Another day, another meeting. When done wrong, meetings might be the one of the biggest barriers to productivity in modern history and it has gotten a lot worse in the last five years. At least it used to be a little bit harder to hold meetings, but after the pandemic the use of video conferencing exploded from something that used to be a novelty to integration into everyday use.
It’s no secret that it’s getting harder and harder to face the job market. Competition is fierce, AI is taking market share and the industries in need are constantly changing. All this to say that a “good enough” application package 20 years ago won’t get you a sniff today. Good has to become great and in some cases great as to become exceptional. So what does exceptional look like?
Trust me, I’m really not that narcissisistic. But I am curious.
Times have definitely changed quickly within the online space. Search Engine Optimization or SEO was once gold for online creators. Put in the proper keywords and learn the algorithm and you could be first on search engines like Google or Yahoo.
While SEO isn’t completely dead, it has been replaced at the top of the search engine output by an Artificial Intelligence or AI summary of the search term. Essentially, what you search for is what is now known as an AI prompt. The output isn’t always fantastic but it usually is fairly accurate with links on the side to show where the sources of the output came from.
We love to keep things locked up in our minds where only we can see it. You have this great idea, and you let it sit there and marinate. You think about it quite frequently and you know in your heart of hearts that it is a good idea. Except that it never leaves your head.
While most in the private sector are used to a one to two page resume, those in the federal workforce have been accustomed to a much longer format than most human resource officials would recommend. Very recently that has changed and resumes will now be limited to two pages. This week we’ll dive into how to be a distiller of information in order to maximize the impact of your resume.
Depending on who you talk to there is a vast difference of opinions on cover letters. Do you need them? Are they worth your time? Some jobs require them, and some don’t. As someone who has served on many hiring panels in the federal government, I can tell you that the cover letter still holds tremendous value.
Hustle culture is killing us, both literally and figuratively. This is a product of societal norms imposed on us by a system that values numbers over people. If we aren’t constantly raising the bar at all times then we are expendable. Companies and organizations use people until they burn out. Then they replace them with someone who has yet to burn out. Good for the numbers, terrible for the culture.
Developing exercises for training sessions can be a big challenge. If we get complacent we can fall into the rut of the same old style of training. We go into a conference room, sit down around a table and stare blankly at a power point until the trainer releases us mercifully, not knowing what happened over the past couple of hours.
For training to be most effective, it needs to be interactive and memorable. One of the most memorable trainings I can remember vividly happens to be one I took online several years ago. Now what could be so vivid about an online training course you ask? This wasn’t any online class, this was Harvard University Computer Science Professor David Malan’s CS50: Introduction to Computer Science course which is open to anyone who wants to take it.
If you remember back to high school economics, we learned about imports and exports. When a country was exporting more goods than they were importing, they were probably in pretty good shape. If they were importing more than they were exporting, things could be getting a bit dicier financially. The concept is quite simple and we can apply the same logic when we think about how to change your habits to increase fulfillment.
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Presentations can be tricky. Many of you have had this conversation before. Your co-worker comes to you with an idea. The kind of idea, they tell you, that is so good that it keeps them up at night. This is their ticket to finally get noticed and take the next step in their career.
You recognize this kind of thinking, because you have done some of it yourself. If you could get someone to just listen, you would be flying rocket emojis to the moon in no time! Now you are getting excited about the possibilities with your own ideas and….