Plan Your Career by Julie Desmond

Julie Desmond is Talent Manager for Express Employment Professionals. Write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Energize your job search: A get smart approach

Thursday, 18 March 2010 14:44 Julie Desmond • Plan Your Career

If you are tired of looking for work, it might be that you’re tired of not finding work. With all the internet sites out there, it is easy to waste hours online and see little in return. Technology is a useful tool. To your job search, technology is a tool the way oxygen is a tool for your lungs; things are easier when you use it. We have talked a lot in this column about how to get a job or promotion using the www. Yet, people still tell me they feel like they are spinning their wheels.

Employment survival guide: Adapt, stand apart and play by the new rules

Thursday, 11 March 2010 14:52 Julie Desmond

Survival of the fittest has not always referred to employment survival. Today, getting a job is no small feat. If you’ve succeeded in getting hired, strategize effectively to keep the position you have. You will need to call in all your personal resources: your talents, your skills, your connections. And with competition as fierce as it is now, you can add three new tactics to your game plan: adapt, stand out, and choose your own rules.

Where have you been? Look to pastimes for better career planning

Thursday, 04 March 2010 14:49 Julie Desmond • Plan Your Career

Hella Buchheim is a story-teller. She has landed a vocation that meets anyone’s criteria for a great job: she sets her own hours, works with fabulous characters and makes a little money. If she had health insurance, it would be perfect. On her website, Hella writes, “Most writers lament the road not taken. It brings us into a loop of should-as, could-as, would-as. But I want to celebrate the road taken.” Watching Hella write her own story and considering that all of us have loops of shoulda-coulda’s, I got to thinking that a really great career is the one that capitalizes on the road taken. Every connection, every hobby, everything we do to relax comes out of choices we make on our own behalf: The road taken.

Up in the Air: Every job is a jumping off point to something else

Wednesday, 24 February 2010 16:06 Julie Desmond • Plan Your Career

A manager at a middle-sized but high-profile organization in the Twin Cities is never bothered when great employers move on. “This is not a place people stay,” she said. “It’s more a place you leap off from.” This is a positive attitude, and also generous, considering the time she invests in training new employees on the same positions every year or two. Maybe the reality is that, if you’re good, most companies, most jobs, are simply a jumping off point; maybe people who are good are constantly assessing their next giant leaps.

Approachability, Compassion, Composure: Key leadership skills everyone can work on

Wednesday, 17 February 2010 16:08 Julie Desmond

Studies bear out what HR managers have always known: some people are natural leaders. Extensive research from Korn/Ferry Institute reveals 67 different competencies which true leaders carry in common. Were they born with it? Was Joe Mauer born AL MVP? Whether it’s leading a team on the field or in the office, competencies develop over time, through learning and experience. If you decide you want to improve a leadership competency, you probably can. First, recognize something you need to work on; then, make the effort.

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