5 Secrets to Getting Never-Ending Job Offers! - Guest Post by David Mensah

5 Secrets to Getting Never-Ending Job Offers! - Guest Post by David Mensah Last week I wrote about the importance of follow-up and feedback for success in your business or job search. The article, Do These * 2 * Things and Get Amazing Results in Your Business OR Job Search, really was about how to have fruitful conversations and build valuable connections. This week, my good friend and long-time business writing client, David Mensah, shares his wisdom on a very related topic: how to create a stream of job and work offers through  the art of talking to people. Guest post by David Mensah Imagine this experience: You’re in the middle of a conversation with a friend, colleague or new acquaintance, when that person suddenly interrupts the flow of the conversation to offer you some form of employment! For most of my life, I have had that experience on a regular basis, and I have ultimately built a career as a leadership trainer and executive coach as a result. So when I started to expand my consulting practice to include career coaching, I wanted to see whether I could train people to do what I have done successfully in my own professional life: generate employment opportunities consistently, both in official interviews and everyday conversations, whether or not they are looking for a job. Here are my top 5 recommendations for creating â€Å"the never-ending job offer†: BE EXCITED: Choose a career that sparks your passion, and let that passion show! Your excitement is contagious. I can always tell when others are passionate about their careers. Genuine excitement is interesting and contagious, while feigned excitement is forced and boring. Discover your true calling, even if it doesnt make sense or scares you (are you an accountant who always wanted to be a dancer?) Your career is as personal as it gets and it’s worth finding out- and sharing- what lights you up. BE INTERESTED IN OTHERS: When people are authentically curious about me, I feel lucky and safe and I want to know more about that person in return. That’s the type of interest you want to create in others. When talking about your life, make sure to make time to explore the lives of those around you. You might ask questions about people’s background, work successes and challenges, or families. Explore their values and what’s important to them. Train yourself to find something interesting about everyone, including friends, networking contacts, and yes, even interviewers! In every conversation I make it my practice to find 10 things I like about the other person in the first 5 minutes. It makes me listen differently. Keep asking questions until you find an area where the other person is energized, and focus there. You might be surprised at the benefits that come back to you. IN AN INTERVIEW, ASK QUESTIONS: Come prepared to every job or informational interview with questions you want to ask. And don’t stop there. Frankly, if you are not interested enough in the middle of an interview to have a few spontaneous questions, you are probably not interested in the job or the company. Questions emerge from a natural desire to know more- to delve deeply into things that matter to you. When you ask people questions, they learn a lot about how you think and feel about them, their company, and, if applicable, the available position. Your questions reveal something about you at the same time as you learn about someone or something else. BE CONNECTED: People hire people they feel good about and this feeling arises from a sense of connection. To create affinity with people where it might not exist automatically, consider telling stories about yourself emphasizing your humanity. I have been known to talk about my most recent business failure or how my ego gets in the way of my dreams. Stories about our failures and flaws allow others to connect deeply with us and push people quickly past the surface differences that keep us separate. While connecting with others comes easily to some, it can be challenging to some people. Do your personal growth work so that you can easily connect to the new people in your life without internal stories about you or them getting in the way. SPEAK ABOUT YOURSELF USING THEIR LANGUAGE: As any conversation progresses, I learn more and more about the person I am speaking with. Once you know enough about someone, it is much easier to tell them about yourself, because now you can reference the parts of their life that help them understand yours. When I am talking with someone who values their family over everything, it is natural for me to use my love and appreciation for my puppy to describe how relationships motivate my professional successes and failures. When I talk to people who care primarily about making a difference for others, I describe my interest in coaching as a way to teach skills that they can pass on to everyone they touch. The more you truly listen to someone, the more you can use the language they use and speak to their values. You will make deep connections with people who feel seen and understood by you, and who will want to find ways to spend more time in your presence- perhaps by offering you a job. When my clients embrace these practices, not just in interviews but in every interaction with others, they start generating job opportunities. Getting excited about your own career and cultivating an authentic interest in others results in others’ sitting up and taking notice. Your never-ending job opportunity will happen one conversation at a time. David Mensah is a leadership trainer and executive coach living and working in New York City. Please connect with him on twitter @DKBWAVE or learn more about his work at www.DKBWAVE.com.

