On the Job: Share Praise With Those Who Help You

In keeping with my post today on my blog PZ the Do-Gooder Scrooge (see http://snipurl.com/forgiveme, I wanted to talk about the important skill of giving and sharing praise.

Frequently in a work situation your boss might praise you for a project you did. Unless you literally did every single part by yourself with absolutely no help from anyone else, you should remind the boss who helped you. For example, “I couldn’t have gotten this done in such a short amount of time if Mary hadn’t crunched the numbers for me and John hadn’t made the charts.”

In most cases, sharing the praise actually earns you higher esteem than if you hadn’t acknowledged Mary and John’s roles. By including your co-workers in the praise, you’ve shown you’re a team player and someone who doesn’t hog all the credit. People like to work with such generous-minded people.

And, of course, you yourself should praise people when they do a good job or go the extra mile, for example, on a project for which you were responsible. For example, “Nancy, I really appreciate that you turned in your numbers a day before the deadline and that the numbers were very accurate. I’m glad you’re on my team.”

Start practicing this skill when you are young and it should be automatic by the time you’re starting out on your career path.

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Flipping Burgers, jobs, careers

Lifetime TV’s ARMY WIVES Episode Touched on Undiagnosed Learning Disabilities

You may not be a fan of Lifetime TV’s ARMY WIVES. Yet Season 2’s Episode 10 touched on a subject that may be very important to you.

In this episode Roxy was told by Roland, who’s teaching a GED course, that the reason she failed the practice exam even though she knew the material was because she had a learning disability that interfered with transferring her knowledge to a written test.

True, this reveal was not nearly as compelling as the reveal when fans of THE COSBY SHOW found out along with Theo, when he was already in college, that he had a learning disability that interfered with his test taking. (My tears flowed when Vanessa told her father he should be sorry for all the times he ragged on Theo about his grades.) Or in PUNKY BREWSTER when a 12-year-old couldn’t read the poison antidote instructions that could save her younger brother.

Anyway, while Roxy’s learning disability was a rather brief moment in the overall episode, it could be a very important moment in your life or in the life of someone you know.

Many students have difficulties in school that are recognized/diagnosed in elementary school. Yet, for some students, the realization that extra help is needed in test taking or concentrating techniques or any of a number of other concerns doesn’t crop up until the high school or even college years.

At this point it would be good to see if you can get testing in the areas in which you are having problems. Yet some of you may feel that “something” is interfering with your effectiveness yet you aren’t ready to ask your school or others for help.

In this case, there’s a book that may speak to you. Dr. Mel Levine’s A MIND AT A TIME is a treasure trove of explanations of numerous areas of the brain that can affect things that we do (or can’t do).

The author’s writing style is quite dense so you have to be determined to plow through the material and extract the relevant information. Yet the result may be worth the work, especially if you discover some thing or things that you may have been unfairly beating yourself up about. And now you will be able to seek help – hopefully without any embarrassment because you understand that your problems are genetic. The problems have nothing to do with “laziness” or anything else that you can control.

For your parents, advisors or mentors who might want to help you on your path through high school, college and beyond, Dr. Levine has another dense yet significant book – READY OR NOT, HERE LIFE COMES. In this book Dr. Levine is concerned about what he calls “the startup years” and young people’s “work-life unreadiness.” Buried gold is also to be found in this book.

And there’s a national organization that can help with reading problems: Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic (www.rfbd.org) offers textbooks on tape or CD. On the home page of the website click on JOIN NOW.

Don’t be like Roxy in ARMY WIVES and assume you’re stupid because you don’t do well on written tests. Check out if the wiring of your brain is interfering with your abilities. And, if so, get the extra help that will enable you to compensate for your genetic wiring.

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Mel Levine, A Mind at a Time, Ready or Not Here Life Comes, www.rfbd.org, Flipping Burgers, learning disabilities, Lifetime TV, ARMY WIVES, THE COSBY SHOW, PUNKY BREWSTER

Who You Know Still Plays a Large Role in Hiring Decisions

Recently the following comment was left on this blog:

About.com just added 3 new sites to their Top 10 Employment sites list:
http://www.linkedin.com
http://www.realmatch.com
http://www.indeed.com

Only one of them is a social network. Employers and recruiters don’t care if they know someone; they want to hire the most qualified candidate .... nothing will ever change that.

This comment was probably generated by a software program that looks for blogs on which to leave comments that connect to someone’s website. At least I would prefer to think this than to think that someone would purposely write such an idiotic comment.

This comment has NEVER been true in reality even if the hiring manager says he/she wants to hire the most qualified candidate. Unless forced by diversity programs and/or government regulations, people hire who they like. And who they like is usually who they feel comfortable with – which frequently translates into a close copy of themselves.

Now the advent of social media networks has somewhat changed the playing field. Today people can connect in non-traditional ways (outside the men’s locker room and the golf course) and become “friends.”

And LinkedIn.com – the one site above that is the social network rather than a job website like the other two sites – is really a business recommendation site much more than a true social media network.

Here’s the thing: There can be so many equally qualified applicants for a job. If you were the hiring manager, wouldn’t you rather hire either someone you know personally or someone recommended by someone you know personally (even if that person is known only through a social media relationship)?

For those of you starting out on your path in life, remember that who you know is still very important in the larger picture. And you also need to be prepared when you discover an unqualified candidate has just been hired in your department. In this case, a good question to ask yourself is: Who does this new employee know either online or offline?

