Hello everyone,

As you can see it has been quite a while since I have posted to my blog.  For the time being I will be focusing on a new web project called The Bible Trainer.com.  It is a blog / web site devoted to providing resources to help people study the Bible.  As some of you know I have been in youth ministry since 2001 and have been studying for a number of years at Global University to obtain my license to be a minster within the Assemblies of God.  Therefore, I really feel now is the time to go after that project 100% rather than trying to devote my limited time to multiple projects.  In the near future this site will no longer be devoted to my personal blog but will redirect to The Bible Trainer.com.  I have enjoyed blogging with you over the years and hope that you enjoy my new project.
Justin

What does finding a spouse and finding a career have in common?

1. A large amount of patience is required for both
2. Hanging out in groups in order to find a spouse or a job is typically required
3. If all of your needs are not met both of these relationships can fall apart quickly.
4. Everyone has preconceived notions about going into a relationship like this. The more open you are with each other in the beginning of the relationship the better off you will be later.
5. The first couple of dates (interviews) can be very uncomfortable.
6. In order to be a friend you must first be friendly. (Even in an interview)
7. People like to be respected; men- hold the door for your date (spouse), open her car door, write her a love letter, buy her flowers, speak to her with love and not harsh words. Isn’t the same true of an interview? Send them a thank you letter for interviewing you, treat the interviewer with respect during the interview, etc…
8. A call back might not happen after the first date (interview)
9. Some persistence might be required
10. In order for anyone to find a spouse or a job, a miracle needs to happen. In the area of marriage it is always amazing to me to learn of two totally separate people rearranging their entire lives to become one flesh. When they met each other they had their own goals and objectives, but when they accept that bond of marriage they relinquish those desires and focus on their desires together.
11. The same goes for finding a job. When a company is looking to hire a new person they search far and wide for the right candidate. This company could hire anyone they want but when it came down to it, they hired you. How mind blowing is that? It could have been anyone in the world but it was you. Don’t take that fact lightly.
12. When you do find a spouse or find a job don’t take these two miracles lightly. Count your blessings and thank God for these two privileges.

I received this email the other day from a colleague and was quite intrigued to say the least.
——–
Hi Justin,

I just joined NotchUp’s private beta program and wanted to share it with you.

NotchUp is a new way to manage your career. Instead of YOU having to sort through hundreds of job postings, NotchUp enables top companies to find you and pay you to interview for available jobs. It’s 100% free to join and use.

If you’re happy at your job, and don’t want to look for anything new, you want to be on NotchUp.

There are two ways to become a NotchUp member: 1) You can apply for admittance to the network and wait for acceptance, or 2) You can be invited by a current member and start using NotchUp immediately. Because I invited you, you can join NotchUp without having to apply.

NotchUp is in private beta right now - to access the site, the username is launch, and the password is interview.

Click here to register for NotchUp and create your NotchUp profile. If the link doesn’t work, you can copy and paste the text below into your web browser:

http://www.notchup.com/beta1/?q=start/invite/7f1ca3a27c35f5ce72d9678c25c7219c

It takes less than five minutes to register and create a NotchUp profile, and it’s the best time investment you’ll make all year.

The current NotchUp private beta site is password protected.

Please enter launch for the user and interview for the password when prompted by your browser

———-

I checked it out and it seems that this start up company is actually going to help people get paid to interview.  In fact the response has been so overwhelming that they already had to shut down their original server and move to another one.  If you read this before 7PM EST the service might not be up and running yet.  I saw it yesterday afternoon and it was working.  In fact they told me I should charge a company $200 to interview me.  Why hasn’t anyone thought of this earlier?  What do you think about this?

I am trying to land an interview with the founders so stay tuned.  Check out their site for more details.

Well I think I have finally found a theme that I like.  Thanks to Derek Punsalan over at 5thirtyone.com.

What do you think?  Post a comment to let me know.

Justin

George Ambler over at The Practice of Leadership has a great post on the value of having a mentor.

The word mentor is defined simply as a Guide. George offer’s the following benefits of having a Guide in our life:

* …a guide has been there before
* …a guide has more experience than you
* …a guide shows you the way
* … a guide keeps you away from dead-end trials
* … a guide helps you steer clear of the quicksand

I personally have benefited from having mentors / guides in three areas of my life:

* Career
* Family
* Faith

I don’t feel we are designed to function on our own. The more we can talk with people who have gone before us the more we can learn from them and hopefully not make the same mistakes they have.

