The Voice of Job Seekers

Mark Anthony Dyson ★ Career Writer ★ Speaker ★ Thinker ★ Award-winning Blog & Podcast! ★ "The Job Scam Report" on Substack! ★ I hack and reimagine the modern job search!

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How to Get a Great Career Start with Janine Truitt and Chris Fields

How to Get a Great Career Start with Janine Truitt and Chris Fields

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Great Start to Career

Very few job seekers who are students, graduates, careerists, or career-changers get a great career start. This episode will be an exception as we dive deep in getting a great start or rebooting your career. I have two co-hosts this week: Janine Truitt of TalentThinkInnovations.com and Christ Fields of ResumeCrusade.com. Both of them bring their perspectives in working with young professionals to those in the executive c-suite.

What was some of the best career advice at the start of your career? We would love to hear your thoughts in one of three ways:

  1. Call and leave a voicemail at 708-365-9822, or text your comments to the same number
  2. Go to TheVoiceofJobSeekers.com, press the “Send Voicemail” button on the right side of your screen and leave a message
  3. Send email feedback to [email protected]

Let me share a little about each of my co-hosts:

Janine Truitt is the founder of her company, Talent Think Innovations, LLC is a multi-disciplinary business strategy and management consulting firm. She has been in HR and talent acquisitions for more than 10 years. Her media features include Black Enterprise, Entrepreneur Magazine, and US News and Careers.

Chris Fields is founder of the Resume Crusade, and also an HR professional and resume writer. He helps around 150 people yearly with resume and job search advice. His career advice has been featured in O Magazine, Mashable, and Monster Working!

Here are some of the highlights from our discussion:

  • Janine believes your career start should be weaved in throughout your childhood, not just college
  • Chris emphasized many professionals aspire to degrees he or she doesn’t need
  • We discussed the importance of networking and using it as a main tool throughout your career
  • Taking time to show up: Go to networking events and be intentional about your connections. Listen more than you talk and learn to identify the fakers from the makers
  • Living on Purpose! Do work that is meaningful to you instead of ALWAYS chasing dollars and cents

 

Need help with your career goals, directions, or efforts? Do you need coaching or instruction? I am here for it!

I will be doing other shows with Chris and Janine, so if you have questions for us, let me know.

If you’re in Chicago, you might be interested in an upcoming event on February 12. If you want to join me, send me a note at [email protected] or call 708-365-9822 for more information.

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.

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Giving Women Courage in their Career Development

Giving Women Courage in their Career Development

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Giving Women Courage in their Career Development

Women desire to differentiate themselves through making an impact with their ideas. There are innate character traits women have keeping them from speaking up. Gia Ganesh is a  career strategist who helps mid-career professionals discover and move into meaningful and fulfilling work.

What are you career development challenges? You can add your voice to the discussion in one of three ways:

  1. Call and leave a voicemail at 708-365-9822, or text your comments to the same number
  2. Go to TheVoiceofJobSeekers.com, press the “Send Voicemail” button on the right side of your screen and leave a message
  3. Send email feedback to [email protected]

 

In addition to her role as a career strategist, Gia is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, and her career advice has appeared in Forbes, CareerBuilder, and Lifehack. The basis for our discussion comes from her article,

Top 5 Career Must-Have’s for Women

    Here are some highlights from our discussion:
    • Gia shares how passionate she is about career development for women
    • We discuss the issue of men and women handle emotions
    • Although men take longer to react, when they do, it’s more forceful
    • How does emotion matter in his or her career trajectory
    • Interviews are much more pressure and questions demand more energy
    • More scrutiny required as the process has lengthened
    • Preparation is essential for interviews at all levels including the entry level
    • Gia challenges her clients to map out want they want in their careers
    • When your values are unfulfilled, your career might be unfulfilled
    • Speaking up is a differentiating factor for women
    • Around 20:00 as I was wrapping up she shared about women are most hard on themselves
    • She discussed her take-a-way from talking with Marshall Goldsmith
    • This sparked more discussion about how unfair expectations are put on women from men
    • We discuss “perfectionists syndrome”

Need help with your career goals, directions, or efforts? Do you need coaching or instruction? I am here for it!

