I am glad to be presenting on Monday at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST at the BreakDrink free fall conference. The topic will be “Mastering the Job Interview,” and it’s about getting in the right mindset to prepare for your job interview. An extended version of this presentation (and others like it) will be part of the Placement Partner hybrid coaching program that I am opening up shortly and that will continue through May.
This program is a “hybrid” mini-course for higher ed job seekers. Split into 25 sections, this program begins in December and goes through May, the traditional season for academic hiring for the upcoming academic year. There are self-paced activities that you can go through on your own on a Moodle group, and a forum where you can share your questions and ideas with other higher ed job seekers. You can add on webinars, resume coaching and assistance, e-mail coaching and one-on-one coaching.
There are three levels of participation:
Value edition-Moodle activities, plus occasional free online chats and call-in group coaching.
Standard edition-Everything in the Value edition, plus free admission to some webinars on job search and career-planning topics. (Value edition members can pay for those webinars they would like to attend.) Plus 2 sessions of online resume coaching and assistance, and e-mail coaching. ($300 for 180 days of access)
Personalized edition: Includes everything in the standard package, plus 6 sessions of 1-on-1 coaching between enrollment and the end of May. ($500 for 180 days of access.)
The Moodle group is shared between all levels of seekers, and the “Value Edition” is offered at the base price ($180). Users get access to the site for 180 days ($1/day).
To upgrade to the standard edition or personalized edition, participants will be given the options to add these on after registering for the Value edition. Just go to the “Overview of the Placement Partner Coaching Program” and subscribe using the PayPal buttons for the other editions. For upgrades, you have the choice to pay the entire amount, or to spread it out over 6 installments.
Tickets to the webinars will be issued as they are scheduled to participants in the Standard and Personalized editions, and members of the value edition will be offered the opportunity to purchase tickets to the webinars before sales are opened to the general public.
Please contact me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com if you have any questions.
This Friday on the Higher Ed Life and Careers Show, Life and Career Coach Sean Cook will be joined by special guest Andrew Henck who is tweeting ideas & thoughts on leadership, nonprofits, higher ed, politics, social media from a Gen Y perspective as @MillennialTweet and blogs about them on http://themillennialjourney.wordpress.com We’ll be talking about a variety of college transition issues, his blog, and the importance of the “bookends” of the college experience…transitioning to college from high school, and out to the wider world upon graduation.
I’ll also be talking a little about mind-mapping and revisiting last week’s episode with Mark Dykeman of the ThoughtWrestling blog. Earlier this week, I announced a mind-map-your-job-search contest to get your ideas on how you could use mind-mapping to plan your job search or your long-term career plan. I’ve decided to extend the contest due to low participation so far. You can sketch out your plan on a napkin and scan it in, do a Prezi, do a document, or something else. Do it your way, and send me the document or a link to wherever you have it posted on the web. I’m looking forward to seeing what ideas people have out there, and giving away a copy of Mark’s excellent e-book: Unstuck, Focused and Organized (affiliate link.)
I also plan to do a little catch up. I had chosen people to honor in September and October for my “Who-Do” awards, to recognize them for doing great things for higher ed and student affairs. But I never got around to announcing the names of the people I had selected or tell you why. So I am going to do so on the show. I am sure you are all on the edge of your seats!
Lastly, I am going to discuss a little about where the blogs and coaching programs are heading in the next few months, and how I am hoping to tweak my business model so that I can offer better content, more services, and keep costs for paid services in line with demand. I have a few ideas that I think are pretty interesting, and I’d love to get your thoughts.
Please listen in from the episode page or click on the episode badge below. You can call in to ask questions or make comments to (347) 989-0055 or via Skype click-to-talk by pressing the Blue Skype “S” logo once the show is on the air.
The hardest part of doing anything is just getting started.
If you are considering a job search this year, you probably all too aware that the hardest part of doing anything is just getting started. This can be especially true for projects that involve putting yourself out there in the public sphere and being judged.
As an academic job seeker, your job search may follow the academic cycle, with a majority of positions being posted by March, followed by interview periods from April to August, and start dates in August or September. So it’s important to a avoid stumbling out of the gate.
Mark Dykeman, creator of the Unstuck, Focused and Organized System
Mark Dykeman, my guest this morning at 11:00 a.m. on the Higher Ed Career Coach Show on BlogTalkRadio, has a good method for getting your plan together: mind-mapping. Mark is the creator of the blogs Thoughtwrestling and the Broadcasting Brain. I met him through Third Tribe (affiliate link), a membership site put together by Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan and Sonia Simone and dedicated to helping small business owners authentically market their products and businesses.
