Received this in a fortune cookie Friday night at our favorite asian restaurant in downtown New Haven (date night with my beautiful wife, Silvia).

After a small amount of research, I found it’s attributed to Charles Beard, one of the most influential American historians of the 20th century.

IMHO, the meaning of the quote is quite apparent — when life is going badly, look around, there are many opportunities to make it better.

Do you agree? Let’s say it’s true — Opportunities are all around us:

1. They are difficult to initially see — we must look hard for them.

Opportunities are not going to drive up to your door in a limousine to pick you up. In the beginning, it might feel there is a ‘darkness’ all around you. But if you begin to open your eyes, positive situations will start to appear.

Open your mind, be more positive, and hang around with more positive people. Don’t follow the news, point yourself towards more motivating resources — audiobooks, people, exercise, books, etc.

2. They are not in the form we expect.

This always happens. We tend to look at opportunities from certain avenues and forget the little side streets which might deliver the goods.

It might be with a person who initially seems inconsequential or a company who is not filling your sweet spot. Keep your eyes and mind open to new possibilities.

3. They are far away — in space or time — we must go after them.

Everyone wants opportunities to come to them quickly. In certain circumstances, it takes time for the opportunity to come into focus.

For example, you might want a promotion — but it might take the better part of a year to get your boss on board and then for him to coax upper management and HR on the idea. Be patient (but look for continuous results).

4. They look small and inconsequential at first, but as we get closer, they take on prominence and importance.

This is always the case with big opportunities. They are usually all around us, but we are looking for the immediate ‘big win’.

It’s almost like growing a delicate flower — watering, feeding, sunlight, clearing the weeds — all to ensure it matures into a beautiful rose.

What opportunities do you see all around you?

Take a moment and reflect about the each person on your team and the skills and strengths they exhibit.

Where do they excel? What do they like doing?

How can you as their manager, provide additional opportunities to excel and do the things they love to do?

I’d like you to take a piece of paper and draw three equally spaced vertical lines (or you can use the attached template – click HERE).

In the first column, write each person’s name with their title.

In the second column, list their strengths — what do they do well?

In the third column, brainstorm opportunities how to leverage their strengths.

That’s it. If you do this on a regular basis (every 3-6 months), you’ll find your team more approachable about taking on more work, higher visibility projects, and having fun at the same time.

Why? Because you are taking advantage of their strengths and interests.

What is your #1 strength or interest? How do you leverage it every day?

More employers than ever are researching job candidates on sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter in order to find out more about their activities and character. And, it turns out, many candidates are doing a great job of showing their potential bosses poor communication skills, inappropriate pictures, and even how many workplace secrets they can leak.

By Jacqui Cheng at arsTechnica.

Some of us had the luck of doing stupid things online before most employers knew what social networking was. (I’ll admit it: in my early working days, I said some not-nice things online about some of the people I worked with.) These days, however, those looking for jobs have had many years to build up an unsavory history across the Internet, and employers now know how to do their homework. In fact, nearly half of the employers in the US now search for job candidates on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, according to survey results from CareerBuilder. The job-finding firm said that the numbers reflect a twofold increase over those who reported doing so in last year—45 percent in 2009 versus 22 percent in 2008—and cautioned that many employers choose not to hire based on information they find online.

Facebook was the most popular site for researching job candidates this year — no surprise there, since Facebook has exploded in popularity as of late. “Professional” networking site LinkedIn came in second at 26 percent, MySpace came in third at 21 percent, 11 percent read blogs, and seven percent followed candidates’ updates on Twitter. Paranoid yet about any of your recent tweets?

If you’re looking for a job, you probably should be. More than a third of survey respondents said that they found info that caused them not to hire the person applying for the job, including “provocative or inappropriate photographs,” content related to drinking or using drugs, and finding postings that badmouthed previous employers, coworkers, or clients. Other candidates showed poor communication skills on their social networking profiles, made discriminatory comments, lied about their qualifications, or shared confidential information from a previous employer. The one that made us cringe? “16 percent dismissed a candidate for using text language such as GR8 (great) in an e-mail or job application.”

