8 Ways to Keep Your Hopes Up While Looking for Your Next Job

There are plenty of sad ironies around this current era of layoffs and job losses. It’s hard to just focus on one without feeling woefully inadequate about not covering all the bases. But for the purposes of this article, this is the irony of the day: Being without work gives you an awful lot of free time to brood, perchance to freak out. Just when you need most to be active and in the company of productive people, you’re on your own. And that’s, quite frankly, crazy-making.

Since exuding simmering desperation can guarantee that you won’t get a job offer, so holding onto your sanity is probably the most important discipline you can practice right now. This, in itself, is an essential skill. Here’s how you do it:

Remember that the children are watching. This is a powerful opportunity to teach your children how to handle modern uncertainty. You may be the first in your family to have been laid off (or maybe not) but you most certainly won’t be the last – and it’s a fair bet that at least one of your children will be laid off at least once in their lives. This is your chance to teach through your own behavior the power of positive thinking, a hopeful and calm outlook, and the importance of always remembering that intrinsic human value has nothing to do with your job or how much money you make. When it happens to them as adults, they’ll look back on these times and remember with admiration how amazingly gracefully you handled this crisis in your own career. And then copy you.

Break a stress habit. Who doesn’t have a stress habit? I’ll cop to mine: It’s those little fruit candies, hard on the outside and chewy in the center. It’s hard to break a stress habit when you’re knee-deep in the actual circumstances of that stress. If your stress habit was job-related, guess what! You don’t have a job anymore. So now’s the time to break that habit. At least something good will come from this down time, and you’ll have given yourself something to be proud of.

Start a health habit. Got time? Go for a walk. Got a lot of time? Go for a lot of walks. You know why.

Call your former coworkers. If you’ve been laid off, you may have discovered that as far as your former coworkers are concerned, you might as well have been abducted by aliens. Why haven’t your coworkers called to extend their sympathies, find out what happened and why, and join you in general righteous outrage? Reason: They don’t have a clue what to say. And maybe they’re a little fearful that it might happen to them (which it might, regardless of whether or not you keep in touch with them). It’s not fair, I know, but it’s up to you to make the first move.

When you’ve settled down emotionally and can be pretty sure you won’t get caught up in the turmoil of business that has long since gone on without you (no one’s paying you to care anymore, so don’t), give them a call. And get together for lunch or drinks after work. Show them that you’re just fine.

Layoffs are short (even though it doesn’t feel that way when you’re in the middle of one) and careers are long. You’ll be seeing these people again and again throughout your professional lives. So now’s the time to set the tone that you’re fine, there’s nothing for them to feel bad or guilty about (unless, of course, there is, but then that’s their problem, not yours), and that you’re still a good time at a party.

Rewrite your story. It’s possible to speak honestly about your layoff situation to potential employers. And you can even frame your story in such a way that you look really good – not expendable. San Diego-based executive coach, Duncan Mathison, explains the full process in Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss. It’s too long to describe here, so simply take reassurance in knowing that there is a tried-and-true formula you can copy and practice. It takes two minutes to introduce yourself and tell your job saga on the most powerful, empowering way. Just writing your job story according to this formula is an especially powerful step in reminding yourself that you’re still an extremely valuable professional who had the misfortune of being tapped as a departee by a very regretful employer.

Get out of the house. In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron talks about “the artist’s date,” which is an excursion out of the house (away from the easel, computer, unringing landline) and into the world of enjoyment, adventure, tactile experiences, just plain old fresh air. You can only stare at online job boards just so long. You can only make a certain number of cold calls to potential employers just so long. You can only be in your PJs just so long. Get out! Go to a farmer’s market, take a hike (a laid-off friend of mine hiked the Appalachian Trail. Now that’s what I call going for a walk), go dancing. Go to a museum. Rest your eyes and heart and soul on something lovely and uplifting. Regularly. Like a date. With yourself.

Say no thanks to stupid advice. An engineer friend of mine knew that his job was going to be eliminated. And he took this as an opportunity to switch professions altogether, hopping the fence into the HR career path. Problem: he was already 15 years into his professional life, and he wasn’t so keen on starting at the bottom rung of a brand new profession. But half the people he talked to said, “No…you have to start from scratch and work your way up again.” Stupid advice. He listened very nicely, worked his network like a master, and made the hop – at director level.

Keep the faith. Whatever your religious beliefs are – or aren’t – whatever you do, don’t lose faith that it will truly all work out. I asked my engineer friend the other day, “How did you keep your cool during all this time of waiting and frustration?” He said, “I knew that the right opportunity was on its way to me and it was just a matter of holding out for it.”

Did he just sit on his hands and wait for the Good Luck Fairy to bop him on his head with the Perfect Job Wand? No. He worked like a fiend researching all sorts of job opportunities and companies, and even turning a few job offers down, because they weren’t the right fit. But he also held in his heart and head that as hard as he was working to find the right job, that right job was on its way to him. And that they would meet somewhere along the way. Which is exactly what they did.

This time will pass. But the enduring lesson is that true job security lies only between our ears. Which is why it’s all the more important to keep your wits about you. Keep it together. People are counting on you.

Are You Punishing Yourself for Losing Your Job?

Losing your job is terrible. But what are you doing to make it worse? Negative thinking? Assuming the job market is so hostile that there's no point in keeping your standards up? Spending weeks in your jammies? Cutting back on even the smallest pleasures in life? Less patient than you'd like to be with the kids? Applying for crappy jobs? Eating crappy food? Drinking more than you should be? Taking up smoking again? Letting the dishes stack up in the sink and dust bunnies do their bunny thing under your bed?


Being kind to yourself and your family is not about coddling yourself. It's about taking care of yourself. And, in the meantime, demonstrating to your children that self-respect and realistic optimism can prevail, no matter what emergencies are swirling around you right now.


What are you doing to punish yourself for being out of work right now? Write to me at martha@reboundyourcareer.com and let me know. I'll send you a free copy of my first book, Find Your Calling, Love Your Life as a thanks!

If You're Worried About Acing the Interview, You're Barking Up the Wrong Tree

It’s hard to be choosy these days, isn’t it? The news is filled with stories like the public school that received more than 700 resumes in response to an advertisement for a janitor’s position (did you hear the emphasized detail that the resumes had to be put into a safe? What’s the deal with that? I truly don’t understand what that signifies. I’m thinking that’s just media hype, designed to get you all in a dither about something that’s neither here nor there.). It’s hard to hold onto hope and high standards for what kind of job you’d like to ultimately land when you’re surrounded by messages that the job market world is coming to an end.

Buy into the terrible headlines that people are losing jobs right and left (and, make no mistake, they are), and you’ll be tempted to abandon all hope for a job that’s good enough for you. But let me remind you, as Lauren Doliva said in my new book, Rebound: A Proven Plan for Starting Over After Job Loss, there is still a war for talent. “And talent is winning,” she said.

In other words, find the job opportunity that matches your skills, abilities and passions, and you’ll nail the interview – regardless of how worried you are about whether or not you’ll “ace” it. People are still looking for you. You just have to find those folks. And that means you have to be just as choosy as your interviewers are.

Easier said than done, right? Right. I get that. And it’s hard to forget that it’s the interviewer who has the ultimate power to actually offer you the job. I get that too. But remember, you have the ultimate power to say yes or no to that job offer. “Talent is winning the War for Talent,” and you’re on the winning side. Even if we find ourselves in a national economy of 10% unemployment, that means 90% of America is still working. So why not you?

So what does this have to do with worrying about “acing” the job interview? One word: Desperation. Regardless of whether you’re single or married, you probably remember at least one date when all you wanted to do was crawl out of the restroom window. Puppy dog eyes that transmit the message, “you’re my best and only chance for happiness.” Ew! Just typing those words makes my skin crawl. Memories….

So what are you going to do to keep the desperation to a low boil? Or a low howl? Here are some ideas:

Keep your dance card full. Don’t just rely only on online job boards for lining up interviews. If you do, you’ll be sitting at home staring at the unringing telephone forever. Seek out networking conversations that might lead somewhere, even if that lead is only more introductions to additional people you can have informational conversations with.

Get over your aversion to networking. I’m writing a new book right now with the ultra-fabulous Duncan Mathison, who is teaching me (and ultimately you) all about the fantastic networking techniques that remove you from those expensive, soulless, schmoozy schmoozy hiya hiya mixers that make you want to run screaming for the ballroom doors. But while we’re waiting for the book to actually hit the stores, I’ll share with you what I can. Let’s just say for the moment that one introduction leads to another. And you probably haven’t yet met the person who will offer you the job of your dreams. That person will most likely come into your life through a series of personal referrals. And it’s likely that you have met the person who will ultimately lead you to that person. Hmmmm, who could that be?

In the meantime, network your brains out so that you have plenty of options to pick from (or at least you feel as though you do), so you won't worry so much about "acing" the only interview on your calendar -- all the while ignoring the signs that you could be walking into the job of your nightmares.

