Category Archives: Mentoring

35 Surefire Ways to Stand Out During Your Job Search | Mashable

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When you’re applying for a job, you don’t just want to get noticed, you want to stand out as the best applicant the hiring committee has ever seen. You know you’re the perfect person for the job — and you want them to know that, too.

But how, exactly, do you do that? We pulled together a roundup of our all-time best job search advice, from getting noticed before you apply to acing the interview, plus tips from our favorite career experts — to bring you 35 ways to put yourself ahead of the pack.

See the list: 35 Surefire Ways to Stand Out During Your Job Search | Mashable.

Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain | BPS Research Digest

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If you want people to see you as trustworthy, try apologising for situations outside of your control such as the rain or a transport delay. That’s the implication of a new study by researchers at Harvard Business School and Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Read: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain | BPS Research Digest.

You may also like: Why It Might Be Helpful to Apologize for Something That’s Not Your Fault | HBR

The Best (and Worst) Countries to Be a Woman | Harvard Business Review

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The Best (and Worst) Countries to Be a Woman | Sarah Green | Harvard Business Review

Article in Full

The World Economic Forum has just come out with their latest data on global gender equality, and the short version could well be this old Beatles lyric: “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better. A little better, all the time. (It can’t get more worse.)”

I talked with Saadia Zahidi, a Senior Director at the WEF and their Head of Gender Parity and Human Capital. Yes, it’s getting better. Out of the 110 countries they’ve been tracking since 2006, 95 have improved and just 14 have fallen behind (a single country, Sweden, has remained the same). But that’s partly because in some places, there was nowhere to go but up.

And not everyone has improved at the same rates, or for the same reasons.

For instance, in Latin America, several countries surged ahead as more women were elected to political office. That was a trend in Europe, too – much of the improvement in Europe’s scores was due not to women’s increased workforce participation, but instead to the increasingly female face of public leadership. Although those numbers are still very low overall, increasingly women are being appointed (and somewhat more rarely, elected) to public office. “Looking at eight years worth of data, a lot of the changes are coming from the political end of the spectrum, and to some extent the economic one. So much of the [workforce] talent is now female, you would expect the changes to be on the economic front but that’s not what’s happening,” said Zahidi.

And sometimes equality is just another word for poverty. For instance, look at Malawi. They’re one of three sub-Saharan countries where women outstrip men in the workforce, with 85% of women working compared with 80% of men. (The other two are Mozambique and Burundi.) These are low-skilled, low-income professions — just 1% of each gender attends college, and Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries. This is a bleak contextual picture… and yet Malawi is number one in the world in terms of women’s participation in the labor force.

Then there’s the Philippines. They’re ranked fifth in the world on gender parity because even though they rank 16th the world in terms of the percentage of women working, “the quality of women’s participation is high,” says Zahidi. Women make up 53% of senior leaders, the wage gap is relatively low, and they’ve had a female head of state for 16 out of the last 50 years – which, among other factors, makes them 10th in the world in terms of women’s political empowerment. They’ve also largely closed the gap on health and education. They, too, are a reminder that the WEF’s data tracks gender gaps – not development.

But there are a few lessons to be learned from the wealthy Nordic countries at the top of the heap. “The distance between them and the countries that follow them is starting to grow larger because of the efforts they’ve made,” says Zahidi, crediting their progressive policies on parental leave and childcare as examples of the infrastructure that makes it easier for women to participate in the workforce. When the WEF began doing this survey eight years ago, no countries were cracking the 80% mark in terms of women’s parity with men (where a perfect score is 100%). Now, some countries at the top of the list are up to 86%.

“Change can be much faster – or much slower – depending on the actions taken by leaders.”

I asked Zahidi about the across-the-board improvements. Were countries and companies learning from one another? Or were they each proceeding on their own? “This is not something that there’s generally been a lot of exchange on,” she conceded, “But one of the the things the World Economic Forum is trying to do is create that exchange.” They’ve developed a repository of best practices detailing how other companies and countries have overcome their gender gaps. Nowhere are women fully equal across all the realms the WEF tracks — health, education, the economy, and politics.

“To accelerate change, you need to have that sharing of information between companies,” she says. “Thus far, [progress] may not have been based on information exchange but it will have to be in the future — if we want to avoid reinventing the wheel.”

