An often-overlooked soft skill

At any interview where I know I’m not exactly what the hiring manager is looking for but also know I could easily do the tasks required of the job, I always try to impress on the interviewer that I am able to pick things up fairly quickly

It’s true. When I don’t know something I need to know in order to get work done, both in my professional and my personal life, I seek it out and learn it, immediately applying it to whatever I’m working on. That’s how I got started in teaching, in web and graphic design, and it seems an awful lot of my management skills are self-learned because I needed a skills boost to survive a situation.

Right now, as I’m trying to break into a new field, I’m trying to demonstrate what I’ve learned on the fly and trying to make it clear to potential employers that I can learn what I need to in order to complete their projects.

If you can pick skills up quickly and are willing to learn, that’s a valuable skill and you should make it part of marketing yourself. It’s amazing how many people will defer to someone who knows how to do something, just so they can get out of having to learn something new.

Volunteer to build skills and experience

Thanks to the way universities now consider prospective students, high school students are figuring out some of the benefits of volunteering. College students sort of have a handle on it, but it’s the adults who honestly might consider how useful volunteering is.

Volunteering your time to a cause you care about is always a good idea. It lets you do something relaxing that makes you feel good. It’s a great opportunity to meet other like-minded people. It’s also a great way to learn and hone skills. Teenagers have even realized it’s a great way to try out a career path they think they might like to have as an adult, so it’s a great decision-making tool for them as well.

Right after I started college, I started volunteering with the planetarium on campus. I spent two days a week presenting shows, giving star talks, building new shows, and doing light office work. I loved it, and I think it was the start of my path toward Career #1. From there, I volunteered with different museums and planetariums, developing teaching and curriculum development skills. It opened my eyes to a new career. Prior to that, I didn’t realize that one could teach somewhere other than a classroom. My teacher prep professors were beside themselves when I told them I was going to become a museum educator. Most of them tried to talk me out of it, tried to talk me into the classroom.

They failed because I was so much happier at my volunteer job than I was in my field experience and my student teaching.

I’m no longer a museum educator, but I still look for opportunities to teach and to develop learning material. Without volunteering, I never would have known about this opportunity, and I wouldn’t have had as many opportunities to develop skills that I enjoy using.

Look for volunteering opprtunities. Encourage those around you to take time out for volunteering. It benefits the organization, and it benefits you in so many ways.

Manage your time

It seems like recently I’ve been working with a number of students on time and goal management skills. I honestly don’t remember how I learned to do both, but I can tell you that trying to teach others to do it is something akin to leading the proverbial horse to water.

I’ve run into these twelve rules of time management a few times over the past few days, and I think it’s a great read! Perhaps I’ll put it to good use myself this week as I attempt to streamline some of my to-do lists!

Active listening

A skill often considered useful in leadership and networking roles, yet applies to so many others, is active listening. In active listening, you not only listen to what the other person is saying, but you listen to what they are saying.

No, I didn’t mistype that. It really does repeat itself.

Oftentimes when we are listening to people, we are engaged in the process of creating banter instead of being actively immersed in the parts of the conversation where we are not speaking. However, if we stop for a moment, actually listen to what the other person is saying, and then take a moment at that point to formulate our own response, the conversation can take on a whole new life. It even has the potential for clearing up misconceptions before they become arguments that leave us wondering how we got there.

Found via Random Thoughts From a CTO

Need a career facelift? Consider reevaluating your skills!

This article targets those over forty, but I think this is valuable information for those of us who’ve just barely made it to thirty and are facing that quarter-life crisis.

Just as it’s not a bad idea to re-invent yourself if you find yourself in a rut, it’s not a bad idea to reinvent your career as well.

The great thing about re-inventing your career, though, is that you have more than likely gained a number of skills that will serve you not only in your chosen industry, but also in others both similar and vastly different form your chosen path. You just have to be brave enough to explore!

In search of a mentor

I’ve maintained an online journal for well over three years. I’ve maintained a blog (a few, actually) for over a year.

I write my posts. I link to articles I find interesting or useful. I read bloggers I find interesting. I entertain the occassional comment or trackback, and get giddy every time I see either.

There are days, however, when I get an email. Some are just friendly greetings complimenting one of my blogs. Some of them are notices that someone has added me to their blogroll and is hoping for reciprocity (which reminds me, I have one to add this weekend). There have been rare occassions when it’s something else all together, and admittedly, I’m so used to talking to myself in my blogs that I really don’t know how to handle these emails.

They are completely flattering and entirely scary. They also leave me wishing that blogs had some of the same features that my online journal does. I wish for the ability to just post a random cry for advice to those bloggers that I read and respect, without it being publicly available. Of course, I’m also not brave enough to just drop a random email on one of these genuinely kind souls and say, “Hey, can I bother you for some advice?”

I enjoy my place as a small fish in a growing pond, but when Idiscover I am slightly bigger than I think I should be, I’m just not sure how to handle it.

And that’s my dirty little secret this week.

I can manage, but I can’t manage

Things I have learned about myself this summer:

I am a good manager. I am able to manage people and logistics. My instructor gleefully took work away from me today to help me because my transportation situation just went to hell. (My starter died Friday.) The park ranger today informed me that he loves working with me because I’m so easy to get along with and will try to make things work to benefit everybody involved. Most volunteers that I have managed have enjoyed the experience and offered to work for me again.

I am a great director for anything children-related. I can successfully learn over thirty children’s names in a very short time. I can build rapport with children very quickly, even if I’m having to spend all of my time repeating the rules. I can problem solve on my feet like nobody’s business! I saw a bumper sticker over the weekend that read, “I can handle any crisis. I have children.” Change “have” to “teach” and that’s really how i see my world these days.

I am not a good business manager. I am slowly learning this with my business ventures. I am great at generating the ideas, but don’t have the what-not to successfully produce income from it. This could be a problem as I intend to continue trying to turn my various skills into ways to keep my bank account from crashing.

I must work on this third one…or find someone willing to take over that part of my entrepreneurial projects.

Collaboration in moderation

There has been a huge shift over the past ten years to focusing on projects requiring teamwork. There are many theoretical reasons behind this. When you split up the work, it is done more quickly. Splitting up the work allows people who are strong in one area but weak in another to contribute positively. Teamwork builds communication and trust. The list goes on.

If you cannot succeed in a team setting, then you’re “not a team player” and you can bet your presence won’t be tolerated much at either staff meetings or the break room because you don’t play well with others.

Collaboration has its place when used in moderation. It is not intended to be used as a crutch. It is not intended to be the new age efficiency expert’s miracle tool. It should be a union of two (or more) people with complementary skills working together to solve a problem that needs to draw on all of the skills present to be solved. It should never cause more strife than solution.

Class projects are the bane of every student’s life. Team projects are the bane of an effective employee’s life. The setting may change, but the need to not rely solely on collaboration remains the same.

Making decisions

Between moving and trying to drum up some income (otherwise known as starting out with my first consignment agreement), posts this week will likely be little more than just links.

Today’s link is this piece from Many Worlds on decision making in the group setting. (Actually read the PDF. It’s quite fascinating.) There is some great information in here that i may have to keep in mind if I ever find myself in charge of a group again.

Volunteering as a means of networking

I’ve written before on how volunteering helps you build useful skills. Volunteering can also help you network.

When you make the decision to volunteer your time to some cause, you’re naturally going to select a place that matches your own beliefs and interests. What better environment to make connections where you can both benefit from and provide benefit to the relationship.

As for me, my love of the water and old sailing ships has led me to an orientation this upcoming weekend for a Ship festival in Tacoma.

Found via Monster’s Human Resources newsletter