Over the past five-plus years, I have written more than 550 blogs, a veritable book of career advice, lessons on leadership, and stories from my misbegotten youth working in my parent’s retail bakery, as well as my early career experience as a crime writer and investigative reporter for a major daily newspaper in Houston, the business boom and murder capital of Texas in the 1970s.
This week I had an epiphany. Why am I doing this all by myself? It goes without saying, I hope, that writing a blog three days a week is no easy task. Nope, I am not looking for sympathy. I love writing it but there are days, at the end of a long flight, or series of exhaustive candidate interviews, that it is a challenge to produce something that is interesting and engaging – aka, entertaining.
Today I met with my team to discuss future blog topics. Becky Pearce, my excellent assistant and social media guru, along with my career transitions partner, Nancy Swain of Strategic Intelligence, to discuss blog topics. Strategic Intelligence offers an innovative and cost-effective career transitions/outplacement service for hospitals and other healthcare clients. Amazingly, they agreed – they volunteered with no loaded gun pointed at their heads — to be blog contributors. Eureka, my Christmas came early!
Together, we agreed that our goal is to provide the best content and commentary covering career management and leadership excellence.
Following a lively conversation over tap water and brownies, here are some of the upcoming topics we plan to cover.
- Unemployed: What do you do after you have cleaned out the garage and painted the house?
- How old is too old? Your work history and the resume
- Unemployed: Most candidates don’t know what they don’t know
- How to network: the key to successfully managing your career
- How to maximize the power of Linked In
- Understand social media: The difference between Twitter, Linked In and Face Book
- Early careerists: You are more than a GPA and a new degree
- Relevant early experience: Jobs, experience you should keep on your resume
- The value of career journaling: exercises that will improve leadership
- Give me reason: To look at your resume, to invite you for an interview, to offer you a job!
- So a recruiter calls: What that means and where do you go from there
- Expensive resume overhaul: How is that working for you?
- Career management in a digital age: How to maximize your email effectiveness
- Eyes wide shut: Questions to ask before you select an outplacement coach
- Transition coaching: The good, the bad and the downright ugly of outplacement
- The art (and technology) of the resume: How the digital age is changing career management rules
- Rock and Roll and workplace communication: Please don’t let me be understand
- Don’t marry your next job
- If you are yelling, it is hard to listen
- Understanding your value proposition: Strategies for a lifetime of successful career management
- Healthcare CEOs: “Thems that have been fired, and thems that are gonna be”
- Healthcare at 202o: “A three-legged horse race that someone is going to win but it is not going to be pretty.”
- The dream job offer at a bad time: How to manage the spouse, the kids and your your career without going into a ditch
- The physician executive: Opportunities to improve quality, enhance safety and return to our true north
- Healthcare in 2020: Five critical skills to lead transformation
- Healthcare expansion: So what are you planning to do with those empty beds in 2020?
- Talent management: Thoughts on how to retain the best during tough times
- If you hate change, this is a bad time to be in healthcare
- Career change: Getting into healthcare sounds nice but it is harder than you think
- Restructuring: How to treat employees whose jobs are being eliminated
- So doctor, do you really want to be a CEO? Five steps to success
- Sorry to tell you, but career management is a lifelong pursuit
Whew, that was a lot of work. However, this proposed list of topics will only take us through the next several months. So if you have issues you would like covered, or if you have had career experiences that you would like to share to help others, let me know.
You can reach John at PublicAffairs@JohnGSelf.com.