Remember that when you are in the interview itself, you must be just as careful a shopper as the interviewer is. When you’re talking with the person who might be your boss, find out from him or her specifically what makes the person who will ultimately land the open position a top performer – in the top 20% sparkly bracket. First of all, it’s important to know exactly what those characteristics are. But it’s also important to know if your potential boss actually knows what those characteristics are. How can you please a boss who doesn’t know what he or she actually wants? And then decide whether or not you want to please your boss in just those ways. Qualify your potential boss just as much as they're qualifying you.

Make sure you are willing to actually meet those characteristics. If you’re picking up a vibe of prejudice, attitude or cynicism, don’t automatically think, “it will be different with me.” It probably won’t be. But you won’t really know for sure until you find out what’s behind that ‘tude.

I remember that during my first job interview, I heard the sentiment, “It takes a special person to do this job well.” Well. Let me tell you, that spoke directly to my confused, codependent heart. I thought to myself, “I’m a special person. Whatever the challenge is, I’ll muscle right up to it.” Translation: “I will earn your love.” Boy was I wrong. Boy was I stupid.

What I should have said was, “Really? Tell me more. What do you mean by, uhm, special?” If they were honest they would have said, “You won’t mind being treated like crap by a narcissistic prima donna witch – I mean, boss. You won’t mind being humiliated in front of strangers. You won’t mind being on the receiving end of smug abuse from the person who just had the job before you and was promoted to be your direct supervisor. You won’t mind being set up to fail by people who really don’t care that this is your first job and maybe you could use a little kindness and understanding.”

If all of those things were said to me in answer to a question that I posed: “Really? Tell me more,” then I would say that I aced the interview by getting the fact that I didn't want it. I got the job. I took the job. I lost.

I get emails all the time from people who feel abused by their bosses. They need so much help and emotional support. But the first piece of advice is “beware of the dog.” And in this case, that dog might be a lousy job. Don’t be so eager to ace a job interview that will chain you to a dog.

How to Land the Leadership Job of Your Dreams

With the jobs picture swinging away from your favor, we know that there are more qualified and talented people competing for fewer jobs. So once you and your fellow candidates are matched for skills and number of years of experience, you have to find other ways to set yourself apart and shine brighter than your competition. You can compete by being the cheapest to hire – but that would be a bummer. (And who wants to work for a cheapskate company anyway?)

Here’s a better way to stand out and get paid what you deserve: Show your interviewer that you have the heart and smarts to hire, inspire, lead and keep great people.

Regardless of what the economy is doing, first-rate companies haven’t forgotten that creating and sustaining an engaged workforce continues to be the secret to their competitive edge. And they want managers who will help them make that happen.

Engagement continues to be where it’s at: Top-drawer employees throughout the ranks are expensive to hire. And they’re expensive to lose, and even more expensive to replace. Passionate people volunteer their discretionary efforts and genius above and beyond the call of duty. They say good things about their company and the company’s products. They recommend their company as a great place to work. And they’re more likely to stick around, even if someone else offers them brand, spanking new jobs at better pay.

Who makes these golden employees feel all these warm and fuzzy feelings? Why, their bosses do, of course. And that would mean you.

So, while all those other candidates are yammering on and on and on (and, by the way, on) about their technical skills and years of experience, set yourself apart by talking a little bit about your journey to becoming an amazing manager.

Here are some of the questions you should be prepared to answer:

* What would you say are the characteristics of leader who keeps his/her team motivated and focused on the goal?
* As a manager, what do you consider to be your primary responsibility?
* Tell me about a time when you led your team through an extraordinary project or accomplishment.
* If you’ve been a manager before, talk about a time when you saved an otherwise great employee who was in danger of losing his/her job?
* What characteristics do you look for when interviewing people for jobs?
* What do you do when you see a high-potential employee’s performance begin to fail?
* What are your opinions about annual performance reviews?
* Let’s say you have to implement a major change inside your department. What steps would you take to get your team to help you make that change?
* Tell me about a time when you learned something about yourself when dealing with a challenging employee situation.
* Who was your most influential boss so far and what did you learn from that person?
* How did you grow as a result of your last job?

As a seasoned manager, or someone who is ready for that next step, you should be ready to have answers to these questions. Even if you haven’t been a manager yet, you should be thinking about these things now.

Here’s another tip: Don’t wait to be asked those questions…it could be that your interviewer may not be savvy enough to ask. But, if you volunteer a few well-thought out comments that demonstrate that you’re a sensitive, thoughtful, wise people leader – one who is also humble enough to know you have lots to learn from your own direct reports – you will send the hiring company the signal that there’s just something about you that they must have on their team.

Don't Turn Your Back on Love

Anyone who knows me well enough to be invited into my house will tell you I have a lot of (I mean, too much, of) several things: towering stacks of aging New York Times that seem to share in my delusion that I really will get around to reading them all, magazines that have bought into the same lie (Coastal Livings get read, Harvard Business Reviews never see the outside of their poly-bags, I’m sorry to say), and books. (There are some who might say that I have too many cats, but I don’t let those people in.)

Some of the books are cynical (like Working, by Studs Terkel). Some are silly (like Your Cat’s Just Not That Into You, by Richard Smith and David Sipress). Some are cherished, like Airman's Odyssey by Antoine de Saint Exupery (you know, of Little Prince fame?).

But the one that brings today’s post to mind is Marsha Sinetar’s book, Do What You Live and the Money Will Follow. I’m so glad to see that just one week short of its 20th birthday, it’s still going strong. Especially these days.

My worry for “these days” is that people are going to be tempted to give up on pursuing their passions, turning a deaf ear to that still small voice, in favor of pursuing some kind of career alternative that is “smart.” Smart or quixotic, we have all been leveled by the same economic scythe. And there will be some of us who might be tempted to put aside our yearning, burning passions to go after retraining in some field that the business magazines have identified as the top careers of the next decade (give, take).

Well, given the state of the journalism career path these days, my question is this: If it’s so smart to go after those jobs, how come the business journalists themselves haven’t dropped their press creds like poisoned pen letters and gone chasing after those gigs themselves? Answer: When your calling is in your blood, there’s just no ignoring it.

You still have to find work that you can love. It has to do more than paying the bills. In fact, if you have found a life’s work that falls just short of paying all the bills, don’t change the job, reduce the bills. Here’s why:

You will like what you see in the mirror. We are not our jobs. And we certainly are not our income. But we are definitely made up of how we spend our working hours. Are you proud of what you do and who you do it for? I sure hope so. That kind of pride is cheap to acquire and excruciatingly expensive to lose. Either way, it’s precious.

You will like whom you work with and for. When you are doing what you love, people who choose to enter into a transaction with you already have something in common with you. There’s a parallel universe of mutual respect that you two immediately engage on. And that just gets any conversation off on the right foot – especially a business one.

You become a much more valuable (read: indispensable) employee. Passion-driven projects ignite your imagination. And when your imagination is sparked, so is your capacity for innovation. And when that happens, boy-howdy! Companies see you as the ticket to their market dominance (at least the smart ones do, and you only want to work for the companies that get it). Which isn’t to say that you won’t ever get laid off again. But if it happens to you under those circumstances, you will rightly recognize it as a loss of a job, not of your livelihood. Big difference.

You’ll love your life 10 years later. Yesterday I reconnected with a friend I had met through work a little over 10 years ago. We haven’t seen each other in a decade but we threw our arms around each other and hugged long and hard (the kind of hug that you get when you’re not thinking to yourself, “okay, was this long enough?”).

I met Evelyn about the same time I discovered my own life’s calling and passion – which is, oddly enough, to study joy in the American workplace. The minute I discovered the kind of work I would love forever, I discovered a new part of myself to love. And when that happened, I discovered a whole new way to reach out to the world and connect with people I will love for the rest of my life. It’s quite a satisfying sequence, let me tell you.

So good times/bad times will come and go. And the jury is out as to how long this particular spate of bad times will persist. So while we’re sitting this one out (to whatever extent we’re sitting it out), let’s learn about love and how we can express it through the work we do and the people we meet along the way.

Not a bad gig, if you ask me.

Special free offer (really, no catch): If you would like a free PDF copy of my first book, Find Your Calling, Love Your Life, email me at martha@reboundyourcareer.com and I'll send it to you right away.

Make Up Your Mind to Change Your Life in 2009: Part 2

Much to everyone’s surprise, it gets really cold here in New Mexico in the winter – frozen-solid-birdbath-water cold. Consequently I’m never in a hurry to slipper-shuffle down the long drive to the newspaper box – not when the flannel and down on my bed are so warm. And so my first news fix happens even before my first cup of coffee. Courtesy of CNN and my remote control.

This morning there was a segment about how seasoned executives are competing with 14-year-olds for summer jobs with theme parks. One former executive/current job candidate is quoted as saying how this is her chance to do what she’s always wanted to do, which is work with animals and people. To which I thought: Yeah right.

