Today’s post is part 2 of a series about the purpose behind HigherEdCareerCoach.Com and the different ways the site and my business are evolving to meet the needs of higher ed job seekers. Consider it a rough draft “blog manifesto” or sorts.
What you need to know about me:
I believe that my purpose in life is to help others along their life and career journeys.
I’ve helped many, many people get jobs and get into grad school, and to figure out where they are going in their lives and careers.
I am mostly interested in helping educators, artists, musicians, and other creators, who keep pushing people, discussions and our culture along.
I believe that knowing your purpose is not enough. You have to find the right way to express it.And for some of my clients, the answer is to not work in higher ed, go to grad school, be an artist or a musician, but something else. If I can help point them away from a wrong turn and be okay with the alternate route, I’ll be happy with that, as well.
I got to a point a couple of years ago where I knew that I enjoyed doing this coaching thing more than the job I was doing, and that it was time to move on. There were other personal motivations, too, including decreasing my stress, spending more time with my partner and kids, and living closer to our aging parents and the rest of my extended family. I want to help people who may be similarly stuck know that it’s okay to change your plans and do something different.
Residence Life is a high burnout field, and I got to a burnout point with it. Then I got over the burnout, and was happy. And people were happy with me. And I felt like I had done what I came to Penn State to do. And I wanted to leave on good terms, because I love that place, and the people there, just like I love my family (dysfunctions and idiosyncracies notwithstanding.)
Once I set a few things in motion, before I knew what had happened, all the sudden, it was time. So I took a leap of faith. And I am happier in my life and career, and get to focus more on what I am meant to do on this Earth, and how I am going to do it. I’m read to help people explore their moments of career serendipity, so that when things come together, they can be ready to take their own leaps.
Which brings me to the whole business thing. Like I said, I have money. It’s not about money. But on principle, I can only justify following my dreams if I maintain the quality of lifestyle my family has, and have a stable enough income to retire one day. I have room to wiggle now, and to figure it out, but I really don’t want to spend my retirement (if there ever is one) living on the street.
So here are the critical points you need to know about me, my sites, and my business.
I’m not motivated by money in the strictest sense, but I do want to have a sustainable business that delivers value and creates regular income, because (like most people), I value stability and want to give that to my family. They deserve it for putting up with me!
The articles and advice you get on the blogs will continue to be free as long as I can manage to keep putting good content out there and justify the costs of hosting the sites. In some cases, I pay my writers, because this is a business, and their writing keeps your eyeballs on the page and gives my business exposure while actually providing you some value, through different perspectives and ideas. In other cases, I trade posts with other education bloggers and coaches, or accept submissions based on a particular topic (for example: Monday Morning Quarterback columns.)
Other services will cost you money. (Resume reviews, coaching sessions, webinars, publications, and eventually one or more members-only sites and coaching programs.)
I’m not outrageously priced, but I am not cheap, either. I do have “friends and family” discounts, package rates, and a variety of products and services, either currently available or in development, and I’m developing more short-term and one-time opportunities to meet the demand for low-cost services.
I will continue to have some sorts of advertising on my site and more often than not, this advertising will be for affiliate programs I am a part of, for products that I use, have used, want badly (like an iPad) or just think are good. If you buy something from a link or an ad on my sites, chances are, I will earn some money from the transaction.
I’m going to stop hinting and start selling, because I want to stay busy with the coaching, help people and support my family. In other words, it’s time to really move from being an aspiring businessman to an actual one.
I’m going to enlist your help. Why? Because I believethe assistance of my readers, professional community, and other people and websites I admire can help me improve the sites and give you more of what you want and less of what you don’t, because I don’t want to annoy you and I do want you to keep coming back.
Here are some upcoming things you will see on the sites, as a result of the “course corrections” to get my sites and my business moving forward:
I will be placing more prominent links and buttons on the sidebar to encourage people to consider working with me as a coach. No more hinting. If you are a job seeker in higher ed, I want your business. But if you only come to read, that’s cool too. But if and when you are ready, I want to be at the top of your mind. If you know me and trust me already, then that’s a good start, and I’ll take it.
You’ll continue to see e-mail list sign-up forms in the sidebar and I do use pop-up forms as well. I’ll try to give you incentives to join the list. For the e-mail list, I am linking them to some auto-responders that will deliver free e-mail mini-courses over a set period, as well as regular newsletters, and the opportunity to get “blog broadcast” summary newsletters. New subscribers who sign up at Higher Ed Career Coach are currently getting a mini-course on “Planning Your Career in Higher Education” in exchange for signing up. This autoresponder mini-course has weekly topics and exercises to help you flesh out some of the steps as you plan your career journey. It isn’t really a “self-coaching” program, but it should help you get started. This mini-course will be available for the next month or so, but will be taken down and replaced by another topic-related mini-course, probably in early October. Afterwards, it will be offered (probably with some modifications and feedback) as a paid product.
