EDR: Every-Day-Resolutions #5

How to improve your curriculum vitae when you don't have a job? 

I don't need to write a lot about how being a volunteer can boost your personal experience (soft skills) and improve your professional curriculum as well. 

The thing is: if you are at home, unemployed and looking for a new job/career opportunity, you can spend a few hours doing something that will:

• connect you to others
• benefit your health
• make you smile and happy
• make you feel accomplished and satisfied
• keep you away from depression
• make you feel useful
• renew your motivation and creativity, advancing your personal and professional experiences

The saddest part is that, most of the times, we don't even consider to do it because we think we are too occupied for it. But let's face it: 

--> can't you really take 2-3 hours of your weekly 168 hours to do something that will change your life for ever? <--

Please think about it, and look for volunteering associations in your community!

If you want to read more about the benefits of being a volunteer and how to become one, please go to:

- European Voluntary Service

- Volunteering and its Surprising Benefits

- World Volunteer Web

- Benefits of Volunteering (to the individual volunteer)

- Benefits of Volunteering

EDR: Every-Day-Resolutions #4

While looking for a job, we should try to stay positive. 

But do you really know why?

I have been experiencing some "up and down" moments, and I think it is really hard to stay positive all the time, day-after-day. But the truth is: it isn't impossible! 

So, if you feel like you are stuck in a "down" moment, please consider some of the benefits of searching for an opportunity in a positive mood:

• Ideas come out more clearly

I realized that I can't think clearly and be so job-focused as I wanted, when I am on my "down" moments. And the truth is: my job search is more productive when I am feeling positive, confident,  and when I have some more faith on myself.

• Motivation Letters become more attractive 

After applying to different opportunities for a long period without a positive feedback, our motivation goes naturally down. And this lack of motivation is often visible in the Motivation Letters that we write afterwards: they stop being personalized, and become more and more a "copy&paste" of what we have written before. 

So, instead of feeling down, we should try to take the best out of all the previous unanswered applications: look at what you had written and try to improve your Motivation Letters. Improve, improve, improve! This is a learning-by-doing process!  

• Your network grows as never

It is a fact: when you feel positive, you are more receptive to connect with others. And you can use your LinkedIn account as a trial: when you are focused on your job search and your ideas flow out clearly, you naturally write more friendly invitations, and the person who receives them is immediately keen to accept you. This is also true when you attend a networking event: when you feel confident, you are the one who takes the first step, and it shows a lot of yourself! 

--> "Happy people get more job opportunities" <--

And J. T. O'Donnell explains you 10 reasons why - here.

Organize your email! #2

Here are other useful suggestions to organize your email inbox:

- 7 Tips to Better Manage Your Email!

- How to Organize Your Email Inbox

Have a nice weekend!

Organize your email! #1

When you are looking for an opportunity to work, and/or if you already applied to a few positions,  you will find yourself stuck with lots of webpages, emails and other contacts. 

So, it is time to: organize!

As you may know, I love to organize things, and there is actually one thing that I need to organize over and over: my email inbox.

I use gmail, and in my opinion, it is a good one for starters and it is really easy to organize. So, here are a few tips on how you can organize even better your gmail inbox:

• Labels:

- They are the best way to organize your email. I have 26 labels, including personal labels as "Friends&Co.", "Family", "Home", professional labels as "LinkedIn", "old-job-related", and other labels such as "Travels", "publicity", etc... To create a label, you just need to go to "Settings" --> "Create a new label", name it and voilà!

• Filters:

- After creating your labels, you should direct your emails to the corresponding labels. And that's when filters enter in this story: open the email that you want to label, select the small down-arrow in the up-right panel, and choose "Filter messages like this" --> "Create filter with this search" (in here, you will find the email address that will be labeled) --> "Apply the label" --> "Create filter".

- You can also add a label to a specific email, and for that you just need to open the email that you want to label and then click in the "label" sign that is presented in the upper menu. 

