you are like that too. It doesn’t have to be close by either. In this day of social media and global conversations, you can hear about needs anywhere. Of course you need to trust the people you are helping, everyday I get e-mails from someone asking for help with their large sums of money.

If you have ever read this blog before, you probably have noticed that I reference Jason Alba of JibberJobber quite a bit. Today, when I read Jason’s post about JibberJobber competition, I couldn’t help but comment back to his question, “I think I can only do one thing about my competition (outperform them and gain a critical mass of users/evangelists)… what do you think I should do?” but more than that, I want to spread the word.

Jason has been a friend of many of us in the career industry. He has given us training and help on many projects and been a keynote speaker at many of our conferences including the recent Career Directors International conference in Orlando.

Read his post, and leave a comment on his blog… and then if you haven’t yet explored JibberJobber.com, the career management tool that helps you with your job search, spend sometime exploring.

Come back and visit me again too!

Maybe you have wondered about the little photos you see by blog post comments or other online postings. Some people have the same photo that you see on Twitter or LinkedIn and others have some little symbol or a cartoon perhaps.

I used to wonder about that too until Jason Alba explained it in one of his blog posts:

Gravatar: How To Get Your Picture With Your Comment In This Blog.

Of course you need a photo. This photo of me was taken by Scott Savage, Savage Photography. You should update your photo regularly. This one is about 2 years old now and I have changed my hair style and so I will be getting an update soon. But once you have a photo, you can get it up using Gravatar.

You just have to go to http://en.gravatar.com/ and follow the directions. I learned recently that you can have more than one e-mail linked to Gravatar so that if you decided to change your e-mail or have more than one, you can still be consistent with the same image.

I have strong feelings that you should use a photo though and not a cartoon. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to establish a consistent brand and that means letting people see who you are. Does it have to be a professional photo? No, if you can get a good photo that you feel represents you well from a friend with a digital camera, that’s great. The important thing is having that presence. I use professionals because I know that they can shoot off multiples quickly, they understand lighting and other factors that contribute to a good photo but you can decide what is best for you.

In case you wondered about whether bloggers want comments on the blog, I can assure you they do. So if the picture has been holding you back from commenting, solve that one today and we’ll see you in my comments!

Let me begin by saying, I like Facebook. My adventures into social media expanded into Facebook in a different order than some people.

My first introduction was to LinkedIn, blogs, Twitter, and after that Facebook. My Wausau Whitewater role as Operations Manager initially prompted the connection to meet the paddling community in a place where they were.

Joe Jacobi and I had been working on connecting the paddling community digitally. Right now, he’s busy being the Interim Executive Director of USACK, USA Canoe / Kayak, so he connects the paddling community on a global level.

I like Facebook as a personal way of sharing pictures, ideas, and just getting to know people. I see real advantages for the job seeker who can use Facebook to connect with others and explore possibilities. I know connections I made through Facebook have expanded into both great friendships and future business relationships but there are dangers in all this good too.

Facebook No-Nos — Let’s list them quickly:

1. Posting pictures of yourself from parties or events. This should be obvious but I see it happening all the time. You put up a photo of you chugging beers or worse, it was fun at the time, you maybe put it up when you were still partying. Negative image…
   Solution: Make sure all photos you post of yourself are ones that you wouldn’t mind sharing in a job interview.
2. Being tagged by friends. You’ve learned your lesson from #1 and are careful of what photos you post. You can’t control your friends though and you were tagged by one of them doing a keg stand or drinking from a beer bong.
   Solution: Fortunately, you can “untag” yourself. If you are tagged in an unflattering photo, look at the tags and select “remove tag” and you are untagged. As a second step, if your friend is truly a friend, persuade them to take the photo down.
3. Saying whatever you feel like: This is from an actual listing on the info page of someone, under employer. Note: I have not friended this person, but I can see this… “I approve shit for all the Order Entry people and walk around with a cordless phone pretending i’m important.” and  ”Get dressed…go there bullshit with businesses and government agencies over the phone…make them buy shit from me”
   Solution: whatever you say on your info page, your wall, or in comments needs to be something that you could say in an interview — if not, take it down or don’t put it there in the first place.

Enough for now. Share your feelings about Facebook, using it in job searches, using it for marketing, or just using it. Let me know other pitfalls or no-nos you see for the person looking for that new career position.

Talk to me, I talk back!

One day last summer, one of my Facebook friends, Tammy, who I only met online asked if  her friends would “friend” her neighbor who was trying out Facebook. He was 94 at the time. I did and that’s how Marcel Murrell entered my life. What I didn’t know is how much he would change my life.

On his page, it says this: “I’m old, but happy to be alive. Living life and loving it.” And he was. On Wednesday, our Facebook community was told that it was likely his last day on earth. It was. But he died with his friend, Tammy, who throughout the time she knew him made sure that he had all he needed. At the end, she was with him, with Hospice care. And close to the end, Marcel was still talking on Facebook, still telling all of us how much he loved us.

I can’t tell you how many tears I have cried since he died. Marcel, compared to family members that have died, was articulate, interesting, and funny up until that last day. My family has battled with Alzheimer’s and dementia and so the person has been gone long before the actual death.

With Marcel, his age never interfered with his communication skills. He was known for telling us a little more about Tammy than she would like. But at the same time, he was there to counsel, encourage, and make us laugh. Early when I met him, I mentioned that I was looking for a camera. He told me the brand he would recommend and kept asking if I had bought it yet, until I finally did. Marcel loved photography. Between him and Tammy, whose photos are amazing, I learned much about seeing through the eyes of a camera. And I learned much about seeing life through the eyes of Marcel.

Later Marcel experimented with Twitter and his tweets made me and so many others laugh:

RT @MarcelMurrell: Every new wrinkle improves my chances of beating a speeding ticket.

RT @MarcelMurrell: If you’re making a sign to be held up at a sporting event, it doesn’t hurt to use a dictionary.

RT @MarcelMurrell: Do cobwebs exist if you can no longer see them?

Marcel came to the US from France to work for NASA. He worked directly with Werhner Von Brahn, one of the most important rocket developers and champions of space exploration during the period between the 1930s and the 1970s. Marcel’ fascination with space continued throughout his life.

Marcel was known for his 1:30am time for Cheerios. When I saw that Cheerios had a Facebook fan page, I quick told him that he should become a fan because no one was a bigger fan of Cheerios than Marcel. In true Marcel fashion, he said, “Thank you, I’m heading over there right now.”

I can’t tell you how many times when I was feeling burdened, Marcel jumped in there to cheer me up or tell me it was time to take a nap, take a walk, or just relax. I encouraged a number of my friends to friend him too and those that did were just as impacted by him as I was.

I learned that he was in Hospice care from my friend, Dawn Bugni, another career professional / resume writer who had friended Marcel on both Facebook and Twitter. She sent me an e-mail to make sure I was aware and we talked back and forth privately as the day went on. One of Tammy’s friends let the rest of us know on Facebook  ”Sleep well Marcel Murrell 8:02 PM November 11, 2009″

I will be forever grateful for the day that Marcel wandered into my Facebook world and into my life. He changed it and I will miss him.

With the advent of using Facebook to push out blog content, many people stop by opening it only in Facebook instead of going the to original post. When I started reading blogs, I didn’t use Facebook or Twitter. I went to one blog on the recommendation of bloggers I liked and then I moved on to others through the comment section — because bloggers also like to write comments.

If you read blogs only on the page that opens in Facebook or through e-mail, you miss the richness of the blogging community. Even bloggers like Seth Godin who no longer allow comments on his blog (due to the sheer volume of comments and time to answer them, I am told) are richer when you read them on the blog. The visual effects are usually better on the blog and you can use the navigation to read a post you might have missed by e-mail.

You miss the community that grows between bloggers themselves. I love Jim Connolly’s marketing advice for small and medium-sized businesses, but even more I love the way he shares the bloggers he enjoys, such as the post he wrote today (November 16) on Danny Brown. You’ll see Danny commenting on Jim’s blog, Jim commenting on Danny’s blog and get that sense of community, camaraderie, and humor that grows in the online world.

When you comment on Facebook, the conversation moves off the blog and onto the Facebook page and some of that community gets lost. I still talk to bloggers on Facebook but more likely about a random comment that one of them made on Facebook. On Saturday, I saw John Haydon make a comment, “I like the rain!” and Danny Brown quickly answer back, “But does the rain like you, ” and I had to respond with “You couldn’t resist, could you, Danny?” only because I have known Danny long enough through his blog and comments that I could almost see the twinkle in his eye when he wrote the comment to John.

The online world is as big or small as you make it. I treasure the fact that people I will never meet in person (most likely) have become real to me. I follow bloggers that speak about things I want to understand better or who are just fascinating writers that draw me in and captivate me with the genuineness of the posts. You won’t get to know them if you only read the Facebook version.

So — Always read the blog on the blog… and thanks for reading my post today! Oh, and the photo – just one of my many river pictures… no hidden meaning…

In this economic climate where everyone is challenged, not just job seekers but also employers, there is often a disconnect between the outplacement packages offered to high echelon employees and the next tier of sales professionals, middle management, production leadership, and others. Executives are often offered substantial packages that serve to compensate them for their job loss and placate them as they enter a new phase. Those packages can easily cost a company from $5,000 to $$10,000 per employee.

As Jason Alba listened to his JibberJobber community and others in the career professional field, he found that there was a gap that could be met by the employer with a small investment of $500 to $1,000 per employee that would speed the job search and train employees on cutting edge job search strategies using JibberJobber and other social media strategies. He and I were talking recently during one of our periodic phone consults and I told him that I had thoughts of an outplacement company but didn’t want to do anything without seeing his plans.

His response was instantaneous and typical Jason, “That’s brilliant!” He suggested I talk to his Sale Manager, Craig Goldberg in New Jersey who was contacting companies to offer the new products of Affordable Outplacement. We discussed how my resume writing and other career marketing communication services could be combined with his package and marketed to companies who wanted to help their employees but don’t have a large budget to work with.

After some discussion, we decided that Design Resumes could partner with Affordable Outplacement as a pilot partnership. Jason’s other Career Expert partners will be soon on board and together we will see if we can help our fellow citizens to rejoin the work force.

If you are an employer who is reading this, consider contacting Craig Goldberg at Craig@AffordableOutplacement.com or call 732.387.0340 to see how Affordable Outplacement can help you.

If you have visited my blog before, you will know that I am a people person. I love helping others, I love positive words, I love making a difference whenever I can. Social media has let me do more of that from the comfort of my home office. Right now it is the Thanksgiving Sharathon at my favorite Christian radio station, www.89q.org. I don’t work to music very often but when I do, it is Christian radio or contemporary Christian artists. Lately, I’ve been back to turning on 89Q again.

Today listening to the Sharathon, I am hearing friends on the radio. Coy Sawyer, the General Manager, invited me to his Christian Business Leader breakfast about 2 years ago. Within the last couple of hours, I have not only heard Coy and his announcers, Ken Bishop and Matt Deane, but Dave Olson from Sons of the Carpenter and Architectural Millwork as well as Rimon Moses from RMM Solutions both of whom are in our leader breakfast group. I’m loving sharing the current challenges through Facebook and Twitter and knowing that people can pledge all over the world now through the website and better yet, people can listen all over the world now through the website.

The long story about Coy Sawyer started when he was with another station in Marshfield. I used to listen when my children were little and I mailed in a prayer request. Times were really tough back then and we had just lost both of our property management jobs on a project in Naperville, Illinois and moved back to Wausau to start over. We managed to buy a really small house and were struggling to remodel it. I just wanted people to pray that we would have work back then, a prayer I still pray. But instead, apparently Coy read my request on air and we received a $100 check from the station because some listener wanted to help.

When Coy moved to 89Q, I offered to be a business sponsor. When that was hard for us, Coy came up with a way for me to help that didn’t cost me cash. He was starting a tabloid-like newsletter that was syndicated and printed in Grand Rapids, MI but the local sections and the ads had to be created here. I learned Quark to help Coy create ads and other desktop publishing. We worked together every quarter for several years, designing ads and laying out content. I learned skills in desktop publishing that I later transferred to things I did for Wausau Whitewater and Kiwanis. Later the newsletter turned into a locally designed and printed publication done by Sun Printing but for a long time Coy was a quarterly visitor.

With all that, you can see that I have strong ties to 89Q. If you have never checked them out, go to 89Q and visit. If you are reading this during Sharathon, the pledge line is 888-638-9250, manned from 6am to 6pm CST.

