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 Infuse Your Career and Life with Empowering Options

How To Infuse Your Career and Life with Empowering Options
The first fundamental step to infuse your career with a surge of career options is good work. Taking control of your career not only requires strategic branding but also means making your work visible. Framing success for any employer, recruiter, or network is challenging without good work. You make a case to your next employer by what you accomplish.
Your work is the only evidence to say you did the job well. If you want options, there is work to do, and it takes more than just a “to-do list.” You can apply my suggestions below to infuse your career and life to attract options when it’s time to make the next career move:

  1. Infuse Your Career with Critical Thinking to Confront Complex Problems

Find solutions to complex problems and build processes to solve them. If you can be the one to train others to solve the problem, they’ll call you an expert. Correct answers make it easier for your coworkers, who depend on you to solve many other issues. In my conversation with Bethany Wallace a few months ago, she said being open-minded and “… always looking for the solution, always trying to check yourself against what you currently think to ensure that it’s even accurate.”
Instead of running from complexity, embrace the opportunities for solutions and what they will do for your team, job, and career. If you want a significant impact and a great reward, embrace and solve complex business problems. Find seams to make them easier to understand and more straightforward to solve.

  1. Infuse Your Career with Resilience to Handle the Difficult Person

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There are opportunities to be the hero, but it will cost you pride, a little dignity, and time. It’s an accomplishment when you calm a disgruntled person. If you can show others the method to your madness, they won’t send their problem children to you.
Before I got into management, I embraced the role of handling demanding clients and members. I was great at listening with empathy and tempering their frustration. My team appreciated it as much as my bosses did. I wasn’t perfect at it, but embracing the challenge bought me respect from the team and the organization. Respect and tact were noticed and rewarded in my performance reviews.

  1. Infuse Your Career with Learning, Then Conduct The Training

Training is an implicit prerequisite to leadership. When you can break down concepts to explain analogies, anecdotes, and stories (even with humor), your career will reshape in value and add value to your brand.
I understand most people don’t want to train, but the person who can grow leadership from training brings an audience with them. They’ve mastered finding answers and facilitating them in a positively authoritative way.

  1. Infuse Your Career with Personality

Let’s say it all together: Companies cannot train character (or personality). I say it often because it is the common denominator in every networking, interviewing, and revealing of your superpowers to the world. People don’t forget others who make them think, laugh, reminisce, acquiesce, act, or react. 

  1. Infuse Your Career with Permission to Promote Yourself

People are afraid of the label “expert.” But you don’t have ever to call yourself an “expert.” These days it is necessary to put on your marquee accomplishments or notoriety. It is the only way employers will gain interest in your uniqueness and your value offerings.
Your career has many small victories to frame as success you may not have acknowledged. While it helps to have others encourage you to see achievements, you must be the main one to lead with them. Ideally, you want to gather around you people who will fan the flames of what makes you great. You’ll probably see your future differently.

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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5 Ways Sentimentality Is Ruining Your Career

5 Ways Sentimentality Is Ruining Your Career (2) by Mark Anthony Dyson

I have a Spotify playlist called “Endorphins.” As of today, it contains more than 200 soft rock love songs/somebody-done-somebody-wrong songs. These songs take me somewhere pleasant and calming. I’m sure you have a playlist that does the same for you.

Similarly, you may also look back on a previous workplace the same way I look at my playlist. Perhaps you remember an office where you once felt wanted, needed, and even praised. There are good reasons to feel sentimental when someone or something makes you feel valued.

But unlike my playlist, which is harmless, sentimental feelings toward a workplace aren’t always good news for your career. Never should such feelings drive your job search or your career choices.

Many of us are sentimental about our ex-anythings — friends, loved ones, and yes, even jobs. For a period of time, these may have been the best things in our lives.

The company you used to work for might have been the place where you cut your teeth. It was good for you at the time. Maybe now your sentimental feelings have you wondering if you should return as a boomerang employee.

Read 10 Job Search Strategies Beyond The Resume

Has layoff announcement rumors and whisperings got you in your feelings? It’s time to formulate a new but healthier perspective of work.

I hate to tell you this: The company was never family.
Even if you had a “work spouse,” um, no. Just no.

Companies don’t reward loyalty. It’s arguable if your hard work is acknowledged at your company.

What if your siblings or parents told you they appreciate you 2.5% more than they did last year? Imagine them saying their appreciation topped out at 4% for any family member.

Sobering? It should be. And if you were caught up in any of it, it’s affected your judgment and set your career light years backward.

Need help determining if sentimentality has infected your career journey?
Consider the five ways it may be harming you:

 

5 Ways Sentimentality Is Ruining Your Career by Mark Anthony Dyson

1. Sentimentality Distorts Your Perception of Reality

Just because you received several promotions and did some memorable work doesn’t mean the company is still the right place for you. A lot can change.

Instead of relying on fond feelings, check in with your old employer. See what has changed about the organization overall and your former position in particular. Make career decisions based on what the company really is, not on what you remember it to be.

Read How to Create Realistic Expectations During Your Job Search

2. Sentimentality Makes You Confuse Relationships for Results

You’re friendly and hold great conversations. You built great friendships with the people you used to work with.

But did you really accomplish much in that role? Try to write out a clear list of concrete accomplishments to see if the job was really as good for your career as you think it was.

