Who Gets the Last Word on Steve Jobs? He Might.

By Tripp Mickle

“One of the things that excites me about archives is the warts and all,” said Courtney Chartier, an archivist at Columbia University who has worked on Martin Luther King Jr.’s archive and the papers of Tony Kushner, the playwright. “People are complicated, and that’s something we shouldn’t shy away from.”

The Steve Jobs Archive deviates from the repositories of other famous business leaders who largely left their material to corporate or library archives. About half of Harvard Business School’s 25 greatest business leaders of the 20th century left behind personal archives that are open to the public in libraries or museums, including Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Asa Candler, who built Coca-Cola.
Other iconic business founders such as Walt Disney, Sam Walton and Ray Kroc entrusted their papers to the companies they built, allowing those collections to become the cornerstone of corporate archives.

Much of that corporate archive material is closed to the public, but some companies, such as the Walt Disney Company, make personal correspondence, notes, speeches and other items available to authors for research.

“We don’t censor,” said Becky Cline, director of the Walt Disney archives. “We just vet.”

The new Jobs archive debuted with a minimalist website containing eight pieces of video, audio and writing that express what the archive calls Mr. Jobs’s “driving motivations in his own words.” The items, three-quarters of which were already public, can be accessed by clicking through maxims made famous by Mr. Jobs, including “make something wonderful and put it out there” and “pursue different paths.”

The next steps for the archive are shrouded in the kind of mystery associated with the way Mr. Jobs ran Apple. About all that’s been publicly disclosed is that Ms. Powell Jobs hired a documentary filmmaker to gather hundreds of oral histories about Mr. Jobs from former colleagues. Where that material will be stored and who will have access to it has not been revealed.


Read the full NYTimes article“One of the things that excites me about archives is the warts and all,” said Courtney Chartier, an archivist at Columbia University who has worked on Martin Luther King Jr.’s archive and the papers of Tony Kushner, the playwright. “People are complicated, and that’s something we shouldn’t shy away from.”

The Steve Jobs Archive deviates from the repositories of other famous business leaders who largely left their material to corporate or library archives. About half of Harvard Business School’s 25 greatest business leaders of the 20th century left behind personal archives that are open to the public in libraries or museums, including Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Asa Candler, who built Coca-Cola.
Other iconic business founders such as Walt Disney, Sam Walton and Ray Kroc entrusted their papers to the companies they built, allowing those collections to become the cornerstone of corporate archives.

Much of that corporate archive material is closed to the public, but some companies, such as the Walt Disney Company, make personal correspondence, notes, speeches and other items available to authors for research.

“We don’t censor,” said Becky Cline, director of the Walt Disney archives. “We just vet.”

The new Jobs archive debuted with a minimalist website containing eight pieces of video, audio and writing that express what the archive calls Mr. Jobs’s “driving motivations in his own words.” The items, three-quarters of which were already public, can be accessed by clicking through maxims made famous by Mr. Jobs, including “make something wonderful and put it out there” and “pursue different paths.”

The next steps for the archive are shrouded in the kind of mystery associated with the way Mr. Jobs ran Apple. About all that’s been publicly disclosed is that Ms. Powell Jobs hired a documentary filmmaker to gather hundreds of oral histories about Mr. Jobs from former colleagues. Where that material will be stored and who will have access to it has not been revealed.


Read the full NYTimes article for the complete article

How Steve Jobs Hired and Retained His Top Employees - A-players are worth their weight in gold. Here's how to treat them.

BY TOMMY MELLO

All it takes is one great employee to change the whole business. 

Just ask Steve Jobs. 

Here's what he said in a 1998 interview:

"I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream ... A small team of A-players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players." 

It's not just Steve Jobs. After interviewing more than 20 billionaires and 300 CEOs for his book, Geoff Smart emphasized the value of A-players:

"We define an A-player this way: a candidate who has at least a 90 percent chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10 percent of possible candidates could achieve."

That's been true in my experience, too -- 20 percent of your people will generate 80 percent of your results. My A-players get more five-star reviews, close more jobs, and charge more because they believe in the product and company. 

