Coach sends Kramer on embarrassing wrong turn...what’s your wrong career turn?

Can you believe what happened to this guy? A speed machine that with no doubt was the best on his field and deserved gold, but as the end of the race approached he got the wrong signal from his coach to do what got him disqualified! It was a very expensive mistake that cost him not just a gold medal but some important financial losses. What if he had kept doing what he was doing already at his best?
Have you taken a wrong turn when you’ve almost got it? Though, I am a very open minded individual I coach myself – and clients – not to be blindly folded by others’ opinions and connect to one's inner voice to know when to follow your instincts and not somebody else’s. So, where to draw the line between what others tell you and your own instinct?

There are so many different stories related to what people wonder only if they had made a different career choice. Speed is key for the ambitious kind of people and making it to the top at a certain point for them is all what matters to win. For others it is about wondering what if they had not rejected a job offer that opened a wonderful career opportunity for the one that took it. But many are still wondering what they would have done if life had given them apples instead of lemons.

How many of you live in the ‘if’ of a moment?

What matters to me is the clarity of a vision that allows you to take some calculated chances with the unknown. Entrepreneurs have a business plan while individuals have their own career/life plans. Do you have one?

Do you know where you are going; therefore, are you ready to take risks and decisions that may get you closer to that destination?

Are you willing to invest your life, your time, your money more wisely, so then you can afford to live the triumph and growing experience that comes out of your decisions?

Because it is better to live up to your standards and your dreams than keeping your life wondering whether you could have done it differently if ….

Most of my clients when talking to me wonder what if they had come to me a year before, what if they had listened to really qualified people on their field instead of their well intentioned friends, what if they had began doing networking at the beginning of their career transition instead of relying mostly on the web, what if they had taken the time to understand the ‘host Country’ business culture in order to adjust their brand effectively, what if…

What if you stop wondering now and take the courage to assume the consequences of your decisions and control your life and career from now on.

What if you decide you do not have all the answers and start looking for mentors and/or coaches to facilitate your success in that journey?

What if when you go to your network you have a level of clarity in your own brand that allows yourself to sell it effectively?

What if you have a job search strategy that combines multiple resources aligned to a vision linked to a unique brand?

What if you take the time not just to ask, ask, ask to your network but decide to actually share best practice with them and give back?

‘People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.
I don't believe in circumstances.
The people who get on in this world
are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want.
And if they can’t, make them.’               
                                        - George Bernard Shaw

Google me, Google you...Ah, ha!

One of the first things I do when getting a potential client is to Google his/her name to see what comes out of it. It is not as boring as you could expect. It’s been an amazing, surprising, shocking and even fun – at times – process.


Recruiters are using social media to look for passive candidates and to even screen a bit beyond what’s on paper to what actually those potential candidates may be like.

Do you have any control on your online professional brand?

A lot of people tend to think that celebrities are the ones in TV, but not anymore. Internet and social media have knocked our walls down to expose a lot of our private matters to the public scrutiny – if not careful -.

The first time I actually ‘googled’ myself I remember finding only my Bachelor’s degree thesis. I just could not believe there was nothing a bit more exciting than that. A few years later and I am in control.

So, what’s out there for you… or not? How does that personal piece may expose your profile? Hopefully, you are doing Ok so far, so good but you can take some precautions and there are some hints I’d like to share with you:

1. Google yourself. Play a bit with your name on the web at www.googlism.com and/or www.pipl.com.

2. Analyze your results and try to measure relevance on them. Is there too much information out there, well, then that means is time to start restricting the privacy setting on your social pages (e.g. Facebook) as well as the access your contacts have of your pictures and personal information. Do you have nothing? Think if that is what you want and then,

3. Market yourself at your best. Create a professional profile out there to sell your brand effectively. How about LinkedIn or Nayms? What have you got in Flickr? Believe me when I tell you that there are things out there that some wouldn’t want the world to see so freely. But, having said this, there are things you do want the world to know.

