Welcome to: WHAT'S HAPPENING.... Keeping you up-to-date on
what's new!
Phone-line numbers:
734-827-9406 Talk Show Host Line
4/30 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Interview with Jay Block with Lillian Cauldwell
Excerpts
http://books.google.com/books?id=F7wWxNqNdRcC&lpg=PP1&ots=wwLozKf05T&dq=%22101%20best%20ways%20to%20land%20a%20job%20in%20troubled%20times%22%20jay%20block&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
The Forward was written by Michigan’s own Susan Corey:
Forward By: Susan D. Corey, M.Ed., CEIP, CWDP, BES, MS
Southeast Michigan Community Alliance; Manager of Workforce Development
Board Member, The National Association of Workforce Development Professionals
Dear Reader: Every once in a while you meet someone using their gifts and talents to really make a difference in people’s lives. Jay Block is that person. His message is a clarion call for you to take action in your life: to provide a guide on how to survive and thrive not only in this troubled economy but when the good times return (and they will), and to motivate yourself to achieve all that you are capable of and deserve. Finally, someone provides an upbeat and inspirational approach to career management and job change! Jay combines commanding motivational techniques with a highly effective strategic process for making a successful and rewarding job change. He makes the process of pursuing and landing a new job fun and enjoyable. He shows you how to remain fearless, hopeful, confident and engaged in the wake of adversity and setbacks. And his good news is that the process of landing a job in tough times is simple. This book will show you just how simple. The only thing you need to do is work diligently at what is simple.
101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Tough Times will be the only job transition resource you will need to land a new job or discover your true calling. Tough economic times and competitive job markets require new ways of thinking, new beliefs and new disciplines. Jay is a pioneer in the career management industry; by definition, an innovative thinker. The foundation of his success – which he measures by the success of his clients – was built over the past 20 years by constantly applying new ways of thinking so you can better plan your career and achieve your career goals. Actually, this book is not only a book on job transition and career management, it is a book on how to significantly improve your quality of life. You will be inspired to take specific actions that will lead to a ‘richer’ life!
So, if you are ready to enrich your quality of your life and take control of your career, immerse yourself in the material Jay presents in this book. Cherish the time you spend working through the processes Jay introduces. Revel in the experience of approaching the entire job transition process with a whole new attitude and a whole new set of tools and strategies. And then, watch your new future unfold!
Thank you Jay, for sharing and caring!
Announcing my newly released McGraw-Hill book: 101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times
http://www.jayblock.com/best-ways-to-land-a-job-in-troubled-times.html
Book Review by Paul Sanders
April 16, 2010
http://www.bizlex.com/Articles-c-2010-04-15-92203.113117_Stop_job_hunting_and_start_career_campaigning.html
http://bit.ly/c1mWR2
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
Business Lexington
Jay Block's "101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times," is a timely, superbly written blueprint to start constructing a new job and career. ...
Stop job hunting and start career campaigning by Paul Sanders
Lexington, KY - For most of us, job change was assumed to be a natural part of career transition, a necessity as we advanced to better paying jobs and more rewarding opportunities.
Then, the tsunami known as the Great Recession came ashore. It wreaked havoc as workers were unexpectedly terminated, even those with lengthy seniority. Downsizing and rightsizing were only part of the deluge; company closings were in the forecast almost daily.
As thousands were forced to face the aftermath, many discovered that the standard job search is no longer effective. The problem is finding what does work.
Jay Block's "101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times," is a timely, superbly written blueprint to start constructing a new job and career. Block, a career coach, has drawn up plans that help you go far beyond the standard resume building. In fact, he suggests erasing the idea of a job search from the drawing board.
Politicians, he explains, are seeking to be "hired" for office. To do so, they do not conduct a political "search." Instead, they conduct a strategic campaign. This new way of strategic thinking is essential to gain control over your future, secure opportunities and, most importantly, enjoy the process, Block says.