• Important/non-important mails:

- You can "teach" gmail what emails are important or not by selecting the arrow (´) that is immediately before the name of the sender in your inbox. Prioritize your emails is an important step towards organization! 

• Stars:

- You can star your emails, for instance, when it is something that you need to do during the day --> so you will not forget about it while it is starred.  

- I usually star my very important emails, either for professional or personal reasons.

• Mark as unread:

- Sometimes, after having starred an important email, I mark as unread to organize and prioritize even better my email inbox!

- I also try to clear my inbox as much as possible in a weekly basis: I only keep visible those emails that correspond to unfinished tasks, work, events. All the others are archived! 

A gap between academia and industry

As a recent PhD graduated trying to do something useful in this world, I often find myself trapped in a huge gap between academia and industry. 

And, sadly, there is nothing new about it, I know. 

The truth is: I expected a gap, and I also expected that moving from academia to industry would take time and lots of effort and "no's". 

What I didn't expect was to find myself (and others like me) in a so difficult situation just because we are trying to do the most logical career pathway. 

Within this topic, I found the following articles very interesting. Please have a look:

- The PhD-Industry Gap

- What have we done to deserve this? It was about a good cause after all…

- One Step At A Time: Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Industry

After being in that gap for a while, I recently decided to build my own bridge by recognizing that an internship/training program could be the best option to take some industry experience. 

And, as I am in a post doc period of my life, I am available to boost my skills and professional experience!

Have you already considered an internship/temporary experience? Build your own bridge from academia to industry!

 Have a nice weekend!

The networking thing

If you are looking for an opportunity to develop your skills and expand your experience, you will probably read about how important is to build up a network, not only on the web but also a real one!

And so, this week I attended my first real networking event and it was amazing! 

Before a real networking event, you must prepare yourself with some of these items:

• Contact cards:

- You can not go to an event like this without a contact card! 

- You can make cards with almost any office tool, I used the powerpoint and I set the page orientation to portrait and used 8.5 cm x 5.5 cm.

- Select wisely what do you want to write on the card. My information was simple: Name, small description, about.me, phone contact, email address.

- The card layout must be as simple as possible, and at the same time, it can show a little bit of your personality (depending on the networking field).

• Volunteer for presenting your work:

- You should always ask if it is possible to present your work/skills/interests to the audience, in a 5-7 minute slot. The audience get closer to you if you catch their attention, for instance, in a stage presentation, and they will remind you at the end of the event. 

• Small resume of your work:

- If you can't do a brief presentation of your work/skills/interests, then you should be prepared with a a small resume of your abilities, expertise, etc... and please write them down in your contact card (just a few strong words).

• Answers:

- Be always prepared in advance to answer some questions: what are you doing at the moment? If you aren't working, prepare yourself to the "why" question. What are you looking for? Do you want to work in academia or in industry?

- And, please, do not be shy, ask questions too! 

During a real networking event, please:

• Do not seat in the back

- Take the front seats so everyone can actually see you!

• Use the coffee breaks to improve your networking skills

- Talk, talk, talk! Present yourself (ideas, thoughts, opinions, etc...) and change contact cards.

• Smile 

- Your body language is extremely important! Be confident, and smile! There is nothing better than a smile to attract people.

• Be yourself and talk with others as much as possible

- You just have to pay attention to avoid any inconvenient word/sentence. And that's it! 

After a real networking event, you need to:

• Stay connected 

- Use your web-tools (LinkedIn, email, etc...) to keep the connection.

•  Follow the other's work

- Now that you know the name and the voice too, pay attention to the progress of his/her career. Stay updated!

• Get in touch from time to time

- And if an opportunity comes, send a message, an email, or make a phone call so the other one will know that you are still interested, still looking for an opportunity to collaborate, and so on...

And, perhaps in a near future, the opportunity that you are waiting for may come to you (not from the sky, but from your work and networking!).

EDR: Every-Day-Resolutions #3

How to improve your curriculum vitae when you don't have a job? 

You can join a lot of activities that will boost your personal experience and consequently your curriculum vitae.

