Radio Talking Book

Radio Talking Book

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Radio Talking Book episodes

  • 5 biggest career mistakes college graduates make

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music

    5 biggest career mistakes college graduates make

    June 25, 2016 — 2:00pm
    While some of the estimated 3.8 million students earning college degrees this year will continue their studies, others will start their careers right away. Here is a rundown of five of the biggest college graduate career mistakes, along with tips to avoid them:
    Believing first jobs have to be dream jobs.

    Your first job out of college is just that — your first job and a steppingstone to something better.

    "It's fine to have an end goal in mind," said James Rice, the head of digital marketing at WikiJob. "But the reality is that you're unlikely to walk into that role straight after university, so don't pass up on great roles that will give you the skills and experience you will ultimately need to land that dream job."

    While some of the estimated 3.8 million students earning college degrees this year will continue their studies, others will start their careers right away. Here is a rundown of five of the biggest college graduate career mistakes, along with tips to avoid them:

    Believing first jobs have to be dream jobs.

    Advertisement:

    Your first job out of college is just that — your first job and a steppingstone to something better.

    "It's fine to have an end goal in mind," said James Rice, the head of digital marketing at WikiJob. "But the reality is that you're unlikely to walk into that role straight after university, so don't pass up on great roles that will give you the skills and experience you will ultimately need to land that dream job."
    Waiting until graduation to network.
    Some students mistakenly feel that they have to wait until they graduate to network for possible internships and jobs. In actuality, they should start networking as soon as they enter college.
    Graduates who put off networking until after getting their degrees might not secure employment as fast as those who had four-year head starts. Using a résumé from a cookie-cutter
    Hiring managers are good at spotting cookie-cutter or generic résumés, and this type of laziness can result in missed opportunities.
    Customizing a résumé might consume more of your time, as you will need to include language and keywords from the job description. But the effort pays off in that you are more likely to stand out from the crowd.
    Being afraid to take risks.
    Eric Brantner, co-founder of Scribblrs.com, a website that offers blogging tips, says your 20s are the best time to take risks.
    "The biggest mistake I see is college grads feeling they have to take the first big corporate job that comes their way for security," said Brantner. "This is your chance to go out on your own and be an entrepreneur without the stresses of raising a family."
    Accepting a bad job.
    Some graduates are so desperate for work that they are willing to accept any position that comes along.
    "It's important to get a job, but it's also worth waiting if the only offers you have are for jobs outside your field or area of expertise," said Jim Wang, founder of the money blog Wallet Hacks Wang.

    4 min
  • Radio Talking Book Network: What is the Radio Talking Book? Spotlight

    Radio Talking book Network provides audio versions of the written word. News, articles, publishings and up to date breaking daily news. Check it out at www.MNSSB.org/RTB and the password is RTB

    You can follow the Blind Abilities Teen Cast Channel on the Audioboom app by searching for BATeenCast Channel. We are also at BlindAbilities.com on the web.

    You can find out more about RadioTalkingBook and State Services for the blind on the web at www.MNSSB.org

    23 min
  • Learning to Use VoiceOver on the Mac and iOS with Audio Tutorials from Mac for the Blind #RTB

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. I’m Stuart Holland.

