Participate in College Career Center Poll

Do you utilize your campus Career Center? What do you think about it? Careerealism has setup an online poll where you can provide them your opinions. Even if you are out of school, it's not a bad idea to offer your opinion on how this resources impacted your professional pursuits.

Inspiration Article on Entrepreneurship

Michael Moore (not that one) with the John Locke Foundation (see, not that one) provided a great Friday guest piece for John Hood's daily column at Carolina Journal. The piece does have significant religious undertones. The core points that Moore makes about the need for us to praise those willing to take risks and meet the needs of others through our own effort.

I do believe these words have meaning to the corps of graduating seniors facing little light ahead in the current job market. For many, especially those who passions are best fulfilled through smaller and individualized professional pursuits, this could be just what they need to hear.

Thoughts on Career Centers, and the people who want to know

Carreerealism is asking for feedback on the problems students experience with their campus career offices. My take?

• Most career centers are really job centers, with their counselors able to tell you about what's open and which business contacted them about scheduling interviews, but they don't do much beyond that.
• Career centers often cater to the strength programs of their institutions. This is a survival mentality, since after graduation placement is critical to the rankings of such programs on the regional and national level. These programs also usually drive the direct offerings from potential employees through the career center.
• Career centers are doing better jobs with soft skill development on average than they did when I was a student, but it is still not enough. In reality, the ideal personal skill tool box for professional achievement is acquired mostly through experience, and not just the "on-the-job" variety.
• If you want to take the entrepreneurial route, they have nothing available to help you.
• Like the guidance counselors who first work with the students in high school, many career centers apply systematic solutions to identify interests based more on ability than passion. This works for some and can help get a graduate employed, but it can also keep someone passionate about an idea from developing it due to his placement in another field on the basis of aptitude, not interest.

If you want to see two offices where they do their best to do it right, you can visit Career Resources for the MPA program at UGA or the Internship & Career Services Center at North Carolina Wesleyan. I know the coordinators of both programs and admire their efforts.

Another Week of Wisdom Bonus: Twitter How-To

Have you ever wanted to share a habit of your favorite United States Congressman? If you do, and cannot hold your liquor on a daily basis or make others not want to kill you when you lie through your teeth, then this free workshop on the newest political (and general societal) trend of Twittering is for you (courtesy Tar Heels in Transit)!

In case you're... wait, you're not... I don't really "Twitter." You can find me on Facebook and LinkedIn, but that's about it for now. Perhaps it's the whole job thing :)

Speaking of resumes...

Saw this one posted by the author of the newest addition to the Blogroll, Tar Heels in Transit. I am really impressed by the simplicity and ability to forge a very strong personal profile into the confines of the all-too-critical single page.

Wisdom Week Bonus: VisualCV

I saw this advertised on a couple of blogs and featured by Alexandra Levit. Here is what I like about VisualCV.

• At its very least, it provides an effective personal portal for accessing your social network
• Provides an easy-to-reference focus site for professional contacts, including potential employers and search firms. The end product is definitely business card material.
• Formatting and design enable creativity within organized structure.
• Strong user-defined security settings, a strong plus for anyone wanting to streamline and enhance their online profile.
• Already accepted and utilized by major corporations and recruiting firms, which suggests extensive future adoption (i.e., you're not wasting your time).

There are many more benefits that I did not mention (or even know about). It is definitely worth taking a look at their tour.

Week of Wisdom, Day Five: Hope is not

What a week! Each of us probably had better things to do, but if you kept up with the "Week of Wisdom," it was worth it. We are now at Day Five, the end of the week, and the final piece of advice I can offer, pulled from years of professional and personal experience.

I tend to not be a fan of Larry Winget, the so-called "Pit Bull of Personal Development." If his methods work for you, however, then they are right for you and the wisdom of Day One is proved once again. However, I do think that Mr. Winget is dead on with one of his primary pieces of advice, which runs counter to the lexicon and beliefs of most of us.

Whether you are trying to just get started, or people start taking notice of your actions, or you face the cold discomfort when everyone agrees with you, or you need to take the next step in developing relationships of substance, there is a common thread that should always exist. It does, and I sense it in the efforts of most successful people. However, I also tend to notice that it is substituted with a far less powerful mentality that often leads people with even the strongest ideas and best intentions on a road to nowhere.

The greatest weakness we have as a society is "hope." It is also often the most significant roadblock an individual possesses, inhibiting them to reach their full potential. If we are taught to define hope as the feeling that better things are ahead, then the reality proves that focusing on hope leads to the opposite.

Take a few minutes to express your anger at the computer, if you feel that way. I completely understand.

The actual definition of "hope" provides insight into its weakness. Hope is about emotion. It can feed off of our energy and focus when people area drawn into frenzy, especially when led by someone or some group that understands the potential of this power in a collective capacity. Hence, hope is often the mindset du jour of the downtrodden and impoverished, as well as those who experience failure after significant success.

Energy and focus are critical to the development of passion. We must draw from these personal spiritual resources in order to exercise the creativity, commitment, and dedication necessary to build a business or start and flourish in a chosen career. If we spend out time focused on "hope" for a future that does not incorporate action, goals, or substance, then we deplete ourselves of critical internal resources.

Winget puts it simply that successful people choose to believe rather than hope. This is not an easy transition, as believing in others and yourself can be a little problematic if someone or something in life fails. If failure turns believe into self-doubt, then it is the same as loosing trust in someone who does not respect our believe in them.

Belief must be measured in respect to faith. Those who profess believe in others must do so with internal assurance not to place fellow man before God with respect to priority or admiration. Balance, just like with other philosophical dichotomies, is critical.

As you set forth, considering the ideas brought forth this week, encourage yourself to approach your friends, assignments, challenges, and opportunities with a spirit that will allow you to pursue passions with the focus and intent necessary for achievement. This is not possible until we each recognize that hope is not, when compared to the personal power of belief.