From Fortune: Grabbing a headhunter’s attention
“It’s a wonderful thought: that someone might just call you up and end your job-search woes forever. But the most important thing you need to know about recruiters, says Les Berglass, founder of Berglass & Associates, is that they love confidence. If you try too hard to get their attention, they won’t be interested.”

Wally’s Comment: There’s solid advice here. If you’re in the part of the job market where headhunters play, you’ll get value from this article.

From Renegade HR: How to Get Noticed
“Today, I’m going to let you in on the secret to making a name for yourself.”

Wally’s Comment: The Fortune article above is about getting noticed by headhunters. Chris Fernandini’s post is about getting noticed by the right people at work. It’s simple, straightforward, and right on target.

From Forbes: How To Get Over The Bad Boss Blues
“The hardest part is moving past the hard feelings and rebuilding your ego. Here’s how.”

Wally’s Comment: We’ve all had bad bosses. I got over one of my mine by watching as security escorted him to the door. Usually it’s tougher than that. Here’s some advice for those other times.

From CareerRocketeer: What good does THIS contact do for me?
“What good does a company contact do you if it’s not the hiring manager for the kind of job you want? And, why should you pursue multiple contacts at a company you are targeting? Because the more information you gain, and the more allies you develop, the better your chances of gaining an interview and a job!”

Wally’s Comment: Contacts aren’t just valuable for what they can “do” for you. They’re also valuable for who they know and what they might be able to do sometime in the future.

From the Ladders: Why Good Career-Changers are Anthropologists
“What does a job search have to do with ancient Greece? A successful career-change candidate can study a target company much like an anthropologist studies ancient cultures – by understanding the needs of its people.”

Wally’s Comment: This is a post from a couple of months back, but it makes such good points that I decided to include it in this week’s selection. There’s first-rate, practical advice about some novel ways to learn about a company you’re interested in.

You get to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Great stuff. Plus you can rescue your friends and save the Earth.

Now it’s entirely possible that some accident of fate has left you without those super powers you so richly deserve. Don’t worry. Don’t fret.

You can still become SuperYou, the hero of your own life and career. It’s simple.

Copy Superman. He’s the kind of superhero who was born with super powers.

You’ve got something like that. We call them your strengths. Identify the things you love to do and also do well. Then use hard work and discipline to develop the super powers you’ve already got.

Copy Wonder Woman. She’s got magical powers for sure, but she’s also got magic rituals.

When she’s hurt, for example, Wonder Woman uses a healing ritual to make things better and get back to the work of saving the Earth.

You can create your own ritual to improve performance. Ivan Lendl practiced mental focus exercises every day. Ernest Hemingway sharpened seven new pencils before he began to write. Many people have a simple prayer or mantra they repeat to themselves to help them do better or recover from a setback.

Copy Batman. The Caped Crusader doesn’t have a single super power in the traditional sense. But Batman is the master gadgeteer.

Find equipment that helps you do your best. It might be your smart phone or a digital voice recorder that fits in your pocket. Or it might be as simple as an index card to capturing ideas.

Truth is, the top achievers are often not the ones who are the most richly blessed with talent and skills. When performance counts, top honors are more likely to go to the hard and focused workers.

That’s what becoming SuperYou is about: learning how to work and smart and focused so you become the superhero of your life and career.

From CareerRealism: 6 Questions You MUST Be Prepared to Answer During Interviews
“Increasing your chances of getting the job are pretty simple if you’re well prepared for your next interview. If you’re ready to answer some of the most common questions, you’re a step ahead of your competition. Here are six questions that will help prepare you and get you closer to getting that dream job.”

Wally’s Comment: Preparing for standard questions is just good planning. This post suggests six popular questions and also ways to deal with them.