Internship Mentors

In the area of career development, a mentor can have a huge impact on the life of a young intern. If you are mentoring a college students during their internship at your company you might not realize how much of an impact you have on them. These interns are truly looking for guidance and advice on what to do during the next phase of their life.

Questions To Ask An Intern

* Are they going to work at your company after their internship?
* Is the work you are having them focus on worthwhile?
* Are they gaining valuable knowledge during their internship?
* Are they able to put into practice what they have learned in the classroom?
* Are they making friends in the office?
* Are they working enough hours?
* Are they going to earn academic credit during their internship?
* What can we change about our internship program to make it a better experience?
* As a new person to our company, how do you like our corporate culture?
* Would you tell your friends about our company to ensure we have quality people working for us in the future?

Hopefully you are giving them meaningful work and valuable projects to let them prove their value. Make sure you are doing your best to give your interns a valuable experience because if done right you will help propel the career of the next world-changer.

Feedback

As a mentor one of the most important things you can do with your intern is give them consistent feedback. The more feedback the better. A young student is use to receiving feedback in the form of grades, video games, and friends. In fact some young people who don’t receive any feedback can wrongly think they aren’t doing a good job because they haven’t been told so in about two hours. I know it is a bit absurd but we must remember the type of person you are hiring. If they need more feedback we should try to give it too them.

More Meetings

Often, when a young person enters the workforce they have a tough time migrating to a zero-feedback environment. During their internship try and schedule regular meetings to talk about progress and offer them feedback, good or bad. I know it can be tough to schedule more meetings but the more often you can meet with your intern the more likely you are going to give them a good experience and in turn they will produce higher quality of work.

Being a mentor is not a small job. If you are one, or become in the future please take the time to think about what you are about to do. Try and work with the intern as much as possible because you never know what type of results can come from a good mentor / mentee relationship.

As some of you reading this post know, I recently left my first professional job at the Pittsburgh Technology Council. I was there five years, and thoroughly enjoyed my time at the organization. In fact, I was an intern with the Council before they hired me on full time back in 2002. They took a chance on me which I will be forever grateful for.

Since leaving, I am beginning to live my goal of being self-employed. My first and well only client is EduLink Inc. I am doing business development work for them; working with school districts, colleges, and municipalities. We offer them database management solutions.

Now that I have officially been self-employed for a whole two weeks I thought I would share with you what I have learned so far.

1. Businesses pay way too many TAXES!
2. Health insurance is expensive no matter which plan you chose. Be grateful to your employer if they pick up a large portion of the monthly premium. To match the health care coverage I left behind at the Council would cost close to $1,000 per month!!! (By the way, government health care is not the answer either.)
3. The freedom to work with multiple companies at one time is liberating.
4. Any new business I land for EduLink or in other ventures will happen as a result of NETWORKING not cold calling or cold-emailing.
5. Office supplies are taken for granted at every corporation. Ironically enough staples, tape, paper clips, post it notes, and pens do not grow in cubicles. Someone had to actually order those items for businesses to use. Weird huh?
6. IT professionals within corporations are grossly unappreciated. When you are your own tech support you will quickly realize this.
7. Macs really can be used as a business computer, much to the chagrin of every Microsoft-centric IT professional in the world!
8. Self-motivation only happens when you love what you do.
9. It takes time to start anything new.
10. Nothing happens over night, even in the private sector.
11. Someone can make the switch from the non-profit or government sector to the private sector and succeed.
12. Your parents / spouse / siblings / friends will always be cautious when you leave a “safe and secure” job to step out into the great unknown of entrepreneurship. Mainly because they care about you and don’t want to see you fail.
13. People are jealous of people who succeed.
14. You really can invest without a 401K or pension.
15. IKEA is a great place for office furniture.
16. LegalZoom.com makes forming a corporation very easy.
17. Your accountant will be your new best friend and maybe even your lawyer…. nah, on second thought, let’s just stick with your accountant.
18. Business expenses are far reaching – another reason why your accountant will be your best friend.
19. The greater the risk the greater the reward – thanks Richard David
20. Not all technology entrepreneurs get out of bed at noon and work until midnight.

I am sure there is more items I could add to this list but this is good for now. If you have taken the plunge into self-employment or entrepreneurship drop me an email; justin at justindriscoll.net

Question: Do you believe that job searching happens by divine providence?

My reason for asking such a thought provoking question is because this topic of divine providence in job searching does not get talked about nearly enough, at least not from what I have seen in the blogosphere. I am sure many of you reading this article today could point to times in your career where no matter what you did it seemed like doors kept closing on you during your job search. And then suddenly, as if by divine appointment a door opened that you never considered. The doors that you were knocking on were doors that in the natural seemed like logical choices and wise moves but for whatever reason they all led to dead ends. And the door that opened and proved to be the most fruitful was the one door that you never even considered knocking on. It was the one that probably never entered your mind or consideration. However, it was the one that brought the result you were looking for right from the start.

