Posts filed under 'My articles'
Following are excerpts from my latest “How’d you land that great job?” column for the Seattle Times and NWjobs.com, the paper’s online career center. I love Laura’s job and wanted to share with the class. Plus, we couldn’t run the photo at the left in the paper, and I didn’t want to let it go to waste…
The job: Between 1994 and 2005, Laura Michalek owned and operated four vintage furniture shops in Seattle, most notably Standard Home on Capitol Hill, which she opened in 2000. A self-professed “junker,” she’d put 60,000 miles on her car every year just trolling for antique treasure at estate sales and auctions. Somewhere along the way, she became sold on the idea of grabbing a microphone and working as a full-time auctioneer herself. Today she takes the stage at dozens of local fund-raising auctions each year, helping community and arts organizations such as Home Alive and the Center on Contemporary Art drum up hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Q. How did you make the leap from selling antiques to auctioneering?
A. I went to the Missouri Auction School in 2001 because I was inspired by auctioneers who I had seen while buying furniture for my vintage furniture shops.
Within a few months of finishing school, I was asked to help out at an antique auction house in Edmonds, which turned into a once- or twice-a-month gig, without pay. I did that for two years and developed my chant. That experience was priceless, because it’s not easy to get the actual “calling” experience that you need to develop as an auctioneer.
From there, I built my business on the side, until I decided to go full-tilt boogie — full time — in 2005. Thus, the closing of Standard Home.
Q. What exactly did auctioneer school teach you?
A. The school is actually only nine days long. It teaches you business skills, selling, chanting and ethics. Your instructors are world champions. The school I went to has a particularly strong focus on the chant, and you spend half your time there developing your chant through various exercises.
During the week, they sent us out to small auction houses in rural Missouri, in the evening, to sell. The whole town would come and watch and cheer us on. It was like free theater for the locals.
Q. What types of auctions do you do?
A. Contrary to popular belief, most auctions in this town are not black-tie galas. The average auction I do is a $100,000 fundraiser. But I do everything from a $2,000 auction to a $500,000 auction — from public schools, private schools, nonprofits, art organizations and environmental groups to big galas at downtown hotels. All of my clients have a financial need that a successful fund-raising auction alleviates. There is no posturing or fancy money sitting in the room.
Q. What advice can you give budding auctioneers?
A. Start working or volunteering at any kind of auction, just to be around them. Work the ring at an antique auction, or volunteer to check guests in at a fund-raiser. Sitting on an auction event committee, reading business books, learning how to speak in public via Toastmasters — these are all very helpful.
Learning how to ask for money is also important. Working retail is a great way to get a glimpse into the mind of the buyer. Getting nonprofit experience and understanding how the fund-raising world works is helpful too.
I also believe a formal education in auctioneering is essential. I recommend attending the Missouri Auction School and reading books such as Growing a Business by Paul Hawken and To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work by Dave Smith.
Q. What skills are essential for making a living as an auctioneer?
A. Being able to handle a tremendous amount of pressure and decision-making in a small amount of time and having a reservoir of patience are great virtues, and of course being able to shoot from the hip. I went to auction school with a small business background, a comfort speaking in front of people and a suitable personality, but it’s all for naught if you can’t actually auctioneer and sell.
Once you get the schooling, practice all the time and start selling anywhere you can, even for free. You really have to create your own opportunities. Early on in my auction career, I not only had to convince folks to have an auctioneer but an auction. At the first auction I called, each item was worth $2, but at least I was selling something.
There is no auction too big or small. I still stand in backyards selling baked goods today. And I still go and watch other auctioneers to see what I can learn from them.
Want more? Read this Q&A in its entirety on NWjobs.com. Or you can read past installments of “How’d you land that great job?”
