Manage The Ups-and-Downs of Covid-19 | Twenty Imperatives To Maintain Careers Quantum Leaps In 2021

The beginning of 2021 sees no abating of the Covid-19 pandemic and one’s determination to meet set goals can detour from key priorities. Periodically, it pays to step back and consider a bird’s-eye view of your trajectory so you can stay on target. This allows you to take stock in where you were, where you are now and where you want to steer during the challenges in 2021. Here are Twenty Imperatives to guide you as you map a Careers Quantum Leap Pathway in 2021.

1. Signup For A Package Deal. If you sign up for success, you sign up for roadblocks. It’s a package deal. You probably have felt defeated, and you will again. As long as you’re still trying and haven’t quit, you haven’t failed. Do your best, but give yourself slack to stumble and make mistakes. Be chancy, break a few rules and leave your job better than your found it. Join the human race and accept the fact that just because you make a mistake or get behind doesn’t make you the mistake. After you slip-up, forget or miss the mark, fix it, forgive yourself and move on because you signed up for a package deal.
2. Stack “Cans” Instead Of “Cannot’s. Check the disgruntled attitude if you bring it to the frustrations of WFH. Complaining when things go south doesn’t fix anything and only makes matters worse. Learn to bounce back from setbacks and bad news by stacking your “cans.” Avoid blowing things out of proportion; look for gains in losses and the upside of a downside situation; focus on the solution, not the problem; pinpoint opportunity in challenge and step back from roadblocks and brainstorm how to turn them into steppingstones.
3. Adopt The Perspective Less Taken. There’s always two sides to every story. Your ability to put yourself in a coworker’s shoes and see her or his perspective is a powerful tool. The eighteen inches from your head to your heart is the longest journey you’ll ever take. But empathy connects you to the feelings of others, makes you a more compassionate colleague and frees you from your own narrow thoughts and snap judgments. It neutralizes anger and frustration and helps you recognize that everybody you encounter at work is struggling with their own inner burdens—the same as you are.
4. Put Down Your Gavel. You, like everybody you work with, have that kick-butt judge in your head that bludgeons you for slip-ups. It tells you how worthless, selfish or inadequate you are. Making judgments is how you make sense of the world, but it can sabotage your career especially in extraordinary times. Coming down hard on yourself after frustrations and defeat undermines your success. Put away your gavel. After a letdown, substitute your kinder, supportive voice and amp up your job satisfaction, performance and productivity.
5. Learn To Say No Instead Of Yo. If you’re the kind who agrees to every opportunity that comes along, you could be undermining your productivity. Learning to say no is a form of self-care. When you always say yes to requests, you automatically say no to yourself. And you’re not working freely, possibly overloading yourself and headed for burnout, which truncates your career. Recognize that saying no instead of yo is a strength, not a weakness. And if a colleague says no, accept no instead of push for yo.
6. Shy Away From Jumping To Conclusions. Sometimes you might think what your boss or team member thinks about you is what you think. That’s called mind-reading—jumping to negative conclusions with thoughts that pop into your head. When you do this, you sell yourself a bill of goods. You save yourself a lot of unnecessary misery by questioning your automatic thoughts that have little to do with truth and waiting until the hard evidence is in before drawing negative conclusions.
7. Stick Your Neck Out . Instead of fleeing from the pandemic’s unknown, stretch into the unfamiliar and unexpected. The nature of the Covid-19 is uncertainty. It’s one of life’s paradoxes. Stepping outside your comfort zone, risking your neck and embracing uncertainty infuse more oxygen into your profession. Pinpoint that place in your career where you’ve been hiding and stick your neck out. What edge can you go to WFH today? What unpredictable bridge can you jump off to sprout your wings? What limb can you reach to get to the fruit of the tree?
8. Be A Goodwill Hunter. Be as careful about what you say about coworkers as you are about what you say about yourself. Gossiping, badmouthing and back stabbing are the ingredients for career suicide. Goodwill while WFH is about being a good steward, committed to selfless service for the common good. Think about what you want colleagues to think and say about you and reciprocate the favor. Looking for and dispensing goodwill—respect, caring and positive regard—boosts morale, builds friendly and cooperative connections and increases job satisfaction and productivity especially in these extraordinary times.
9. Be For Yourself. Are you on your own side? Do you look out for your best interests? Can you advocate for your special needs WFH? It’s important to be for yourself—not against others, but for yourself. If not, then who will be for you? When you fall short of a goal (and you will), refrain from scolding yourself or putting yourself down. Scale career obstacles by being true to yourself, learn what challenge you can rise from and never, ever abandon yourself to participate in someone else’s underestimation of your ability.
