004 Laurence Childs on “It’s Just a Conversation”

Career Tips & Trends with Tom McDonough & Deborah Burkholder

Best results are often achieved well before you need a job, by consistently networking so that when you find yourself job-hunting you have a large network to work with. – Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics.

Today’s show focuses on preparing your scripts for networking. Our guest is Larry Childs, PhD, career coach and organizational development specialist. You can follow up with Larry by email.

In The News

Experts are beginning to rethink the meaning of Full Employment. In the past most of us thought that when we had 4% unemployment the country was at Full Employment. The 4% reflected the natural job transitions inherent in the system.

According to John Jay Jordan, of The Jordan Company, the new structural full employment may reflect 7% unemployment instead of the 4% most of us are used to.

In other words, when the system heals it is more likely to reset at 7 rather that 4% for the foreseeable future.

The slow recovery and the latest jobs report support this view. The unemployment rate dropped only a tiny amount to 8.2% while the hiring rate slowed down significantly. According to reports employers added only 120,000, down significantly from February’s 240,000 jobs.

Experts think this drop may be due to women leaving the market, and that men are finding jobs as the construction and manufacturing sectors pic up.

Even though the numbers reflect a lot of pain for a lot of people, it’s important to focus on the fact that over 91% of people do have jobs and companies are hiring.

Small Town Rules still apply.

It’s all about relationship and reputation, and as Ed Evarts said in last week’s show, your visibility and your ability to communicate your value. If you missed it, check out the full interview with Ed in Career Tips and Trends episode 3.

80% of doing work you love is getting clear on what that is. Once you’re clear on what you want and why, it’s a lot easier to target companies and key people that can help you get there.

Like St Nick, make a list, check it twice and… strategically build your network –

More on this after our interview with Larry Childs…

Listen to the show and interview with Laurence Childs, PhD, by clicking at top of post or by subscribing on iTunes.

Recommended By Larry Childs

	An exploration of and advice on conversations at work, home and in social situations. Describes how to deal with conversational hurdles such as starting them, bores, liars, and silence.
	Describes how to handle the important conversations in your life where you know opinions of the parties vary, stakes are high and emotions run strong. The authors present an action-oriented model for preparing and then successfully navigating the interaction.
	Provides clear tools to prepare for work conversations to identify barriers to success and to incorporate individuals’ and teams’ perspectives and motivations to improving problematic situations. “Fierce” refers to conversations where opinions and positions may be passionately held and are therefore powerful tools in developing motivation for success and agreed upon resolutions.
	The authors work with the Harvard Negotiation Project (Getting to Yes). They lay out the three underlying questions behind difficult conversations: 1) what happened, 2) what are the feelings about it, and 3) what does it say about me. Their model helps to probe the perceptions of each conversational party and arrive at workable solutions.

Childs, L. (2009, August 3). Another Factory Worker: Case for Empowerment. Retrieved from The NEWS: Air Conditioning, Heating, Refrigeration

Childs, L. (2008, June 23). Getting What You Want from Your Techs. Retrieved from The NEWS: Air Conditioning, Heating, Refrigeration

You can follow up with Larry by email.

Also Mentioned In The Show

4 Simple Steps To Building Your Network And Getting Booked Solid by Michael Port, from the Huffington Post.

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