3. Sentimentality Comes and Goes

The feelings you have about that old job may not last, and you should never make career decisions based on what your mood is at a given moment.

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Step back and soberly dissect each aspect of that old job. Did you really love everything about it? Or are you letting sentimentality cloud your judgment again?

4. Sentimentality Doesn’t Account for How Much You’ve Grown

It took me years to swallow something one of my mentors taught me: “Never do your old job.” We’re supposed to outgrow our old positions as we progress. You can’t produce more value for employers if you never move beyond your old job.

Listen to Layoffs? Did Someone Say Layoffs?

5. Sentimentality Hinders Rational Judgment

When we’re facing challenges at work, we have a tendency to romanticize our old jobs — but we probably had problems there, too. Romanticizing rarely helps us understand the situation or address the issues at hand.

Your job search strategy must rely on facts as much as possible.

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I will admit that elements of emotion and faith may enter the equation, but a strategic approach requires a foundation of truth.

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Relying on the way it used to be is not good intel, and it could misguide you. Instead of letting sentimentality guide your career, try to put yourself in a clear, objective mindset. Make the choices that are best for your professional journey — not the choices that your fickle heart urges you to make.

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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Job Search Like a Consultant, Not a Job Seeker, Unlike Your Competition in 2023

Job Search Like a Consultant, Not a Job Seeker, Unlike Your Competition in 2023

If you were unemployed and a LinkedIn user in 2008, you likely heard the advice to list your latest job as a self-employed consultant. This way, lurking employers would consider you as a potential candidate, and you could avoid the (often unintentional bias) of being labeled “unemployed.” Although it wasn’t a foolproof or utterly viable strategy, it made me and others stop and think. As a business of one, CEO of ME Inc., or YOU, LLC, everyone is their primary consultant.

 

When I was a personal trainer for a short time (at the same time I obtained a large career consultant-client that consumed my time for the next 18 months). Personal trainers will perform assessments to see how their client is capable of moving and ask questions to gain more information about their client’s physical abilities.

 

It’s likely they may need to collaborate with a physical therapist or someone with advanced knowledge of kinesiology. If a client has a problem have specific movements, you know the client couldn’t do certain exercises. For example, if he or she couldn’t bend his or her knees, then the trainer shouldn’t prescribe squats in their designed workout. People who are enthusiasts or novices are unlikely to attempt any assessment. They are usually too eager to give advice.

 

As a job seeker, you must be more like the consultant and not the novice. The mindset shift goes from a technician’s view to an expertise perspective. Even if it’s an entry-level position, you must have an expert strategy. When you are networking, be a collaborator. Here are some ways to do that.

 

Consultants solve difficult problems.

Answering questions and giving advice is only the bare minimum in approaching your new roles to set yourself apart from the competition. In my short time as a practicing personal trainer, I noticed novices who give general advice on the overall outcomes and didn’t collaborate with mentors, strength coaches or physical therapists. I also knew how the muscles work when challenged to grow, and when to get additional added opinions. Who would you have taken advice from?

Consultants ask questions.

I still don’t get why many people feel they are at the mercy of the interviewer during the hiring process. Your questions are the only opportunity to ascertain high-level information. Your research-based questions must be direct. Irrelevant questions will dilute your credibility.

Read Think Like a Consultant: Win at Today’s Job Search

Consultants are perpetual teachers and learners.

Good consultants must learn new processes quickly, and then teach a revised version to solve business problems. It doesn’t have to be the exact solution but applied knowledge even if it’s new is necessary. Behavioral interviews will test your application knowledge through simulation or scenarios under stress.

Consultants are prepared to apply technology in different ways.

More companies will eventually adopt the means to use virtual reality to assess a candidate’s ability to adjust to technology changes. A few years back, Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine used virtual reality to prepare autistic adults for job interviews. Technology continues to evolve in job interviews. You may not need to be the expert in how it works, but you will need to understand its limits and potential. Personal trainers know how muscles work within their boundaries.

Consultants are agile.

Agility, in this case, has nothing to do with project management or software development, but how quickly and easily one can move from project to project. From a holistic career view, it’s how prepared are you to go from job to job with few interruptions. When I was a personal trainer, I had a client who was afraid to perform lunges. If I forced her, the potential was present for injury, so we came up with other exercises working similar muscles to achieve results. Similarly, this must be your mindset in offering solutions.

Consultants understand critical and timely service delivery.

If time and money are not mentioned in a business transaction, it’s not a business. Your ability to deliver must have data in the form of cash, quality, and the quantity associated with it. Although the high-level analysis is not required, your ability to communicate awareness and its significance makes you well-qualified.

Consultants solve the long-game issues.

Trends and challenges shift constantly. Your solutions to problems should address them. If your approach is only in “job seeker” mode, the focus is what you have done, but doesn’t often resonate as a “fit.” Your plan as a consultant offers a holistic approach, addresses potential changes, and how your past shifts solved issues.

 

Once you can change your strategy to a consultant’s mindset, and established your brand, you’ll notice a change in your job search. Opportunities where your talents are valued the most will appear, your questions will have depth and foresight, and employers will approach you as a  partner instead of just another hire. Research deeper, customize your approach to every employer and look for clients instead of companies who will embrace solutions and collaborations.

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.