Today I am going to write a short resume about:

- Toastmasters -

Have you already heard anything about it? If not, this post is for you!

• What is the Toastmasters?

The Toastmasters is like a workshop, but instead of just listening, here you "learn-by-doing". This Toastmasters' philosophy gets you out of the comfort zone to improve your public speaking skills. 

• How does it work?

By attending a Toastmaster club, you will improve your communication skills: you have to present several topics, and in each one, you are evaluated regarding your voice, body language and humor (among others). 

You will also improve your leadership skills: you have also to evaluate other presentations by performing different roles on that evaluation, and your own evaluation is also assessed by a member of the club.

• Where can I find a Toastmaster club?

You just need to look here and find a club near you.  

Have a nice weekend!

EDR: Every-Day-Resolutions #2

Hobbies.

I like a lot my hobbies. 

And my tip for today is:

- find your own hobbies and spend as much time as you can on them.

But, what kind of hobbies can you do while you are looking for a new opportunity/job?

You are the only person that can decide on how do you want to spend the weekly 143 hours that you've got after your job search (considering that you spend on it 5 hours per day, 5 days-a-week).

 So, I ask you: 

what kind of things did you usually want to do when you were working in your previous job but you hadn't got* a time slot to do it?

Here is my list:

- Read more books

- Watch more interesting movies

- Running/cycling

- Go more often to the gym

- Write an useful/interesting blog

- Read and follow other useful/interesting blogs

- Nurturing my friends/family

- Meet new people

- Painting

- Cooking delicious meals

- DIY presents (as we are in November, I've always wanted to have more time to prepare my presents for all the birthdays I have in this month, and for Christmas too)

- Go for a long walk and take some nice photos

- Improve my curriculum**

- Do more volunteer actions

In my list there are two types of hobbies: one type that directly affects my personality and welfare, and the other type that enhances my soft or technical skills. Can you see the difference? 

Try out yourself and leave a comment with your hobbies' list. 

* - "You have more time than you think!"

** - I will write about it later.

EDR: Every-Day-Resolutions #1

So you got a big no. Then, what?

- You restart you job search, 4-5 hours per day. 

- You occupy yourself with positive things, old hobbies, old wishes, dreams.

You still have plenty of time in your 168 hours per week to fulfill your life with the things you like most.

Today, I decided to share with you this thought: 

"21 Things You Should Force Yourself To Do Every Day", from the Thought Catalog --> Here

After a big no, it is important to start with small routines: 

• organize your own-thoughts, 
• make a list of what do you want to do next (job-related and hobby-related), 
• choose what you really want to do with your life (again)!

Let's switch it to English

From this day on, my blog will be written in English. It is something that I have been thinking since the very beginning of this thing. I need to practice, to become again completely fluent and I have time to learn new words. 

And for today: how to recover after a big no? 

In the first place, what is a big no?

A big no is what you receive when you are not selected for something that could have changed your life for better in the next coming months. Instead, it usually drives you to the uncertainty of being a human being and it makes you feel bad, sick, tired of the world that you are trying so hard to move from.

A big no makes you feel down. There is nothing new about this. But we must always learn from these big nos. Saying that, what can you learn after a big no?

• Every big no has a meaning so uncover the meaning of your big no. Why did it happen? Was it because you were not so good as you thought? Not so well prepared? Not so convincing? Not so convinced? Or was it because of other random reason apart from you?

• You should be prepared for that decision. Were you well prepared for that decision? Probably not. Probably you spent the last few days, perhaps weeks, waiting for that great moment when your luck would change and get that job, that not-dream-but-close-job. But what about your plan B? Do you have any alternative?

• "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction" (by Sr Isaac Newton). In this specific case, you don't need to react in the opposite way but you must react as quickly as possible to start a new adventure in the realm of uncertainty: get up from that bad mood and do a reset on your PC, mind and spirit. Refresh your job search and start to apply (again)!

Don't ever wait again for a big no.