And then I thought: Uh oh. Here comes a whole new Recession-era story line: It’s gotten so bad out there that seasoned executives are competing head to head (in a manner of speaking) with youngsters who can barely be trusted to upsell by simply saying, “You want fries with that?” And then quickly on the heels of that dread scenario will be the executive applicants’ frustrated conclusion that “I am such a loser, I can’t even compete with a pimply pre-pube.”

What recruiter in his or her right mind would even consider a seasoned, middle-career executive for a job that a teenager can – and, by the way, should – do? There’s the over-qualified issue, of course. But even more to the point, these people are totally non-applicable. If we’re going to see more of this kind of behavior, we should add a third category to the problems of being qualified. You’ve got over-qualified (which is often code for being, well, you know). You’ve got under-qualified. And you’ve got N/A qualified. That’s where these people land.

Recruiters know that as much as these people might want the gig now, if they are handed a six-figure job offer in July, they’re going to ditch their summer job in a twinkling. They also know that the supervisors are going to be barely post-pubescents themselves. And who wants that kind of power issue going on? And, perhaps most compelling of all, if you’re talking customer service, just think of all those parents taking their kids to these parks for a jolly holiday and, perhaps, an escape from their own woes. Do they really want to hand their money over to someone just like them? Do they want to be reminded on their day of escape, “Don’t judge, you could be me before too long”? I’m thinking probably not.

N/A stands for non-applicable. It also stands for non-appropriate. And it just isn’t appropriate to crawl down your career ladder just for the sake of a job – even if you need one so badly that first paycheck is all that stands between you and Snidely Whiplash. Plus it’s insulting to everyone involved: you, the hiring company, all those kids who really deserve to take their spot on the first rung of their own career ladder. Entry-level does not mean easy-entry.

Which brings me to Step Two of my conversation with certified executive and life coach, and licensed mental health counselor Meredith Kaplan. (Click here for Step One: Acknowledge Your Feelings) Merry (that's her pretty picture at the top of this blog posting) says that if you want to change your life in 2009, Know Your Core Genius is the essential second step. If it’s counting correct change, filling bags of popcorn, and filing customers onto whirl-and-hurl rides, great! Knock yourself out. But I’m thinking you’re capable of more than that. It’s largely a matter of remembering what those things are and holding on to them for dear life.

“You owe it to yourself to figure out what your core genius is,” she says. “If you do it by yourself, brainstorm the answers to such questions as:

‘Where have I had peak experiences?’
‘What have I done that no one else can do quite like I can?’
‘What is it that attracts people to me in terms of my work-related skills?’
‘What is it that attracts people to me in terms of who I am as a person?’
‘What is it that I have or can do that is unique from other people?’

“These are the traits, skills and passions that can take you further in your career,” she says.

If you come up with a big, fat, “nuthin” when you ask yourself those questions, it could be that your self-esteem has been so hammered by your rough patch that you can’t see yourself as clearly as your friends can. So, says Merry, go to your friends for the feedback you need to get that clear picture of who you really are and what you can really do.

“Seek out people who really know you, people you can really be yourself with, and ask them straightforwardly, ‘What do you think my strengths are?’” she says. Those are the things you want to expand on and use to position yourself in the career marketplace.

Keep in mind all the elements that make up your core genius and you won’t be so tempted to give into the siren song of “gimme a job, any job will do.” First of all, you won’t get it. Secondly, be glad. Just imagine how silly you would feel if you encountered on Saturday the guy who interviewed you for an executive job on Friday. Only now you’re wearing a silly hat and counting change.

(To contact Merry directly, email her at meredithkaplan@bellsouth.net)

Wouldn't it be great if you could look under your prospective boss's hood?

We get so wrapped up in trying to impress our potential boss that we forget to look for warning signs that this person might have some serious issues of his or her own. This article describes some of the indications that your potential boss might be a nightmare to work for. It begins after this brief introduction to my new book, Rebound.






Do you know anyone who has been laid off -- or thinks a lay-off might be coming? Please tell them about Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss! To read more about it, click on the title, which will take you to the Amazon.com description.






Okay, so I have a quick question for you. Are you a nut? If I gave you this cup right here, would you be able to confidently take it into the bathroom, knowing that the results wouldn’t hurt your chances of a job? How do you blow off steam when you’re tense? If you found a wallet on the sidewalk, what would you do with it? If I called one of those background checkers on you right now, what would they find on you? Do you have multiple cats and have a tendency to leave newspapers all over the floor and dishes in the sink? (No, wait, that’s me.) Are you the kind of person who promises only one question but really asks, let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six questions?

Prospective employers want to know these things about you (except, probably, not so much the thing about the cats; they would probably prefer not to know about the cats). And they have ways of finding these things out: experts in background checks, personality tests, aptitude tests, the cup in the bathroom deal. They can really peer under your hood and find out all sorts of things about you, maybe even stuff that you didn’t know yourself. Surprise!

It sure would be nice to have the same advantages when you are considering prospective bosses, wouldn’t it? While you can’t exactly hand them a cup, nor get their social security number for your own rap sheet research, or ask them to fill out this quick personality screening test, it seems like it would only be fair play. I mean, you have every reason to need to predict whether these people will go all nut-bag on you, just as much as they need to know about you. You’d think that they had already passed those emotional-health gates by now. After all, they were once candidates for the jobs they have. But there sure are a lot of wackoids (that’s a clinical term) out there who are in charge of other peoples’ careers and peace of mind.

We’ve all heard of bully bosses, for example. And I’d venture a guess that most of us have personal experience with at least one or two people who were just flat-out not very nice. To put it mildly. As it turns out, it may not be that these people are mean to the bone. It could be that certain parts of their brains are over-active. And it sure would be nice to know which parts are on overdrive before we accept the job offer, wouldn’t it?

Over this past weekend I found myself lost in a fantastic book by Daniel Amen, MD, called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. (On Saturday morning I promised myself just one chapter, but before I knew it the weekend was gone at precisely the moment I turned the last page of the book. I’m a slow reader, plus I underlined a lot.)

A blog posting is not the place to go into total details about the book. But let’s just say that he has a scientific process, much like an MRI, that can read what components of a person’s brain are bouncing off the proverbial wall (another clinical term). And this way he’s able to show why the person is behaving so badly. Negative thinking, procrastination, emotional control, rage, violence, ability to control anxiety, ability to organize, capacity for empathy, tendency to worry, tendency to hold grudges, etc., (perhaps even the proclivity to write long sentences) are all seated in certain parts of the brain: the deep limbic system; the basal ganglia; the prefrontal cortex; the cingulate system; and the temporal lobes.

All very interesting. But the thought that kept occurring to me (in what part of my brain I wonder) was this: Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just inject our interviewers with isotope, make them lie down on a drawer, and slide them under one of those thingamabobs to find out exactly what’s going on with their noodle? As Eliza Doolittle says in My Fair Lady: “Wouldn’t it be loverly?”

Since you can’t, you really have to play super-detective when you go into interviews. And you have to have the nerve to see things for exactly how they are and make the decision whether you actually would want to work there. Here are some ideas:

Take a look around the department and the office: It seems that nowadays offices all look alike. Modular, cubicle. That’s okay for some, but that would just suck the life out of me. (I mean, what’s a workspace without newspapers all over the floor? I ask you.) But that’s just me. What you want to be looking for is an indication of whether you would be comfortable there. If everything looks so tidy that it appears that the staff is under direct orders to hide all the evidence, someone might be a little controlling at the top. Or if things look so sterile that a phone swab wouldn’t register a single microbe, could you possibly have a latter-day Howard Hughes on your hands? Maybe, maybe not. Just take notes.

Or does the office look like a teenager works there? Gum wrappers strewn everywhere? Candy spilling out of the drawers? Bent, empty soft drink cans standing forgotten on any available surface? Posters of some gawd-awful rock band on the walls? Files on the floor? Any kind of evidence of hyper energy and perhaps attention deficit disorder? Does the staff look crazed and on edge? Welcome to your future. You might want to google “twinkie defense,” before saying yes to the job offer.

Conduct a little behavioral-interviewing of your own: Personally, I think there’s nothing worse than being on the hotseat and having an interviewer ask me a question that starts with “Tell me about a time when….” I even draw a blank when someone asks me, “Do you have any questions for us?” My eyes roll back and all I can squeak out is “hummuna hummuna hummana.” Not very professional, is it? And I talk to people for a living. So if your interviewer is asking you to tell stories, ask a few back – most especially if the interviewer is your prospective boss.

The questions I really like are: “How do you like to work under pressure? Can you tell me of a time when you and your team pulled together under a really hard deadline? How did you rally the troops? What was the secret to your team success? How did you celebrate afterwards?” (Notice the positive orientation here?)

Another one: “What signs do you look for in a new employee’s performance that tell you that this is a successful hire?” Here you look like you’re gathering data on what the boss considers to be successful work habits. But what you’re actually getting is a solid idea as to whether the boss is a positive-thinker who has tons of stories of how much he or she appreciates the staff. Positive thinkers always have great anecdotes at their fingertips about how wonderful their people are. Word to wise: If you hear, “our people are our most valuable assets,” make a note of that and circle it in red. Danger! Danger!