    (music)
    From: AFB Access World Magazines
    Learning to Use VoiceOver on the Mac and iOS with Audio Tutorials from Mac for the Blind
    Jamie Pauls
    If you are a technology enthusiast, chances are good that you have placed a new Mac, iPhone, or iPad on your Christmas list. As the size of Apple devices continues to shrink, many of them will fit in a decent-sized stocking. Assuming that you are fortunate enough to receive a new Mac or iOS device for Christmas, you now have the thrill of learning to use your new gadget. After all, VoiceOver, Apple's built-in screen reader, is a part of any new product you receive. But is it really that easy? Might there, in fact, be a bit of learning curve when it comes to grasping the concepts of the OS X operating system found on the Mac, or the iOS operating system that comes on your new iPhone, iPod, or iPad? Not only do you need to get up and running with a new operating system, but you need to learn to use a new screen reader as well. There are lots of free resources available to the blind person who wants to learn to use VoiceOver with Apple's product line, but where are those resources located? Even if you manage to find all those resources, you will discover that quality and teaching style varies greatly from one to the other. Fortunately, there is a better way.
    John Panarese has been a part of the assistive technology industry for years. He has trained many blind people in the use of Apple's products over the years. In fact, Panarese is now an Apple certified support professional and trainer. He recently sat down with Scott Davert and Alex Hall of the AppleVis team to discuss the topic of becoming an Apple certified support professional from the perspective a blind person.
    Panarese is also the driving force behind the Mac for the Blind website, which offers many free resources, in both text and audio form, for learning to use Apple products. Recently, Panarese decided it was time to release a series of audio tutorials for the Mac and iOS. While not abandoning the practice of placing free resources on his site, he made the decision to charge for this new set of tutorials. Rather than create one mammoth tutorial covering every aspect of using VoiceOver on the Mac and iOS, he decided to create a series of short tutorials that could be purchased separately. It would also be easier to update these tutorials as the need arose. Those tutorials are now available on his website, so let's take a look at the current offerings.
    Style and Presentation
    Each tutorial is made available as an MP3 file that can be purchased and downloaded from the site. The tutorials range in price from $30 to $45, with one $70 bundle available for a two-part series on using VoiceOver with Safari on the Mac. Panarese has a teaching style that is warm and relaxed, while avoiding unnecessary chit-chat. Each tutorial has been professionally edited by Patrick Purdue and Derek Lane of P&D Audio, so the quality of the audio is extremely high. The years Panarese has spent training clients privately and for state agencies shows in his tutorials. He makes many references to actual experiences he has had when working with clients, alerting the listener to potential pitfalls and frustrations that may be encountered during the learning process. The thorough but fast-paced style employed in these tutorials allows Panarese to cover a lot of material in a fairly short amount of time. For example, his free Introduction to VoiceOver tutorial available in the "Mac Lessons" area of the tutorial site, runs just under 50 minutes in length, but covers just the right amount of material to get the new user up and running.
    An Overview of Currently Available Mac for the Blind Tutorials
    Mac and iOS tutorials are listed separately on the Mac for the Blind website. In each category, one free tutorial is available, so that the student can get a feel for how tutorials are presented. The free tutorials introduce you to using VoiceOver on the Mac and iOS.
    Paid tutorials include a lesson on when and how to interact with items on the Mac. This is an area that causes a fair amount of confusion for those who are considering the Mac, and for the new user. Panarese discusses the seven element types that require interaction. These include scroll areas, browsers, tables, tool bars, groups, sliders/value indicators, and grids.
    A tutorial on the Mac VoiceOver utility helps the student configure the screen reader to their liking.
    I personally found the lesson on using the Finder to be especially enlightening. Panarese discusses the various views one can use when working with the Finder, and encourages the student to become familiar with the folder structure of the hard disk.
    VoiceOver utility commanders on the Mac can help simplify the use of the screen reader, and Panarese takes a look at these commanders in another of his tutorials. Learning to use the Safari web browser on the Mac comprises two tutorials. Tutorials on learning to use Mail and Text Edit round out the current crop of Mac tutorials.
    iOS tutorials include such subjects as typing and text entry, VoiceOver and the item rotor, using the Messages app on iOS, and the Phone.
    The Bottom Line
    Panarese encourages people to continue taking advantage of all of the free resources available for learning to use VoiceOver with the Mac and iOS devices. There are times, however, when a person might feel the need for some added assistance from an experienced teacher. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to be in the same physical location as a good teacher. John Panarese's audio tutorials very well may be what many of these people are looking for.
    The Mac for the Blind tutorials may not be the least expensive offerings on the market, but it is worth pointing out once again that Panarese is an experienced trainer who has been certified by Apple. He brings his many years of practical experience to his tutorials, and the professional audio editing done by P&D Audio is the icing on the cake.
    As I worked through the various tutorials available for Mac and iOS, I was struck by Panarese's warm, engaging style, as well as his knowledge of the material covered. He was careful to point out that his was not the only way to accomplish a given task, but he frequently explained why he chose one approach over another. Since purchasing every tutorial on the site all at once could be a bit costly, I recommend working through free or lower-cost resources first in order to determine the areas where you feel that you need extra assistance. You can then purchase the Mac for the Blind tutorials that meet your specific needs. Panarese plans to release more tutorials in the future, so be sure to check the site often in order to see what has been added.
    Product Information
    Product Name: Mac and iOS audio Tutorials
Copyright© 2015 American Foundation for the Blind. All rights reserved.AccessWorld is a trademark of the American Foundation for the Blind.

    10 min
  • The AppleVis Community Names the Apps and Developer that were its Golden Apples of 2015 #RTB

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. I’m Stuart Holland.