On the other hand, some candidates are doing a good job of presenting their professional side when posting online. Half of those who screened candidates via their social networking profiles said that they got a good feel for the person’s personality and fit within the organization. Other employers said that they found the profiles supported the candidates’ professional qualifications or that they discovered how creative the candidate was. Solid communication skills, evidence of well-roundedness, and other people’s good references (we assume this one came from LinkedIn) helped boost people’s credentials, too.

For most of us, it seems like common sense not to talk trash on your Facebook wall or post drunk pictures where potential employers can see them, but people are still catching up to the idea that their future bosses are on the same sites as they are. Anecdotally, I have worked at many an office that has casually looked up interns and new employees online, only to find sides of them that were less than flattering (one intern publicly declared that our company’s parent company could “f-ing suck it!” immediately after we offered her the job).

Some may argue that employers shouldn’t use information they found through a little bit of online stalking (something we’ve heard in our forums)—after all, what someone does after hours is his or her own business. At the same time, it’s hard to deny that discovering truly alarming information—such as leaked workplace secrets—would be good cause for choosing another candidate. These days, everyone hunting for a job needs to exercise some judgment on what to post online and who they let access it if they want to stay in future employers’ good graces.

CIOs are under more pressure than ever. The job is incredibly challenging. Despite recent arguments to the contrary, we believe information technology is at the heart of corporate strategy. IT must deliver more systems faster and operate them in a fail-safe environment. Being successful as a CIO requires an unusual combination of technical know-how, business acumen, and organizational leadership skills. It’s a job with a sometimes short life cycle, and it takes a seemingly superhuman to do it effectively.

I read this great article in InformationWeek from Dr. James Cash and Dr. Keri Pearlson. Hope you enjoy it!

Why does this characterization sound so familiar? Partly, we suspect, because you’ve heard it before-and continue to hear it over and over. Observers have been spouting generalizations and hyperbole about the challenges of IT management for well over 30 years, or as long as the job has existed. The job certainly is difficult, and many otherwise capable managers have foundered in the role of CIO. The questions we want to address in this article are how the job really has changed, and what it takes to survive and even succeed as a CIO today. Our conclusion is that, spurred in large part by the business implications and opportunities of information technology, the CIO job has become much more complex and more business critical than ever. This is a mixed blessing. CIOs who fail to understand the new reality may find themselves both overpromising and underdelivering. They may well be setting themselves up for high-profile failure.

Successful CIOs today are far more than IT strategists and functional managers. They see themselves as business strategists and change agents. In most large companies, the CIO is expected to play a strong leadership role-and not just about technology architectures and capabilities. They’re actively involved in exploring new business opportunities, in advising line managers on how to launch IT-dependent business ventures, and in defining priorities for fundamental organizational transformation. Most businesses simply can’t succeed without a strong IT function. The stakes for CIOs and their organizations couldn’t be higher.

The “New” CIO Role
Our research and conversations with dozens of CIOs and business executives has confirmed that the successful CIO today in most large companies is a different creature than even five years ago. Here are a few of our findings:

The business and technology contexts surrounding the CIO are substantially different than ever before. The job has become far more complex at the same time that the critical nature of information systems has gone up by an order of magnitude in virtually every business. To compound matters, there’s an unprecedented urgency to develop and implement IT capabilities-an urgency that often flies in the face of what has traditionally constituted good IT management practice.

CIOs are struggling to manage this complexity, and meet the expectations of their bosses, peers, and subordinates. Life in this fast track may be exciting, but it can also be stressful and lonely.

Too many CIOs continue to spend most of their time with their internal staff. They spend very little time interacting with outside customers, in spite of the growing importance of IT in supporting customer information and interorganizational processes.

IT organizations are facing enormous pressure to accelerate the delivery of services. Virtually every other functional area in business has become significantly more dependent on IT. And the Internet and the new business models it has spawned have created a widespread expectation that information systems can be developed and implemented very quickly.

While some industry analysts have been heralding the “demise of the CIO,” we believe exactly the opposite is true. The CIO role has indeed become more complex, and the full gamut of CIO responsibilities may need to be shared by several individuals. But our research suggests that the CIO’s strategic importance is greater than ever.

