I always loved the Jetsons. What’s not to love about flying cars, robot maids and cool futuristic outfits like Judy’s?

I admit when I watched the Jetsons I wasn’t paying much attention to where the characters worked or what happened when they got there. But today, I am totally fascinated by predictions about the future of work and careers.

Will we all work from home and go to virtual meetings with our colleagues in Second Life?

Will I be able to give speeches virtually, with a holographic image of me (a la CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during the 2008 presidential election) standing behind a holograph of a podium?

Will people have robot assistants?

To help my thinking and yours on this topic, I’ve been doing a lot of research. Here are some of the most compelling career and workplace predictions I’ve come across. It’s never too early to start thinking about how these trends will impact your own career:

1. You probably won’t work at an office from 9 to 5. More than 100 million people are expected to telecommute to work by the year 2015. This sounds accurate to me. With an increase in contract workers, freelancers, working parents and caretakers of elderly relatives, it makes sense that we’ll increasingly work from everywhere except an office. Source: OfficeTeam’s “Office of the Future: 2020″ study

2. You won’t travel for business. Thanks to better and better teleconferencing technology, faster broadband connections for Skype and 3D virtual reality meetings, you’ll rarely need to get on a plane for a meeting or presentation. (This one can’t happen soon enough for my taste!) Source: BNET Insight

3. Work will be good for your health. Instead of going to the gym at lunchtime, you might spend some of your day at a “walking workstation” and grab an apple from a healthy vending machine. Your office will be more environmentally friendly, too, with recycled office products, live plants and LEED-certified building materials.Source: Generation X, Y & Z Blog

4. You’ll have two (or more) jobs. More people will maintain two sources of income — a trend we’re seeing already across all generations. You might combine a full-time job with a side entrepreneurial venture or a freelance gig. Marci Alboher wrote a book on this topic, naming the trend “slash careers,” as in “lawyer/writer/yoga instructor.” Source: Tammy Erickson’s Harvard Business Review Blog.

5. You’ll be in school forever. This is a trend I talk about all the time. According to the above-mentioned OfficeTeam study, “To remain marketable, workers will have to make education a lifelong priority, continually upgrading their skills.” I can see people having a lifelong relationship with their college or university, not just returning for reunions but also for more education. My hunch is that the majority of this will take place through online learning. In fact, IBM is supporting its workers in this effort by matching them dollar-for-dollar in their educational pursuits, even if an employee is educating himself or herself to a job outside of IBM.

What do you think of these five predictions? What trends do you think will affect your career over the next five or ten years? Please share!

This post originally appeared on my “College to Career” blog at MyPath.com.

TAGS: career advice, planning for the future

Come listen in on my conversation with Pete Kistler, the founder of Brand-Yourself.com, who was named one of Entrepreneur magazine’s Top 5 College Entrepreneur of 2009. He joins me to talk about personal branding as it relates to college students and young professionals.

In this podcast, we define personal branding, talk about Pete’s own personal branding process and explain why students and young professionals need to think about your personal brand — especially the image you’re projecting online.

For more on this topic, here are two great new resources that can help you create and enhance all aspects of your personal brand:

PricewaterhouseCoopers Personal Brand Week – a terrific collection of downloadable worksheets to help you create an elevator pitch, express your passion, build a network, promote yourself online and more. PwC has also collected free personal branding advice on Twitter with the hashtag #pwcpbw.

Student Branding Blog – a new resource expressly designed to help college students with personal branding. This site was created by Dan Schawbel, who also launched the Personal Branding Blog.

Click here to listen to this week’s podcast.

How have you approached personal branding in your career? As always, I welcome your comments below!

TAGS: career advice, Generation Y, personal branding

I’ll never forget what my driving instructor said to my mom while we were waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles the morning of my driver’s license test.

“She has the ability to pass. It’s going to come down to whether she thinks she can pass.”

I failed.

