Mark Anthony Dyson, Author at The Voice of Job Seekers

Your Career Choice Should Offer Happiness in 2021

The pandemic is forcing many professionals to put themselves and their livelihood first. There are many layers to our lives. It’s hard to say in blanket statements what we all want anymore. We all want to feel valued in 2021, and there are “no’s” to give out. Another talking point to what professionals wish to in 2021 is to work from home even if we have to sacrifice some cash.

Bloomberg recently reported some professionals are willing to take up to a 15% cut in pay to stay home to work. In addition, many are eager to give up time off to work from home.

Working at a big company would sacrifice a little salary to buy back travel time if I were working at a big company. For many of us who had to travel more than two hours a day (sometimes driving) is a lot of time. Those hours mean much more when you have small children growing and maturing faster than we can keep up. It gives us time to attend a child’s participation in sports or to help with homework. You can’t get that time back.

Many professionals have radically valued career development more than ever.

We can scale our careers more conveniently as we can do it from anywhere. And it doesn’t have to cost us vacation time or overtime to do more of it. What we do realize is our employer is less likely to invest in our future. They are more interested in the now. If we’re lucky to get that boost from our employer, our cup should be overflowing with gratitude.

Consider a disaster recovery plan for your work.

A recent Gallup poll showed people had to change how they worked, and it wasn’t perfect. The longer the pandemic disruption lasted, workers did adjust:

Since November, however, worker reports of difficulty have eased, although workers continue to report doing their job differently. This workflow could either be a sign that workers are getting accustomed to the changes or that refinements have been made to make those changes easier.

Gallup.com

It is finding a workplace that values you, me and all of us.

My friend Scott Behson’s new book, The Whole Person Workplace, discusses how employers create a welcoming, inclusive culture. In my recent conversation with him, he shared with me in an email several questions job seekers can ask to help them discern, such as a workplace.

Two of them are:

How did you help employees with feelings of burnout and overwork during the height of the pandemic? What lessons from that time are you continuing to apply going forward?
Can you tell me about someone who, at one point in their career with you, had to alter their work because of life demands and is now in a leadership position?

These are great questions because they speak to several real issues exposed by the pandemic:

How the company arranges work to help workers through stressful instances?
How will I feel about the company during a crisis of any kind?
Does altering a workload (not necessarily lightening it) create a negative view of my performance?

I’m sure there are other ways to view these questions. But I think it’s time to evaluate what is important to us outside of compensation. People may take jobs that underutilize their abilities and talents to claim peace of mind. Others want to work remotely without a negative and lasting effect on their careers. All of us want to end up at the same place: Feeling valued.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development. Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!" You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

by Mark Anthony Dyson

Redefining the Rules of Resilience to Your Career

I told you a few weeks ago that Gen Z should ignore your Gen X and Baby Boomer relatives‘ career advice. This week is a clear example of how my generation, the epitome of resilience, has amassed outdated experiences regarding career and job-search advice. We have enough evidence from our generation regarding what was right and wrong about what we called resilience and how it applies to our careers.

We can look at the exploits of a hero like Muhammad Ali and the brilliance of his patience and intel in knowing George Foreman was a relentless pounder. The reward was one of the greatest sports victories ever. We can look at the tragedy in the head trauma he survived that left him unable to continue showcasing his colorful personality for the last 35 years of his life.

The fact we’re offering the “gut-it-out” and “you have to play the game” when it comes to our health, wellbeing, and survival in the workplace no longer serves us or our younger counterparts. I am only referencing Simone Biles a single time now because of her recent decision to step away from competing in the team and all-around Olympic gymnastics competition. You can find opinions and commentary all over the place. But that is all I will say about it in this article.

Our well-being is woven into our careers, and it is the catalyst of our job search.

You’ll need to discern who will be the right leader for you. Who will respect what you feel you need, your boundaries, and your aspirations? Initially, only you can make that decision.

Tom Brady chose his boss. I know sport is different. But, he took who his boss was going to be to heart. There is never a perfect boss. There’s a case to find the perfect boss for you.