A-players are especially important when most industries are getting disrupted. Even in my industry, home service, there are vultures all over. Google and Amazon are coming in big time. If you don't have a team of A-players -- and you don't move fast -- you're screwed sooner or later. 

So how can you find and hire your best employees? Here's what I recommend: 

Create an "A-player avatar"

Hiring the wrong employees can cost you a fortune.​​ A study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) shows that an employee is worth six to nine months of their salary. If your employee has a $5,000 per month salary, you lose up to $45,000 when you let them go. 

So make sure you understand what the perfect employee is. Don't hire until you figure this out! Ask yourself the following questions to define your "A-player avatar":

• What are they like? Where do they hang out? (This helps you run ads to target them.)
• What are they motivated by? (Everyone's different: Some people might want PTO. Some people might want to go out of town regularly. Make a list of common motivations.)
• And, most important, what makes them great? Who's the perfect employee for your business?  

Recruit, don't hire

There were times when we were forced to hire people I didn't get along with. And I thought, "Man, there just aren't good people out there." Then I realized that recruiting -- finding great people -- is not putting an ad up and waiting for them to come to you! Recruiting is going out there and getting them. 

Think about this: Can you build a baseball team or a football team by just having people show up to the scrimmage? Or should you go out and get 'em? What's going to work better? 

The best employees are the ones who are recruited. The majority of your hires -- over half of your employees -- should be amazing people you recruit away from other companies! 

So, how do you do that? Call customers up and ask them if they know anybody who might fit a certain role. And, more important, ask your best employees.

Turn your A-players into recruiters - Read the rest of the Inc. article

 

Mark Cuban Says the Worst Career Advice is 'Follow Your Passion.' What Should You Do Instead?

By Jeff Haden

Ask just about any motivational speaker or career expert. Or ask Steve Jobs:  As the Apple co-founder once said, "You've got to find what you love. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking."  

Most people believe passion comes first.

But not Mark Cuban. When Adam Grant asked him if there was a "worst piece of career advice you've gotten," Cuban said:

Follow your passion? No.

Follow your effort. No one quits anything they're good at.

While passion can spark effort, the reverse is more often true. Effort, and the improvement that results, creates passion. Do something poorly? You probably dread doing it. Do something well? You enjoy it -- and the better you get, the more you like doing it.

Science agrees, especially where starting a business is concerned. According to a study published in Academy of Management Journal, the more effort entrepreneurs put into their startups or side hustles, the more enthusiastic they get about their businesses. 

As startup founders gain skill, expertise, and experience, their enthusiasm grows -- with or without early financial success. Effort, and resulting improvement, creates passion.

Not the other way around. 

'Follow Your Passion' Can Be Disastrous - Find out why and the rest of the Inc. article

 

7 updates your résumé needs now

Without a refresh, your résumé can quickly look dated. Here are seven ways to give it a quick update.

BY GWEN MORAN 

Résumé-writing typically comes with a list of best practices. Tailor your résumé to the job. Focus on the impact you made instead of the tasks you performed. And, most of all, be sure it’s accurate and free of typos. A recent analysis by job search platform Adzuna found that meaning almost roughly two-thirds of résumés contained at least one mistake. More than 13% of the résumés analyzed contained five or more errors.

But, beyond that, there are a few more nuanced details that can make your résumé look modern—or dated, says career coach and résumé consultant Marjorie Sherlock. “The résumé has evolved as a marketing tool, driven by what the market is telling us,” she says. And much of what was expected even 10 years ago is “completely dead.”

The risk of submitting a résumé that looks a little behind the times is what it says about you: Perhaps you’re not up on trends or how industries evolve, Sherlock explains. So, if it’s been a few years since you’ve updated your professional calling card, give it a look with these tips in mind.

4) GET THE FORMAT RIGHT

While applicant tracking systems have come a long way, it’s still a good idea to avoid heavy graphics or tables to present information in your résumé, Sherlock says. And use one space after a period rather than two. (Word processing programs automatically adjust spacing—typewriters didn’t—so, there’s no need for the extra space.)