Pretty Foggy out there...

As a self-employed business owner, I have watched the health care debate from the sidelines. For over 20 years of my 25+ year self-employment, I paid my own health insurance. In 2005, when premiums reached $500 / month with a $5,000 a year deductible per person for my then family of 4, I stopped. I lived in fear of dropping my policy for a long time, but finally the costs going out exceeded my income. When I looked at how little the insurance actually had paid for me or my family  in the 20 years, it didn’t seem logical to keep paying for something that wasn’t helping me.

I realize this may seem very foolish. Instead, I have opted to try to eat healthy and exercise and I’ve paid less than $1000 in health care costs this year.

Since I fall in the uninsured category, you would think that I would be clamoring to be covered. I would pay for a policy again if it was reasonable and covered only major medical. But most of what I have seen coming out of the national proposals are anything but that.

People who have had company paid coverage in the past have often taken it for granted. More recently, companies have introduced co-pays but I have still heard employees who have much lower deductibles than I think are needed to have good coverage. Over the years, I have listened to people who visit the doctor for every little thing and let the insurance pay for it.

No one thinks through what health care coverage costs an employer unless they have had to pay it themselves. Many people think the same way with the government. Until you can prove to me that government run health care would be affordable to everyone, available when you need it (the Canadian model is not according to my sources) and run efficiently, I’d prefer to wait.

Jumping on a bandwagon because it sounds good, when you have not read all the fine details will result in later complaints. I am guessing that proposed bill will end up costing most Americans much more in the end.

I am sure that most people will not agree with me. It’s too easy to say, let the government pay for it… but the government is us… isn’t it?

Yesterday, (November 19), I went to my first Wausau Regional Chamber of Commerce meeting in a long time with a new friend and colleague of mine, TJ McManus from IcreaTech.com. The topic enticed me, “Embracing the Digital Marketing Age” It was presented by Gerald Mortensen & Amy Zondlo, Flapjack Creative. The room was packedwith about 60 people.

As I looked around the room, I saw many people I knew and reconnected with some of them. I saw market firm reps, business people, and people who just wanted to network and learn. As the Gerald began his presentation, I could tell from early on that I could easily identify with his content. In many ways, I had been on this course of study for over a year now. I found myself raising my hand a lot as he asked who was familiar with this or that. I use Twitter and Tweetdeck, I know who Tony from Zappos is and I recently ordered some boots from Zappos because I had heard so much about their amazing customer service and work culture both from others and from their videos. To me, Zappos is an example of making online marketing work for you.

Gerald made sense, he talked about interacting with the members (formerly customers) of your brand and contributing while not imposing.

There were points on which I disagreed, like when he said that he thinks blogging is dead and microblogging is the wave of the future. If that were true, you wouldn’t see Chris Brogan, Danny Brown, Jim Connolly, Jason Alba, John Haydon, Susan Murphy, and many others with far more marketing knowledge than I have blogging regularly and getting great traffic.

Online business marketing, as Gerald said in his presentation, is here to stay. How you incorporate it into your marketing plan is your decision but it is easy to say that the ways we communicate are changing and those people who are too fearful of what could happen will miss out on a wonderful opportunity.

As we were walking out, TJ said, “You know, companies who are afraid of using social media for marketing because they are afraid of bad comments about the company are missing the point. The conversation is going on whether or not you are there. Your customers will be talking online. How quickly you respond to them is dependent on whether you have put yourself in a position to be listening. Thinking that if you are not on Facebook or Twitter you are protecting your brand is silly. You just left yourself out of the conversation.” Wise thoughts, TJ!

So, are you on board? Let me know what you think. You know I love comments!

Competition strikes fear, the word Colleague, implies working together. Can the competition be your colleague? In my experience, yes!

I’ve been a career industry professional for over 25 years, writing resumes, cover letters, teaching clients job searching strategies, and listening to job seekers share their stories.

Along the way, I learned about professional groups. These days I make faster decisions but from 1991 until 1999, I waffled about joining the Professional Association of Resume Writers (now PARWCC). I wanted to make sure it was a legitimate organization and I would get value. If you are my son’s ages (22 and 23), you’d probably ask, “why didn’t you Google it?” Well, probably because back then, there wasn’t Google! This leap of faith was the best business decision I have ever made. Shortly after joining, I connected with the e-list, introducing me to other resume writers all over the globe.

In 2000, I joined Career Masters Institute, (CMI) now Career Management Alliance (CMA). Wendy Enelow launched CMI as a training resource for the field. If PARW connected the career industry, then CMI taught us lessons and gave us resources. It was the first Internet-based training and development resource for the career industry. Wendy opened the door to publication for me. I still remember when the first book with one of my resumes came in the mail, Expert Resumes for Teachers and Educators by Wendy Enelow and Lousie Kursmark. Only one resume was selected for publication but you would have thought I wrote the whole book. I danced around, showed it to everyone and was so excited! Since then, I’ve had resumes selected for other books, including three in last year’s Expert Resumes for Engineers. Today I connect with Wendy and Louise when taking their Resume Writing Academy courses.

Though I knew certifications were available, it took personally meeting Susan Guarneri to actually sign up for the test. I passed and earned the Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) credential.

If you follow this blog, you know the impact Jason Alba had on my life. I chose to become one of his Career Expert partners because he is always thinking, learning, and I never know what new idea he will come up with next, like the Affordable Outplacement concept that I blogged about earlier.

The last organization I joined was Career Directors International (CDI) and again, this has opened new doors to me. Founded by Laura DeCarlo, CDI is continually offering new resources and educational opportunities. The rave reviews from CDI’s recent convention in Orlando echoed throughout Twitter and 2010’s convention is already being planned and I think this time, I might actually get there. CDI has multiple learning tools, many of which are created by another friend of mine, Gayle Howard. Gayle is in Australia but she has been a friend since the early PARW days, we’re connected on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn these days as well as by the e-lists.

I asked my friend, Dawn Bugni, a career professional in North Carolina, to help me with Wausau Whitewater 2009, by providing her editing and copywriting skills, helping to make our annual production over the top in quality. Dawn’s highly visible on Twitter and has recently made her debut in radio, as a member of the Resume Chicks, interviewed by Recruiting Animal, billed as the number 1 show in Recruiting Radio.

So what’s my point? Recently you see career professionals all over Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and though we are obviously there to let job seekers know we have resources and solutions for them, we are also there as a group. We talk to each other, retweet each other, and comment on each other’s blogs. Why? Aren’t we all competing for the same market?

For years, we all knew each other as career professionals. We know who has talents in which area, expertise and tips but many people still told me and others, “Wow, I’m glad I found you! I didn’t know someone like you existed.” It was the invisibility factor. Professional resume writers and career coaches are often sole proprietors who lack the marketing budgets of large firms. Lack of marketing individually or as a group left people in the dark about the professional as a whole. Added to the invisibility factor, some people took advantage of job seekers by creating resume mills where every product looks alike and no one even talks to a person.  The career industry took a hit from mainstream media as untrusted and a scam because they only heard the complaints.

Nothing could be further from the truth! In 25 years, as I have grown to know the career industry professionals, I find them to be as a body, the most caring, professional, talented individuals on the planet. Their willingness to share knowledge and problem solve with people who could be their competition is amazing. Throughout this post, I gave you links to what could be called, my competition. Why?

The truth is, we’d like the world to get to know the career industry. You will find people who care about you, the job seeker. People who strive every day to improve their craft, understand new strategies and technologies, and stay ahead of the learning curve. Do I call them competition? No — I call them colleagues, and I call them friends!

The best thing a job seeker can do is make a smart buying decision based on whose personality, knowledge base, and strategies fit their needs best. All of us care about our clients, you can choose which one of us is right for you.

Random thoughts today:

I had coffee with a friend today and we shared heart concerns. Then I ran up to church and I fixed the direct debit and offered some other gifts if needed. I can feel it in my heart when I am doing something right.

I read somewhere that when you get touched to tears, that’s the Holy Spirit leading… And it has been happening a lot lately.

I have always felt that a worker is worth his pay so I find it hard to expect people to give of their talents without pay… unless that is their gift.

I believe that sometimes giving up control and letting someone with the right talents do the job even if it costs money is worth the investment.

When I can pull all these things together and create a win-win, I feel an incredible sense of victory and relief. Bless one person to bless another. Pay a little to gain a lot…

Random thoughts, just had to write them…

For as long as we have been in this house (17 years), all holidays have been here. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and a few extras now and then. Both my family and my husband’s family have been invited, occasionally there was an extra person or two that joined us because they were new to the community or just because they didn’t have family here. It was never an ultra large group, 10 to 15 or so, but it was always here. I love to cook and play in the kitchen. Over the years, I had fine-tuned the turkey-making process. I never mind guests in general.

For a number of years, it was always guess whose coming to dinner here almost every night. See Children that are not Mine. My favorite part of cooking is being able to try new recipes and experiment. Our children and their guests have had fun wondering what Ms. W was going to make next. On holidays, I tried to stick mostly to the traditional recipes but usually had at least one dish that was new, figuring that even my father-in-law could be selective if he didn’t want to try it, it was OK.

Our house is in a perpetual state of remodeling and the kitchen has yet to be touched. (wait for that blog post on kitchen remodeling) My husband was a remodeling contractor for years. Now his job is to be caregiver for his father and he spends 6 days a week there from about 7am to 7pm. This year, his sister from Arizona decided that she wanted to come home and have Thanksgiving on the dining room table at my father-in-law’s house as she remembered from 30 years ago. She didn’t ask what our tradition was and she actually never talked to me at all.

Anyone who knows me well, knows that planning a dinner would have been one more thing on top of the many things that I am buried under on a regular basis. So after a short pouty period where I whined about not asking me, I just decided to roll with it. This would eliminate the craziness of shopping, food prep, cleaning, decorating, moving tables, etc.

My Sister-in-law arrived Saturday and she brought with her a friend from Thailand that we haven’t seen for over 20 years. My sister-in-law doesn’t thrive on cooking but her friend knows her way around the kitchen and is helping my father-in-law who loves to cook. He also loves to experiment but it has to be his idea. My mom and brother will also join us so there will be at least 9, possibly 10 at dinner today.

I could have gotten crabby and pouted and made an issue of changing our tradition. But I thought about it and it would have made no sense. I have enough to keep me busy for years with catching up on paperwork, marketing for Design Resumes and Wausau Whitewater, client projects, and just trying to stay on top of Teddy’s perpetual shedding.

My previously mentioned kitchen needs a total redo (it did before we moved in and that was 1992) and though I could make it work, it isn’t ideal. So taking all that into account, I decided several weeks ago that I could just give up control, let them handle Thanksgiving and help out today if they want help in the kitchen.

Teddy is coming along because he has been a part of every holiday since 2004 when he joined our family. I’ll spend the day working on projects and probably make a big batch of granola to satisfy my cooking needs.

Giving up control is something that should be easy. But I have always been the kind of person who likes to have a role, I like facilitating, coordinating, doing… it makes me feel like I am helping… It also makes me feel part of things. I am not naturally an extrovert, most of my life, I would have told you I was shy but if you put me in a position of helping, cooking, planning, directing, etc. I am fine even if it means more work.

I like cutting-edge, new and different, I like change, except if it makes me feel less valued. Giving up control can make me feel less valued. How about you, do you adapt to change, be it in your job, your job search, your family, or your holidays? Or are you a little like me, struggling when someone doesn’t ask you before they change things.

Early in my resume writing career, I wrote resumes for a large number of local television media on-air personalities and reporters in news, sports, and even weather. During time, I learned the jargon and insider details from the media industry. (My clients are also often my teachers!)

For instance, I learned how television market rankings are defined. Did you know that each area has its own market ranking. Wausau, Wisconsin (where I live) has a market ranking of 135. New York tops the list at #1. (Surprise?) Television reporters, anchors, sports reporters, and even meteorologists rarely can make large market jumps. Back then, I had a meteorologist jump from the Wausau market at 131 to Grand Rapids, MI at 31. That’s a huge jump! It might have been a little easier in the weather field because of the specialized skills that a meteorologist has but still an accomplishment.

At the same time, I worked with a number of sports reporters and many of them became friends. One, in particular, taught me terms that cross over into news reporting too. “One-Man-Band.” Used as a verb, a reporter that is one-man-banding will both shoot a story and do the reporting. This is harder than having a cameraman with the reporter because the reporter has to concentrate on positioning the camera, doing the on-air commentary with the appropriate background, and interviewing subjects for the piece.

