I’ll share advice with students on how to create a stellar career, truly rise above peers in their profession and get employers to go “gaga” over them.

Perhaps most importantly, I’m offering all attendees of my session a FREE mentor match. I’ll introduce them to a seasoned professional with whom they have common interests and can build a long-term collaborative relationship.

Read more in the press release below.

SJSU Student Organization Conference Release

Hey, I read the news.  I know that the national / world economy is headed to heck on greased skids.  But my clients haven’t received the notice that business is supposed to be bad.  Yes, one particular client, a very large particular client, has been managing its way through some difficult times.  And I know that the unemployment rate is Way Too High.  And I know that between the War and the Economy Obama has almost burned through all his charisma.  But over here?  Our long-term clients are reinvesting in growth.  Our new clients are seeing bright and shiny opportunities.  And our consultants are starting to feel the love again.

I’m a member of a group called Vistage International, a networking / professional development group for CEOs, and one thing I’ve learned from the group is that the successful and heroic leader is the one who can see a way through that no one else can see.  Honestly, some days I’m not sure I can see three months into the future.  But as long as I’m connecting the right consultant with the right opportunity and following through to make sure the match is right — I’m solving the best possible type of problem.

Working with some of the nation’s top marketing communications professionals, you might think I receive a constant stream of well crafted, even artful follow up correspondence. Or maybe just thank you notes that are spelled correctly.

If only it were true.

It’s truly scary how many notes I receive with typos and grammatical mistakes from professionals in a line of work where perfect copy should be table stakes. This doesn’t build my confidence in them and probably gets in the way of me connecting them with one of my clients. But, what about that thank you note I just mentioned?

My son is a freshman at USC and one of his fraternity brothers is interested in a marketing career, so — like mother, like son — my son introduced him to me. I looked at his resume, gave him some tips and then introduced him to someone I know who’s experienced in sports marketing, the area of marketing he wants to pursue. In return, I received a lovely voicemail message and a five paragraph thank you note that covered…

1. The thank you
2. How he wants to stay in touch with me
3. A reminder of his amazing experience and qualifications
4. Appreciation for the introduction I made for him
5. A compliment about my son, the quickest way to a mother’s heart

I’m sure I’ll hear from this young man again and when I do, I’ll remember how he’s smart — and savvy — and I’ll be happy to give him a hand.

Do not underestimate the power of a well-crafted thank you.

In fact, I started High Tech Connect in 1997 to match independent contractors all over the world with the high technology marketing teams that need expert help. The best person for the job may now be a part-time project manager or a remote writer with exactly the right subject matter expertise.

Bob Lankard of CTW Features describes and defines the Flexible Jobs market:

Other ways to work: Employment arrangements you may not know exist

Workers thrown out of jobs and unable to land another fulltime position in their field sooner or later run into employment arrangements they never knew existed. It’s important to understand how these different employment arrangements work.

Negatives define these so-called “non-standard jobs.” Typically, they are not full-time, not permanent, they have no benefits and no job security. These positions can include independent contract work, temporary employment, part-time work and freelancing.

Independent contractor

An employer typically controls where and how a full-time employee works. But an independent contractor calls the shots about how to get a job done, sets his or her own hours and is free to work with a number of businesses.

A contractor may go to work at an office every day, but his or her relationship with a company and the terms of employment are different from a regular employee. The company a contractor works for does not withhold income taxes or pay Social Security Medicare taxes or unemployment tax on a contractor’s wages.

Temporary

A temporary worker works alongside regular employees but is not on that company’s payroll. Staffing firms such as Kelly Services typically employ temp workers. An unemployed person interviewed by a staffing firm may not find out where they will work until they are hired. Their paychecks will come from the staffing agency. An up tick in temporary employment is considered one of the first indicators of a rise in overall employment. Businesses that cycle through busy seasons and down seasons typically rely on temporary workers.

Part-time

By custom part-time work is 35 hours per week or less. Company policy rather than government rules set standards for these workers. The ranks of the involuntary part-time workers – those who want full-time jobs but could not find them – swelled during the recession. In February 2011, the number of involuntary part-time workers stood at 8.3 million, unchanged from the previous month.

Freelance

A freelancer hires himself out for a specific project. A graphic artist may design only one ad for a business. Freelance work has exploded during the recession. Dislocated workers struggling to find full-time work can make money by doing jobs on a freelance basis. Freelancers are paid a negotiate sum per project. Online markets for freelance workers, such as elance.com, offer freelance workers global opportunities at the click of a mouse.

SmartMoney (a Dow Jones publication) recently published a great story, Ten Things Your Boss Won’t Tell You. Here’s a doozy:

4. “Your kid? Your problem.”

