Cringe Worthy Cover Letters

If you’ve ever written a resume, a cover letter or a letter of recommendation, you know how important it is to balance being accurate with promoting yourself and your skills (or the person for whom you’re writing it, in the case of a letter of recommendation).

However, this young man clearly overdid it, as his cover letter to J.P. Morgan has become the laughingstock of the civilized world:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tenacious-summer-analyst-applicant-got-laughed-at-by-everyone-else-on-wall-street.html

For freelance writers such as myself and others who love the written word and/or the process of career transitions, what’s the moral of the story here?

Perhaps it’s that promoting yourself can be taken too far, and if you’re bordering on obnoxious with your claims about yourself, it could be time to take it down a notch!

It’s definitely a funny letter, worthy of being mocked!  Enjoy!

Social Media to Impact the World!

For those of you who love social media and are interested in ideas and strategies to promote yourself, I facilitated and recorded a webinar on this topic for my writer’s group last night!

If you were on the webinar, rock on!  If you missed it, you can watch the recording here now:  https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/416980942

Also, if you want to follow my freelance webinar facilitation company, Digital Transformation, on Facebook, you will be part of the in crowd and you can find out about upcoming webinars I’m hosting here:  http://www.facebook.com/digitaltransformation

As you may have guessed, I think social media is awesome and the opportunities and potential for you to promote yourself and advance your career or your business are gigantic.  While last night’s webinar was all about using social media to promote your writing, whether it is the great American novel or a freelance project, I think it was a high enough level overview that you will find it interesting and useful no matter what you’re currently working on.

Also, if you are a writer and you’re not yet a part of the Write to Impact the World meetup group, what are you waiting for?  While we are a group that meets in person and we are based in New Jersey, we obviously also do webinars and online events, we have an awesome message board, and we are interested in anyone, anywhere participating as much as they can.

So, if you haven’t yet joined our group, join for free now: http://www.meetup.com/Write-To-Impact-The-World-Matawan-Meetup-Group/

Once you join the group, post on this topic directly to our message board here: http://www.meetup.com/Write-To-Impact-The-World-Matawan-Meetup-Group/messages/boards/forum/2482202

Also, if you’re on Twitter, follow me @captkeating, and if you tweet about this topic, use the hashtag #writing4impact as this will be the hashtag that we use for the writing group going forward!

Thanks for your interest in this topic, and please comment and let us know your perspective on social media and using it to promote yourself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your Resume is a Marketing Document…

Dear reader,

My purpose in writing to you today is to share that your resume is a marketing document.

I think that many people relate to their resume as a static document, a generic summary or fixed list of where you’ve worked and what you’ve done.

In one sense, your resume is that. It is definitely an overview of your experience.

However, hopefully you are also sharing your accomplishments, what your professional focus has been, and what you have achieved so far in your career. Ideally, you’ll also share your dreams, your goals, and the difference you could make as an employee in a company or as a partner in a business.

Just like a company publishes a brochure or advertising flier, you will be telling potential employers or business partners about your history, your experience, and about what you’ve done and how you’ve done it.

In a marketing document, a company will provide information about the company and the product or service that the company offers.

You may be asking, if my resume is a marketing document, like a brochure or flier, what am I marketing?

I’m glad you asked! On your resume, you are marketing the commodity that you are offering to a potential employer or business partner — yourself!

This may seem like semantics, but I’d like you to consider that the perspective that you bring to your resume specifically, and to your career search as a whole, has everything to do with the way that you create and craft that document and the success and satisfaction that you experience in your search.

I hope this provides a new way for you to think about your job search and your resume!

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this concept.

Please use the “comment” feature to let me know what you think!

An effort to not suck!

Dear reader,

OK, so I get a sense that a lot of this blog, and others that I have created, have been primarily about me and my random musings about life, the Universe, and everything.

If I’ve learned anything from my journey in personal development recently, it is that the best thing that I can do is to make my blog, my business, and my life primarily not about me but about others and the contribution I can bring to them.

SO, in that spirit I would like to invite you (also known as the person reading this blog) to read some of the previous posts and the current posts (I’m going to start posting every day to the blog, suck or not!) and I would love to get your feedback on if this blog is valuable, informative, if you feel smarter and more worldly after reading it, or if it just plain sucks!

If it sucks, it sucks! I would rather know so that I can make it better!

Thank you in advance for your help with this very important service project!

