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12 Choices to Help You Step Back From Burnout by Vicki Davis

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Author Vicki Davis surrounds herself with sayings and thoughts to help her stay positive. Photo credit: Vicki Davis

“Our very lives are fashioned by choice. First we make choices. Then our choices make us.” – Anne Frank

A tired teacher is a powder keg waiting for a match. In my bouts with burnout, I’ve learned that stepping back from the brink is about choice. These 12 choices have helped me recover and be a better teacher for my students.

Choice #1: Choose to Be Happy

First, happiness is a choice. Choose to be the first one to smile at everybody you meet. Choose to greet your students by name.

Use happy triggers to boost your mood when you get upset. I have a Pinterest Board called Happy Thoughts and another called Things That Make Me Laugh. The “Atta Girl” folder in my desk holds nice notes.

Choice #2: Choose to Disconnect

We are making a dumb use of our smartphones. Instead of freeing us up to go anywhere anytime, they’ve tethered us to a hamster wheel. Usually, I check email twice a day. I deleted my school email off my smartphone after several evenings because of an angry email. (We all get them.) Unplug once a week. Be a human being, not a human doing.

Read more…

A top recruiter on what anyone can see after 30 seconds with your resume

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Hello. (Inspirestock/Corbis)

This question originally appeared on Quora: What do recruiters look for in a resume at first glance? Answer by Ambra Benjamin, Engineering Recruiter.

 I don’t look through stacks of resumes anymore. I hate paper. I do everything online.
 There has been for many decades, a mysterious Wizard of Oz-type viewpoint of the recruiting world that I think is somewhat misappropriated. People seem to be truly fascinated by what goes on behind the curtain, when in reality, recruiters aren’t running the covert operation many think. “Does this candidate seem like they stand a chance of being a good match for this role? If yes, proceed to next step. If no, reject.”
 I’ll highlight how I personally absorb a resume. I should preface this by saying that currently I primarily recruit for senior-level software engineers. In my past life I recruited for PMs, MBAs, finance, sales, and pretty much all of it. Everything I’m about to say broadly applies to all of these fields. I also was a campus recruiter, and you read resumes of new grads a bit differently since experience is less meaty. So for non-new grads, here’s how it goes in my brain:
  • Most recent role. I’m generally trying to figure out what this person’s current status is, and why/if they might even be interested in a new role. Have they only been in their last position for three months? If so, probably not the best time for me to reach out, right? Unless they work for Zynga, or somewhere tragic like that (said with great respect for Farmville, the app that put Facebook apps on the map). If it’s an incoming resume, I’m wondering why the candidate is looking now. Are they laid off? Did they get fired? Have they only been in their role for a few months and they’re possibly hating it? But most importantly, is their most recent experience relevant to the position for which I’m hiring?
  • Company recognition. Not even gonna lie. I am a company snob. Now don’t get all Judgy McJudgerson about my judgy-ness. Hear me out. It’s not even that I think certain companies are better than others (although some most certainly are). It’s purely a matter of how quickly can I assign a frame of reference. This is also known as “credibility.” Oh you worked at Amazon? Then you’re probably accustomed to working on projects at scale. You’re at a well known crash-and-burn start-up? You have probably worn many hats and have been running at a sprinter’s pace. There are some pretty blatant if/then associations I can make simply by recognizing a company name. Because recruiters have generally been doing this job for awhile, we notice patterns and trends among candidates from certain companies and we formulate assumptions as a result. There are edge cases and our assumptions can fail us, but again, this is a resume review; we’re talking a less than 20-second analysis. Assigning frame of reference is often more difficult to do when a candidate has only worked for obscure companies I’ve never heard of. When I can’t assign company recognition, it just means I have to read the resume a little deeper, which usually isn’t an issue, unless it’s poorly formatted, poorly written, uninformative, and wrought with spelling errors—in which case, you might have lost my interest.

Read more….http://qz.com/525496/done-what-a-recruiter-sees-on-your-resume-at-first-glance/

Designing a Career Strategy for Evolving Roles and Opportunities September 2015 KLA/KASL Conference – Librarians in the 21st Century:

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17 Simple Habits That Make You Look More Professional

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IMAGE: Getty Images
Unprofessional? Here are the behaviors that send the opposite, more positive message.
By Bill Murphy Jr.

Executive editor, TheMid.com, and founder, ProGhostwriters.com

(A quick note before we get started. I wrote the following in response to reader feedback to another column: 10 Bad Habits That Make You Look Really Unprofessional. This post is the counterpoint to that one.)

Here’s a story from about 15 years ago. I was traveling from Seattle to Yakima for work, flying in a tiny commercial turboprop. There were only 10 or 12 passengers, and the cockpit was separated by a curtain rather than a door. We flew through the Cascade mountains in really rough weather, and the captain — a pilot in his early 20s — pulled the curtain aside.

“The tower is saying it’s our choice to continue to Yakima or turn around,” he yelled over the din of the engines, “But I think we’re gonna give it a try.”

What’s wrong with this picture, right? “I think” and “Give it a try” are pretty much the last things you want to hear a commercial airline pilot say, especially in a bad storm. My fellow passengers nearly revolted. The pilot quickly changed course (both literally and figuratively), and we flew back to Seattle.

I’ve told that story a few times over the years, usually for laughs. But remember: It wasn’t the storm or the tiny plane or the air traffic control’s apparent laissez-fair attitude that freaked us passengers out. It’s that the pilot’s attitude made him seem totally unprofessional — and we all lost confidence in him.

Here are a few of the attributes you can demonstrate to make yourself seem more professional. I’m not saying they’re easy, but they are pretty simple. (Keep in mind, nobody demonstrates them all constantly. You’re only human. Just try to be the best human you can.)

1. Confidence

This was the biggest problem with the pilot’s performance that day. Confidence without the ability to back it up is useless, but if you’re truly competent, own it. Read more…

Burn the Libraries and Free the Librarians from R. David Lankes

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Burn the Libraries and Free the Librarians from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.