Block suggests the processes he shares are appropriate for the laid-off seasoned professional as well as the new graduate. His ideas are both challenging and realistic. In sharing his own story of near-bankruptcy and renewed success, he comes across as both an empathetic teacher and someone who has also been in the trenches.
The strategic campaign he recommends is a five-step process: (1) learning how to ride the emotional roller-coaster; (2) defining your goal; (3) using value-based resumes and self-marketing tools; (4) creating a meticulous action plan; and (5) taking action.
Even if you are not currently looking for employment, read the first section of this book. Block tells us that the most valuable asset an individual has (including during difficult economic times) is not a job, a savings account or skills and qualifications. Your most valuable asset, he says, is your thoughts — "your ability to think, and, more importantly, your ability to change how you think."
Beliefs are the most important indicator of outcome, he argues. When experiencing a job loss, many see the event as "devastating, humiliating, and painful," he says. Changing your belief about job loss is the first step in redefining your future and improving your income. Controlling how you think will affect your life more than almost anything else, Block says. Becoming aware of beliefs allows you to determine whether they are empowering or limiting yourself. Once you have accomplished that, you are ready to begin the rest of Block's proposed process.
Awareness of your beliefs lays the foundation for effectively managing fear and emotions when adversity strikes. Losing a job is among the most painful occurrences in life, Block says, and landing a new position is possible only when you begin to manage your fears and emotions. This is not simple positive thinking, Block says; it is also proactive action.
Emotional state affects your performance, just as it does a world-class athlete, the author suggests. Superior skills don't always win; usually it's the individual with stronger character and an unstoppable mindset. Invoking the use of a variation of Socratic method of inquiry, Block suggests utilizing what he terms, "courageous questions." These are questions that inspire appropriate action, no matter the economy or job market. Courageous questions result in "life-enhancing" answers.
Once you've asked the right questions, you can take the next steps to identifying meaningful career goals. These include knowing your signature life and career values and determining what jobs interest you. This is not the stuff of standard testing. It is an in-depth process of introspection that requires investment in you.
Block's discussion of value-based resumes and self-marketing tools is also not the standard protocol of job placement. His design suggestions for tools that communicate an individual's core strengths, values and results abilities are novel and refreshing.
Block concedes that finding a job in troubled times is not easy. Life itself is not about doing what's easy.
"It's about purpose, meaning, passion, love, contribution, sacrifice and hard work," he says.
With teachers like Block, we can also learn that we can come to know ourselves better and enjoy the journey, no matter how difficult it may be.
News U Can Use
2010 PIVTR
CRAZY TUESDAY with Rowena Cherry - January 5, 2010
"On Tuesday, December 22nd, eleven Romance authors got together to read original short stories on live radio to raise donations for the homeless and the hungry in Detroit, and to fund the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit. More authors volunteered than there was air time for on December 22nd, so on Tuesday January 5th, "The Ones That Got Away" will be read starting at TEN A.M. EASTERN.
Loretta Wheeler will read her story "DARK PLEASURES".
Pauline Baird Jones will read 'GETTING A CLUE"
Becke Martin has contributed "SILVER AND GOLD" which will be read as a play with various authors taking speaking parts.
