The Advertisement You’ll Never See

Here’s an advertisement you’ll probably never see:

“Wanted: people to whom I can give money. Send brochure and cover letter to We’re Giving Money, 123 E. Main St …”

So if that’s fantasy-land in fundraising, what makes you think it works for your career?

“But I see advertisements for jobs all the time,” I can hear you say. You do. But what’s your chance of getting one of those jobs? Not nearly the same as it would be if you identify prospective employers, set up times when you can meet them — whether one-to-one or through group networking — and they see you as the person to whom they want to give money, er, I mean a job.

The process is remarkably similar.

So the career lesson? No, it’s not “don’t read the advertisements,” but it’s see the ads for what they are: a chance to indulge your fantasies. Worth responding to? Yes, but not dependable. The real opportunities, like a real charitable gift, take a lot more work.

Useless Flutes.

When was the last time you saw a wood column — real wood, not wood around a steel beam — that was a height over your head? If you live somewhere that has grand buildings constructed before 1870, you have a chance.

Of course, the ancient Greeks built thousands of buildings that required columns. They found that to strengthen the columns, instead of simply putting up a hunk of trimmed log, if they cut ‘flutes” into the sides — those long, vertical indentations that make the column look “scalloped” around the edges — the column could hold more weight.

That was nice, but the ancients’ ability to carve stone moved forward, and after a while, there was no need to cut wood (and my guess is that wood became expensive), and stone, which could bear so much more weight — became the preferred method of column supports.

Yet the basic design never changes — even to this day. We think that all the sculpted edges are for show, but once they held a real purpose.

How is this a career issue? Think. I’ll bet there’s lots that you do today that once served a purpose but now is just a habit. It’s easy to keep those old habits for our own comfort or vanity, but they really serve no purpose at all. Getting rid of them could let you build a modern, stronger pillar for your career.

Discrimination Raises Its Ugly Head, Legally.

Employment discrimination can raise its ugly head in all sorts of ways. If not race, then age. If not sex, then sexual preference. If not the disabled, then the faithful. Every time someone discriminates — illegal or not — in their own mind it’s justified. After all, THOSE people can’t/don’t/won’t (or not) something that makes most of them unsuitable for the job. Of course this is usually dead opposite the empirical evidence, but why let facts get in the way of a handy assumption?!

Before you think that this is a problem of THOSE people — THOSE bigots or THOSE unenlightened — point that shaky, gnarled finger right back at yourself. Yes, we all do it — even the best intended of us.

So it’s not too surprising to learn in a recent newscast of the latest (and legal) discrimination trend: unemployment. According to the story, there is a trend to overtly do what people have been subtly doing for years (sound familiar?) — putting out signs that say “current unemployed need not apply.”

I can hear you say now, “Hey, that’s not fair!” But who said that life was fair? The assumption is that the currently employed are more valuable candidates because in the current economic turmoil they were the ones their employer kept.

There’s a whole lot wrong with this logic, starting from the assumption that you’re letting a past employer’s judgment — someone you never met, running an operation your never saw — make a decision for you. Let’s not even go to “last in, first out” employment policies, or that even in the best of economies good people leave or lose their jobs. But it is what it is, for good or ill.

How is this a career lesson in NPOs? It’s certainly not to keep you in a job that’s not right and not to depress you any further if you’re between paid work. After all, even great fundraisers are unwillingly unemployed from time-to-time. Besides, most unemployed that I know will work twice as hard on their next job because they see the downside of not having that job. Just see it for what it is: an attempt by some people to get out of the hard work of actually investigating a candidate’s abilities. Unfortunately, what’s meant as a risk reducer ends up being a gain limiter. Their loss.

So, no great solutions on this one. No witty endings -– just know about it, and keep your eyes open for great people who are between jobs. There are some fine people out there -– don’t be afraid to give them a chance.

Hi Ho, Silver, Away!

For those of us of a certain age, we have vivid memories of the Lone Ranger (ironic, huh, since it was filmed in black and white) taming the American West with his colleague Tonto and a belt full of silver bullets!

Since then (and maybe before then) a “silver bullet” has become a metaphor for a direct, once and done solution to a vexing problem. Everyone wants a “silver bullet” solution to whatever they do.

It’s a great fantasy, but I’m sorry to say that in the REAL days of old, silver bullets were a myth. The old lead ones -– heavy, dull (and lethal) — really did the job.

It’s the same with your career. While getting a promotion, raise or new job assignment might seem like a silver bullet solution to all your personal issues, you’ll quickly realize that they’re at best silver plated. The real solutions are base(ic) — like a lead bullet.

So even if you get the new job with the raise in the most exciting place you’ve worked, keep up the basics that got you there — the networking, the teaching, the writing… whatever got you recognized in the first place. That way you’ll always have bullets in your belt (you can paint them silver) for when the bad guys -– that job loss, the tough boss, the budget cuts — come to town!

The Shiny Penny

Have you seen the new U.S. penny design? It took me by surprise. I guess I hadn’t been paying attention to what my local mint was producing (yes, local to me — the mint’s in Philadelphia). But what struck me first (yeah, no pun intended) was how shiny it was. That caught my eye, and then I looked at it more closely. Marveling over the penny certainly took my attention from what I was doing at the time.

A good friend of mine, and a marketing expert, Jim Shulman, calls this the “shiny penny syndrome.” What he means is that something “bright, shiny and different,” like the new U.S. penny, can take away our concentration from what’s really important in our lives. I certainly spent more than a penny’s worth of time examining the new penny design. Just like something new — like a new idea for a way to raise money or a new type of donor to approach — can take our attention.

How is this a career issue? Because in our careers, we see “shiny pennies” all of the time. Maybe it’s a new type of job that you never considered before or an organization whose mission suddenly strikes you as “the latest, greatest.”

But before you pick up that penny and spend any time with it, you need to ask yourself, “Is this for me?” Shiny pennies can take you off focus and in a direction that may feel good momentarily, but in the end most aren’t worth the time you put in. So think, before that coin, or new opportunity, takes your attention –- and costs you a lot more.