Notes From A Bad Teacher About Education Careers

Education Calculator on Notebook (Photo credit: nniknak)

Some people seriously consider going into education as their “encore career“.

Let me whisper something in your ear: fuggedabowdit.

Ask me what prompts that venomous phrase. I want to do my part in strengthening education by preventing one more idealistic, romantic  person with the wrong personality configuration from becoming one of the 50% of educators who leave the profession in the first five years of practice (and head off some chocolate OD’s and soggy-pillow-at-3am moments).

Yes, truly monstrous people continue to slip through the cracks and end up in education  judging from some of the  lurid stories in the news these days about abusive teachers. However, this is not that kind of discussion. This is intended  to influence people who ought not teach lower school grades to put the cap back on the pen before the application gets filed to any system anywhere. This is about the “rightness of fit” issue in the job search. I am lifting the example of early education because it is what I know, but the lessons can be widely applied to jobs anywhere:

when you don’t belong somewhere, you don’t belong. Move on.

In earlier posts this year there is a discussion about discovering the most appropriate place of employment. I collected the discussion in the section of the blog, “Victoree’s Shape-Shifting Job Gypsy Card Game”. Click on the tab  to review.

While re-doing my MBTI assessment with a professional counselor it finally dawned on me why I had so little success as an early educator. Education systems, like many other companies, slide up and down the scale of being candid about  fully disclosing why an employee “didn’t work out”. It seems companies rather go to great lengths to couch  bad comments on the “final report card” in vague terms, probably to deflect a possible wrongful termination/discrimination lawsuit.

The truth surfaced for me in cross referencing the results and finding several of the same traits  surfacing across several assessments, including the MBTI, skills, and strengthfinder2.0.  I came to the conclusion that I am basically unsuited for the lower school classroom. No shame.

The release of that shame felt like finally being able to wear a pair of jeans one size smaller. Releasing the shame might even make my dream of shopping in that lower-sized section come true! (You know stress makes you fat, don’t you?) I made a cowardly decision to look for “job security” and “normalcy” early in the job search and ended up in a place where I did not belong.

Wherever the ”ah ha” breaks through,early or late in the job search, give yourself a gift and let the revelation “work you”.

Related articles

• Relationship Between MBTI Type and Religious Preference (drdianehamilton.wordpress.com)
• Indeed increases job search traffic lead (indeed.com)
• How to Become a Teacher (answers.com)
• CAPT Training Programs Approved for Continuing Education in Professional Licensing, Qualification, and Certification (prweb.com)

Do You Really Want To Know What My Real Weaknesses Are?

Nooooo!

In a word, no…

especially if the weakness is one that will  in any way negatively impact the company or the potential employee’s ability to do the job being interviewed for. Again, there are some things an applicant should never admit in an interview. Re-read that last sentence. I did not say, lie in an interview. I said, never present any weakness in an interview that will speak of the lack of an ability essential to performing the job. Why set up for failure? Interviewers ask applicants about their weaknesses to tease out several things, according to the headhunters and human capital experts I have met in my travels. When they ask this abominable question interviewers really want to know:

• Are you humble or do you take yourself more seriously than  you ought?
• How well do you understand yourself? Are you self-aware?
• Are you honest? Can you admit making mistakes and able to own up to it?
• Can you really do this job or is your resume a crock?
• Are your intentions honorable or is this just  a “one night stand’?

The next few posts will be a casual but serious discussion of the interview including dealing with the mystery of what to tell potential employers about things like Swiss cheese resumes, a stretch in the slammer, family care issues, and other “red flags” that give applicants and recruiters alike nightmares.

In one article I read entitled, “How To Answer the Question, What Is Your Greatest Weakness?”, featured below,I found one intriguing statement: “The questions you hear in an interview will reveal a lot about the mindset of the organization…”  It immediately sets up questions in my mind:

• Exactly what kind of weaknesses pose the biggest threat to that company?
• How is my kind of weakness going to bless or curse the company?
• Is there already a full complement of my kind of nut in the tree?
• is one of those nuts going to end up being my supervisor?

They hired my brother!

