Civic Ventures, which awards The Purpose Prize, is a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. The organization introduced the concept of encore careers, which combine meaning, continued income and social impact. They provide  social entrepreneurs over 60 $100,000 each for using their experience and passion to make an extraordinary impact on some of society’s biggest challenges. Now in its sixth year, the $17 million program is the nation’s only large-scale investment in social innovators in the second half of life.

Learn more about this winner below!

Edward Mazria (pictured), 70, Architecture 2030, Santa Fe, NM

An award-winning architect in Santa Fe, Mazria had a 40-year record of innovation and advocacy in sustainable building. But even he was surprised when in 2002 his analysis of U.S. government data revealed that the building sector consumes approximately half of all energy production and causes about half of all greenhouse gas emissions each year. In 2003, Mazria founded Architecture 2030 to change those practices. The group issued the 2030 Challenge – a set of benchmarks for reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment (buildings, homes and other man-made structures) to “carbon neutral” by 2030. The American Institute of Architects, U.S. Conference of Mayors, U.S. Green Building Council and National Governors Association immediately adopted the challenge. Legislation followed. Mazria will soon release the 2030 Palette, a global set of comprehensive guiding principles, which will be translated into multiple languages for application internationally.

photo and video courtesy of Civic Ventures

Civic Ventures, which awards The Purpose Prize, is a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. The organization introduced the concept of encore careers, which combine meaning, continued income and social impact. They provide  social entrepreneurs over 60 $100,000 each for using their experience and passion to make an extraordinary impact on some of society’s biggest challenges. Now in its sixth year, the $17 million program is the nation’s only large-scale investment in social innovators in the second half of life.

Learn about this winner below!

Wanjiru Kamau (pictured), 69, African Immigrant and Refugee Foundation, Washington, D.C.

When Kamau, a former Penn State University administrator and adjunct professor, met survivors from the Rwandan genocide, she saw that some were illiterate and bewildered by modern city life. Seeing them took her back to her own childhood in rural Kenya, growing up without running water or electricity, and carrying loads on her back that left her permanently scarred. An expert in mental health and intercultural communication, she had the credentials to help. So in 2000 she decided to quit her job, withdraw $10,000 from her retirement account and move to Washington, D.C., home to many African immigrants, to start the African Immigrant and Refugee Foundation. The organization has since provided services – including mentoring, tutoring, assistance with human trafficking and domestic violence cases, and mental health care – to more than 6,000 immigrants from 45 countries.

Read about prize winner Nancy Sanford Hughs

Read about prize winner Randal Charlton

Read about prize winner Jenny Bowen

photo and video courtesy of Civic Ventures

Civic Ventures, which awards The Purpose Prize, is a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. The organization introduced the concept of encore careers, which combine meaning, continued income and social impact. They provide  social entrepreneurs over 60 $100,000 each for using their experience and passion to make an extraordinary impact on some of society’s biggest challenges. Now in its sixth year, the $17 million program is the nation’s only large-scale investment in social innovators in the second half of life.

Learn about this winner below!

Nancy Sanford Hughes (pictured), 68, StoveTeam International, Eugene, OR

Hughes, a stay-at-home mom, was at a loss after her husband’s death in 2001. Yearning for adventure and purpose, she volunteered to cook for a medical mission in Guatemala. As she worked, thousands of people came for treatment – as many as 80 percent of them injured by open fires in unventilated homes. Entire families suffered chronic coughs, respiratory infections and horrific burns. According to the World Health Organization, smoke exposure from traditional cookstoves and open fires causes more than 2 million premature deaths annually – twice as many as malaria. Hughes was intent on finding a way to prevent those injuries. Since 2008, Hughes’ organization, StoveTeam International, has manufactured and sold the affordable, fuel-efficient Ecocina stove. Portable, smokeless, cool to the touch and needing just a few pieces of kindling to cook a meal, the stove has replaced the open cooking fire in more than 15,000 homes across Central America, reaching more than 90,000 people.