4. Control your Brand. Google results are no accident as many may think. You can actually create and set your distinctiveness straight in the web. You can even rate your presence and ‘play’ with it.

5. Do not obsess with it. I’ve heard there are people out there even paying for their names not to ever show up in any website listing results.

6. Google your potential hiring manager and interviewer. What comes around goes around. Find their professional profiles and affiliations. Wouldn’t it be great to find you share a strong affinity that is not listed in your resume before that interview?
Do not underestimate the power of Social Media and its potential to get you closer to your Vision.

“How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?”

– Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com)

How are you supposed to prepare for a telephone screening?

Yes, today is a bright and shiny day in your job transitioning journey. You’ve got an e-mail to schedule a telephone screening/exploratory talk to the hiring manager/recruiter of that company you really want to work for. You wish it was a face-to-face talk, don’t you? You’ll probably have no way to get reactions over the phone as there is not a face to read in front of you. You may be nervous that your accent may come too strong for the interviewer. But, you want to be prepared.

Here are some tips that could facilitate your success on this matter:

1. Show energy and enthusiasm through your voice. As the interviewer will not see you, your voice will be your main resource to sell your brand. Having said this, remember to be careful not to over do it and mindful on your volume and environment under which you’ll have this talk. If you are a visual person, have your resume and charts with your highlighted achievements in front of you. Sometimes the only info you’ll be asked for is the one already reflected in your resume which makes easy to handle the conversation, but some other times the recruiter may want to inquire on a particular set of competencies required for the job and you must be ready to perform at your best during the telephone screening process by providing clear examples that demonstrate you are effectively the person for the job.

2. Minimize/avoid interruptions before they happen, so then it is easy to hear you. Get that beautiful dog somewhere else, so its barking is not annoying for your interlocutor during the conversation.

3. Keep yourself 100% in the moment! It is important to ensure it is a good time for you to talk to that interviewer. If the call comes without any notice, feel free to provide a very business related excuse to re-schedule it at a better time and ask for a phone number or e-mail to call back. You do not want that beautiful child to make baby noises in the middle of a job screening talk and you do not want to be distracted by the fact that the most undesired interruption may ruin your moment at anytime.

4. Use clear diction. It is more obvious over the telephone and can affect the interviewer's perception of your professional/executive image. If English is your second language, please do not rush in responding. Speak at a slower speed, so then the right words come to your mind and get to make it effectively to your mouth. It also gives you a little bit of a break to gain confidence in your message and articulate your response effectively.

5. Request contact information. If you don't have the interviewer's contact information, be sure to request their email address, so that you can send them a thank you e-mail.

Prepare, prepare, and prepare to sell your Brand! Remember as well to ask for a job description in advance of that telephone screening in order to ensure you understand the job requirements and how they relate to your background and competencies

There are some common questions you can expect to get and role playing with a career coach is a wonderful way to get ready to be at your best.

Best Success!

"You must know that in any moment a decision you make can change the course of your life forever: the very next person stand behind in line or sit next to on an airplane, the very next phone call you make or receive, the very next movie you see or book you read or page you turn could be the one single thing that causes the floodgates to open, and all of the things that you've been waiting for to fall into place.” - Anthony Robbins

Mom, do you have to go to work?

Lately, I’ve been getting more job transitioning Moms looking to get back to work. There are the ones whose super domestic engineering duties are almost gone; therefore, they’re looking forward to transfer their skills into an office environment. On the other hand, there are the Moms whose financial household situation is requiring them to do what they know how to do best: multiple tasking between a job and the duties of raising a family.

I am a true fan of Moms and their working potential as they probe constantly their amazing commitment to do the job that needs to be done while organizing multiple priorities into a scheduled scheme of tasks that generate tangible results.


I think our society has evolved and it’s getting a deeper understanding on the transferable skills Moms have to offer to this job market; however, the market is tougher for everyone these days as there are less jobs for more qualified people. This element has an impact in the emotional side of many transitioning professionals and Moms returning to work are not the exception. I have listened to their worries about their adequate offer to the market (e.g. do I have what it takes?) or not having enough skills to sell (e.g. I may not be that qualified after all). At the end, professional branding’s clarity with a vision is the key to nail it.


