Blogging to Network for Career Success

Sounds like a math formula. As will all word problems; let us begin at the end. I know this is contrary to our traditional Maria Von Trapp influenced world thinking. Trust me this is the easiest way to solve a word problem.

Career Success

This should be a pretty simple process (one would think) but it is not. Just walk down to your local independent booksellers and ask to see the career section. At the Elliot Bay Book Company they have a section that is twelve feet high and twenty feet wide. This does not indicate a simple process.

Essentially though the idea is that you (as in me, you, everyone) are happy with what you do. It is the reason you get up in the morning upbeat and happy; or at least only hitting the snooze once or twice. (I am up to five now) Because really if there was a career out there that would let me sleep until eight or nine but still be home around five I would so totally be there, alas I have not found it. Career Success is where you end up with a harmonious balance of work and life. You work just as much as you want and you still have a life (house, spouse, dog etc.) that is happy.

The key then would to be to find a career where you want to work enough to cover the expenses of your life. The customary workweek which in the U.S. of A. is forty hours (bore) is typical, although may gigs out there can be pretty flexible, with half and three-quarter time hours.

Unless you have been blessed with the knowledge all your life that you would be happy being a Professor of Onionology; there will be some work involved with narrowing down what it is you would like to do for the next seven years. (There was a study done a couple of years ago that stated that the average adult will change careers five to seven times in their professional life. I assumed that most people will work about thirty-five years once they are out of school and five into thirty-five is seven. end digression) However, once you have that narrowed down to some degree the next part of our word problem which is becoming something of a iteration.

Networking

The beast that is and will always be; the beast that should become your very best friend. I read another very helpful article on networking today. Networking for People Who Hate Networking by Penelope Trunk (There are tons of articles online about networking) This one was quite insightful in so much as stated very clearly that if you are looking for a job you SHOULD NOT NETWORK i.e. if you are out of a job this is not the time to be dragging your sad sour puss all over town with your sad sob story and puppy dogged eyes hoping someone will take pity on you and give you a job.

This is such an awesome concept that I just didn’t get before. I actually thought that was networking. ‘Ding’ and ‘Chorus of Angles’ My life has been transformed. Well maybe not that much but it does take the fear out of networking. This is my definition of networking, the play ground of our youth transfigured in our adult lives. Remember how easy it was when we were in kindergarten to just walk up to another kid or group of kids and start playing. Networking is the equivalent of that playground process, as long as we don’t through sand or pine cones at each other all is well. You can however throw pinecones at the bigger kids as long as it is mutually agreed upon in your group. The bigger kid being Howard Schultz or Bill Gates or some other public figure, and I would suggest that you not really use real pinecones. Think verbal pinecones. So what if you are one of those kids that hates rain or dirt or is so over scheduled that you cannot get to the playground. Well that brings us up to the beginning of the equation.


Blogging

Apparently, blogging is the new networking medium. Yeah, yeah we know that. The afore mentioned article explains how 'blogging to network for career success' is an easy strategy for connecting with “people who wouldn't normally give you the time of day” There are some other great little tidbits in the article about blogging. The most important part to me was that the best way to meet people is to read their words comment intelligently and just play along. It would probably be a good idea though to stay away from the pine cones for a little while at first. Remember the revolution will be backed up nightly.

I think this at least explains the word problem; still it brings up other questions. Well unlike math not everything can be wrapped up in string theory.