The moral of this story: You should always strive to be the best qualified candidate for any position to which you apply – and finding someone to recommend you who knows the hiring manager is also a good idea.

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Flipping Burgers, internships, jobs, careers, LinkedIn.com, Realmatch.com, Indeed.com, About.com

Volunteering for College Applications – and for Life

Most high school students applying to college know that volunteering activities are important to have on their resumes. Yet, as with everything else on a good resume, there’s volunteering and there’s volunteering.

It’s easy, for example, to volunteer to help with a food collection drive sponsored by your high school. Any student can do that simply by signing up and following through.

Yet, for the other kind of volunteering, what about coming up with a volunteer project yourself that demonstrates initiative, creativity and results?

As described in my post today at www.dogooderscrooge.blogspot.com, I’ve just returned from the Philadelphia wedding of my nephew. It was a lovely, lovely wedding, and I cried as the bride and groom stood under the chupah. Yet I also cried much later in the evening – while a fantastic band played – when I opened the wedding guest gift:

Each guest received a gift certificate for $18 (in Hebrew 18 represents chai – life) to www.donorschoose.org – a nonprofit website where “public school teachers submit proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn.” And then donations bring these dreams to life.

At the wedding I talked to my nephew about the gift certificates. He said he and his bride-to-be had been thinking of giving each guest a $10 gift when they realized what they could do with a different kind of wedding guest gift.

This morning I went to www.donorschoose.org/gift to redeem my gift certificate. There were so many good projects from which to choose. And any of these projects could be the basis of initiating your own volunteer project.

Example of creating your own volunteer project

Let’s suppose you read the following project listed at www.donorschoose.org/gift

Pushing Our Way into Literacy: Book Carts For the Classroom

Last week was Teen Read Week. The media specialist and I created a book cart around the theme Get Active and visited 28 classrooms during the week. With each class, we did a book pass of books we thought would be high interest reads for the students and then allowed them to check out books. During the week, there was a 280% increase in the number of books checked out. We received an overwhelmingly positive response from the staff as well, who reported that for the first time their students were reading.

We would now like to purchase a number of carts to create themed book mobiles for teachers to check out. We know that reading comprehension is the most critical component of student education, and placing high interest reads into the hands of our kids is the key to developing that comprehension.

I need two book carts to enable me to provide high interest young adult reading materials to the students in my school. The cost of this proposal is $833, which includes shipping for any materials requested and fulfillment.

You could take this idea and brainstorm with friends, family, teachers or mentors how to adapt to your own community. Maybe you and three friends could make presentations in classrooms of your favorite books, and your enthusiasm could ignite the interest of students who normally don’t read books.

Or you and three friends could raise money to send to www.donorschoose.org to support this project. And you could offer to send a letter about books you enjoy to the project creator to share with the school’s students.

If you’re going to spend time volunteering – make that volunteer time truly count. Start a new volunteer project that shows your initiative, creativity and commitment.

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Donorschoose.org, volunteering, volunteer, college application, college applications, Flipping Burgers and Beyond

Second Life Offers Alternative Teen Summer Jobs to Flipping Burgers

“While his friends scramble for jobs flipping burgers or bagging groceries this summer …” These opening words of the May 16th Wall Street Journal article “My Virtual Summer Job” by Alexandra Alter caught my attention even though, at 8 a.m. this morning at the car wash and with no decaf coffee (I don’t drink caffeinated), in hand I was barely awake.

The article goes on to describe how teens are using their skills to make real money on virtual world websites. One teen expects to make $4,000 a month this summer on Teen Second Life by using the site’s graphic-design tools to build homes, offices and schools. A set of twins who are inventors on Second Life and sell their gadgets expect to each make about $2,500 a month this summer.

In the Journal’s Independent Street blog by Wendy Bounds in connection with this article she wrote: “Yet as the next generation of builders, metalsmiths, designers and architects increasingly use pixels instead of penny nails and pencils to create, will there by enough talented craftsmen and women to put solid roofs over our heads and well-made clothes on our backs?” And she then added: “Do we value that kind of bricks-and-mortar work properly anymore?”

Here’s the comment I posted in response to Bounds’ blog: “This trend can be looked at in a positive light – these virtual experiences can be internships for the real versions of these jobs. And these virtual jobs can be great to write about for college application essays. These kids are following their passion at an early age, which is what I blog about at www.flippingburgersandbeyond.blogspot.com."

While – disclaimer coming – I have never played Second Life or Teen Second Life, I have frequently stated that high school and college graduates have very little knowledge about the basics of life – such as balancing their checkbooks, hiring a plumber, paying the utilities bill. If these virtual universes with their own real currency can help teach teens and young adults about these basics, I think this could be a very good thing. (As long as these virtual worlds don’t take over the real words of teens and young people.)

I’ve read numerous articles about how the mind doesn’t know the difference between the real thing and a simulation. When professional golfers, for example, stand at a tee and visualize their next swing, their mind can’t distinguish between the visual swing and the subsequent actual swing. And virtual simulations are used for training airplane pilots, among others.

It seems to me that there can be considerable good coming out of teens and young people earning real money in virtual worlds, including the encouragement of entrepreneurship and the concept of working hard without adult prodding. Let’s not bemoan the end of the real world yet.