CIOs see themselves playing five primary roles: business strategist, IT strategist, IT functional leader, technology advocate, and change agent. This configuration is new and represents a significant shift in emphasis from the past. Indeed, the best role model for a CIO may be the CEO, who must balance a wide variety of priorities and influence a very diverse group of managers and specialists to achieve tangible outcomes.

Unlike many other functionally focused managers, successful CIOs operate as true general managers and senior business executives. They often have a varied career history that includes graduate-level education in business and management, significant periods of time working outside IT, and-surprisingly-they often have substantial experience managing overseas operations.

There’s no simple or single job description of the CIO role. We’ve identified four distinctively different CIO job types: corporate CIO for operations, corporate CIO for functional leadership, business unit CIO, and regional CIO. But even within those categories there are major variations from one company to another in job requirements, business priorities, and organizational challenges.

CIO Of The Future
To ensure future success, you should start with a deep and thoughtful look at yourself and your situation. What are your personal strengths and limitations? Do you thrive on complexity, on rapid-fire decision making, on life in a fishbowl? Can you operate as a true general manager, holding both your staff and your peers accountable for IT performance? Do you have a clear vision of the future of IT in your company in terms of both its strategic role and the IT functional organization needed to build and deliver the required capabilities? Can you commit to dramatic change and ensure that others do what’s needed to accomplish that change-even if that means overhauling staff and skills, offshoring, outsourcing, or having to confront peers in other areas of the business? Do you truly understand what your companies’ customers want and need? Do you spend at least 20% of your time listening to and talking with customers? Can your IT organization deliver new, highly reliable application functionality in 90 days or less? Do you have full accountability for IT investments and architectural decisions? Is your IT organization delivering systems at the pace and with the bulletproof quality your company needs? Have you delegated responsibility for IT operations and freed your time and energy to focus on the business opportunities and performance of IT?

If you can answer these kinds of questions confidently and affirmatively, welcome to the future! If not, you may need to reassess your role and your ability to fill it. A CIO today must be focused on customers, on the business, and on the future. If your workweek is consumed with IT management issues rather than with business leadership and innovation, you probably won’t succeed as a CIO.

Key Recommendations
Faced with this complexity and urgency, the CIO must balance his or her time and priorities among a number of competing but equally critical goals. Individual CIOs must make choices: what to focus on, who to spend time with, what to learn, and what to do. Your personal agenda depends on your own situation-as a CIO, you must first be very clear about the business imperatives and the personal issues you have to focus on. There’s no simple way to operate IT in the future. However, there’s a large set of tactical actions that a CIO can take to deal with the core dilemmas of IT leadership and accelerate the way the IT organization operates. While none of these tactics is revolutionary or even new, taken together they have the potential for dramatically accelerating the delivery of IT services:

• Simplify the operating environment, governance, work processes, and task priorities that form the context for IT work.
• The first step in simplification is to establish a standard business and technology architecture and use it as the basis for all IT technology decisions and vendor selections.
• Move toward a simpler organizational structure for IT, centralizing infrastructure responsibilities and decentralizing application development and implementation responsibilities wherever possible.
• Be very clear about your own organizational situation and the business requirements that must be satisfied. Establish an explicit short list of goals and stick to it.
• Focus your time and energy outside the functional IT organization. Spend as much time as possible with external customers or suppliers (choose them based on strategic importance). We recommend at least 20% of your time, or one day a week, on average.
• If your internal staff isn’t strong enough for you to delegate most of your operational responsibilities, then devote a reasonable amount of time to strengthening the IT organization. (For most organizations this must be accomplished in six to nine months.) As the organization matures, shift your emphasis to spending more time with business clients and external customers.
• As CIO, think of yourself as the CEO of an IT products and services company, regardless of whether you have a large staff or have outsourced all of your operations. Focus your time and attention on strategic issues, on external relationships, and on the future.
• To accomplish this strategic leadership role, think of yourself as a storyteller and an entrepreneur, not as a controller. Adopt a marketing mind-set and introduce marketing processes into the IT organization to complement (not replace) the engineering disciplines that currently characterize the IT profession.
• Establish clear, explicit goals for shortening IT decision and development cycles. Focus the entire IT organization on accelerating all of its core business processes.
• Find the right balance for you personally, and for your organization, between fostering organizational change and exploiting the potential of IT, on the one hand, and ensuring the discipline to produce highly reliable, bulletproof systems and infrastructure, on the other.
• Manage your own time and personal agenda carefully-and explicitly. Be sure to reserve enough time for reflection, learning, and peer-to-peer networking. Adapt your leadership style to match the needs of your organization, combining collaborative problem solving with task-focused direction setting to produce a cohesive, committed organization.