40 percent of American women are now the primary earners in a household and this number keeps growing, though, we all know there are obvious salary disparities in what women make vs. men doing the same job.


The chances are most Moms out there are actually adding further value in their activities beyond the Mom duties by doing fund raising and volunteering at a local non-profit group or PTA. Knowing what to do with it and how to capitalize your resume is essential.


Highlight the competencies that you have demonstrated on these volunteering activities with no embarrassment or apologetic sense such as:

•  Developed a donor prospect list of individuals and groups with the capacity and propensity to give for further research while rating prospects in categories of giving potential in order to plan solicitations (Did you organize all the previous donors and worked on that master list for this year’s event? Well, here you go!)
• +25% contributions’ increase in less than a year by leading a fund raising drive for a +800 community members (It may be you actually organized a successful school fund drive)
• Designed and conducted training programs for +50 young volunteers using various training methodologies in order to increase fund raising events’ success (you have led and facilitated a meeting with all volunteers to go through expectations, roles and accountabilities, as well as deliverables and safety procedures to be kept during the event…isn’t this training?)

The point is to focus in what you have and not what you may think you are missing because the chances are that if you own your Brand, then you’ll be able to land an offer by networking yourself effectively among your contacts.


It is not a matter of luck but a matter of self-confidence, branding, networking and vision to succeed.


“The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”- W.R. Wallace


Your coach,
 
Mariela

What a lovely accent, where are you from?

If you are like most, you may be flattered by the compliment and replied back with no second though on your country of origin, but….Oh, well…
Interviewers are not those mean people looking to get you at your worst as some may think. These are folks that are looking to fill job requirements in order to deliver what is asked from them, so they can meet their client's performance expectations. They need the BEST individual they can find to do the job, don’t they? But who are those so-called ‘top quartile’ candidates? Are the best candidates those that meet the job requirements or the ones that resemble the interviewers’ personal traits?

The challenge for the recruiter is to instill in hiring managers an objective sense to select that PERFECT candidate for a job; however, some may fall into illegal questioning to get the answer they need for the job requirement they have.

But what do you do when you are faced with a situation like that? Do you attack the interviewer for illegal questioning or do you play a smart act?

Let’s say you are asked: Where are you from? The right line of thought is that they should not care about your nationality but your ability to work for any employer in the US. You could volunteer or not your Country of origin (though, you shouldn’t feel forced to it) but the best response would be the one satisfying the job requirement which is your legal status to work in the United States.

One of my favorites is hearing how some may actually intend to compliment the family they are guessing you have, so then you fall for it and volunteer details on your kids, etc. Don’t! Even if the interviewer does not have a purposeful intention to discriminate against you wanting to be friendly, the chances are that once the screening is done and the decision is between you and Joe Doe, well, your personal cards may play well against you.

Be mindful when you go to an interview. You are going to sell your Professional Brand at your best. Your objective is to demonstrate your competencies by providing clear examples of your added value, so then you can be considered as the candidate for the job. You are not there to make a new friend but to position yourself at the top of the pile.

Don’t be someone you are not and do not fall into a ‘pleasing attitude’ under the belief you will impress the potential employer and get the job.

It is not just how legal the interviewer may be but how honest you are being to yourself and the potential hiring organization in wanting to give your best to them in order to add value and move your career forward.

It is great to be prepared and understand the legalities of the interviewing process in the US but it is even greater to assume your own set of values and expectations in order to match them with the best possible ‘qualified’ potential employers out there.

A good recruiter knows the difference between the authentic candidate and the one that ‘fakes the act’ to get the job. But an experienced job seeker knows how to distinguish ethical job probing questions Vs. the illegal ones.

Call it a ‘blink’ instinct or the voice of the experience.

So, go on and prepare for that interview with the best you’ve got to offer and the level of awareness to handle those illegal set of questions you may – or not –face, but be authentic in your promise of value.