This suggests to me that if job seekers empower themselves they can take the body of questions corporations ask in interviews together and read them like tea leaves to find things out about the company what should be known before saying yes to a potentially toxic or abusive work relationship. 

• Candidate Tool Kit, Part 1: Interview Do’s and Don’ts (govigseniorcare.wordpress.com)
• Ten Things Not To Say During An Interview (therantingrecruiter.wordpress.com)
• Your Achilles’ Heel(s) (caitlindurkin.wordpress.com)
• What Questions Should I Be Ready to Answer at Just About Any Job Interview? [Ask Lifehacker] (lifehacker.com)
• 5 Things Not to Say in a Job Interview (money.usnews.com)
• Feb 16, 8:27pm “Good Interview, but unwanted job” (ilovemycrazyboss.wordpress.com)
• How to answer “What is your greatest weakness?” (patchspace.co.uk)
• 21 Things Hiring Managers Wish You Knew (sweetbriarcareerservices.wordpress.com)
• The Mystery Of The Interview (dougnewmanpro.wordpress.com)
• 15 Biggest Job Seeker Mistakes (frankcrumstaffing.wordpress.com)
• Interview Rules to Break (cmcacorner.com)
• Candidate Tool Kit, Part 1: Interview Do’s and Don’ts (govigseniorcare.wordpress.com)
• The Trick To Answering ‘Trick’ Interview Questions (personalbrandingblog.com)

The Day That “What You Do” Is Just That

"shape shifter" art by: "Thunderhands"

One of the things a job seeker who has been out  of work for a half-year or more learns to do is to “disassociate”. By “disassociate” I mean uncouple a former job title from the definition of the self. Please allow me to elaborate.

Many people will introduce themselves like this: “Hi, my name is Sean; I’m a mechanic down at ABC Garage”. Notice that a job title is used as a modifier in the statement of personal identity (like a little commercial for the company especially if the brand name of the company is well-known) as if  the company name is a part of personal identity. For a long time after the loss of a job, a former employee might say, “Hi, I’m Sean who used to work for ABC Garage” before launching into a tirade about being out of work and cursing the government official currently being blamed for it. After not having lived in an employer-employee relationship for over six months, that introduction may begin to sound like this: “Hi, I’m Sean Dannon, Angelica’s husband. I noticed you were alone at the punch bowl so I decided to come over and say hello”.

What is the difference you might ask? Disassociation. The more remote the last  workday becomes in memory, the weaker the emotional ties to that employment become. Making new possible work relationships feels less like betraying  the old workplace. The company name is dropped as a modifier of  personal identity. Notice how people whose job search has been longer begin to identify themselves by their own names plus the relationships that have meaning instead of the former job title tag.

The process of disassociation in the beginning feels something akin to a child’s separation anxiety on the first day of school. It can be so acute, it feels like choking;  imminent death; annihilation; non-existence. Once on the other side of this first stage of the  shape-shift, behold, “all things are become new”. The sun shines and there is something to get out of bed for.  The mere fact that day has come and being out of bed is what happens after a period of sleep feels “right” and “normal”. There is a day to plan. There is a looking forward to Life presenting her challenges, joys and surprises. The search for new work takes on a different meaning. Looking for work ever so slowly become less “the new job”  but just one of the tasks necessary to accomplish a certain goal. It becomes something on a “to do list”. This is sane, businesslike dispassionate disassociation.

About the same time or soon after the frenzied stretched-to-the-limit attention, “looking for a job is my new job” phase is over, “finding a job” falls into a new position in the order of things.  No longer queen, it becomes merely one part of the mix in life. Certain seekers begin to cast glances around and find out that “having a job” or being an “employee” is not the only way to do “making a living”.

Half a year out from the initial event of job loss, “what I do for a living” and “my person-hood” are two very non-associated things. This is actually a new reality. “I am me, not what I do”.

Related articles

• The problem with job titles (wall-notes.com)
• Work History questions (tonavicblog.wordpress.com)
• How should I list my previous jobs on my CV? (career-advice.monster.co.uk)
• Help Kathryn come up with a job title (danpink.com)
• Disassociation, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (theupsanddownsofmyworld.wordpress.com)

They’re Going To Find Out Sometime

Employment Exhibition (Photo credit: Modern_Language_Center)

My pastor hails from the West Indies. When he applied for employment back in the early 60′s his shining credentials and measured, well spoken British accented voice charmed them. “Come on in and see us. You’re perfect for the job!”, they would tell him over the phone. Then, he would arrive for the interview and the employers’ disgust slammed the door long before they could physically stammer out, “we’re sorry. The position is closed”.