My driving instructor was exactly right. I had practiced enough and had the skills and knowledge to get my license. What I was missing was the confidence to actually do it.

I see this same situation all the time with college students and recent grads in the job market. They have the talent, skills and ability to get a job, but they lack the self-confidence it takes to land a position, especially in the ultra-competitive market we’re experiencing right now.

If you’re struggling with self-confidence, here are some tips:

1. Ask for feedback. Recruit a trusted relative, career services staff member, professor or friend to assess you honestly. Often we don’t even realize our strongest assets because they come naturally to us. Ask the person to list your best qualities and most impressive accomplishments. On the flip side, ask for constructive feedback on your weaknesses. Find out if the things you’re most concerned about — lack of experience, a less-than-desirable GPA, shyness, etc. — are legitimate concerns or if you’re obsessing over nothing. If your fears are unfounded, let them go once and for all!

2. Take action on any gaps. If you do determine some important weaknesses, develop a game plan for improving the key skills, knowledge or qualities you’ll need to land the job you want. Take action! Sign up for a coaching session at your career services office, register for an e-course, read a few instructional books or hire a career coach or tutor. Besides gaining the skills you need, you’ll have a great answer to the interview question, “What is your biggest weakness?” You’ll be able to say, “I identified a key weakness and here are the steps I took to overcome it.”

3. Overprepare. Think about your confidence level when you walk into a test for which you’ve studied really thoroughly versus how you feel walking into a test for which you’ve skimmed your notes for ten minutes the night before. Most people don’t realize that a job hunt is something you can study for. Before attending a job fair, spend an hour or two on the websites of companies that will have booths. Before a job interview, spend an hour reading the organization’s website (especially the mission statement, recruiting pages and recent press releases) and study the LinkedIn profiles of the people who will be interviewing you. Read e-newsletters and blogs from your industry to keep up with current events that might be discussed at a networking event. The more preparation you do, the more confident you’ll feel when you interact with recruiters and other professionals you’ll encounter during your job search.

4. Seek out recommendations. One of my favorite features of LinkedIn is the opportunity to have people write recommendations that will appear on your profile. This not only strengthens your profile’s value but also reminds you of your best qualities. Ask for recommendations from former bosses, internship coordinators, professors, volunteer coordinators, students you’ve worked with on activities or other people you’ve known professionally or academically. Whenever you need a boost of confidence, go into your profile and read the good things other people have said about you.

Note: This post originally appeared on Lindsey’s “College to Career Blog” on MyPath.com.

TAGS: career advice, Job Search

What are the major hiring trends on campus this year? What are the best strategies for finding an entry-level job? What are the biggest mistakes students make in the job search process?

To answer these questions and more, I spoke with with Trudy Steinfeld, Executive Director of the Wasserman Center for Career Development at New York University, and Manny Contomanolis, Associate Vice President and Director of Co-op and Career Services at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Don’t miss the opportunity to hear top tips from two of the best career services professionals in the country!

Listen to the podcast interview now.

Note: This post originally appeared on my “College to Career” blog at MyPath.com.

TAGS: career advice, Job Search

Exercise for 30 minutes a day. Sleep eight hours a night. Floss. Good habits are the building blocks of a healthy life.

The same goes for your career: small daily habits add up to big success. The earlier in your working life you develop smart daily practices, the easier they will be to maintain and the more overall impact they’ll have.

Here are 5 important career habits to cultivate:

1. Keep up with the news. We live in the Information Age, so there’s no excuse for not being informed. Whether you read a news site every morning, watch the headlines on TV or subscribe to a major news outlet’s e-newsletter, you have to know what’s happening in the world. Pay particular attention to any articles relating to your profession. This will give you topics to discuss at networking events, articles to discuss on Twitter and LinkedIn and a base of knowledge to apply to your current and future career decisions. I landed my first job at WorkingWoman.com because I learned about the site from an article in a news magazine!