With the current economy, I worked with a number of reporters this summer, who were one-man-banding the stories for Wausau Whitewater. It is more cost-effective to send one person than two when costs are scrutinized by station management and advertisers may be reluctant because of the economic downturn.

Business owners, like myself, often try to one-man-band it too. We try to be all things to our business, accountant, marketer, sales, web designer, social media expert, as well as whatever our actual business does. Recently, I have been trying to be a little less of a one-man-band and outsource to professionals who can leverage my time better. For years, I struggled with trying to get some glitches in my QuickBooks straightened out so my balance sheet would read right. My income and expenses were correct and the checking account was fine but I had old entries for accounts that were long closed messing up the balance sheet. Finally, through a connection from my Christian Business Leaders group, I asked Kathy Ross from Bottomline Bookkeeping to look things over. She did, and decided that I could optimize my time best by seeing Glen Erdman with Vanden Heuvel, CPAs. He took my QuickBooks company and fixed everything with only 3 hours work. By being a one-man-band, I was depriving myself of correct financial records that help me keep a handle on my business and would be a huge asset if I ever wanted a loan for my business or even myself. I have other ways I am working on not being a one-man-band right now. The investment in improving my financial records was well worth it.

Job seekers often do the same thing. They try to be a one-man-band and do it all themselves. Fear of asking for help or paying for professional career marketing communications and resume writing help often deprives them of being in position to make the career move they desire. For unemployed jobseekers, the temptation is to not invest in career help in fear of not being able to pay next month’s rent or mortgage payment. But if that investment could shorten the job search, how much does it cost you to try to one-man-band your career management strategies?

For me, I am working on leveraging my resumes and becoming less of a one-man-band so I can do what I do best – help others reach their career goals.

Our family has always liked New England style clam chowder. We have used various recipes over time but recently we adapted one that we originally found on Recipezaar, created by Derf, her version, Recipe #14134.

We liked this recipe originally because it has lots and lots of clams. In our house, rarely does a recipe that we start with end up exactly as it was originally posted. My son, Dan, who is not a soup lover normally, liked this recipe enough that he bought the ingredients and we have made it twice in November. Dan loves to cook as much as I do and he has learned that fine-tuning a recipe to meet your own taste is part of the creativity in cooking.

Here’s our variation:

Clam Chowder − Walraven Style

Time: 50 Min | 15 minute prep time

• 1 lb bacon, cut into small chunks
• 1 large sweet onion, chopped or sliced to your liking
• 3 stalks celery chopped
• 8 ounces sliced mushrooms
• 16 ounce chicken broth
• 5 medium potatoes chopped
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (adjust to your level of hot)
• 5 tablespoons butter
• 5 tablespoons flour
• 3-4 tablespoons Wondra flour (made by Pillsbury)
• 2 cups whole milk
• 3 cups 2% milk
• 4 (10 ounces) baby clams, undrained
• 2-3 tablespoons chopped parsley

1. Fry bacon in large Dutch oven until almost done. (We added more bacon than the original recipe which had 3-4 slices)
2. Add the onion, celery, and mushrooms to pot, saute until softened, then add potatoes and chicken broth. (There needs to be enough liquid to be able to cook the potatoes so add more or less broth as needed.)
3. Season with salt and cayenne, cover and cover for 15 minutes.
4. In second large pan, melt butter, whisk in flour, whisking to make a roux.
5. Cook for about a minute, then add all milk and whisk while adding.
6. Watch for thickening, cooking over low heat. We found that it wasn’t as thick as we wanted so we added Wondra flour in increments until it was thickening to a pretty thick mixture. (This is part of what makes it so good.)
7. Pour into onion and potato mixture, add 2 cans of claims with the juice and 2 cans of drained clams, reserving the juice to use if needed if you think it is too thick.
8. Stir and gently cook over low to moderate heat until heated through.
9. Add parsley if desired.

The magic happens when you make this a family event. Dan and I made it together the first time and his friend, Lee, joined us the second time. My kitchen has always been an open kitchen and I have welcomed help and innovativeness. I think it is as important for boys to learn to cook as girls so I have always encouraged my sons to play a role in the kitchen. Dan is as handy in the kitchen as he is a carpenter. We last made this on Friday after Thanksgiving and the fun we had in the kitchen was my Thanksgiving. I love that feeling of community.

Give this a try and see what you think!

The past few days have been swallowed up in literally changing technology. Leaving my Clam Chowder blog post as my last post wasn’t my plan but as you read on, you’ll realize why I had little time to try to blog. I did wander around commenting on a few blogs, like Jason Alba’s  Worst Time Since  The Great Depression but otherwise I have been busy changing technology around. E-mails piled up more and I have a huge amount of filing to do.

As readers of this blog might already know, I hold two career roles, I am a professional resume writer and owner of Design Resumes (since 1983) and my business is contracted with Wausau Whitewater, where I hold the role of Operations Manager for the non-profit corporation that runs whitewater activities on the Wausau Whitewater course in downtown Wausau (since 1997). These roles often get intermingled and so does the technology that drives them.

In the early years with Wausau Whitewater, I owned all of the computers and the software. I bought my last PC in 2002 and have been making it work since then. Wausau Whitewater has provided me with a laptop that I was using heavily both in my office and on the river. I waffled about buying a new laptop for me and couldn’t see how I could use two in my office. As my friend, TJ said, it isn’t like you are Julie with Design Resumes from 8 to noon and Julie from Wausau Whitewater from noon to 5. He’s right, it’s more like I am both sides all day long from when I get up at about 5am until I drop over at about 10pm or sooner. The Adobe CS4 software I needed to write Wausau Whitewater 2010 (the 60 page annual promo book) wouldn’t load on Wausau Whitewater’s laptop and Windows 7 wouldn’t load either.

Since it has been a tough year for Wausau Whitewater and I was due for a new computer anyway, I opted to buy my own laptop again but make sure it was built to run graphics-laden programs like Adobe InDesign, Bridge, PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, as well as Microsoft Office 2007 and QuickBooks. I called Lucy Hoerter from PC Confusion Solutions to help me decide which laptop to buy to meet both my needs and Wausau Whitewater’s. We reviewed specs from several companies and decided on the HP Elitebook 8530P. It arrived last week and Lucy came to help me install it and transfer programs and files on Wednesday, which also happened to be the day that our long-needed carpet was being installed in the living room and dining room outside my family room office.

Getting all my technology and programs to talk to each other is no small task. Though my resume files were always stored on the old 2002 PC, the Wausau Whitewater laptop was filled to the gills with programs and files. The printers both needed new drivers for Windows 7. Even after we established communication between the printers and the new laptop, trying to get my resumes which were still down on the older PC to print was difficult. A client I was working with experienced my frustration with me when we could revise his resume and print a copy or two but asking the printer to do full set, was more than it was willing to do.

I figured that opening the resumes on the laptop and then asking the printer to print the file that was in MS Word 2000 on the 2002 PC was just more than it wanted to do. I apologized to the client and told him I would call as soon as I resolved the problem. I figured out that using my external drive (My Book) to copy all the files down there and then come up and put them on my new laptop was going to solve the problem. The downstairs transfer took an hour (there are literally thousands of resume and other client files) but the installation upstairs was less than 5 minutes. I used the same process with all the Wausau Whitewater files so that I can work on everything on one laptop.

I suspect it will be at least a week or maybe several before I get to the point where I have conquered the learning curve of new software, established that all the files I need are on this laptop, and can be in a more normal work routine. I suspect that I will be calling Lucy to help me tweak things yet and if Dreamweaver doesn’t cooperation, I will give a shout out to  TJ (IcreaTech.com) to coach me through how to get those files to cooperate. If I mess up my blog formatting, I have Kim Woodbridge, my WordPress Consultant to turn to.

I believe in networking, building alliances, and keeping contact with people whose services do or could meet my needs. I am grateful that I have connections to almost every one I could possibly need in the way of an expert and when I don’t, I ask my connections for recommendations. Do you have a network of experts to turn to? And if not, why not? Is it time to start building your network?

Throughout my life, I have been introspective at times, looking at what I am doing and seeing if it worked. Often though, that was as far as I took it. I could see that things might be different if I took this action or that but it didn’t mean I would move forward and do that.

This year has been different for me. I have taken action on things and changed thing, looked for more advice, checked for experts, consulted with friends who have skills in the area I’m concerned about and things have changed.

As I mentioned in the post, Changing Technology and Why I Use Experts, I recently purchased a new laptop. It is my first laptop though I have used them for years with my role with Wausau Whitewater. I checked with experts before I bought it and made sure it would meet my needs. I even had my expert, Lucy Hoerter with PC Confusion Solutions with me as I placed the order for the new HP Elitebook. While we were installing the software and downloading, Lucy made me aware of how slow my DSL was running, so we are in the process of changing to Charter. We have a few more tweaks on the router but essentially the service was installed yesterday. In my world, there are a few tools I have to have and they have to work together. I need a dependable computer (preferably a laptop for mobility) and I need dependable Internet access to be able to use the online tools I use every day (e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, other social media, blogs, and other websites).

Sometimes to make things work, you have to invest. Recently, I was in a discussion over on Jason Alba’s blog post, The Worst Time Since the Great Depression, I stirred up quite a hornet’s nest when I said that I thought you shouldn’t whine. People accused me of being insensitive and others rose to my defense. But honestly, I could whine forever about what is not working in my office, slow computer, slow Internet, slow… or I could do something about it. It cost me money but these are my tools. I talked about having the right tools before.

If you are a job seeker looking for a new job, you need the right tools and you need an expert to guide you. It is frustrating, you get lost, you lose hope, and I do too, if I stay in my own little world and don’t reach out. You need a well-written resume packed with keywords and focused on accomplishments. You need to know how to network and you need to invest time building your network. There are plenty of tools out there. For me, tools and experts go together. There are many things you can do on your own, depending on your own talents and knowledge base. You can be stubborn and say you can do it all yourself, you can sit around and whine and do nothing. Or you can take advantage of the vast resources, tools, experts, and people that are there to help you.

I am one of them. I’ll help. Just ask.

You can wish on a star… or you can take action. Always your choice. I’m here. Ask me.

The headline of this blog is directly borrowed from Jim Connolly.  You’ll see why I chose it shortly.

When I wandered over to Twitter, one of the first people that caught my eye, was Jim Connolly from the UK. His About You on his blog says: “Jim Connolly has worked in marketing for 23 years and had his own successful marketing business since the mid 1990’s.  Jim is known worldwide for his ability to help businesses make massively more sales and boost their profits.” But what I noticed about him on Twitter was that he was remarkably approachable and friendly. After that initial introduction, I made his blog a frequent landing place.

At one point, when I commented on his blog and talked about pricing issues I was having with getting my new Design Resumes website launched, he suggested that I read his post, How to get your fees or prices right in three steps. Pricing was such a hurdle for me. I had stayed at lower fees than the rest of the industry based on Midwest pricing. He advised researching your competitors ( I call them colleagues) and offered a free guide to do that. Then he said I should go one better.

My unique brand is that I offer the Face-to-Face model. My services page tells you, “Face-to-face appointment: Create your resume in our Central Wisconsin office. Even if you live across the country, if you want to combine your appointment with a mini-vacation, to ski at Granite Peak or visit Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, we can make it happen. Our lodging partners would love to provide you with great accommodations. As many of my colleagues, I offer a virtual experience if you want to stay in the comfort of your own home or city. Virtual resume experience: If you would like to remain in your location, Julie works virtually to create the same high quality, excellent resume and provide the same career management services. You save transportation costs and can continue your normal lifestyle. When I realized this made me unique, I had the key to my pricing strategy.

Jim’s advice continued: “Finally, you need to set a price or fee that accurately reflects an attractive proposition for your new, highly valuable service.  You achieve this by using the exact same technique used by all marketing professionals –Test, measure, test measure! This is more that I still need to digest and learn, but I know where to get the advice on how.

As I said, I have been a student of Jim Connolly’s through his blog for over a year. I can’t tell you how much I have gained from his advice – which he gives very freely to everyone. Last week, I decided to take it a step further and ask him what his Motivations Masters Class download would cost if the 5.75 GB was converted to USD. He gave me a ballpark which was incredibly reasonable. I processed through the link on his website and found the amount was $9.71 in USD, not much if you consider that I have already gained multiple life-changing and business-changing tips. I just switched from DSL to high-speed download so I just downloaded the class this morning. I listened to the first of the three parts. I took notes. I’m not going to tell you everything that’s in it, actually, I won’t know until I listen to all of it. But I can tell you that I gained valuable take-aways that will change the way I look at things. And I’m not done listening.