'The most important words that have helped me in life-when things have gone right, or when things have gone wrong-are Accept Responsibility. . . Dream, act and lead. '  - Billie Jean King

Let's Play Tag!

I am a Latino, a female, a minority and an alien…aren’t those tags so much fun to live by? Well, only if you want to.

When I moved to the US I was only me, Mariela Tinoco-Aramburu, but then it hit me that I may have become someone else once I started getting some Diversity and Inclusion training related to the whole legal and cultural aspects as per the differences and commonalities we all share (or not). Woao! I was shocked! I also started getting questions related to my professional knowledge as whether I knew things that were pretty common HR knowledge unrelated to my nationality. I could write a separate entry on my blog including all the ‘silly’ questions, comments and huge tagging I felt myself trapped by when I was living under my first year induction in a country characterized by its diversity.

More than 9 years experiencing the presuming new me and I’ve found quite a level of comfort in the attributes I’ve chosen to give to each of my tags. Here I go:

 Latino: Undetermined race not given by color or language. Alive and diverse all Latinos come from an extensive region with a variety of countries that sometimes share a lot of cultural values and some other times have not even the language in common. Winter and summer can be experienced or not. Poverty or richness. Happiness or sadness. Everything in Latin America is a matter of choice (not that different from anywhere else, don’t you think?).

 Female: A wonderful genetic combination that happens to some amazing people called women. It comprises a variety and out-of-the-box category that it is impossible to tag into any other self-described attribute but the one given in the biology class.

 Minority: A group that is not numerically bigger than another one. A growing number of people with the power to make sustainable changes in our society.

 Alien: It is work in progress. A person from ‘somewhere else’ not to be taken with fear. An explorer looking for a better life, seeking a dream and contributing to the fun diversity of our society with its own differences. A real barrier breaker. Innovative, brave and determined to make it.

What tags have you identified for yourself? Introverted or Extroverted? Emotional or Analytical? Do they trap your potential or move you forward to success? Do you consider yourself pre-determined and self-contained by a set of categories defined by someone else or have you chosen to live your life by your own chosen standards?

I couldn’t resist the urge to re-invent the definitions given to tags as life probes constantly that nothing is like it seems and how my grandmother would say: ‘the world is upside down’. It opens all sorts of possibilities to explore the life you have always wanted to live if you give it a try. Make your own definitions and get-out-of-the box!

Your life, your tag definition and your ultimate choice! Let's play!

Your Coach,
Mariela

P.S. For those looking for the legal information on how to deal with interviewing illegal questions, wait for a future entry on that matter coming soon!

Is your resume 'too oversized' to fit anywhere?

Have you heard the news on Kevin Smith ‘ejected’ from a Southwest Airlines' airplane due to his size? It is everywhere. CNN, Yahoo News, BBC and almost everyone else is talking about it. He planned his trip by booking two seats on the airplane but there was only one available and when he took it, he sat properly getting his seat belt on as required, but still the flight attendants did not consider it met the airline regulations to sit on it, reason why he was ‘ejected’.

What if they were talking about your resume? Is it oversized? Is it being rejected by the corporate job boards’ screening systems? There are two perspectives I can think of when figuring an ‘oversized’ resume.

1. TMI: How much detail are you putting into it? I wonder if you would invite someone on a second date if getting TOO MUCH INFORMATION on the first one. Same thing happens to resumes. Yes, there is such a thing as TMI on them. A recruiter does not need to know every single thing you’ve done but what relates to the job opening. Even better, what about using your resume to actually advertise the best that your professional brand has to offer? When we are watching TV commercials we just get a snapshot of a product based on what the advertiser has defined the interest of the audience may be. Be Creative. Do not copy and paste your friend’s resume. Do you want to be an ‘ACME’ Resume or the real deal?
2. Length: How many pages are we talking about? I’ve got clients that come to me worrying that the ‘resume’ seems to be 5 pages too long. What do you think?

A recruiter does not give generally more than 5-10 seconds attention spam by resume once it gets to her hands. What can you placed at the beginning of that resume to catch the recruiter’s attention even more than that?