Read about prize winner Randal Charlton

Read about prize winner Jenny Bowen

photo and video courtesy of Civic Ventures

It’s a question Purpose Prize winner Randal Charlton of Detroit asked himself at one point in his career. His story is really inspirational, as he’s experienced many ups and downs personally, but has been working to help create jobs and opportunities in Detroit.

Civic Ventures, which awards The Purpose Prize, is a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. The organization introduced the concept of encore careers, which combine meaning, continued income and social impact. They provide  social entrepreneurs over 60 $100,000 each for using their experience and passion to make an extraordinary impact on some of society’s biggest challenges. Now in its sixth year, the $17 million program is the nation’s only large-scale investment in social innovators in the second half of life.

Learn about this winner below!

Randal Charlton (pictured), 71, TechTown, Detroit

In his lifetime, Charlton has bought and sold 14 companies, worked as a journalist, tended dairy cows for a Saudi sheik, started a jazz club and consulted for a world bank. For four years, he served as executive director of TechTown, a business incubator aiming to recruit local entrepreneurs to revitalize Detroit’s economy. Charlton transformed TechTown from a nearly empty industrial building with few resources into a thriving hub, currently supporting 250 companies. More than 2,200 entrepreneurs have received training at TechTown, which has helped clients raise $14 million. On November 1, Charlton will transition from leading TechTown to focusing his expertise on BOOM! The New Economy, a TechTown-affiliated venture that offers training, one-on-one mentoring and internships to people over 50 exploring second acts.

Read about prize winner Jenny Bowen.

photo and video courtesy of Civic Ventures

Civic Ventures is a think tank on boomers, work and social purpose. The organization introduced the concept of encore careers, which combine meaning, continued income and social impact. Civic Ventures awards The Purpose Prize, which provides “five social entrepreneurs over 60 $100,000 each for using their experience and passion to make an extraordinary impact on some of society’s biggest challenges.” Now in its sixth year, the $17 million program is the nation’s only large-scale investment in social innovators in the second half of life.

(The Atlantic Philanthropies and the John Templeton Foundation, funds the prize, a program of Civic Ventures.) Twenty-eight judges – leaders in business, politics, journalism and the nonprofit sector – chose the five winners from a pool of more than 1,000 nominees.

I’m delighted to be an invited guest to The Purpose Prize awards ceremony in December in Sausalito, CA. The organization will host approximately 300 attendees of the invitation-only ceremony. We will hear from Purpose Prize judges, including NBC’s Jane Pauley and Sherry Lansing, CEO of The Sherry Lansing Foundation and former chair of Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group.

Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing information and videos about Purpose Prize winners. I hope their stories will inspire you…While you may not want to create a non-profit organization yourself, these successes remind us that age is not a true barrier to accomplishing your career goals.

Purpose Prize Winner: Jenny Bowen (pictured), 66, Half the Sky Foundation, Berkeley, Calif.

Winner of The Purpose Prize for Intergenerational Innovation, sponsored by AARP

When Bowen, a screenwriter, saw a photo in The New York Times in 1996 of a starving girl in a Chinese welfare institution, she took immediate action. Within 18 months she and her husband had adopted a 20-month-old girl named Maya from Guangzhou, China. Maya couldn’t walk or talk, but after a year of loving care, she was a happy, healthy child. In 1998 Bowen launched Half the Sky Foundation to radically transform the way China cares for its 800,000 orphans. Today the organization operates in 51 Chinese cities, providing infant care, preschool programs, free medical services for disabled children and financial support for foster families caring for AIDS orphans. So far, the group has improved care for more than 60,000 orphans.

photo and video courtesy of Civic Ventures.

Clearly, there was something significant he wanted to capture. (It didn’t look particularly special to me — just leaves and the sun shining through.) Regardless, he was willing to go all out to accomplish his target photographs.

“Ah ha!” I thought. “THIS is a blog post.” Have you tried approaching your job search from a different angle? When is the last time you turned your focus a bit and thought about how you could do things differently?