The inspiration for this article comes from my brother Ryan. After years of knocking on the most logical doors with little or no results, his unforeseen door opened this week with a new job at Fed Ex Ground here in Pittsburgh! Even though he applied for hundreds of jobs on the Internet Fed Ex found his resume on Monster.com and quickly interviewed and hired him. He didn’t know about the job nor did anyone refer him to the position, they randomly found him with no effort on his part.

Here are a couple of items that I am sure some of you can relate to:
Sent hundreds of resumes via online job boards and corporate web sites.
Countless phone screens and face-to-face interviews
Endless networking encounters
Frustration over the lack of communication from human resources departments (By the way, what is wrong with many HR professionals around this country? This is the one group that is supposed to be the best at communication within a company but when it comes to recruiting they display a pitiful example of good communication. If you interview someone multiple times for a position please have the decency to call them and let them know they didn’t get the job!!!!)
At one point a very large company gave him a verbal job offer only to never make any contact with him again. The words, “You have the job…we will send an offer soon” actually came out of HR’s mouth only never to hear from them again. I guess corporate priorities change on a dime now-a-days. Unfortunately the communication side of HR is slow to adapt.
Countless more hours of trying to come up with alternative plans for your full time job to ensure that you can put bread on the table, a roof over your head, cloths on your back, and gas in your car once you finally get the call that your time with your present employer has ended.

I believe that God has a plan for our lives and that our steps are ordered by the Lord. You may not be a Christian or believe that God has a plan for your life but you must admit that there are situations in life that you simply cannot explain or take credit for. The next time a new job or business opportunity comes your way unexpectedly or effortlessly you will have to ask yourself how this happened? Why did it happen to you at this particular time in your life? Some decisions and events are simply unexplainable except by Divine intervention.

jd

After much thought and consideration I have officially decided to resign from the Pittsburgh Technology Council effective December 21^st, 2007.

My decision does not come as a result of unhappiness.  In fact, I have nothing but positive comments to make about the Council and will continue to be a large supporter of their efforts.  I have greatly appreciated the time and resources the Council has invested in me over the past five years.  I will be forever grateful for this organization because of the chance it took on me right out of college and as an intern.  The skills, contacts, and people I have met along the way will not soon be forgotten.

However, I have been carefully considering my career goals over the past six months and feel that continuing on in the association world / workforce education world is not ultimately where I want my career to go.  I have therefore chosen to take a position in the private sector in a business development role.

My new venture will be one of an entrepreneur.  I have officially launched my own corporation, Education Meets Industry, which will be a consulting company in the education space.  My first and primary contract is with EduLink Inc, www.edulinkinc.com.  I will be helping them grow and expand their business by offering technology  solutions to K-12, higher education, and municipal governments.  They are a database management and information systems company.  I am extremely excited about what lies ahead for this company.

In addition, I hope to continue to add more value and resources to this web site in the way of articles, podcasts, vodcasts, and ebooks.  My goal is to grow my portfolio of resources for students and young professionals to help them find their passion in life and not a job.  These developments should start to pop up after the New Year.

Sincerely

Justin Driscoll

If you are interested in becoming a youth motivational speaker you need to attend this upcoming Youth Speaker Boot Camp in Dallas TX A friend of mine, Josh Shipp, is one of the speakers at an upcoming one-day boot camp for the Youth Speaker market in December in Dallas TX. If you are going to learn about the youth speaker market you may as well learn it from the master, Josh Shipp! Take a look at their web site for all of the details.

www.youthspeakerbootcamp.com

Attention students and recent graduates!  If you are interested in a career in science, engineering, or technology you are in demand.

I have put together a list of  10 companies that are hiring these three groups of students and experienced candidates.  Take a look at some of these companies and their web sites to determine if they are right for you.

1. PPG Industries, Pittsburgh, PA
2. Westinghouse, Pittsburgh, PA
3. Vanguard, Philadelpha, PA / Charlotte, NC
4. Swales Aerospace, Edina, MN
5. Applied Materials, Santa Clara, CA
6. Lutron, Philadelphia, PA
7. Johnson and Johnson, New Brunswick, NJ
8. Ford Motor Company, Detroit, MI
9. Applied Signal Technology Inc, Sunnyvale, CA
10.Argonne Natinoal Laboratory, DuPage County, IL