    (music)
    From: AppleVis – www.applevis.com/blog
    The AppleVis Community Names the Apps and Developer that were its Golden Apples of 2015
    Submitted by AppleVis on 28 December, 2015 - 05:44
    We are pleased to announce the results of the fourth annual AppleVis Golden Apple Awards.
    Since their launch in 2012, the AppleVis Golden Apple Awards have afforded blind and low vision users an opportunity to recognize and acknowledge the hard work and dedication which developers have put into making great and accessible iOS and OS X applications during the given year.
    To be shortlisted for this year's Golden Apple Awards, apps must:
    • Be fully accessible to blind and low vision users.
    • Have been launched or significantly updated during 2015.
    • Be from a developer with a demonstrated and long-term commitment to full accessibility.
    • Demonstrate excellence in design, functionality and operation.
    Candidates for Developer of the Year must:
    • Have a long-standing, exemplary commitment to making their apps fully accessible to blind and low vision users.
    • Be receptive and responsive to the needs of blind and low vision users in a timely manner.
    • Have delivered significant new features or updates to their app(s) during 2015, particularly updates which directly benefit blind and low vision users.
    The 2015 AppleVis Golden Apples consist of awards in five categories:
    • Best iOS App
    • Best iOS Game
    • Best Assistive iOS App
    • Best Mac App
    • Developer of the Year
    For the Best iOS App of 2015, the AppleVis community chose Workflow: Powerful Automation Made Simple. Perhaps not surprising as Workflow has already won an Apple Design Award this year for it’s VoiceOver support and been rated an App Store Best of 2015.
    1Password - Password Manager and Secure Wallet took second place, and Overcast: Podcast Player came third.
    In the closest ever vote in the history of these Awards, Dice World - Dice with Friends! took the Golden Apple for Best iOS Game of 2015. A Blind Legend followed as a very close second, and Blindfold Bowling was just a handful of votes further back in third place.
    In a landslide vote, the AppleVis community voted KNFBReader Best Assistive iOS App of 2015. BlindSquare took second place, and Be My Eyes - helping blind see placed third.
    Audio Hijack was voted as the best Mac app of 2015 by a wide margin. 1Password - Password Manager and Secure Wallet came in second, and LaunchBar placed third.
    Kid Friendly Software (Creator of the ‘Blindfold’ series of iOS audio games) was voted as the Developer of the Year, with MIPsoft (Creator of BlindSquare) and DeskConnect, Inc. (Creator of Workflow - Powerful Automation Made Simple) rounding out the top three.
    We would like to extend our congratulations to the winners of the 2015 AppleVis Golden Apple Awards and to wish everyone a happy and safe new year and a prosperous 2016.
    About the Apps and Developer Chosen as the 2015 AppleVis Golden Apples
    Workflow: Powerful Automation Made Simple
    Workflow won an Apple Design Award at this year’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference (WWDC). These prestigious awards acknowledge the mobile and desktop apps which raise the bar in design, technology and innovation. In the case of Workflow, the award specifically recognized its accessibility with VoiceOver. According to Apple’s own report on the 2015 Design Awards:
    Workflow is a powerful automation tool, available exclusively for iPhone and Apple Watch, that connect apps and actions together to automate things you do every day. Selected as an Apple Design Award winner for its outstanding use of iOS accessibility features, Workflow delivers an excellent implementation for VoiceOver with clearly labeled items, thoughtful hints, and drag/drop announcements, all of which make the app usable and quickly accessible to those who are blind or low-vision. The creators of Workflow understand that true accessibility is not just a technical task, it also requires design and usability consideration.
    You can read Workflow's iOS App Directory entry for more information at http://www.applevis.com/apps/ios/productivity/workflow-powerful-automation-made-simple .
    Dice World - Dice with Friends!
    Dice World features a collection of popular and fun 2-player dice games - Yahtzee, Farkle, Pig, Threes, Balut and 24 - offering multiple game and player options and the ability to track your performance.
    You can read Dice World's AppleVis iOS App Directory entry for more information at http://www.applevis.com/apps/ios/games/dice-world-dice-friends
    KNFBReader
    KNFBReader converts printed text into high quality speech to provide accurate, fast, and efficient access to both single and multiple page documents with the tap of a button on the iPhone. Picture accuracy is facilitated by a Field of View Report, Automatic Page Detection, and Tilt Control. When used with a document stand, the app will automatically detect when you turn the page of a book in the stand or insert a different sheet.
    You can read KNFBReader's AppleVis iOS App Directory entry for more information at http://www.applevis.com/apps/ios/productivity/knfbreader .
    Audio Hijack
    Audio Hijack allows you to record any application's audio, from Internet streams to DVD audio and everywhere in between. If your Mac can play it, Audio Hijack can record it. And that's not all - Audio Hijack can also enhance any audio using industry-standard VST and AudioUnit audio effects.
    You can read Audio Hijack's AppleVis Mac App Directory entry for more information at http://www.applevis.com/apps/mac/utilities/audio-hijack
    Kid Friendly Software
    Creator of the 'Blindfold' series of accessible games, which includes Blindfold Air Hockey at http://www.applevis.com/app/ios/games/blindfold-air-hockey , Blindfold Bowling at http://www.applevis.com/apps/ios/games/blindfold-bowling , Blindfold Racer at http://www.applevis.com/apps/ios/games/blindfold-racer and Blindfold Spades at http://www.applevis.com/apps/ios/games/blindfold-spades .
    Marty, the developer of these games, is a regular and active member of the AppleVis community. He quickly responds to questions about his games, actively seeks suggestions for future games and keeps the community updated with his plans for current and future titles.
    The complete list of all the apps and developers shortlisted for the 2015 AppleVis Golden Apple Awards is available at http://www.applevis.com/blog/advocacy-applevis-assistive-technology-ios-apps-mac-apps-news/closed-cast-your-votes-now.