Mark is a well-known and well-connected social media entrepreneur, and a really nice guy. He’s known for helping people get unstuck, focused and organized, and he’s a strong proponent of the idea of mind-mapping to clear out your mental clutter, unlock your creativity, and move forward with new ideas and plans.
I recently bought his new product, Unstuck, Focused and Organized, because I’ve been looking for ways to get more organized and stay on task. I’ve been getting much busier lately, and needed some fresh perspectives on how to organize my ideas and thoughts. I liked it so much that I joined his affiliate program, and invited him to talk about how job seekers can use mind-mapping to move forward in their search.
In today’s BlogTalkRadio show, Mark and I will talk about using Mind-Mapping to et unstuck in your job search and plan your way forward. I was able to ask Mark a few initial questions ahead of time about his program and ways that job seekers could use his approach.
Unstuck, Focused and Organized: Mind-Mapping for Higher Ed Job Seekers
(Questions are in bold, Mark’s answers are inset and italicized.)
How could someone use mind-mapping to plan their career?
Mind mapping could be used in a number of different ways. For example, if there are different stages of your intended career and different milestones, you could use the mind map to examine each stage. Here’s a simple example: have major categories or branches of the mind map to correspond to different levels of corporate hierarchy:
consultant/team member
team leader
manager
director
vice-president
You could explore each role in detail, including key education requirements, work experience, networking, mentors, and so on. This would be a useful first step in coming up with a plan. You could also do something similar with the type of companies that you would want to work at as well, focusing on both functional experience and industry segment experience.
If you were planning a job search during the next year, how could mind-mapping help you focus your efforts?
There’s several different ways that you could plan your job search. You could conduct a SWOT analysis using a separate branch for each aspect. You could use a mind map to compare your skills and experience to different types of jobs about there: the mind map could help you find key skills to emphasize in your job search as well as important gaps or shortfalls to consider.
You could also use the mind map to explore all possible ways to network and search for the job, which is much better than firing resumes into the ether and hoping for the best.
What’s the best way to start?
The best way to start mind mapping, if you’ve never done it before, is to use a pencil and a huge piece of paper. Write your central or core idea that you want to explore in the center of the paper. Then start writing down every thought or idea that you can think of around the center of the paper. When you’ve gotten everything out that you can think of, take a few minutes and look at it. Look for connections between things. See if you can group similar things together into major categories. Draw lines between things that could be connected. Doodle and draw on it, if you feel like it, in ways that would be meaningful. Look for holes – things that are missing.
The reason for using a pencil? Because you’ll probably want to redraw the mind map after this first try!
We’ll discuss the features and benefits of Mark’s UFO program and different ways to use mind-mapping to plan your job search and your career in general. He’ll also announce a special promotion he’s running next week.
Please join us at 11 a.m. today (Friday, November 5) for the podcast, and call in with your questions and comments to (347) 989-0055 or via Skype click-to-talk.
My first job search was spring 2008 when I was just about to graduate from the Student Affairs in Higher Education master’s program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. At that time I essentially carpet bombed the field with job applications; I did a national job search and applied to over 40 institutions. It was too much to organize, it got to be too confusing keeping track of everything and everyone.
I managed to find the funding to attend The Placement Exchange in Boston and ACPA Placement in Atlanta. In all I managed to have 20 conference interviews, for those keeping count, thats about a 50% success rate. I was on my way to … disappointment. I was sitting on cloud nine, I interviewed with almost half of the schools I applied at. Well, those 20 interviews only resulted in two on-campus interviews: Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL and Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA. In the end I was offered and I accepted an entry-level position at Point Park University. Its ironic that I had to travel to Atlanta to interview with and accept a position from a school that was literally 5 miles from where I was living.
Now after a few years I decided that it was time to start looking for a new job. It was February 2010 and I was in the midst of job searching and this was my second time going the the student affairs job placement process. I knew I did not want to repeat my first experience, 40 applications, 20 interviews and 1 offer. I decided that I was going to narrow my job search to only one region: New England. I started looking at openings and thats when it hit me; I needed to update my resume and cover letter. It had been a while since I had to use my resume so I wasn’t sure where I should start.