Cities and States Listening to What's Happening With Portia
Abington, MA; Ann Arbor, MI; Atlanta, Georgia; Buzzard Bay, MA; Flint, MI; Grand Rapids, MI; Hendron, VA; Jonesboro, Georgia; Van Nuys, CA;
5/5/10 Robert Miller and Bruce Gendleman, The Fishbowl Principle
4/30/10 Jay Block 101 Best Ways To Land A Job In Troubled Times and Sherri Zyaka, Senior Dean, College Center for Schoolcraft
4/23/10 Jeanne White, The Connect with Sheryl Williams and Shelia Wilson discussed Healthcare Violence and Education
3/10/10 Candace Silvers, Vision
2/16/10 Todd Lunsford, Fathead Company,
2/10/10 Kevin Gray, Authors Solution
2/4/10 James Thompson, JMJ Phillip Recruitment
1/27/10 Rich Bergeron, Activism and the Internet
1/15/10 Rosemarie Ashley, Sassy Alternative Music
November 23 Interview with Lillian Cauldwell, author of "The Anna Mae
Mysteries-The Golden Treasure, Transcript
Lillian Cauldwell talks
legend, race, critical thinking in new tween series In “The Golden Treasure”
(Star Publish), the first book of local author Lillian Cauldwell’s “The Anna-Mae
Mysteries” series for tweens, heroine Anna-Mae Botts accomplishes something
that’s eluded almost 145 years of effort by adults: finding the lost gold of the
Confederate Treasury, supposedly buried in northern Georgia during Jefferson
Davis’ flight from Richmond after the South’s surrender. Anna-Mae doesn’t do it
alone, of course — she’s got the help of her eight-year-old brother Malcolm, her
best friend Raul Garcia, three remarkably supportive grandparents and…a giant
disembodied black fist, accompanied by a host of other supernatural
phenomena.
Told from the perspective of two black kids and a
Hispanic one growing up in rural Georgia, the book neither shies away from the
obvious facts about race — like that all the members of a junior high clique are
often the same color — nor invests them with the sort of futile hand-wringing
sometimes engaged in by adults who see race primarily as a “problem” to be
“solved.” Mostly, though, t’s an adventure story, pure and simple, focused on a
bright girl who finds it hard to fit in sometimes, has a little brother who’s
equal parts extremely useful and a pain in the rear, and occasionally finds her
best friend kinda cute in a way that makes her insides a bit “gooey.”
AnnArbor.com chatted with Cauldwell about it recently.
Q: Tell me how
this book came to be.
A: I wanted to write a book for multicultural kids.
I wanted them to know that girls could have adventures as well as boys can and
that girls can think and solve problems — and yet (as tweens) they’re also in
what I call “purgatory“. They’re not toddlers, they’re not holding their
parents’ hands, but they don’t want mid-teens giving them trouble. They don’t
know who they are, where they’re going, what people are doing, but here they are
in junior high — they’re in the big leagues. And depending on how your junior
high is set up, you may even be sharing space with the big kids, so…at any one
time, there’s always a group that’s a little superior. I know how they’re
feeling, and I wanted to get that across.
And I wanted to get across
that life isn’t fair — but before you can do anything, you have to find out who
you are, learn how to deal with what’s bugging you, and learn to get along. You
can’t just disappear; you’re going have to deal with whatever problem comes
along, and you usually have to do it by yourself. So to me, being that age meant
that you were in the middle of nowhereland. I remember what it was like, and I
remember what it was like watching my kid go through it, too. He was gifted,
very smart, and his sophistication was up there with grown-ups…but his maturity
was on the floor. (Laughs.)
Q: There’s lots of crazy supernatural stuff
going on here! Are you a believer in the supernatural in general?
A: A
lot of it was research. I’ve had one or two experiences that I don’t share much
because people who haven’t been there don’t understand. My husband is an organic
chemist, so there’s no way he’s going to believe that there’s anything else
besides us out there. A ghost could walk through him and he wouldn’t believe it.
But I’ve had those experiences, and I’ve known other people who’ve had those
experiences, especially around this age. At this age…you’re more open to other
things that may happen.
Q: What drew you to the mystery of Jefferson
Davis’ lost gold?
A: I wanted them to find the lost treasure. I did not
want my kids on a mystery where they found dead bodies or got shot; there’s
plenty of that in the world and other folks can do a better job of writing it.
