Portfolios

Since my May 29th post that included my mom’s low-tech portfolio idea, I’ve been thinking more about portfolios.

Beth Kanter keeps her portfolio on a wiki that she links to right at the top of her blog.   She told me she uses a wiki notsomuch for collaboration purposes, but because wikis are such quick and simple websites to edit.

Google Docs are another option out there.  I like that you can create a shared word processing document that bridges to paper very easily.  The formatting would not be as flexible or quite as web-friendly as a wiki though.  It also seems fun to create a presentation-style portfolio, though its usefulness is a little less clear to me.

Speaking of fun portfolios, Minnesota has a great initiative called eFolio Minnesota.  Its tagline is “Your Electronic Showcase.”  It has modules for students, educators, and careers.  I like that it’s not just a form to fill out – it seems to have been thoughtfully created and offers advice about reflection, goals, and content.

What else is out there?

EDIT: Beth suggested I check out Michelle Martin’s blog “The Bamboo Project.” It’s amazing what you don’t know till somebody tells you!  This non-traditional résumé Michelle posted about was too pertinent to not share.  I’m looking forward to catching up with Michelle’s work in the weeks to come!  Thanks Beth!

Being Web 2.0 Brokers

It’s extremely busy “season” at work the past few months, and I was recently explaining Google Reader to my office mate.  She looked at me blankly and said that if we did any more talk about new tech stuff that day her head would explode.  

Cut to a scene about 1 hour later at a staff check-in meeting.  Coworker A says, “Emily, what’s so great about wikis?”  Right on cue, Office Mate makes an exploding noise and a little mushroom cloud motion with her hands.  The room goes silent and she and I try not to giggle.  Other coworkers are mystified, lengthy explanations ensue, and universal amusement is eventually achieved.  End scene.

The point of relating this mini-drama is that there are so many awesome tools out there, it’s almost funny.  It’s not surprising that so many people are overwhelmed. 

This is where I’ve found it important to be a Web 2.0 broker (with thanks to Mary Pipher’s “How To Be A Cultural Broker”).  In unfamiliar territory, people often need a little guidance.  You don’t have to be the most qualified or knowledgeable person around to help; you can share what you know and then learn the rest together.  It is about getting people connected with tools (therefore information, therefore power), and also a great excuse to build relationships with people you might not work with very often otherwise.

I’m excited that the handful of Web 2.0 brokers in our organization have put together a wiki (thanks Coworker S!) to let us support the personal verbal conversations with a small “sandbox” to play in.  We have a place for meeting notes and a brief, hand-picked list of resources.  It’s local, limited, and simple, and I can’t think of a better way to start.

How have others helped ease their coworkers into the Web 2.0 waters?  What tips would you share with other would-be brokers?

CNN’s How To Sabotage Your Job Search… So You Don’t

Great article on CNN.com lists easy ways to derail your job search so that you know what not to do.  Very awesome.

A lot of it is common sense (#2 – don’t burn bridges; #7 – typos make you look like a fool; #19 – be nice to the person at the front desk), but it’s good reinforcement all the same.

Point #1 spoke to me in particular because my mother showed me a quick way to create a working portfolio.  Get a binder and some page protectors.  Pop important papers in as you receive them – letters of promotion, job acceptance, completion certificates, the end product of a big project, etc.  Simple.  Easy to add to.  And always there for you when you’re putting in for a promotion, a new job, or for bragging to your mother.

Transparency and “Good” Applicants

Many thanks to Lifehacker.com for starting a discussion on the apparently heated debate of résumé length.  I was surprised at how many different (and vehement!) opinions were out there.  Great points were brought up about the number of applicants and experience level.

My initial thought: employers should state what they’re looking for.  They post jobs and qualifications, why not post expectations?  It doesn’t seem difficult.  And why limit this to résumé length?  Wouldn’t HR’s job be easier if every company had a page of their website called, “How to be a good applicant” or some such?  Kind of like a twitter landing-page that Beth Kanter blogged about a couple of weeks ago, or email etiquette pages like ThanksNo.com (thanks again, Lifehacker!) you can refer people to.  

What would we call it – an applicant splash page?  Why be so secretive about the basics of our organizational cultures?  Do the benefits of such passive-aggression outweigh the potential benefits of increased transparency?  Would it help or hurt efficiency?  Would applicants like this or be irked by it?  Do some organizations already use one, and if so how is it working?

Taking Back My Environment

This was an amazing weekend.  I had four glorious days to myself!  I got a lot done in my apartment that I’d been putting off, and the result is that I have room in my closets, a desk, and a much smaller population of dust-bunnies.  I’ve effectively expanded my living space now that my desk is a place where I can spend time, and all those pesky tasks of day-to-day living will be easier now that I can find things and put them away.

Even though I’m not quite prepared to start thinking about work again just yet, I definitely noticed myself thinking that it would be nice to spend some time getting a handle on my office environment again.  I think it would make a huge difference in how I feel at work and in how fast I can find things.  I don’t think I’ll be able to work in cleaning/organization/de-cluttering time this week, but I’m thinking that it needs to become a priority for a day sometime before mid-July.  Because wow.