February 28th, 2008
Since many of you work or aspire to work in creative fields, I thought you’d get a kick out of my latest “How’d you land that great job?” Seattle Times story, which profiles Roberta Browne, lead animator at Bungie Studios, maker of Halo. I think Roberta’s career path is particularly interesting because (a) she initially struggled with how to turn her talent/love of illustration into a viable career, (b) she tried her hand at freelancing and realized it wasn’t for her, and (c) she has an enviable position in what’s traditionally been an ultra-male field. So, without further adieu, some excerpts from my interview with Roberta…
The job: Roberta Browne grew up on what she refers to as “a steady diet of Looney Tunes cartoons and ‘The Wonderful World of Disney.’” All her spare time in high school was spent drawing cartoon characters, all her notebooks were covered with doodles. After getting a commercial illustration degree at Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, she tried her hand at freelance illustration for two years — and wound up earning the bulk of her income by waitressing and bartending. Feeling off her game, she returned to school for animation and, upon graduating, landed her first job as an animator. A decade later, in May of 2007, Browne joined Bungie Studios in Kirkland, Wash., where she works as a lead animator, a job that involves everything from 3-D software to brainstorming sessions to pratfalls.
Q. How did you land your first game animation gig?
A. I studied animation at Sheridan College, located in Oakville, Ontario. Every year the school would hold an open house to showcase the work of the graduating students. There was usually a big industry presence, with representatives ranging from small post-production shops to big movie houses to game companies from both Canada and the United States. After graduation I was offered a job at a small post-production house in Toronto, creating animations and effects for various TV shows.
I was contacted a few months later by Broderbund, a game company located in the San Francisco area. One of their lead animators had attended the open house and seen my reel. I was offered a job. I have to admit, the initial draw of living in California overshadowed the opportunity to work in games. I wasn’t really sure what was involved in being a game animator, but I thought I could figure it out. What I discovered is that animating for games is an exciting, challenging and extremely rewarding job.
I worked at a couple of game companies in California before moving up to Seattle in 2003. Over the years I worked my way through the ranks, starting as an animator, working up to senior animator and then finally to lead animator. I have worked on seven released games in my career, as well as a few prototypes that did not make it to market. Some of the more notable titles are “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (Xbox), “Shadowrun” (Xbox 360/Vista) and, of course, “Halo 3.”
Q. What does a lead animator do?
A. My role has changed from creating animation content to managing. I oversee a team of five animators. Most of my time is spent planning, problem solving, coordinating with other functional groups and working with the animation team to ensure they have everything they need to create animation content. I sit with the animation team and participate in [their] reviews of content so far, brainstorming, and acting sessions. Acting sessions involve falling onto mats, jumping, punching and so on. We hand-animate, so there’s no motion-capture technology involved. We’re old school in that regard.
I try to get in a little bit of animation here and there, but it is very limited. It was an interesting transition going from creating animation to helping others to create animation. But I have found it extremely satisfying.
Q: How does game animation differ from film animation?
A. Games are different than films in the sense that the animators create a bunch of smaller pieces of content that are then combined in the game engine. In film, animators work on shots or scenes and animate all the motion from start to finish. So a game animator needs to collaborate with other disciplines. That’s what I love about working in games — it takes art, design and engineering working together to fully realize and bring a game character to life.
Q. Are you a gamer yourself?
A. I do play games outside of work, about three to five hours a week. But I do not consider myself an avid gamer. My passion lies with animation and bringing characters to life. A lot of my free time is spent taking figure drawing and figure sculpting classes at a local art school. This keeps my observational eye sharp, which is a skill I use on a daily basis as an animator.
Q. What advice can you offer hopeful animators?
A. There are so many schools offering animation courses. My advice to those looking to pursue a career in animation is put your focus on learning how to animate. Many schools focus more on teaching different software, and it is fairly easy to get a character to move around. But to have that character act and emote is the real trick. Look for the schools that offer training in animation principles and acting. Having a solid understanding of the basic principles of animation and acting is the key to being a successful animator. Once you accomplish that, you can work in any area of animation production.
You can read the rest of my Q&A with Roberta — complete with recommended resources for aspiring game animators — on NWjobs.com.
November 13th, 2007
Here’s the latest PayScale piece. Thanks again to everyone who sent in their best hell-meeting tales.