From Social Media Today: Can You Put a Value on Virtual Relationships?
“More and more relationships are being developed online first. It’s true for professional networking, as it is for dating. People are connecting with “the right” people online before they connect offline these days. The reason for this change is the evolution of first impressions, the amount of background information available to us with a click of the mouse, and the use of the web as a people filtering device. People have less time than they did a decade ago, and are much lazier, as well as bombarded with noise, from advertising, to social feeds. We don’t want to waste our own time, and we do want to meet people who have mutual interests. That’s why there are Ning networks, forums, Facebook fan pages (and groups), LinkedIn groups, and other special interest communities. ”

Wally’s Comment: Dan Schawbel has written a lot of excellent material about personal branding and the ways that social media and traditional media interact. This post is one of his best. Dan looks at the value of different kinds of relationships, how they may fit into your strategy, and how to grow your online network. This one merits a bookmark so you can return to it.

From Mary Jo Asmus: Unlocking Your Potential
“Most of the leaders I know and work with dream of making a big impact in their organizations and communities (or world!). Many (though not all) have a healthy dose of self confidence. Most have been successful, however they define it, but they know that they have more in them – a potential that is not yet realized. So behind closed doors – what do I hear from those leaders about what prevents them from reaching their full potential? What can they do about it? My two cents worth:”

Wally’s Comment: When you read this post, you will be tempted to think, “How does she know about me?” What you’re reading are the observations of an experienced and mindful executive coach. Mary Jo Asmus has coached a lot of people like you and me and she’s developed the skill of drawing general lessons from specific situations.

From Management Craft: Confessions from a Natural-Born Starter About Follow-Through
“I am one of those folks who has lots of energy and focus when starting things but who tends to quickly lose interest. I am a world class starter – but not a natural finisher. I bet many of you share this trait, too. I can count many accomplishments that I have brought to fruition, but MANY more projects that were abandoned mid-stream. Some of these efforts deserved better from me.”

Wally’s Comment: Yep. This is me. How did Lisa Haneberg know? The great managers, like great scientists and great authors are finishers. Some people come by that naturally. The rest of us have to learn it. Lisa shares some hard-won wisdom about how to finish that important project even while six great ideas are begging you for attention.

From Ed Batista: Peter Drucker on Excellence, Careers and Planning
“Most of my clients and students are seeking to be more effective and fulfilled as professionals or are in the midst of a career transition–or both.  A resource to which I’ve referred people for years is Peter Drucker’s brilliant essay Managing Oneself, and it’s time to do so again.  Here are a few key excerpts and the questions that they inspire in me.”

Wally’s Comment: When you have a moment, send a thank-you to Ed Batista for reminding us of this incredible essay. I re-read it, for perhaps the twentieth time and I was reminded of how very much quality advice is packed into such a small space.

“Larry,” one of his friends asked, “What’s wrong? That was the finest performance of your life!”

“Yes,” replied Olivier, “but I don’t know why.”

Andrew Garcia, a contestant on this year’s version of American Idol, knows that feeling. For a while, he was the darling of the judges.

Andrew had a compelling story. And he had developed quite a following on YouTube even before the competition began. His fans liked his covers of a variety of songs.

Then Andrew wowed the judges with a version of Paula Abdul’s 1989 hit “Straight Up.” The judges loved it and pegged Andrew as a potential contest winner.

Since then, things have been tough for Andrew. He’s tried to re-capture the magic of that performance. So far, it hasn’t worked.

We like to think that our best performance is the measure of our ability, but that can be dangerous. It’s easy to confuse good luck with great skill. As Steve Martin says:

“Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. Those nights are accidental and statistical. Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time.”

Whether you’re on the Idol stage, toiling away in a cubicle, or out on the road, your value doesn’t come from the occasional, unpredictable, great performance. It comes from what other people can count on from you. Steve Martin, again.

“What is hard is to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.”

The rule is simple. If you can’t re-create it, you’re not there yet.

From CubeRules: Are you making these communications mistakes with your manager?
“Manager – employee communication is tricky. The process should be straightforward, but then, business is social and social situations are never that simple. Throw in the fact that your manager is writing your performance review and has influence on your pay and career and you get a communications nightmare. If you want to be an effective communicator with your supervisor, don’t make these killer mistakes.”