Do you ever stop and think about the hiring manager’s point of view, for example? Do you ever read books or blogs written for recruiters or hiring managers? Do you know what they are thinking? What they say they like? Do you consider how your resume and other application materials may or may not appeal to them?

Maybe you’re too busy writing your resume all about you, when you really need to re-focus and write it focusing on the touch points making you qualified for the job? Are you looking backward (metaphorically) in your application materials, when it’s time to turn around and look to the future? Your resume needs to be about that future — it’s not a historical diatribe; it’s a marketing document. Focus it on your NEXT opportunity, even if it means you need to look in a different direction to do it.

Have you thought about applying for different types of jobs? Maybe “your job” doesn’t exist anymore; your field isn’t hiring. It may be time to look at your career from a different direction. Avoid being linear in your thinking; start exploring new opportunities and options. Maybe that includes working for yourself or branching out into a different field altogether. The first step is being willing to look at things from a new angle.

Are you letting people around you dictate your direction (where you’re looking)? This is often the case for young people, just starting out in their careers, but I think it is pretty common for more experienced workers, too. It’s too easy to hear the voices telling us to follow (or stay on) a certain path, when we may be happier looking elsewhere.

Are you looking at the writing on the wall, but ignoring it? Give yourself some credit. Stop and think about your plans, your goals. What are you doing to accomplish them? How can you turn your lens and re-focus your search to help you accomplish your goals?

(For more inspiration from NYC, you may enjoy “Are your perfectionist tendencies helping or hurting you?“)

While in the impressionist wing, viewing art by French artist Edgar Degas (1834-1917), famous for his paintings and sculptures of ballet dancers, I noticed an explanation accompanying many small sculptures (photo at right). Apparently, there were more than 150 pieces made of clay, wax and plastiline that Degas had been ambivalent about preserving in bronze because he wasn’t sure they were good enough.

I thought it a little ironic — this master painter and sculpture, whose art is now famous around the world and displayed in iconic museums, was worried some of his work wasn’t good enough to save for posterity.

Clearly, he had perfectionist tendencies, as the placard near the famous, “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (photo below), indicated he had taken such care to sculpt it, there were an “extraordinary number of surviving sketches in charcoal and pastel, as well as his study of the figure.” You can see some of his paintings of dancers in the background.

Stop and think: what are you doing well that you don’t think is good enough? What are you underestimating about your skills, experiences and accomplishments? Are you convincing yourself something isn’t good enough when, in fact, any more objective onlooker would convince you otherwise? Sometimes, it’s difficult to give ourselves credit for what we know we do well. I remember advising a student when I worked at Emory to highlight her multi-lingual skills (she was in the international health field). She assumed everyone had similar skills, and her accomplishments weren’t unique or special.

Just as Degas didn’t think enough of the many small sculptures to preserve them in bronze, you may be underestimating your abilities and not applying for the right kind of jobs. Maybe you haven’t had success landing interviews, so you think you should look for different (maybe less advanced) work? Have you considered the fact you may simply be underselling yourself in your resume and other marketing materials. (If you even have other job search marketing materials.)

Before you alter your course, make sure you’re giving yourself every chance to succeed in your chosen path. Consider hiring an unbiased career expert to help showcase your best “you” before you metaphorically destroy your clay, wax and plastiline job search.

What career lessons do you glean from this story? Share you ideas in the comments.

Could you use some help highlighting your “best you?” Contact me for a quote for a transformed resume and/or coaching to get your job hunt moving in the right direction. Be sure to consider having your own professional website to showcase your professional attributes and to help people find you online.

Skip these resources at your own peril — they are telling you exactly what you need to know to be a strong candidate.

But, what if most everything on the job description is a great match for your skills, but they want one or two skills or accomplishments you don’t really have a lot to say about? A good example? Leadership skills.

