I'm a Three for Three in White House Tweetups!

Yippee!  The White House has selected me to attend the March 14, 2012 Tweetup where the President and the First Lady will greet UK Prime Minister Cameron and his wife for their first visit since the British elections.  This is the third time that I have been picked!  Next month’s event is right up my alley because I have a BA in International Economics degree and traveled to London, England ten years ago during Queen Elizabeth’s jubilee.  Immediately I complete and send my Excel spreadsheet with all vital information because I will be front and center. 

Get Recruited! Book Review

            Ever wonder why you land many interviews but never a job offer? You haven’t seen the process from the recruiter’s perspective.  There’s a difference between job searching and recruiting.  The former is uploading your resume on Monster, CareerBuilder and Indeed.  The latter means cultivating relationships and developing a brand.  Get Recruited! supplies superior insight to increasing your visibility by tapping into the recruiter’s world, a hidden job market of unlisted positions. This book goes beyond burnishing your resume, by helping you network with recruiters, like-minded professionals, create a career advisory board, media kits, business cards and find mentors and sponsors. Mentors and sponsors are meaningful because you’ll need them at every career stage.  When change jobs or receive promotion, you must find new ones.  Graham also says that media kits, business cards and branding specialists aren’t only for Fortune 500 firms. Use them to create your own branding strategy to find the job that you want. Finally, the author shows you how to use various networking levels (friends and family, volunteering, social media, past jobs and organizational memberships) to expand your current network.  Ultimately, Get Recruited! succeeds where other texts don’t by getting you unstuck.  What more can you ask for in a career management book?

Saturday Night at Policy

            The reason why I decided to eat Policy was because that screenwriting instructor advised to ‘get a life and go outside when all of your characters sounded alike.’  I was truly against surrounding myself with broke hipsters who used to live off of DuPont Circle but since the Great Recession now lived off of U Street, I made the trek up 14^th and T streets NW at 10pm and it was a madhouse!  There were people lined outside of the door!  Luckily, I had a reservation or so I thought.  I told the male host about mine and he disappeared for 10 minutes.  The people kept coming crowding the small waiting area.  The security guard asked me for ID which was extremely ghetto.  I could dine at Palm or Bourbon Steak without showing ID and they are five-star restaurants!  I had to chase down the female hostess and snag the booth.  My tables wasn’t bussed because the staff was spread thin.  At least I got a sheet. I asked my waitress for recommendation and she mentioned that the chicken wasn’t small plates but everything else was.  Then I inquired about the olive and she said that was a good choice.  Now I loved olives but not the full bushel of them!  I sat there thinking there was no way Policy could make a profit giving three pounds at $1.99 a piece!  Sheesh!  Next was the chicken with mashed potatoes were excellent.  What wasn’t excellent were all of the wannabe people there.  They were my age but unlike me didn’t have the disposable income.  See, I was a professional; whereas, they were support.  The men walked around in Men’s Warehouse shirts and the women paraded around in Limited dresses.  These items you typically didn’t see in my neighborhood!  My meal was actually so I considered desserts but after waiting 15 minutes for my waitress, I declined asking for my check!  I paid and returned back to my humble abode.  Next time, I will simply go for lunch and save myself to Cititrends drama or people posing without any real income!

Last Night at El Centro D.F.

            I am back at El Centro DF because I craved Mexican food and familiarity.  Though Opentable.com had Policy reservation, I refused to sit amongst all of those broke hipsters.  I knew that I made more money than they did.  Just ordered my Jalisco shrimp and crab dinner and ate in peace!  I walked up to the restaurant where the hostess initially assigned me to ‘the downstairs dungeon.’  I barfed telling her that I preferred sitting on the ground floor.  The downstairs wouldn’t be bad if the steps were wider.  If someone was going in the opposite direction, you must stop.  That was hard when you were on an incline.  I ain’t breaking my ankle over no food!  Okay so the lady seated me right across from the men’s bathroom.  Whenever it was in use, the bright light hit me.  I felt like a pre-midnight Gremlin, I claimed victory by not being seated in purgatory!         

            When the waitress brought me my Jalisco meal with the plantains and cilantro rice, my eyes expanded liked one of those cartoon characters.  I was in disbelief that I would get all of that food for $15!  It was bigger than the family-sized HungryMan TV dinner.  It was yummy, too!  Also it’s so colorful, I should had brought my camera!  This reminded me to buy the USB cable chord from Amazon ASAP!  Though I could not eat the whole thing, I made a major dent into the plate.  I finished off one soft taco, ½ the plantains and ¾ of the cilantro rice!  I prided myself of consuming that much food!  Major gastronomical feat!  I should had taken a bow of over it!  I had the waitress box the rest of my meal because plantains would be wonderful for tomorrow’s breakfast.  Exiting El Centro D.F. fat and happy and carefree from today’s world wind day. 

No, You Can't Pick My Brain: It Costs Too Much Book Review

            The global workforce is in flux.  Workers, used to staying at one job for 30 years, is vaporizing.  They need flexibility and portable because this is a knowledge based economy.  Brain not brawn is the order of today.  Workers must acquire the skills that’ll help them stay afloat in choppy career waters where the sharks circle them.  Adrienne Graham’s No You Can’t Pick My Brain serves as the blueprint for maneuvering in this new paradigm for retaining your knowledge for your benefit.