Ask your prospective boss about the person who previously had the job. Why is it now vacated? Hopefully because the person was promoted from within or has gone on to a stellar career elsewhere. How long did the person have the job? What did he or she like best about it? What was it about that person that the boss especially appreciated? Listen for how the boss talks about your predecessor. Is he or she happy for that person’s ongoing success? Or resentful that that person has moved on? I actually heard one boss call a departed employee a bad word that is brought to you by the letters A and H. Hmmm. An unresolved issue there, I’d say.

Is the prospective boss polite to you? If you’re a candidate, you’re in the category of “guest,” not “slave begging for work.” So you should be treated like a guest. The interview should be on time. And if out-of-control circumstances make the boss late, someone should let you know. If the tardiness is more than a half hour, you should be given the opportunity to reschedule if you want to.

You may be actually be the one who was there first, with a new boss coming in to take over the department. How does that person treat the new staff? With humility and receptivity as befits a newbie? Or someone who is over-compensating for his or her discomfort? What language does that person use?

I was at a client’s office once when a new department head passed by me at the soft drink machine. While I had worked for the client for many years, both as a staffer and then as a consultant, this guy was totally new. When he saw me, he said, “Skulking around here, trying to scrounge up work?” Huh. That was weird. But everyone is a little weird when they start a new job. So I gave it a pass.

But then he hired a new direct report, who said to me, “If you intend to keep working for us, just know that I’m going to hold your feet to the fire.” Alrighty then. Given the choice (not to mention self-respect), I regretfully scratched that client off my list. That was that. The end of a great run.

I recognize that in these tough times, it’s hard to be too choosy when it comes to landing a great job with a mentally healthy boss. I mean, everyone is just a little bit nuts. But go into these interviews with your eyes, ears and intuition on full receptivity mode. The realities of food-in-mouth, roof-over-head may force you to accept the job as it’s offered to you.

But you will know that, with that peek under your boss’s hood, you should probably keep your resume current and in circulation. You’ll also know not to take any weirdness personally. It’s just them and that hot spot firing off in their brain.

How to Raise Successful Kids When You're Between Jobs

These are different times, certainly. But you and I have both seen enough catastrophizing parallels with the Great Depression to wonder if maybe there are some personal lessons we can draw from our parents or grandparents who lived through tougher times than these. It’s certainly hard to feel in control during an economic storm. But how we react to this time will affect future generations who are watching us and taking their own lessons from our example. This article is about what to do with the kids so they continue to grow up hopeful, ambitious, confident, and optimistic.

There has been a lot of recent research into what creates a flourishing life founded on an emotionally empowered outlook. Positive psychology. Happiness. Learned optimism. Emotional intelligence. I think it’s very interesting that right before the proverbial matter hit the proverbial fan, there was an upsurge in research around these topics. It was almost as though our antennae were up for the wintery days ahead of us. Now it’s time for us to put that research to good use – especially for the sake of the children.

Watch how you talk about being laid off. First of all, don’t lie to the kids. They already know something is up – little pitchers have big radars these days. So if you lie to them, they’re going to come to their own conclusions or grow up learning not to trust their intuition. Both. Bad. In an age-appropriate way, tell them that you might be home more than before while you look for your next wonderful opportunity. In the meantime, everyone has to watch their pennies more carefully. And that means them, too.

In a related matter, be mindful of the vocabulary you use around the topic of money. In a recent TV news segment advising parents on how to talk to their children about money, a mother said, “I told my daughter it’s my job to worry about money.” Worry about money? Oh my gosh! Like a dog who only hears the words “Rover” and “food,” a child immediately parses out the words “worry” and “money.” And puts those two together for the rest of her life.

Money is not something to worry about. It’s a resource that we can control. We can make it when we need it (or want it), it helps us live the lives we want to live and if we take care of it, it will take care of us when we’re older. Money is a good thing.

Tell empowering stories. Whether the stories are from your past, your day, or the daily newspaper, talk about times when good things happened -- especially as a result of someone taking initiative or acted in a generous way. Talk about the meaning behind the work you do (or did) in an upbeat way that shows children how their efforts really can result in making the world a better place. And how somehow it all works out in the end.

Give the kids an appropriate role in the current situation. Right now the culture message out there is that everything is out of our control. Even when we think we’re being prudent and have millions in the bank, suddenly we don’t. Where’s the control? Where’s the payoff in self-restraint? Answer: In the little moments of every day when we go out of our way to help others, show kindnesses, taken on a project and see it from start to finish. Whether it’s picking up the toys, doing the dishes or helping with a Habitat for Humanity house project, there’s something that every children can do to make the world a better place and see immediate results.

Have a good time! It’s so important to remember that a parent’s job is to teach their children to be joyful. And joy isn’t job-dependent! It’s as free as an afternoon in the park. And there’s huge ROI associated with joy. Harvard researchers have shown that people are much more creative and innovative the day after playing than they were keeping their nose to the grindstone. So, in case you’re so Type A that you need this little extra rationale: Fun is good for the career.

Keep those dreams coming. It’s tempting to focus only on the terrible headlines, how one more friend is out of work, another house in foreclosure, etc. And, yes, it’s also important to share the realities of real life (in an age appropriate way, of course). At the same time, dreaming of a happy future is an essential survival skill, especially when you brainstorm with your children about how to put feet to those dreams and actually achieve milestones toward making them happen. It costs nothing to dream. And maybe as you brainstorm as a family about what practical steps to take to make dreams come true, everyone (even you) will be more and more inspired to greet the future with a hopeful heart.

Make Up Your Mind to Change Your Life in 2009: Part 1

If you're a magazine nerd like I am, you might remember when Self magazine was first published. I loved that magazine, especially the feature that always appeared in the back, called Fresh Start. It was always just a one-pager, featuring the story of how one young woman changed her life in a really significant way. Oh how I missed that department when they canceled it. I just loved stories of people who were given the chance to begin again.

Well, here's the deal now. With hundreds of thousands of people being laid off and many more facing the prospect of losing their jobs in upcoming months, we're all being given the chance to begin again. Woo-pee! Right? Yeah. I didn't think so. But, like it or not, change is being handed to us, if not actually being shoved down our respective throats. So we have a choice: we can change our lives intentionally, or have them changed for us. I pick the first choice. Which would you pick?

But, you know as well as I do that no life change can actually stick unless we make the change from the inside. And we have to make that choice happily and hopefully (not in the context of dread and punishment). So, to get the best possible advice for all of us, I went to one of my favorite sources for mental health counseling and positive thinking -- Meredith (the very aptly nicknamed "Merry") Kaplan. (That's her pretty picture at the top of this posting)

(I also interviewed her for my chapter on handling rage in Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss.)

Merry (meredithkaplan@bellsouth.net) is a licensed mental health counselor and an executive and life coach with a national clientele (but she herself is based in Palm Beach Gardens, FL). And she gave me this six-step process to align your thinking around change and to organize the way you manage your life from here on out.

We've broken this interview down into seven parts. Use this process and see what your life is like by 2010! We're thinking that this action process will prove to you through real experience that you do have the power to make your life exactly what you want it to be. So...here's Step One:

Step One: Acknowledge Your Feelings

Merry says, "It's so important to acknowledge your feelings because if you don't you are in denial. And your denial will hinder the process of setting a new course for yourself. Once we are in denial and we are not accepting, we limit ourselves from opportunities for success, opportunities to visualize what it is that we want from our future. Also by acknowledging your feelings, you are able to share them with those near and dear to you. When you are able to verbalize how you feel, you are able to get the support from the people who are in the best position to help you emotionally. They'll be able to understand how you're feeling and respect the journey that you're on. Even if all they can do for you is be a circle of good listeners, that's a very important part of your toolkit for change."

Merry says that even though there might be social pressure to put on a happy face and hide your true feelings, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, you really need to be fully and expressively authentic with both yourself and your closest friends.

"Because of our socialization, it's much easier for women to express their feelings and have their friends and female relatives acknowledge those feelings and be empathetic. It's more difficult for men to express their feelings, especially to other men. When they do have someone in their lives that they really can share those feelings with, it certainly lightens the burden. They can actually reduce the possibility of psychosomatic illness that comes when they internalize toxic feelings. That's when they develop all sorts of stress-related medical problems. So it's extremely beneficial for both men and women to acknowledge their feelings to both themselves and to confidants whom they know and trust."

So Rebound Readers: Here's your assignment for the day...Make a list of all the emotions that are swirling around you right now. Get them down on paper. And then make another list of your closest confidants -- your spouse, your golf buddy, your walking partner, and resolve to set aside some time to share with them those feelings that you might be trying to ignore away, feelings that maybe you think might put you in a bad light. Take that risk.

You know you would want your friends to do the same with you, if they were wrestling with a life change challenge. You would want to be there for them. And, I'm willing to bet, once you show them how to open up, they just might give you that chance themselves!

Rebound!!! The Book is Out!!!

Hi everyone:

I'm so excited to see that Rebound is now available online and in bookstores! I just had to tell you!