2. Share. You know those little “Share” icons that appear next to almost every video and blog post these days? Imagine that “Share” button everywhere you look. One of the best ways to maintain a strong professional network is to share articles, job leads, book recommendations, etc. with the people you know. For instance, if you read an article about grad school scholarships, forward it to your friend who is applying to PhD programs. If you come across a video of an interview with Bobby Flay, send the link to your former internship colleague who loves to barbecue. A small, kind, helpful gesture is a great way to keep in touch with people in an authentic, professional way.

3. Learn. I recently switched from a PC to a Mac and I swear I am learning how to do something new every five minutes. I can feel my brain expanding in new ways, and it feels great. Successful people are always looking to learn, from taking a tutorial on a technology product, to looking up a word they don’t know on Dictionary.com, to asking a question at a meeting. There is a saying to do one thing every day that scares you. I would add: do one thing every day that teaches you.

4. Write a to-do list at the end of each day. This is a habit I’ve only begun recently and I wish I’d learned it years ago. Take a few minutes at the end of each workday to write a list of priorities and to-dos for the following morning, including anything you didn’t accomplish that day. It’s a great opportunity to set yourself up for success in the morning and to make sure you don’t let anything fall through the cracks.

5. Relax. College is certainly a time of staying up late, running from classes to extra curriculars to the gym to parties, and surviving on coffee and Ramen noodles. But those habits are not sustainable over time. No one can work 20 hours a day for weeks at a time and perform at peak levels. No one can go 10 hours without eating and concentrate completely. Take time now to figure out what kind of relaxation is most effective for you. It might be yoga, power napping, playing video games, zoning out to music or something else. What matters is that you take time to recharge your batteries when you need it. Remember that your career is more like a decathlon than a sprint.

What other career habits do you recommend? Please share!

This blog post originally appeared on Lindsey’s “College to Career” blog at MyPath.com.

TAGS: career advice

Last Tuesday evening I gave a talk for students visiting New York City from American University. Besides the fact that I got to speak at a very cool venue – the stage of Caroline’s Comedy Club in Times Square – something else cool happened. When I asked how many students were on Twitter, almost half of the audience raised their hands.

Granted, it was a room of students seeking communications careers, who are more likely to enjoy the hyper-communication of Twitter. But, it was the first time I’ve seen so many college students involved in the three-year-old micro-blogging site.

If you haven’t yet checked out Twitter, you should. If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it’s a free social networking site that allows only 140 characters per announcement or “tweet.” Get rid of any preconceived notions you might have that Twitter is a waste of time where people post silly messages about their cats and what they had for breakfast. While some people do tweet about nonsense, there are many, many other people whose tweets can be incredibly valuable to your career.

My philosophy is that I follow people on Twitter for three reasons:

1. I follow people I admire or whom I want to work with someday, so I can learn what those people are thinking or talking about.

2. I follow people who tweet out great career advice and help me learn something new.

3. I follow people who share interesting news, articles and announcements that help me stay up-to-date in my industry or the world in general.

You can follow this same strategy by following professionals you admire, companies you’d like to work for someday, career advisors who provide free advice and news outlets that will keep you up-to-date on current events. While there are hundreds of people I could recommend, part of the fun of Twitter is making your own unique list of people to follow. To help get you started I’ve put together a list of 10 of my favorite college-to-career tweeters:

www.twitter.com/lindseypollak – that’s me!

http://twitter.com/MyPath_Manpower – Tweets, news and updates from all of my fellow bloggers at MyPath.

http://twitter.com/alevit – Alexandra Levit is the author of “They Don’t Teach Corporate in College” and many other career advice books for young professionals.

http://twitter.com/CAREEREALISM – Careerealism offers loads of advice from a variety of career experts, all in one Twitter feed.

http://twitter.com/DanSchawbel – Dan Schawbel is founder of the Student Branding Blog and tweets about personal branding for college students and recent grads.

http://twitter.com/InternQueen – InternQueen is a great resource for – you guessed it – internships.

http://twitter.com/SalaryExpert – SalaryExpert’s tweets help you answer that dreaded question, “What are your salary requirements?”

http://twitter.com/Under30CEO – Under 30 CEO offers inspiring tweets that motivate you to go for your biggest career goals.

http://twitter.com/willyf – Willy Franzen is the founder of One Day, One Job and One Day, One Internship – sites that share information about one potential employer every day.

http://twitter.com/WSJcareers – Wise advice from contributors to the Wall Street Journal Career Journal.