By now it’s common knowledge that women earn less than men – about 81 cents for every dollar. Having a kid hurts women’s earning potential even further. The so-called “mommy penalty” may manifest in many ways: A mother may get passed over for a promotion because the boss thinks she takes off too much time to care for her kids or that she’s more concerned about the family than her career. A mom may get overlooked for high-profile projects because the boss fears she won’t devote enough time and energy.

Those are hard slights to quantify. Not so for the penalty faced by women who take time off to raise a child – even for a period as short as 18 months. Women with M.B.A.s who left the workforce for a year and a half to raise children make 41% less than men with the same degree; female Ph.D.’s make a third less; lawyers, 29% less, and doctors, 16%, according to a 2010 study by Harvard economics professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz. “Business occupations place heavy penalties on employees who deviate from the norm,” Goldin and Katz write in the study.

I’m not saying this is fair. I am saying this does exist and goes unspoken in many environment and can work against you.

Please take the time to read all 10 and think about what your boss is — and isn’t — telling you.  –And let me know what you think.

Earlier this year, he published an article by Celine Roque on how you can become more productive, or, as she defines the problem…

On days where our tools, skills and energy come together, our output seems to flow seamlessly. On other days, though, no matter how many tools we use or how many cups of coffee we consume, something seems to be blocking us from getting anything done. On our worst days, we can’t even get our work started.

In other words, anyone who’s a knowledge worker spends their working moments somewhere between two states: choke and flow.

What’s so great about Celine’s post is that is draws from a variety of different sources and then fits them all together like puzzle pieces revealing an unexpectedly beautiful picture.

A simple way to put it is that if we waste our brain’s resources over-thinking how we’re going to do something we normally do well, we don’t leave enough brain power for the creative act itself. So instead of dwelling on unnecessary details, maybe it’s better to remind yourself that you’ve done this work before and trust the instincts that you’ve honed over the years.

But getting to the flow state requires more than alleviating pressure. It means we should sit down and work long enough to get to the point where our vision of the work is clear and we’re not distracted by anything else. But working on the web gives us easy access to hundreds of distractions. How do we avoid giving in, especially when being distracted has become a habit? [more]

I highly encourage you to take a look at the article. She cites at least a dozen different sources and attaches at least three different reports to her post free to download.

Think flow. Go with it.

In a recent post about Francis Ford Coppola, we learned that he believes time — taking time — is an important element of the creative process.  According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, there are different lines of thought about how much time and effort Shakespeare spent on his writing.

According to the editors of the first folio, “What he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.” The author of the article in the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Greenblatt writes,

The notion that Shakespeare rarely revised his work makes perfect sense. Here, after all, was a man who wrote, on average, two plays a year, acted in his own plays and those of others, penned sonnets, and helped to run a theater company, to say nothing of his many other business interests. The original manuscripts have all long disappeared, but biographers have endlessly repeated the claim that they were “unblotted.” After all, where would Shakespeare have found the time for rewriting?

Greenblatt explains that scholarship reveals Shakespeare was a compulsive reviser, ever in search of the more perfect turn of phrase.  And he concludes that one of Shakespeare’s other gifts — beyond mastery of the language and a narrative genius — was his ability to make it look as if writing was easy for him.

In business, the creative process is almost inevitably a collaborative effort and, when a team is at work, it’s important to know — and believe — that certain positions and assignments are covered by the best possible talent.  The writer who appears to be struggling is … struggling … and is probably pulling down the vibe for the whole team. So, for all you writers out there: sweat out the details, but never let your clients see you perspire.

Here are some of my favorite snippets:

It became a matter of figuring out how to build a team and share with them what inspired me to start the company. There’s a quote from the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that really spoke to me. It says, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” So the management style that I have is first, share your passion.

<snip>

Being a manager also isn’t about trying to become perfect. You’re not going to stop making errors. But it’s about having a mature appreciation for the fact that you’re a flawed human being. Probably everyone around you is a flawed human being. What are your flaws and how are you going to manage around them? What are your strengths? How are you going to optimize those?

<snip>

When we do something good, we come together and we celebrate. In baseball, a guy hits a home run, goes around the bases, and all his teammates come out and they give him a high five, and that’s awesome. And then every time somebody hits a home run, they do that. In business, people tend not to do that enough, so when we achieve a goal, we have to go celebrate. And there are two reasons why we need to do that. As human beings, we’re not emotionally and anthropologically different from who we were on the plains of Africa 100,000 years ago. We need to feel that hey, I’m in a community.

<snip>

Having to work through college and then waiting tables my last two years of school was hugely helpful for me in terms of understanding that O.K., maybe theoretically you delivered the plate on time, and maybe theoretically you did what was right. But at the end of the day what mattered were the tips and how happy people were and how much you entertained them or didn’t depending on what they were looking for. That’s what’s important.  [more]

What lessons have you learned from being a leader?