When Marie, a sales assistant, showed up for a routine meeting with a big-time retail client, she didn’t expect to find the guy drunk. With a bird cage containing a latex chicken hanging on the wall behind him. Nor did she expect him to spend the entire meeting on the phone, haggling over money with a bunch of car dealerships.
“I thought about Kafka,” Marie says. “This was so weird.”
While most meetings from hell aren’t quite so surreal, they’re every bit as maddening. Take Judy, who worked as managing editor at a magazine and had the classic sitcom experience of suggesting a story idea in a meeting only to have her boss ignore her and then present the idea as his own ten minutes later.
“Everyone’s jaw dropped as they turned to look at me,” she says.
Or Lawrence, who worked for a travel company where the president’s wife (who doubled as the business manager) would monopolize the first ten minutes of every meeting by lecturing the staff on the finer points of carpet stain removal, sometimes even demonstrating how the team should go about cleaning spilled coffee from her prized new office carpeting.
Then there’s Ruth, who worked at a non-profit arts organization where many a meeting devolved into a group therapy session:
“At my very first staff meeting, one woman announced that she had to leave early because she was going to see her therapist, another woman started crying over something and then apologized because she was hormonal, and more time was spent talking about hair than anything else.”
With such a sense of uselessness and futility at meetings — and such a dizzying percentage of the workday sucked up by them — is it any wonder that so many attendees have taken to working on their laptops, texting friends, even snoozing through them, often in plain sight of the boss? Should it come as any surprise that workers overwhelmed by the onslaught of irrelevant meetings block out several days a month on their calendars so they can get some actual work done?
Managers, the next time you feel compelled to schedule a team meeting, think long and hard before you hit Send. The way to earn your employees’ respect is not by scheduling a pre-launch meeting to discuss what next week’s launch meeting will discuss. It’s not by holding a meeting at 7:00 a.m. on a Monday or 6:30 p.m. on a Friday. It’s not by showing up five minutes before the hour-long meeting you called is scheduled to end (and no, you don’t get points for actually showing up). And it’s certainly not by hijacking a meeting so you and the one other manager in attendance can beat to death a topic that has nothing to do with the cube monkeys helplessly held captive in the conference room.
Managers, don’t say it with a meeting when you can say it with an email. Don’t say it with a meeting before you know what the heck it is you want to say. Don’t be the crazy drunk guy with the rubber chicken in a bird cage who haggles with car salesmen during meetings with business colleagues. And if you have to be that guy, make sure you bring enough booze for the rest of the class.
For some ideas on putting meetings out of their misery, see this PayScale page.
November 11th, 2007
Thanks, everyone, for sending in your best Meeting from Hell stories. Who knew there were so many drunk, stoned, vomiting, conniving, idea-snatching, lobotomized, obsessive compulsive, and three-blinks-shy-of-a-nervous-breakdown managers out there? The PayScale story I wanted them for will be out in November and I’ll link to it here once it’s live. If I decided to use your story, I sent you an email confirming as much. Meanwhile, congrats to Marie, who sent in a tale of a rubber chicken-wielding intoxicated client who used a meeting with her as an opportunity to do his personal car shopping. Complete with phone haggling! With a bunch of car dealerships!
Marie’s getting a signed copy of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide, but there are a couple dozen more where that came from. (Actually they’re in my office, and I’m looking to free up some shelf space.) If anyone wants one — $15 + $5 shipping = $20 US — email me and I’ll tell you how to send me some dough so that I can get you a copy.
October 22nd, 2007
Since I’m trotting out all my freelance projects this week and I was just talking about pet photography, I want to introduce you to a journal/book I worked on last summer that Sasquatch Books recently published. It’s called My Puppy’s First Journal, and it features the stunning pet photography of Emily Rieman, proprietress of Best Friend Photography in Seattle. There’s only one way to describe Emily’s work: so freaking gorgeous-adorable it makes you coo and goo and blubber like a baby, which I of course mean in the best possible way.