Who else do you recommend for career-minded college students to follow on Twitter? Please share in the comments section below!

This post originally appeared on Lindsey’s College to Career Blog at www.mypath.com.

TAGS: career advice, Generation Y, social networking

I’ve always loved new beginnings — the first day of a new month, the turning of a new season, even the sunrise of a new day (on the rare occasion I’m up early enough to see it). Of course there is no bigger new beginning than the turning of the calendar to January 1.

This year in particular, the New Year feels like a crucial fresh start. 2009 will go down in the books as one of the hardest years ever for job seekers, especially those looking for entry-level work. If you’ve had a tough time in 2009, or even if it’s been a great year for you, here are some tips for starting 2010 on a successful note.

1. Out With the Old. To make room for new things in your life (a great job, fresh ideas, more money, a strong network, etc.) you need to get rid of any clutter that is weighing you down. This might include critical people, a job that drains your energy, college junk piled in your closet or self-defeating thoughts like “I’ll never get a job in this economy.” For inspiration, check out two of my favorite resources on the topic of simplifying and decluttering: the Zen Habits Blog and Julie Morgenstern’s book, Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life.

2. Set Quality (not Quantity) Goals. We all know that New Year’s resolutions are generally forgotten by February. So, instead of making a long list of “rules” for my year, I prefer to declare three to five big goals or priorities. I keep them in a little note file on my computer and on a little card pasted on the inside cover of the notebook I use every day. I peek at my list constantly to remind myself what my priorities are, how I want to spend my time and what opportunities I should not pursue. If you need help clarifying your goals, check out Your Best Year Yet! Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever.

Read the rest of this blog post on my “College to Career” blog on MyPath.com — a great new career resource for college students and recent grads…

TAGS: career advice, Job Search

As green careers continue to grow in popularity, I’m pleased to share an interview I conducted with Shari Aaron, co-author of Climb the Green Ladder: Make Your Company and Career More Sustainable.

Lindsey:  For those who don’t know, what is social entrepreneurship and the “triple bottom line”?

Shari: Sustainability, corporate social responsibility, green, and triple bottom line are all terms that refer to doing business in a way that is more sustainable.  These terms refer to taking into account the social, environmental and economic impacts of the way we do business — hence, not just a financial bottom line but a triple bottom line.

There has been a cultural shift in society’s expectations that businesses should work to protect the environment and its people.  In fact, 95 percent of CEOs report that businesses must address the social and environmental pressures of society (McKinsey & Co., July 2007) and mounting evidence shows that employees will drive companies’ efforts to address sustainability (MIT Sloan Management Review, Sept 2009).

Social entrepreneurs work both inside of companies and in their own firms to help advance a triple bottom line approach to business and society. If you utilize entrepreneurial talents inside of a company,  you can be referred to as a social intrapreneur.  The success of social intrapreneurs lies not only in their passion for sustainability, but also in their ability to translate that passion into a great pitch, a solid business plan, and positive, measurable results.

Lindsey:  Can you share some examples of sustainable businesses?

Shari: Companies like Timberland, Green Mountain Coffee, Seventh Generation, and Interface are often referred to as more sustainable businesses as they incorporate positive social and environmental practices into core business operations.  This includes reducing toxic materials, water, and waste while increasing use of renewable energy sources and recycling more materials.  Many large corporations, academic institutions, and government offices are working to increase their commitments to sustainable practices — these include such household names as Johnson & Johnson, HP, and Walmart.  Even the United States Postal Service uses soy inks in their stamps and has made commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Lindsey: What does it mean to “climb the green ladder”? What can each of us do as individuals to be more sustainable in our careers?”