    13 min
  • Why do employers ask about weaknesses?

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)
    We turn now to the Ask Matt column in the Star Tribune, from August 16: Why do employers ask about weaknesses?
    Dear Matt: In every interview, employers always ask: What is your greatest weakness? What is the answer they want to hear?
    Matt says: Recruiters ask this question primarily to gauge your personal character and communication skills, says Ben Foster, President and Executive Recruiter of 4Sight Search, a boutique digital marketing recruiting consultancy serving Minnesota and Colorado.
    “How you answer this difficult question tells interviewers about your honesty, business acumen, and ability to handle tough communications situations,” says Foster.
    One answer the employer does not want to hear is something generic, such as “I’m a perfectionist,” says Foster. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you want to hear something generic that everybody else says, or would you want to hear something that is specific, human and genuine? The other answer they don’t want to hear is that you lack a qualification that’s critical to the position — that’s a sure way to eliminate yourself from consideration.
    There is a two-step process to handling this question, says Foster: 1. Provide an honest, genuine answer; 2. Recover.
    For example, if you’re a manager, reference the challenge of balancing delegation with control. When thinking about how to recover once you’ve made yourself vulnerable, remember that self-awareness is a highly-valued trait in an employee. This is the perfect time to show that you have it, says Foster. Think of what you’ve done to help correct your weakness and immediately follow your confession with an explanation:
    “Three years ago, when I started managing, I didn’t delegate enough and it affected my team dynamics and my own productivity and focus. I still consider it a weakness of mine, but one that I recognize and can tame when it surfaces. After being mentored by my former director, taking a handful of leadership seminars and obtaining feedback from my direct reports, I feel like I’ve learned how to hire the right people, empower my team and let them be the experts at what they do.”
    Admit the weakness, than recover with your plan to overcome it. Make sure your recovery has an assertive, upbeat and positive tone. For example: “I haven’t used software X before, but I have used similar software Y, which is obviously another industry standard. So I’d be at a disadvantage there, but if I received this opportunity I would start familiarizing myself with it before I even started, and I guarantee I’d be proficient in three weeks at the most.”
    When switching careers or industries, focus on the skills you can transfer. Highlight how what you’ve done in past jobs relates to what you can do in future jobs, and use success stories to show that crossover experience. “Be human,” says Foster. “Be genuine, strategic — and you’ll be just fine.”
    Again, that was entitled Why do employers ask about weaknesses?

    5 min
  • Working Strategies: Welcome the tough interview questions, and learn to control them