Where does your own country fit in? Take a look at the graphic below. The thick in the background shows the overall equality score – the 2006 score is in gray, and the 2013 improvement is indicated in light blue. (Countries that worsened or stayed the same are only in gray; countries that were not tracked in 2006 are only blue.) The narrow, darker blue line in the foreground indicates how much the country’s relative ranking has changed in the last seven years. Some countries have surged ahead, pushing other countries down on the list.

Gender_Parity_365_R

Leaders Needed at Rural Libraries, by Natalie Binder | Letters to a Young Librarian

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Leaders Needed at Rural Libraries, by Natalie Binder | Letters to a Young Librarian

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You’ve always wanted to work in a public library. You believe in service, citizenship, and community. You value relationships; when you imagined being a librarian, you imagined participating in local government and getting to know your patrons by name. You want to make a big impact—not just in your career, but in people’s lives. You want to be a generalist, not a specialist. You want to have a great quality of life on a librarian’s salary. And when you started library school, you wanted to be a traditional, book-based, community librarian, but it seems like those jobs are either disappearing or impossible to get.
If that sounds like you, you may be a rural librarian at heart—which is great news, because rural libraries need you. These jobs rarely appear on listservs or job boards, but the “graying” of the profession is very real in rural libraries. Many rural libraries have a long-serving librarian (or staff) who will be retiring soon. And since rural libraries are often quite small, you can quickly rise to an influential leadership role and have a strong say in how these small libraries meet the challenges of the future.
I’ve worked in a rural library since before library school—four years this month—and I love my job. Every day I go to work knowing that I will make an impact on someone’s life. Every day something terrific, exciting, or funny happens at my library, and though I am not in administration, I always feel like my contributions and ideas are appreciated and valued. There are many other benefits to rural librarianship. While salaries are generally low, a dollar goes much further in rural communities than it does in urban or academic communities, and affordable housing is rarely an issue. You can probably afford to live much closer to a beach, farm, or lovely national park than you imagine. If the library is adequately staffed, working conditions are also good. Rural libraries enjoy strong community support, and small staffs often work together to ensure flex time is available for things like childcare and family events. Rural libraries are usually quite safe—while no public library is conflict-free, your patrons are more likely to bring you homegrown vegetables than complaints.
Best of all, rural libraries serve as true community centers, where far-flung and diverse groups can come together. A rural library often serves as a small town’s largest meeting room, its only Internet hotspot, the only local, affordable entertainment for adults and children, and an access point for badly needed social services. My library serves as the physical “office” for employment services, child welfare and legal aid.
Of course, no type of library is for everyone. Rural libraries are generalist libraries. As a rural librarian you will frequently be called to do things your master’s degree never prepared you for, from running a farmer’s market to repairing a child’s shoe. If you’re interested in doing something quite specialized or academic, it’s probably best to begin your job search elsewhere. If you need to be surrounded by other young academics, or enjoy a lot of social activities, then you probably won’t enjoy the quiet and isolation of a rural community. If you’re married, it can be a challenge for your spouse to find work in town.
Finally, in small towns there is little division between your personal life and your work life. Your patrons, co-workers, Friends group, Board of Directors, and government leaders are also your friends and neighbors. Sometimes it feels like you’re never off the job! For this reason, it’s very important to move slowly, get community buy-in, and be prepared to backtrack on big changes. That can be a challenge if you’re fresh out of library school and eager to change the world.
I have seen too many “new directors” leave or lose their rural jobs because of avoidable conflicts among stakeholders. It’s great to have vision and ambition, but if you’re more combative than cooperative, you’ll have a hard time achieving your goals in a small town. Even if your library seems like a mess that you were hired to fix (or “bring up to date”), plan to spend a full year or more listening and learning before you try to change the system. When you become a librarian at a rural library, you’re also joining small, stable team of prominent citizens and community leaders whose support you’ll need for years or even decades. Make those relationships a priority, and always take the long view in any conflict.
If that sounds like a challenge you’re up to, then you can begin your rural job hunt locally. No matter where you live, you’re probably not far from a small library system. Check county job boards, or see if there’s a volunteer position available. Ask if you can shadow a librarian or staff member for a day or two. These jobs are not usually widely advertised. Take your time and get to know the rural libraries and communities around you. Even if you decide to look elsewhere for a permanent job, you’ll be in for a fun, rewarding and educational experience.
Natalie Binder is a librarian at a small library in rural Florida. She is a graduate of Florida State University’s College of Communication and Information. She is also the founder and moderator of #libchat, a Twitter chat for librarians and library school students. She can be found on Twitter @nvbinder.

