Frustration Friday: Credit Where Credit Is Due

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You know who needs more respect, credit, and wads of cash in their paychecks?

People working in job placement.  The recruiters, the job counsellors, and the like.  Wether they work freelance or with big placement companies, they deserve more recognition for what they do and what they go through.  Their job is not easy.

Consider the lot of someone working at, say, in recruiting or an outplacing company and all the challenges they face.  They have to deal with clients who have laundry lists of needs that no normal human being could meet, or two sentences of requirements that say nothing.  They have to read the Resumes From Hell – in this case the level of Hell where people can't describe their careers or skills, and proper punctuation is something that happens to other people.  This is their lot.

Now, beyond the challenges that people in placement and job searching and the like face, they also face the fact they don't get much credit for the work they do and the things they go through.  When's the last time you've seen them mentioned in the news favorably, or beyond a source of statistics?

Honestly, especially in this economy, they don't get enough credit.

Job searching and placement is a set of skills, ones that take effort and deliberate action to master.  Doing it for someone else is even more challenging – and many people out there have indeed mastered it.  They're just not going to get much recognition for it.

So let us raise a glass (probably of your favorite Energy Drink) to the people who do all this: the recruiters and counsellors and placement experts.  They've mastered the job search skills and knowledge and pass it on to others.

This Frustration Friday, let's acknowledge their frustration and recognize people who place us in jobs, and the hard work they do.

– Steven Savage

Failure Is A Sign you Tried

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So you failed.  You tried to finish an art project and it didn't work.  You tried to get a job and didn't get it.  I'm sure you've had recent or past failures that you gave it your all for, and it didn't work.

These are the moments to sit back, look, and realize that there is one good thing.

You showed you could make the effort.

Yes, you failed, perhaps big time, perhaps spectacularly.  But here's the thing to remember – no matter what happened you were able to bring the effort to bear.

It may not have been the right effort, it may have been too much or too little, started too late or too early.  But you proved you can MAKE the effort.

It's important to remember these things, especially in our darker moments of self-loathing.  We have to remember that, flaws aside, we can bring our resources and skills, and energies to bear towards a goal.

When we remember that we're capable of effort, it takes the sting off of failure, and reminds us of what we're capable of.

It reminds us of the resources and enthusiasms and abilities we have.  It reminds us of all we did right.

It reminds us that we can do it again.

So next time you think you failed, appreciate the effort you made.  Any mistakes aside, at least you made the effort.

– Steven Savage

That’s A Lot of Business Cards . . .

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When talking with an artist at Anime North, they'd noticed it seemed they were collecting an awful lot of business cards.  By the end of the convention I had to agree – it seemed that a lot more people had business cards, be they for their own business or just personal contact.  I certainly left with quite a few of them.

Perhaps it's just me, but I honestly feel people are using business cards a lot more, including for personal contact and for their hobbies.  It's to the point where I think we may need a new term for "non-business" business cards.

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