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)
    We turn to the August 9 Working Strategies column from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, by Amy Lindgren: Welcome the tough interview questions, and learn to control them
    Wouldn't it be great if you could go to an interview and talk only about your good points? No more awkward interludes where you try to spin your last period of unemployment or put a happy face on not grasping technology very well. Just a smooth-flowing discussion about what you could contribute to a new employer.
    Yeah, well ... that's probably not going to happen. You won't likely escape an interview without answering some difficult questions, nor should you want to. An interviewer who doesn't delve deeper into your anxiety closet isn't taking you seriously as a candidate.
    Instead of hoping you won't face those questions, why not throw open your arms and meet the challenge head on? Here's a five-part strategy to get you started.
    1. Identify your weak point for the job. Technology? Lack of a degree? No management experience? In some cases, the weak point will be easy to spot: Just compare your skills and background with the job posting. But when you're meeting an employer outside of a posting process, there might not be a job description to guide you. You'll need to research what you can and make an educated guess about the rest.
    On the other hand, if you have the basic ingredients for the work, your Achilles heel may be something in your work history, such as having been fired from the last job.
    2. Look at it from the employer's perspective. Why would this matter? Are you sure it does? For example, you might be very sensitive about having been fired, but maybe that's not uncommon in your industry.
    In some fields, such as sales, managers would have a hard time finding experienced reps who had never been fired.
    But what if you're missing a skill critical to performance, such as applying for a job as a program manager but lacking budgeting experience? Again, ask yourself, how will this impact this employer? Is the budget developed annually or more frequently? If it's annual, is the fiscal year just starting (which means the budget is pretty much set for now) or is the budgeting process just around the corner? The answers to these questions could influence the employer's assessment of your experience versus the company's needs.
    3. Shore up your courage. If it were a fatal flaw you wouldn't be scheduled for an interview. The employer is intrigued enough to overlook the issue temporarily, so you must have something (probably several things) in your favor. You've earned a place at the interview table.
    4. Strategize your plan for correcting the flaw or, if that's not possible (you can't "correct" having been fired, for example), for discussing it. For example, if you know a certain software is part of the job and you haven't used it, you probably can't learn it before the interview. But you can research it online, possibly download a tutorial, and even join a user's group. By the time you meet with the employer, you should be conversant in the software's uses and features, and be able to estimate how much time or which classes are needed to bring you up to speed.
    5. Finally, consider raising the issue yourself. I generally favor a strategy where the candidate promotes strengths but leaves the less favorable points for the employer to ask about. If the employer doesn't ask, my view is that it wasn't so important after all -- why stir the pot?
    An exception would be when the negative issue may be lurking below the surface, and might still influence the employer's decision making. Here it's best for the candidate to control the topic during the interview, where a discussion is still possible.
    One way to do this is to tack the topic onto the back of another answer. For example, a candidate with limited management experience could give this answer when asked about a strength:
    "One of my best strengths is my ability to work with people from a variety of backgrounds. I'm good at building rapport and developing respectful relationships, which makes it easier to have difficult conversations if that becomes necessary. For example, if a team member isn't meeting deadlines and it's impacting my work, I can have that conversation without creating new problems. That's one reason I think I'd be a good manager, even though I haven't had that experience yet. I've seen that effective managers are good at building relationships and I have that skill."
    Sometimes your difficult issue is more complex than a missing skill or a messy departure from a previous job. Next week I'll provide a blueprint for facing more intrinsic challenges, such as being the "wrong" age or shape for a job.
    Again, that was Working Strategies: Welcome the tough interview questions, and learn to control them, from the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

    7 min
  • Graduates: Time to hone your definition of ‘professional

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)

    We turn now to the Working Strategies column of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, by Amy Lindgren, from May 17. It’s entitled Graduates: Time to hone your definition of ‘professional.’

    Graduation time always puts me in mind of new workers, headed off to summer jobs or career-path positions. For many, this is the transition point from student to professional -- a leap of enough magnitude that it's worth pausing to consider what that actually means.
    So here's a question for you: What comes to mind when you hear the word "professional"? Perhaps you think of someone who seems to embody a professional ethos. Or maybe a code of conduct springs to mind, with specific standards for measuring professional behavior. You might even conjure an image of a certain type of worker, in a suit-and-tie or skirt-and-heels position.
    Here's something I've discovered by accident: There seems to be a generational divide in defining professional behavior. That's probably not news to anyone in management or anyone involved with multiple generations on a regular basis. But in my very informal polling process ("Hey you -- what does this word mean to you?") I found some interesting points of agreement and difference between age groups.
    For example, where everyone seemed to equate professionalism with respect -- as in respecting others in the workplace -- my younger respondents did not seem as concerned with "respect for authority." I had an interesting discussion with a 20-something who feels it's her professional obligation to oppose her boss if she disagrees with a decision; baby boomers I spoke with were more likely to see that as risky and possibly unprofessional.
    Image was another interesting talking point.
    Nearly everyone in my small sampling was open to an expansion of professional image to include a variety of work outfits or hairstyles. But the generations seemed to part ways on things like tattoos, piercings and bare legs (nylons vs. no nylons). While I think this is largely a matter of evolving fashions, I was nevertheless struck by a sentiment framed by younger workers that I didn't hear from older workers: "If I'm doing my job, it shouldn't matter how I look."
    In the end, I didn't come up with a uniform definition for "professional" but I did re-learn an important lesson about the risks of assuming that a common word has a common meaning.
    In a subsequent Internet search, I again found a diversity of definitions for the concept, although I did see some common themes. For example, a number of the writers on the web described professional behavior as some combination of etiquette, respect, ethics, knowing one's job well and being expert in one's profession.
    The elements of etiquette and respect seemed to underlie most of the advice I encountered, including: Always get back to people in a timely way; listen more than you speak; respect your colleagues' contributions; etc.
    Since I hate to let a good round of Internet reading go to waste, I thought I'd assemble a brief code of professional do's and don'ts for new graduates heading into careers over the next few months. Although I recognize that the tide might be turning on some of these points, I'm taking a safe route by presenting the more conservative side. After all, it's hard to imagine being too professional for the workplace.
    Professional Communication. Don't interrupt others, disagree in a disparaging way, or let your emotions speak for you. Do listen more than you speak, strive to understand others' views, and respond in a timely manner to messages.
    Professional Image. Don't under-dress for business events or client meetings, keep an exceptionally messy work area, or send out communications with errors you could have caught. Do dress as well or slightly better than your peers, maintain a hairstyle than can be described as "neat and clean," and practice good hygiene in all settings.
    Workflow. Don't hold up workflow processes, take on more than you can handle, or otherwise keep things from moving smoothly. Do complete documentation quickly and neatly, watch for tactful ways to "unjam" a process, and follow through with what you promise.
    General Etiquette. Don't look at your cell phone while meeting with others, multitask while on a conference call, or talk loudly in a confined space. Do greet your co-workers when you pass them, arrive at meetings five minutes early rather than late, and credit others for their good ideas.
    If those tips seem pretty obvious, so much the better. Practice them every day and you'll have the necessary foundation for when something really challenging comes up, such as a difficult boss or a direct report who refuses to accept your delegation.
    Eventually you will have improved your skills enough to add "expertise in one's profession" to your repertoire, at which point you might be the person who comes to mind when someone is asked for their definition of a professional.
    Again, that article was Graduates: Time to hone your definition of ‘professional.’