My husband sold insurance in the late 70′s in Rhode Island. Potential clients, impressed with his professionalism and knowledge eagerly invited him to their homes, but when he arrived on their doorsteps they spoke to him through the crack above the chain on the door…if they opened it at all after getting a look through the living room window.

This is African American Heritage Month (officially called, “Black History Month” in many places) and I am here to confirm that in the early 21st century racism still persists in the USA. Racism, sexism, ageism, handicap-ism and weight-ism taints the job search for many, causing stellar resumes to suddenly be tossed into “pile C”. We discussed this earlier in the conversation about branding and image if you remember. There are still some physical features in prospective employees (otherwise called “job seekers”) to which some employers will react negatively. This is still a cultural reality which cannot be denied or ignored. Just a casual listen to some of the conversation in the current elimination rounds in the presidential election debates unearth clues to the existence of a lot of social unfinished business in the subfloors of this society. I weep when I pray for this country sometimes. Much pain. Much pain.

Some career coaches advise their clients against posting their pictures on their professional profiles because of the known negative response to some physical features. I remember my stories and still post my picture on Linked In anyway. I say to myself, “why not? They’re going to find out sometime so it may as well be now”. I stand with poet Robert Burns: “A man’s a man for a’ that‘” I figure there are two kinds of potential employers out there: those who think I would be a good hire and those who do not. If  the unalterable aspects of my packaging puts an employer off, I have to question if  that is a company I would want to work for.

Nobody should be surprised at what they see when I show up.

Related articles

• Are You Over-Sharing On LinkedIn? (executiveresumeexpert.com)
• The Resume is Dead – Again (onlinecollege.org)
• February is Black History Month – Black Women in America: Culture and History (dublinlibrary.wordpress.com)
• Maid in Jersey: Black History Month looks at domestic workers (nj.com)

The Terror On Both Sides Of The Table

Image via Wikipedia

It's not rocket science, it's magic

October is “the scary month”, so, let’s talk about scary things in the job search. Fear. So much about why people fail in the search for work is laid squarely at the door of fear. Question: is this justified?

Guess what I found out? Potential employers are scared. Scared crapless that they’ll make a bad decision and hire the wrong person.

Let the Job Gypsy lady tell you a tale: I took a data entry job once and in that class of newbie processors was a Superstar Processor. She was my main competition.  We both had lightning fingers on a keyboard, but she did the work even quicker and more accurately than I. Finally, after a series of elimination rounds, there was a choice between us. They hired The Star. I got the gate and continued my search elsewhere. A week or two later, I met the Star in the streets and asked her how the new job was going. She said, “Oh, I quit that job last week. It was boring”. The moral of this story? Employers always take a chance when they hire a star. This is why “overqualified applicants” scare them. However, to live means to take risks and taking risks means facing the reality of the odd loss or two.

What lies behind the mask?

Go here to see an article from the potential employer side of the hiring process –

How to Guarantee You Won’t Make A Bad Hire

In a certain way, this knowledge makes both sides of the table equal. On both sides of the table, there is a fear the match will be wrong. The hiring process could sure use the services of a matchmaker or a connector –someone gifted in brokering relationships, huh? In some places this is the core of what recruiters do. I’m saying companies should have a person strongly possessed of the strength of connection–a relationship broker– on their hiring team in Human Resources departments. It might just take the “scary” out of the hiring process.

Related articles

• A Recruiter’s Nightmare Applicant (victoree.wordpress.com)
• Hire the Job, Don’t Let It Hire You (craigormiston.com)

The Third Page: References Will Be Provided

clear intentions?

In times gone by, “references to be provided upon request” squatted at the end of a resume like an ugly little troll. In even earlier days, the list of references was its last page. I still have a “third page”, but I never send it until it is needed. As we have mentioned before, unless the woo in a resume is very strong, a recruiter will not look past the fold. That means the list of references–page 3– will go unnoticed.

