What Haunts You?

I'm going to try to get back in the saddle with the blogging. Sure, I've slacked off a bit, but 2012 was a crazy year, wasn't it? It's a new year, and so on and so forth. Onward...

I've written before about my love of the obituaries for career inspiration, and a recent obit in the Post reminded me of why I love to read these.

A famous Manga comic artist passed away last week. I don't know much about Manga, but the opener to this obit grabbed me right away. Keiji Nakazawa survived an atomic bomb. He was six, standing outside of his Hiroshima school, when the U.S. dropped the bomb on his city. Somehow the school building shielded him.

He pursued a career in comic book art, sticking to themes such as boy adventures, samurai, and baseball. But in 1966 his mother died, and when he collected the ashes, he said he noticed that there was barely anything left of her, that usually there were pieces of bone, but the radiation had affected her  down to her bones. He decided to focus his art on the bombings and their effects. His work was so moving that a group formed a nonprofit to translate his work into different languages.

What strikes me about this man is that he would never have become the artist he became without going to dark places, exploring a horrific event that he survived as a child, facing down who knows what demons.

It's not a place people like to go. Who would? But there are things that haunt you. We have all seen enough now in this world to ask ourselves what sticks to us, what can't we let go of? What do we have to do something about? A lot of times I see people who are frustrated because they are stuck trying to figure out their career direction. If only they had a passion, something they loved to do. They feel guilty that they don't.

It's fine to ask yourself what you love, what your passion is. But if you come up empty, it might be worth asking what haunts you? What do you detest more than anything? Maybe your passion isn't a sunny, happy place. And that's okay too. In fact, it's more than okay, it's admirable.

The Danger of Overplanning Your Career

Let's say you've done some soul searching and finally have decided on your next career move. You want to open a floral shop in Georgetown and cater to nearby businesses who need flowers at their front desks. You're proud of the specific nature of your dream, after years of vague yearnings. Everyone you tell your dream to is impressed by your razor sharp goals.
But wait, not so fast. Vague dreams have their up side, it seems. Leaving some of your dream open to chance may make you a bit luckier.
Researchers are discovering that identifying a destination, then being open to multiple paths to arriving there, is better than creating and trying to stick to a detailed, linear plan, Psychology Today magazine reports.
So instead, what if you expand your vision? Maybe your dream could be to add beauty to workspaces through living plants. Maybe you decide to experiment with your dream by taking a part-time flower delivery gig, and you learn that there's a demand for potted plants in lobbies of tall office buildings outside of your target area. Can you be flexible enough to jump on that opportunity?
You can prime yourself for good luck if you approach life with a sense of possibility. And when you see an opportunity, it takes flexibility and openness to try something new.
One way to cultivate flexibility? Take a different route to work, or try a new coffee shop. Insert novelty in your day. It can't hurt, and you just might be a bit more lucky in life.

Clutter Up Your Career

The new year brings resolutions, and this year it seems everywhere I turn, some magazine is urging me to declutter my home, my email, my brain, even my  resume.
I'm trying to resist the urge to spend large amounts of time decluttering. It always looks so good on television, but I think clutter gets a bad reputation.
Instead of trying to keep to a linear career path in life, clutter up your career. Don't worry so much about being on "track," about having the perfect resume, the perfect work history, or the most linear progression through a company. Think instead about cultivating hobbies, pursuing reading just because it intrigues you, and collecting odd facts and theories. Consider taking a course for the love of it, or becoming an expert on something off-beat. Sometimes you can hook a future employer that way.
I once got a job because I had traveled to Morocco. I had no other reason for going except the photos in our college travel center looked amazing. And it helped that study abroad at my college cost the same as staying on campus. So off I went, and later, I was hired by a man who also loved traveling to Morocco, and when he saw on my resume I had studied there, he offered me an interview. I got the job, and I credit that trip.
So go ahead, take up something intriguing, or read a perfectly "useless" article. Stray from the linear path and see what happens. Clutter is not so terrible after all. It can be interesting.

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In other news, I will be starting to take new clients again now that the new year has begun. If you would like to talk more about my services, please contact me at meredithtseu@gmail.com. Happy New Year!

Is Buying a Home Good for Your Career?

Many new graduates I talk with are saddled with huge student loans and wonder about when they can afford a home, or even a car, of their own. So many are renting, sharing space with roommates, and riding Metro (here in DC). It's understandable that they would want to settle down some day in their own homes, with no landlord to worry about.

