Who's Tooting Your Horn?

Horn Tooting is the normalcy in many business environments. But when and how loud should we toot our horns?

• When we’ve closed the deal on a sale? Toot!
• When we’ve written a book? Toot!
• When we’ve made our first million? Toot!
• Appeared on TV or radio? Toot!
• When we’ve been embraced by an elite or exclusive group? Toot!
• Received a degree from an Ivy League college? Toot!
• Best Business of the Year Award recipient? Toot!

Luke 14:11 states, For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbled himself shall be exalted.

If our clients aren’t tooting our horns, is our horn tooting in vain? Who's tooting yours?

Can't Find a Job - Create Your Own

Okay, it’s been weeks, months, maybe a few years and you still haven’t found a J.O.B. If your job search strategy has primarily been behind a computer pushing emails and electronic resumes, your resumes are probably being added to thousands of job seekers in a virtual recruitment center being daily purged by the delete button. Which means your livelihood is somewhat in the hands of a virtual recruiter with the power to move your resume forward or prevent it from reaching your desired destination – the decision maker who can hire you.

Let’s face it, unemployment can stink, but it can also be a sweet aroma when you decide to use this experience as fuel to take charge of your life in spite of the economy! You’ve heard the saying If It’s Going to Be, It’s up to Me. That’s right; it’s going to be up to you to create your own path to financial freedom. Not the government, politicians, Mama, Daddy, Pookie – You! Here are a few suggestions to make it happen:

1. Develop a winning attitude and embrace the challenge to take charge of your life.
2. Define and create your dream job description without thinking about your bills or the economy. Just dream big!
3. Make a two-column list and write the required skills/resources needed to fulfill this dream job on the left side and your skills on the right.
4. Create an interim dream job description if you don’t have 80 percent of the required skills for your ultimate dream job.
5. Create a target-list of people/businesses that can benefit from your skills.
6. Identify your working/business relationship (e.g., contractor, W2 employee, consultant)
7. Make a list of people currently working your dream job and define what makes you stand out from them.
8. Write and send a one-page letter to business owners with your knowledge and interest, passion and skills, a value statement, and business quote from someone that has experienced your work. Also, keep a log of businesses you sent letters to.
9. Send a note or post card expressing your gratitude for business owners taking time to read your letter. Do this repeatedly until you receive a response.
10. Network with people that are employed and have winning attitudes.
11. If you’re low on funds consider the library, churches, community colleges, or volunteerism as resources to acquire the needed skills to create the job of your dreams.

Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

Emotional Intelligence is linked to an ability to identify, assess, and control emotions. Depending on a woman’s estrogen level or her season of life, controlling her emotions can be a challenge – even in the workplace. Here are some tips to strengthen your intelligence:

• Get Real With Yourself - Identify and deal with the source of negative emotions because nothing positive derives from them. Suppressing or camouflaging these emotions with shopping, smoking, or eating are temporary coping mechanisms that can lead to other challenges.
• Know Your Role – Be clear on your purpose for working; the benefits and impact your contributions have on your employer’s bottom-line, and how your role coincides with their mission and core values.
• Don’t React, Get the Facts – There are many women reacting to events based on their emotions instead of facts. Feelings should never be used as a deciding factor in the workplace because they aren’t tangible and cannot be validated.
• Define Your Outcome – For every task you perform, you should have a desired outcome that links to your personal mission and your employer's. Working without a personal mission is like accomplishing empty victories because there isn't a connection to your uniqueness.
• Begin with the End in Mind – Start your day with a clear vision of its direction and destination. What you envision in your mind (direction) will lead to your destination. This is achievable when your emotions are under control.

Want more help to chart your course to emotional intelligence, visit SOFEI Online.

The Number Nine Can Have Power

After spending nine relentless months looking for work at a local one-stop career center, an unemployed single mother regained hope to find employment when she learned how to build a career in customer-service from the results of a complimentary MAPP assessment provided by The SOFEI Group, Inc.

