Professional Sponge

Now that I’m no longer a student (again), I’m on a campaign: Operation Employable.

I believe that my internet presence, including this blog, plays a central role in my professional identity, so why not share my movements towards starting a career here?

I’ve learned a lot in my personal development since I started working on it as a part of my identity. Some of this growth has come from attending lectures, reading voraciously, or talking to professionals. I’m constantly sponging up information and I’m certain that there’s someone interested, whether you’re interested in your own development or you’d really like to give me a job. Yes, you!

But in all seriousness, I have come across some insights I’d like to share and some others that I want to explore.

So I wanted to start the Operation Employable series by sharing the ways that I’ve started collecting and making sense of all this information.

Being a writer of sorts, I used a gift my generous mom left me as we set up my apartment in Duke: a journal. Being a person that loves technology as much as I do, I still have a thing for old-school journals. I currently have three journals, but only one is dedicated solely to career development. My handwriting is a modified cursive and I find that the movement my hand makes generates ideas. Sometimes I sketch out plans or flow charts. I always bring it to a lecture or a coffee chat, so I can write notes but still stay an active listener. While it’s not as easy as turning to a search bar to find old notes, I date and title every event and jot down inspiring quotes or great advice in it.

See, I can be professional!

When I’m not writing, I’m often reading and non-fiction development is a hot genre for me these days. I keep up with what I’m reading and other recommendations with my Goodreads account. If you haven’t heard of Goodreads, it’s a social networking site for avid readers that sends great recommendations and opens up conversation for bookworms. You can organize the books however you like on virtual shelves and I have one just for my development books that way I don’t forget titles when I’m ready for a new read.

I also read a lot of articles I enjoy on the interwebs and if there's one I think I can get something out of later, I save it. I’ve gotten some friendly chiding for it, but I created a board on Pinterest devoted to business related topics of videos or articles that are interesting. Sometimes I review them before an interview or keep them handy to send to others when I inevitably talk about how cool such-and-such is that I read about the other day....

So far these are working for me, but I'm always looking for different ideas. I’m wondering if there’s anything else that I’m missing that might be helpful to collect ideas. Do you have some different methods I might use? Do you have some recommendations I should add to my reading list?