1. A clear objective, summary and career highlights would do you a favor. Do not tell me what anyone else does but what your brand is all about. What makes you different from the competition? What makes you not just right for the job but the best there is out there to be found?
2. Please make it relevant. I do not want to know all the tasks performed on each job but the outcomes, added value you provided due to your performance to the organizations you’ve worked for.
3. Keep it simple. Be mindful to what the market is looking for and what you’ve got to sell to it. Get that reality check. It may be you need an upgrade. I had a client whose profile was fantastic but after I performed a job market analysis on her case, we realized she was missing key software knowledge to get that ‘dream job’. She was disciplined enough to get certified. She highlighted that element properly on her newer resume version. No much later, she landed the kind of job she was truly looking for.

You can actually be strategic about your resume once it is aligned to your Brand values and distinctive elements. If you nail what’s best in yourself, by working not just on a snapshot you can reflect on that piece of paper, but in the unique positioning statement you’ll sell to your network, then the chances are you won’t be oversized but perfect to a market that is just waiting for you to grab the opportunity.

 
“You've got to be success minded. You've got to feel that things are coming your way when you're out selling; otherwise, you won't be able to sell anything.”
Benjamin Jowett (British Scholar)

Are you hiking straight to the top or just hanging in there? (A very personal story)

Some years ago I was invited to go to a hiking trip to Mount Kenya in Africa. I could not refuse an invitation like that while I kept thinking how anyone like me could make it to the top. I had 7 months to prepare and get in shape for the big trip. Then, September 11 happened and the world as we knew it collapsed as fear grew big time among travelers. Still, we took a leap of faith and decided to go telling just a couple of close relatives and not even our parents.

Any professional hiker – which I can assure you I am not! – can tell you how important it is that you pack the right stuff. Not too much, not junk, dehydrated foods that you can cook easily on a camping stove, healthy energizing snacks, proper clothes and the best shoes you can find not to kill your feet.

So then, we went for adventure ready to take anything with our hearts and cameras. I felt ready but still had serious doubts I could get to the top. I trained at my best with a personal trainer, lifted weights twice a week, ran 5-6 miles a day, used the treadmill, ate healthy and had the best legs I’ve ever had. Ready or not, there I went!

Once we got to the entrance of Mount Kenya National Park I realized how scared I was. It truly looked like Jurassic Park and it was raining so badly that we had to stay with our backpacks sitting under the little guard house at the Entrance Gates waiting for the rain to clear a little in order to set our very basic camp. No luxuries allowed as we had a tight budget.

While sitting there pretending relaxation and excitement I just felt the urge to go back home, I thought of all the failure stories, the tourists killed by buffalos, snakes and all the horrifying images that Discovery Channel had had the brilliance to share with its audience. Still, I smiled and tried to picture the unique feeling of getting to the top of a high mountain.

Before I knew it, it was the day after and we began our hiking deciding not to wait for our guide as the path seemed very clear and easy to follow. It was truly a magnificent Rainy Forrest, a path surrounded by the biggest trees I’d seen in my life with the animal sounds you can only imagine in a well made documentary.

We walked for a couple of hours until my worse nightmare crossed in front of us: Buffalos!!!! I stopped paralyzed with fear remembering that they supposedly do not attack you unless they are alone. My husband did what every macho man would have done which was trying to scare them away with some well calculated screams, but before he did, he warned me to run fast and try to climb a tree if buffalos decided to attack us. The buffalos did not seem to respond well as they got ready to attack, and before I knew it, I was running fast and furious to the closest tree I could find even before my husband gave me the sign. He offered to climb the tree first, so he could help me out once in the closest branch but I quickly rejected asking him to back off for me to go first. The truth? I fell like a sack of potatoes and I cried for the ending of my life. However, once I turned my head I did not see the buffalos anywhere around as they had indeed decided we were not that scary anyway and disappear into the rainy forrest. Lesson learned: We waited for our experienced guide.