Filled with passion to provide great customer-service to her next prospective employer, this single mother landed nine interviews within nine weeks of attending The SOFEI Group's Microsoft Office Specialist certification training program. Her hope was restored and momentum to find employment soared, but something was preventing her from getting hired - her forgiveness for being unemployed!

This breakthrough came when a career development facilitator of The SOFEI Group looked her square in the eyes and said, “Your smile isn’t in harmony with the way you really feel about yourself, and maybe this spirit is resonating during your interviews - preventing you from getting hired.” Tears streamed down her face, because she had not taken time to confront her feelings of shame and guilt for being unemployed.

The single mother found employment after her nine months bout with the one-stop career center and nine weeks with The SOFEI Group, Inc. She had everything she needed to get employed, but her negative emotions were blocking her path to successful employment.

Our belief about ourselves will create the pathway to our destiny. Is your belief system blocking your path to your next career?

What's the Secret to Success?

Discovering and crafting your gift and sharing it passionately with greatness! In our How to Create a Great Career workshop, we teach people how to build great careers from their innate qualities; not from skills they’ve learned to make a living, but from their God-given gifts to make a life.

During the workshop, we demonstrate how people like Serena and Venus Williams, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan were able to get corporate sponsorships because of their ‘greatness’ in their respective sports, not because they had good marketing skills to promote Nike, Hanes, or Buick.

God created us to succeed so others can experience Him through our work. And, He cannot accomplish this through people that know how to wear or drive success; but through people that are willing and spiritually fit to do the work He has called us to do.

Success is a divine right. Don’t allow the definitions or opinions of others hold yours hostage.

Need to Redirect Your Career?

Working hard but your career is going nowhere fast? Are you unemployed and on the fence to find familiar work to pay bills or need to start new because your old job is obsolete? If you answered yes to either question, you can redirect your efforts and move your career in the right direction. Here’s how:

Evaluate the underlying cause of being stuck in your career.

• Do you believe this is the only work you're qualified to do?
• Jobs are scarce so you're thankful for what you have and you've decided to stay where you are.
• You've worked in this field and don't know what else to do.
• You believe you're too old to start a new career.

Get in the driver seat; take your career off ‘auto cruise’ and determine where you want to take it

• Resolve negative emotions associated with unemployment
• Assess your skills and determine who can benefit from them.
• List your contributions and the impacts.
• Create a career plan (inclusive of a personal mission statement and goals) to make it all happen.

Breathe life to your plan everyday

• Work on an activity everyday to achieve your career goals
• Envision yourself making a contribution in your place of work and the outcome.
• Share your vision with a person that will hold you accountable.

Your career is your responsibility and only you can decide where you want to take it! Don't let the woes of the economy or fear to stop you from making a contribution with your skills and your life.

What Do Employers Want?

Contributors! Yes, employers are looking for people to join their business as a contributor, a problem solver, not a leech. Employers are not hiring to simply increase their payroll. They’re more likely hiring to address business needs or challenges.

What about you? Are you selling your skills to get a job to pay the bills? Or, are you selling your skills to make a business contribution? If your job search strategy is simply to get a job to pay bills, you need to change your job search approach. Here’s how:

• Find your niche (everyone is great at something)
  
• Change your self- talk (there aren’t any jobs, nobody’s hiring)
  
• Change your Circle of Influence (surround yourself around problem-solvers)
  
• Conduct research to learn about your prospective employer's business trend(s) and industry (e.g., find out how they make money, the dynamics and demographics of their customers)
  
• Discover and decide your contributions and benefits you want to make for your prospective employer and create a “Contribution Statement”
  
• Update your resume and change your career objective to your “Contribution Statement” and change your tasks to impact statements (i.e., the end result of your performed tasks)
• Secure references that can effectively speak about the impact of your contributions
  
• When you land an interview, share how you can contribute to the business more so, than selling your skills to simply get a job

Employer/Employee relationships should always be mutually beneficial. When you think and act based on these terms, your employment opportunities will increase.