As Jim told his story of how he began, I was inspired. I am in the process of a major change in my life, which will radically change my business, Design Resumes, and I need support and help right now. You’ll find out soon what that change is but for now, I’m saying thank you to Jim for all the tips and strategies and support he has given me in the last year. You can count on seeing me over on his blog listening to him guide and lead those of us who want to be our best.

I’ve been my own worst enemy for years and I have decided that it is time to change that. You’ll be able to hear me talk about how in future blog posts. For now, go visit Jim!

I made a decision this past week (December 2009) that will change my world. I resigned as Wausau Whitewater’s Operations Manager, a position I have held since 1997.

Wausau Whitewater has been my passion. It’s the whitewater course in downtown Wausau, Wisconsin that has hosted regional, national, and international slalom and freestyle whitewater competitions and provided fun and training to thousands of people.

I have been part of two World Cups and numerous US Junior and Senior Team Trials. I have watched the organization move into a bigger focus of something for everyone with the refocus on running our own recreational releases in 2009 (people play for $10 plus ACA fees per day) and adding Basic Whitewater Training to those releases.

For this entire time from 1997 to 2009, I have been the only staff member, working under Wausau Kayak /Canoe Corporation’s non-profit Board of Directors to execute all of our programs. My role has been marketing, customer service, registration, event management, public relations, web content development, vendor negotiations, program development, sponsor development, advertising sales, and all around gopher.

I wrote, created, and distributed marketing information, such as the annual program, which we figured out how to create in an electronic format this year. In 2009, I merged my two worlds when I asked Dawn Bugni, a fellow career professional to help proof my sponsorship copy and then hired her to copywrite and edit the articles for the book.

In this role, I met people from all over the world, including Olympians like Joe Jacobi and Eric Jackson (EJ). Joe was back in person to coach our training camp this summer and we visited over dinner at Michael’s Supper Club which we had planned on Twitter. Joe is currently the Interim Director of USA Canoe & Kayak, leading the national organization. EJ is well-known for his amazing world freestyle champion moves and was also a frequent visitor to Wausau with his family during the pro rodeo days. Now EJ runs Jackson Kayak, the fastest growing boat design manufacturer in the world.

I’ve also added to my friend base. Our current President, Michael Schroeder, who is a contemporary Christian musician when not leading Wausau Whitewater, has been my friend since we met on the river about 10 years ago. This past year, despite the worst possible economy, Wausau Whitewater thrived because we used creative strategies that Mike suggested to keep us going. The whole paddling community has enriched my life and I know my Facebook community has a large group of paddlers that I have come to know and love.

In 2010, Wausau Whitewater hosts the USACK Junior and Senior Team Trials, setting the stage for PreWorlds in 2011 and the 2012 ICF Slalom Canoe Junior World Championships as well as the normal line-up of two to three other events, four or five training clinics, and 10 to 13 recreational releases.

So why am I resigning? I founded Design Resumes in 1983 as a side business when I was a Property Manager. I went fulltime in 1987 when a transfer to Illinois in property management didn’t work out and we came back to Wausau.

In 1991, my father-in-law suggested I interview for a contracted administrative coordinator position with the Kiwanis Club of Wausau and in 1997, he again suggested I interview for what became my current Operations Manager contract with Wausau Whitewater. Along the way, I also supported two other non-profits with QuickBooks financial recording and reporting. My own business was growing but being stifled at the same time. I thought if I dropped some things, it might help. So in 2003, I dropped the 2 QuickBooks contracts. In 2008, I resigned from Kiwanis. But the energy I put into those other things, quickly transferred not to Design Resumes, but to Wausau Whitewater.

Mike did encourage me to launch the Design Resumes website in January 2009 and that made a dramatic change in my business. For the first time, I can market to and work with clients from all over the United States as well as those in Central Wisconsin. I’ve been learning and growing in social media since fall of 2007 and it has definitely changed who I reach and communicate with on a daily basis using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and this blog.

Last year I spent well over 30 days on water. That sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Well, make that on the river bank, under a tent, running registration, operations, and event management. I have never been in a boat. I do get a great farmer tan but that’s about it.

Throughout my journey in the career industry, I have felt a deep sense of joy and satisfaction as I see my clients achieve their goals. I have many goals unachieved. I want to see what it is like to focus on only Design Resumes. I want to explore how all the initiatives that I have made with social media come together to promote my own business. I want to explore more partnerships like the one I have with Jason Alba. I want to use marketing tools, like e-mail newsletters to my client base and build a follow-up system that I know how to do, but never find time for. I want to continue to grow, learn, dream, and enjoy the world around me.

I want to do fun things, like ride horses, maybe learn to paddle, travel, finish my house remodel, work in my garden, play with Teddy, read, and enjoy my friends and family. I want to have a little free time. I want to go to career industry conferences and get to know my wonderful colleagues.

I will miss Wausau Whitewater, this is the end of an era, but I have a new world ahead and I am so excited. I’ll keep you posted on how this new career journey of mine goes. Right now, the sun is shining and Teddy is playing the piano.

Are you a martyr or do you have a martyr-like personality? I’ve been doing much introspective thinking lately. Yesterday, I announced that I was leaving Wausau Whitewater as the Operations Manager to focus on the Design Resumes side of me. Though I had the help of some of the board members, volunteers, and others, I still was carrying a large load for the organization. My president, Michael Schroeder, kept asking if I was asking for volunteers. I did ask, but not as much as I should have. I tended to think that it should be obvious to the people that I needed help and if they didn’t offer, they were busy too.

I told Mike on the phone when we were discussing my resignation, that this is my martyr personality. When I was much younger, I was President of an Explorer Post (Boy Scout Co-ed program) and for a couple years we took an annual trip north to Minocqua. Part of the trip was a visit to Circle M Corral. Not just once but every time, when it was time to go horseback riding in the morning, I said I would stay back and prepare breakfast. The funny part about that is that from the time I was a little girl, I loved horses and dreamed of going riding. But something would happen and it wasn’t fear of riding, because I have gone a time or two since, but feeling that martyr thing going on. Couldn’t I have gone riding and we all made breakfast later together? Sure, but, no, Julie had to play martyr.

I’m a pitch and help kind of person and so if you need my help, you will get it. But I have people all around me that don’t work that way, including my own family members. I know that people need to be asked, often want to be asked, but I struggle to do that. I don’t want to impose or make work for them.

I’m really trying to change that. With my departure from Wausau Whitewater, I’ll be asking for help for projects I am working on and asking for advice on ways to avoid being the martyr. I’ll also be finding ways to push that martyr-attitude away and get out there and live. It’s not going to be easy to conquer this attitude I have been stuck on, but I will give it a try.

How about you? Are you a martyr, do you fail to ask for help and let yourself get so burdened that you aren’t having fun any more? I have to believe that there are people like me in the world. Share your thoughts. I love comments.

I was visiting career industry colleague, Barbara Sanfani’s blog yesterday, Break All the Rules in Resume Writing to Land the Interview where she gave an interesting example about rotary phones and then discussed the misconceptions that people have about resumes. She said,”This made me reflect on the way that most people think about resumes. Many seem to think that there is a right way and a wrong way and that if you deviate from the “rules” the resume won’t work. But the reality is that there really is no right or wrong way to craft a resume. The key is to create a document that quickly proves your value and impact to the hiring authority.”

I commented back that her points were excellent and I incorporate all those suggestions in the resumes and career marketing materials I create. I ended my comment with the headline of this blog, “fear makes us follow the wrong experts, don’t you think?’

I do think. I have been in the career industry for a long time. Throughout my career, I have heard the same things from people, like this:

1. Resumes need to be one page long.  No, they don’t. A resume needs to highlight your unique talents, gifts, and accomplishments and be filled with keywords that fit the position you are targeting. If you can do that in one page, great. If you need two pages, use two pages.
2. Don’t put much detail in resumes, just the bare facts will do. No, it won’t. You need accomplishments that attest to your ability to do the job.
   • Example: Spearhead sponsorship development, recruitment, and retention for a total budget of $412,078 which represents a 45% increase over the budget prior to March 2005.
3. You don’t need a professional profile or branding statement, just start with the employment information. That’s just filler. No, it isn’t. The professional profile should be written so that it is filled with keywords, measurable results and accomplishments.
   • Example: DEDICATED GRAZING SPECIALIST, with over five years of experience educating farmers in ways to improve their profitability and overall land use while maintaining high standards of environmental conservation and sustainability. Productive team member, with the ability to plan and conceptualize effective solutions. Resourceful professional with a track record of success writing both grants and grazing plans. Confident individual, with the ability to deliver thought-provoking presentations to large groups.
4. Or even, stick to my old format, I had a professional do it, it worked 10 years ago and it has always gotten me a job. No, it might not. Wow! I had one of those come in a few weeks ago, because he told me it was done a by a professional, I was prepared to make only small changes. No, the whole layout was old and stale and lacking in any of the components of today’s resume. He looked at my samples and decided to let me re-craft the resume for him. He called a week later to say he was headed to the interview! And to be fair, I had a client of my own come in last week, who told me when she scheduled the appointment, “I keep coming back, your resumes always get me the job!” I took one look at the last resume I wrote for her in 1999 and said, we have to revise and refocus this resume. And we did. She has some challenges to overcome and called for additional coaching in how to respond in interviews.

When you go to the wrong experts, your brother-in-law who hired some people, the teacher who hasn’t written a new resume in 15 years, the next door neighbor, or your golfing buddy because you are afraid or because those people say they know it all, you miss opportunities. You miss listening to the professionals in the career industry who continuously research, read, and learn new strategies from each other and the professional organizations like Career Directors International, Career Management Alliance, and Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches. Ultimately, letting the fear drive your job search may also make you miss getting the job of your dreams.

Career Industry professionals are much more visible than ever before because many of us are using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Many of us have blogs like this one, packed with free information and resources. Don’t let fear drive your job search or drive you to the wrong experts.

Thoughts? Your comments are always welcome and I love to talk with you.

Can you tweet your way to a new job? Maybe and some people have!

What is Twitter anyway? In my Are you on board? post, I talked about how the presenter at a Chamber meeting, Gerald Mortenson from Flapjack Creative introduced the audience to the complex concept of social media marketing. He opened Twitter and wrote, “I’m having mashed potatoes.” He asked the audience if this was their impression of Twitter. Everyone laughed.

But for many people, that is their impression.

When I first came to Twitter in fall of 2008, I knew nothing. I started noticing that there were a lot of interesting people out there talking on Twitter. Tools like Twitter Grader by Hubspot helped me add to my connections.

I found people who knew how to use this new tool and followed them. I followed bloggers, career experts, marketing people and interesting people. I followed Darren Rowse, Problogger before he launched his Twitip.com resource. I researched, connected, and learned, like a sponge, about everything such as tools to make Twitter work better and easier to track, like Tweetdeck.

At the same time, I built friendships and connections by talking with people. The words “authentic” and “transparent” are big in social media but to me they come naturally. I like connecting with people. I am always willing to have new clients who want me to help them with their career marketing materials but I just like connecting and as I have said before, I like helping. My initial Twitter experience was very positive.

Then whitewater season rolled in and with the preseason marketing and long hours coupled with on river hours as Wausau Whitewater’s Operations Manager, I didn’t tweet much. I grew disconnected. When I came back in the fall, I felt lost and thought Twitter didn’t work for me anymore. But as I started connecting again with people I knew before and meeting new friends, I found that it wasn’t Twitter not working, it was me.

How can Twitter work in a job search? I said in the beginning that I suppose you might be lucky enough to be in the right place with the right people at the right time to directly be offered a job on Twitter. But more likely, if you incorporate Twitter as part of your networking strategy which has to have both an online and as we call in social media a “real life” component, you will grow connections.

Connections I met first on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook have turned into “real life” lunch meetings. Converting those conversations with people you value doesn’t happen instantly and it won’t happen with everyone but it can happen. I also created business alliances with people on social media and connected with new clients.

Can it happen, yes! You have to learn to use the tools and you have to be “authentic” and “transparent” but honestly, that’s how I want my real life friends, colleagues, business partners, and clients to be too! Honest, real, trustworthy, caring… brave, truthful…

Find me on Twitter! What do you think? and what else would you like to know about how to use Twitter… in a job search? in business? in life? What tricks, tips, and tools would you like to know better? #hashtags, what are those anyway? You ask me, I’ll find out and tell you.

