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Some have called it “Resume 2.0.”   For others, it works as a universally accessible business card.  Whether you are looking for a job or running your own business, or simply want to control what people will see when they “Google” your name on the internet, you need LinkedIn.com. 

The whole premise works a little like the “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon” game — LinkedIn helps you build a growing group of “connections” — people you know and can personally vouch for — who form the “first degree” of an enormous “network” of people consisting of the friends and colleagues of your friends and colleagues. 

Sort of like the way networking works in real life, hey?

If you don’t have a LinkedIn.com profile yet, you need to build one, and here’s why: 

1. All of LinkedIn.com’s basic features are free, and LinkedIn will even search your email address books for you to find those first contacts.  You don’t need to build your profile all at once, either, but can gradually add and learn as you go.  There are plenty of online resources about LinkedIn.com to inspire you, too.
2. The more data you have online about yourself, the more easily search engines will find you.  It is more important than ever for anyone and everyone in the working world to have an online presence, and LinkedIn is a great way to help manage yours.
3. In addition to your employment history and links to your other business or personal websites, you can add ”recommendations” to your LinkedIn profile, which you solicit from your own contacts.  This is a fantastic opportunity to create a public list of quick, mini-reference letters, and one that is entirely controlled by you: nothing goes “live” on your profile until you’ve approved it.  
4. Sharing your LinkedIn.com profile is easy, and much less obtrusive than handing out resumes or business brochures.  You can even put your LinkedIn URL on a business card… a tactful way to assure that all the professional information you may want to share is easily accessible by anyone who wants it.  LinkedIn also provides a cute little badge you can add to your other business websites, linking folk back to your profile.
5. Managing your contacts is easy, too.   Once people are on your contact list, you will receive regular updates or “pings” whenever they make their own LinkedIn updates, which is helpful information and often fun, too.
6. LinkedIn is a great way to find former classmates and long-lost friends. People will inevitably find you, too: one quickly learns to gracefully ignore “link beggers.”  The strength of your network, after all, is based on the understanding that everyone’s ”1st degree” contacts are people she can honestly recommend.  It is perfectly appropriate, and tactful, to simply ignore any invitations from the high school boyfriend you never want to see again. Yes, really! 

Whaddya waiting for?  It won’t take long before you’ll be a true Insider, and then you’ll be ready for the latest in LinkedIn humor, too…

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He’s just graduated from high school, and all of us are learning a new drill.  It’s hard not to feel like the world’s Number 1 Hypocrite when telling him that “I don’t really see myself working in a grocery store” is not an acceptable excuse for an unemployed 18-yr-old.

It only works when you are an unemployed 45-yr-old. 

After all.  I was cleaning vomit out of restaurant toilets when I was 18.  Which, as my son dourly pointed out this evening, CLEARly made the entire world a better place for all future generations. 

I really will have to go to court, because it turns out that a conviction for speeding in a school zone can be as bad for your driving record as causing an accident in which someone is killed.  Even at best, it is worse than driving without a license — and I can see why, really, being a mom after all. 

In fact, in a sort of show of solidarity with the whole “keep our kids safe” idea, I’d intended just to find out what the fee was, pay it quietly, and move on.  However, it turns out that paying the fine amounts to a legal admission of guilt, which carries some pretty serious consequences, both for our insurance and even potentially for my employability.  And I honestly don’t think I am guilty.  Even the traffic court lady I spoke to today told me it’s better to go to court than pay,  so that clinches it.  I’ll no doubt blubber like an idiot, however. 

Poop.  It’s like when your first dishwasher explodes, and then your second dishwasher explodes, and then you have to go out and buy a third one, and pay for someone to install it, when what you really wanted to do with that money was finally buy nice new countertops instead.   I mean, you know?!?

The Wall Street Journal’s online Career Journal  has continued its series of articles called “90 days,” presumably based on Michael Watkins’ bestseller, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels.  Each WSJ column addresses the most critical things to remember in the first days following a major career transition.

There’s lots of terrific cross-pollination here, so if you’re in transition, go ahead and read them all!

• 90 Days: Working Productively As a Telecommuter
• 90 Days: Relocating Overseas? Do Your Homework And Ease Your Way
• 90 Days: Acing Your First Post-College Job
• 90 Days: Working for Yourself Can Have Its Challenges
• 90 Days: Easing Back From Maternity Leave
• 90 Days: Dealing With a PR Crisis Takes Planning and Truth
• 90 Days: Joining a Nonprofit Board Is More Than a Labor of Love

~ For more WSJ “90 Days” articles ~

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I received an email today from an AmeriCorps VISTA leader in Oregon, asking if I was available to work in Portland’s Native American Youth and Family Center. Unfortunately, that’s several thousand miles away! 

AmeriCorps  is not just for 17-24 year olds. Members of AmeriCorps VISTA program are expected to have a college degree or some working experience, and commit to serving full-time for a year. In exchange, VISTA workers receive training, moving assistance, health care, and a $4725 education award. Members also receive a modest living allowance.

VISTA members commit to a nonprofit organization or local government agency, working to fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses, strengthen community groups, and much more.   Just think:  You could work in Portland, too.

My friend Peggy, aka the Career Encourager, has asked me to choose which of the following I would use to describe myself:

1 - I am a Working Mother

2 - I am a Woman with Children and a Career

3 - Other

Hmm.  How would you answer that, readers? 

The way I define myself keeps changing, is the problem.  I’m going to be out of the mother business soon enough and never quite made it to feeling like a “Working Mother,”  so I think the first option is out.