There are a million tips for getting and staying organized all over the Internet.  I didn’t look at any of them.  Three mindsets that worked for me this weekend:

1. Go for high-impact bulk stuff first.  In other words, don’t start by dusting your DVD collection; start by washing and putting away the 11 loads of laundry floating around the apartment.
2. Get rid of things.  Ask yourself, “Am I really going to take this item with me if I move in a year?”
3. Take a moment to decorate your space.  For instance, my desk is now clear of piles of junk, and that’s great.  I also took 5 minutes to decorate the area with miscellaneous pictures that were floating around – a fun reward for present-Emily and future-Emily.

I’d love to hear what works for everyone else out there!

Acceptance vs. Control

I attended a Work/Life Balance training today.  Lots of interesting food for thought.  One of the points the presenter made was about finding a balance between accepting and controlling your workload.  

Facets discussed:

• We all work with people, which means our day-to-day workload is going to shift:
  • email volume is largely out of our control;
  • meetings, phone calls, and personnel mini-crises happen;
• It’s not realistic to check off everything from our daily, or even weekly check-lists;
• Two unhealthy tendencies:
  1. perfectionism;
  2. multi-tasking.
• Suggested Solutions:
  • Prioritize;
  • Organize;
  • Breathe, take a break;
  • Analyze how you’re spending your time so you can determine how to be more efficient.

My questions:

• At what point do employees need to take some control?
• At what point do employers need to address workload situations?
• What happens when items both “important” and “urgent” get passed to next week’s to-do? 
  • What happens when this becomes a pattern rather than an anomaly?
• Yes, perfectionism is unrealistic.  Where is a reasonable line of standards of excellence?
• How can a person or organization reign in demands without damaging relationships?  

Nonprofit Competition

I just happened upon this Compensation Force blog post about benefits trends in the nonprofit sector in general.  I appreciate the blogger’s call to nonprofits to recruit talent!  Just because we’re willing to work for less money in order to not sell our souls doesn’t mean we’re not quality employees.  

She alluded to competition for this talent between nonprofits and for-profits, and more interestingly (and less directly) to competition among nonprofits themselves.  In my experience in nonprofits (granted, pretty limited to just a couple of years in Minnesota), it’s been intentionally non-competitive.  This is interesting because great employees definitely jump from organization to organization.  I’ve seen it a lot already.  We even sometimes joke about which organizations act as feeders for others.  

This leads me to re-think my perceptions of nonprofit competition.  It is there even if we’re unwilling to call it “competition.”  Yes, it has to do with salary, and yes, benefits too.  But I know there are other factors.  What are they?  What do nonprofits do to win the competition they stubbornly maintain is not there?

Top Three Supervisor Practices

I’ve been thinking a lot about program sustainability lately.  A big part of that is program management.  I thought it might be helpful to someone out there if I shared the Top Three things I really appreciate about my supervisor.  

1) She listens.  And she doesn’t just smile and nod – she asks questions and takes notes.

2) She doesn’t blame.  I don’t have to waste energy figuring out how to defend myself if I don’t do something perfectly.  I can spend that energy figuring out how to fix whatever went awry.  It’s one less thing to be stressed about and allows me to do my best work.

3) She asks for help when she needs it, and she helps us when we need it.  This sets a collaborative tone in our office culture.  We don’t just say we’re a team; we are a team.

To my supervisor, on the off chance she reads this: thank you.  

To everyone else:  Can you say the same about your supervisors in your life?  Can the people you supervise say the same about you?  Would you want them to?  What are the top three things you most appreciate in a supervisor?

Analyze Smart

I looked back at last week’s posts on investing time.  I still think the points that I made are valid, which is a good sign I guess.  

Something that framework overlooks is analyzing why the present feels the way it does.  Why do I feel overwhelmed today?  What is weighing on me?  What can I do about it?

For me it came down to a large, long-term database project I had taken on.  I was having a lot of trouble finding time to work on it; even though it was a huge investment in the program’s future, it kept getting trumped by the mini-crisis of the day.  

Time was very seriously running out.  Whenever I flee the office to work off-site I feel like it’s a bit of a cop-out, but I put any of those reservations aside.  The database was too important to worry about that.  I badgered around the office until I found a PC laptop to borrow.  I looked at my calendar, saw some blocks of time with nothing scheduled, and then I scheduled them as busy.  I told my supervisor I would be working on the database off-site at those times.  

Then I did it.  And we now have a database.

Why did it take me so long to do what I knew would work?  Is working at the local Bean Factory actually a cop-out?  What could I have done if I’d had no choice but to work on-site?

Preparing for the Future

I joined LinkedIn yesterday, and to me it seems very old-school.  I can see what the Free Range Librarian meant about when she called it “spectral.”  I think the only thing I’d add to her amazingly apt description would be “limiting.”  Even though there’s a lot more room to talk about what you do at work than there is on Facebook, something about LinkedIn makes me feel boxed-in.  I don’t know, maybe it was just the ghostly interface, or that it was new to me.  

Ok, you caught me, I was just saying that to appear more open-minded than I’m really feeling.

Still, I did let it search my gmail address book for contacts and sent requests to 13 people who already have profiles, so I feel that I did my duty for my future-self who may someday wish for a solid career network.

Organizing all of my groundwork for the future is becoming a challenge.  I dabble in maintaining my contacts, keeping up my résumé and work portfolio, and exploring different grad programs to find My Path.  It’s hard to know what I’ve already done and to stay focused enough to build upon it instead of starting over again every few months.  One online solution I’m trying out is del.icio.us, but it’s not quite what I was envisioning.  What else is out there?