Talk to me! I talk back!

A recent conversation on Twitter between @CincyRecruiter and @Animal with an interjection from @Jerry_Albright focused on being shy or introverted:

Animal: How many job hunters do U know who’ve seen ads on job boards & used network to get intro to hiring mgr? @CincyRecruiter

CincyRecruiter: @Animal “Most” people *aren’t* that bold/well-connected. But job seekers 2day have 2 get our of comfort zone/behave differently to get jobs

Jerry_Albright: @CincyRecruiter @Animal I disagree. You can not coach someone into a different personality trait – that would include “bold.

CincyRecruiter: @Jerry_Albright @Animal People do uncomfortable things everyday to be successful. For example – I’m an Introvert who networks for a living.

JulieWalraven: @CincyRecruiter @Animal Me too! I’m out here on social media, you put me in crowded without a role, I’m shy and to some extent introverted.

I always struggled with that thing they call “shyness.” Yet, I work with people every day and have been in “people” jobs or roles my whole life.

As a junior in high school, I joined an Explorer Post and was elected president. I was fine if I was leading. In college, working at the book store or the YMCA front desk, I was fine if I was helping. As a customer service representative and new accounts manager in two savings & loans, I was fine.

As a  HUD 8 project manager, I directed programs and interacted daily with residents and the public. The owner/developer hand-picked my husband and I to open a 400 unit luxury housing project in Naperville, IL. As the Community Manager, I was fine.

In the career industry face-to-face with thousands clients as well as non-profits and organizations like Kiwanis Club of Wausau, Wausau Whitewater in marketing and management roles, I was fine. With Wausau Whitewater, lines of people surrounded me, asking questions and interacting, but I was fine.

On social media, I’m out there, not totally bold but I interact. Not quite the way my friend, Dawn Bugni, interacts on Twitter. She definitely doesn’t have any shyness. She’s tweeting genuine concern to people about topics such as pets or job search or even new stoves.

I think that what @CincyRecruiter said is true though. CincyRecruiter: @Animal Agree Introvert doesn’t necessarily = shy but 4 me personally – not my natural tendency. I had to learn how to do it & push myself.

Adaptive behavior will work in most social settings. If your goal is to network, you can teach yourself to be bold. Your choice in business or a job search is to let your natural tendency to be shy and introverted take over or learn how to do it and push yourself.

Put yourself in situations where you will have to interact. You can start on social media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and commenting on blogs.

At some point, you need to take it out into the real world. Start little, invite someone you don’t know well to lunch and to know them better, go to a Chamber or other community organization gathering, or volunteer in the community. Increase your visibility, increase your network, and increase the conversation.

You can be the shy, introverted wallflower, or you can decide that your next job or next business gig is too important to let those feelings overwhelm you. What about you? Are you naturally gregarious and highly sociable or do you too have a little of that shy, introverted personality trying to take over?

Learn to be bold. You can. Leave your thoughts in the comments and give us more ways people can overcome shyness or introversion. Talk to me. I talk back.

A recent direct message with a Twitter friend talked about an unemployed friend, out of work since June. Her friend was resistant to hiring a professional because of the cost.

Even a basic package would give her friend a step up. Then I said, she’s really shooting herself in the foot if she is afraid to invest in career marketing professionals.

Qualified professionals are available. You’ve heard me mention Career Director’s International, Career Management Alliance, Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches.

You can select a talented career marketing professional who can cut short a job search by creating top shelf resumes and cover letters or coaching you through today’s maze of online applications, hidden job markets, and networking strategies.

My friend and colleague, Dawn Bugni, has this illustration on her services page for The Write Solution.

Why hire a professional resume writer?

Some job seekers underestimate the value of a professionally crafted resume and look at it as only a “piece of paper.” However — think about this: A $1 bill and a $1000 bill are “just paper” too. But, like a resume, their value is determined by what is printed on that paper!

Invest in your future. Invest in yourself.

Take a look at what a job search can cost:

• If you want a $20,000 salary, your weekly salary is $384.61 and an 18 week job hunt will cost you $6,992.98.
• If you want a $50,000 salary, your weekly salary is $961.54 and an 18 week job hunt costs you $17,307.69.
• If you want a $100,000 salary, your weekly salary is $1,923.08 and an 18 week job hunt costs you $34,615.38

Job seekers who are unemployed for a long period of time and think that they can’t afford a professional are the ones who need us the most. We can shorten your search, teach you new strategies and overall just be your partner in the search.

Here’s an example of how it helps to have us work with you. A client sent this e-mail this morning. She is a client I worked with for more than 15 years as she continued to move upward in the health care industry and we just did a major update when she disconnected from her employer after 29 years, “Hi Julie,  Just wanted to tell you I have a job interview scheduled in January. SS said on the phone – “I’d like to compliment you on your resume – it was very well done”.  I wanted to pass that on to you – you deserve all the credit.  Thanks, J”

All the career industry wants to do is help you get back to work. The misconception that we thrive in times like these is a myth. We do best in a good economy because clients invest in their careers.

However, in a poor economy, all of us still have mortgages, car payments, utility bills, as well as the investment we all put into career industry organization memberships and continuing education so that we can be the source you trust. And of course, we all need to eat too.

Let’s work together. If you don’t shoot yourself in the foot by ignoring the people who care about you and want to help, then we can get you back to work and we all win. Give us the chance to help us help you!

Again, thoughts? Talk to me… I talk back!

Just in case, you’ve all been out shopping and racking your brains for just the right present for your favorite bloggers, I thought I would give you some pointers!

1. Visit their blogs often. Bloggers love building community and having conversation so you coming back often makes them feel good.
2. Comment. If you ever hesitated because you think that the bloggers are too busy and don’t really like comments, you’re wrong. Your favorite blogger wants to hear your voice. And that too builds community. More voices talking, creates more conversation, more conversation creates more dialog, and dialog makes your favorite blogger happy.
3. Share. If you want your friends to know your favorite blogger, you have to tell them. So retweet, Facebook, post on LinkedIn, and let people know. Your favorite blogger wants new friends too.
4. Link. If you blog, link to their blogs, reference them, give them recognition. Your favorite blogger likes links, lots and lots of links… because links create connections.

These are a few presents for your favorite blogger and don’t just give them at Christmas. Your favorite blogger likes these presents all year round. Merry Christmas!

Talk to me. I talk back!

I’ve been partnering with Wausau City Pages for the last year,  mainly because one of the Advertising Execs, Malibu Springer, is a friend from a long time ago. She was with the Wausau Daily Herald when my sons were little. She coached them with their paper routes and made that experience fun for them and me. Since she knows my business, Design Resumes, she called to talk about the need she saw to advertise my services with City Pages’s readers. With the economy dipping, she felt people needed me.

As an experiment, I started doing a weekly ad with City Pages, just in the billboard section on the back page. With the challenges of running both Design Resumes and Wausau Whitewater, I had a tough time monitoring referrals, but I did see City Pages mentioned often in the client agreements. When Malibu called recently to discuss if I wanted to take a break, I suggested we to try this ad and see if people would think the investment into people’s careers at Christmas time was a good present. There is a second ad coming out later this week with a different focus. Unfortunately, I had this idea a little late and my positioning for this ad was less visible than my backpage location in the billboard. But I love the ad that their graphic artist, Cathy Hackel created with my verbiage.

I enabled PayPal, which I found, has a Gift Certificate generating button on the Design Resumes home page. I will leave it there after Christmas because really, the gift of expert help in your career search is something everyone can use all year round.

Every day is a journey and I will have much to report, not only on job seeking help, resume writing, and assorted other topics but also how running Design Resumes as a business without additional contracts with non-profits as well as finally starting a marketing plan will change my business. This week’s journey has also been to launch the FaceBook Page for Design Resumes. Learning how to incorporate new strategies and tools into letting people know that I am here is part of the journey. I love to learn about your journeys too!

I welcome you to work with me. But in any case, I also always welcome your feedback… Talk to me, I talk back!

Be entertained with Teddy and his favorite washcloth… which kind of reminds me of my title, mind spinning… He looks like a Ninja.

I start my day very early, often at 5am and often I spend time reading blogs, checking links from friends on Facebook and Twitter and trying to focus on where I am headed. Not just for the day but for the future. It can be mind spinning. There are so many opportunities out there today.

It is also my favorite time to write blog posts. I love the early mornings that seem to clarify my thinking and energize my day.

Some mornings take me in many directions but all of them tie together in a way. I end up thinking about the impact that this thing we call Social Media (for lack of a better name) has had on my life. We often hear from people who don’t understand this new world that it all has to do with either wasting time or marketing.

For me, neither are true. I liken my social media experience to the college of my dreams. I need to limit my time but I have found so many resources to help me grow in multiple directions since I wandered onto first, LinkedIn, then Twitter, then Facebook. I use them differently and interactively. Many of my contacts or connections are in more than one place.

Very recently, I launched the Design Resumes Facebook page, if you read any day’s posts on the Facebook page (such as December 28) you will get an idea of where my research and reading takes me. I think about the people I would never know about without social media and the people I would never have interacted with without social media. I would be missing so much.

I see 2010 as an adventure about to begin! I have done considerable research into some of the possible directions that I will go in 2010 but largely I see it as an open door. I am careful in decision-making but I try not to throw away ideas just because they are unusual. This willingness to look at things opened many doors in 2009 and led me to make the big decision of letting go of my role as Wausau Whitewater’s Operations Manager to focus on running Design Resumes and letting it grow.

A client was here yesterday (amazingly at 6:30am!) and we were talking about some of the choices both he and I were making. And we talked about people who couldn’t make choices, who remained afraid of doing something different. This man is a long time client so I have watched his goals change but at the same time, I have watched his successes. He is not afraid of launching something new. He is logical, detail-oriented, and very hard-working. He is willing to innovate and just do something new. He’s a person I look forward to seeing because I know that I can throw a new idea at him and he will evaluate it and give me sound feedback. But he will never tell me to abandon it, just because it is mind spinning.

As you look at options, career choices and how you will approach 2010, keep an open mind. Open the door to new ways of looking at things, open the door to seeking out experts, and don’t let fear trap you into doing things the same way. Sometimes, the things that seem “mind spinning” are opportunities that could change your life.

Let me know what you think. As always, talk to me. I talk back!

My mom has always loved to read. She’s 82 now and is still buying books and reading every day. When my sons were younger, they used to laugh because it would be 90 degrees outside and they would say, “There’s Gramma, still in the hot house, sitting in the hot kitchen, drinking hot tea, and reading!” There was a period of time when I took her to the library every month to get her stack of books, usually 10 or 12, all fiction. She followed authors and dragged the 3 inch binder with us to the library with the alphabetized list of authors and the books they wrote by title and year. Now she pretty much buys the books she wants or gets them from friends. When she finds one that she particularly  likes, she will pass it on to me.

She’s also always kept her eye on my business. Not on the computer side or the resume writing side so much as who is my competition or how am I getting the word out. Mom also always wanted to write so I think seeing me spend so much of my time writing probably makes her happy.

For Christmas, she gave me Homespun Harvest by Robert Elmer. She said she accidentally ordered two of them from Guideposts and I could have the extra one. I love to read but lately all my reading has been non-fiction. I was planning (and still will) to do some book reviews here on my blog because I like to share what I like, however, I thought the books I would be reviewing would be Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith or Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk. I might review those in the future. Both of them are great books and I highly recommend them.

But it’s Christmas and so I grabbed Mom’s present and started reading. I expected to just be reading a novel about a family. But I found myself seeing it through different eyes. Charlotte and her husband Bob are raising their three grandchildren from San Diego after their mother died tragically. Charlotte and Bob have a farm in Nebraska. Culture shock for the three children, Sam, 16, Emily, 14, and Christopher, 10 who all have different reasons for not adjusting well to their new surroundings. Through attending a cooking show, Charlotte gets talked into turning her homemade pies (Apple-Caramel, Pumpkin Streusel, and Cherry-Berry) that have always had a high level of popularity at potlucks and family gatherings into a business supplying her friend’s restaurant, Mel’s Place. She sees it as an opportunity to involve the grandchildren and teach them a sense of responsibility. This probably resonated with me since  my career marketing and resume writing business has grown up with my sons and their friends.