Wally’s Comment: Communicating with your boss is important. Communicating with your boss is tricky. This post describes five things you can do wrong.

From HR Observations: “Free Agent Nation” A Thing of The Past? Not In My World.
“I was somewhat surprised to come across the Towers Watson report Jobless Recovery in the U.S. Leaving Trail of Recession-Weary Employees in Its Wake, According to New Study. Sure you would expect to read that people are tired of being laid off or losing their jobs by job elimination. But surprisingly this has lead to a CULTURAL ATTITUDE SHIFT and people are now looking for more permanency in their relationships with their employers. The report states that “A startling eight out of 10 respondents want to settle into a job, with roughly half saying they want to work for a single company their entire career and the rest wanting to work for no more than two to three companies.” Whoa! Are these people wanting to return to their fathers’ world of work?”

Wally’s Comment: Towers Watson released the results of a survey that seems to imply that workers really want to return to a kind of 1950s workplace. Mike Haberman doesn’t think that will happen.

From Jackie Cameron: Why you need to tell stories in interviews
“Good interviewers will tease information from candidates but the candidate has to play their part. This is their moment in the spotlight! So providing evidence of experience by telling relevant stories with details and examples (blending more than one to make the point if necessary) is crucial.”

Wally’s Comment: Interviews are high stakes conversations. Stories are the most powerful communication medium human beings have. It only makes sense that they should go together.

From Alison Doyle at About.com: Real Work at Home Jobs
“I was helping a friend look for a work at home job this week and it was really hard to find anything that was a real job opportunity with a paycheck.”

Wally’s Comment: Sure, those “make gazillions working from home” ads are bogus. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate jobs where you can earn a paycheck working from home. Alison Doyle surveys the landscape and highlights some real opportunities.

From Awake at the Wheel: Be Your Own Guru
“I spent the better part of the first 40-years of my life looking for a guru, that person who would just blow me away with her or his prescience, kindness, compassion, vision and guidance.  The one who would give me the answers.  Who would tell me what to do to get to that place where I finally felt like I had “made it.” So many others I knew had found one and their lives seemed so much better, more directed and purposeful for it, but that never happened to me. I would attend lectures, teachings, seminars, trainings and retreats and, inevitably, end up leaving early because some combination of information, integrity, pace or delivery did not resonate.  Why couldn’t I find that person?”

Wally’s Comment: Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Jonathan Fields suggests something slightly different. “We have met the ultimate guru, and he is us.”

One bowl is too hot. Goldilocks passes on that one, along with the one where the porridge is “too cold.” Luckily for her, though not the bears, one bowl’s temperature is “just right.”

I’m betting that my wife would have been just fine with the “too hot” bowl. I probably would have been OK with the one that Goldilocks thought was “too cold.” At least that’s how we are with coffee.

We’re different in the way we work, too. I’m pretty much a “plan your work and work your plan” person. My wife is a true “go with the flow” person.

One of life’s arts is finding out what a “just right” level of discipline or structure is for you. If there’s too much structure, you’ll be frustrated and you won’t be creative. If there’s too little, you won’t be very productive.

As you go through your life and career, learn what’s right for you. In the meantime there are some things you should know.

You only have a limited capacity for self-discipline. Dr. Roy F. Baumeister of Florida State University found that “people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.”

You can develop your capacity for self-discipline. No matter what level of structure is right for you, having more self-discipline when you need it will help you succeed.

Start your day with your most important task. That uses your self-discipline where it has the most effect.

Find simple ways to practice self-discipline throughout your day. You’ll be developing your self-discipline muscles.

Look for simple tools like checklists and automatic reminders that can lift the load of remembering from your brain. That way you save self-discipline for more important things.

Learning your “just right” level of structure will help you work more effectively. Increasing your self-discipline capacity will give you the discipline you need for times when you just have to buckle down and get the job done.

From Fistful of Talent: Cell Phones and Interviews Just Don’t Mix…
“Cell phones actually have NO place in a job interview. Period. End of story. It’s inappropriate, un-necessary and down-right rude. ”

Wally’s Comment: What can I say? I agree. Turn it off. Leave it in the car. Better yet, bury it in the backyard, at least until the interview is over.

