Mark Hirschfeld

I had an opportunity to interview a very successful sales rep. She had been recruited by her employer out of college with a degree in music, which seemed like a unique path to sales. I asked her why the company hired her, she said: “They told me they had training for new people, and they liked that I had been the lead fund raiser for the band for three years and had raised over $100,000 for new uniforms and equipment.”

Dr. Clifton would say: “past performance is predictive of future behavior.” While not every music major can be a successful sales rep, she had shown a behavior– fund raising– that could be a predictor of success.

Think deeply about your past behaviors, including work, volunteer and personal experiences, to gain clues as areas where you might have potential, and then tell your story.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by a man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton.

There are training videos on the web site of my faith community and a handout. This content is free: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources

#career #careercoach #jobhunting #careers #jobsearch #strengths

My grandfather, Ed Moss, is one of my heroes.

He served in World War II as a navigator, stationed in Hawaii.

He served, and did so proudly.

For the last twenty years of his working life he held a job where he again felt he provided a needed service to our country…

He was a postal worker.

If he were alive today, he would be enraged at the thought that the Postal Service was at risk of not providing services to our communities.

The Postal Service is codified in our Constitution—that’s how important our Founders felt.

I read yesterday that an 85-year old man in Houston was without his heart medication for TEN days, as it was delayed in a processing center just a few miles away because staffing hours had been cut.

Thank God he didn’t die.

Over 80% of our beloved veterans who need medications from the VA receive them… via the Postal Service.

Whether it be the big city where I live now or in rural areas where I’m from in Nebraska, the mail is delivered.

I voted in-person last week in the primary election in Minnesota, but I have already requested a ballot to come to my home for the general election in November. I will drive my completed ballot to the court house to place it into a designated drop box. I will also track my ballot to make sure that it is received by the Election Commission so that my vote is counted.

Although I will take these extra steps and am willing to do so to make sure I can exercise my Constitutional right to vote, I am deeply saddened and angered that I and many others must do this because of threats to what I see as a cornerstone of our country—the ability to receive and send mail in a reasonable time.

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

I join my grandfather, who deeply believed and lived out this motto every day he was a postal worker.

I hope you will too.

Do you remember the movie Jerry Maguire? Jerry was initially ridiculed because he had a mission statement.

He succeeded in the end, and fell in love to boot!

I can’t promise you that having a mission statement will help you find true love, but it could help you find the job of your dreams.

Dr. Clifton talked frequently about having a personal mission statement, a simple message that would help folks understand WHY you did the work you did and HOW you gain meaning from your job.

It doesn’t have to be long or flowery, but it does have to be honest and reflect you. His assignment to help you write your statement: “what is it that you do that makes a difference to other people and to mankind? Why do you do what you do?”

Write it down. Practice it with your coach. Proudly tell your mission as part of your story.

Make Jerry proud. Claim your mission.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by a man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton.

There are free training videos on the web site of my faith community: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources

#career #careercoach #jobhunting #careers #jobsearch #strengths

I’ve been asked many times by job seekers how they can measure certain aspects of their job. This is important, because the degree to which we can measure things can help prospective employers better understand what we’ve done and how we might contribute in their workplace.

My mentor Dr. Clifton said there are four ways you can measure aspects of any job:

1. Can you COUNT it?
2. Can you RANK it?
3. Can you RATE it?
4. Did you ACHIEVE it?

For most tasks you perform in a work setting you can use one of the four ways illustrated above to provide some measurement to your work. You can use insights from this to enhance your resume, and can also quote these results in interviews.

As has been said: “what you count, counts”. Measure your successes and then go tell your story.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by a man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton.

There are free training videos on the web site of my faith community: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources

#career #careercoach #jobhunting #careers #jobsearch #strengths

As referenced in prior posts, Dr. Donald O. Clifton identified five indicators that can help you determine if you have strengths which you could promote and apply to a new job. The fifth and final is the total performance.

Are you better than 10,000 people? This seems like a provocative and perhaps audacious question, but we all have strengths, and some of those can be so profound we can be better than 10,000 people.

If you’re that good, folks will hire you for that talent.

If you have not found that yet, use the previous four indicators to determine if you’re on the right track. If you make it into a role where you are seeing evidence of the first four indicators, you may be on your way.

