DiverseNote Career Notes

Invite Your Friends and Colleagues!

2012-01-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

The bigger our community, the more professional network and career opportunities we have to build on. Invite your friends, coworkers, and other colleagues to join you in becoming a member of the DiverseNote community. We want you here and are excited to help you build your career. Share this link with friends, http://www. diversenote.com/join-diversenote/ .

Tekisha Lee

CEO, DiverseNote

Setting and Reaching Career Goals – Part 6

2012-01-19T10:18:00.000-08:00

Sponsored webinars is a way we offer career development resources at DiverseNote. The next webinar is February 1. Its topic, Rebuilding Your Career After Long Term Unemployment. This webinar, we will review resources that should be used to rebuild you career after you have been laid off or unemployed for a long period of time (one year or longer). The unemployment rate in the U.S. is currently 8.6% according to the U.S. Department of Labor. This rate is even greater within the diversity community. Many have been unemployed for one year or longer. An in depth discussion on resume development, career building while unemployed, as well as how to prepare for the interview and discuss long term unemployment with a potential employer will be discussed.

Even though the discussion is on rebuilding your career after long tern unemployment, the webinar will be a good resource for individuals and employers that are preparing for job interviews. DiverseNote webinars provide tips for career mapping, successful network development, and an opportunity to network with professionals in the industry you are interested in. Network during the webinar! Join DiverseNote and register for webinars at www.DiverseNote.com. Membership is free. The DiverseNote community would love to welcome you!

Setting and Reaching Career Goals – Part 5

2012-01-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

Let’s say you’ve had a successful interview. You’ve given the right responses to questions; you’ve asked the right questions and have received the responses you were looking for, etc… What do you do after the interview? Okay, sure you send a “thank you for the interview” in some form. How about being unique, thinking outside of the ordinary. Send the thank you e-mail because this is expected by the interviewer. To stand out, do something in addition that will be remembered and that is relevant. Write a hand written thank you letter or card to the interviewer and send it with a copy of the presentation that was discussed in Part 4 of this blog series.

Tekisha

CEO, DiverseNote

Setting and Reaching Career Goals – Part 4

2012-01-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

Let’s move forward to the interview process. By now you have become a member of the DiverseNote community (membership is free), applied for new career opportunities on DiverseNote…, and you have signed up for the Rebuilding Your Career webinar on DiverseNote. You may have even been called for a job interview.

How will you prepare? Here are three great ways to prepare for your next job interview.

1. Research the company clients and the work the company does with these clients

2. Think of how you will contribute to these client relationships

3. Prepare a small presentation, a printed leave behind so that the employer will remember you when reviewing candidates

Tekisha

CEO, DiverseNote

Setting and Reaching Career Goals – Part 3

2012-01-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

How do you set goals? Do you start with the beginning in mind or with the end result in mind? How about starting with the end result in mind? I will share one of my goals as an example. Goal: raise DiverseNote membership by 10,000 people by February 29. If I start with the end in mind, I can set milestones and plan each step that will assist in reaching this goal. Here is how this goal setting model should look.

Goal: Raise DiverseNote membership by 10,000 people by February 29.

Milestone 5 Measure membership weekly

Milestone 4 Ask current members to invite colleagues to join

Milestone 3 Share DiverseNote job opportunities and blog on Twitter

Milestone 2 Create more career development opportunities for DiverseNote

members

Milestone 1 Share the news about DiverseNote with friends and colleagues, ask

them to invite others

So, help increase the DiverseNote community and career development opportunity, invite your friends and coleuses to join. When you do, list the benefits.

Setting and Reaching Career Goals – Part 2

2012-01-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

So, you have assessed your career interests, leadership ability, and other relevant skill sets. And, if you’ve read part two of the Setting and Reaching Career Goals blog series, you have a good knowledge of what employers generally look for in new team members and how to begin to develop those elements for yourself. With all of this in mind what are your career goals? I and other DiverseNote members would like to know. Share with your comments on the blog.

Tekisha

CEO, DiverseNote

Setting and Reaching Solid Career Goals Part 1

2012-01-02T20:54:00.000-08:00

What do employers want? Think of it like this, if you were the boss of your department or the CEO of a company (by the way, you are the CEO of your career…more on that later (in Part 3 of the blog series)) what type of employees would you want? Here are a few things… someone to join the team who is qualified, a team player, able to communicate effectively, a strong networker … Below are five skill sets employers look for in new job candidates. These are skill sets you should consider as goals to set and reach.

1. A Great Professional Networker

Professional networking is a skill that gives you the ability to build relationships with people who can affect your career, business networks/relationships, and the brand of the company/organization you work for. Be great at becoming a professional who is memorable, approachable, has something to contribute, and an asset to those in your network.