Dr. James I. Cash recently completed a 27-year career as a professor and senior associate dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He’s a member of InformationWeek’s Editorial Advisory Board. Dr. Keri E. Pearlson is a research director with the Concours Group. Numerous graduate programs use her book, “Managing And Using Information Systems: A Strategic Approach,” to train future IT leaders.

Here’s a fun list that I saw on Madatoms:

Denial
I’ve got plenty of money! I’ll start looking next week!

Anger
Craigslist and Monster sucks! I’ve got a college degree! Jobs should be looking for me!

Bargaining
I’ll just drive around looking for help wanted signs. I hear that Starbucks has health insurance!

Depression
Why did I major in Communications? I have no useful skills.

Acceptance
I didn’t know I qualified for unemployment! I love this country!

I saw one of the most touching and inspiring movies of my life last night.

Sitting in the movie theater with my family wearing 3D glasses, I was actually tearing up during many scenes of Pixar’s new movie UP (by the way . . . don’t walk – run out to see it TODAY. It will change your life and the way you look at life).

I’m a softie, but I NEVER cry at movies. And let me also state that I religiously see every Pixar movie. I will argue to my dying day that Pixar puts out the best movies for any age in theaters today.

But the best part – UP has a number of powerful messages. My favorite, and the one that should stick with you forever is: You are never too old to start your second adventure.

Many people go through life thinking that they only have one good ‘adventure’ in them. It might be their career, their marriage, their kids, college, etc. But let me say this – your life can be full of MANY new adventures! And here’s the best part – they could get better and better!

So just when you thought it couldn’t get better – go out there – grab life by the collar and make a new adventure for yourself. Take a risk, step out of your comfort zone, and push yourself to new heights. You can plan – or don’t plan – just do. You might just surprise someone that is never surprised . . . YOU!

P.S. In posting this story, I just saw that I have no tags for the words “Adventure” or “Fun”. Time to rectify that! More “Adventure” & “Fun” for Rich Gee!

Ferrazzi contends that people who build meaningful relationships with others can attain greater personal and professional success. Why you should read this book?

Your Four Mindsets: Intimacy, Generosity, Vulnerability, Candor
This follows up on the mindsets Ferrazzi explored in his first book, Never Eat Alone. Building relationships, and repairing relationships, using these mindsets will greatly enhance and fuel all types of relationships, and increase your chances of maintaining strong, successful alliances. These four mindsets are core to building trust.

Build a Dream Team
We all have dreams, and we need strong relationships to help us realize those dreams. Once we’ve accepted that conducting our relationships through the lens of the four mindsets contributes to our success, building a dream team to help us fuel our success is the next logical step. Ferrazzi outlines nine steps to building a dream team. Not sure if the steps work or not, since Ferrazzi doesn’t present hardcore evidence that actual, real live individuals have used these steps successfully, but Ferrazzi’s nine steps includes many practical and tactical ideas that logically should work, and seem worth trying.

Hold Each Member Accountable
Without accountability in the group and among individuals, teams become lazy, complacent, loose focus, and derail. Ferrazzi does a nice job of explaining safe ways to implement accountability measures into your organizational, or dream, teams.

Hands down this will probably be the best book I read this year (Keith does it again!). Run out and get this book ASAP!

Malcolm Gladwell is one of today’s most innovative ‘connectors’ of knowledge. His most recent New Yorker article again proves he is the master.

Gladwell again uses history to reinforce his argument that with the proper planning and doing something different — something that your opposing team (i.e., competition) isn’t expecting — even though you are the underdog — You Will Succeed.

Enough of my blather — go read this great article!

Most people don’t realize the power of personal connection on the job.

I have many clients today that have lost their jobs and are looking for new employment. Unfortunately, they have worked at their respective companies for a very long time and they find themselves unable to get back that one specific position.