So I wanted a mystery, and I started researching Davis, and the more I read, the
more intrigued I became, because the gold he lost was not all Southern gold. He
took out a loan from the French bank with interest, whether or not he won the
war. Now, you’re not taught that in history class. And I found out which bankers
he borrowed it from, and I discovered that it makes a difference whether you
read the Northern or Southern account of the story. (Davis) ran out when the
(Confederate) Cabinet fell, and he had a trick for storing the gold so that no
one would find out, and he was trying to get it to Savannah to take the gold
back to France. So I found the route he took for his great escape and added some
of my own touches. ...
Everyone has their own theory about how
the gold was carried, where it was buried, why it was buried, so I tried to give
enough of the story without digressing too much from the adventure.
Q: I
like how you’re very explicit about the systematic way the kids go about putting
their clues together. Are you hoping to sneak some critical thinking skills into
your readers’ enjoyment?
A: Oh, absolutely. Actually, the book is a plot.
(Laughs.) I wanted to show that there are certain things you need to do to take
this to its logical conclusion. When I went to school, you had to show all of
your work on a problem, so that even though I never got the right answer, my
teacher could give me credit for thinking. … I wanted these kids to actually sit
down and think about what had taken place, who was involved, and how they got
there. One of the things my husband taught me is that if you can’t find
something where you think you put it, you can go and retrace your steps and you
might find it. And it seemed like a girl would know this
instinctively.
Q: Isn’t it interesting that you said your husband taught
you, but a girl would know it instinctively?
A: (Laughs.) Well, maybe
other girls. My mother knew it, anyway! I do think a big difference is that it
seems like girls will go out and find the information they need and store it
away for another time. I think that boys do have adventures, but I think girls
maybe have better ones because they pay better attention to the details. They
use them later because they want to make their lives better, while a guy seems
more likely to say he can tough it out the way it is.
Q: You say toward
the end of the book that the South is “still fighting the war between the
states.” What do you mean by that?
A: A lot of places still have rigid
class structures, still have strict rules about who can sit together. … I wanted
to get across to kids that no matter where they lived in the United States,
there was still superstition and prejudice and (basically) no democracy. There
are still racial tensions in this country, and you ignore it at your peril. I
had a friend who was a student out west and he decided to drive home to Ohio
with a friend, and they stopped in this little town to get gas and a snack and
just got this feeling like they better conduct their business and get out of
there as fast as possible. On the other hand, I had a friend who was an adult
and she and her friend stopped in Tennessee and it was the same thing — they
knew they were not welcome and the local law was trying to figure out a way to
throw them in jail.
And a kid in this situation acts differently
than a grown-up, but they can feel it. They may not be able to say, “Oh, they
don’t like me because I’m black,” but they know they’re not welcome. So
Anna-Mae, she’s a black child in a white rural school district that’s located in
Georgia, so there’s two strikes against her there. And on top of that, she talks
to ghosts, so that’s three strikes!
Q: You have some interesting
classifications that involve race — you provide names for two classes of white
kids, and there’s a suggestion that black Anna-Mae is being treated less well by
the authorities than her white antagonist. What conversation about race are you
hoping to start?
A: I’m hoping to start (a conversation that says to)
girls, and black girls especially, that there’s more to life than being a
mother, than following a gang mentality, that they do not need to choose sports
or become or a singer or an actress to get ahead. That there are other
opportunities. ... And that girls don't need to dumb themselves down. My
attitude is more of, “You are fine the way you are, it’s the rest of the world
that’s out of whack, and don’t get down to their level. Force them to come up to
yours.” There’s no reason for the girls of today to have that kind of attitude
or that type (of worldview).
Q: Are you saying that there are no
pressures on girls today?
A: No, there are plenty of pressures — you
don’t have to look any further than Saturday morning TV! There’s a great deal of
conformity and a great deal of pressure to do what’s acceptable. But why is it
always the old maid (that we’re supposed to be scared of)? The wicked
stepmother? I never hear anything about the wicked stepfather! I guess as I’ve
gotten older, I’ve gotten a little more conservative — don’t tell my hippie
friends that, but I guess you just do — but it hasn’t gotten any easier to be a
girl since I grew up in the ’50s.
