How to Sharpen Your Saw In a Job Search #SevenHabits #StephenCovey

How to Sharpen Your Saw In a Job Search #SevenHabits #StephenCovey The seventh habit is sharpen your saw.  How do you do that as a job seeker? Your number one priority is (usually) to land your next job. Its a full-time job, its emotionally and mentally draining, and by the end of the day you are probably ready to drop.  How in the world can you sharpen your saw? Let me suggest that this is a great time to study and read.  Start with the job descriptions that you are looking at do you fully understand all of the phrases, words, and acronyms? If you do, could you write a paragraph or a page about each of them?  Could you even include some of your mini-stories. Know what you are doing? Polishing your professional skills, and preparing your messages that you might use in an interview or networking situation. Recently Ive been reevaluating my role in JibberJobber, and understanding my duties as a product manager. This has been for a long time, my dream job.  Im pretty much self-taught, since I never worked at a company that used the title product manager. But Ive been doing most or all of the PM tasks, including interfacing with my developers, customers, stake holders, designers, and planning roadmaps, go to market strategies, and figuring out what analytics and metrics make sense to monitor. As a product manager for JibberJobber my family (and team) completely depends on my ability to make enough right decisions, and lead my team to deliver the right solutions for our customers. The alternative is shutting down the business.  Im not interested in that. So, I am studying project manager topics. Even though I havent been formally trained as a product manager (I have a CIS degree, an MBA, was a developer, and a general manager for a software firm), Ive done all or most of the tasks that a product manager does. But am I doing them well? Thats what Im refining. Im taking time to learn my craft, and to get better at it. I need to get better for the sake of my team and my customers.  All of this will result in goodness for me and my family, as well as everyone involved with JibberJobber. When should you sharpen your saw?  Right now.  And moving forward, regularly. In my last job I spent all my time executing and performing, not studying and sharpening my own saw. When I hit the job market my saw was dull and virtually useless. I had to play catchup. During the four years that I was creating Pluralsight courses I let my JibberJobber saw get dull.  My team worked on it, but I didnt put as much time and effort into it as I should have. And now I find myself doing catch-up. Im resolved to not let this slip again. Continual education, either through reading, videos, or conversations with others, I will not let my skills get dull.  Even in a job search you owe it to yourself to spend a solid 30 minutes a day sharpening your saw. How to Sharpen Your Saw In a Job Search #SevenHabits #StephenCovey The seventh habit is sharpen your saw.  How do you do that as a job seeker? Your number one priority is (usually) to land your next job. Its a full-time job, its emotionally and mentally draining, and by the end of the day you are probably ready to drop.  How in the world can you sharpen your saw? Let me suggest that this is a great time to study and read.  Start with the job descriptions that you are looking at do you fully understand all of the phrases, words, and acronyms? If you do, could you write a paragraph or a page about each of them?  Could you even include some of your mini-stories. Know what you are doing? Polishing your professional skills, and preparing your messages that you might use in an interview or networking situation. Recently Ive been reevaluating my role in JibberJobber, and understanding my duties as a product manager. This has been for a long time, my dream job.  Im pretty much self-taught, since I never worked at a company that used the title product manager. But Ive been doing most or all of the PM tasks, including interfacing with my developers, customers, stake holders, designers, and planning roadmaps, go to market strategies, and figuring out what analytics and metrics make sense to monitor. As a product manager for JibberJobber my family (and team) completely depends on my ability to make enough right decisions, and lead my team to deliver the right solutions for our customers. The alternative is shutting down the business.  Im not interested in that. So, I am studying project manager topics. Even though I havent been formally trained as a product manager (I have a CIS degree, an MBA, was a developer, and a general manager for a software firm), Ive done all or most of the tasks that a product manager does. But am I doing them well? Thats what Im refining. Im taking time to learn my craft, and to get better at it. I need to get better for the sake of my team and my customers.  All of this will result in goodness for me and my family, as well as everyone involved with JibberJobber. When should you sharpen your saw?  Right now.  And moving forward, regularly. In my last job I spent all my time executing and performing, not studying and sharpening my own saw. When I hit the job market my saw was dull and virtually useless. I had to play catchup. During the four years that I was creating Pluralsight courses I let my JibberJobber saw get dull.  My team worked on it, but I didnt put as much time and effort into it as I should have. And now I find myself doing catch-up. Im resolved to not let this slip again. Continual education, either through reading, videos, or conversations with others, I will not let my skills get dull.  Even in a job search you owe it to yourself to spend a solid 30 minutes a day sharpening your saw.