Once we all met, we reinitiated our hiking with hopes we wouldn’t be featured in the discovery channel or a Hollywood movie. We made it to second camp and decided to use the basic collective cabins instead of our tents being warned not to leave the door open under the risk of getting our food stolen by monkeys.

On our second day, we were welcomed by a much harder trail as it actually disappeared in the middle of the mud and the water flowing downhill under the stormy rain. Three hours into it and my legs felt like broken into pieces, my arms were weak as I tried to make my way by pulling branches and whatever could help me to drag myself further towards the very wanted top. At that moment, my husband asked me in his sweetest voice: ‘honey, would you like us to go back or keep going? It’s your call’. At that moment, I was faced with all my fears, my hard moments of hard training and a choice that would lead me to the top of a wanted dream or to a warm bath at the Naro Moru River Lodge. What did I do? I kept going for quite some good extra hours until we made it!!!! Yes, I actually was able to make it to the Teleki Lodge at 14200 feet!!!! Hurrah! I couldn’t believe it! I was actually that woman wearing dirty hiking clothes in the middle of nowhere having a lifetime adventure.

I was exhausted and freezing cold. My husband couldn’t wait to get to the real top: Point Lenana. So, I was faced with the same question again: 'Do you want to go for Point Lenana tomorrow at 3 am or hang around Teleki?'.

That was a difficult choice that took me just few minutes to reply: I will hang in here! So, I stayed and I did not reach the real top.

So, does it matter? It’s been +8 years since we made that trip and I consider it one of the peak moments of my life. The probe that when you want something, you prepare, you set your mind and your heart to it and then, you go, go, go and keep going until you make it. I may not have reached the snowy Point Lenana but I made it much higher to where I’d ever dreamed of. I made it to that forgotten corner in my heart that treasured the childhood dreams and converted them in adulthood adventures. I made it to the image of the person I can be whenever I want it to be. I created the amazing possibility of repeating the story for the rest of my life stretching my own self-imposed boundaries out of any comfort zone to the adventures that lie in front of me to be explored and the tops to be reached while I may hang in there for a little while between them.

Go for your dreams.

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream”.

C.S. Lewis.

P.S. Oh! The picture above is the Teleki Lodge. A day there feels like touching the clouds with your feet still on Planet Earth.

What's luck got to do with it?

I’ve had a ‘lucky’ day today as I was able to coach all my clients over the phone while also doing some networking mixing, blogging, online networking, cooking and playing with my kids….I guess I was just ‘lucky’ that I had time to do all of that today or wasn’t I?

Don’t you hate it when you get to achieve something really important at work or in your personal life and people blame it to your luck?

Certainly I’d love to be as lucky as William Kiefer who won big time in the lottery a week ago right here where I live. He is donating 60% of it to charity. I could have been the winner, if I only played the lottery!

If I let luck determined my life, then I’d be better off letting the stars determining my future. So, here’s to my original question, what does luck have to do with the outcome of our choices?

It is like swimming with sharks and having the bad luck of being bitten by one. Isn’t it truth we control our choices; therefore, our actions are consequence of our own purposeful intention?

My grandma never wished me luck when I was going for a hard test in college; she would place my head between her hands and whispered to my ears her hopes that my judgment would make the right call. Didn’t I know how wise her words were at the time!

Luck is not anything else that the results of your judgment call or is it simply that?

I have a client who lost her very successful job at a major international corporation, after working with me in refining her Professional Brand; she did her homework and started selling it among her contacts. She got interviews with stakeholders and decision makers of companies that did not even have jobs available on her technical field as she understood the importance of being ahead of the game, but guessed what; she got a job only a few weeks after her job search started. Wasn’t she ‘lucky’?

Is it a ‘lucky’ coincidence to find the job of your dreams or just the result of a lot of hard work, preparation and use of multiple resources?

I see quite often e-mails from people asking for help to find a job just because they’ve never done a bad job in their careers. I wonder they must be pretty average not to define themselves in positive terms. Those people do not provide a compelling reason to help them, to refer them to a potential employer. They do not even offer a single career highlight to be used in their ‘defense’; therefore, they are out of luck when nobody passes their resume to potential hiring managers or recruiters.