It probably won’t come as any shock that this goes down in history as my best freelance project ever. It wasn’t as high-paying as, say, my less-sexy mega-corporate high-tech work, but it was hardly work to sift through achingly cute puppy shot after achingly cute puppy shot and come up with accompanying text like, “the first time I humped my person’s leg,” “the first time I pooped on the carpet,” or “the thing I did in front of company that embarrassed my person so much they had to change their name and move to the next state.” (That last one’s not in the book, but I kind of wish it was.) Working on this project was one of those freelance high points where I almost felt guilty accepting money because I was having so much fun. And the fact that Emily was a blast to work with was just icing on the already delectable cake.
So… if you’re a pup fan or you have friends who recently adopted a four-legged bundle of joy, I highly recommend this one. And for the record, this is Emily’s book, not mine. As in, she earns the royalties. I was paid a flat fee by the publisher for my work on the project. So the only thing I get out of you buying the book is the satisfaction of knowing that more people will get to slobber over Emily’s scrumptious pup photos and that another freelancer’s doggone done good.
October 12th, 2007
Here’s my latest article on PayScale. Enjoy…
We’ve all been there. Sunday night rolls around and suddenly we’re covered with hives. Or we find ourselves frantically searching WebMD for some exotic new disease to call in sick with the next morning. Or we begin entertaining “kill the boss” fantasies that rival the pink-collar revenge scenes in the movie “Nine to Five.”
But suffering from a chronic case of the Mondays doesn’t necessarily mean you should dust off your resume and start looking for greener pastures. Some workplace woes are fixable. The trick is knowing which ones — and how to mend them.
The magic is gone
So you’ve been at your job a couple years and now you’re bored. Or frustrated. Or disgruntled. Sound familiar? It’s possible you’ve just fallen into the age-old workplace habit of griping for griping’s sake, says Cynthia Shapiro, author of Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know — And What to Do About Them.
Instead of pissing and moaning, Shapiro advises, try to tap into what you originally appreciated about your gig and company. If you come up empty, take a long, hard look at your job: Has it changed for the worse since you started? Has the company? Have you changed, perhaps outgrowing the work? If the answer’s yes to any of these, it’s indeed time fly like the wind.
“I hate my boss” syndrome
Sure, a lot of bosses are crummy managers, but only a small percentage of them are sociopathic misanthropes. “If your boss looks like he’s terrible, it’s probably just that you’re terrible at managing up,” says Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.
The solution, says Trunk, is to tell your boss what you need to succeed in your job — be it more lead time on deadlines or more backup when the workload’s piled sky high. But remember, it’s not all about you. It’s about supporting your boss and doing a bang-up job so that she impresses her superiors. Keep your boss happy and you hold the keys to the kingdom.
“I think my boss hates me” syndrome
But what if you are doing a heckuva job, only to be snubbed when your boss hands out the plum projects, pay raises, and promotions? Maybe you’re constantly getting the difficult clients dumped in your lap. Or your job title’s changed so many times your coworkers have no idea what you do anymore. Or you just received a poor performance review, seemingly out of the blue.
If no matter how hard you shine, you’re ignored or sidelined by management, it’s time to wake up and smell the pink slip. “That is not just job ennui,” says Shapiro. “That is danger — you’re in the exit lane.” And while it may be tempting to sulk, your focus should on looking for a new employer. Pronto.
Want more? Read the rest of the article here.
October 12th, 2007
I do a biweekly column called “How’d you land that great job?” for the Seattle Times and its NWjobs employment blog. Usually I have to profile 9-to-5ers, but for this week’s Q&A, my editor let me feature a self-employed pet photographer. The interview was too much fun to keep to myself…
The job: Like many animal-loving kids, Jamie Pflughoeft grew up with dogs, cats and birds for pets, and she dreamed of working with animals someday. In college, she studied animal behavior while working as a pet sitter and dog walker on the side. Stifled after graduation by a tight job market, she decided in 2003 to turn her hobby — taking photos of her pet-sitting and dog-walking “clients” — into a full-fledged business. Today, as top dog of Cowbelly Pet Photography, she snaps the mugs of hundreds of critters a year, turning many of them into brightly colored, digitally enhanced artwork that she’s dubbed Decopaw.
