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Looking for Some Inspiration in Your Career?

March 30, 2010 Author: Lena ZentallCategories: Tags:

spotlightAre you someone who sees opportunities and potential in most situations? Are you open to new ideas? Do you try new things even if they intimidate you? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then read on. We are Leslie Wolf and Lena Zentall, two project managers at the California Digital Library who want to shine the spotlight on you in our new blog Your Life@Work.  You face many challenges as a motivated professional. You are not alone.

What can you expect from Your Life@Work? You can expect our candid thoughts and practical advice on collaboration, professional development (or what we call “professional fitness”), resiliency, skills portability, innovation, and happiness at work. We’ll share ideas from bloggers and others who have inspired us, and we’ll dig into our own project management bag of tricks for tips on what’s worked for us (and what’s failed) in strategic planning, marketing & branding, creating effective teams, and of course, project management. We are eager to hear from you about what inspires you and to learn from your own stories.

As professionals, we’ve experienced career ups and downs in the library world and a myriad of other industries. We’ve come together as a team to write this blog. It’s a reflection of our successful collaboration in our work (more about that in the next post).

Now it’s Your Turn

Enough about us, let’s get started on you…One of the first steps for building a professional network these days is setting up a web presence on LinkedIn.

  • If you haven’t already, create a LinkedIn profile to get your professional network started.
  • Already on LinkedIn? Did you know you can personalize your individual LinkedIn URL? For example www.linkedin.com/in/[yourname]. (Do it by editing your Public Profile URL from your Profile page.)
  • Add a professional photo of yourself to your profile. Three reasons why you need a photo:
    1. Transparency builds trust. Don’t hide your identity.
    2. People who have never met you will be more willing to help you if they feel there is a connection – and your smiling face is a great connector!
    3. Nobody wants to connect with an outline drawing of a face.

Read more posts from Your Life@Work.