The Benefits of Negative Feedback | John Butman | Harvard Business Review

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Article in Full 

I recently gave a lunchtime “author’s talk” at Children’s Hospital in Boston and, although I thought the talk went well, somebody in the audience didn’t like it at all. On the evaluation form, the person in question wrote a single word in the comment box: CONFUSING.

Thank you, whoever you are. While everybody else gave me good marks and said nice things, which I appreciated, my critic forced me into self-examination. Was he the only one forthright enough to speak up, or was he the only one not paying enough attention to get it? What was confusing? The ideas? The presentation?

This all got me thinking about feedback. Whenever you go public with an idea — in a book, a talk, a presentation, a video, a graphic — you will inevitably get many kinds of responses. This feedback generally falls into one of three categories: praise, silence, and backlash.

Praise seems quite easy to handle — we all love to be praised, especially when the praise is nonspecific, such as “fascinating!” Go ahead and bask in the praise: It is a reward for your work and a motivation to push forward. But such praise is not necessarily valuable feedback. In order to make use of this praise, you must probe it deeper: What, exactly, was fascinating?

Silence can be difficult to interpret. A few years ago, during a 90-day interim as blogger-in-residence forBzzAgent, a start-up social media marketing firm, I wrote a daily blog about company issues and stories. Some of these posts received zero comments. I assumed my readers were indifferent, disengaged, or actively did not like these particular bits of writing. But, in face-to-face discussions with my audience (there I was, surrounded by them), I discovered that often Internet silence corresponded to deep thinking and reflection done off-line. So, as with praise, the value of silence may require mining: Did I leave you speechless? Or did you just not care?

An idea that advocates any kind of change is likely to receive some amount of negative response. When you’ve invested time, energy, and passion into your idea, this rejection can hurt. Your first impulse may be to lash back, to rebut the rebuttal. But a better response is to let the backlash unfold a bit: It is likely that negative feedback will be the most useful in further developing your idea.

Backlash takes many forms and is unleashed for many reasons, so it’s important to first understand the nature of the criticism, as well as its source. A thoughtful review from a credible source is not the same as a mean-spirited comment online from an anonymous Internet troll. (The latter of which you can ignore.)

If, as with praise and silence, you take a moment (or a night’s sleep) to reflect on the backlash — what kind is it? why is it happening? — you may realize that backlash has its own unique advantages:

  1. It deepens the appreciation of advocates. In light of a contrary opinion, those who initially said your idea was simply “fantastic” may be forced to think about it more deeply, and respond with more detail. I thought X was fantastic, but in light of these comments, I had to reconsider and found that XX… Additionally, backlash can cause those who were silent at first to speak up as advocates of the idea. Only when an idea is challenged, and especially when it is attacked, do people realize just how much they care about it.
  2. It creates new contexts for the idea. Consider backlash against Michael Pollan, the best-selling food expert, whose books include The Omnivore’s Dilemma and, most recently, Cooked. Adam Merberg, in the Berkeley Science Review, suggests Pollan misrepresents and even vilifies science. Tyler Cowen, in Slate, writes that Pollan “neglects the macro perspective of the economist.” And Emily Matchar argues against Pollan’s historic view of women’s role in cooking in her Salon.com article, “Is Michael Pollan a Sexist Pig?” Did Pollan think his ideas through from the point of view of science, economics, and feminism? Maybe, maybe not, but thanks to the backlash he received, the debate about the value of home cooking now embraces those topics. Negative feedback from disparate domains empowers you to articulate your idea more clearly — to incorporate, avoid, or merge it with other areas of thought.
  3. It improves the quality of the argument. Recently in The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik explains how brain science has become an explanation for just about everything (why we eat what we eat, say what we say, etc.), and how people are beginning to push back against it. This backlash may be a case of idea fatigue: People are merely tired of hearing about the brain, to a point of heated annoyance.

Discussion, debate, and positive­­­-negative tussling serve to put an idea through a public testing that makes it stronger and better or, sometimes, rejects it. As the one who has brought the idea forward, it brings you into the conversation in a new way, giving you more license to speak further, create new expressions of your idea, and seek to influence outcomes you care about.

It is no small feat to stimulate genuine conversation about any idea, and to generate criticism, rebuttal, debate — and even attack — suggests that you have touched a nerve, surfaced a tension, or put your finger on an issue that needs discussing.

