This started out as something of an experiment. I wanted to get myself back into blogging by putting my learning on display.

Unfortunately, a series of technology issues led to the ultimate failure of this site, but it helped me get a better handle on how I want to approach my online presence.

So, if you’d still like to see what I’m up to, check out either of the following sites (or the ones still in the sidebar):

I’m working on trying to revamp my professional life, find my brand, and hopefully get my feet pointed forward for a change. One of the things I will eventually have to work on is my visual branding, how I present myself to the world on paper and on the web.

Of course, I’m thinking about visual branding design in what’s become the traditional sense, but I think my thinking might just be outdated if these business cards are any indication. They’re vibrant. They’re expressive. They say something about the person behind the card. I’m willing to bet people who receive these works of art don’t forget the person, and that’s always a good thing.

I don’t know how to express the person I’m finding hiding out in here, but I’m hoping these inspire me to do it authentically. Maybe they’ll inspire you, too.

If the posts collected in Reader are any indication, the hot topic at the moment appears to be gaining attention by taking care how you hold yourself.

It’s been true for a long time that you can do certain things to attract people to you, but they’ve always seemed to escape the notice of image consultants and personal development gurus. If you walk into a room like you belong there, people are going to notice. This is especially useful if you’ve never been to a certain place, among a given group of people, or are shy.

Really, your posture is what tells people who you are. They size you up in a single glance by how you stand or sit. Body language is a powerful nonverbal communicator.

Feel like you aren’t being seen for you think you are. Try adjusting how you present yourself and see what changes.

When you manage, you learn you have a few resources that you always need to keep an eye on: time, materials, money, and people. The problem is, you have to manage people completely differently from how you manage time, materials, and money.

I realize I’ve written on this before, but I really think this is where managers who are otherwise good completely fall down.

People are people not human resources. You manage people. Living, breathing, feeling, imperfect, lovable, exasperating people. People will enliven you, deaden you, excite you, disappoint you, thrill you, and contort you into many different shapes. In short people will have a profound impact on you. As a leader, always remember you are also doing this to them. (Source )

People are people. Their skills are resources. It’s their time you’re managing. They’re unpredictable. They’re feeling. Many of them try their best against next to impossible odds.

You cannot manage people the way you manage everything else. You have to remember that you’re a person, and that the “resource” you’re dealing with is a person, too. They deserve the same respect and application of common sense that you would expect.

You also have to remember that if you continually forget that you’re managing people instead of one more resource, people can find somewhere to go where they’ll be seen as someone who has a lot of relevant skills as opposed to a number on a piece of paper.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.- Peter Drucker

The guys over at Slacker Manager are asking what the difference is between management and leadership. Reading over the comments, it seems that no one agrees. For some people, the two are synonymous. For others, there’s a distinct difference.

For me, managing and leading are two different things. Managing is overseeing things, making sure everything is running smoothly, making decisions and changes to keep everything running smoothly. It’s about processes. It’s operational.

Leadership, on the other hand, is an underlying set of governing principles. Where management is often something everyone can put their finger on, leadership is a bit more elusive. You know someone is a bad manager because they aren’t handling resources well. You suspect someone is a bad leader because it feels like the person never really knows where they’re going, and that translates to confusion in the ranks.

Management is a practice. Leadership is a trait.

Freelance Switch (which has graciously linked to CareerNiche for a while now) has this great article on good ways to build your skills.

Regardless of whether you’re a freelancer, an entrepreneur, or an employee, it’s always important to work on strengthening the skills you already have, and learning new tricks along the way. It keeps you on top of your field. It keeps you motivated, and helps avoid those energy-sapping ruts. It can also make you look more attractive to the people you want to do business with by showing your versatility and commitment to your field.

Skill-building can also be a great form of networking. When you look to others to learn something, they get to know who you are in the process. This can help generate leads. It can also help form collaborative relationships, and it gives you people you can refer others to. Word-of-mouth and sincerely trying to help others are always good things.

Try to incorporate one or two of the suggestions into your routine. See how they’ll help you not only become better at what you already do so well, but how they can benefit you in unexpected ways.

I suspect I need to take advantage of these myself. I know I’ve said I need to find a new job, but it’s becoming imperative that I find one (I’d actually hoped it wouldn’t come to that).

If you find yourself in my shoes, it’s always better to be networking already, and it’s always better when you’re networking to give people everything they need to know about you. This allows them to know both how to help you out, and how you can help them out in the process (always a good thing).

Honestly, I think everyone really should write one of these pages about themself. It’s a great informative tool, and I’ve found in trying to start my own that you really are forced to think about your career and your goals.

Everybody is going nuts for the Manager’s Cheat Sheet right now, and it’s not hard to see why. 101 common sense tips, right there for the printing and tacking to your wall for reference! What could be better?

Since everyone seems to be picking a couple and blogging them, I decided I’d pick a couple that reflect what I feel can be the difference between a manager who encourages high turnover and a manager able to retain their employees.

89. Get the facts first. Before you pass judgment on a situation, make sure you have the whole story. Listen to employees and refrain from questioning anyone’s integrity without first ensuring that you’ve gathered all the data.

Because my workplace is what it is, I’ve seen what happens when this one is actually applied. The manager arms themself with the facts, and then can best address the issue, be it a gap in a program, a complaint, whatever. And if the manager is going based on what they see, then it’s imperative to talk to the employees who are actually involved to get all of the information. There may have been something going on the manager couldn’t see from a distance.