Definition and Examples of Eponyms in English

Definition and Examples of Eponyms in English An eponym is a word that is derived from the proper name of a real or mythical person or place. Adjectives: eponymic and eponymous. Over time, the name of a well-known person (such as Machiavelli,  Italian Renaissance  author of The Prince) may come to stand for an attribute associated with that person (in Machiavellis case, cunning and duplicity). Etymology: from the Greek, named after   Pronunciation: EP-i-nim Examples and Observations We are well-armed for battle in a Machiavellian world of reputation manipulation, and one of our most important weapons is the delusion that we are noncombatants.(Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Basic Books, 2006)Jeff: You probably just Britta’d the test results.Britta: No, I doublewait! Are people using my name to mean ‘make a small mistake’?Jeff: Yes.(Joel McHale and Gillian Jacobs in Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps. Community, October 27, 2011)[Alton] Brown can fill an entire episode on popcorn, teaching you how to MacGyver a nifty, cheap popper (hint: a stainless-steel bowl and some perforated foil).(Entertainment Weekly, August 14, 2009)The crowd parted reluctantly, and [Lance Armstrong] glided off, Batmanning through the crowd toward the start line.(Daniel Coyle, Lance Armstrongs War. HarperCollins, 2005)Lily: Dont Ted-out about it.Ted: Did you just use my name as a verb?Barney: Oh, yeah, we do that behi nd your back. Ted-out: to overthink. Also, see Ted-up. Ted-up: to overthink with disastrous consequences. For example, Billy Tedded-up when heTed: All right, I get it!(Matchmaker. How I Met Your Mother, 2005) Americans now nibble their way through two billion popsicles a year; their favorite flavor is a Jaggeresque red cherry.(Oliver Thring, Consider Ice Lollies. The Guardian, July 27, 2010)Sandwich: named after John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718–1792), a British politician.Cardigan: a knitted garment, such as a sweater or jacket, that opens down the front. Named after the Seventh Earl of Cardigan, James Thomas Brudenell (1797–1868), a British army officer.Andy Bernard: I really schruted it.Michael Scott: What?Andy Bernard: Schruted it. Its just this thing that people say around your office all the time. Like, when you screw something up in a really irreversible way, you schruted it. I dont know where it comes from though. Do you think it comes from Dwight Schrute?Michael Scott: I dont know. Who knows how words are formed.(Traveling Salesmen, The Office, Jan. 11, 2007)Lets not Rumsfeld Afghanistan.(Senator Lindsey Graham, quoted in Time magazine, Aug. 24, 2009)S axophone: named after Belgian instrument maker  Adolphe Sax. Other eponyms in English include boycott, braille, camellia, chauvinist, dahlia, diesel, dunce, gardenia, gerrymander, guillotine, hooligan, leotard, lynch, magnolia, ohm, pasteurize, poinsettia, praline, quixotic, ritzy, sequoia, shrapnel, silhouette, volt, watt, and zeppelin.​ Achieving Wordhood As a word,  eponymous is a bit anonymous itself. Its moment in the sun came with the release of REM’s album Eponymous, a subtle dig at musicians who name records after themselves, such as Peter Gabriel, whose first four albums are all entitled, Peter Gabriel. In short, an eponym is anything that’s ever been named after anybody. . . .But a name only crosses into true wordhood once it is no longer used as a reference. When we speak of hectoring wives and philandering husbands, it is without a picture of valiant Hector or lover-boy Philander popping into our minds, the way a bespectacled Viennese man with a pipe does when we say Freudian slip.(John Bemelmans Marciano, Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words. Bloomsbury, 2009) Eponyms and Allusions An eponym is similar to an allusion, referring to a specific famous person to link his or her attributes with someone else. Using an eponym well can be something of a balancing act; if the person is too obscure, no one will understand your reference, but if its too well known, it may come across as a clichà ©.(Brendan McGuigan, Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities for Student Writers. Prestwick House, 2007) Skutniks When CNNs Jeff Greenfield assured the crowd, I havent planted a Skutnik here, I stopped him: I had heard of a Sputnik, the Russian word for the first Soviet satellite, but what was a Skutnik?Greenfield directed me to his book Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow! about the media failure on election night: A Skutnik is a human prop, used by a speaker to make a political point. The name comes from Lenny Skutnik, a young man who heroically saved lives after the Air Florida plane crash in Washington in 1982 and who was introduced by President Reagan during his State of the Union speech.The introduction of heroes became a staple in presidential addresses to joint sessions of Congress. In 1995, the columnist William F. Buckley was one of the first to use the name as an eponym: President Clinton was awash with Skutniks.(William Safire, On Language. The New York Times, July 8, 2001) The Lighter Side of Eponyms First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.(Steve Martin)