For those of you who have been following me over the last couple of years, and then wondered why I disappeared in November, this is the reason why! I was busy writing the book I hope will give a lot of comfort and perspective to people who are facing the prospect of being laid off.

I write about career, legal, financial, family, personal emotional issues. And there are three aspects I'm especially proud of in this book:

1. I interviewed the top experts in their fields to bring the absolute best possible advice together in one volume.

2. Rebound features a collection of first-person stories of people who have been laid off, the lessons they learned along the way, and how they landed happily in their new careers.

3. Each chapter concludes with three quick action items: The best thing you can do; the worst thing you can do; and the first thing you should do.

I hope you and the people you love aren't facing this crisis right now. But who doesn't know someone who is going through a layoff? Here's hoping that Rebound will give them what they need to come out the other side stronger than before!

Are Your Friends and Family Inspiring You? Or Retiring You?

I must be on a real cleaning jag. Last week I did the dishes. And just now I spent a couple of hours in the garage, cleaning out one side of it, channeling Peter Walsh. While pushing broom and trying not to breathe in mouse dust (don’t judge, I live in the desert), I listened to the audio version of Change or Die by Alan Deutschman. This is the book in which he uses very inspiring examples to illustrate his formula of igniting lasting change.

One of his essential keys is the importance of being surrounded by role models – people who are not so different from you that they seem to have come from a different planet, but people just like you who personify the changes you want to make. In his own personal situation, he uses the example of Claudia Berman, a San Francisco-based trainer who inspired him to finally jettison 40 pounds.

At first I started thinking of a friend of mine who is still having the devil of a time finding and keeping a job with an organization who treats her with the respect she deserves. On a particularly low evening a few months ago, she told me that it’s hopeless to find a job in a respectful organization. That all businesses are hell holes and that I’m unrealistic to constantly be banging the gong in favor of emotionally healthy workplaces where people are happy and businesses are profitable.

It’s all a lie, she said. Of course she’s right, she says, referencing a good friend of hers and acquaintance of mine who told her so. And I’m just being delusional. Okay then. I guess that gives her all the permission she needs to stop trying. In the ensuing months, she’s had three jobs, and quit two of them. Yesterday I found out that she was fired by the third. So she must be right. Right?

I’m not blaming my friend for her terrible luck, but it sure isn’t helping her prospects any to be hanging out with people who will spend perfectly good social time complaining about the nature of work. And agreeing with each other about how lousy their bosses are, etc.

And then I started thinking about myself. And how I’ve been surrounded by people who would far rather talk about how awful things are than brainstorm about ways to make them better. Or just focus on elevating aspects of life in general. I remember a time about 10 years ago in Annapolis, I was sitting in the livingroom of some friends who spent the entire time complaining about their boss. Sitting there just listening to these coworkers, the thought struck me, “this is the most boring conversation I’ve ever heard.” So much to talk about: politics (we lived only 45 minutes away from Washington); art; music; literature; navel lint. But no, we indulged in the hurts-so-good outrages of a narcissistic control fiend (which, I grant you, she most certainly was, but who wants to talk about that on a Saturday night?).

I don’t know who said it, but you’ve probably also heard the truism that “we see things not as they are but as we are.” (Somebody please write in and tell me who said it!) And that is consistent with what Deutschman was saying about “frames.” We see and believe things according to elements we already believe to be legitimate truths in life.

So. If you think all workplaces are Dickensian workhouses, that’s probably all you’re going to find, because you don’t have the faith, vision, or expectation of finding anything better for yourself. And if you are surrounded by friends who firmly believe the same, you’re at a huge disadvantage even if you do aspire for better for yourself. You’re going to be constantly surrounded by debilitating messages that your dreams for something better are pointless. So, from their perspective, you might as well take what you get and suck it up. That’s reality, sweetie. Deal with it. Really? I beg to differ.

It’s not just friends telling you discouraging things about the world. It could be family members telling you discouraging things about yourself. This is especially common in families with neglectful, abusive, substance-abusing parents. Children of these households very commonly take on unconsciously assigned roles like the Scapegoat, the Troublemaker, the Over-Achiever, the Good One. If that’s the case with you, and you’re trying to thrive in a world of your own making, hoping for a better life in a healthier world, you could be upsetting the rest of the family. You’re breaking the rules, getting a little “full of yourself,” or “too big for your britches.” And someone is going to want to remind you – often forcefully – that it’s futile to aspire for anything better. And heaven help you if you actually reach for a way to love yourself.

Sometimes, as Mark Twain would have said, you just have to light out for the territories. Breaking away from the old ways is going to upset people who don’t want to try that for themselves – consequently having a vested interest in holding you back as well. So you may have to break away from people as well. Maybe not forever, but at least until you've gained solid footing on the new world that is closer to your vision of what is happily and healthily possible.

If you truly want a happier life, with a better job, working for and with people who respect and value you, go for it. It’s out there for you. The name of the game is to find people who agree with your vision of life as it can be, and who model for you every day the choices and behaviors that make that dream come true.

Find those people who see things the way they are – hopeful, empowered, mutually kind, respectful, high performing, rewarding, positive. You’ll get there faster that way.

Don't Get Sad, Get Bad

All morning long, while doing the semi-annual dishes (Question: What’s the difference between Martha Finney and Martha Stewart? Answer: Just look in the kitchen.), I’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember who told me about Timothy Ferriss’s fantastic book, The 4-Hour Work Week. I was down to the lasagna pan when I remembered: It was “Anna,” one of the “voices of experience” I interviewed for Rebound. Ah yes, now that I’ve read the Ferriss book on her recommendation, I can see how it all fits.

Ferriss is one bad boy. I like him. While I don’t necessarily approve of all of his tactics (some of them are a little duplicitous for my taste), I love his attitude. Which is basically: Your life is your own and you have every right (in fact, responsibility) to lead it exactly as you want to. And…by the way…you can. You just have to be bad enough to break out of the box that someone else shoved you in. Which totally fits with what Anna was telling me about her experience. So let me tell you about her first.

The brief version of the whole story, which you can read in Rebound, is this: She was a hugely successful salesperson in one of the top ranking companies in her industry. She helped the founders grow it to the point that it could be sold to a public company and walk away millionaires many times over. She’s glad for them. They deserved the rewards of their hard work, she says. So far so good.

But then she watches the new owners run the company into the ground partying like it was 1999. And she’s getting both angry and worried. What to do? Management tells her: Nothing! Everything is groovy, no worries. Her plan was to move to California – a more happening market for her merchandise – but that would require buying a hugely expensive house in an insane market. So she double-checks with her manager. Are you sure it’s a wise personal risk for me to take right now? Absolutely! Go for it! Enjoy the beach, he says.

Within days of her closing on her house, the word comes down that the new owners were shutting the company down. Why wasn’t this the absolute worst news ever? Anna had been a very “bad” girl. She had chosen not to fully believe her boss and had seized control of her own life and future. So, by the time the news hit her, she already had two job offers in her back pocket – offers from her employer’s direct competitors, no less. She seamlessly went from one company to the next, taking her value with her.

Make no mistake. All is not totally hunky dory. She still grieves the destruction of the company that she helped raise from its infancy, not to mention the anguish of her former colleagues, who she keeps track of on Yahoo blogs. But she is in a job she loves, with people who are smart, cutting edge, and totally committed to the smart, ego-free management of the business. (No champagne-saturated helicopter rides for this executive team, nosireebob.) Her former coworkers, who had been "good" and obeyed their management's instructions to be loyal and faithful, are out of work en masse, now competing with each other in a dwindling job market.

When I say “bad,” I’m talking about an internal shift toward the direction of self-respect and self-sovereignty. I don’t mean that you should consider doing anything that will result in a regrettable firing or even a court case. I don’t want to find myself on Nancy Grace trying to explain your “Martha told me to do it” defense. This is about arriving to the realization that you are 100% responsible and in control of your career and life. And if something in your company isn’t passing the smell test, don’t be “good” and believe everything that’s being handed to you. Be “bad” and take action on your own behalf, for the sake of your own future.

If you think that one of the best ways to keep your job may be to be eager to please, you could actually be taking the front spot in the bye-bye line. When the executive team is sitting around the table thinking about who to lay off and who to keep, no one is going to say, “Well, you know, James is always so good about taking his lunch leftovers home on Friday nights. Let’s keep him.”

You know how annoying some over-pleasing, obsequious people are. You don’t know what they have to offer you and your life. All you know is that just being around them makes you really peevish for some reason. They’re the first ones you want out of your life.

So what do I mean about being bad? That all depends on how your particular brand of being good is screwing you up.

Are you inclined to believe management when it’s telling you that you’re safe, even though people are disappearing right and left? Does blindly believing management feel like you’re being “good” like you were when you were blindly believing the parents? And that you will somehow be rewarded for your loyalty? Time to get bad.

Does taking action on your own behalf feel oddly disloyal or disobedient? Time to get bad.

Do you find yourself taking on really crappy assignments that no one else would be caught dead with? And that you wouldn’t do either if you weren’t afraid of getting fired? Time to get bad.