Being part of the 5% — a new era for Transitional Tenses…

Dear reader,

I read a statistic recently that as many as 95% of blogs don’t last — they are started and then they are never updated, or they never get a following or never quite take off, and are eventually abandoned.

I thought that was an interesting statistic as I read or heard a similar statistic about small businesses (as in, up to 95% of small businesses and start-ups don’t make it, flop, shutter and close their doors in a very short period of time, a couple of years or so)…

Where did I hear these statistics?  Good question!  The answer is: I have no idea.  I guess you’ll just have to trust my short term memory for now, hahaha.

However, what I think is interesting about this is that the inherent lesson of this statistic, assuming it’s accurate, is that surviving, persisting and being consistent is most of the trick to being successful and effective — in blogging, and in life.

Most blogs don’t make it, meaning that just like small businesses, most endeavors are created and started in a flash of insight or creativity, but then for a variety of reasons, they just don’t make it.

The insight that I see here is that survival is already an accomplishment, and that expanding and growing the endeavor is the goal — not just keeping the business open but having the business thrive and prosper, not just having the blog still exist but consistently contributing to it, having more people reading and commenting on the blog, etc.

I want everything that I do — this blog, my freelance writing company, Transitional Tenses, as a whole, and everything that I’m up to in my life — be prospering, expanding, and growing.

One of the things that I see has been missing with this blog has been the inconsistency of it — my last post was back in February! (It’s now July.)

So, I intend of visiting the well more often, but I want those visits to be more valuable as well.  To that end, I want what I write or contribute to this blog to be valuable information that you can use in your life, , not just my general musings and thoughts, especially if you are interested in the written word and language!

Thank you for reading, and please feel free to leave a comment here or email me directly here: Email Transitional Tenses

Leaving on a Jet Plane…

… and I know when I’ll be back again!

Posting to my blog two days in a row?  Is that even possible?  Yes, it’s possible, and I know that because it happened!

I’m up early because I am leaving this morning for San Diego for weekend five and the completion of a one-year leadership and training and development program called the Team, Management and Leadership Program that I’ve been in with a wonderful, life-changing company called Landmark Education.

I’ve participated in several courses at Landmark, and I’ve gotten so much out of just this last one that I don’t even know where to begin!

But, I just wanted to chime in again real quick, since I was shocked at just how easy it is to post a new blog entry, and I intend on doing it much more often, perhaps even every day!  Gasp!

I will be sharing after this weekend what I got out of participating in this extraordinary program, especially in regards to how it has impacted and will impacted my writing, my self-expression, and my freelance writing business.

I also would like to share my experiences of San Diego, where I’ve never been before, and travel, which I quite enjoy, especially when I am able to do it with friends and respected colleagues!

Have you been to San Diego?  Do you like to travel?  Ever done an intensive, one-year leadership program?  Operators are standing by (or you could just comment!)

Writers are cool people

Dear world,

Because of an awesome writers group I created a few years ago and the awesome writers who have flocked to be in the group, I had the distinct pleasure and the high privilege the other night of meeting and hanging out with some remarkable people.

The thing that I’m left with from meeting some of the writers in my group and finding out what they are up to is just how easy it is to connect with others when those people are up to something, intellectually curious, kind, and willing to listen to others with an open mind.

In short, it was a fascinating meetup.

And it’s sparked a lot of interest in what we’re all working on individually, epecially blogging!  It seems that several of us are active bloggers, and I just can’t wait to find out what my fellow wordsmiths are thinking and writing about online.

As you can see, I’m also inspired to chime in myself and dust off my keyboard so I can swim around in the blogosphere with the other intellects!

So, while I won’t be around this weekend — yes, I’m going to San Diego to complete a one-year leadership program I’ve been participating in around creating teams and teamwork in any situation — I do encourage you to check out the rest of this blog, and do comment.  Comment early and often!

Also, why don’t you comment with the link to your own blog, so I can have the pleasure of checking it out and dropping a hello by your little corner of the web?

And, if you’re a wordsmith (if you have to ask, you are), and you’re not a member of the Write to Impact the World meetup group yet, for goodness’ sake, what are you waiting for!

It’s free!  Join now!   Write to Impact the World

Celebrating two years writing to impact the world.

As a former English teacher and an educator through and through, I’m clear that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else, or to hang out with a group of fellow collaborators who teach each other, learn from each other, create friendships and business relationships, and inspire each other with ideas, thoughts and advice that they wouldn’t come up with by themselves.