While the particular comments matter, what matters more is how you use the feedback to gather advocates, interpret your idea in new contexts, and improve its quality for your now broader audience.

So, to the person at the Children’s Hospital talk, please be in touch with a bit more detail. I don’t mind being called confusing, but I need to know exactly how and where and why you think that.

via The Benefits of Negative Feedback | John Butman | Harvard Business Review

10 Things Extraordinary Bosses Give Employees | Inc.com

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Good bosses care about getting important things done. Exceptional bosses care about their people. Good bosses have strong organizational skills. Good bosses have solid decision-making skills. Good bosses get important things done.

Exceptional bosses do all of the above–and more. Sure, they care about their company and customers, their vendors and suppliers. But most importantly, they care to an exceptional degree about the people who work for them.

Article discusses the following 10 things:

  1. Autonomy and independence.
  2. Clear expectations.
  3. Meaningful objectives.
  4. A true sense of purpose.
  5. Opportunities to provide significant input.
  6. A real sense of connection.
  7. Reliable consistency.
  8. Private criticism.
  9. Pubic praise.
  10. A chance for a meaningful future.

via 10 Things Extraordinary Bosses Give Employees | Inc.com.

Online Dating [Infographic], Online Dating & Relationships Report | Pew Research Center; How I Hacked Online Dating | Amy Webb | TED

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Online Dating & Relationships | Pew Research Center

Overview
One in ten Americans have used an online dating site or mobile dating app; 66% of these online daters have gone on a date with someone they met through a dating site or app, and 23% have met a spouse or long term partner through these sites. Public attitudes toward online dating have become more positive in recent years, but many users also report negative experiences.

These are among the results of a national survey of dating and relationships in the digital era, the first dedicated study of this subject by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project since 2005. Key findings include:

  • 11% of internet users (representing 9% of all American adults) say that they have personally used an online dating site. As recently as 2008, just 3% of American adults had used online dating sites.
  • 7% of cell phone apps users (representing 3% of all American adults) say that they have used a dating app on their cell phone.

Taken together, 11% of all American adults are “online daters”—meaning they have used a dating site or mobile dating app. Online dating is especially common among the college-educated and those in their mid-20’s through mid-40’s, and 38% of Americans who are currently single and actively looking for a partner have used online dating at one point or another. See the online report or download the pdf.

Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating | TED.com
Amy Webb was having no luck with online dating. The dates she liked didn’t write her back, and her own profile attracted crickets (and worse). So, as any fan of data would do: she started making a spreadsheet. Hear the story of how she went on to hack her online dating life — with frustrating, funny and life-changing results.

Online Dating [Infographic] | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

Dating Digitally: Pew

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How To Wire Your Brain For Happiness | HuffPost

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The secret to lasting happiness might be neatly summed up in a cheesy neuroscience joke: “The neurons that fire together, wire together.”

The article shares 5 ways for hardwiring happiness.

via How To Wire Your Brain For Happiness | HuffPost.

If We Want More Ada Lovelaces, We Need to Empower Women | Mashable

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This week we celebrate Ada Lovelace, a woman from the 1800s who invented computer programming at a time when no one knew what a computer was.

While her contributions are vast, I can’t help but imagine how much she may have impacted society had she been properly educated. And then I begin to think about how important it is to recognize the movements and groups that educate and offer opportunities to women.

Read the full story: If We Want More Ada Lovelaces, We Need to Empower Women | Mashable.

Related: Wiki editing session at Brown University recognizes women in science | Brown University

How to Get Your Resume Past the System and Into Human Hands | Mashable

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Landing an interview for a position in a giant organization can feel impossible if you don’t have any personal connections. People often blame the sheer volume of resumes that are submitted — HR simply can’t review them all with enough detail to see what a perfect candidate you are.

And this is partially true — one study suggests that recruiters spend only six seconds looking at each resume. However, many resumes are trashed before they’re even seen by human eyes. How is that possible?

Here’s how: Many large organizations rely on applicant tracking systems (ATS) to help pre-filter resumes. The systems work by scanning resumes for contextual keywords and key phrases, mathematically scoring them for relevance, and sending only the most qualified ones through for human review. [C]heck out these tips for writing a resume that an ATS will approve — and a hiring manager will love.

The article suggests 4 tips.

Read: How to Get Your Resume Past the System and Into Human Hands | Mashable