Shari: There has been a circular argument about sustainability — many say corporations should green up their acts, others say governments should legislate more on these issues, and still others say that consumers should be demanding products that are more sustainable. Individuals make up all these organizations and each individual has the power and ability to make a difference, to  influence his or her workplace.  In fact, that is what has been happening as more and more employees –from all levels and from all industries — are influencing their workplaces.

“Climb The Green Ladder” refers to a new corporate ladder — one where employees bring their values to work and help their workplaces become more sustainable and profitable. It also refers to a progression and six key principles that are behind all effective sustainability strategies.  These six key principles are outlined in Climb The Green Ladder and have come from extensive research with more than 500 employees and sustainability experts.

Lindsey: What advice do you have for students and young professionals interested in launching or working for a sustainable company?

Shari: I would encourage them to consider joining organizations like New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) that provide a community of support, mentoring, and resources.  I also would encourage them to “get the mindset” around sustainability and to understand the issues that face society as well as to learn as much as they can about how forward-thinking companies and individuals are addressing climate change and limited resources, poverty, toxic waste, etc.  I would encourage them to read Climb The Green Ladder, in which they will learn important principles and case studies to help inspire and motivate them to action.

In addition, be sure to read a company’s and competitors’ sustainability reports and ask relevant questions on job interviews.  Seek out greener, more progressive companies and help them to grow.  Work with your colleagues and peers to bring attention to your current workplace.  Never give up — it’s too important.

Lindsey: Tell us about  your new program to help female professionals near New York City get ahead in their careers.

Shari: In order to provide women with the platform to become business leaders at their workplaces, New York Women Social Entrepreneurs (NYWSE) is launching its Emerging Sustainability Leaders (ESL) program.

As a longtime corporate sustainability professional and author of Climb the Green Ladder: Make Your Company and Career More Sustainable (Wiley), I founded the ESL program to work with women professionals in developing a business case for implementing sustainable initiatives at their workplaces. The training program will address best practices and lessons learned as well as provide an opportunity for each participant to present her business case before a panel of experts. The [triple-]bottom line: A group of well-prepared, innovative women ready to take the lead and change the way their companies do business, improving financial, social, and environmental results.

The program, which is designed for female professionals, will begin in January 2010 and take place in New York City.  For more information on the NYWSE ESL program, please see: www.bit.ly/nywse-esl.

This post originally appeared on the Lindsey Pollak Career Blog.

TAGS: career advice, environment

It’s no secret that 2009 has not been the easiest of years for most college students and young professionals; however, over the past year there have certainly been bright spots. Today, in honor of Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday season, I wanted to share some of the positive trends I’ve noticed this year.

More resources to help students and recent grads. While we’ve lost some bloggers and websites this year, we’ve also welcomed many helpful new resources for young professionals. I’m particularly grateful for the resources I find myself recommending over and over again, such as UrbanInterns.com, LinkedIn’s Grad Guide and Twitter lists (check out my list of career/workplace experts to follow).

University career centers serving more alumni. Resources for more experienced job seekers are growing as well — and some of that growth is coming from college career centers, which traditionally only served students. Almost every career services professional I spoke with this year mentioned the influx of alumni calling for their help. One career director at an Ivy League university told me that, for the first time ever, they’ve added a dedicated staff person to service alumni.

I think this is a great thing: as people face more career changes and job hunts, they need more resources to turn to. While I do suspect that career centers will begin charging their alums (currently the vast majority serve alumni for free), I believe this trend is here to stay. Perhaps in the future university career services will become more of a lifelong resource rather than a one-time stopover.

