Helping People Who are Out of Work
Top Tips for People Who Want to Get A Job Now!
By Elisabeth H. Sanders-Park
If you’re looking for work, you know the market is tough. But, every month people get jobs. Here are some tips to shorten your search.
Focus. If you don’t know what you want to do, the employer won’t either. Choose a job target, then craft your marketing tools to prove you can do the job. Your target should include what want to do (title) and where you want to do it (industry). Pursuing two different jobs? Develop separate campaigns to prove you meet the unique needs for each job.
Think like the employer. They decide who gets screened out and who gets hired, so consider how they make money, and what makes someone ideal for the job you want. There are six reasons you’ll get the job — ability, presentation, dependability, motivation, attitude, and network. Figure out what the employer needs in each area and prove you’ve got it. These are also the six reasons you’ll lose the job, so catch anything that could get you screened out and deal with it before the employer notices.
Get to a decision maker. 90%+ of us are screened out before the person with the power to say ‘yes’ enters the process. So, find a side door! 50%-70% of jobs are found through networking. Get an introduced by a current employee with a great reputation, volunteer, intern or go in as a customer and prove your passion and talent, attend a job fair, and reach out to family, friends and acquaintances. No matter how you search, your job is likely to come through contact with people, not paper (or computers!). Get prepared, and get out there!
None of this is rocket science, but the job search never has been. In the end, it’s more about what you do than what you know. Job seekers today need fresh ideas and inspiration to jump start their job search. We can help
Get the book! The 6 Reasons You’ll Get the Job will help whether you were recently laid off, are just beginning your career, or have a rocky work history and some explaining to do. Get it at a bookstore starting October 5th, join the tour, or pre-order today at Barnes & Noble.com
Meet the authors! In September and October 2010, we’re coming to a city near you to jump start your job search. Attend a half-day seminar based on The 6 Reasons You’ll Get the Job to learn how to get a job now and get a free copy of the book. Come to our employment networking event to make connections and get your book signed. Prizes will be given via the website and events. Details at www.the6reasons.com
When the Kosmos Holds its Breath
Sometimes the kosmos just holds it breath. The answers that we have been seeking seem to hang just out of reach, and while we know they are coming, it almost seems like the world is in spiritual slow motion. That is a normal part of our faith journey, but sometimes something else is going on.
Having a strong pedigree of teaching has helped me to understand spiritual warfare, and because of the privilege of sitting under the teaching of Jack Hayford while at Life Pacific College, and before that with Dennis Easter while working in a SoCal church under his leadership, I understand that there are seasons of our life when the spiritual battle around our lives and ministries seems more intense, or at least more obvious. Today is one of those days for me.
The clues don’t always come from a big thing. Today, it was the bank teller dropping a zero off my deposit putting things way out of wack until they went back to do their math. It was one of those moments when I became aware that the spiritual battle was on. I realized that the enemy was overplaying his hand. And thanks to that teller error, my spiritual antennas went up (that’s slang for becoming spiritually alert) so that I would understand what was happening. While I don’t go in for the magical version of Spiritual Warfare teaching, and think that our prayer should always be directed “to God,” I have lived long enough in Christ to know that it is a real fact of our existence, and that there are times when I need to pay special attention.
The pressure of waiting for God’s response leads me to wonder if all the assurances that I have found in prayer, in the scripture and through the encouragement of others have been wrong? Is God on vacation, like so many others around us?
A passage in the book of Daniel illuminates this spiritual experience (NIV)
Daniel 10:12 “Then he continued, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.”
This passage holds some important encouragement for me, and I hope for you too. The first instruction is that we are not to be afraid. Fear after all is one of the key tools of evil. If we can be moved into a position of terror, we are immobile, neutralized.
The greatest fear is addressed by the very next part of this passage– the fear that God, the one that we entrust our lives to, hasn’t heard or responded. Daniel is told that from the very first day that he began to seek understanding and humble himself, the answer was dispatched. Why do we always assume that either something is wrong with us, or something is wrong with God? Jesus clearly taught that a good father responds to the requests of his children (Luke 11:5-13), and such a father we have; he is our “abba” (Romans 8:15).
So I need to remember and trust, and perhaps you do as well, that when we do as Daniel did, humble ourselves and seek Him, he answers. Why the delay? No, I don’t think it is always the devil. Sometimes I think it is a wise father making sure that I get what I really need instead of what I ask for, and other times, I think that people who have been entrusted with answers and resources go slow when I need them to go fast.
But sometimes…there is something else at work, resisting the answers that I seek. The Daniel passage pulls back the spiritual curtain so that we can see conflict in the spiritual world that involves our prayers. Why does God allow this? Bigger question that I can tackle in this blog. Why do I need to know this? Because I need encouragement not to doubt that God is an answerer of prayers, and that I matter to Him.
It is good to ask if we have really sought him like Daniel, humbly and open to his direction. If you aren’t sure, then take this moment or this day to make that a priority. Do a Daniel fast (lay off the fancy food) if this is something important. We don’t get answers, if we don’t ask.
I have a suspicion that a few others who are engaged in missions work, church planting and faith adventures feel like the Kosmos is holding its breath, too. You have asked diligently, and need this is a time for resources and answers and wisdom to be both dispatched and received. We all need to remember that the answer has been dispatched, and that our task is to leave that battle the Lord and His hosts and return to fervent prayer.
