The Welsh word for grandmother is Nain.

My Nain, Gwenda was the 3rd of 13 children. Born in 1922, the World War 2 kept her stuck at home longer than she wanted to, looking after 12 additional other children who'd been sent away from London during the bombings.

So, as soon as she could, she got away from small town Wales and and moved to the city. It was her time and she did what she wanted to do. She became a cool Londoner, wearing all of the latest fashions you might find in an Austin Powers movie. Then, again she picked up everything and moved to Canada, with her husband and her young daughter, my mom.

Later in her life she reinvented her life a third time, when my grandfather died. She married a fisherman and joined him, hauling in Chinook salmon in the frigid Pacific waters near Alaska. This was her life, jumping around, reinventing herself. 

She and I weren't super close until I got older, when she and my mom happened to come and visit me in London. I was having a hard time with my job, trying to prove myself in a role that wasn't a great fit. It was hard for me to see the forest for the trees. I just wanted to be as responsible as possible and prove myself, which I guess is pretty normal for people in their 20s. She gave me a lot of guidance and support that week. 

I was so keen for her advice, I wrote it all down. (This is a practice I've continued since then. I love collecting jewels like this.) 

Here's what she said:  

• Be honest with yourself and follow your convictions.
• You’ve got to keep your own council. No one knows what I’m up to at any time. 
• When I have a confrontation I smile a lot.
• Over time a relationship becomes easier. You grow kinder toward one another and make more allowances.
• Collect garbage if that makes you happy; it doesn’t matter what people think.
• Whenever there is a problem and people are inquiring you just smile and say, “I’m fine.” They don’t need to know.
• Listen carefully to anyone who gives you advice.
• You’ve got to face things straight on, or they’ll still be there like a cancer
• If they ask you if you can do it, say you can. In 1963, they asked us, “Can anyone use a comptometer?” I told them I knew how. They’ll always show you once ...

The reason you didn’t get your dream job might be that your references don't know you as well as you think they do.

It's an iceberg problem; most of your value is hidden under the surface--hidden even from those who like you the most.

I'm embarrassed to say I've been this kind of reference before. The person was an impressive employee colleague. I don't have anything bad to say, but I don't have a lot of specific good things to say either. I'd like to think that I pulled it off and helped the person get the job, but I felt bad after the reference call, knowing I probably didn't help very much. 

The person on the other end of the call is probably thinking, "Why did the candidate choose this person to tell me about them?"

I think this happens more often than not. Good people don’t get the job they should have and they don't know why their dream job has passed them by. 

Let's design the opposite of this scenario:

Your dream job comes up. Before you can even hear about it and apply, they offer it to you. This happens every day. That's a situation where your abilities are well known to the market. 

The problem is worse for remote workers or professions like teachers, where your best work is done mostly independently, so people don't really know how you get your results.

The best way I’ve found to avoid this problem is to (in advance) share evidence of how you do what you do offline, but also online. Share helpful details of what’s worked for you, so people can see how you think and what you think about. Share your wisdom. Write in a helpful way, rather than an awkward, humble-brag way popular on LinkedIn. Be nice and helpful.

Share the checklist you're using now. Give it away for free, even though it's part of your secret-sauce and it was hard for you to come up with. 

Post it on your blog or LinkedIn Facebook or Pinterest, if people are still there. If you must you can use Twitter. Share your morsels of helpful tips which your referees will be able to look at before they're on a call about you. 

Let it be a an act of generosity. 

Then when you are applying for a job you can send those links to your references. Or you might just get offered the job without applying --becaus...

Advancing systems like Chat-GPT make it easy to automate skills that only the most talented of us ever had before. But this makes those who differentiate with authenticity, humility and unique creative insights stand out even more.

The Covid-19 pandemic taught us that technologies can empower us to accomplish a lot remotely, but to sustain our best work we need true human connection.

Technologies will continue to improve, beyond anything we can imagine today. But every stride they make, will only shine a brighter light on what they cannot do, what is essentially human and what we need from each other: to see and be seen by real people who care.