Are people all around you getting promoted, even though you are doing the lion’s share of the work? Time to get bad.

Are people taking credit for your work? Time to get bad.

Do you suspect that people are just looking for an excuse to fire you? Time to get bad.

Have you been the object of an ambush? Time to get bad.

Do you feel that normal actions that reflect self-respect are being received as insubordination? Time to get bad.

I wish I knew how to help you specifically get bad. All I know is how to tell when you’re on the right track. You’re acting reasonably, responsibly, like the adult with healthy self-esteem. And then someone (some, uh, jerk) says to you, “Hey! Who the hell do you think you are?”

And you can mentally respond with, “My own bad self.”

How to Get Your Foot in the Door Part 3: You May Be Interviewing For A Job Without Even Knowing It

If you had an especially caring (or controlling) mom, she probably told you that you should never forget that you're being watched, and maybe even judged, all the time. Her initial purpose for telling you this was probably something about making sure your hair is combed and that there's no spinach in your teeth (not to mention never forgetting "please" and "thank you"). And her advice might have been tinged with a bit of warning around it. As in: Keep your nose clean of cave bats, someone's noticing.

But this is also good nose, I mean news. When you're shining and performing at your best, someone may be noticing. And, while it may not be today, tomorrow, or next month, they just might offer you a job.

Last week I interviewed Scott Seaton, who works for SRI (a little known research firm in Palo Alto, CA, that invented things we use every day, like the mouse and the desktop computer). I asked him how he got his job. And he said that when he was in the Navy, he was stationed as a special electronics projects officer in Iceland (brrrrrr). And he was in charge of some visiting scientists from SRI. He was so impressed by how mission-driven and committed these people were -- so willing to tromp across the tundra in all hours of day/night, to work on some kind of whiz bang antennae. Why? Because they loved their work!

And they were obviously impressed with him! So when Scott decided that it was time for him to leave the Navy and rejoin the civilian world, he grabbed a transport from Iceland to California (how's that for a climate change?), interviewed with the folks at SRI and was offered a job.

You just never know when you're going to meet your future. You may be standing on top of the world on an ice floe. And some guy in mukluks emerges from the mist. "Hello, I'm from your future. And guess what? That future has palm trees."

So. Keep your hair combed, your teeth spinach-free and your nose clean! Someone may be noticing, taking mental notes and smiling to themselves as they think about what a great fit you would be for their organization.

The Most Important Thing to Do When You're Laid Off

Getting laid off is a crappy happening in so many ways, it’s hard to pick just one. But I will anyway. Not to discount all the other ways you’re taking it on the chin, today I’m focusing on the hit your self-esteem is taking. And what you can do about it.

When you’re laid off, you’re out of work. That’s bad enough. But, precisely because you’re out of work you have all this time to worry about. And brood about it. And obsess about it. And on top of that, you have to do it all by yourself. Why? Because everyone you know is busy at work. Or, if they’re not, they’re probably laid off too. And you really don’t want to be around worrying, brooding, obsessing people – especially when they’re negatively focused on the same thing you are.

Okay, granted, you have your career to be worrying about – not to mention such incidentals as mortgage, health insurance, kids’ education, etc. But you also have something else much more close to home than that you need to ferociously protect right now – your confidence, self-respect, your faith in yourself and your future. In other words – self-esteem.

Self-esteem protection has got to be Job #1 right now, even outclassing the job of finding a job. The good news here is that this is one aspect of your life you have complete control over (although it may not seem to be the case at the moment). So I’ve outlined a few steps you can take to create a cone of esteem protection around your head and heart as you move proudly toward an uncertain future.

Give yourself the time you need to grieve and then recover. You wouldn’t take a cast off before a broken bone was healed, would you? You wouldn’t force a child with a 104 degree fever to go to school, would you? (The correct answer is: No.) Don’t rush yourself to “get over” the emotions around your feelings of betrayal, shock, even rage. Even if you have to get a new job instantaneously, don’t think you “should be over this by now.” You’ll be over it when you’re over it.

Be a rainmaker for other people. Wealth comes in so many forms, and your network is one of them. While you may be thinking that your set of personal contacts is completely useless in helping you find your new job (you’re probably wrong, by the way), you can open up your address book to help your friends find the job of their dreams. It is beyond words how rewarding it is to be able to make a real difference in someone else’s life, especially when you’re spending your days trying to renegotiate interest rates and minimum payments.

Be your own champion. Remember how I said that it’s your job to ferociously protect your self-esteem? Well, that begins with the kinds of thoughts you fill your mind with. If you’re prone to criticizing or second guessing or psychoanalyzing yourself (even a little bit), knock it off. You can always come back to that self-talk when you’re on steadier ground. Don’t worry, you’re in no danger of getting a “big head” in the meantime if you let up on yourself. Reality will keep you humble. Stay away from so-called friends who make you feel uncertain or bad about yourself. Even the ones who you think might be smarter than you about these things. You know in your heart what’s what. If someone else wants to castigate you for some perceived failings, just think to yourself, “projecting!” (like Jon Lovitz’s Master Thespian character announcing, “acting!”) and lose their contact information for awhile (I mean, forever).

Be someone else’s hero. Confession: I like Mariah Carey’s music. And I’ll never forget the time I first heard her song, “Hero.” I was on my way to the dentist to get a root canal. Talk about having something imprinted on your brain. I was especially receptive to the message of that song that morning. There is always something you can do to relieve the pain or restore the hope of someone else. It’s especially good if you’re able to use your professional skill set to make that happen. You need to remind your heart and brain that you still have a role in the marketplace – even if it’s volunteer for the moment. It won’t be for long. (Although it would be excellent if you continued to volunteer after you landed your next great job.)

Give yourself a success project. One of the messages your hammered self-esteem may be telling you right now is that you are powerless to make an impact. Give yourself real and current evidence to the contrary. Assign yourself a series of projects that you have total control over and can see to completion. Cleaning out the garage. Cutting out sugar. Taking the car in to get serviced. Little projects. Big projects. Whatever. Just make sure that you can see that light at the end of that project tunnel. And that you are in total control over a successful completion. (The down side of this advice, of course, is that if you fail you will have only yourself to blame. So. Don’t fail.)

Don’t believe everything you think. You’ve been wrong before. You know how it feels. You might have been one of those people who thought getting laid off would never happen to them. Surprise! Personally I’m big into believing everything I feel (I usually come to regret ignoring my intuition). But believing everything I think is another matter altogether. It’s really easy to get into the habit of drawing sweeping negative conclusions about the way of the world, and our personal success prospects, when nothing is going right. Just remember to constantly ask yourself, “where’s the evidence?” And if you see that you’re compiling a dangerous amount of evidence to support your negative assumptions, load up on those success projects.

What Will 2009 Mean to You in the Long Run? You Decide

You may not be able to control all the events of 2009 as they seem to be lining up just beyond the horizon – like storms in the Pacific, or planes lining up to land at SFO. But you have absolute control over what they will mean to you in big picture scheme of things. Will 2009 be remembered as the year of despair and anxiety? Or the year of absolute amazement, miracles and inspiration to last a lifetime? Same year. Same events. Two different interpretations. You get to choose which one will best carry you and your family into the future.

The other night I was listening to a lecture in which Jack Canfield was talking about how one year he and his wife decided to assign a theme to that year – in his case it was The Year of the Family. And so for those ensuing 12 months, the two of them took on specific projects to help them appreciate their children more and to more intentionally set their kids up for their own future.

The theme itself isn’t as important as the intentionality of focus that is assigned for that year. So that got me to thinking…the way we’re going right now as a nation (probably even the entire world) the year 2009 could be the Year of The Financial Fecal Matter Hitting The Proverbial Fan.

But that doesn’t have to be the theme of 2009 for you. However the financial events unfold, that train, as they’ve been saying on TV, has left the station. In the big picture scheme of things, we as individuals have no control over the macro-economic state of affairs -- or even the Madoff-economic state of affairs.

I recognize that most of us have lost a lot of money. And some of us have lost our jobs, or are having a harder time finding work. And I don’t mean to make light of very serious events in our lives right now. We’re all suffering to some degree.

But even though the financial aspect of the 2009 story may be out of our individual control, this is a great opportunity for us to remember that the story of our life is more than a financial, material, or even a professional one. Let other people assign financial dominance over the way the story of 2009 will be told. But we can choose a much better story to tell of who we will become as individuals during this time. That’s within our control.

Here are some ideas for 2009:

The Year of Relying on Our Own Judgment. Personally, I made some really stupid financial decisions over the last couple of years, because I listened to the wrong people. I figured that the experts knew more about these things than I did and I should just follow their lead. So I ignored what my heart was telling me and chose to do the “smart” thing. Well. That didn’t turn out so well, did it? A few years into my regrettable commitment I read something in an Oprah magazine that hit me between the eyes: “When in doubt, don’t.” That’s my new mantra from now on. Well, at least one of them.