So many jobs are looking for people with leadership skills. You know you need to address how you are a great leader in the interview, but, truth be told — you haven’t had a lot of opportunities to lead. Maybe you’re an entry-level candidate or you’re trying to move into a leadership position. However, as far as specific stories about how you led a team to greatness, you don’t really have it.

Some things to consider:

It’s acceptable (and expected) to share non-work related leadership stories if your job isn’t very leadership focused. Volunteer work is very useful for this. Maybe you led a team and raised a lot of money for a cause. Or, you galvanized a lot of other volunteers and accomplished a big goal. Your leadership stories do not need to focus entirely on your paid work experiences.

That said, it does help to be able to work in information about how you demonstrated leadership at work. Focus on what skills are useful to have as a leader…Break down the topic of “leadership” and see if you can identify some matches between what you’ve exhibited on the job and your career goals. (Note: remember, you can break down the topic for any skill you want to illustrate.)

For example a leader:

• Shows (and takes) initiative — enthusiastically
• Takes responsibility for his or her actions
• Has strong communication skills
• Can think on his or her feet and make decisions
• Is able to convince others of a viewpoint or plan — and inspires them to cooperate
• Demonstrates dedication and confidence
• Is comfortable with a certain amount of ambiguity
• Is focused on the best possible ways to get the job done
• Thinks analytically and focuses on the task at hand
• Sees the bigger picture and makes suggestions to avoid obstacles
• Hones strong relationships
• Shows good judgement
• Is imaginative and innovative

Consider addressing a question about leadership like this:

When I think of the best leaders, they demonstrate dedication and confidence, can think ahead and make good decisions and have strong relationships with their teammates. (Then, tell a story illustrating a time when you used those three skills.)

Framing the definition of “leadership” and providing a story showing how and when you used those characteristics will help you answer a question that might otherwise have stymied you — if you were thinking of a very traditional example of you “leading” a group or a team, but you have not done that on the job.

What suggestions do you have to answer interview questions that might otherwise really stump you?

Resources for this list:

An article by Barbara White, who has over twenty years experience in leadership. She is President of Beyond Better Development, which specializes in motivation and training in interpersonal skills.

Coach4Growth

photo by Leo Reynolds

This month, the Career Collective (a community I co-coordinate with my colleague Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter) addresses the question of how to successfully accomplish a career change. Please click through to the links at the bottom of this post to the other responses to this question.

Beyond the resume and typical job search materials, I believe using social media tools can really help build a career changer’s bridge to a new occupation or vocation. In my book, Social Networking for Career Success, I explain how social media may help career changers who naturally have a difficult time proving they have what they need to succeed in the next job: How? It solves several problems:

• It allows you to extend your network to meet people you otherwise would never encounter. Statistics show how important introductions and “warm leads” are to job seekers. Companies value referrals from within their organizations, and meeting new people you would not otherwise know via online interactions provides more potential for referrals. (Moving those social networking interactions to in-person or telephone conversations is a good next step.)
• You have easy access to information and resources about your targeted profession. I like to think of social networks as offering a constant opportunity to learn what people in the field and thinking, saying, writing and sharing. Twitter is particularly useful in this regard. In the book, I describe how it’s possible to follow content from conferences you don’t attend in person via hashtags, and share tips from Mark Stelzner, of Inflexion Advisors, for live tweeting a conference. If you find and follow people like Mark in your field, you may be able to grasp the key problems your new targeted industry is grappling with, without leaving your home and without spending a dime! (I elaborate on all the details in the book for HOW to find and follow the right community online.)
• Social media allows you to demonstrate your newfound expertise, engage in your targeted community, and make a name for yourself in your new industry. Social media can’t MAKE you an expert, but if you have what it takes to excel in your new field, you should be able to demonstrate it online. Show that you know what’s going on, suggest solutions based on your expertise in other industries or fields and be someone who contributes to the conversation in your targeted field.
• Your lack of actual experience in the field may become less important once potential colleagues view you as an active contributor. If you’re good at sharing what you learn and know, the connections you gain and their willingness to promote you as a contributor will outweigh your actual lack of industry, paid work experience as a factor. (It won’t totally erase it, but it goes a long way to helping you get where you want to go.)
• Being familiar with social media tools may be just the unique skill you need to help you land a job. Social media isn’t going away. Having an online profile, a Twitter feed and/or using LinkedIn to connect with prospective colleagues helps show you are staying ahead of the curve regarding technology. In and of itself, that may help you exceed another qualified candidate’s credentials.