Recruiters and HR hardly spend 15 seconds eyeballing resumes these days–those resumes served up to them cherry picked from key word searches. A resume that is not properly SEO-ed (search engine optimized) with key words is invisible to the search engines. A resume that does not rise in the key word search will simply not be picked up.

If a search spits out 50 resumes that “make the cut” by key word, that number is shaken down through closer examination until 5 candidates’ resumes remain. This is the round where “packaging”–stand-out individuals and presentation really matters. Again, references do not enter into the discussion. Where does the “third page” enter, then?At the interviews. References and a few more rounds of interviews are  used to winnow the number to the final two.

Along with a lot of reading, job seekers attend a lot of seminars. As I listened to panel after panel of HR professionals and recruiters I came to this conclusion:

no ring; no thing.

I checked your references

I forget about showing references until I am sure the intentions are serious. The rejected need not waste resources of time and energy when there is no evidence of a serious woo to win. Unless I am just wild about a company the chase ends when I get the auto responder that says, “we will keep your resume on file for….” That is the signal to move on.

A Home-made Resume

produce of resume writing

Some of us must write our own resumes and that is no sin. Some of us are under severe financial duress in the search for new employment. There simply is no room in a poverty-level budget for a $100.00 plus professionally written resume. Food and shelter are more important right now. The best bet may be to locate a professional who will agree to do pro-bono work. Others of us are control freaks. Having decent writing ability and a bit of an eye for design, we prefer to meet the challenge of resume writing ourselves, but there are roadblocks along the way and a little help is appreciated.

Personally, I love telling stories but I hate writing about myself. Resumes, bios,

Resume! OH NOOOOOO!

and Linked In profiles get “kinda funky” and I tend to procrastinate on doing these tasks because of left-over self-esteem issues. The last time I had my freshly done resume critiqued by a certain job board (which shall remain nameless to allow grace to the guilty) the agency told me in the comments that “if you were sushi, your resume presents you as “cold dead fish”.  The sting in the tail of professional resume writers I see advertising on line seems to be provoking anxiety by using a foreboding  undertone:   “don’t get caught presenting a ‘homemade’ resume’. This is not a job for amateurs.”

I put off doing it again.

Contact Information

There are a few items immediately below the owner’s name on that document that should be there no matter who does it: contact information. Many resumes hop, step and jump to the waste bin because of the lack of contact information. The ticket to the ball will never get to a person who does not say where the ticket should be delivered. Of course, there are folk on the pro-address side and the con-address side.

Many people, for various reasons including security concerns, residence in a place of incarceration, being in the process of relocation or fear an employer practices a 21st century form of “redlining” may be reluctant to declare an address. Nevertheless, there should be a way to get in touch. Special circumstances can be explained later.  Click on an interesting article below about email addresses from Brazen Careerist, a favorite blog of mine. Even if an applicant’s real present address is “in an old oak tree in the Hundred-Acre Woods”, in a spare bedroom at a friend’s home or in a local emergency shelter, real addresses,  real phone numbers and a businesslike email address are necessary.

The Ugly Duckling Days Of Change

The Ugly Duckling

Change. Everybody talks a good game about change. Chrysalises of hopeful futures hang on every Christmas tree. They partly open in gyms and in clinics and in journals. Then about March, they fall slain by the struggle like early buds that freeze in an untimely spring snow. The “failures at change” have a pint of ice cream to console themselves and return to “what was” having given up becoming the butterfly.

Why don’t more people succeed at elemental change?  The truth is that change is not easy. Change is difficult. I believe it is the “ugly duckling effect” that many find so challenging.

Say, what? The “ugly duckling effect”?

Are you familiar with the tale of the ugly duckling? Allow me to revisit that story with you. I am telling my version of the tale I learned from Hans Christian Anderson.

A duck was going about her duty one season setting on eggs. She did what ducks do; what she had always done with all the clutches of eggs she laid season after season. However, this brood she was setting was unusual because one of the eggs seemed to be a little different. The mother duck ignored that difference and kept setting; kept going about her duty.