Tim is available for online Zoom coaching almost every day, to help to make sure you are soon doing the work you are meant to do. He's a fully trained career and business coach and founder, with an MBA and over 20 years of experience. 🚀 Click here to get started with Tim. 🚀

These past two years have been really hard on many of us, leading a lot of us to the verge of burnout. 

We all know that we can’t keep giving our students what they need if we aren’t feeling supported ourselves. As therapist Anne Brunette says, "You cannot care for others if you do not take care of yourself. And yet, when we’re feeling stressed it’s hard to know how to make things better. 

Some small changes that can make a big difference 

Many of these tips, as you’ll see, are about taking time for yourself. That can seem impossible when there is so much to do, but it’s all about finding possible, helpful things you can do to keep yourself moving in the right direction. Safeguarding our most important activities…

• Leave the work at work. Consider staying half an hour later in your classroom (or coming in earlier) if you have to, so that you can fully relax at home. Unless you have kids of your own. ;-) 
• Organize and plan. Look for ways to do things now that will reduce your future workload. As Tim Ferriss says, you can ask yourself, "What would this look like if it were easy?" and then try to take a step in that direction. Again, this can seem hard to find the time for, but it's a bit like making your bed or cleaning your bathroom --you'll be glad you did. 
• Take healthy breaks. Email does need to get checked, but take some breaks where you are aiming to rejuvenate yourself--with a very healthy snack, with water, with a 2 minute meditation or a chat with your best friend, down the hall. Sometimes it feels indulgent to even take a proper lunch break. But this can be a good time to “stack” many good things at once --social time, healthy food, get your mind off work. 
• Get more sleep. In his great book Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker explains that those with tendencies toward being anxious are particularly vulnerable to having difficulty sleeping and that can lead to a vicious cycle because sleep helps emotional resilience. (More on that in this Youtube Video). Calm is also a great app for falling asleep.
• Talk it out. If you’re feeling stress, don’t keep it to yourself. Psychologists at UCLA found that putting feelings into words reduces feelings like distress. 
• Mindfulness. Build...

Have you ever applied for a job the perfect job, that you're qualified for, but then you didn't get an interview? Applicant Tracking Systems might be to blame for that. Many schools now use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to scan CVs. This (in theory) helps them weed out all of those hundreds of applicants who don’t meet the minimum qualifications. It also gives them a searchable database they can use to explore and compare applicants. 

Considering how important it is for you to get past the ATS-scanning stage, with your CV. Here are some simple tips you can use to do that, to get your name onto the Qualified Candidate list and onto the interview stage.  

How to get past the ATS 

• Make sure all important information (including your contact information) is in the main section of your CV. Information in images, graphs, headers and footers are not read by the ATS.
• Use a standard file format. Word (i.e. .docx) and PDF files are easily read by an ATS. 
• Use standard job titles. The ATS is scanning for words, so it’s better to call yourself a “Teacher of X” on your CV, even if you’d rather describe yourself as a “Facilitator of Student Discovery”. 
• Use standard headings, like "Education" and "Work Experience," so your vital information is easy to find.   
• Notice the keywords used in the job description and include those in your CV, to describe your qualifications or work experiences. Those are especially likely to be scanned for. 
• Use some of education-related keywords. Don't be shy about dropping in your the words you use when talking about your practice--terms like Growth Mindset, flipped classroom, differentiation, inquiry learning, technology-integration, interdisciplinary and social-constructivist.  There is a bit of an art to this, which we can discuss if you'd like.
• Use the long-form and short-form versions of all keywords on your CV. If you're certified in SEL, don't forget to write Social Emotional Learning as well. 
• Use a standard font size (11-12 points) and a standard font like Arial, Times New Roman, Tahoma, Verdana or these other ones.  
• Avoid using tables and columns. These are sometimes less searchable for an ATS. More likely they will be searchable, but th...