The Year of Recreational Frugality. This past summer a client of mine took her family on vacation to the United Kingdom. Her teen-age daughter was appalled that a hamburger in a London McDonald’s was over $8 and challenged her mother to a game of, “let’s see how cheaply we can live while we’re here.” What could have been a fretting endurance trial of watching money slip through their fingers (totally spoiling a trip that should only have good memories), her daughter turned it into a fun game and source of pride. How inspiring! How cheaply can we live while the financial situation shakes itself out? It could be fun to find out. We can turn that into a game, if we wanted. And, in the end, it could be a great source of pride for everyone because this is a game in which no one loses.

The Year of Using What We Have. We all have stuff we don’t use. When it comes to books, I’m a huge snob. And over the years I have looked down my nose at poseurs who filled shelves with books they would never read. Somehow, “I bought it but haven’t read it,” didn’t translate in my mind as someone who was actually well-read. Well-bought, maybe, but not well-read. But over those same years I discovered that I was getting into the habit of saying the same thing. My problem: I’d buy a book that I discovered, regardless of whether I had the time to read it right then and there, because I didn’t want to forget about it later. Now I’ve got tons of great books in stacks, shelves and piles, all of which are squeaking, “read me!” I could actually go a whole year without buying another book (heaven forbid!), and still have plenty to read. What do you have that you don’t use to its full potential?

The Year of Turning What We Have into Cash. Everyone’s looking for a bargain these days, and those bargains often come in the form of used stuff. Where does that used stuff come from? Well, from us, of course. A friend of mine routinely makes as much as $600 holding periodic garage sales. I wonder if I can make so much selling some of my books – the ones I’ve read, of course.

The Year of Strengthening Our Faith in Whatever. God? Humanity? The Laws of Attraction? Karma? The Way the Cosmic Cookie Crumbles? Our own resourcefulness? I’m not so sure about the power of positive vibrations. But one thing I do know is that a negative mindset is completely self-destructive. It shuts you off from innovative thinking, appreciating the good things in life, connecting with other people, and seeing opportunities when they come flying at you. Personally I’m fond of deus ex machina stories – those stories of God coming out of nowhere and pulling my personal fat out of the fire, just in the nick of time. I’ve got tons of those. They make me feel better and strengthen my faith.

The Year of Recognizing When We’re Being Emotionally Hijacked. One of the books I haven’t read yet (but I’ve got!) is Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. But I think I understand his concept of emotional hijacking. That’s when someone else manipulates you (intentionally or not) into an emotional frenzy about something that really isn’t about you and then causes you to make choices and decisions that may not necessarily be in your best interest. When you think about TV and other vehicles of advertising and news delivery, that’s a model of emotional hijacking. We’re in a heightened state of anxiety by the time the commercials come on. That makes us more inclined to buy things we wouldn’t otherwise even consider. Or our friends give us well-intentioned, but emotionally charged, advice, causing us to go against our best judgment.

The Year of the Pleasant Conversation. I know things are pretty crappy right now, but there’s always something crappy to talk about…even in the so called “good days.” And it’s just not healthy to dwell on that stuff. As Nigella Lawson said when she was criticized for throwing lavish parties and hosting a silly cooking show while her husband was dying of throat cancer: “You just can’t live in that lane all the time.”

I know I’m not alone in the general yearning for “can’t we just talk about something pleasant for a change?” I’m not so much of a control freak as to try to dictate what gets talked about in social gatherings. But I have learned to keep my mouth shut more often than not.

Some friends of mine are throwing their annual gumbo party in a couple of weeks. And the hostess has said, “Yeah! Only pleasant talk this year!” I hope she’ll be able to pull it off!

The Year of Learning New Skills. Pleasant conversation, for one example, is a skill. How much easier it is to succumb to the gravitational pull of complaining and bad news. Learn a new language. Learn how to cook. Learn how to break 400 in Scrabble. Learn all the ins and outs of Microsoft Office. If we’re going to be stuck at home, we might as well make good use of that time.

The Year of Caring About Something That Has Absolutely Nothing to Do With Me. There is plenty in this world to get excited about that doesn’t affect our economic state or job status -- things we can actually do something about regardless of our political affiliations or financial security. Isn’t it true that we really appreciate our own situation when we roll up our sleeves and help someone else out in theirs? Which leads me to…

The Year of Helping Each Other Out Just Because We Can. We all have strengths, skills, networks, areas of expertise that ease the burden of life for our friends and neighbors. How rich it makes us feel to know that we can help someone in a really important way just by coming over, picking up the telephone, giving some advice (good advice), sending an email. It costs us nothing but it’s worth the world to the people we help. And, of course, vice versa.

Whether or not you will end up saying, “That was a very good year,” depends on the vision you make for 2009 right now. And that’s entirely within your control. You still hold the power in your life.

Freelancing Can Be a Great Option -- Especially When You're Between Jobs

(Do you know anyone who needs help, advice, inspiration, and hope after being laid off? Please send them to my new blog, Rebound Your Career! It's based on my new book entitled, amazingly enough: Rebound: A Proven Plan For Starting Over After Job Loss, which will be available online and in bookstores everywhere on February 9! Hey! That's one month away! Yay!)


Have you given any thought to freelancing? Almost anything that can be done full-time can be translated into freelance gigs. And, according to CNN.com's news crawl yesterday, more and more companies are turning to freelancers to get their work done project by project, instead of full-time job by full-time job.

Now, I know that most of us aren't cut out for freelancing as a lifelong career. So I'm not suggesting that everyone rush right out and hang out their shingles. But if you're not working right now anyway, it beats the heck out of sitting in your socks soaking up the soaps all afternoon. Believe me, I tried that. Freelancing is a much better way to go.

Here's what freelancing can do for you:

You keep your resume fresh with recent projects and accomplishments. Recruiters want to know what you've been doing "all this time." Taking on freelance assignments while you're looking for a new job gives you the chance to keep your resume up-to-the-minute with fascinating stories of achievement, learning, completion. Plus, you get to have a whole new set of people who will give you references.

It keeps you in touch with your former employers, who were really sorry to have to let you go, by the way. I have one friend who actually was able to hire back a fantastic employee as a freelancer after she was forced to shut down her department. And, she was able to pay him more money because she had a lavish freelance budget. Which is kind of weird, but there's no arguing with reality. (And, if CNN is right, more companies will have more money in their freelance budgets. So why not claim some of that for your own?)

Freelancing makes you the head cheese. As a freelancer you get to pick which assignments you're willing to take on. As an employee, you pretty much have to say yes to everything that crosses your desk. Of course, to be realistic, when wolves are beginning to gather at your door, you still have to say yes to most assignments that come your way. (Especially in the beginning when you're just building your practice.) But it's still very nice to know you can still say no...any time. Really. It's allowed.

You can actually fire clients! In fact, if you were feeling especially spiteful -- and your former employer completely deserves it -- you can turn right around and fire the guy who fired you! Just make sure you have plenty of money in the bank and a line of clamoring clients waiting for your attention, like the rope line outside of NY's most happening nightclub. Again, it's just nice to know you can.

You can write some really cool stuff off. See your tax guy about this. But, just so you know, I've been able to write off a scuba diving trip to Bonaire. My groovy new Mac? Deductible. That video camera I want to buy? Deductible. All that chocolate I eat when I'm writing under deadline? Not deductible. Can't have everything.

You can grow much faster as a freelancer. By which I don't mean chocolate-eating, although that is also a guaranteed growth strategy.

What I do mean is that as a freelancer, you can go after potential clients in companies you would love to work for. You learn about the latest, greatest developments in your field, and you can, if you so choose, hang out with the leaders and role models of your profession. One of my most favorite assignments was helping Intuit write a white paper about their employee engagement initiative. Of all the books I've written, the cool places I've traveled to, the amazing people I've interviewed, I have to say that spending a couple of months working with Intuit's director of workforce research taught me so much...and even made me want to leap back into the workaday world.Just for a minute, there.

You have the satisfaction of actually completing projects. You know that sense of "ah, done!" As a full-time employee, you don't always get to feel that feeling. But as a freelancer, you do, because there is a definite "done" time, and that's when you get paid the second half of your fee (the first half comes when you say yes to the assignment at the beginning of the project).

You get to meet a heckuvalot more people as a freelancer. If you're stuck in your cube all day, bent over the same keyboard, staring into the same screen, day in and day out, you know what that makes you? A full-time employee.

As a freelancer, you get to wake up exactly when you want to (in my case, it's 3:30 am...so no slug-a-bed visions of sloth, please, thank you very much). You get to pad around the house in your jammies until you're ready to put on shoes to go out and get the newspaper. Then you get to decide whether or not you want to haul on go-to-meeting clothes and attend a top-notch, cutting-edge lunch meeting with the leaders of your community and industry. You get to sit in big round tables, asking "is this your bread plate or mine?," of people whose business cards represent the best of the best in your profession. You get to make friends with these people. Why? Because you're the head cheese of your own operation. You're not buried deep inside a corporate org chart, which, by the way, is just about to be thrown up into the air like pick-up-sticks. The reorg will be announced next week, time to tidy up your desk.