10. Curb Your Perfection. In its clutches, perfection tightens you in a stranglehold, injects its rigidity into your bloodstream and chokes the flow of spontaneous and creative ideas. Un-curbed, it causes you to set unrealistic goals, try too hard and over focus on shortcomings. It blinds you to your strengths and from generating your best work. When you sidestep perfectionism and set realistic WFH standards for yourself, job performance and productivity skyrockets.
11. Shun People Pleasing. We all want to be acknowledged and appreciated for our work. But if you trim yourself to suit everybody else, you whittle yourself down to dust. You’re the sculptor of your career. Imagine a huge lump of clay in front of you as you clutch a sculpting knife. Instead of handing the knife to someone else, you carve your career to your own true form. Relieve yourself of the chronic habit of proving yourself first and pleasing yourself last. Get in the mode of pleasing yourself first and proving yourself second.
12. Get Cozy With Uncertainty. If you’re like most people, you count on certainty and predictability. During the pandemic, you want to know how things will happen in your career. When certainty is upended, it can be frightening. Your natural need for predictability doesn’t fit the nature of the unknown, which is full of ups-and-downs. The mindset of “maybe” loosens up the need to have your job tailored to your expectations. Getting comfortable with uncertainty prepares you for the inevitable curve balls that will surely be thrown your way.
13. Extinguish Your Blame Thrower. How often do you blame the WFH challenges or coworkers for your shortcomings? How many times have you fired your blame thrower on innocent bystanders? When things don’t go your way, do you look inside and check the expiration date for the true reasons? The mark of the consummate professional is someone who can take ownership for their slip-ups (without self-judgment), admit their responsibility to colleagues then course correct and move on.
14. Perform In Line With Your Values. Don’t do anything at work that you wouldn’t tell your loved ones. Even if it’s something no one will ever know, you will know. And you have to live with yourself in your own skin. Whatever your actions are at work, make sure they’re in line with your personal values in order to adapt to the new normal with confidence and peace of mind.
15. Acknowledge Your Positive Attributes.  It is important because we tend to ignore our positive attributes and clobber ourselves with negatives. It’s important for you to recognize your limitations without dropping your head in your hands. But you can’t have an honest picture of yourself if you don’t affirm the positive aspects. And that means your list of tallcomings equals your list of shortcomings.
16. Create Micro-Chillers. Always have a “to-be list” in the form of micro-chillers alongside your “to-do list.” A mere five minutes of solitude, reflection and meditative breathing offsets the frenzied workday, relieves stress, enhances mental clarity and loosens physical tensions. A quiet mind puts on the brakes of the comings-and-goings in your head so when you return to your desk, you’re filled with rich, innovative and productive ideas.
17. Send Self-Doubt Packing. The new normal is a time when doubt can take up residence in your head and eat you alive. Doubt casts a large shadow over truth. Unless you recognize it, doubt darkens your capabilities. Watch it with a dispassionate eye, much like you would observe a blemish on your hand. Hold it at arm’s length, and you will step out of doubt’s shadow into a clearer vision of the self-truths about your WFH possibilities.
18. Cultivate Resilience. You have the strength to withstand daily job challenges and obstacles—the kind journalist Judith Viorst wrote about: “Strength is the capacity to break a Hershey bar into four pieces with our bare hands and eat just one of the pieces.” In the same way an acorn contains within it a mighty oak, you contain deep within you roots of strength whether you recognize them or not. Get in touch with those roots of stamina so your acorn can sprout into a giant oak to withstand current challenges. And your deep roots can never be reached by a hard frost.
19. Cop An Attitude Of Gratitude. Whatever you focus on expands. Always wanting more increases the feeling that your work life is lacking, and you want more and more to satisfy the hunger. The secret sauce to job satisfaction is to want and express gratitude for what you already have. Naming all the things you’re grateful for—the people, situations and accomplishments that make your work life meaningful and worthwhile—suddenly expands with deeper appreciation, abundance and fulfillment.
20. Celebrate Ups And Downs Equally. Celebrate the accomplishments and accolades in your job. But don’t take the highs anymore seriously than the lows. And don’t take the lows anymore seriously than the highs. When you stay off the roller coaster which will surely come your way, and welcome the lows and highs equally, you don’t suffer the unpleasant effects of the lows. And you’re able to steer the course of your career in the direction you want to go and find the happiness and success you seek.