This month, I will begin offering some low-cost webinars on career topics and you will see registration widgets on the site, as well as articles about upcoming opportunities. Some of these will have set per-seat prices, and others will be offered as “Tip Jar Webinars.” This means that you pay according to the value you receive. There will be a suggested donation but if you think the seminar was useless you won’t pay anything. If you get something out of it, you’ll be encouraged to support the development of the series by “tipping” based on the length and format, number of presenters and value of the information. (Probably between $5-$20 would be an appropriate tip for most seminars)
In the next few months, you will see offerings for e-books and for a book I am contributing a chapter to, called “101 Great Ways to Enhance Your Career.”The book is a cooperative book project from SelfGrowth.Com and that means I bought into the project to get published alongside 100 other career authors and to have books to use for giveaways and promotions, as well as selling them. There is a screening process, so hopefully my article won’t get rejected, now that I am telling you about it. So let me make it clear. I do realize this is a glorified ad in some ways.
I’m going to revise my affiliate advertising strategy, and the first step will be to get feedback from you about what you would prefer to see, and what you might buy. I will only continue to participate in affiliate programs for products I use, would use, want or believe in. And if you have a bad experience with one of these programs or think I should stop my affiliation with a group or company, I want to know that, because I only want to advertise products and services that readers would actually use.
Thanks for reading. I’d love your feedback about what I can do to improve the sites, focus my business strategy, and better meet the needs of higher ed job seekers. I’ll be starting later this week with a brief survey about the site features and advertising/affiliate programs.
The last few weeks have been interesting to me. With the exception of August 1999, when I was in-between jobs, I worked on college campuses during the busy back-to-school rush for all of my adult life. So it was weird to not be getting ready for new staff, RA training, and welcome week.
I expected this August to be different, in terms of how busy I would be, but that hasn’t been true. I’ve had a lot of client appointments lately, as some finally found themselves full-swing back into searches that had stalled for a while, and realizations that the grad school applications they’d been thinking about in theory need to find their way to paper (or electronic) form sooner than later. All the sudden, following up on a site redesign, some emerging partnerships, the development of some e-books, seminars and workshops moved from my “get to that soon” list to “Oh, crap, I really have to get in gear with that” list. And I realize that I wasn’t paying attention.
It reminded me a lot of my time on campus, and all that goes into getting ready for a successful year. I wonder now why I expected it to be different. There are so many things that pull at our attention and all too often, we drop the ball, and miss the important details of what is going on around us. Today, I was catching up on Twitter (something that often distracts me, but that oddly, during this time, I have been able to tune out) and I saw this tweet from my friend and coaching buddy Monica Moody.
The link she mentions in her tweet goes to a YouTube video of an interesting psychology experiment about attention. And a reminder that, as Linda Loman pleads in her famous monologue to son Biff in Death of a Salesman, “attention must be paid.” (Video embedded below.)
As you get into full swing of the back-to-college season, and all the stresses that come with it, how are you paying attention? What will you be missing? And how can you keep yourself from missing the “invisible gorilla?”
Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
As the academic year begins this August, approximately 2 million new students will flood campuses in the United States (according to the National Center for Education Statistics), representing about 68% of the nation’s recent high school graduates.
When you work in higher ed, you spend the summer getting ready for this great mass of humanity, their parents, and all their stuff. Each year, the next most-connected generation in history descends upon campus, ready for the mythical wonderland called college…full of challenging classes, enlightened professors, new friends, great parties, and steeped in fine traditions, pomp, circumstance, and loads of fun. The newest, most exciting “best days of their lives.” And they come with almost romanticized visions of college, so we spend our time and efforts on being ready, smoothing out the edges, and making that move-in and arrival period as painless as possible. We concentrate next on getting our student staff trained (whether they’re resident assistants and orientation leaders in brightly colored move-in shirts, or dining hall crew members, desk staff, or teaching assistants, etc.)
It’s easy during busy times like this to forget how important it is to make sure our new professional staff members make the adjustment to campus successfully, as well. We hope for it, and plan for it, but sometimes drop the ball in our planning, because of all the other priorities we’re juggling. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 124,600 postsecondary administrators in the country in 2008.Of course, most of these are not new staff. As experienced professionals, they know the drill, have the routine down pat, and motor along the path of same-old, same-old. Sometimes, right over the new staff, who are still looking for the bathrooms in the building, don’t know the code to the copier, and haven’t received a computer password, not to mention a paycheck yet. It can be a rough adjustment for these new staff, and retention of good staff is always an issue. Sometimes, we burn them out with training and teambuilding before the first student moves in, or the first class bell rings.
This month, we’ll spend some time on the topic of transitions, and to invite some guest bloggers to contribute their thoughts on how we prepare our new staff.
Some possible formats include:
Philosophical pieces (like “how to think about your job,” “what you need to think about,” and “what you need to understand about our organization, field, specialty, etc.”)
Practical Pieces: (give an example of a favorite training activity, a checklist for getting started in a new position, or steps toward creating a positive routine, etc.
Creative pieces (art, video, publications, poetry, readings, etc. What do you share and why do you share it?)
Some combination of the above
If you are interested, please contact me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com and let me know which of the following opportunities interests you, and join the conversation.Guest posters will also be invited to appear on the Higher Ed Life and Careers podcast on BlogTalkRadio.