Students getting smarter about the pros and cons of social media. As the campus spokesperson for LinkedIn, I have a unique insight into this topic. Student participation on LinkedIn, the professional social network, is growing exponentially, and many students are learning for the first time that social networking can help them professionally. For many students, this is carrying over into the way they use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social sites. Many of these sites are still primarily social, but I’ve noticed more awareness among students that recruiters are Googling them, which means they need to be smart about what they’re putting on the web. I hope that in 2010 we see more tools that help all professionals better separate the personal from the professional online.

Ditto for employers. At the same time, recruiters are paying far more attention to social sites and trying to figure out how to use them to find entry-level candidates. Over the past year, I’ve seen companies making more strategic decisions about which social media sites to use and what policies to implement when it comes to connecting with students, vetting students and retaining young employees. We certainly have a long way to go, but 2009 should go down in the books as the first year social media became part of HR manuals and recruiting guidelines.

Wider definitions of “job” and “career.” I recently wrote a blog post that generated a lot of discussion. It was about the way careers are now more pyramid-shaped than ladder-shaped. In 2009, I’ve observed so many young people creating unique career paths through various combinations of part-time work, virtual work, freelancing, entrepreneurship, paid interning, volunteer-to-temp-to-perm and beyond. The economy is in a huge state of flux right now and the people who get creative are the ones who will get ahead.

Finally, I am so grateful to all of you who read our blog, share your comments and keep me inspired every day. Happy holiday season and thank you for your ongoing support!

This post originally appeared on the Lindsey Pollak Career Blog.

TAGS: career advice, Generation Y, trends

I had the complete joy last Sunday of having absolutely nothing to do. It was pouring rain, SeamlessWeb delivered bagels and coffee directly to my door, and my husband and his best friend had plans to watch nonstop football.

So, I camped out upstairs in our apartment — computer turned off! — and read pretty much the entire Sunday New York Times cover-to-cover. In addition to reading Bono’s op-ed, a review of Gail Collins’ new book about women and, as always, the wedding announcements (“the sports pages for women”), I came across an interview with Carol Bartz, the CEO of Yahoo.

In the interview, Bartz is asked to share her best career advice. She says the following:

“You need to build your career not as a ladder, but as a pyramid. You need to have a base of experience because it’s a much more stable structure. And so that involves taking lateral moves. And it involves getting out of your comfort zone.”

It’s no secret that the concept of a career ladder, in which you rise up each rung in a direct (and precarious) upward trajectory, is no longer relevant to the realities of today’s work world. I was excited when, a few years ago, Deloitte’s Cathy Benko and Anne C. Weisberg, authors of Mass Career Customization, coined an alternative term “career lattice.” They defined this as a career that exists as “an undulating journey of climbs and lateral moves.”

I like the lattice image, especially in a corporate context as Benko and Weisberg designed it, but for career paths in general I love the pyramid analogy. It suggests that, in the early years of one’s career especially, your job is to build a foundation that will be the base for future career decisions and accomplishments. It suggests that a career is something from which you can’t “fall off” or “fall through the cracks.” It connotes stability and strength.

Furthermore, a pyramid can be custom built to any specifications. The current Wikipedia entry on pyramids notes, “The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or any polygon shape, meaning that a pyramid has at least four faces.” (Plus, if you envision a pyramid that looks more like a progression of steps, you can also incorporate the helpful concept of “leveling up,” which Chris Brogan wrote about recently.)

It’s no secret that many of us have various “faces” at any given point in our careers. I’m thinking of a newly entrepreneurial friend whose pyramid “base” is her seven years at a law firm learning the basics of negotiation and communication. Or my husband, whose base includes eight years in magazine advertising sales that has now grown into a role as VP of sales for a digital media company. Or my own career pyramid, that started with a base of writing and speaking experience and has grown into a business with a variety of “faces.”

What do you think of the idea of career pyramids? Do you think this is a helpful analogy for the “shape” of 21st Century careers? Please share in the Comments!

This post originally appeared on the Lindsey Pollak Career Blog.

TAGS: career advice, managing your career