    7 min
  • Rising to Your Level of Misery at Work

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)
    We turn now to an article from the New York Times, Rising to Your Level of Misery at Work, from SEPT. 5, written by Arthur C. Brooks
    EVERYONE has heard of the Peter Principle: Managers rise to the level of their incompetence. Today, however, a whole class of hyper-competent Americans will never find their level of incompetence. Instead, they will suffer a similar principle in which they rise to their level of misery.
    Here’s how it works: Ambitious, hard-working, well-trained professionals are lifted by superiors to levels of increasing prestige and responsibility. This is fun and exciting — until it isn’t.
    People generally have a “bliss zone,” a window of creative work and responsibility to match their skills and passions. But then the problems start. Those who love being part of teams and creative processes are promoted to management. Happy engineers become stressed-out supervisors. Writers find themselves in charge of other writers and haranguing them over deadlines. In my years in academia, I saw happy professors become bitter deans, constantly reminiscing about the old days doing cutting-edge research and teaching the classes they loved.
    Why don’t people stop rising when they are happy? Because we are built to think that more is better — more power, authority, money and responsibility. So we incorrectly infer that promotions will equal greater satisfaction. In an economy that has left so many people behind in recent years, this might seem like a nice problem to have. But it is a problem nonetheless, as recent research clearly demonstrates.
    In 2009, scholars from the University of Illinois published a study in the journal Social Indicators Research charting the relationship between success and stress. Not surprisingly, poverty was a predictor of stress, as a lack of resources puts great pressure on everyday life. But interestingly, wealth also increased stress, probably because of high-pressure work with time constraints. So while success may initially relieve stress as people rise into the middle class, it seems to introduce a whole new set of stressful problems for those who keep climbing.
    So what’s the solution?
    Here’s one that many people try: Drink a lot. Research from 2010 found that people with high incomes reported consuming more alcohol than people of more modest means. Specifically, 81 percent of respondents making over $75,000 per year drink alcohol, versus 66 percent of those making $30,000 to $49,000 and 46 percent earning under $20,000.
    If strategies like drinking seem less than satisfactory, one might take the problem head-on instead: Identify the bliss zone and get back into it. An unhappy dean should resign and go back to the happy professorial life, right?
    Easier said than done. People are wired for progress, and regression looks and feels like failure. Furthermore, if one is a manager long enough, one risks falling behind in the skills in which one previously, happily functioned.
    If the road back is blocked, are there other options? A clue comes from scholarship on jobs designed to serve others. In 2014, two researchers published an article in the Journal of Positive Psychology looking at the lives of lawyers. They found that lawyers in high-income fields like corporate law, tort and malpractice were unhappier and less satisfied than their lower-paid counterparts in service roles such as public prosecutor or legal defender. (Not surprisingly, they also drank a lot more.)
    Does this suggest quitting and joining the Peace Corps? Not necessarily. In the immortal words of the Bhagavad Gita, “The renunciation of work and work in devotion are both good for liberation. But, of the two, work in devotional service is better than renunciation of work.” In other words, even better than renouncing your exalted position is converting it into a source of personal liberation by devoting it to the good of others.
    I believe that service reduces stress and raises satisfaction because it displaces the object of attention from oneself. When I am working for myself, any disappointing outcome is a stressful, unpleasant reflection on me. When I am serving, on the other hand, the work is always intrinsically valuable because of its intention. Adopting a service mind-set guarantees some measure of success.
    Through this added layer of intentionality, almost any work can be understood as a genuine service job. The type of work is actually less important than the attitude of the worker. This point is illustrated in the parable of a traveler who happened upon stonemasons. When he asked the workers what they were doing, one mason simply replied, “I am making a living.” But another stonemason answered differently: “I am building a cathedral.”
    Every one of us is building a human cathedral. In our interconnected world and global economy, our work transforms the lives of countless others. Sometimes the impact is obvious: Managers and executives directly inflect their employees’ happiness and career success. But everyone, in every industry, affects the lives of co-workers, supervisors, customers, suppliers, donors or investors. How often do we spend our morning commute thinking consciously about how to make their lives better through our work? What if we made this as routine as our morning coffee?
    So cheer up, kvetchers. Relief is as close as the kindness you show to others. Build your cathedral. And for God’s sake, stop drinking so much.
    Again, that article was Rising to Your Level of Misery at Work.