 

Right on time, as they did every season, the eggs hatched. One by one the little wet heads poked through their shells and in minutes they were all blow-dried in the spring air into bolls of yellow fluff with yellow beaks and feet–except for one–a boll of grey fluff with  a skinny black beak and wide, black feet. The mother duck was puzzled. She dismissed the “different” duckling as just a freak of nature and led them all down to the water for their first swim. They all swam beautifully, though she wondered why the little grey duckling dipped her head into the water so long. And her voice! She did not give a melodic “quack” like her brothers and sisters. It was more like a “honk” with a little broken squeak on the end. Ugly voice.

 

As time went by, this “different” duckling grew taller than her nest mates; even her walk was different: more upright off the grass. Such big feet she had. One day, her nest mates’ yellow fluff began to fall off their bodies and juvenile feathers appeared, showing the mark of their species.  Their sister did not have that distinctive stout neck and low, compact form. She was grey and gangly with a long neck, longer wings and a black mask across her face. “If you aren’t the ugliest thing we have ever seen!”, they hissed at her. “You’re hideous!.” Then they poked her; bit her and drove her out of the ducks’ area. The gangly, grey duck shuffled away to the next pond alone.

 

As the ugly duckling paddled silently across the water, she was startled by a family of neighbor birds. She hid in the reeds and watched them parade by. Behind some of the magnificent, white feathered adults were the fledging teens, preening themselves of their grey feathers. Behind some of the adults were small, fluffy grey hatchlings. “Ducklings?”, the ugly ducking thought. She looked at her reflection in the pond and saw that she looked like them. Immediately she swam up to the  ones who seemed to be her own age and hailed them. They drifted around her and giggled in their harsh voices, “You’re not a duck! You’re one of us–a swan. You must be our lost sister”.

 

They invited her to float down the stream with them. Eventually, she met her original nesting pair who were thrilled to see the daughter they thought was lost a season ago.

Trumpeter Swan-charleyharperprints.com

When fall came, the ugly duckling’s juvenile feathers were all shed and in their place were the feathers of an adult swan. She was all white except for a slender, black beak and a black band across her face, the mark of her family.

 

I told this tale to say this: sometimes job seekers change something about themselves to “repackage” or “reimage” themselves. It is part of a “reinvention” movement to craft a  younger, stronger, more active, smarter, more up-to-date image. People who are not in a job search mode tend to laugh behind their hands and roll their eyes heavenward at all this metamorphosis, I have read. No tea and sympathy from folk who think about the unemployed once per week–when the “unemployment figures” come out in the news media.

We job seekers change hairstyles and glasses. We color our hair. We buy new clothes (an inside change has really happened when we start to revamp our wardrobe). We “get work done”. Many of the changes have stages. This takes time.

We head straight into change. We begin to “shape shift”. The stadium of friends and family seems to be smiling and cheering for change in the beginning. It feels powerful when we first trot out our dreams and intentions, but that first rush of success does not last. Actually going through the process of change is a long, lonely stretch of road. Change is not a sprint, but a marathon we find out. Change exacts its fees in patience and pain. These are the “ugly ducking” days.

 

 The hard work of change is largely solitary and unrewarded. The unprepared become discouraged and fall away in the early stages. They who persist longer become tempted to relax the standards when the change regimen begins to actually challenge established patterns and habits. Believe me. I know  whereof I speak having made many, many attempts to loose ”baby weight” since 1985. The “baby” is married now, but the weight is still there and has gained company.

 

The real work of change is a period of discomfort in increasing intensity. There is so much pull to fall back into the older, more familiar and comfortable. This is why “change” is so popular initially, but so hard to really get done. This is why people tend to put off necessary change until forced to by outside events. At that point change mounts a coup and snatches the command position instead of being managed and controlled with dispassion, strength and mindfulness.

Some Employers Love it–Brainless, Painless Pre-Judgement

The real Aunt Jemima

Our discussions about image and branding has come to a thicket in the “Thoughtless Woods” I do not care too much for, so I am hemming it in with this very popular, powerful and very mindful-to-the-minute prayer (its full text!):

The Serenity Prayer

The full text of the original “Serenity Prayer” written by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

GOD, grant me the serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change,

Courage to change the
things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;

Aunt Jemima mid 20th century

Accepting hardship as the
pathway to peace.

