Why career advice has become so boring?
Tags: boring, career advice, Dan Pink, linkedin, linkedin group, Penelope Trunk, seth godin, Tim Ferriss
I have been using google reader to get all the news about my industry especially career advice and everything related to job search.
But with the time passing, I realize that career advice is completely boring and not creative…every single day, I read loads of advice and tips:
“5 tips to write your cv”
“the 7 tips to win an interview”
“How to use linkedin to find a job”
And so on…(I hate lenghty listings like the “15 ways” with 15 bullet points)
So I started to simply unsubscribe to a great deal of blogs with always the same talk and the same titles.
Do it yourself: go on google and type in interview tips or CV tips, you will see, you’ll get thousands and thousands of occurrences.
Now I started reading blogs about different issues (psychology, cooking, marketing…) with personal talks, or stories, or even completely unrelated topics but I discovered that I learn much more from reading these blogs than from reading the same thing with the same title (same tips, same everything).
People who think outside the box like Dan Pink or Seth Godin or Penelope Trunk or even Tim Ferriss are the kind of refreshing stuff I am looking for and not the boring career advice stuff you can get everywhere.
So why people give career advice like that or don’t strive to be more creative?
(ah I forgot one that is a big hit: 5 tips to use linkedin to find a job)
1 – They just copy and paste articles they read on internet or other blogs and rewrite it to appear different
2 – They want to attract a huge traffic and they know that even if these articles are boring and not creative, they will attract readers
3 – They know that to attract traffic numbers work“the best 5, the 7 mistakes…”, the word “tips” or anything related to ready made solutions will be read
But the consequences for people reading these articles can be worse: you create an army of clones with the same tips and the same way of doing things.
I think tips and advice are highly personal stuff and you can’t apply them to everybody.
So dear blog writers or journalists, please spare us with all these boring articles starting with “ the 5 …” or “the best…” just to create traffic.
Think about your readers even if you won’t get a huge amount of traffic on your website, try to give us:
- personal points of view (like this one) Never again!
- stories or case studies: Job Search Tenacity through a blind dog or this one Horror and funny job search stories
- new ideas: Web-loafing
- new challenges: The roots for motivation
Even if we are all tempted to craft messages or articles that will attract as many readers as we can, we still need to create quality over quantity.
We still need to create and bring new ideas, emotions, stories to make people think or to challenge the status quo…the world is changing quickly and career advice needs to adapt as well.
A couple of months ago I almost wrote an article “the 5 mistakes on linkedin” after seeing on a linkedin group 1303 views for an article about job search on linkedin.
At the end of the day, it is a question of what kind of title I put for my article and the content that will come up with it. I will probably disclose an article about linkedin but will try to make it personal and full of stories.
Highest Paid Jobs said:
Nov 04, 09 at 2:58 amFinding a good job can be pretty troublesome. Especially when you have high expectations.
Here are some tips that helped me land the job of my dreams:
* You need to have a professional written resume. If you are not an expert, you could consider hiring one.
* Think about all the jobs you are qualified for. This may lead to discovering additional jobs you could land.
* Don’t neglect any source of jobs : internet, newspaper, radio and other media. Ask your friends that have similar jobs if there may be an opening in their company.
* Don’t just send the resume by email and wait for an answer. You need to call them and have them confirm the job opening and receiving your resume.
Finding a job is pretty much a job in itself and it’s all about how well can you market your abilities.
Laurent Brouat said:
Nov 04, 09 at 12:07 pmIt is exactly the kind of comment that adds nothing else (it is probably some kind of advert or spam!) with bullet points talking about your dream job mentionning that you need to have a well written CV (who does not know that!!!)
Linda Whittern said:
Nov 13, 09 at 11:33 amAgree with your comments, Laurent, and have been through much the same process as you when looking for interesting ideas / developments in career advice and job search support.
There’s very little good quality research in either of the above fields to refresh the ideas of practitioners. Most of what research is available is government-funded,so is concerned with the problems of those who are socially disadvantaged (eg long term unemployed people with a multitude of other personal problems).
We work with people (eg professionals who have just lost their jobs) who are not socially disadvantaged and are expected to be able to quickly resolve their problems; accordingly, little research attention is given to them. After all, who’s going to fund that research? If PhD students did want to research the area, they’d find the evidence base hardly exists.
You might find some interesting information coming out of the University of Derby careers guidance unit.
Laurent Brouat said:
Nov 13, 09 at 1:45 pmThanks Linda for this additionnal information.
John Deely said:
Dec 14, 09 at 12:10 pmI agree with the broad thrust of this thought provoking post. I would make three points about the place of the boring basic advice.
1. Given how poor some or many people are at the basics of career management and marketing whether for reasons of failing to focus on their career or lacking in that acumen, I think there is a market for career advice that is basic and therefore quit boring. (Even people who are expert in a field need do not always take the advice they know to be good, such as medical professional who are often poor at managing their own health.)
2. In a system like the internet where the barrier to entry for information and quality control is based on someone building up a reputation over time, it will take time for quality to recognised and highlighted. Hence many of the “cut and paste” career advisers will be superceded by more thought provoking original thinkers.
3. In any area or walk of life, there will be novices and experts. The same applies to the area of career management. Today, everyone needs to be their own career manager as careers change much more often (as you highlighted in your post “Did you know… that the world is changing?”) However, some people are quite passive or novice career managers whereas other are expert and dynamic.
Enjoy your thought provoking career thought and provocations. Apologies for replying to a not quite current post.
Laurent Brouat said:
Dec 14, 09 at 8:37 pmJohn, your 3 points hit the nail…the barrier of entry is low on internet, so anyone can make comments, but at the same time, new talents can pop up!