    8 min
  • Pressing Reset on a Career

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)
    We begin with an article from the New York Times, July 28, Pressing Reset on a Career, by Steve Lohr.
    After Paul Minton graduated from college, he worked as a waiter, but always felt he should do more.
    So Mr. Minton, a 26-year-old math major, took a three-month course in computer programming and data analysis. As a waiter, he made $20,000 a year. His starting salary last year as a data scientist at a web start-up here was more than $100,000.
    “Six figures, right off the bat,” Mr. Minton said. “To me, it was astonishing.”
    Stories like his are increasingly familiar these days as people across a spectrum of jobs — poker players, bookkeepers, baristas — are shedding their past for a future in the booming tech industry. The money sloshing around in technology is cascading beyond investors and entrepreneurs into the broader digital work force, especially to those who can write modern code, the language of the digital world.
    Internet giants like Google and Facebook have long fought over the top software engineers in the country, and that continues. But now, companies in most every industry, either by necessity or to follow the pack, are pursuing some sort of digital game plan — creating lucrative opportunities for computing-minded newcomers who, like Mr. Minton, want to reboot their lives.
    “These are skilled and ambitious people who are seeking an on-ramp to the tech industry,” said Jim Deters, chief executive of Galvanize, the school that Mr. Minton attended.
    Whether the on-ramp proves to be a lasting pathway to high pay and stimulating work remains to be seen. The boom-to-bust cycles in the tech business can be wrenching, like the last downturn in the early 2000s after the dot-com bubble burst. Nearly everyone in the industry was hit. Yet software development and engineering jobs held up better than ones in finance, marketing, sales and administration.
    For now, at least, it is a seller’s market for those who can master new technology tools for lowering a business’s costs, reaching its customers and automating decision-making — notably, cloud computing, mobile apps and data analytics.
    Companies cannot hire fast enough. Glassdoor, an employment site, lists more than 7,300 openings for software engineers, ahead of job openings for nurses, who are chronically in short supply. For the smaller category of data scientists, there are more than 1,200 job openings. Demand is highest in San Francisco. Nationally, the average base salary for software engineers is $100,000, and $112,000 for data scientists.
    In March, the White House announced an initiative, TechHire, to coordinate the efforts of the federal government, cities, corporations and schools to train workers for the thousands of current job openings in the tech sector. The Obama administration points to coding schools like Galvanize, Flatiron School and Hack Reactor, which offer accelerated training in digital skills as a way to “rapidly train workers for a well-paying job.”
    The graduating classes of these coding schools support the trend. They will graduate about 16,000 students this year, more than double the 6,740 graduates last year, according to a survey published by Course Report in June. The 2015 total would be about one-third of the estimated number of computer science graduates from American universities. The largest concentration of the schools, often called boot camps, is in San Francisco, which has 12, followed by New York, with nine, and Seattle, eight.
    Students are of a wide age range, but most are in their 20s and 30s. The typical student is a “29-year-old career changer,” said Liz Eggleston, co-founder of Course Report, which tracks these schools.
    Past shifts and surges in the information technology industry — the early Internet boom in the 1990s, the personal computer revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, and the minicomputer and mainframe eras before — have often opened doors to job seekers of diverse backgrounds.
    Lois Haibt was a freshly minted graduate of Vassar College when she was hired by IBM to join the original team that created Fortran, a pioneering programming language. Recalling the hiring practices of the late 1950s and 1960s, she said, “They took anyone who seemed to have an aptitude for problem-solving skills — bridge players, chess players, even women.”
    One sure way to fill job openings in technology these days would be to attract more women. Only 18 percent of computer science graduates at four-year universities were women in 2013, the most recent statistic. By contrast, 35 percent of students at the specialized coding schools are women.
    Savannah Worth majored in English and graduated last year from Colorado College. Jobs that might use her skills, she says, seem limited to writing marketing materials or blog posts for websites. “The good jobs were all in computer science,” she recalled.
    In college, she had dismissed computer programming as all math and numbers, and not a creative pursuit. But she dropped into an open house one evening at the Galvanize school in Denver. She found it filled with creative, smart people — and not at all just dry math.
    Ms. Worth, 22, signed up for the Galvanize 24-week web programming class and excelled. Shortly after completing the course, she was hired by IBM as a software developer in San Francisco. She helps IBM’s corporate clients design and build web and mobile applications that run in remote cloud data centers, and she earns a six-figure salary.
    Galvanize’s 24-week web programming course is one of the largest among the coding schools. The average class length among the schools is just under 11 weeks, and costs $11,000. Galvanize’s web programming course is also among the most expensive, at $21,000. The company offers scholarships and deferred payment plans, and has partnerships with online lenders like LendLayer and Earnest.
    The job placement rate for Galvanize students is 98 percent. “Graduation here is you get a job,” Mr. Deters said.
    Employers are recruiting for immediate needs, but with the future in mind. “What we hire for is the ability to learn,” said Rachel Reinitz, an IBM distinguished engineer, who is Ms. Worth’s boss. “The technology changes so fast.”
    Galvanize is selective, accepting about 20 percent of applicants. The vast majority are college graduates, but there are exceptions, like Reyna DeLoge. She grew up in northwestern Montana in a working-class family and logged long hours in part-time jobs throughout high school. She went to Montana State University, but dropped out after a year, uninspired and in debt.
    Ms. DeLoge, 24, worked for years mostly as a barista and assistant manager. She moved to Denver, and a year ago, got a job at the coffee shop in the Galvanize building there. She found the environs, bustling with aspiring coders and fledgling start-ups, appealing. She applied to the web-programming course and was accepted.
    To help pay for the course, Ms. DeLoge got a $5,000 scholarship and a no-interest loan from Galvanize. She graduated last month, immediately received a few job offers and decided to take one from Galvanize, as a teaching assistant and mentor to new students. In the past, Ms. DeLoge never made as much as $30,000 a year. Her salary now is nearly $80,000.
    In a stroke, she is making more than her father, an experienced machine-tool operator and instructor. “That blows me away,” said Ms. DeLoge, who sees her new skills as a gateway to opportunity. “Who knows where I’ll be in a year.”
    Again, that article was Pressing Reset on a Career.