Now, if you were a freelancer, first of all you wouldn't be worried about being laid off. Secondly, you'd have all these fab business cards of people you've met in business/social functions who will help you. The successful freelancer's network is something to envy, that's for sure.

You get to learn new skills and even heal old self-esteem wounds. First of all the new skills: Marketing yourself (by which I mean, "marketing your brains out"); new technical skills that will expand your marketability and competitiveness; negotiation skills; productivity skills; time management skills; public speaking skills; making new friends skills; getting-out-of-the-house skills.

As for the self-esteem healing part: I just find that people who are self-employed have a greater sense of purpose and potential than they did when they had a full-time job (and when I say "people," I mean "me"). When you are a freelancer, companies don't care whether you are too fat (heck! it's not their health insurance rates at risk here; but really, just stay away from the fridge at home) or too old. They just want to know if you can do the job, and what will it cost them. And how your talents and skills will help them achieve their own objectives.

Which brings me to the next self-esteem sticking point. You discover very quickly how closely linked your self-esteem is to the money you make. You build a lot of confidence landing gigs, successfully completing them to the point where you're like the Lone Ranger and your clients want to know when they're going to see you again. And pretty soon you can start asking for more money. And then more money. And then more, as your value goes up and your name gets around. It's really good for your self-esteem, let me tell you.

Freelancing isn't easy. But it sure can be fun. And, if you've been laid off, you're not doing much right now anyway, except banging your head against the wall, perhaps looking for jobs that may or may not be there (but the work still needs to get done!). Present yourself as a freelancer, and it's quite possible the more doors will swing open for you.

At least, that's what CNN.com said yesterday. And that's what I've been saying for the last 20 years.

Twitter alert! Don't forget to "follow" me on www.twitter.com/marthafinney

Wouldn't It Be Great to Be Able to Look Under Your Prospective Boss's Hood?

Okay, so I have a quick question for you. Are you a nut? If I gave you this cup right here, would you be able to confidently take it into the bathroom, knowing that the results wouldn’t hurt your chances of a job? How do you blow off steam when you’re tense? If you found a wallet on the sidewalk, what would you do with it? If I called one of those background checkers on you right now, what would they find on you? Do you have multiple cats and have a tendency to leave newspapers all over the floor and dishes in the sink? (No, wait, that’s me.) Are you the kind of person who promises only one question but really asks, let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six questions?

Prospective employers want to know these things about you (except, probably, not so much the thing about the cats; they would probably prefer not to know about the cats). And they have ways of finding these things out: experts in background checks, personality tests, aptitude tests, the cup in the bathroom deal. They can really peer under your hood and find out all sorts of things about you, maybe even stuff that you didn’t know yourself. Surprise!

It sure would be nice to have the same advantages when you are considering prospective bosses, wouldn’t it? While you can’t exactly hand them a cup, nor get their social security number for your own rap sheet research, or ask them to fill out this quick personality screening test, it seems like it would only be fair play. I mean, you have every reason to need to predict whether these people will go all nut-bag on you, just as much as they need to know about you. You’d think that they had already passed those emotional-health gates by now. After all, they were once candidates for the jobs they have. But there sure are a lot of wackoids (that’s a clinical term) out there who are in charge of other peoples’ careers and peace of mind.

We’ve all heard of bully bosses, for example. And I’d venture a guess that most of us have personal experience with at least one or two people who were just flat-out not very nice. To put it mildly. As it turns out, it may not be that these people are mean to the bone. It could be that certain parts of their brains are over-active. And it sure would be nice to know which parts are on overdrive before we accept the job offer, wouldn’t it?

Over this past weekend I found myself lost in a fantastic book by Daniel Amen, MD, called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. (On Saturday morning I promised myself just one chapter, but before I knew it the weekend was gone at precisely the moment I turned the last page of the book. I’m a slow reader, plus I underlined a lot.)

A blog posting is not the place to go into total details about the book. But let’s just say that he has a scientific process, much like an MRI, that can read what components of a person’s brain are bouncing off the proverbial wall (another clinical term). And this way he’s able to show why the person is behaving so badly. Negative thinking, procrastination, emotional control, rage, violence, ability to control anxiety, ability to organize, capacity for empathy, tendency to worry, tendency to hold grudges, etc., (perhaps even the proclivity to write long sentences) are all seated in certain parts of the brain: the deep limbic system; the basal ganglia; the prefrontal cortex; the cingulate system; and the temporal lobes.

All very interesting. But the thought that kept occurring to me (in what part of my brain I wonder) was this: Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just inject our interviewers with isotope, make them lie down on a drawer, and slide them under one of those thingamabobs to find out exactly what’s going on with their noodle? As Eliza Doolittle says in My Fair Lady: “Wouldn’t it be loverly?”

Since you can’t, you really have to play super-detective when you go into interviews. And you have to have the nerve to see things for exactly how they are and make the decision whether you actually would want to work there. Here are some ideas:

Take a look around the department and the office: It seems that nowadays offices all look alike. Modular, cubicle. That’s okay for some, but that would just suck the life out of me. (I mean, what’s a workspace without newspapers all over the floor? I ask you.) But that’s just me. What you want to be looking for is an indication of whether you would be comfortable there. If everything looks so tidy that it appears that the staff is under direct orders to hide all the evidence, someone might be a little controlling at the top. Or if things look so sterile that a phone swab wouldn’t register a single microbe, could you possibly have a latter-day Howard Hughes on your hands? Maybe, maybe not. Just take notes.

Or does the office look like a teenager works there? Gum wrappers strewn everywhere? Candy spilling out of the drawers? Bent, empty soft drink cans standing forgotten on any available surface? Posters of some gawd-awful rock band on the walls? Files on the floor? Any kind of evidence of hyper energy and perhaps attention deficit disorder? Does the staff look crazed and on edge? Welcome to your future. You might want to google “twinkie defense,” before saying yes to the job offer.

Conduct a little behavioral-interviewing of your own: Personally, I think there’s nothing worse than being on the hotseat and having an interviewer ask me a question that starts with “Tell me about a time when….” I even draw a blank when someone asks me, “Do you have any questions for us?” My eyes roll back and all I can squeak out is “hummuna hummuna hummana.” Not very professional, is it? And I talk to people for a living. So if your interviewer is asking you to tell stories, ask a few back – most especially if the interviewer is your prospective boss.

The questions I really like are: “How do you like to work under pressure? Can you tell me of a time when you and your team pulled together under a really hard deadline? How did you rally the troops? What was the secret to your team success? How did you celebrate afterwards?” (Notice the positive orientation here?)

Another one: “What signs do you look for in a new employee’s performance that tell you that this is a successful hire?” Here you look like you’re gathering data on what the boss considers to be successful work habits. But what you’re actually getting is a solid idea as to whether the boss is a positive-thinker who has tons of stories of how much he or she appreciates the staff. Positive thinkers always have great anecdotes at their fingertips about how wonderful their people are. Word to wise: If you hear, “our people are our most valuable assets,” make a note of that and circle it in red. Danger! Danger!

Ask your prospective boss about the person who previously had the job. Why is it now vacated? Hopefully because the person was promoted from within or has gone on to a stellar career elsewhere. How long did the person have the job? What did he or she like best about it? What was it about that person that the boss especially appreciated? Listen for how the boss talks about your predecessor. Is he or she happy for that person’s ongoing success? Or resentful that that person has moved on? I actually heard one boss call a departed employee a bad word that is brought to you by the letters A and H. Hmmm. An unresolved issue there, I’d say.

Is the prospective boss polite to you? If you’re a candidate, you’re in the category of “guest,” not “slave begging for work.” So you should be treated like a guest. The interview should be on time. And if out-of-control circumstances make the boss late, someone should let you know. If the tardiness is more than a half hour, you should be given the opportunity to reschedule if you want to.

You may be actually be the one who was there first, with a new boss coming in to take over the department. How does that person treat the new staff? With humility and receptivity as befits a newbie? Or someone who is over-compensating for his or her discomfort? What language does that person use?

I was at a client’s office once when a new department head passed by me at the soft drink machine. While I had worked for the client for many years, both as a staffer and then as a consultant, this guy was totally new. When he saw me, he said, “Skulking around here, trying to scrounge up work?” Huh. That was weird. But everyone is a little weird when they start a new job. So I gave it a pass.

But then he hired a new direct report, who said to me, “If you intend to keep working for us, just know that I’m going to hold your feet to the fire.” Alrighty then. Given the choice (not to mention self-respect), I regretfully scratched that client off my list. That was that. The end of a great run.

I recognize that in these tough times, it’s hard to be too choosy when it comes to landing a great job with a mentally healthy boss. I mean, everyone is just a little bit nuts. But go into these interviews with your eyes, ears and intuition on full receptivity mode. The realities of food-in-mouth, roof-over-head may force you to accept the job as it’s offered to you.

But you will know that, with that peek under your boss’s hood, you should probably keep your resume current and in circulation. You’ll also know not to take any weirdness personally. It’s just them and that hot spot firing off in their brain.