PDF, Very useful.
Category: Careers
25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself
Rajesh Setty [PDF]:
Why should you distinguish yourself?
Short answer: Being part of the commodity crowd erodes your value.Long answer: Technology professionals worldwide are getting caught in a tsunami of massive commoditization. Technologies are changing very fast. What seemed hot today is not hot anymore. There is a constant pressure to give more, be more effective, be more efficient and be more productive. This forces most technology professionals to go after “short-term skills”. Of course, going after “short-term skills” will provide “short-term results” but will hurt them in the “long-run”. Competency in technical skills is necessary to succeed in this world but they are not sufficient to thrive. The question is what can one do differently so that he or she can distinguish and move above the commodity crowd ? The goal of this manifesto is to provide 25 ways to do just that.
Bonus: You have reached where you are by doing whatever you have done so far. If you need to leapfrog and succeed beyond dreams, continuing to do whatever you have done in the past may not be the answer. You need to think and be different. In other words, you need to distinguish yourself!
Take Control of Your Career
Radical Careering.useful
Paradox: WSJ: Skilled Labor Shortage: Milwaukee Journal: State Short on Jobs for Graduates
Jason Stein writes in the Wisconsin State Journal that there’s a skilled labor shortage here:
Colleges and training programs aren’t keeping up with the demand for skilled workers in a variety of industries, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development has found. Rough state projections show Wisconsin needs 2,430 registered nurses to enter the work force each year until 2012. But in 2004, only 1,755 nursing graduates took the state exam to become registered nurses.
Wisconsin’s construction industry needs a projected 1,020 new carpenters a year, but only 340 carpentry graduates are coming out of the state’s apprenticeship and tech college programs.
Meanwhile, Joel Dresang writes in the Milwuakee Journal-Sentinel that we don’t have enough jobs for graduates.
“In many cases, the jobs aren’t here,” says Karen Stauffacher, assistant dean and director of the Business Career Center at UW-Madison.
As of last week, more than a third of the job offers accepted by the business school’s spring graduates were with companies based in Minneapolis (18% of the accepted offers) and Chicago (17%).
Only 31% of accepted offers were from Wisconsin employers, mostly in Madison (13%) and Milwaukee (8%). On average, the Chicago employers offered salaries $10,000 higher than in Madison, and Minneapolis companies offered about $7,000 more.
Money for Nothin’: Media Consultants & the value proposition
Darren Dahl talks with Martin Kihn about his new book: House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time Interesting Reading.
Sales Skills 101
Surviving a meeting today, I recalled the essential skill that makes a great salesperson: the ability to listen, sometimes for extensive periods of time. I’m always amazed when a person selling something can’t be bothered to actually listen to what the buyer has to say (another way one might put this, when the cluetrain made a stop, they failed to board).
It can be difficult, for sure. I remember one meeting, where there was 3 or 4 minutes of silence. Anyone involved in sales and marketing should become familiar with the term markets are conversations. Learn more at the cluetrain.
Coaching in Wisconsin – Worth it?
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Pearly Kiley – wishoops.net [PDF Version 103K] |
“With all this talent, why aren?t we winning more games?”
“My kid averaged 20 points in summer league, why isn?t he playing more?”
“Why are we walking the ball up the floor all the time?”
“I wish we had the old coach back.”
These unfounded sentiments were also a major reason why over 80 coaches
chose to resign, were relieved of duty or retired since last season.
There are coaches who point to AAU basketball and all its dramatically improving impact. Some blame school administrators for showing more allegiance to parents than them in disputes over individual roles and playing time. Still others say it takes too much time ? and impossible patience ? to deal with the increasingly overzealous parent.
?At the high school level, the rewards aren?t tangible,? said former Waupaca coach Tim Locum, who resigned after last season and is currently an assistant coach at UW-Oshkosh.
Weak on Entrepreneurial Energy
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Starting a Business is Not a Top Down Process
Rick Romell’s summary of CFED’s Development Report Cards for the States does not shed a whole lot of new thinking on Wisconsin’s entrepreneurial dilemna:
- Wisconsin placed 47th in the number of new companies formed per 1,000 workers in the state
- Venture Capital is a problem here
- Wisconsin’s Brain Drain – new grads often leave the Badger State.
Yet, Wisconsin continues to try government driven, top down programs, such as the Wisconsin Angel Network, among others.
Candinas Chocolatier is the type of business we should seek to emulate. Markus started the company in 1994, after completing an apprenticeship in Switzerland. Today, over 10 years later, he is still in business and clearly enjoys what he’s doing. The attention to detail illustrated in the product photos above demonstrates the devotion required to succeed. Let’s call it passion. Another interesting local firm, Planet Propaganda created his packaging.
Candinas’ products are certainly not inexpensive, nor are they run of the mill. Rather, Markus has taken a quality position in the market and continued to improve his chocolates. This is a very long term approach to business. I need say no more on this subject as Consumer Reports discovered:
?The best chocolates came from lesser-known makers,? the magazine pronounced in its February issue. ?Lesser-known? as in Candinas Chocolates, of Verona, Wisconsin (www.candinas.com). Candinas was one of only three chocolate makers nationwide to achieve the rating of ?excellent,? ranking behind Martine?s Chocolates and La Maison du Chocolat in that category.
The winning assortment was the Candinas 36-piece box (price: $41). ?Ultra-smooth dark and milk chocolates with especially good hazelnut, caramel, and liqueur-flavored centers,? praises the magazine, accentuating the ?fresh cream and butter notes.?
Fine chocolates from Wisconsin may boggle the mind, but consider: chocolatier Markus Candinas, 32, has Swiss parents and trained as a confectioner in their homeland.
Great chocolate makes perfect sense – we have fantastic dairy products. Perhaps we’d be better off further leveraging our dairy business (designer milks and more cheese varieties?).
Entrepreneurs are born, not trained. We simply, as Romell’s article notes, need to find more people willing to give it a try.
A useful book, sort of related is Mintzburg’s Managers Not MBA’s.
The Power of Words – Launching a Revolution
Linus Torvalds launched his Linux revolution with these words, over 13 years ago. Today, the linux operating system powers a growing number of internet servers.
“Creative Destruction”
A term coined in 1942 by Joseph Schumpeter in his work, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, to denote a “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”
I thought of this concept (which I learned in High School many years ago) and refined at the UW recently while visiting with a local small business owner. This guy’s firm formerly sold voice mail systems. That business has changed quite a bit therefore, he is now selling services and IT solutions including replication, archive and “secure” email products.
I told him that I was impressed by his ability to zig and zag as the market changed. It’s clear that every worker today, at any level must be ready for new challenges and opportunities, as this article on the NY Times outsourcing plans illustrates.