Even though I do coach them to ‘reach for the stars’, there is a law of diminishing returns. After a certain amount of time (let’s say 4-6 months), one needs to be realistic about their search. If you are busting your butt getting interviews and not getting that position, it may be time to click your search down a notch and focus on easier pickings. This happens frequently with C-Level clients that NEED to have another C-Level position. Honestly — they’re not many C-Level (or others of that ilk) spots out in business-land today.

My suggestion — instead of beating your head against a wall — take a lower position that will be easier to attract/lock-in. When you get into the invite-only party, show them you’re able to do much more than you’ve been hired to do. Most likely, they will see your capabilities over time and offer you increased responsibility or a better position (with increased pay).

But this scenario only comes with a successful and clear set of personal connections in the new job (I will talk about building personal connections later this week). And you will only get those if you are On The Job.

So don’t be so picky and go get that position. Good things sometimes don’t come to those who wait.

Most businesses today have a fatal flaw that will take down their entire client base.

It’s the fear of doing something . . . anything . . . NEW. They know it ‘might’ fail — so they do nothing.

I’m here to tell you that doing nothing (most of the time) is worse than failing. Why?

Let me give you an example:
Let’s say you’re quite sick. Now many people will disregard the symptoms, say they are not sick — because they feel that the diagnosis or the treatment will be worse or possibly hurt them more than the illness. So they do nothing. What they don’t understand is that the initial reason why they are sick is not being addressed — and it will slowly grow to infect other parts of their body.

Now if they just tried one type of treatment or just went to the doctor and asked for a complete work-up, they would at least make a positive move forward in treating their sickness. Let’s say it failed – they should try something else. And something else — ad infinitum — until they felt better.

I did this with a recurring allergy. I first went to my general practitioner who gave me LOTS of pills. Nothing happened. So I went to a specialist. They took tests (63 pokes of a needle) and also gave me LOTS of pills. I got a little better, but then it came back. I then finally tried an old, but simple cure (a Neti Pot). Guess what? It worked. And I feel GREAT.

It’s like business. People will just act like nothing is wrong and “stay the course” while they see their clients and profits drain away. The problem is that they are afraid of taking any action — it might be wrong — it might worsen the situation — they might lose the business.

But at the end of the day, they need to understand that what is making their business sick can be cured. Here’s the simple process:

1. Realize that you’re sick. You might get better, but you’re probably going to get sicker. And sicker. And then die.
2. Understand why you’re sick. Get a good diagnosis. Find out what the causal elements are — Get the facts.
3. Take action. Make a list of possible treatments — list them by how much effort (time, money, resources) they will take and what impact they will make.
4. Pick one and take action . . . NOW.

It’s that simple. As Nike says: “Just Do It.”

It boggles the mind. I can’t tell you how many times in my career as an adviser and coach to executives that I’ve heard phrases like:

• “You’re a lifesaver Rich — I don’t know how I could have done this without you.”
• “You’re there when I need you.”
• “You helped me reach farther than I’ve ever reached before.”

But I’m not here to extol my accolades . . .
I just wanted to let you in on a little secret many executives use to climb up the corporate ladder and stay at the top for a very long time:

They all have a Personal Coach.

You would be quite surprised how many of us are out there working in the background, helping our clients jump from one great opportunity to another, celebrate success after success, and have fun doing it. Oh — and along the way making gobs of money.

If you just asked them if they have a coach, you would be surprised by their answer.

So I have a little bit of homework for you to do next week:

Sit down and think of the most successful person that you know.
Call them up.
Ask if they have a coach.

They probably do.

Watching my son’s baseball game last night, I saw the coach do something that I didn’t like, but I know he had to do. They were down 2 runs and it was the last inning – they had to somehow stack the deck to even the score. What did the coach do? The sides changed, my son was about to be up at bat, and the coach made the decision to move the batting order around (they are allowed to do that) to favor some of the more heavy hitters. What happened? They tied it up and eventually won the game.

Now to your career. Sometimes when faced with an immovable obstacle, one needs to change what they are doing. The more hard-headed one is – the bigger the obstacle will become.