Also, join our Linkedin community! You’ll enjoy some of the insights shared by community members and other career pros!

If you’re a career pro and love giving career advice, let me know. Thanks for being among the thousands who listen every month. There’s so much more to come so stay tuned!

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.

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Make Your Career As Resilient As Your Body

Make Your Career As Resilient As Your Body
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Your career needs your attention as your body does. Many of us act when someone admires our body’s pleasing development or notices our depreciating condition. At first, we do what comes to us naturally as a casual effort until reality hits and the seriousness lingers.

When I pursued my certification in personal training a few years ago, the more I learned about anatomy, the more amazed I became of the human body. I took away life to change perspectives of what the body can endure and what can break it down.

I attended sessions by personal trainers who trained in kinesiology who showed how muscles perform under stress and adapt to training. Your body adjusts to the lack of training (and often weakening) and to high-volume training (strengthening and endurance).

In working with people, most people think weight-loss will only require increase activity without considering a modified diet. Think about it, and it is not the exercise we lack.
If we’re overweight, and our metabolism is slow, and the pancreas is wearing out, we will need to modify our eating habits over time. Our bodies need to re-align a healthy body with a healthy lifestyle.
One of my favorite books in the last few years is “The Rise: Creativity, The Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery,” written by Sarah Lewis. Her book offers examples of many heroes who embraced the “near-win” yet showed the power of resilience to survive and eventually experience the gratification of mastery.
She tells the story of Ben Saunders who went to the North and South Pole solo and on foot.  Saunders explains it in detail in this TED talk. The idea of surrender and, “…of not giving up but giving over to something much larger than yourself and circumstance and by releasing that resistance, finding the resources that you need to move forward.”
No matter how warm you can perceivably dress for 50 degrees below zero, your body still must resource the ability to resist freezing to death. Someone on Saunders team lost all of his teeth because of the uncontrollable chattering due to the extreme cold.
Your career must resist many changes during a lifetime, as does the body when it’s challenged to survive. As your career grows in resilience, more times than not, will thwart some of the  residual of trauma and catastrophe of life. Just remember resilience does not avoid failure, which is a building block of success.
Here are some suggestions to make your job search and career more resilient:
 
Adapting to changes in job climate
Your body does the best it can to adjust to the lack of or volume of training you provide. You must look at your career trajectory the same. You will see multiple changes in any career path or industry. Today, those who navigate their careers anticipate change and keep fingers on the pulse of their training.
Know when and how to find time for training
When you’re consistently engaging your network via conversations, tea, or social media, training is easy to find. Too many times professionals are behind finding the needed training for career advancement. It costs a lot of money to register late for relevant training. More times than never, the cost discourages them from signing up.
Planning fuels motivation
People do well with nutrition management when he or she plans ahead. When you have budgeted and planned your actions, strategy becomes easier to execute. When you partner with someone who shares your motivation and goals, moving forward is easier.
Comfort is last when change is priority
Eric Heiden, the famous gold medalist skater, trained until he threw and continued his training. Successful careerists find ways to use the time and resources available no matter how scarce. It’s easy to find comfort when there is excess as it often masks the need. When comfort is rare, the power is using all at your disposal. You find rest, but it doesn’t equal comfort!
Similarly, you can control how well it survives even the worse conditions. Being laid off. Or falsely accused of something and you had to leave your job. Or being fired. Or just performing well enough. The good news is we’re all resilient. It’s a dominant attribute all of us have to survive along with grit. What differentiates each person is our ability to deploy it, as we choose to enact it.
No one has had smooth roads to success. Most of us are searching for our success, or an overload of satisfaction, and often the two can mean the same and co-exist in our lives simultaneously. Your body can do it. Your career can do it too. As Sarah Lewis’ book suggests, almost does count. You can use almost and some grit to finish–and land your next job.

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.