From Alexandra Levit’s Water Cooler Wisdom: Next Level Networking
“I’m going to the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin this week, and a lot of high-profile people whom I’ve wanted to meet for a long time will be there. I’ve talked to some other attendees, and we all have the same goal. But if everyone has the same goal, how can we make the most of the little time we might get with the big shots, and how can we encourage them to remember us?”

Wally’s Comment: Alexandra Levit tackles a topic no one ever talks about. How do you get a wee bit of face time with that guru you’ve always wanted to talk to, since you’re both at some giant convention? Even better, how do you wring some value out of the encounter if it happens?

From NW Jobs: Why a handful of mentors is better than one
“To me, the idea of the grizzled older professional bestowing all their hard-won wisdom upon a junior colleague week in and week out seems so very twentieth century. Outside academic settings and rigidly structured corporate or volunteer mentorship programs, it’s unusual to find one person who has the time, energy, and inclination to take you under their wing and dole out hour after hour of career advice.”

Wally’s Comment: The mentoring described in the opening line quoted above is not how it happened. What happened was that you went to work for someone who took an interest in you. Most of the advice came while you worked together. If you were lucky it continued later, too. Even back in the Pleistocene Era, when I came up, most people had several mentors. And people who should know, like Jack Welch, have been recommending multiple mentors for years.

From the NY Times: In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt
“One fast-growing American industry has become a conspicuous beneficiary of the recession: for-profit colleges and trade schools. At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition that can exceed $30,000 a year. But the profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students, according to academics and advocates for greater oversight of financial aid. Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages while setting them up for default on untenable debts, low-wage work and a struggle to avoid poverty. And the schools are harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students.”

Wally’s Comment: Let’s take a line from Hill Street Blues: “Be careful out there.” You need to do your due diligence on any education/training opportunity, especially if you’re looking to change career paths.

From Alison Doyle: Niche Job Search Engines
“A niche job search engine, rather than searching across the Internet for jobs, searches for jobs based on a more specialized criteria – just green jobs from green job boards, for example, or just retail jobs.”

Wally’s Comment: If there’s a niche search engine that meets your needs, it’s probably your best source of quality leads. Check out this post to see if Alison Doyle has found a search engine for you.

But Spiller decided to stay at Clemson for his senior year. Lots of people, including his mother, thought he was crazy. Today newspapers like The State are running stories with titles like “Smart move: Spiller’s draft stock on the rise.” Here’s a key paragraph.

“Today, however, he looks pretty smart. He has a sociology degree because he came back to finish school. But he also has a better career opportunity lined up after a spectacular season has vaulted him up the rankings before April’s NFL draft.”

That’s how it looks today. But if you want to learn something from Spiller’s decision, today doesn’t count. Think about how it looked a year ago.

Laid out logically, at the time, things looked like this. Spiller could enter the draft and become an instant millionaire. Or he could return to Clemson for his senior year, with the risk that those millions might be gone forever if he suffered a career-ending injury.

Why take that risk? You could find the answer if you were at Clemson last December 19. It was graduation day and one of the 1080 graduates was CJ Spiller. He had earned his degree in sociology at one of America’s top public universities and he did it in three and a half years.

After the ceremony among family and friends and members of his local church who had made the day-long drive to Clemson, Spiller cleared up any doubt. “This is the No. 1 reason I came back,” he said.

If you’re facing a big decision, take a lesson from CJ Spiller, Nr. 28. Know what the most important thing to you is and make it the most important part of your decision process.

Today there are all kinds of articles and blogs speculating on where Spiller and others will be chosen on NFL Draft Day. Spiller doesn’t pay attention to them.

“If you get caught up in that stuff,” he says, “It’ll get you off-track.” Staying on track is important, but you have to choose which track is most important.