There are many twists and turns to the book but I watch as Charlotte first puts her business plan into place, checking with the health department and configuring a second kitchen to be exclusive for the pie business. I follow her as she figures out where to source the ingredients, all the way through production and assembly to meet scheduled deadlines. I feel for her exhaustion as orders keep multiplying and she is literally baking pies around the clock. I see the children helping with production, marketing, and delivery. And I realize that I am getting a complete view of the challenges and triumphs of building a home business.  My Mom probably didn’t plan it that way, or did she?

Without giving the whole book away, the children also learn many lessons and that surprises Charlotte who is convinced she has failed in the whole process.

Many people never really look for the lessons in life. You get comfortable in just doing your job without much introspective thinking or wondering if you did things differently if you would get different results. They blame the circumstances, the economy, the weather, or whatever but they don’t really think through what they are doing.

In 2010, I’m going to be evaluating how I do things. I’m going to look at things differently. If you are a job seeker, are you doing things the same way and expecting different results? (yes, I know that saying…) Perhaps in 2010, you will want to take some time to think through how you are doing things and try a different approach.

Tell me how you plan to do that. As always, talk to me. I talk back!

Ever since I bought my new little Canon camera, I shoot many more photos than perhaps any other time in my life. Random ones, like the one on the left and deliberate ones like the one in yesterday’s post.

Recently, I have started to look at my business, Design Resumes, very differently. You could almost say that for the last 25+ years I have been running my business randomly. Not that I never did anything deliberately but life just kind of happened all around me and I was not executing a deliberate plan.

The business began as a sideline business in 1983 while I was a property manager.  It took a 9 month break when we transferred to Naperville, Illinois to open a new property for our development firm. And it resumed when that transfer didn’t work out. To bolster the career business, I took on non-profit management and support starting with Kiwanis in 1991. I was green, didn’t have a clear plan to help non-profits, I just evolved… sort of randomly.

In 1997, my journey with Wausau Whitewater began, a journey that was great and mostly random and just ended with my resignation on December 12. That, however, was deliberate. I finally realized my limitations. Chris Brogan captured this quite  well in his recent post, Never give up, no-give up which references Seth Godin’s book, The Dip. Though I now read Seth’s blog regularly, almost daily and even put his posts on my Facebook page for Design Resumes, The Dip is the only book I have ever owned by Seth despite an enormous library. All of his books are, however, on my Amazon wish list. I read The Dip shortly after I resigned from Kiwanis. It made sense. It was time to end.

With Wausau Whitewater, despite my passion for the people, the cause, the sport, the community, I saw the dip coming a few years before my final resignation. I saw that how the same passion would continue to drive my focus away from any deliberate development of my own business and me in general. I would always be pulled, stretched, much like a rubber band and I would always be trying to juggle two sides when I needed to figure out how to be more deliberate. The last board meeting was traumatic for me. As I looked around the room, I knew that I just could not do one more year. Everyone on the board was probably convinced I was mad. And they were right, I was mad. But not at them or the organization. I was mad at me. Mad that I wasn’t able to do more, balance more, juggle more. Then the light went on. Quoting Chris Brogan, “There is a right time to give up. There’s a right time to quit. The trick, and it is a HUGE trick, is knowing which is which.” This was the time for me. The right time.

Since then I have made more decisions, always using members of my team of trusted advisors (a blog post for the future) but they know who they are. Different advisors for different decisions.

1. One decision will impact my business and my marketing tremendously and take it in a whole new direction. That too is a blog post for the future. But it was a deliberate decision and one made with much investigation, thought, and prayer.
2. Another decision is to begin to build more awareness and connections with the career community. Even though I have many friends that are career professionals and have gotten to know them much better through social media, I have only met one personally. To remedy that, yesterday I registered for the Career Thought Leaders Conference and Symposium in Baltimore, MD on March 22 to 24. I am excited because I have not been to any of the career conferences before. Truthfully, most of them met at times when I would be needed either planning Wausau Whitewater’s season or executing it. If I had not resigned, I would have been writing Wausau Whitewater 2010 and rushing to meet the printer’s deadline around that time. Again this was a deliberate choice to register for this conference, to expand my career education, and to network with my colleagues.
3. I have for some time been exploring partnerships. It is common knowledge that I am one of Jason Alba’s Career Experts. It started with JibberJobber and has expanded to include many of his new ventures from the LinkedIn for Jobseekers DVD to his newest venture, Affordable Outplacement. Jason is one of my trusted advisors so I frequently talk with him about my decisions and get to hear about his new projects. During one of those interactions, he asked me if I would guest blog for Affordable Outplacement on a regular basis. This was a deliberate decision but a very quick one… Yes! The link to my first post is here. A little scary because I wasn’t sure what Jason was looking for and we have different blogging styles. But he’s given me the go ahead so you can look for me over there too.

You will see me being much more deliberate in 2010 and I am excited about the opportunities, many of which I am sure I am not even aware of yet. This is a new year, a new decade, a time for new beginnings. As you look at 2010, are you going to live it randomly or deliberately? Will you make choices to grow, to move on, perhaps to quit things that aren’t working to make room to make deliberate choices with your trusted advisors? Or are you going to just let life and your career happen?

For me, I choose deliberate. I lived random far too long.

Thoughts? Talk to me. I talk back!

Do you have a team of trusted advisors? Yesterday’s post, talked about being Random or Deliberate as we start this new year, new decade in 2010. I mentioned that I as I made the various decisions recently I spoke with members of my team of trusted advisors. Whenever I make a major decision - that would be different than deciding which shoes to put on or what to put in my coffee – a major decision, like quitting something or starting something new, contracting with something, hiring someone, a major purchase, or travel plans, I generally talk it over with members of my team.

I don’t know if all the members of my team realize I do this consciously. I know that we don’t have team meetings and I don’t ask the same people about every decision. My team members have never met together for a meeting and in many cases, they don’t even know each other. My team members include real life / same city friends, real life / across the country friends, online only friends, and some that are both. My team of trusted advisors is constantly changing as I meet new people or realize they have experiences and expertise that would help with my decision.

My team members have different expertise in different fields. The qualities that they have in common is that I value their opinion, see them as intelligent, caring people who genuinely what the best for me, and most importantly, they will tell me the truth. I weigh the opinions of my team, evaluate their concerns, decide if I can live with the consequences of possible negative results if I go in a direction that one or more team members feel is not the best choice. I ask enough different people so that I can see if there is general consensus and I investigate the issues that my advisors point out as potential pitfalls.

Throughout this process, I pray. Not everyone would agree, but for me, prayer brings me close to my most trusted advisor, my heavenly Father. It often feels as though I am directed as to who to ask about a certain decision. And when I finally make that decision, the sense of peace that comes over me assures me that it is the right one.

In the end, I make my own decision, but I know that whatever it is, it wasn’t just an impulsive moment.

Do you have a team of trusted advisors? If you don’t. as you move forward in your career or life decisions, maybe it is time to make some changes and find your team. To live life deliberately means that your will be making decisions, perhaps many of them. Having your team on board makes that much easier.

Tomorrow’s post: The Christmas Prime Rib… complete with photos. Just for fun!

As Always, Talk to me. I talk back!

Just for fun today, I thought I would let you know of our Christmas tradition and the recipe that goes with it. When I married into the family, Christmas dinner at the Walraven’s was always Prime Rib. At first, it was always at my father-in-law and mother-in-law’s house but as time went on, it moved to our house and I was put in charge of the Christmas Roast. I love to cook so that’s fine. I’m a cook who likes to play and you never know what I might do next. New recipes, new spices, new foods, new flavors… and my sons and their friends are enthusiastic experimenters right with me. However, my father-in-law also loves to cook and though he will experiment, he is the one in charge. For the Christmas Roast, I need to follow directions and those have evolved over the years. There are some things we both agree on which does make it easier.

Both of us agree that garlic is an essential ingredient. Grampa, however, is a salt and pepper guy so I can’t play with spices on the Christmas Roast. This year’s roast was the biggest in recent memory bought from Zillman’s Meat Market which makes it extra special. Grampa removed a layer of fat for me prior to it getting to our house but I was instructed to use that layer of fat and I did. Here’s the finished photos and then I will give you the pointers.

The Christmas Roast

14 pounds of boneless rib roast

20+ cloves of garlic

salt & pepper

Directions

Using a sharp knife, poke random holes throughout the roast. Cut slivers of peeled garlic cloves and insert into the holes, pushing them in so they don’t stick out and burn. Salt and pepper the roast to taste.

Preheat your oven for 500 degrees F. Put layer of fat back on the roast and roast for 15 minutes to seal the roast and keep the juices in. Reduce the oven heat to 250 degrees F. Insert meat thermometer which is your guide (not the timer) Check the thermometer regularly to make sure it doesn’t get over done. When desired doneness is reached, give the roast 20 to 30 minutes of standing time to seal the juices in before slicing.

This roast made wonderful gravy and was served with mashed potatoes and squash.

I lowered the temp even more and cut the projected time by over an hour but Grampa still didn’t get his rare to medium rare slice. However, he did agree that the flavor was wonderful. Since my husband had to go get Grampa, timing was set for a 4pm dinner. I pulled the roast before 3pm. If you look at the pictures, I believe that the bones factored in to it getting done quickly.

Every roast is a little different so keep these factors in mind as you prepare your next roast for Christmas or another special holiday.

What lessons can we learn to apply to our careers or career search from the roast episode?

No matter how carefully you prepare and follow directions, factors may intervene that change things. You may need to adjust. Being prepared to adjust is half the battle. For years, I have recommended that my clients update their resume every 3 to 5 years and keep Post-its or other notes either electronically or in their folder to keep track of accomplishments. By keeping those notes, if the timing changes and you are forced to look for a new position sooner than you planned, you have notes to remind you of what you brought to each position.

In today’s job search, being prepared also means being purposeful in your job search using social media. Your LinkedIn profile should be ready, both to give recruiters and hiring managers a place to search and also give you a concentrated way of building your network. Building your network on Facebook and Twitter is also beneficial to a potential unplanned change in your career. If you want to join me on Twitter or Facebook, search for Julie Walraven. Our recently launched Facebook page for Design Resumes is also a great place to get more information or recipes for successful use of social media in the job search and overall career management strategies.

Yes, you may need to tweak the recipe to fit your particular needs, but in the end, you will end up successful.

Thoughts? Talk to me, as always, I talk back!

I met Mohammed Altaee on the career industry e-lists and watched him quickly grow in knowledge and open doors to new opportunities. He says on his blog, “Drawing on my deep experience in technology and business. I bring professionals and business owners information and perspective that can drive true value in their careers and lives.”

He was recently named as one of the world’s leading 60 Personal Branding Experts on Twitter.

We’ve been talking back and forth on Twitter and Facebook for awhile. When he asked to interview me for one of his Brand Conversations on his blog, I said “Yes.” We handled the interview via e-mail and I knew it was coming, but I am still smiling after giving it a read.

This whole conversation only developed because both of us were interested in networking. Doors open when you network and you never know where they will take you. There are no barriers to conversation around the globe anymore. I have them every day but there is a part of me that will always be a little amazed at how far we have come!

Today, I will let you go over there and read it yourself. http://altaeeblog.com/brand-conversation-with-julie-walraven/

The post I planned for today will come later. The planned title: Break All The Records!

Let me know here and on his blog what you think! As always, talk to me… I talk back!

I married into a Packer family! The family has season tickets and even if no one goes to the game, schedules are planned around when the Packers play.

At 87, my father-in-law is still an enthusiastic fan and my husband wears his earphones half on and the TV set on so he gets to hear both the radio commentary and the TV.

I was probably most glued to the games during the Brett Favre / Reggie White era because I loved Reggie’s life attitude. The helmet at the right is signed by Reggie with 1st Corinthians 13 (the love passage.) My sons are 22 and 23 right now and they caught the Packer fever early. One Sunday, I gave in to exhaustion and took a nap during the game.

I woke to hearing my youngest son, Dan, yell “Break All The Records!” in his deep Packer voice. Dan’s known to lose his voice during games. He’s the one we weren’t sure would catch the Packer fever but he has. He has gone to multiple games and loses his voice there too. He wears his lucky Packer shirt every game day. Definitely a Packer fan! Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals had Aaron Rodgers breaking multiple records.

The phrase: “Break All The Records” stuck in my head. What if we approached business and life with that level of enthusiasm?

Break all the records in Customer Service – How would that change things? All of us have been to businesses that have given us less than record-breaking customer service.