Decide today to play your lucky card! That means, go and invest in yourself, work hard towards your vision and keep an eye on your competition. Thomas Jefferson said: I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it’.

Does the big fish really eat the smaller one?

Successful entrepreneurs and professionals can tell you how networking has been core to the fulfillment of their visions. Even politicians have figured this out already. Social Networking for instance was Key to Scott Brown's success. Tea party twitterers, Facebook friends, and Blogspot buddies helped him win big time as a junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.
If examples like this are all around us probing how networking and social media influence stakeholders and decision makers; then, why do people listen to the toxic voices in their heads? Why do they hide behind a resume that does not sell? Why do they have a plain profile in LinkedIn and let hideous Facebook pictures filter in the web for recruiters to see when they Google their names? Why do they network rarely and just come to terms with the network when in urgent need? Why don’t they invest in themselves and give up their chance for success?

It is like a ‘big fish theory’ in which by replicating the force of nature, the bigger fish eats the smaller one creating a chain reaction. But does it work for us that way? Does it have to be like that?

What makes a fish a big one? The size? Its speed? Its power? As we are talking on people terms let’s discard size as a factor and think on speed and power.

But, how can any of us compete against bigger fishes on this sea to be faster at catching the opportunities and powerful enough to win over our competitors? NETWORKING! Look at the picture.

What makes the power of the ‘big’ fish? A bunch of synchronized little fishes moving on the same direction towards a goal. They are connected. They all know why they want; they are following the leader within.

Switch your perspective for a minute and look at your current situation in ‘fish terms’. Where is your network? Have you identified your key allies, mentors, sources of major expertise, best practice holders? Have you identified your own Brand to market it effectively? And are you truly connected to a common ground level to swim at a more powerful speed towards each other’s vision?

Can you visualize yourself moving faster, smarter and with much less struggle by tapping into the resources of your Network? I can. Then, what are you waiting for?

"Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning."

- Bill Gates

Will the Universe conspire in your job transitioning favor this 2010?

“When you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

This is a phrase that comes from one of my favorite personal books - the Alquimist by Paulo Coelho -. When I read it back in 1997 while I was on a long solo business trip to UK I was very impacted by it. It was a perfect moment in my life and a phrase that made sense to it. Inspirational stuff you may say.

Are you a believer? Are you inspired? Do you truly believe in yourself? What about your vision? How are you coming across to those that encounter you? What is the perception you create with your Brand? Are you pushing the Universe to conspire in your favor or sitting in front of your computer screen hoping to be discovered by a head hunter that comes across your resume at a job board?

I love conspiracies, the intellectual ones driven with such passion that can’t be defeated. Are you a key actor in your own conspiracy?

First and foremost, take full accountability of your life. Then, ask yourself:

1. Are you still aware of your vision? When was the last time you stopped to reflect on it?

2. Are your actions connected to it? Is your job transitioning where you want it to be? Are you taking every necessary –well planned and prepared – step to get you to your vision?

3. How aligned are your resources to it? What kind of networking, volunteering, and contribution you are making to ensure you are not one number of the unemployment statistics? Are you paying forward or you're always looking for something?

4. Are you having some fun? Can you tell, honestly, you are doing your best? Do you remember the Jerry Maguire movie in which there is a part Jerry finally gets what it really means to be #1. Being oneself, dreaming big time, daring and risking it all and above all, using a very distinctive brand that eventually put him in top of his competition to win it all.

5. Do people trust you? Gain TRUST as your biggest commodity value. Have you read the Speed of Trust by Covey? If high trust organizations outperform low trust organizations by 286% on Total Return to Shareholders can you imagine how your total return will be when you manage your own Professional Brand by adding Trust as one of its core competencies?

Get inspired in your job transition process. It is all right to experience ups and downs. The job, the unemployment, the size of the house or the car will never determine who you are. You do!

Remember …“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. “ Mark Twain