From the Wall Street Journal: Standout Letters to Cover Your Bases
“It’s something job seekers often wonder: Do you really need to submit a cover letter with your résumé?”

Wally’s Comment: Some hiring managers simply don’t read cover letters. So why put effort into your cover letter? Simple. You don’t know if you’re contacting one of the non-readers or a hiring manager who thinks cover letters are important. This article gives you advice on what to do to make your cover letter a potential competitive advantage.

From HR Bartender: Performance Metrics: Beyond the Numbers
“Peter Drucker once said, “What gets measured gets managed.”  It’s very true.  Tracking the numbers is essential to running your business.  But it’s also important to not just calculate numbers. You need to have a good understanding of what they mean.”

Wally’s Comment: With spreadsheets and calculators, anyone can generate performance numbers. But which are the important ones? Why?

From Dorothy Dalton: Changing sectors or function? You need to walk the talk!
“50 % of my coaching clients aspire to move out of their existing sectors,   some perhaps that have been hard hit by the recession (automotive, logistics, manufacturing, financial services) and into hot predicted growth areas   for 2010 such as Clean Tech, IT renewable energy, healthcare, personal development education and re-cycling.

Wally’s Comment: Dorothy doesn’t say it, but some candidates seem to think that hiring managers are psychic. They expect the manager to look at a resume that lists only experience as a keypunch operator and see the potential for a marketing vice president’s position. OK, so maybe I exaggerated a little. But, if you want to change the kind of work you do or the industry you do it in, you’re going to have to bear the burden of communication.

From Cube Rules: How to build a broad business network
“Research consistently shows that your business network is the best way to find a job. Then, there is the best of the best: getting a recommendation from an employee in your network that is inside your target company. This makes sense: a person already in the organization knows the potential candidate and will put their reputation on the line saying this person (you!) will do great in the job. This means your best opportunity to find a job is to have a business network where people are in as many different targeted companies as possible. But how can you start to build that kind of network? Let’s check out some different tactics to get you there.”

Wally’s Comment: I selected this article because it’s about building a broad business network. The idea is not to have the most friends, twitter followers, or contacts. It is to have the most contacts that can help your career.

From Katheryn Rivas writing at All Things Workplace: Ten Online Resources for Job Seekers
“The Internet can be a very useful tool when it comes to finding work. However, you may have to search hard and long for quality websites, since, as with most things online, there’s a lot of junk. The following are ten online resources with job search engines and other websites to help you find work fast.”

Wally’s Comment: This is about the perfect length for a resource list. It covers a number of areas and offers a limited number of recommendations in each.

Jack’s retired now, after a long, successful career at a Fortune 200 company. That’s where he developed a reputation for hiring great people.

I chased him for months to get him to sit down talk about what he looked for when he was hiring. Jack was reluctant. It seemed like bragging to him and that’s something Jack hates. Besides, there were rounds of golf to be played and new countries to be visited.

A couple of weeks ago, Jack slowed down long enough to talk with me. He said that he and other managers looked for “all the usual things.”

But he found three things that he thought were the identifying marks of someone who would do well at his company. I call them “Jack’s Big Three.”

Jack looked for people who had dealt with failure or disappointment. He believes that you can’t have a career without several setbacks. What matters is whether you figure out what went wrong and what to do differently in the future.

Think about times in your life when things haven’t turned out the way you wanted. How did you deal with it? What did you learn? Can you describe those lessons and how they made you a better person and candidate?

Jack looked for people who would enjoy the work of their first job with the company. He reasoned that if you didn’t enjoy the work, you probably wouldn’t be passionate about it and put in the effort to do it well.

Think about the jobs you’ve applied for. Do you know what you’ll be doing every day?

Jack looked for people shared the values of the people in his company. He said that when someone has different values than the organization, it’s like they’re playing the game using a different rulebook.

Think about the companies where you want to work. Do you know what their values are? How do they compare with your own?

What struck me about Jack’s Big Three is that they weren’t about basic qualifications, what he called “all the usual things.” They’re about fit and ethics and work ethic, the things that drive success in a particular job or company.