Q: How did you decide to hang your own shingle as a pet photographer?
A: I studied animal behavior at the University of Washington. My master plan was to start a dog training business. I graduated right after 9/11 and the job market was horrible, people were getting laid off right and left. I was willing to take any full-time job I could get working with animals that wasn’t entry level. I looked for a job for a year but couldn’t find one.
I had been doing pet photography as a hobby since 2000, never once considering that I could make a living at it. I’d been working part-time as a dog walker and a pet sitter for a pet-services company while I was going to school. And it was my clients’ pets that I was photographing — for free. So I had a ready-made model base.
I got really great feedback on the photos I was taking and ended up creating a portfolio just for fun. A friend of mine who was also starting a business suggested that I turn my pet photography hobby into a business, and I thought: What a great idea. You know how in the cartoons a light bulb goes off? It was just like that.
Q: Did you have a full-time workload as a pet photographer right away or did that take time?
A: I started the business in July of 2003. But I’ve only been doing it full time for the past two and a half years. For the first year and a half I was doing dog walking part-time to supplement my income.
Q: Do you have any formal photography training?
A: I took one photography class when I was 17. It was a film class and I did all my own darkroom stuff. I’ve always loved photography and I think I’ve always had an eye for it, but as far as the technical aspects of photography, I’m self-taught.
For this job, my background in working with dogs for six years as a dog walker and pet sitter and studying animal behavior at the university level was essential. I would not have this job now without that experience.
Q: What type of pets do you photograph?
A: Dogs are 85 percent of what I do. Cats are about 15 percent. I also shoot any other pet people want me to. I will shoot an iguana if you want. I’ve done rats and horses, too.
Here’s the rest of the article, which includes Jamie’s recommended game plan and resources for aspiring pet photographers. And here’s Jaime’s pet photography blog.
October 11th, 2007
From a new article in NAFE magazine by yours truly…
You’re at your desk by 8 a.m., wouldn’t dream of pocketing a single box of binder clips, and haven’t worn flip-flops to work since your lifeguard days. But there’s more to keeping your nose clean at the office than hitting deadlines and following the employee manual. Some of the most seemingly innocuous acts can kill your shot at that promotion — or worse, land you on management’s hit list next time layoffs roll around. Following are seven fatal workplace mistakes you should avoid at all costs.
Abusing technology
Think one little email rant about your boss to a sympathetic pal can’t hurt you? Think again. A recent American Management Association study found that 25 percent of companies have fired employees for email misuse. And 26 percent of businesses have given workers the axe for browsing sites they shouldn’t.
“Misusing the technology in your office is the number one career killer,” says Cynthia Shapiro, former HR executive and author of Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know — And What to Do About Them. Thanks to computer monitoring software, “you’re no longer invisible.” So the next time you want to shop online for a new pair of pumps, vent about management via email, or burn up the phone lines with your latest childcare crisis, do it at home.
Butting heads with the boss
You don’t have to invite your boss out for happy hour, but you do have to build an amicable partnership with her. “If you don’t have a good relationship with your boss, your job is in jeopardy right now,” Shapiro says. “Your boss can put a raise freeze on you that will last your entire duration at that company.” Not only that, a bad write-up in your personnel file can haunt you any time a future employer calls to check references.
Unless you’re working for an abusive Neanderthal — in which case you might want to dust off your resume — treat your boss as though you’re self-employed and she’s your biggest client, Shapiro advises. A supervisor who is unsure of your commitment will have trouble grooming you for the next rung.
Settling for a support role
“Support roles are dead ends,” says Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. If you have your eye on the executive suite, Trunk advises getting out of HR, marketing, or customer service. Instead, move into a department that’s responsible for the company’s bottom line, such as sales, finance, or business development.
