A little intellectual curiosity can help your career

Your boss comes to you in the middle of a project and asks you why you’re doing something a certain way. Without much thought, you reply “because that’s the way we’ve always done it in the past.” A response that makes most managers cringe.

 

Even if what you’ve done in the past is the best way to approach the task, your manager is generally interested in hearing the rationale behind what you’re doing and why you’re doing it—in other words, your level of intellectual curiosity. And that becomes even more of an expectation as you progress throughout your career. Managers want to see that you have perspective and that, even if you’re caught off guard by a question, that you can think through what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

 

• What am I trying to accomplish? One of the best questions to ask yourself if you’re focused on continuous improvement. Instead of falling into the trap of just changing something for the sake of changing it, take time to clearly outline and articulate the purpose of the program, project, or change you’re working on.

 

• What does success look like? For some, just completing the task at hand counts as success but that’s usually not enough. Your boss is going to want to know you’ve put some thought into what you’re going to measure and how you’re going to collect feedback.

 

• Are there areas that can be improved? Because you know what you’re trying to accomplish and you’ve identified what success looks like, you’ll be able to give perspective on areas of improvement.

 

“Because I said so” only gets parents so far when trying to manage their kids. As an employee, “because that’s the way we did it last year” is only going to get you so far with your employer. Be intellectually curious—show your value by asking insightful questions and by backing up your thoughts and ideas with data and historical perspective when possible.

Endeavors magazine

A big thank you to Mark Derewicz for writing a review of my book, Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job in the fall 2008 issue of Endeavors magazine.

Endeavors magazine focuses on the intellectual side of life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A self-confessed music junky, one of my favorite articles is about the impact technology has had on music.

When it comes to resumes, don’t be so bold

As job seekers, we want to draw attention to key details on our resume—our name, educational background, experience, specialized skills, etc. Unfortunately, for many that means bolding pretty much everything on their resume. And not just bolding, bolding something that’s already capitalized, italicized, and underlined. If writing in all caps in an email is the equivalent of yelling, just imagine what all that overemphasis means on your resume.

 

Although there are no universal rules on what you should bold, I usually stick to the guidelines below.

 

Things you can bold:

• the name of your employer (generally only if well known) or your job title (if it’s something you want to draw attention to); you typically wouldn’t want to bold the name of your employer and your title as they would wash each other out.
• the name of the college or university you attended
• category headings for the different sections of your resume

 

Things you definitely don’t need to bold:

• dates. I really can’t think of anyone who would want to draw attention to a date although one job seeker did argue with me because she wanted to leave perfect attendance in high school on her post-college resume that was already three pages long
• your address (recruiters aren’t going to write you a letter and, if they do, trust me you don’t want it)
•  anything that’s already capitalized, underlined, or italicized

 

By using bold sparingly, you’ll find that recruiters will be more likely to focus on what it is you’re trying to highlight. And, after all, isn’t that the point?