Louis Pasteur said that “genius is one or two talents maximized.” Find those talents, work to develop them, for they could make you exceptional.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by a man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton.

There are training videos on the web site of my faith community and a handout. This content is free: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources

As referenced in prior posts, Dr. Donald O. Clifton identified five indicators that can help you determine if you have strengths which you could promote and apply to a new job. The fourth are glimpses.

Don told the story of a track coach, Bob Timmons, who saw potential in a young runner by seeing a short “glimpse” of performance.

The coach worked with the young runner, helping him build on those glimpses.

The runner, Jim Ryan, eventually became a world-record holder.

There may be times in your past when you’ve experienced a “glimpse”, when you weren’t necessarily at peak performance but were showing moments of success. Glimpses can be built upon and nurtured. Those moments can be highly predictive of work where you could be, eventually, very successful.

Want to use your strengths at work? Think about your glimpses.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by a man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton.

There are free training videos on the web site of my faith community: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources

As referenced in prior posts, Dr. Donald O. Clifton identified five indicators that can help you determine if you have strengths which you could promote and apply to a new job.

The third is rapid learning.

Have you noticed there are some tasks for which you seem to “catch on quickly”?

That could be rapid learning.

Have there been new jobs where you were actually ahead of the training?

That could be rapid learning.

Have there been jobs where you’ve helped other new employees who are struggling with tasks you find easy?

That could be rapid learning.

If you’re experiencing rapid learning, you’re well on your way to finding tasks for which you are optimally suited.

Find them.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by a man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton.

There are free training videos on the web site of my faith community: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources

As referenced in prior posts, Dr. Donald O. Clifton identified five indicators that can help you determine if you have strengths which you could promote and apply to a new job.

The second is satisfactions.

So you thought you might like a job or some part of a job (yearnings), and now you’re actually doing the job. The next thing you should look for is a sense of satisfaction.

You may still be new to the role and not feel as successful as you would like, but you can still get a sense that you will find satisfaction in the work.

When have you felt a sense of satisfaction in your work? Has it been a sustained or fleeting feeling? If the former, you may be onto something.

Although more predictive of talent than yearnings, there are still some tasks that we enjoy but ultimately we don’t become exceptional.

I know the Rolling Stones sang about not being able to get any satisfaction, but you can find it in your work.

Search for it.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by a man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton.

There are free training videos on the web site of my faith community: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources

As referenced in the prior post, Dr. Donald O. Clifton identified five indicators that can help you determine if you have strengths which you could promote and apply to a new job.

The first is yearnings.

We often have a feeling that “I might like that job”—that’s a yearning.

It’s a good place to start to search for your talents, so think about those things for which you have yearned for when it comes to work.

Although yearnings are a good place to start, we often have yearnings for which we may not have the talent. For example, I LOVE to play golf (a yearning), but I’m awful at golf! In this case my yearning is not an indicator of talent.

The inspirational speaker Orison Marden: “When we begin to desire a thing, to yearn for it with all our hearts, we begin to establish relationship with it in proportion to the strength and persistency of our longing and intelligent effort to realize it.”

Yearnings are a start. Think about your yearnings, as they may lead you on a journey to the work that would really speak to you.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by a man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton.

There are free training videos on the web site of my faith community: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources

#career #careercoach #jobhunting #careers #jobsearch #strengths

In his ground-breaking book “Soar with Your Strengths” my mentor Dr. Donald Clifton (pictured in 1983) identified a hierarchy that was designed to help folks think about what might be their strengths:

1. YEARNINGS—those things for which we have interest,
2. SATISFACTIONS—the kind of work you actually enjoy,
3. RAPID LEANING—times when you learn new parts of a job easily and quickly,
4. GLIMPSES, when you maybe aren’t excellent, but you are showing glimpses of success, and
5. TOTAL PERFORMANCE, those roles or tasks where you have achieved excellence.

I’ll speak more about each of this in subsequent posts. You can use these five factors to think about how you can identify your strengths, the talents for which an employer will pay you well to help them contribute to the success of the organization.

You too, can soar with your strengths.

The posts for the next couple weeks are inspired by the man who inspired me, Donald O. Clifton. Regards, Mark

There are free training videos on the web site of my faith community: https://www.thetablempls.com/jobresources