Try something new — either go around the obstacle or don’t deal with it at all. Some suggestions:

• Job boards and recruiters are not helping your job search – try networking and connecting with influential people.
• Someone on your team keeps complaining about their work — give them one of your projects to work on — they might shut up.
• Feel stuck in your position — build your potential — read books, go to lectures, take a course. Start a blog! Expand your horizons.
• Continuously at meetings all day — stop attending 1 or 2 of them. See what happens. Leave early/show up late.
• Have an open door policy? Nice guy — no time to do anything else. Limit your exposure to the troops. Close that door.
• Current contact list not delivering that job? Time to make a new contact list — get out there and meet some influential friends. Do you know your mayor? Your representative? You should — they are well connected individuals — call them for an appointment today.
• Boss not listening to you? Try another communication method. If email is getting lost in the shuffle, pick up the phone or even better, stop by his door for a quick 2 minute discussion.
• Resume not getting any response? Time to update it with better keywords, action verbs and most of all – Be Concise! Still not working? Try a resume writer (call me for the best ones).

Bottom line – stop hitting your head against the wall. Changing your game — even a little bit — might make all the difference. You might hit a home run.

If you’ve been laid off in recent months, you’re in excellent company. Plenty of qualified and experienced managers are now having to develop strategies to find their next job. But where to start? If you me, I would simply say: network, network, network.

By Gil Corkindale at HBR

And yet among many executives, networking is often an underdeveloped skill. Take Jerry, a 40-year-old business development manager in a financial services firm. His role is to build the business in Europe, so he has to make industry contacts, speak at conferences and look for new client relationships. He is now at a point in his career where he has to build internal networks, but instead of recognizing that he is already a master net-worker, the very mention of the word makes him shudder. Why? Because in his mind, networking is associated with self-promotion, politics and inappropriate favors.

In truth, networking is a critical skill for managers and leaders: your network supports and sustains you in the good times, but is the key to your survival in the bad times.

And yet networking is difficult, even daunting, for managers who have no problem simply chatting to people. It doesn’t need to be so stressful. Here are some common mistakes people make when networking — and how to avoid them:

1. They think they don’t know anyone
We live in a networked age and most of us are connected to more people than we realise. Take 10 minutes to write a list of work colleagues (past and present), industry contacts, friends, family, college alumni and social acquaintances. You may surprise yourself — I recently coached a friend who claimed he had no contacts, but was still writing his list two hours after I prompted him!

Facebook and LinkedIn are online powerful gateways to contacts — see how far your network extends through your friends and colleagues. You may also have an online presence in the form of a blog or homepage — see who has been corresponding with you lately. Online networking sites such as freeagent (www.freeagentnet.com) and ecademy (www.ecademy.com) are easy ways to make quick connections. Twitter (www.twitter.com) is another useful social networking vehicle.

2. They don’t know how to introduce themselves
It can be hard to introduce yourself if you’ve just been laid off — after all, you’re probably used to saying, “I’m so-and-so and I work at such-and-such.” If you don’t currently have a job, be clear that you are in transition and looking for a new role. While you can refer back to what you did in your previous job, don’t dwell on that. Instead, draw attention to your interests and skills in order to take the conversation forward.

Before you make a phone call, consider your agenda and what you can realistically expect from the person. Think about the purpose of your conversation — is it to find out information or to seek further contacts? Being clear about what you want will be a more effective use of your and the contact’s time, and will create a better impression than a rambling speech. Be aware that they may not be in a position to do much, so be gracious if all they can offer are ideas, advice or their experience. Requesting a job isn’t appropriate at this stage and may result in you losing the contact. For networking emails, be personable and upbeat, but make sure your tone is appropriate to the person you are contacting — don’t go into “networking mode” if you are just reaching out to an old friend, for example.

3. They sound self-promoting
Networking is about selling yourself, but it can be hard to do that without sounding like a salesman. No wonder so many people dread networking.

One way to show (rather than tell) people how great you are is to have a few ‘STAR’ stories up your sleeve. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Achievements and Results; it’s an easy way to tell a concise story that lets your talents and achievements speak for themselves. An example might be:

Situation: The customer services division of your company was losing customers, had falling revenues and a conflict-ridden team

Task: To stem the loss of customers, improve customer service, restructure the team and develop new products

Achievements: You held on to key accounts, resolved the conflict, rebuilt team morale and increased the visibility and positive reputation of the department.