** I have looked at a lot of resume that would have looked nice if they were printed out but the parsing function doesn't like all of the columns and graphics so it cuts down on your odds of being found through keyword searches.

5) BE SUCCINCT

Résumé consultant Donna Svei limits clients’ résumés to 700 to 800 words. “Very few recruiters and hiring managers want to read more than that,” she says.

Similarly, she advises avoiding large blocks of text, which are hard to read, especially on mobile devices. People start losing interest after about four lines, she says. “Technology shifted résumés from paper to screens, and job seekers who haven’t adapted to the change with shorter paragraphs that are easier to read on screens look dated,” she says.

AVOID TRIPS DOWN MEMORY LANE

Periodically, it’s a good idea to cull the information you include on your résumé to keep it more focused on today. Since 2007, the pandemic and Great Recession have changed so much about work and the way things get done. Unless the experience is “stunningly relevant” to your goals, consider dropping it in favor of more recent and relevant experience. Awards, speeches, and publications older than about four years may be past their expiration date, she adds.

Read the full Fast Company for all 7 updates article

Networking on Slack Is a New Way to Find a Job, but It Takes Work

By Lindsay Ellis

Networking forums on Slack have become fertile ground for finding new jobs fast. Getting into the right professional group and navigating its dynamics can take some effort.

A popular workplace communication tool, Slack is becoming a growing force in professional networking and recruiting. Many industry and professional groups have formed on the platform in recent years, allowing those in marketing, cybersecurity and other fields to exchange career advice and job leads. Members of these invite-only communities often connect each other with hiring managers at their companies, putting them on the fast track for openings. 

But job seekers first have to gain access. And some Slack networking groups can be like awkward parties, members say: A few people occasionally show up, and no one has much to say.

To make the most of these private forums in your job search, it is important to know how to find the people with connections to open the right career doors and how to navigate each group’s social norms, veteran Slack networkers say. Just as in traditional meet-and-greets, for instance, it’s wise to introduce yourself and show collegiality before asking for favors. 

As Alexis Scott looks to make a career transition, the 39-year-old says she is honing her Slack networking approach. She wrangled invitations to join several online communities for professional women. Some she discovered by finding Slack offshoots of other professional forums—such as Ladies Get Paid, a career-networking and professional development site for women.  

In each of the 10 groups she has joined, she has figured out how to quickly gauge how engaged members are and whether they are posting worthwhile job openings. She says she looks for groups where users respond to one another’s questions. “If someone posts, are people replying, or is it sitting in dead air?” she notes.  

If things seem quiet, Mrs. Scott says she won’t hang out there, aside from occasional check-ins.

Here are more tips she and other Slack networkers offer:

Find the right community

Once you find a Slack group of professional peers, getting in isn’t tough, many group members and founders say. But finding the right group can take legwork. Slack Technologies, which is owned by Salesforce.com Inc. , says it doesn’t know how many networking groups exist on its platform. 

“It does seem to be kind of an insider club,” says Jimmy Daly, who co-founded Superpath, a Slack group for content marketers. “For the most part, people let you in on the secret as they discover it.”

Mr. Daly, 36, recommends asking professional networking organizations about relevant Slack groups, and googling “Slack community” and your career field—for instance, “engineer.” Some of Superpath’s roughly 8,500 members discovered the group, he says, by coming across a tweet or blog post listing relevant Slack forums. Others did so by word-of-mouth.

Some more recently established Slack groups do direct outreach via social media. When the Cybersecurity Marketing Society set up on Slack in 2020, its founders sent LinkedIn messages to people in the field, urging them to join, says Gianna Whitver, one of the group’s creators. 