Taking, as He did, this
sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will make
all things right if I
surrender to His Will;

Aunt Jemima trademark updated 2001

That I may be reasonably happy
in this life, and supremely
happy with Him forever in
the next.

Amen

When we get to this spooky place, things have to be said that the sensitive seeker does not clamor to hear. I did not. The paths of my own job searches have always been wet with tears upon reaching this cursed ground.

People are lazy. People love conformity. People like to know what to expect. People would rather have a handy-dandy, card-sized coding system that seems to give them the ability to “know” any person met anywhere without doing any research (conversations, talking…). It is a neat, pre-constructed response usually based on a misinformation mash-up of fear and selfishness “ready to use” in any social situation to  “pre-judge” anything. Brainless and painless, it can be applied so fast and so deftly that people are barely aware of using it at all.

Potential employers use their  “pre-judging” system like a cardboard grading scale to immediately measure on sight a candidate’s trustworthiness and “rightness of fit” with the corporation’s image. Certain human attributes communicate negative social meanings in the USA. Having these attributes carries the possibility of keeping  their owners out of the “final cut” in the competition for employment. Most are, for the most part, not changeable except on a very surface level.  They include genetically determined human features–factory built to spec– features that came with the original package like sex,  skin color, physical build, voice and how aging will play out.

Decisions can be made about how features considered undesirable can be packaged in the most personally honoring, favorable way possible.Any candidate with image-damaging , generally held negative social constructs against them cannot simply ignore them but can ill afford to spend time burned up with anger about them.  Is this extra burden fair? No.  Being one of a devalued group, I can personally say for the record that these realities are soul-damaging, anger producing hope destroyers.

First Lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama

The only positive, productive choice in dealing with these realities must include forgiveness, courage, self-esteem, perseverance and faith.

…And They Don’t Like “Virgins” Either

Queen Victoria, the bride

I mentioned in an earlier discussion that prospective employers do not like job hoppers. Well, let me tell you something else: they don’t like virgins either.   You see, brothers and sisters, these are the rules of engagement of the job hunting game–and it is a game:

1. Present a “winner” career history
2. Be able to prove you can do the job by having done it before
3. Act like you’re not unemployed

I know the last one is wild, but it is true. Career counselors know this. Being a veteran job hunter (the essence of working actors’ and freelancers’ lives–looking for work), I have always known about this. However, in my travels, no potential employer I interviewed with had guts enough to actually speak “the rule that cannot be named”, out loud. Go to Career Diva and read about one employer in Florida who did.  This is causing a firestorm of comments in my alumni Linked In group. Companies are being outed about the secret of rule two.

If you have read enough research and listened to enough advice (because you, like I, have been unattached a LONG time) you also know that being young, tall, slim, good-looking and extroverted gives you power balls.  They who do not have the power balls had better know incantations and get magic weapons. I’m a sorceress. What about you?

Now, rule number two is the reason anybody who is just recently entering the workforce or is changing career fields (jumpers!) will have such a hard time making a convincing case in an interview. The reasons are the same as they were for the breakup with my first boyfriend in college.  Neither potential employers nor recruiters like to know their company is ”your first”.

Rule number two is why Distributive Education exists. Rule number two is why internships exist. Rule number two is why working summer jobs is so important. Potential employers like to bet with the house. They are skittish about taking a chance on a new, untried worker who may not fit or grow properly on the job. Replacing  and training people is an expensive venture.

I feel the moral of this cautionary tales is stated best in one of my favorite blogs, “Career Advice” written by Marc Cenedella.   His column can be found at “The Ladders” website. In a post called, “How Your Resume Can Tell Your Story”, one of his guests, Erica Moore-Burton, gives the essence of rule two when she told him,  “A prospective employer has to know that they are not dealing with someone from scratch and there is either a base knowledge or some relevant experience that is going to benefit them…Remember W.I.F.T. … what’s in it for them!”

…And there we have it! In the job market, it is no credit to have a history that looks like Queen Victoria’s wedding dress. Though they would rather not see a worker with a “scarlet woman” history trekking through the door, one with the right shade of pink for the season is always in fashion.