So it goes with a writers group I’ve been organizing and facilitating for two years now called “Write to Impact the World”, a meetup group that brings writers together and helps them to succeed in their writing and make the kind of difference they are committed to making with it.

We meet tonight to bring old and new faces together to talk about what we’re up to as individuals, as well as what we see for the future of this now distinguished meetup group, and you’re welcome to join us if you’re in the central New Jersey area: www.meetup.com/Write-To-Impact-The-World-Matawan-Meetup-Group/calendar/15033247/

I get the sense that meetup groups and collaborative groups, like small businesses, mostly don’t make it. Just like small businesses that often go out of business, many meetups don’t attract enough members or don’t get enough momentum going fast enough, or their organizer steps down and the group flounders.

I’m proud of the work that we’ve done in the past two years, as we are still around and potentially stronger than ever. We took a break over the summer, but when we created tonight’s meetup group, members of the group jumped at the opportunity, and the meetup was in part in response to members asking for a new meetup.

Many members of the group may not know this, but a former roommate of a freelance writing client of mine found out about the group and was so inspired she created her own writing meetup group, and so the Red Bank Writer’s Group was born: http://www.meetup.com/TheRedBankWritersGroup/

What’s the moral of the story here? The moral is that you can do it, that creating the life of your dreams is possible and all is takes is creating and organizing a team of people to support you and rally around the project you created. That’s what happened and is happening around this group and around many of the areas of my life, thanks to a team building leadership program I’m in!

And, the party’s not over yet! We’re just getting started with the success the writer’s group is experiencing, and I’m excited to be a leader in business, in writing, and in my life.

If you made it this far in this blog entry, you deserve to be acknowledged for reading about my group and my insights about it, and I would love to know what you’re experience is, either as a community organizer creating groups and teams, or as someone who has participated and made a difference for someone else’s dreams.

What do you think?

Going beyond just being a technician… finding the art in life.

Dear readers,

One of the things that I love about networking, and more recently, sales, is that it is unpredictable and there are infinite possibilities.

When you are really engaged with someone and listening to what they have to say, it is uncertain where the conversation will go. If both parties stay open, it could go anywhere.

One of my colleagues let me borrow a copy of a book called “The E-Myth Revisited”, which is about how, to be a successful entrepreneur, it’s necessary to go beyond just being a skilled technician and become masterful and artful in all areas of running a business. While I’m still new and exploring this concept, what intrigues me about this idea is that of finding the art and creativity in something, whether that be in building a business, conducting a webinar, or transforming the written word.

If you are an enterpreneur or interested in these ideas, check them out here!

I’m clear that when the written word is transformed from just words to a cohesive narrative that says something of significance, the technical aspect of the piece will be less important than the message the writing conveys. I am standing as an experienced freelance writer as someone who can create written communication where the whole is more than the parts.

And why bother? I assert that when you discover the art of writing and communicating with words, the people with whom you are communicating are left inspired, uplifted, and taking action that they otherwise would not have taken. Life becomes a joy, not a burden, and the words that you use and the message that you express becomes an access to making a real difference in the world, instead of just something to do.

Here are a few of my audio thoughts on this topic!

It’s called Networking, not net-sucking…

Dear readers,

I went to an awesome networking event for wedding vendors last night with my friend who is an amazing freelance pastry chef!

Her name is Melissa Paul and her company is called Vivacious Cakes! Check out her website here!

While I am a freelance writer and this blog is all about transforming the written word, I hope to break into the wedding industry and become a wedding singer! (Now there’s something about your favorite freelance writer that I bet you didn’t know!)

My specialty right now as a writer is helping to create and revise resumes and assist professionals in transition. It’s amazing to me the magic that happens when you break out of the comfort zone and get yourself out there amongst others!

For instance, while I shared with the folks I met last night that I am an aspiring wedding singer, and actually met a singing DJ, a couple of bona fide experienced wedding singers, and a bunch of other very cool wedding-related people, I got a very viable lead as a freelance writer, as well! How cool is that?

Why do you care, dear reader? Well, if you are a professional in transition, or if you know someone who has been recently laid off or is looking to advance their career, creating, revising or updating their resume might be just the thing they need to sharpen their image and prepare for an interview or the next step!

One of the things I’m learning for myself is that the more you put yourself out there, the more unexpected (and fortuitous) things can come your way.

By the way, what do you think of the title of this blog post? I got it from the title of an article I was exposed to through a networking group with which I participate. I thought it was funny!

I want to hear from you! Your thoughts are welcome. Let’s take this thing to the next level!