I’ve also seen what happens when the manager doesn’t bother to research all of the facts. Nothing destroys your credibility as a manager faster than to tell someone you’re yelling at that you couldn’t be bothered to actually look into what happened. Especially when the situation is one that could be neatly mediated between all concerned parties just by taking a quick look at the facts.

40. Know your subordinates’ jobs. You don’t want to be caught with inferior job knowledge.

Along the same lines, nothing loses an employee’s respect faster that hearing, “I have no clue what you do, but I’m going to tell you how to do your job. You know, the one you normally do just fine.” Learn what people do. Learn how they do it. This puts you in a better position to help the employee out if something comes out, and allows you to be sensitive to their issues.

Amazingly, by knowing what your employees do, it also allows you to match up the right task to the person with the best experience/job scope.

I know I did them out of order, but I just wanted to address them in this order. Just doing these two things can go far in retaining employees, making the manager’s life simpler because training and “ramping up” takes a lot of time and resources.

An aware and alert manager is a good thing.

I had originally thought to review Brazen Careerist and Career Intensity separately, but I’ve realized they really go together. Both focus on taking charge or your career.

Penelope Trunk, writer of Brazen Careerist, really has a bright casual tone that will likely resonate more with younger readers. Her rules are organized step by step from starting the job search clear through to management, all in 200 pages. She focuses on showing off your best side without running yourself into the ground, and making connections while being authentic. It’s good, relevant advice at a time when I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to move in their professional paths. I came away with a ton of notes to help me deal with my own lost career.

David Lorenzo, author of Career Intensity and the blog by the same name, focuses more on how to move a stuck career you’re already in. He classifies workers as being on of four types: Workplace Warrior, Management Maverick, Intrepreneur (which is where I fit in the grid), and Entrepreneur. Lorenzo then spends the rest of the book speaking mainly to those who fall into the Workplace Warrior and Management Maverick categories, providing thoughtful advice on how to get unstuck and enjoy the career enjoyed by Intrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs. He encourages more strategic risk-taking and managing your image, two very important components of a successful career.

The two read incredibly well together as a continuous flow through career stages, both providing their own voice and ideas on a variety of topics. I’d actually recommend that if you choose to read them, you do read them together and start with Brazen Careerist. You can also read them separately and come away with great advice to help you jolt your own career.

I’m noticing a lot of this lately, and it disturbs me. Let’s look at the scenario from both sides.

The Prospective Employer

(I don’t know how it happened for Jeremy, but I’ve watched it happen repeatedly at work.) A hiring manager puts up a job listing and receives a stack of resumes. He or she sifts through them to find the top group of potential interviewees. The hiring manager calls them to schedule the interviews. One declines the interview spot immediately because they have already been offered a job elsewhere. One immediately sets up an interview for the next day. The rest don’t even return the message left on their voice mail for two or three days.

The one who immediately set their interview shows up fifteen minutes late, unapologetic for their tardiness. Another interviewee also shows up late, a victim of the always-heavy traffic.

One interviewee, however, seems eager and yet detached. They set the interview. They call up the day before to confirm the time and location of the interview. The hiring manager prepares for the interview, even as an emergency project hits their desk, and patiently paces their office, waiting for the interviewee. After about fifteen minutes, the hiring manager starts organizing the emergency project, trying to remain available for the interviewee when they arrive. Half an hour after that, the project is in full swing. The hiring manager is muttering, wondering what’s keeping the interviewee from either arriving or calling. An hour after the interview’s start time, the hiring manager marks the resume as a no-show and dumps it in a file of people to not consider in the future, and tries to make up the hour lost to the rude interviewer.

The Prospective Employee

(What I can only imagine from helping so many friends work on their own job search, although my friends don’t pull this particular stunt, and from living in my current home.) The job searcher spends hours putting together a resume that sells them into their dream job. They write up the perfect cover letter. They comb the job boards, Craigslist, and anywhere else they can think of. Finding jobs that either fit or come close to fitting what they want, the job searcher sends out their polished resume and cover letter.

Lo and behold, they get that first nibble, the first sign that they may not have to live off ramen anymore. A hiring manager calls and offers an interview. The job searcher takes it. Somewhere between that first call and the interview, a variety of things happen. The job searcher is offered another interview with a company they’d rather work for, so they blow off the first interview they set up for the preferred interview. With no phone call to the first hiring manager, this is rude and puts a black mark against your name should you ever decide to apply at that company in future. Sometimes, the job searcher receives a job offer before their slated interview. In their excitement (benefit of the doubt), they completely forget to call and cancel their interview. Again, this isn’t terribly polite, and hiring managers do note this kind of thing.

My personal favorite, though, is when the job searcher blows off an interview because they got a better offer. The offer was to go skiing with their friends who are playing hooky from their own jobs. (Yes, I’ve seen this one happen.) Same result: the job searcher has no job, and they’ve earned themselves a reputation at the company they were supposed to be interviewing with. Even if the job searcher calls in after the interview slot and asks for a reschedule because of an illness, the hiring manager isn’t likely to take the job searcher seriously. (They tend to be very understanding if you call at least a few hours beforehand and let them know you’re sick. Hiring managers aren’t heartless beasts.)

The moral of the story

If you really want a job, then act like it. Keep your appointments. If you genuinely can’t make it or are running late, then call and let them know that. It will leave a more favorable impression on the hiring manager, who is a person who understands that things happen sometimes. Don’t bother with everything you’ve read about finding a job unless you actually intend to put forth the effort to go through the job search process.