Not all Slack groups are equally useful

Read the full WSJ article for more tips and info

 

 

 

How To Choose The Right Next Job

George Bradt

In an earlier article I suggested a BRAVE approach to finding your next job. It gives you a framework for adding deliberate thinking to an emotional process and your ultimate choice. The crux of the issue is getting at the right weighting of the dimensions driving your choice – especially between your short-term ideal job criteria and long-term goals to optimize the growth potential of your next role. Ask:

• Where to play to focus your job search on where you can be most successful next.
• What matters most to you in terms of the balance of doing good for others, things you’re good at and doing good for yourself.
• How you can win to sharpen your focus on what makes you differentially valuable to potential employers.
• How to connect to guide your message and story.
• How to understand and communicate the impact you can have on potential employers.

Then:

1. List your likes and dislikes - your raw data pulled from past activities and jobs - about specifics, not generalities.
2. Lay out your ideal job criteria.
3. Identify your long-term goals.
4. Create a broad range of options.
5. Make choices by evaluating your options against your criteria and goals.

Job Search Steps

Prepare your positioning and messaging before contacting any prospective employers. 

Between your first contact and their offer, all you’re doing is selling. Everything you say and do, including every question you ask, should help potential employers understand and believe you have the right combination of strengths, motivation and fit to help them. You can’t turn down a job you haven’t been offered.

An offer or multiple offers switches you from selling mode to buying mode. Do your due diligence to understand potential organizational, role and personal risks. Rule out potential jobs with too much risk for you.

Read the full Forbes article to learn about

Job choice

and

Ideal job criteria versus long-term goals

 

 

 

 

5 factors that will make you more promotable

By Jennifer Kraszewski

When I was seven years old, I decided that I wanted to raise chickens. For some, this might be a little odd. Even in my small Oklahoma town, a young girl managing chickens isn’t an everyday sight. But I was committed. Thankfully, my beloved grandad was all in and even encouraged me to consider starting a business selling eggs.

My time as a chicken manager was chaotic but lucrative (more on that later). Those days offered something else: opportunities to fail, learn, and experience deep joy from a job well done. The business world isn’t a chicken coop, but it’s had its fair share of chaos the last couple of years. As an employee, you have the desire to feel valued. Maybe you’re considering a career jump. Perhaps an opportunity that speaks to who you are, holistically, and what you can offer. And in return, you’re wanting more.

Within the unexpected is an opportunity to step up and stand out right where you are. As the vice president of human resources at a high-growth S&P 500 company, I’ve had the privilege of seeing team members soar to new heights in their careers. At Paycom, we move quickly. In my role, I expect and notice excellence. Promoting from within is competitive advantage for successful businesses. It fosters institutional knowledge and loyalty. Unfortunately, the flip side of the equation can be costly. A workplace study from Gallup reveals the cost of replacing an employee is as much as 200% of the original worker’s salary.

For those looking to position themselves for a promotion, below are some beneficial traits to consider.

1) Be adaptable

Adaptability’s value is only going up. Flexibility and the ability to manage change are imperative now more than ever. Adaptability fatigue is behind us. Let’s settle in to our new normal and take a breath. As a little girl, my grandad inspired me to create my own egg company. I was seven years old, and in my mind, anything was possible. I began selling eggs around the neighborhood and quickly found out that there were a lot of neighbors and a lot of eggs, but only one me. Instead of quitting, I did what any tenacious girl would do: I found a few more baskets and asked my friends to help. When managers look to promote, they’re not looking for employees who restate the problems. Believe me, we know the problems. Leaders offer solutions. Leaders find the baskets and make it happen.

2) Take initiative

In my career and life, I’ve observed the importance of pitching in before someone asks you. I’ve carried that with me and promoted team members who have the tenacity to show they want more responsibility and can handle it once given. Taking advantage of professional development opportunities demonstrates the drive to learn and perfect your skills. Extra points if your company provides professional development, leadership trainings and growth opportunities, through HR technology accessible 24/7. This is direct access to training and upskilling so you’re able to succeed where you are and develop skills for tomorrow. You should be in control of your data and track your goals through tech software.

When I’m looking to promote someone, employees thinking steps ahead and prioritizing their own development sets my mind at ease and shows me they are strategic thinkers.

Read all 5 factors and the complete Fast Company article