If you are at that place in your journey, reply to this blog and I will join you in your prayer for the message or resource to arrive at your place. I invite you to join me in that prayer, too. Remember, we aren’t waiting for the postman, we are trusting someone who is much bigger and even more faithful. In His case, neither rain, nor snow, nor demonic horde will keep him from his appointed task.
What Should I be Doing About Grants?
How do I come up with a good grant plan?
For many of us grants are either a painful memory in which we recall a long weekend and late nights writing or just a good idea that we have never tried. What is a reasonable plan for getting my organization into the grant stream? When I used to play baseball, the coach had a saying. “If you don’t swing, you will never get a hit”. That is one of the basic rules of winning grants, you must participate to win. Are their some basic steps that I should take to move us forward? Can any of that be done without unreasonable amounts of effort?
A strong grant effort includes many of the things that are found in a good baseball swing:
The appropriate stance- in baseball, a batter comes to the plate ready to swing and has the basic gear required and is included because he or she is on the roster. If you are a ministry or a non-profit then you are on the roster, and with a little training, you will have the equipment that you need to play the game. The stance for ministries and non-profits requires that they orient themselves in the right direction by knowing which pitches to swing for, and which grants are appropriate. The opposite is often true, groups swinging backwards because they have not done the basic research to find out where to swing. A good stance allows the batter to develop a rhythm that maximizes body strength. That is what grants should be for your organization, a routine that allows you to flex appropriate muscles over and over. It should feel natural if you are doing it right.
A concentrated effort- every batter knows when it is time to go to the plate. Hitting, just like running and fielding is a concentrated and focused effort. Batters bat when their turn comes. They focus on this and do it with intention and concentration. They don’t bat all the time, but it is a part of the rhythm of the game. If you don’t swing the grant bat, you are only playing one part of the game, and it will be much harder to score.
Overcoming fear- Not so switch sports, but when I used to take tennis lessons, the instructor discovered that I was afraid of being hit. Being the good teacher that he was, he decided to teach me a lesson and began to hit me over and over with served tennis balls. While I wouldn’t recommend the practice, the same is true in baseball and grants. Getting up to swing away means that you have to overcome your fear of failure. Yes you might miss…in fact you are going to miss. But will you continue to swing until you get it right?
Practice- My graduate school grant writing professors had a wise approach to grant writing. He believed, and I experienced the reality that practice does bring about improvement. If you want to get good at writing and winning grants, you have to practice. The more the write, and get feedback from colleagues and grant makers, the stronger you will get in your ability to knock it out of the park.
Home runs are good- having won my own share of grants, which now reach into the tens of millions of dollars, I must admit that hitting home runs with grants is really a lot of fun. There is nothing like that first, second and twentieth grant win to bring a smile to your face and to the face of your team mates. In my short baseball career, hitting home runs required a lot of strikes and singles along the way. And it goes like that. Hit some and miss some, but if you keep at it, you will see that ball fly over left field fence. You and your team will all benefit as well as the people you are working to serve.
<–Learn more about grant writing on a conference call this Thursday afternoon, July 16th at 5:00 p.m. Select schedule to the left to join the call.
Seven Non-Profit Options for Churches
We may think, “its to Non-Profit or Not…”
but we really have a choice between a variety of structures. Its like going to the bakery and thinking only about just one kind of cookie. I went on Father’s day to a special pie shop in Leesburg, VA and discovered something that I had never heard of before: Texas Cake. it was a piece of cake with about 3 inches of pure fudge on top. My heart thanks me that I didn’t get any. I discovered that church choices about how we operate as non-profits are pretty unique too, in fact there are at least seven different options.
THERE ARE SEVEN OPTIONS FOR CHURCH NON-PROFIT ACTIVITY
The most common choice that most church leaders are aware of is a secondary non-profit 501c3 corporation. But there are at least 6 other structures that can be adopted depending upon the specific focus and needs of the church. There are some important issues with a standard 501c3 that you need to be aware of as you consider which of the seven types you might be best for your church. In addition to the three primary reasons that churches form NPO’s (Risk, Resource and Rapport), you will need to consider which of these three items goes to the top of your list. Are you primarily seeking to avoid risk, or like me are you ready to run head-long into danger for the Kingdom (as long as you have a good suite of amour)?
The right pick from these seven will determine how well you do in each of the three categories. And all the choices are not equal when they stand side by side. Approaching this as an informed leader will allow you to make an informed choice and to bypass the “build it and they will come” myth. If you are primarily loyal to the structure that you create or you don’t understand the choices, you can easily easily end up serving a new structure in the same way that you serve the old structure.
Structures need to serve purpose and support growth and life.
While it is true that some plants can’t grow without a supportive structure, there is nothing wrong with germinating some seeds before you install the trellis. But you do need to know what you want the plant to do when it grows up. Your knowledge of your options will help you to make timing, resource, leadership and ministry choices that will help you to maximize what develops out of your community efforts. I know that some people swear by those upside down tomato plant stands, but even if they produce great tomatoes, they look kind of funny. If you are going to take the first step outside the box and create a secondary community ministry structure like a non-profit, then you will want to be intentional about the type and understand its costs, risk and rewards. That is why they grow tomatoes upside down isn’t it, for the fruit?
Join our discussion of these seven options on a webinar lead by David Mills. We will evaluate and understand these choices for ministry purposes and share a comprehensive overview of the options and their impacts upon ministry. Next webinar is June 24th at 3 p.m. EST. Click schedule on the tab to the left, pick non-profit for churches, and then webinar, and schedule a spot to learn more.