Three Tips On How To Stand Out In A January Job Search |Corpusvec TotalTalents Communications

January is usually one of the best months to launch a job search because many companies begin a fresh and more aggressive wave of hiring in January to match the business plans they set for the new year.  

In addition, unlike a fall job search that is sandwiched between job market slowdowns over the summer and holiday season, starting your job search in January gives you several months to make progress in networking and interviewing without losing momentum.

However, while those are the trends you can expect in a typical January job market, this past year has been anything but normal. The global pandemic and economic fallout have shaken up what are typically reliable hiring trends, making it even harder to determine what to expect from a January job search this year.

January Job Market Trends

While the rollout of a vaccine has renewed hope for a more robust job market in 2021, employment gains appear to be slowing, stemming from renewed restrictions and concern about how the ongoing spike in COVID-19 cases will impact an already battered economy. 

January hiring activity will vary widely by industry, with some industries such as technology or healthcare hiring at the same or even increased rates from previous years, while other industries such as restaurants, retail, travel and higher education will still bear the brunt of the downturn.

The size of the candidate pool vying for the same jobs will also be larger this January, with US unemployment levels at 6.7% up from 3.6% at this time last year. Overall, it’s a fair assumption that competition for jobs this month will be fierce.

How To Stand Out

If you are launching or continuing a JOBSEARCH in January, it is more important than ever to have a plan to stand out among the crowded field of candidates. Here are three tips to help you focus your attention this month on the best ways to attract and convert new job opportunities.

1. Concentrate your early efforts on a smaller list of companies

When you’re anxious to kick off your job search, you may instinctually begin by applying to any and every option you see on LinkedIn or other job sites. This often feels like the fastest and easiest way to get your résumé in front of recruiters and it provides an immediate spark of hope and anticipation.

However, by taking the time to first research and create a list of target companies that you want to work for, you will net a higher return on your efforts because applying aimlessly to jobs online has a notoriously low probability of producing a real job lead. This is especially true in the month of January, when most recruiters are swamped with new applicants.

Instead, start by drafting a list of up to ten companies you want to target in your first wave of job searching activity. To gather ideas for this list, research the top companies in your industry, field or location as well as lists of the best employers for categories that matter to you such as Most Innovative, Best for Working Parents, Most Inclusive, etc. Then, run your list by at least one or two mentors or industry contacts to get their perspective on the cultures you are targeting or to uncover any companies you may have accidentally overlooked.

This doesn’t mean that you have to ignore online postings all together, as they may help you identify other (especially smaller or less well-known) employers you may want to consider. Just make sure you are actually targeting those companies and building out your network there versus simply applying online and hoping you’ll stand out in the pack.

2. Don’t be afraid to refresh stale or dormant connections

Once you’ve determined which companies you plan to target first, you need to turn your attention toward finding networking contacts within each of your target companies.

It is through these networking activities that you will receive referrals that help you get on the radar of a recruiter or hiring manager, or gain the inside connection on a job before it is posted online.

In a perfect world, you would embark on your job search with the confidence that you have a large, diverse network primed for you to reach out to because you’ve been proactively maintaining those connections. But many people find themselves doubting the power of their network and fearing that many of their professional relationships have grown stale over time.

Reaching out to old contacts, especially those you have not kept in touch with, can feel intimidating. But January is one of the best months to reconnect with lost friends and colleagues because many people are also thinking about their own career path during this time of year and are often more eager to network as a result.

Don’t rule out asking anyone in your network for help making an introduction into one of your target companies simply because they aren’t in the same industry, live in a different location or lack seniority. While you may be correct in judging their professional network, they may instead have a family member or close friend that can help refer you.

Throughout January, work systemically to get on the radar of one to two hiring managers and one recruiter at each of your targets. But don’t overdo it: reaching out to too many people in the organization at the same time can backfire. Focus on a few people this month and wait to try additional contacts later.

3. The best time to shape a job to your preferences is after first-round interviews

This may surprise you, but it often happens that the great job that someone ultimately lands is not the one they were first contacted about.

At some point during your hiring process, a company may decide to create a new position for you or tweak the current opening to better fit your skills, compensation needs or career goals.

On top of the professional growth you hope to gain in your new job, you may also have personal circumstances that impact the parameters of your search, such as a need to work permanently (or for the foreseeable future) from home, an inability to relocate or a desire for a flexible schedule.

While these are all valid work life needs, you may not want to focus on them in your initial discussions with a recruiter or hiring manager unless the job has a component that you view as an absolute deal breaker.

But if there is even a 5% chance that you’d consider the job as described, make the decision to learn more about the opportunity, and give the company a little time to see why you’d be an asset to their business before expressing your concerns.

This is especially important during a busy hiring month like January, when recruiters can quickly move on to the next qualified applicant instead of taking the time to inquire internally if the job might qualify for a higher title or whether you could commute from another office location.

Leave your options open as much as possible during your first-round discussions, and then be sure to express any desires to alter the role before engaging in second-round interviews. By that point, the hiring manager should have some sense of what you are bringing to the table and will be able to consider what flexibility, if any, they have for the position.

The key to getting and staying on the radar for job opportunities in January is to have a personal contact to reach out to. This way, even if that job doesn’t move forward, you will be better positioned to follow up on future leads with that company.

While a January job market is full of potential, these are not the easiest economic conditions in which to look for a job. Yet, many people will indeed persevere and land great jobs over the next few months. With hard work and dedicated focus, you can be one of them.