environment/ motivational videos/ resume jokes

Sept. 5 Environment: I was going through my bookmarks for my job search, and I found this. TD Friends of the Environment Foundation. You can donate money to help the environment. I'm going to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and take the bus.

http://www.fef.td.com/

Sept. 6 Blog article: I got this through my blog about "30 Thriving Careers your Children should Consider." It's a fast and easy read. There are the classic, safe careers like doctor, lawyer, and teacher. There are less popular ones like mobile application developers, debt counselors, market researcher (kind of like me working at a call centre), and physical therapy assistant.

There are a lot medical and science positions like nurse, pharmacist, stem cell researcher, and biologist. Here it is:

"Hi Tracy,

The coverage of your blog is so comprehensive and creative that it’s turned many of us at Accreditedonlinecolleges.com into regular followers. We recently published a post, “30 Thriving Careers Your Children Should Consider” (http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2011/30-thriving-careers-your-children-should-consider/), we hope you and your readers might also find interesting. If you have the time to consider it, we’d appreciate any mention or feature of it on your blog. Let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks!
Emma Taylor"

Motivational videos: I got this through my blog some months ago, but I didn't have time to watch the videos. Here's one:

"Hi Tracy,

I work with Bschool.com, where we just published entitled "10 TED Talks That Will Transform Your Career" Considering this overlap in subject matter with your blog; I thought perhaps you would be interested in sharing the article with your readers? If so, you can find the article here:

Either way, I hope you continue putting out great content through your blog. It has been a sincere pleasure to read.

Sincerely,
Rose King"

I clicked on the first link: "Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation." It's 18 min. of a guy named Dan Pink who was once a lawyer. He went to law school, and didn't do well. He's very charismatic and funny. He talks about experiments that concludes: "Higher incentive leads to worse performance."

He talks about how you tell a group of people that if you solve this problem within 5min, you get $5. If you solve it the fastest out of everybody, you get $20. It can actually slows them down by 3min. then the group without any incentive given. It's about the intrinsic thing that what you do, is that you want to do it. There is the intrinsic drive to do things because they matter. Here's the link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Here's another blog email that has more videos. I do want to watch it, but I will make an effort to watch it:

"Hi Tracy,

I recently discovered your blog, and I have become a frequent reader. We recently published an article “The 20 Essential TED Talks for New Grads” that dovetails well with your audience. Perhaps you would be interested in sharing with them?

Here's the link: (http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2011/the-20-essential-ted-talks-for-new-grads/)

Thanks for the great content, and I hope the article I've linked primes your interest.

Regards,

Emma Taylor"

Resume jokes: I got this article from the Globe and Mail, on Sept. 3. It's called "Resumes that stand out for the wrong reasons" by Wallace Immen

-"A candidate said that the more he was paid, the harder he would work." If you watched the Dan Pink video above, that's not the case. I thought in general, everybody thinks that, but you wouldn't say it.

I have a book called Acceleration by Graham McNamee. I bought in 2004, and I think in the Edmonton Public Library, there was a teen section and it got voted as the best book that summer. It's about a teen boy named Duncan who finds a diary that belongs to a serial killer, and he has to stop him. There was a line that said: "Minimum wage, minimum effort." I told this to my friend Angela and she said: "That's a bad attitude."

Now back to the resume jokes:

-An applicant was fired from several jobs, and listed them all as a reference.
Me: Stupid.

-One applicant listed her dog as a reference.
Me: That is even more stupid.

-An applicant listed how to moonwalk as a "special skill."
Me: I would say that as a joke during an interview and then say: "Just kidding. I'm really good with customer service."

-An applicant listed "versatile toes" as a job skill.
Me: What? Unless you're a dancer, you can say you can moonwalk and have versatile toes.

-Co- applicants of a husband and wife looking to job share, submitted a co-written poem.
Me: Unless you're applying for a writer job, you may use a poem, but that's for submitting something you want published.

-One applicant only used his first name.
Me: Did you forget to type in your last name on your resume? Who are you trying to be? Madonna?

-"A job history that included the fact that the applicant was arrested for assaulting his previous boss."
Me: Don't even put that on your resume.

-Typo: "I would be a good ass to the company."

May 8, 2013: I had to delete the B school motivation video link because the people at the site told me to.