Connecting the Dots

As someone who is fortunate to love what I do, I am venturing out to the blogosphere to share ideas, information and tools for career satisfaction and effortless employability. A bit of background, my day job as an Assistant Professor of Experiential Learning is working with undergraduate students to explore, learn and test the waters through internships. When I am working with a candidate, I get all fired up about pulling to the surface and helping them identify unique employability factors and personal attributes so they can confidently go after the right job, career or Company. Still too often I see a very linear, last generation approach to "finding a job." The ineffective game of applying online and responding to postings typically produces poor results and frustration for the candidate and recruiter. People get stuck here. I help candidates get unstuck. I challenge my candidates through an exercise of what do you know? who do you know? I help them to connect the dots. I focus on encouraging them to open up their networks and activate their connections to more directly approach opportunities. Hidden gems are found every day when you take the extra steps to research, customize approaches and make personal connections to the audience or person you are trying to reach. We can talk more about selling yourself,building a portfolio and establishing a track record to become a compelling candidate in the marketplace in future postings. Here's some fun reading in the meantime...How to Never Eat Alone. I hope you are working well today.