New Year’s Day, a friend and I had a horrible morning trying to find breakfast. A saga that began driving by closed restaurants or unable to even get on a waiting list, and ended with us walking from one famous breakfast franchise after not even being offered coffee for over a half hour and being passed up for people who came after us.

Finally, we left that breakfast franchise and went to Applebees since it was now lunch time and had outstanding service and quick food. We told the staff at Applebees of our nightmarish morning and they hustled to take care of us.

Could you break all the records for customer service in your present job? What would happen if you did? What if that was your goal? Would you be happier? Would your customers or clients be grateful? Would they be more willing to tell others? I told you about Applebees. I could have just complained about the other restaurant… but I would rather give the good one praise.

I know that as I look at 2010, I am going to look at how I do things at Design Resumes and make sure that I continue to provide the “break all the records” feeling for my client base.

As always, talk to me, I talk back!

We’ll get to the topic soon… but first, there is no secret reason for this choice of photo. It’s Teddy, thinking that he should have cheesecake too!

To the topic: Job Seeker or Job Keeper?

Yesterday I talked about customer service as it relates to Breaking All the Records. Jim Connolly also talked about the topic in his post, What’s your Experience, asking you to analyze what makes you choose one service or business over another and think about what makes a wonderful buying experience. His post inspired Robin Dickinson to write his post, The Golden Key to being Remarkable They both spoke about the peak and off-peak experience. Robin’s question was why don’t businesses design their services for peak times.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about my restaurant experience but it is bigger than that. It crosses the lines to all service industries, retail shopping, grocery shopping, restaurants, coffee shops, and more. It also crosses over to client-driven businesses like mine, Design Resumes. I’ve had excuses in the past, because I was juggling multiple roles with other organizations like Wausau Whitewater. When I made the decision to focus on Design Resumes, it was a decision to start being deliberate, and not random.

It takes work to provide over-the-top customer or client service! As Dan Gacke said yesterday in his comment, he wants to be in a WOW experience so that he will not only want to come back but he will bring all his friends. I understand how hard it is to consistently deliver a WOW experience but that’s not what puzzles me.

What puzzles me as a career industry professional who has spent most of her life crafting resume strategies and career marketing materials, why in this economy are we still getting BAD customer service. If you are a job seeker now, you know that it is tough out there. Even with professional help, job seekers are finding it hard to find a new position. But if the statistics are right, about 90% of people are still employed. With the threat of more unemployment ever looming, wouldn’t you think that every one in a job right now would be focusing on how they could remain a Job keeper so that they don’t have to compete in the marketplace as a job seeker?

I’ll tell you why it doesn’t happen that way. The mind is very talented at forgetting painful experiences. Ask any mother who has given birth, after a short time, you only remember that the experience of giving birth gave you a precious child. You forget the pain for the most part. Same thing, unfortunately for many job seekers. They forget the pain of seeking a job and forget how they felt, how long it took, and all the effort that went into finding a new position. They get complacent. They start complaining about their new job, new boss, new customers… If you want to stay a job keeper or even grow to a more challenging and responsible role, I think the focus should be on the things Jim – “The kind of positive, commercially valuable experience I’m talking about here, needs to penetrate your marketing, your delivery, your customer service, your design – everything.” and Robin “You want to take your remarkability to the next level?  The golden key is to design your customer/user experience to be remarkable in both peak and off-peak periods.  This will put you at an immediate advantage against off-peak only providers.” mentioned. Provide incredible customer service wherever you are working now as a job keeper.

What do you think? Talk to me, I talk back!

Don’t get the wrong idea! I’m not suggesting that you should never apologize to people for your actions. I’m talking about another kind of apology. One that I hear from clients all the time.

Let me know if this crosses into other fields but I know that as a career marketing professional, clients call or even when we are working together on their projects, they apologize saying “I know I should be able to do this myself.” Or they say, “The last time I did this was in college.” Or they say, “my wife could have done this but she was busy.”

I know other career professionals hear this too. Listen, I don’t tell the mechanic, “I know I should install my own brakes, but…” I trust that he has the tools, skills, training, and has installed brakes for many different types of cars. He has experience. That’s why I choose his service. I don’t tell Becky and Nikia at Kasha Salon, “I’m sorry to bother you, I should be able to cut and style my own hair, but…” Actually, I make Becky or Nikia a little crazy every time I snip off my bangs when I didn’t schedule the appointment quick enough. I don’t tell the doctor, “oh, I’m sorry to bother you, I could have asked my husband to set my broken  leg but…”

You get the point. I hire experts to do what I can’t do well or don’t know much about or will never be able to do on my own. Why do I get that comment from clients? What is more important in your life than your job search? If you are unemployed, will you be shooting yourself in the foot by extending your search much longer because you didn’t ask for help to position yourself in the best possible light? If you are looking for the next promotion or moving on to a new company, wouldn’t you want the help of a professional to help you come up with the best strategy to highlight your accomplishments and teach you the best networking skills?

I’ve been networked with the career community since 1999 and writing career marketing materials for over 20 years. I literally talk to career professionals from around the globe on a daily basis, exchanging ideas, tips, resources, and more. My three career organizations keep me up to date on changing job search strategies. My personal library is overflowing with career industry books as well as state of the art marketing and networking skills. I’m a Microsoft Word expert, who has used every version since 1997 and can create attention-getting resumes published in multiple resume books. I am not alone. My colleagues are equally educated, networked, and talented.

Stop apologizing! We want to help you! Give your favorite career marketing professional or resume strategist a call today so you can start being in the best position for your career in 2010!

Thoughts? Talk to me, I talk back!

Yesterday was part experiment, part challenge, part fun… My friend, Michael Schroeder and I have had an ongoing debate about the time impact of using social media. As a musician, he used MySpace successfully but it was an intense battle of trying to keep up and keep it meaningful to his followers. He knew I was using social media or as Danny Brown recently commented, it is more than social media. His tag lines on his blog now read “Connection… Conversation… Community” Danny sees it my way. My journey with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogging have led me to great new friends, conversations I have never had before with people I would never meet normally. I have built multiple business relationships and continue to grow in those connections. I have wonderful new clients who met me in one of these places.

Yesterday, Mike finally gave in and set up his page. He was coming here anyway to work on a grant for Wausau Whitewater so I couldn’t resist giving him my tips and tricks with Facebook. Before he got here, I sent an invite to many of my friends to his Michael Schroeder Facebook page and then being somewhat competitive, asked more of my friends to my Design Resumes Facebook page. Mike’s page grew from 0 to 44 and mine from 62 to 100 yesterday.  I’m guessing it won’t be long before he passes me up. He has fans all over the nation and world. If you haven’t been there yet, you can listen and buy songs. I am very excited about the new Praise and Worship project he is working on here at Dark Horse Recording, the same studio where Neil Diamond, Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith and many others have recorded. Though Mike has his own studio, producing this project in Nashville with the talented musicians he is working with will change the final project. You’ll hear more from me about this project in the future.

I’ve said I’m Not a Numbers person… but no one can survive in a vacuum. You need community, conversation, and connections to be able to reach new people. As much as I love writing, I love being read too… and more than that, I love conversation. I love talking back… see my signature line at the bottom of every post, “Talk to me… I talk back!” We need each other. I need you to get to know me and if you need my help with your career, so much the better. I view whatever we call this – social media – as an adventure that will open new doors. My clients have been benefiting from my exploration and I just find it fun. If you have not been to the Design Resumes Facebook page, come visit. I’ll keep you informed with career strategies, tips, favorite bloggers, and much more.

But come back here often too… because this is where you will hear me talk to you.

Talk to me… I talk back!

Hang in there… I didn’t forget you… I will write again soon. We are in transition time and there are piles of files all over my office as I start the hand-off to Ashley, my summer intern who will be Wausau Whitewater’s new Operations Manager…

I’m excited to be in charge of me soon again. Impatient with this temporary chaos that held me captive for far too long.

But to write now would not do justice to moving the process along… so be patient. I’ll be back.

Maybe as soon as tomorrow…

Did you ever have one of those dreams where it felt like an endless cycle and you felt like you were wide awake even moving forward on tasks you would do and then realize that you are still asleep?

I was having one of those dreams this morning and I was literally up writing a blog post in my dream. I could see the WordPress software and the thoughts and flow of what I was going to write was so clear. I had it all outlined and ready to go and then I realized that I was still in bed.

People say that visualizing things help you focus so that you can move forward. I think that in many stages of my life, my dreams have echoed where I am in life. I have had dreams where I was tweeting or posting on Facebook, visualizing the whole screens in front of me. Does that say that this electronic part of my life has become more important in my life than real life interaction? Or is this just one more part of me that makes me me?

Last night I was at a mentoring training session for Project Step Up, a new United Way project that I am taking part in for the next year, and as we introduced ourselves, I mentioned something and the Program Director, Rebecca Morris (who I only met twice before) said, “oh yes, Julie is your resource for all things social media – she tweets, does Facebook, and blogs.” I guess this is becoming part of my identity which might explain how it is getting in my dreams too. I see it as a resource for the things I do in real life though and a conversation starter.

I treasure the people I have met through the social media platforms. They have enlarged my world and helped me grow. But I also treasure the other side of me that interacts and works with people.

The Project Step Up program is another adventure I am starting. My church (Wesley Methodist) had a Faith in Action day last fall and Ellen, the leader of that project presented numerous opportunities to get involved for the one day, like volunteering to rake a yard, paint a house, sort potatoes at a food pantry, collect food at the grocery store, help serve a meal for the homeless at church, and I looked them over on the PowerPoint but the one that jumped out at me was mentoring a family for a year. Craziness, I know. I would be balancing one more thing with all the other things I was doing. I didn’t know I would resign from Wausau Whitewater at the time. I just knew that I missed the giving back feeling that I had when I was volunteering just to volunteer. I have two more training sessions before they match me with a family and then I begin my year of being a mentor. I see mentoring as just sharing what I know and have experienced as well as the resources I have or know about with another family who just needs a little help.

I may be dreaming about blogging because it is so much a part of me. The desire to write, to communicate, and to share has always placed a huge role in who I am and social media and blogging have opened the door to new ways of communication. And I guess, I would rather be dreaming about blogging than having the reoccurring dream where I don’t have my shoes and I have to go to school with no shoes…

Do you dream about dreaming? Do your dreams parallel your life or echo what you might be thinking about most? Do your dreams help you clarify your thoughts or pull together your focus?

Talk to me. I talk back.

Some days, I’m just a little slow. I saw the information on TV about the Haiti earthquake and it impacted me in much the way so many of the things happening in the media do. I absorbed it and it passed me by.

Then I saw a Facebook note by Coy Sawyer at 89Q and his concern about people he knew there… and it touched me. Then I saw a comment by a friend, Ellen, from church saying her daughter who was in the Dominican Republic on another mission trip was safe and they would be used to help the people in Haiti. I replied that I was glad her daughter was safe but it still didn’t quite get it.

Then I saw, almost simultaneously posts from Jim Rosenberg saying:

This from Bonnie Bissonette at NTC: The NTC Foundation, 1000 W. Campus Drive, Wausau, WI 54401, will accept donations for the NTC Haiti Relief Fund, in recognition of the 8 current Haitian students and the dozens of former students now living in Haiti. This is a local connection for an international disaster. Thanks, Bonnie and NTC!

And from Jaclyn from Wesley Methodist (my church) announcing Anyone who would like to can meet in the sanctuary to pray for all of our friends and loved ones in Haiti in the aftermath of yesterday’s devestating earthquake. The prayer meeting is at 6:30 tonight.

And then I made the connection. Many of the international students who are part of our every Sunday worship come from Haiti. Jaclyn and her parents have housed the students for several years. Some of them volunteered for Wausau Whitewater too. Suddenly there was a connection and it was personal.

Faceless things happen all around us and we become immune to what is happening because there are so many tragedies all around the world every day. People talk about how everyone just talks social media but doesn’t do any thing. This is an opportunity to make a difference.

I just talked to Jaclyn on the phone and she said that this is such an information gathering stage where no one knows who is safe and who has been hurt or killed by the earthquake so the most important need first is to get that information. She set up a group for our church and a discussion page so people can post about people they know who are safe or give status updates: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=28642116979&topic=13581&ref=nf

Jaclyn told me that the mission team that was in the Dominican Republic has been rerouted to go help with the earthquake in Haiti.

On Twitter, the hashtag #haiti will get you information about the latest in information coming through Twitter. Worldvision is on the ground in Haiti. The RedCross is collecting funds through texting 90999 with donations of $10 for each text. More is explained in the White House blog. Here’s another Tweet that just flew by: RT @BuzzEdition My son is being deployed to #Haiti for disaster relief within a few hours #FortBragg #82ndAirborne > Our prayers 4 u all.