Enter Sean Cook
I had been participating in the #SAchat on Twitter and introduced myself to Sean Cook. I learned that Sean had worked at Penn State and that he had just started his coaching business helping others with job searches, interview techniques, updating resumes and much more. Sean started offering a free support group to job searchers. In this group we were able to discuss a lot including expectations for placement conferences, interview dos and don’ts, resume tips and much more. It was during this free group that I decided to retain Sean’s help one-on-one. So I sent Sean a message and said I’ll pay you please help me!
At first I wasn’t sure what to expect. Here’s this guy that says he knows what he’s doing and here I am looking for help. Well it turns out that it was one of the best investments I made this year. I first started by talking about what I was afraid of and what concerned me. Then in our second session we jumped into interview techniques and reviewing my resume. The best thing we did was a mock phone interview. I’ve always felt I was a poor phone interviewer, Sean taught me several techniques to use during phone interviews. During this mock interview Sean asked some questions I have never heard before, some were really thought provoking and some were easy. At the end we talked about my answers and he provided a great critique. About a week later I was able to utilize the skills Sean taught me in an actual phone interview. Armed with these new skills I went into the phone interview confident and at the end I knew I rocked it.
Job Search: Part Deux
The major difference between my first job search and my second was focus. I was able to focus on the geographical area and with Sean’s help I learned to focus my energy on specific parts of the job search and not everything at once. Throughout my ACPA Placement experience and throughout my on-campus interviews I knew I had Sean as a resource, someone I could call for support anytime I needed him. My second job serach experience was so much better than my first. I had less applications submitted, but a higher percentage of conference interviews and more on-campus interviews. Clearly I had a better experience because halfway through one conference interview I was offered an on-campus interview!
One school I interviewed with was Western New England College (WNEC) in Springfield, MA. I had two good conference interviews so i was confident going to my on-campus interview. I arrived the night before my interview, I was picked up at the airport and dropped at the hotel by a WNEC Res Life staff member. That evening I decided to take a taxi to campus to walk around and get a true feel. I jumped in the cab and had a great conversation about the school and the area with the taxi driver. When we arrived at the campus the first think I noticed was the trees and the buildings. I noticed how quintessentially “New England” WNEC looked and felt. As I walked around, I noticed students playing frisbee, tennis, catch and just hanging outside with friends. Brick buildings, gazebos and lawns, these are things my previous campus didn’t have. I knew that evening I wanted to work at WNEC. I was so confident in myself that during my self-paced tour of WNEC I stopped in the bookstore and purchased a school pennant for my collection.
Ultimately I ended up being offered and accepting a job at WNEC. While I did the heavy lifting, by doing the interviewing and applying, it was Sean who helped me build the confidence needed to be successful.
John Mayo, Area Coordinator, Western New England College
John Mayo is the Area Coordinator for Traditional Housing at Western New England College. In addition to residence life, he has experience working in housing operations and student leadership development at very diverse campuses. Like many student affairs professionals, his family still doesn’t understand what he does, so he tells them that he teaches life skills to college students.
RescueTime is a great tool to help you get a handle on how you spend your time. If you are interested, sign up for the free acount through my referral link and I’ll earn two weeks of free RescueTime. Sign up for a paid account, and you’ll help me extend my account by 30 days. This is also a great way for you to get to use this tool, since referrals earn you free time. I’m sure that many of you will be interested after watching my tutorial video.
Also, if you are entrepreneurial at heart but struggle with marketing yourself, learning how to run business, or you just want to be immersed in social media and have the opportunity to learn first-hand from some great business minds, check out Third Tribe. They have an affiliate program, too, so if you sign up through my link, I will earn a commission.I have found the advice I get there to be worth several times the membership cost, and I can safely say that if I have to trim back on expenses, this will be among the last to go. The community there is awesome, and it goes way beyond the founders (Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan and Sonia Simone).
I hope you found this tour of RescueTime interesting and that you’ll give it a spin. It’s really been helping me, and I think it could help you, too. My best wishes to you as you find ways to rescue time and find more life in your work/life balance.
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.
I am glad to be presenting on Monday at 1 pm CST/2 pm EST at the BreakDrink free fall conference. The topic will be “Mastering the Job Interview,” and it’s about getting in the right mindset to prepare for your job interview. An extended version of this presentation (and others like it) will be part of the Placement Partner hybrid coaching program that I am opening up shortly and that will continue through May.
This Friday on the Higher Ed Life and Careers Show, Life and Career Coach Sean Cook will be joined by special guest Andrew Henck who is tweeting ideas & thoughts on 