Results: Increased revenues (figures), a high-performing customer service team, innovative products (examples) and happy customers.

A STAR story should take no more than five minutes to relate and should include enough detail to pique your contact’s interest without overwhelming him or her.

4. They don’t know how to work a room or a contact
If you are going to an event, remember that there will be many others in the same situation — especially in a downturn — and that the purpose of the event is to circulate among people. Focus on the other person by asking them what they like about their job, how they got it and what they would do if they were not in their current role. Exchange cards and don’t be embarrassed about moving on to the next person when the conversation is at a natural end.

If you are contacting someone by phone, check whether it is a convenient time for them to speak and reschedule the call if necessary. If you’re phoning or emailing someone you haven’t met personally, mention the person who gave you their name and how you know them. Ask how they got into their job, what it involves, where vacancies are advertised and how you might be considered for any roles if jobs are only advertised internally. Ask them for an introduction to other useful contacts or for a follow-up meeting.

5. They criticize the people or companies that laid them off
Think hard about how your story might sound to someone who has never met your nightmare ex-boss. Try to be positive, upbeat and open about looking for work, but avoid sounding desperate or blaming the company or others for being laid off. This will leave a bad impression and could close off contacts before you can begin to develop a relationship.

6. They forget to say thank-you
Good manners are critical for networking and are often overlooked, especially if you are under pressure to get a new job. Always thank a contact for their time and advice, either in a handwritten note or a follow-up email. And keep in touch — send them an article or notice of an event that might interest them. Keep in touch through social networking media, or drop them an occasional friendly email telling them how you are getting on. Let them know when you do secure a job. This will help you to maintain the person as a contact in your network — and allow you to return the favor when they’re looking for a job down the road.

Finally, don’t miss the opportunity to extend your network in even wider directions while you are unemployed. You might find it a surprising opportunity to consider different options, such as retraining or trying a new role (even a temporary one). Stay flexible and keep an open mind, and you might just find yourself in a better, more interesting career.

Robert is the KING of Twitter, Facebook, All software, and social marketing in general. This article hits so many personal points I discuss with clients that I just had to post it. So let’s all lift our glasses – here’s to Robert!

I’m getting a LOT of chats from people who have been laid off. Most of the time I find that they just aren’t presenting a good face to me for me to help them find a new job.

If you are laid off, here’s what you need to do:

1. Your blog is your resume. You need one and it needs to have 100 posts on it about what you want to be known for.
2. Remove all friends from your facebook and twitter accounts that will embarrass you. We do look. If we see photos of people getting drunk with you that is a bad sign. Get rid of them. They will NOT help you get a job.
3. Demonstrate you are “clued in.” This means removing ANYTHING that says you are a “social media expert” from your Twitter account. There is no such thing and even if there were there’s no job in it for you. Chris Brogan already has that job and he’s not giving it up.
4. Demonstrate you have kids and hobbies, but they should be 1% of your public persona, not 99%. Look at my blog here. You’ll see my son’s photo on Flickr once in a while. But mostly I talk about the tech industry, cause that’s the job I want to have: talking to geeks and innovators.
5. Put what job you want into your blog’s header. Visit Joel Spolsky’s blog. He’s “on software.” That’s a major hint that if he were looking for a job that he is totally, 100%, thinking about software. If you want a job as a chef, you better have a blog that looks like you love cooking.
   