2. An Effective Communicator

Communication is an extremely important skill in the work environment. Being effective at it is even more important. When I say communication, it’s not just getting your message across which is important too but include the ability to have your message create action, having the ability and knowledge to use multiple means of communication and being effective at the method you use (e-mail, verbal, written, video, presentations, etc…), and the skill of communicating with influencers. These will give you a great jump start in setting solid career goals and getting you to the job you want

3. Stand Out from the Crowd

Once you get the call for a job interview, prepare to stand out from other candidates. Use a presentation that is exhibits of your capabilities, for example, take a presentation to the interview that tells a story about your accomplishments relevant to the position you are being interviewed for. Make sure the presentation is memorable and is something you can leave behind so the interviewer(s) can go back to it when they are deciding which candidate to bring back.

4. Come Ready on Day One

Okay, you have been selected for an interview. This is the Day One I’m speaking of, not day one on the job. Be really prepared for the interview and communicate you are ready to do the job and contribute to the team.

5. Be A Part of Continuous Improvement

Always have a network and resource for continuous career development, a resource to assist you in advancing your career, establishing to improving your professional network. An example of this network and resource is DiverseNote (www.DiverseNote.com). Find several methods to develop your professional network and continuous career development by joining the DiverseNote community.

Join our first career development webinar on February 1^st (register now), follow the CareerNotes blog, and build your network during the webinars and live events sponsored by employers looking for you.

Let me and the DiverseNote community know what you think and share your thoughts, tips regarding this blog series. On Thursday, January 5, Part 2 of the series will cover planning for career advancement (you being the CEO of your career).

Happy Career Building,

T. Lee

Assessing Your Skills, Strengths and Interests for a Clue in Making the Right Career Choice

2011-12-29T09:27:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays DiverseNote Community,

I hope that everyone who celebrated Christmas had a wonderful celebration. I want to begin with providing everyone with detail about my professional background and career experience to provide credibility to what I blog about. My name is Tekisha Lee. I am the founder and CEO of DiverseNote. I’ve worked in the areas of human capital (resource) development, recruitment, and economic development for twelve years. Most of my experience has been in non traditional methods of human capital and economic development. I have worked with Turner Broadcasting, The U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of the Interior, DTE Energy, Many Fortune 500 and 1000 corporations, and academic institutions. My goal for this blog is to share and assist members of the DiverseNote community in using out of the box ways to reach career goals and move up the career ladder.

In today’s CareerNotes blog post I want to focus on a topic that provides strategies for assessing your interests and goals for career development. I am blogging about this because in January 2012, I will begin a blog series on establishing solid career goals and reaching them. The series will be three weeks for a total of 6 blog posts on the topic. Assessing your interest and overall goals is a good start.

Career assessments take a look into your personal and professional interests to gauge what industry or specific job category may be a good fit for you in the workplace. Career assessments are offered when you first enter college (community or undergraduate studies) and they are provided by some employers as well. An example of career assessments in community college is the TABE test, the Myers Briggs test at four year colleges and universities; Firo B, Myers Briggs, 360 Degree Feedback assessments are available in most human resource departments in the workplace. If you do not have access to any of these, I am aware of a few free career assessment tools you can use for free. These assessments or tests do not offer as much detail or feedback as you would get from one of the assessments I mentioned above, but they will give some hands on experience of how a career assessment works. I make note that I am not certain how credible these assessments offered by the links below are. Here are some links; the Career Colleges website (http://www.careercolleges.com/career-assessment-test.jsp) offers a career assessment test that tells you which industry you are best suited for. The My Career Quiz site (http://www.mycareerquizzes.com/job-test) provides an assessment for those who are already on the job but it is not specific to an industry. The site also requires you to sign up for an account on the website.

With this information on what career assessment are, how they should be used, and examples of career assessments you can try, we move to the bog series next week. Next week, Monday, January 2, we will begin the three week blog series on establishing solid career goals and reaching them. I invite you to share your comments and experiences on each blog topic. I’d like to hear from you and will do blog posts on the topics you express interest in. Remember to join DiverseNote and invite your friends and colleagues to join the conversation and take the next step in career development.

Intro to DiverseNote Career Notes Blog

2011-12-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for visiting the DiverseNote Career Notes blog and welcome! The DiverseNote Career Notes blog is a place to introduce and discuss all thing related to career development and advancement in the current economic client we live in today. Every Monday and Thursday, there will be a new blog post covering issues like having a stronger professional network, tools and tips for planning career advancement, improving your leadership skill set. I also recommend that you visit http://www.diversenote.com/ for more free career development tools, webinars, new job postings, profiles of employers hiring members of DiverseNote, and more. DiverseNote is a social site that offers career development tools that will help you plan your next career move successfully. Join the DiverseNote community for free today. I look forward to posting on the DiverseNote Career Notes blog and to hearing from you.

Happy career building! Let's get started.