The more I read about our economic recovery, however, the more I wonder if the American dream of owning a home is bad for our careers. Time magazine reports that the outlook for economic recovery and job growth may turn out to be very dependent on where you live. According to a report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, New York City may see a good job market in two years, but L.A. may not see a good one for seven. Of course, results like these are in the mayors' best interest, and I try to take these things with a grain of salt.

Still, I'm starting to think I may need to start asking career counseling clients if they intend to own their homes in the next decade or if they will rent. It may make all the difference to their career decisions. If your dream job is available across the country but not locally, can you afford to move? And if you can't afford to buy, maybe that's good news, in a way. You're free to move to that job in NYC.

On Being Vulnerable

Photo by Nate Brelsford, via stock.xchng

Recently on brainpickings.org I came across researcher/storyteller Brene Brown, author of The Gifts of Imperfection. In her talk (I watched it here), she asserts that perfectionism blocks our paths to happiness. I fall victim to this all the time. I'm sure that's why I haven't posted on my blog recently. With a newborn, I'm never rested enough, never reading enough, never prepared enough to post. But I need to get over that, and so do job seekers.
Time and again I see a client's perfectionism get in the way of sending out a resume on time. So often I see people waiting for the perfect moment to change careers. The economy is never good enough, their portfolio is never creative enough.
But the perfect time will never come. We will never be the perfect candidate, because being human is by definition an imperfect enterprise. At some point we have to take a deep breath and send the email. We have to be ourselves. We have to, as author Seth Godin writes, get used to "shipping" the product.
We need to find a way to act like ourselves, despite the fear that we're not good enough. Brown says this is, very simply, what happy people do. They put their real selves out there and make connections. They make themselves vulnerable, despite the fear. If that's difficult for you right now in your job search, her talk might inspire you to hit send. What's the worst that could happen?


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My career counseling practice is still temporarily on hold, although I am taking time for a few resume critiques by email and phone. Contact me at meredithtseu@gmail.com for more information. I'll be sure to tell you when I'm fully up and running again.

Maternity Leave and Robots

Photo by Sasan Saidi

Okay, so those things are not related. Two separate ideas here in this little post.

First things first: I'm on maternity leave. My second child was born a couple weeks ago, and although I thought I'd keep posting through the rest of April, it didn't work out that way. Which is probably for the best, given how much sleep I'm getting. I expect I'll be taking at least three months break from my career counseling practice, but I'll keep you posted if it's less than that.

In the meantime... robots! Slate.com is soliciting opinions about a topic I find interesting: Will robots steal our jobs? Automation is a force that we all will have to deal with sometime, I believe. And when considering a future career, it's a topic we all must consider. Even my job seems just as risky these days. Just how replaceable are humans to a certain job? Slate will be writing about it in the near future, and if you want to weigh in on the topic, visit here.

Attracting Attention to Yourself (the Good Kind)

Photo by Joana Croft, www.joanacroft.com 

Job searches are all about getting attention, and a lot of the advice out there is what I think of as cosmetic: what to wear, what to say, how to manage your body language in an interview, that sort of thing.

A lot of clients I work with start to get a look on their face when I talk about it... like I'm asking them to take out someone else's garbage. A lot of job searching seems false to them, they say. They hate to "network" just for personal gain, and they hate that it all sounds like gaming the system.

I agree with them. Job hunting needs to be about more than looking good, or sounding good for an hour and a half interview. It's about capturing someone else's attention and keeping it, intriguing them, and I've come to believe that the only way to be that interesting is to find out what you're interested in, and then obsess about it, dig in, find the biggest problems and start to think about solutions.

A Harvard Business Review blog spells out some steps on capturing attention. Apply them to job hunting and you'll avoid the falseness that many feel when they're writing cover letters or sending out resumes.

Take the first step, for instance: "Embrace Mystery." We're so tempted, during a job search, to look like we know all the answers, but what if we start asking questions? What problem are you attracted to in your industry? How do you see that problem, and what do you think is being overlooked? How could you intelligently talk about that problem in an interview or cover letter? Could you find companies that are trying to address that problem, too?

Read industry journals, general interest magazines, anything you can get your hands on, if you don't have a problem in mind. Turn your job hunt into a quest.