Career

Find Your Strengths and Your Sweet Spot

I know StrengthsFinder 2.0 has been mentioned in the GovLoop community, but I want to vouch for it.  If you haven’t already taken this online survey, check it out at http://strengths.gallup.com/default.aspx. The survey tests your preferences among 34 themes and spits out a nice report on your top five strengths.  These are the areas whereRead… Read more »

Would You Rather be Lucky or Good?

If you think about it a moment, an early experience with bias was our first job application. A job announcement is essentially a statement of bias. The employer can write the job application any way they choose. They determine the skills, qualifications, requirements, educational standards and salary levels for the job. They decide how longRead… Read more »

Innovate From The Inside Out: Create An Innovation Plan

Recent “Innovate from the Inside Out” blogs focused on forming teams and generating ideas. Now it’s time to create an innovation plan. Ideally you will create a plan that conforms to a larger organizational innovation strategy. No such strategy in the organization? That’s OK. Think of your innovation plan as you’d think of a projectRead… Read more »

Why You Should Be Scheduling Informational Interviews

Whether you’re deep in the job hunt or just curious about new possibilities, an informational interview can be a fantastic way to get your foot in the door at a new company, build contacts, and score new opportunities. What’s an informational interview? An informational interview is essentially a face-to-face conversation that lets you get informationRead… Read more »

(Old) Girls Who Code – And Why You Should, Too

I loved hearing the stories this past December coming from organizations like www.code.org and www.GirlsWhoCode.com, who are working to inspire people to learn to write computer code.   To show just how important Silicon Valley thinks this is, over $75 million was raised by Code.org to fund their “Hour of Code” push this past December. ThatRead… Read more »

New Year, New Resume

Every year we make resolutions…and we break them. If you are planning on applying for a position in 2015, reviewing and/or updating your government résumé is a resolute you need to make and just can’t break…especially if you are that government employee who wants to climb the GS scale ladder. In my experience, employees attemptRead… Read more »