Now this tragedy isn’t faceless for me anymore. It has a face, it has faces, and now it becomes something I can do something about. I can pray for the people who have lost so much, I can pray for the rescue workers, I can donate, I can spread the word. Social media is a powerful tool but instead of talking about it, we can use it.

What can you do? How can you help? Stay in touch. My signature line is talk to me, I talk back… somehow that seems a little odd right now. But talk to me… I will talk back.

Update from Jaclyn: Yele Haiti,  founded by Wyclef Jean, right now the website says 100% of donations will go to earthquake relief: http://www.yele.org/

In yesterday’s post, Use It for Good – the Haiti Connection, I explained how Haiti’s earthquake became personal when I read a post from Jaclyn at church asking for prayer. Suddenly I understood that the international students who were and are part of my worship came from Haiti.

When I talked to Jaclyn, I told her that I had friends all over the world and I would figure out how to help if I knew what was needed. I wrote yesterday’s post and minutes after I wrote it, Jim Connolly had tweeted it. Jim’s in England.

Friends all over the world… I asked colleague and prolific Tweeter, Dawn Bugni from North Carolina if she would pass it on.  I asked Jason Alba in Utah to push out the message that we need to take action. He did.

I shared my post with Susan Murphy, in Canada, a well-known videographer and blogger I met on Twitter. Susan helped produce the 12for12K video and has been involved in that project from early on. It was through Susan that I learned of 12for12K and how I got to know Danny Brown better.

Here’s part of Susan’s post: By now, we are all aware of the devastating 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12th. It’s estimated that there may be 100,000 casualties or more. Now more than ever, the people of Haiti need our help. Ottawa Tonite has joined forces with the global social media fundraising force 12for12k.org.

12for12k is working with registered charity Hope for Haiti to raise money to assist in the aid effort. 95% of the money raised by Hope for Haiti goes directly to the people who need it most, and the money is getting there fast, thanks to the help of thousands of dedicated volunteers.

I asked TJ McManus, from ICreaTech.com to post links and encourage people to donate through the 12for12K ChipIn widget on the sidebar. He did, using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to reach his contacts and network.

Some of the people reading this trust me. I have been building my network for years. During 911, I felt helpless. My network was much smaller and the tools weren’t there. I could talk to my colleagues in the career industry but there wasn’t a lot of action I could take other than donating.

With social media and all these tools, I can’t sit by the sidelines. I may be in Wausau, Wisconsin, miles from this horrible tragedy but I can ask my friends around the world to help. I can find out how my friends around the world are already helping and I can write. I can speak through all these tools and ask you to take action.

Here’s the conversation starter with TJ last night: Tj, I need your help. I put Danny Brown’s ChipIn Widget for 12for12K on my blog wall. Tell your friends that this is a safe way to donate. Danny will get it there through Hope for Haiti! http://designresumes.com/blog/2010/01/use-it-for-good-the-haiti-connection/

The devastation in Haiti is awful and people are hurting. How can you help? Don’t sit on the sidelines! Use the tools you have, the network you have, and do something! Don’t sit on the sidelines and cry!

Talk to me. I talk back!

Recently, I was interviewed by Ken Bishop, the Way-Cup Show personality from 89Q. For the very first time, it was an interview as Julie, the career marketing communications professional and Design Resumes.

Over the years, I did multiple interviews for print, radio, and television but in my role with Wausau Whitewater. Ironically, I was also taught how to write effective press releases by a journalist because of Wausau Whitewater. In fact, my work with Wausau Whitewater brought me considerable notice.

Design Resumes held the contract with Wausau Whitewater. Not Julie Walraven, which makes it even funnier that during that whole time, my now 25 year old business never had a single mention in local press. The dual e-mail signatures with both Wausau Whitewater and Design Resumes didn’t make me a resource. My focus was on helping the non-profit grow and draw media attention.

I would guess I created a self-imposed brand confusion. I thought that media would see me as a resource without me having to do much. But I thought wrong. I really did need to develop my own brand outside of Wausau Whitewater. I needed to network, as Julie, career marketing professional. I did a pretty good job of losing my identity.

Oh, my Design Resumes clients provided a strong referral base and the business grew. Success story calls come frequently like the one from a client who said he was hired on the spot for a position matching his talents and heart’s desire. But as a career marketing professional, I failed to market me, creating brand confusion.

Job seekers often think that all they need is to answer an ad or post their resume on an online application and they will get the job. Or they blame the employer when they don’t get the job. Marketing a job seeker is not much different than marketing a business or product. You have to have a recognizable brand or product. And then you have to drive up demand. I was good at finding creative ways to get people to come to Wausau to paddle on the whitewater course. I went where they were. On the boater boards, on Facebook, on e-mail lists targeted to paddlers in multiple large metropolitan areas, I used print strategies, newsletters, and direct marketing. In other words, I networked and marketed. I could have used those same strategies for me and my business.

Job seekers often don’t understand how important brand development (who are you?) is to their job search strategy. They throw out resumes to every ad they see instead of focusing on the jobs that really match their talents. Sometimes they don’t even stop to figure out what that talent is.

If you live this way for your whole life, tossing your job application in to everything, you will most likely be one of those unhappy employees who is stuck in a job they hate. Instead, if you think about what jobs you would really enjoy, focus on marketing yourself from that vantage point, you will end up in a career you love that you can have for as long as you want. Market pressures may intervene and you may have to change companies but if you are really doing what you love, you will be marketable. Joy sells! Misery doesn’t! And brand confusion of not showing who you are and what you offer makes it difficult for anyone to “want” you.

Thoughts? remember, talk to me, I talk back!

Last week I met (and met with) Shawn Blackwell from Wausau To Go for the first time. We had chatted on LinkedIn and he had called previously to schedule an appointment to chat about social media, marketing, and to learn how I work as a career professional.

As we talked about Facebook, he said he needed more fans for his  Wausau To Go page. So I said, “I can make that happen” because I knew I could. I invited my friends to fan his page and posted thoughts on his page as I was starting to understand how his business worked, a few posts like this one:

“I didn’t know you had all these restaurants… Choices, choices…”with the link to www.wausautogo.com

I knew that I could get the support of other friends, if I said, “Here’s something else I didn’t know… if you order from Wausau To Go, there is a $3.99 delivery charge but it costs the same as if I was in the restaurant and I don’t have to go outside… Learning more all the time!”

Dan Gacke said, “Um, Julie, Wausau To Go ROCKS!”

Darcey Westcott said, “Check for coupon codes at their site…delivery charge, schmelivery charge!”

Darcey posted this on her own wall: “Mmmmm….food! Is it dinner time yet? Love Chinese food and a movie…in my PJs. WausauToGo can make that happen…with the food, anyway!”

Shawn’s fans grew, not astronomically, but they grew from 69 to 105 in about 24 hours.

Here’s what I learned about his business by sitting down and talking with him. Shawn provides inbound and outbound marketing for restaurants, by delivering from the restaurants, he expands market share for restaurants. People who would love to enjoy more than just pizza can order online and have it delivered, both lunch and dinner. Think of the possibilities! You could have food delivered to the break room instead of running out or you could have a client meeting in your office and have confidential conversations with great food or work through lunch using your computer to teach or share.

I learned much about Shawn, Wausau To Go, and marketing. I took a little time to connect him with some of my friends who I thought might enjoy his service.

What if we all worked together? If you are employed, what if you took a little time to talk to someone who is not? What if you listened to what he (or she) needed and figured out who you might know that could help him? What if you asked a friend to have lunch with you and your unemployed friend? What if you strategized together people you know and places that might match the persons talents? What if you just worked together, what would happen?

Job seekers often feel isolated and solutions don’t readily appear. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any, it just means  you might need a different perspective. Most of the time, people go about their lives ignoring the needs of the people around them. But you saw the difference in the current Haiti crisis. The combined power of social media and people working together has raised over $10 million for Haiti. Working together produces results but much of the time we don’t step out of our comfort zone to do that. All I am asking is, what if we did?

Talk to me, I talk back!

This is the first blog post I had to get permission to write… from my son!

Anyone who has been following me for a bit on this blog will know that I made a huge decision in December to resign as Operations Manager of Wausau Whitewater. This means many changes including sending off all of the accumulated “stuff” from 12 years.

Another big change in my life is happening at the same time. My youngest son, Dan (22 going on 23) has a Residential Building degree from Northcentral Technical College and  he built 3 houses from the ground floor up through NTC and Wausau Freshstart. My sons, Dan and Tim, have been surrounded by construction since Dad is a remodeling contractor. Dan worked the past two years for Reede’s Custom Curb, installing specialized curbing.

In the meantime, my father-in-law thought it was time to put all these pieces together and when my husband came upon someone selling a fix-it up home, Grampa proposed that he help Dan finance. The location is perfect. It sits on two lots, one of which can be sold off later to recoup much of the cost. It needs a lot of remodeling but Dan is trained on how to build and his brother, Tim, worked in the construction field as an insulator for several years.

Right now, they are removing drywall and carpeting while insulating box sills and filling voids. Their friends are pulled into the project. Dan’s friend, Lee, lives in Eau Claire but comes home frequently. His building background parallels Dan’s and also has talents in residential and commercial design. Lee will probably follow in his father’s footsteps some day and become an architect. Lee is completing a degree in Commercial Design. The tag team and network of resources Dan has grows every day.

The challenges of this project loom in having so much family involvement. Grampa is acting as the banker, managing the funding, Dad is working with subcontractors and helping to line them up. I was initially against this whole project because it seemed too soon. Dan is a homeowner at 22 and his older brother, Tim, will be living with him and working with him. I finally just decided to stay out of the way. I was sold on the learning experience. I remind everyone periodically, that for this to be a learning experience, the young men have to be involved in all levels and it has to be their project.

As soon as some of the initial construction is done, my sons move into the property and continue remodeling.  When they move out, even more things will move with them. I anticipate many changes with their absence, both in more room and also in the empty nest as children grow up.

All of this means moving on. I mentally adjusted to this latest change. Though Tim has moved out multiple times, Dan has lived at home throughout his education and early work career. Dan is a great cook. He also can be relied on to grocery shop (and buy all the right things) and run tons of other errands.

I look at all of these changes with anticipation and excitement. It did take some time to get there. Every time we face changes in our lives, we have to adjust mentally and emotionally. For some this comes easily, for others not so much. When changes happen, such as job loss, each person has the choice to look at it positively or negatively. If we choose the negative route, we will stand in the way of change. Adjusting the mental attitude makes it possible for us to see options.

For a job seeker, perhaps they are able to do things that they always wanted to but couldn’t because the career path wasn’t taking them in that direction. When I coach my clients, I tell them that the job loss, as hard as it is to accept initially, can be a blessing in disguise. It can be an opportunity to try new things, to open new doors. It is all in how you perceive it.

Do you have changes in your life? How are you dealing with them? Let me know and feel free to give me any other feedback. As always, talk to me, I talk back!

Job Stickiness: Post 1 – a series that can help us keep jobs or tips to make us stick in the next one

We all have times that we are most effective. Some of us are morning people, some of us are night owls, some of us will suffer if we drink too much caffeine later in the day and not be able to sleep or stay asleep or sleep long enough.

For me, my best times for maximum energy levels have changed, when I was much younger, I used to like to sleep until at least 7am or 8am. Today my alarm is set for 5:04am every morning and many times I wake up before the alarm goes off. The morning is my favorite time to write blog posts because everything seems to gel then. If I have an outstanding resume project or cover letter due for a virtual client, the best time for me to do that project is from 9am to about 1:30pm.

I was talking to a client about this the other day and she was saying that her clock works the same way. By 2pm, she starts to drag and would really like a nap. But catch her in the early morning, she can accomplish much.

By paying attention to the ebbs and flows of our energy levels, we can learn to schedule activities so that we do our most difficult “thinking” projects during the maximum energy time. Keeping our body clocks regulated with a similar rhythm all the time makes us more able to accomplish more. There are times when I will push the limit and either stay up late or just have one of those “no sleep” nights when I sleep a couple hours and then wake up for an hour or two. I can guarantee that the next day, my productivity will be low.

How about you? Do you find that there are times that you are most productive? If you schedule your hard projects during that time, will you get more done?

Watch for more on Job Stickiness Tips

As always, Talk to me… I Talk Back…