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"Connections and Why They Matter"
Most of what happens in our life will spark a connection. Life connects with what has been found in books. Books connect with what happens in life. Use the connections to help you see more clearly. A love of reading and writing is what motivated the creation of this blog. Thank you for coming to the blog.
A job can be just working to earn a paycheck, and your current position in those cases has nothing to do with your last job or your next job.
A career means that each of your jobs, experiences, and training programs is helping you advance in pay or responsibility. The sequence of employment you have built on each other makes the next job more valuable if you use good career planning.
People often want to know if they can easily change jobs in midlife, and the answer is that it is easier to change jobs than to change careers.
The fundamental difference between a job and a career is your attitude about your work. People who want a career are always thinking about their long-term goals.
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, Beethoven composed music, and Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say,
“Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
Sales skills are hard and soft skills that help a professional successfully sell a company's goods and services to third parties. Organizations that base their business on clients or customers buying their products or services rely on sales professionals to generate transactions constantly.
Hard selling skills are easier to teach and measure and have to do the technical side of a product. Product knowledge is needed as an understanding of why the product works.
Soft skills are sometimes harder to define, but they include how effectively the salespeople relate and communicate with others, especially customers. Critical soft skills have emotional intelligence, communication skills, charisma, confidence, and more. Selling is so people-centric and emphasizes the human element in services.
To sell a product, you usually need to understand the technical side of the product to help the customer see what he wants the product to be available. Then to finish the job and help the customer understand that the technical benefits will not only be the ones he wants but that the product offered is desirable and the right product requires soft skills in presentation, communication, and instilling confidence.
Almost half of all jobs lost during a pandemic may be gone permanently, was the title of an article written by Maurie Backman on July 29, 2020, in USA Today. The article starts:
“The COVID-19 outbreak has done a number of the U.S. economy, plunging it deep into a recession and sending unemployment levels skyrocketing. Jobless claims reached a record high in April, and while things improved slightly in May and June, new restrictions could increase the unemployment rate in the coming months.”
Many will need to learn new job skills and look closely at what works in finding a job under these new conditions. Informational interviews using video networking like Zoom will enable those searching for an opportunity to connect and ask questions.
It will only get more challenging as more and more people see more and more competition for the same jobs.
This site offers sections on Career Development Insights, Career Development Education, Career Development Essays, Job Interviewing, and Using LinkedIn.
It will be a long time before things look like they did before COVID-19, if ever.
What exactly is career development? It is the support an organization provides to an employee’s professional growth and especially to employees' movement to a new position or project within the organization. This support often includes coaching, mentoring, skills development, networking, and career pathing.
The resulting processes lead to finding your footing in your professional life. Sometimes for the employee, the steps taken in career development are a means to an end: a better title, status, more money, and a sense of accomplishment.
The employer wants to see a career development path in their employees because it maximizes their investment, improves productivity, and ensures the best match between people and jobs”.
The key for the employer and the employee is to take proactive action. Progress doesn’t happen until someone does something.