The second option,”I am a woman with children and a career” is a little better in that I was a “woman” before I was a mother, but it seems a little out of reach as well.  I might, someday, get to call myself ”a woman with children and a job,” and then a few more years after that, I’d really like to retain the ”a woman with a job” part, too.   But a “Woman with Children and Career?”  “Careers” sound like such permanent and uninterupted things, things people have expressly gone to school to prepare for when they were young, worked away at for a three or so further decades, and then eventually retire from.  Can the majority of mothers even do this?  **Having a Career** sounds so intense and single-minded.  While “intense” certainly fits me, what mother is ever free to be single-minded as well? 

What I am is chronically multi-minded instead.  And every one of my many minds is subject to sudden and unpredictable change as my children and my life and I all go lurching along together. 

Which seems to leave only the last option: “other.”  I’d probably have chosen that option anyway, being the obnoxious iconoclast that I am, but in this case I think it really is the only one that fits.   In the end I think I choose “I am a woman:” or maybe,  ”I (just) am,” period.

How about you?

Creative commons   Child’s Drawing Photo by an0nym0usmus & Giraffe Photo by Timothy K. Hamilton  (see great comment by Timothy, below!)

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HR Carnival #15 is hosted today by Irish career-consultant Rowan Manahan on his Fortify Your Oasis blog.

I am particularly glad to see Career Encouragement’s post, “Would you rather stay home with your children?” — this is such a tender and complicated point for me personally that I couldn’t even come up with a comment of my own when she first posted it. I appreciate her voice very much, however!

Deb over at 8 hours and a lunch is also a favorite of mine in this bunch… I appreciate her irreverence and willingness to stare things in the face without blinking.

There’s lots of good stuff here, whether you are an employer, employee, or (oh dear to my heart!) still seeking a job. Don’t miss!

It’s the Carnival of Human Resources for August 22, and I’m the one lurking over here in the corner wearing the false mustache. I wasn’t strictly invited, but some of my favorite bloggers were, and these collections of HR posts are always valuable to a job-hunter like me.

Blog carnivals are a great idea, by the way — there are many creative ways to organize one, though generally a group of bloggers agree to post on a common theme or topic, sharing editing/hosting duty on a rotating basis. And who better than a bunch of human resource professionals to take advantage of this double-helping of networking — building community among colleagues while building readership at the same time?

So come on in. I’ve got a spare mustache in my pocket with your name on it!

When I was trying to decide what to do about a recent job offer, a friend proposed a  “thought experiment” she thought I might be helpful as I made the decision about joining that particular company.

Think about a person you have worked with that you really respected for his/her skill and professionalism - someone who was a boss or mentor to you (let’s call her Jane).  Now imagine you are at a business lunch with the folks from the team that’s been interviewing you, and Jane walks by and stops to say hello.  How do you feel about introducing Jane to your new colleagues and saying that you just took a job reporting to these folks? Are you proud of that decision / accomplishment?

My friend then described a job she had once accepted with a small firm that seemed to have a lot going for it, with the benefit package and flexibility that she needed.  She still felt she was “settling,” though.  While she was able to do good work for them, there was something about the whole arrangement that didn’t quite fit.

One day we were all out at lunch and it hit me, “If “Jane” (a former boss that I just loved - professional, smart, you name it) walked by, how would I feel about introducing her to this crowd?”  I realized I would be embarrassed to let her know I had taken a job with them - I felt like I had settled.  Not because they are “bad” people or anything, but because I knew I was capable of something much different in my professional life.   I realized I couldn’t work somewhere that I felt embarrassed about, so I resigned the following week.

My friend didn’t just leave, however.  Because she was valuable to the company, she was able to negotiate a consulting arrangement with them.  “It works much better for me because I can be more forthright and open with my ideas and suggestions since I’m not as tied into them as I would be with an employment relationship.  And it works better for them because I truly believe they are getting better advice from me now.”

Career strategist and consultant William S. Frank heartily endorses this approach, recommending that any job offer that seems unsuitable in terms of duties, responsibilities, or earnings may work very well if reworked into a consulting opportunity instead. In an article he wrote for Careerlab.com, Frank lays out some very practical ground rules one should consider in making such arrangements, most particularly how to calculate an appropriate fee.  It is better, he firmly believes, to give a few hours away than it is to undercharge…  a trap he’s seen many first-time consultants fall into.

Consulting may lead to full-time job offers, or it may very well prove to be an attractive career choice in itself.  In the end though, Frank’s most compelling argument for consulting is this:

No one should be unemployed, even for a day. The world is full of  problems waiting to be solved. Someone out there needs you and your talents badly. It wouldn’t hurt you to volunteer a few hours a week for a charity or for a business in need of your skills, and it certainly couldn’t hurt you to accept a few small consulting assignments while you pursue full-time employment.

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It’s so new it’s not even in Wikipedia, and baby that’s SAYIN’ something!

Invented (according to Web Worker Daily) by software developer Brad Neuberg, Coworking is “a movement to create a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents.”  Mostly young, mostly hip independent workers are trading their pj’s and isolation for shared work space where they can network, meet clients, and enjoy some of the time- and space-structuring benefits of “going to an office.”

Click here to watch Brad and some of his colleagues in a “learn more about it” video.

While it’s not an entirely new concept, the current “coworker movement” among the growing number of (mostly web) workers is clearly taking advantage of the social connectivity provided by the internet to collaborate in forming a number of “coworking” spaces  already available (or currently being formed) throughout the US. 

It’s a really neat idea.  What I want to know is whether they accept anyone older than 25, and if you can still get a mocha?

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