6. Get rid of any ‘smart’ name/acronym like “LOLCats”. Do not argue me on Twitter about this. Google finds Twitters. Do you want your future potential boss noticing that you post LOLCats all day long? Believe me, you do not. It will NOT help you.
7. Post something that teaches me something about what you want to do every day. If you want to drive a cab, you better go out and take pictures of cabs. Think about cabs. Put suggestions for cabbies up. Interview cabbies. You better have a blog that is nothing but cabs. Cabs. Cabs. Cabs all the time.
8. Do not beg for links. If you did the above, you can Twitter me and say “check out my great software blog” though. Include @scobleizer in the tweet so I’ll see it. I’m an egotistical person so I read all Twitter replies that include my @scobleizer name in them. Hint: I haven’t met a blogger yet who is not an egotistical person. Take advantage of it. But no begging.
9. If you want to be a plumber, look for other plumbers to add to Twitter, friendfeed, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Remove all others. Be 100% focused on what you want to do.
10. On Twitter you can tell me what you had for lunch, but only after you posted 20 great items about what you want to do. Look at Tim O’Reilly’s tweet stream. Very little noise. Just great stuff that will make you think (he wants a job as a thinker, so do you get it yet?)
11. IMPORTANT: Invite influentials out to lunch. Getting a job is now your profession. If you were a salesperson, how would you get sales? You would take people out to lunch who can either buy what you’re selling, or influence others who can buy. That means take other bloggers (but only if they cover what you want to do) out to lunch. That means taking lots of industry executives out to lunch.
12. Send out resumes. Make sure yours is up to date and top notch on LinkedIn and other sites where employers look for employees. Craig’s List. Monster. Etc.
13. Go to industry events. I have a list of tech industry events up on Upcoming.org. If you want to be a plumber, go to where contractors go. Etc. Etc. Make sure you have clear business cards. Include your photo. Include your Twitter and LinkedIn addresses. Your cell phone. Your blog address. And the same line that’s at the top of your blog. Joel’s should say “on software.” Yours should say what you love to do. Hand them out, ask for theirs. Make notes on theirs. Email them later with your LinkedIn and blog URLs and say “you’ll find lots of good stuff about xxxxxxxx industry on my blog.”
14. When you meet someone who can hire and who you want to work for – Follow them on Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Their blog. Stalk them without being “creepy.” Learn everything you can about them. Build a friendfeed room with all their stuff. That way when they say on Twitter “I have a job opening” you can be the first one to Tweet back.
15. Tell others where the jobs are. One thing I learned in college is by helping other people get jobs you’ll get remembered. So, retweet jobs messages (if they are relevant to your professional friends and to you). Blog about job openings. Help people get jobs. Hold lunches for people who are jobless. Some of them will get jobs and they’ll remember you and invite you along.
16. Do what you want to do. Let’s assume you’ll be laid off for a year. Are you going to lay around on the couch waiting for a call? No. You will do exactly what you want to do. Want to be an engineer at a great startup? Go and volunteer to work there for free. Make sure you do a blog post about every day you do what you’re doing for free. Say “I could do this for you, call…”
17. Do some work on SEO. Make it possible for people to find you. THINK about how people would search for someone with your expertise and skills. Here’s how, Visit the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Do a search on a word that you think represents best what you want to do. I just did one for “Electrical Engineering” and it brought up a ton of great info about what people are searching for. Include those terms in your blog. And, even better, blog about those things!
18. Remove any hint that you hated your old job from all your online things.

Good luck. It sucks. I know that. I was laid off last time and, who knows, might be laid off again, but if you’re doing all this stuff and you aren’t finding a job, let me know. You know where to find me.

“There are two things that people want more than sex and money – recognition and praise.” – Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay Cosmetics

We all forget to do it. You focus on work, meetings, reports, etc. and ignore the most powerful leadership tool you have in our arsenal – recognition and acknowledgment. When you neglect it, your teams tend to wander and lose focus. When you regularly insert it into your leadership practices, you’ll have the best performing and energized team money can buy.

1. Be A Star Catcher. Regularly “catch people doing things right” and recognize them for it. And, Make recognitions self-perpetuating by recognizing those who recognize others. Remember: What gets recognized gets reinforced, and what gets reinforced gets repeated.

2. Develop A List of At Least 20 Ways To Recognize Others. Some ideas to get you started: a homemade Thank You Card or Praise-A-Gram; small gifts: special assignments, etc. If you would like the best Rich Gee recognition tool – check this out.

3. Customize The Recognition You Provide. Ask each member of your team how you can best demonstrate your appreciation for them. Then provide “different strokes for different folks.”

4. Let Everyone “Hold The Trophy”. Be sure each contributing member shares in the recognition for achievements.

If you practice and regularly schedule (not with a calendar, but in the moment) these tips — you will realize that some of the best things in life are free!