In the book, I share career change success stories from several contributors, including:

• Alexis Grant (@alexisgrant), social media coach and owner of Socialexis, who is now Careers editor for U.S. News & World Report.
• Jessica Lewis, who transitioned to a non-profit career after 10 years in a different field.
• Kate-Madonna Hindes (known online as @girlmeetsgeek), who used blogging and Twitter to launch an entirely new career as a social marketer and career columnist. (She notes, “Social media changed my life.)

Don’t let the competitive market discourage you from making a change. Dive into social media — I hope you’ll take a look at my book to teach you how to get on the right path — and you may be surprised by the results! Be sure to learn more about my book, Social Networking for Career Success, as I teach you how to use all the social networks you know about — and some you haven’t even considered — and Amazon has it for a great price!

Here are the links to my colleagues’ responses!

Are You Ready for a Career Change? @Debra Wheatman

Changing Careers? Ask yourself these questions. @erinkennedycprw

Changing Careers: Not for the Fainthearted, @GayleHoward

Career Change Isn’t An Exact Science, @careersherpa

The 10-Step Plan to Career Change, @KatCareerGal

When it’s Time to Recycle Your Career, @WalterAkana

Best Career Change Advice: Target & Plan, @JobHuntOrg

How social media can help you change careers, @keppie_careers

Expat Careers: You Are Not Your Job Title, @expatcoachmegan

Changing The Direction Of Your Career, @EliteResumes @MartinBuckland

Career Changer: Can You Quell Bottom-line Ache? @ValueIntoWords

Top 3 + 1 Tips for Making a Successful Career Change, @KCCareerCoach

Changing Careers: Look Before You Leap, @barbarasafani

10 Commandments for Career Changers, @LaurieBerenson

photo by vistavision

Me: We’d like to see about scheduling an interview…

Her: I’m sorry…I can’t really hear you so well. It’s really LOUD here. Let me try to get somewhere quieter.

Me: Okay. (Waiting…thinking — why did she answer the phone if she can’t hear me?)

Her: Okay – I think this is better…

Me: We’d like to have you come in for an interview. When is a good time?

Her: Oh, this isn’t any better. Can I call you back?

Me: (Thinking…It hardly matters what I say — she can’t hear me.) Okay. Bye.

While it was great to b able to reach this candidate (in theory) while she was out and about — a communication revolution at the time — the reality was she would have been better of letting me leave a message and calling me back when she was in a quiet place.

That was probably 15 years ago. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if we’ve learned much about telephone etiquette in the interim. Just yesterday, I contacted a job seeker via a mobile number. He answered, and we proceeded with pretty much exactly the same conversation as above. While I am not hiring anyone, I imagine if I were, it would have been pretty much the same story.

It’s not rocket science – potential employers and everyone else will judge you based on anything you offer them. If you can’t hear to speak on the phone, don’t answer the phone!

Once your resume is out there, be aware that any time the phone rings, it might be your dream job on the line. If you’re in a bad or loud spot – let it go to voice mail (to your nice, clear, professional greeting), listen to the message and call back as soon as possible.

While providing a mobile number for your job search should prevent anyone else answering the phone, resist the need to answer your phone whenever it rings – even when we are driving or in the middle of a mob of screaming baseball fans. If you are job hunting, be aware that trying to scream, “I can’t HEAR you” or cursing the driver who just cut you off as you are picking up your phone does not offer the impression you want to give your prospective employer.

You (and the caller) will be glad you did.

photo by woodleywonderworks