Monday Morning Quarterback: Guest posts in this category will be “thought” pieces, leaning toward the idea of having a “gameplan” for your training and transition efforts. So I would love to have some philosophical or creative pieces here, but don’t be afraid to be practical.
Tuesday Time-Out: Like the title says, I’d like these to be brief, welcome breaks from the action. This would be a good place to share your ideas on how to welcome staff to the team, build rapport, inspire, and support them through the busy transitional period. This could also be a great place to share your favorite training activities, including icebreakers, teambuilders, or even outlines for your expectation-setting activities and first meetings with new employees.
So, whether you are a higher ed professional, or from some other category entirely, you’re invited to share your thoughts as a guest blogger. Please e-mail me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com this week if you are interested, and check back next week for our first guest column.
Today, you will notice that the navigation bar has changed, to give more information on Professional Development Programs available through HigherEdCareerCoach.Com. Please take a look if you are in the market for in-person or online training or coaching for individuals or teams in your organization. We offer some specific programs but can customize training (both online and in-person) to meet the needs of your organization.
You’ll also notice the addition of an Events tab and page, which will allow you to keep up with programs you might be able to participate in.
A series of small-group online web-classes is coming up. People already participating in the 8 Weeks to August Coaching program will be able to attend the paid sessions at no additional cost. For others, the webinars will cost $19/seat, which you can pay using a credit card via Paypal
Facilitated by Sean Cook (Starts at 11:00 AM EDT- Monday, August 2, 2010)
Are you interested in hiring a life or career coach? Register now for a free overview of my programs and services, along with the opportunity to ask questions and learn about how I work with clients to develop successful 1-on-1 coaching relationships. My speciality areas include: career coaching for people working in higher ed, preparing for graduate school application processes, and life/career transitions. I do resume preparation, mock interviews via phone and Skype, and coaching on career strategy. Please join me. I look forward to talking with you.
Bryan Koval recently transitioned to a new position at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Transition is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. In the past 3 weeks, I have resigned from an old job, started a new job, moved from rural central Pennsylvania to the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and begun living apart from my partner (with whom I have been living for the past 7 years). It has been a very up-and-down few weeks. The excitement of new opportunities at Carnegie Mellon University and in Pittsburgh has been tempered with the anxiety that goes along with opening up a new chapter in my career and personal life.
In a roundabout way, thinking about my current transition has helped me to reflect on our students and the important transitions that they experience while living matriculating through higher education. In many ways the business of higher education is all about transition. Each semester sees new students arriving on campus while others depart. During their time with us students choose majors, study abroad, take on leadership opportunities and learn more about who it is that they are, and who they hope to become. We are constantly surrounded by transition.
As you think about your role in higher education, how do you see yourself being a resource to your residents as they experience the many transitions that are a part of the college experience? Schlossberg (1995) defines transition as “any event, or non-event, that results in changed relationships, routines, assumptions, and roles.” By that definition, transitions are happening all of the time! Schlossberg identified four major sets of factors that influence how well a person can cope with transition (Evans, Forney, & Guido-DeBrito, 1998). Let’s identify those factors, and reflect on how we can help our students to manage transition effectively.
Situation: Important factors include the timing of the transition, the duration of the transition, and previous experiences with similar transitions. During a major change, individuals will also be dealing with concurrent stresses and questions about whether or not they feel in control during the transitions. Working closely with students on campus, we may have some real insight that our students would benefit from. We also function within the situation . . . but as someone on the periphery of the situation we may have some unique perspective on the situation.
Self: During transition, we think about who we are in terms of demographic characteristics (socioeconomic status, gender, etc.) and psychological resources. How has our background prepared us to manage this transition? As higher education professionals, we can play a role in helping students to know more about who they are through programming, conversation, and our relationships with each other.
Support: To manage a transition, individuals need to feel a sense of support. A supportive community is one of my favorite aspects of the work I do with students in residence halls and apartments. What can we do as higher education professionals to make sure that everyone in our community feels that they will receive affirmation, assistance, and honest feedback when they need it?
Strategies: To manage transition, you need a plan in order to proceed. When we talk to our students about their transitions (or when they come to use for mentoring and guidance), how can we help them to move forward in productive ways, while leaving it up to the student to decide how best to move forward?
As I come to the end of this blog post, it dawns on me that I have described Schlossberg’s theory meerly as advice for helping students. In reality, this would be a great theory to review if you supervise new staff members or are staying connected with individuals who are leaving your organization and moving on to new positions elsewhere. Best of luck as you transition for Fall 2010, with whichever events (or non-events) come along with that!
References:
Evans, N. J., Forney, D. S., & Guido-DiBrito, F. (1998). Schlossberg’s transition thoery. In Student development in college: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 107-122). San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Schlossberg, N.K., Waters, E.B., & Goodman, J. (1995). Counseling adults in transition (2nd ed.). New York: Springer.
Interested in reading more? This title is available at Amazon.Com. Purchase through the affiliate link below to support this site.
Work with Sean. I help higher ed professionals take control of their careers with tailored services including resume and CV development, LinkedIn profile optimization and networking strategy, interview coaching, and one-on-one career guidance.