    10 min
  • The Right Words: How to Ask for More Money

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind and it is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. You can find complete programming of the Radio Talking Book at www.mnssb.org/rtb and the password is rtb. Your host for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    (music)
    We turn to an article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press from September 20, The Right Words: How to Ask for More Money, by Margaret Steen

    Whether you're asking a potential employer for more money or your current boss for a raise, talking about money is awkward, especially when you are searching for the best way to phrase your request.

    "Money is very tightly tied to our self-esteem," says Meryl Runion, author of Power Phrases. Asking for more money means saying you think you're worth more -- and risking hearing that someone else disagrees. "If somebody tells you, 'No, I don't think you are worth that much,' it's almost like saying you're not that valuable as a person," she says.
    A little practice can help you find the right words to make these requests -- and respond to the answer you get. Runion and other experts offer the following tips for two common scenarios.
    Asking Your Current Boss for a Raise 

The key is to ask in a way that shows you've done your research. Try saying, "I've been evaluating my own performance and what you've told me about my performance, and I would like to talk with you about increasing my salary," suggests Marcia Stein, a human resources consultant who recently published a book about recruiting.
    This approach alerts your boss that you have analyzed your contributions and are not simply asking for a raise because you want more money. And by asking for a time to talk, rather than simply stating the raise you want, you give your boss time to prepare. 
    If the Boss Says No: Despite your preparation, it may turn out that your boss isn't able or willing to pay you more. Try to find out the reason -- is there a companywide freeze on raises, or does your boss not agree that you deserve more? Stein suggests showing your interest in improving your performance by saying, "What would you recommend that I do so I can be one of the top performers on your team?"
    Negotiating a Higher Salary with a New Employer 

If you're offered a job but were hoping for more money, the key is to make the request in a positive way, says Lori Itani, an independent staffing consultant who focuses on high tech companies and hears candidates' responses to offers. "If they're telling me that they really like the company, they really like the position, the manager and the team, and they'd really like to have this work, that's a good thing to say."
    Itani suggests a way to phrase the request: "I'd really like to come on board, but I need some more help with relocation." If your goal is a higher starting salary, finish the sentence with, "but I need a little more in salary to justify the move from my current company to yours."
    If the Employer Says No: Even when you ask politely, it may turn out that the employer isn't willing to increase the offer. In that case, assuming you still want the job, your goal is to find out the possibilities for future raises -- while emphasizing that you intend to work hard. Runion suggests saying, "If I can prove my value, what are the possibilities for future raises?"
    Again, that article was The Right Words: How to Ask for More Money.

    5 min

About Radio Talking Book

From the publisher's feed

The Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network was the world's first radio reading service for people with blindness and visual impairment. It began January 2, 1969. The signal is also heard via the internet and across the country via satellite..