In meetings, too, avoid playing the servile mother hen who takes notes and ensures everyone’s had a chance to voice their opinion, says Michele Lodin, a veteran HR executive at Advanced Medical Optics, Inc., in California. Instead, focus on the job you were hired to do and fearlessly offer up your expertise.
Confiding in HR
Contrary to popular belief, your human resources representative is not your friend, advocate, or confidante. “The role of human resources is to support the company, not you,” says Trunk. “If you need support, hire a career coach.”
Complaining about your boss to HR is like griping about your husband to your mother-in-law and expecting her to keep quiet. Ditto for voicing concerns to HR about your health, family, or ambivalence toward returning to work after maternity leave. “You cannot tell them anything that would make you appear to be a threat,” either legally or in terms of job performance, Shapiro says.
Read the rest of the article here.
September 8th, 2007
I’m writing a series of articles affectionately dubbed “Take This Job and Love It” for the salary site PayScale.com. The first one’s on how to find and negotiate a flexible day job. Here’s an excerpt:
You can’t open the business section these days without seeing a story on companies that let employees work when and where they want. It’s good for morale, great for the bottom line, and with any luck, the wave of the future. All well and good for the country’s millions of flextime and telecommuting workers. But what if you, too, want to be there when your kids get home from school or would love Fridays off to pursue your side business? How do you find the flex-friendly companies, and while we’re at it, how do you convince your current employer to cut you a piece of the flexibility pie?
Targeting flex-friendly employers
It doesn’t matter how open-minded your employer is — your job can’t be done off company premises or outside “normal” business hours, you don’t stand a chance of nabbing a piece of the flexibility pie. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume a little flexibility wouldn’t compromise your getting the job done. So how do you spot a flex-friendly employer?
Read the headlines. Obviously, if a company you have your eye on makes the Working Mother Top 100 annual list, it’s cause to celebrate. Ditto for companies that prominently feature press releases and media coverage singing the praises of their work/life balance programs. “Employers who have something to brag about usually do,” says Pat Katepoo of WorkOptions.com, who’s been consulting hopeful flex workers for 14 years. But don’t stop at corporate propaganda. Pay attention to the local headlines and see what dirt a Google search turns up, too.
Get references. Use your personal network, professional memberships, and social networking sites such as LinkedIn to track down current employees of your target companies and see what information you can glean. Katepoo also suggests contacting your local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and asking what companies in your neck of the woods offer flex packages — and how their employees rate them.
Check the company culture. Once you’re on site for a job interview, play detective. Unless you get a job offer, avoid asking the hiring manager about company hours and the possibility of flex work. Instead, see how many cars remain in the company parking lot after 6 p.m. and how many of your potential co-workers have pictures of their kids on their desks. After the interview, ask to talk to some of your potential colleagues. Sniff out who has a flexible arrangement and how it’s going for them.
You can read the entire article here.
August 25th, 2007
My Oprah-style-roundtable piece on the way working women relate to each other across generations appears in the Seattle Times today. Here’s the start of the article:
Now that the country has four generations of women in the workplace, the stereotypes are piling up faster than to-do items in an overworked middle manager’s inbox.
According to the latest lore, today’s youngest workers are a bunch of midriff-baring, self-entitled whiners who demand constant praise. By contrast, their midlife counterparts are workaholic technophobes unlikely to hold open for younger women the doors they had to beat down themselves.
To hear what those in the trenches think, we invited eight Seattle area women ranging from age 26 to 63 to lunch. Excerpts from their conversation follow…
You can read the story in its entirety here. And you can share your two cents — or duke it out — with other Seattle Times readers here. Oh, and in case you’re wondering what generation I hail from, it’s X. I turn 40 this Thursday.
August 5th, 2007
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Following are excerpts from my latest “How’d you land that great job?” column for the Seattle Times and NWjobs.com, the paper’s online career center. I love Laura’s job and wanted to share with the class. Plus, we couldn’t run the photo at the left in the paper, and I didn’t want to let it go to waste… 
Q. How did you make the leap from selling antiques to auctioneering?