And you know that junior high
is when you learn how to kiss! I would be foolish if I didn’t recognize that at
12, you start noticing that boys and girls are a little different, and you maybe
go a little past kissing. In my second book, Anna-Mae goes overseas and meets a
13-year-old boy, and Raul knows immediately that he’s dangerous, but he doesn’t
know if he should shoot the guy or befriend him. And that’s how it goes at that
age.
Q: I like that your son (cartoonist Ben Caldwell) drew the cover and
also that you reference his “Dare Detectives” in the story. Does Anna-Mae ever
have a walk-on in his work?
A: Not yet. But he’s very interested. He’s
the one who suggested that when I set up the book, I storyboard it. So that was
how I did it. He told me that kids want to be entertained, they want to be able
to see what’s going on, because today’s world is so visual.
Q: What do
you have planned next?
A: (Book Two in the series is) “The Holy Relic,”
based against the Solomon and Sheba legend. The whole book is written as one big
clue, so you have to figure out what I’m talking about, why Anna-Mae is where
she’s at and how she’s going to get out of it. She encounters other people and
other types of problems and ultimately realizes that as bad as the United States
can be, it’s a lot better than overseas. Which a lot of kids don’t understand —
we’re way ahead of the game. We’re not bombed continually, there aren’t troops
in the streets. We do not have foreign soldiers living in our homes, our water
supply is still working, and we live a pretty comfortable life. I think it’s
important for kids to realize that any country can only offer as much as their
citizens give back to it — it’s a two-way street. (Laughs.) I don’t say that
right out, of course.
After that is “The Tablet of Stone,” which takes
place in South America, and the fourth book is “My Mother’s Keeper,” which comes
back to the United States. So I’m willing to take (the characters) all the way
up until they become adults and have careers as investigators, but I wanted to
keep away from murder and mayhem. And there are so many other types of mysteries
to be solved! Sometimes they’re right underneath you, and they have just as much
power.
You can get "The Anna-Mae Mysteries: The Golden Treasure" at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Star Publish, LLC, or you can contact email
Lillian Cauldwell for a signed copy. Cauldwell is also the founder of Passionate
Internet Voices Radio.
Leah DuMouchel is a free-lance writer who
covers books for AnnArbor.com.
PROGRAMS
Parents and teachers will love....
The Anna Mae Mysteries
by Lillian S. Cauldwell
Lillian Cauldwell writes with a voice that speaks to the rich
imagination of a child. A ten year old child's mind plays tricks. She
fears dark places in buildings where the grown-ups are not, because she
believes in ghosts and apparitions, and squeaking, creaking things that
could be a monster spider's joints. Yet, she yearns to find buried
treasure, or to make headlines in a good way, or to improvise and solve
a mystery.
One example of masterly "childlike" problem solving is the use of coat
hangers as divining rods.... Dowsing is such a cool thing for children!
Vivid images strike a chord in my memory, and linger in my mind of the
phantom fist, the schoolyard bully, the horror in the
air ducts, the dusty, thirsty hard work of digging in the fruit
cellar... for buried gold. It's "real", it's delightfully scary in the
way of all good and gripping page-turners, but it's not frightening.
Perhaps Lillian's writing is so believable, and so immediate because
Lillian pays attention to details - such as the ring on fourth finger
of ghostly black fist. Parents and teachers will love Lillian's
writing, too, not only because the children will be immediately engaged
by the mystery, but because of the tie-in with history, including
Jefferson Davis and Georgia's exciting past.
Lillian Cauldwell is a splendid storyteller, and my child and I are
eagerly looking forward to the next gripping tale in the series!
Rowena Cherry
http://www.rowenacherry.com
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL
Winner of the N.O.R. Awards, Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance:
http://www.youtube.com/v/RNnX5dyfzmQ