We have the tools now to know who our boss will be long before we apply for a particular job. There’s intel to collect from people they work with. And yes, the process I described is a lot of work. This is a critical step now to your well-being and success in your career.

I also advocate deep networking. A large network is helpful. A network with many people who introduced you to other people, especially within a single or adjacent industry, can give you opportunities. I see that a lot in my industry with my friends, peers, colleagues, and partners. They will also add to your well-being because of their familiarity and experiences with bosses, colleagues, and intel of the work.

Great work relationships don’t have walls or distance anymore. As I can personally testify to powerful partnerships with those I never met in person. Remote work won’t change the friendship dynamic when choices are limited.

Competition is important for your job search because it’s designed that way. It probably won’t change anytime soon. Each of us has to decide which race we are willing to enter. It’s more important to be well-informed and do the necessary work to obtain what’s important to us. But we’re broken if our mental health is fractured, whether temporarily or permanently. Don’t risk your mental health to chase glory.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

by Mark Anthony Dyson

Treat Your Career Like Appreciating Property

My wife and I own a building we’ve been redecorating quite a bit in the last two years. There are challenges, and there were updates done that were seamless. There are useful analogies similar to building a future-proof career and the modern job search. Buildings and your career are similar because they require improvements to appreciate and add value. We can argue later how location has to do with its worth, but it does.

We can’t assume there is a solid foundation in both instances, so it’s important to have them tested. The house or building has to be inspected carefully and never overlooked because if it lacks a strong foundation, its worth is diminished greatly. We can assume the training and experience you’ve obtained will continue to add to your foundation for job seekers. Remember, employers, circumstances, and people who want to refer you will test your foundation.

I was recently on the “Who Ya Know” web show where one of the co-hosts, Trevor Houston, used a building analogy I thought would be interesting to explore. All of us, including Trevor’s co-hosts, Foster Williams and Mark Elder, rallied around this analogy. It was my favorite part of the show.

We are currently renovating a kitchen upstairs-intending to replace the Lazy Susan with a new one. Everything went as planned for all other work in the building except for the kitchen. We didn’t make any considerations in measuring the Lazy Susan, and as a result, we failed to finish the kitchen in the timeline we had established.

Your career and job search are similar to renovation.

Let’s keep in mind your career depreciates if you’re not renovating, just as a building loses its worth if you don’t. Renovation is related to buildings, as reinvention or innovation is more relevant to your job search and career. I advocate to constantly and consistently increase your value, so you’ll continually add worth.

The recreation shouldn’t stop overall progress.

When we decided to wait for the right size Lazy Susan for the kitchen, a lot of work still needed to be done in the rest of the building. Similarly, this shouldn’t happen to your job search, but the propensity of most job seekers is to stop adding value to other areas important to impress employers. You can’t allow training or the discovery of new learning to stop your overall growth and career advancement.

You can’t expect growth by doing just enough.

If you’re learning something new, change must follow. Learning itself doesn’t create growth unless applied to test whether it’s true or false. A slight change may be a need for the training to work. Although I don’t do personal training anymore, there is a practice that applies here. Growth is necessary, and it takes time.

Before training anyone, an assessment is needed to prescribe the correct exercise program for each individual. For most people, squats are the most challenging yet rewarding weight exercises to perform and add muscle. I couldn’t prescribe weighted squats to someone who cannot hold their balance when squatting without weights. It’s as important- someone trains safely or consequently injures themselves. The goal is for them to perform squats, but it will take a series of small and progressive training to get someone to weighted squats safely and effectively.

Similarly, career growth occurs after assessing whether you need to do more. Then you determine if smaller steps are best to grow. Discomfort is certain at some point, but the process shouldn’t hurt you more than the change itself.

It costs to renovate and to redecorate a building or a house. It also costs to assess, and if smaller steps are needed, time and cost are a factor. All of these could discourage you from finishing a building, house, or career. You don’t want any of them to be an excuse not to finish. Remember, your job search and career are much like property. Continual changes and upgrades will bring value and appreciation. No changes or upgrades bring down the value and depreciation.