I’m happy to have Vicki Salemi as my guest today. Vicki is an author, journalist, career expert, and public speaker with areas of expertise in careers/business and entertainment/lifestyle. She writes for a variety of publications covering careers/business and entertainment/lifestyle including AOL, Forbes.com, The New York Post, Weight Watchers Magazine, mediabistro, and more. Her latest book, Big Career in the Big City: Land a Job and Get a Life in New York, has info for anyone looking to succeed in a big city. Below she shares how good karma can help you succeed in your career.
By Vicki Salemi
When it comes to job searching, sure there are nuts and bolts to landing that coveted day job but your intangible efforts will propel you ahead of the pack. When you adhere to career karma, your job search, your career itself, your whole being organically catapults upward. Two little words: Career karma. Here’s how it works and it’s pretty simple. Just pay it forward and your personal stock will rise, along with everyone else around you.
If a job lead or networking contact lands in your desk, circulate it to your network. Send a few e-mails and perhaps specifically send a note to one or two people to whom they may be a fit. Technically it’s a win-win situation as you help the person who needs to fill it and you’re a “matchmaker” by sending the lead to people who may be a fit. As things are in motion around you, they can’t help but find their way back to you in the long run. If you go to a cocktail party and speak with a lawyer and have absolutely no need in your life for a lawyer, no worries; chances are your friend’s daughter recently graduated from law school with her coveted JD in hand and no employer to speak of. Net net: We all know someone who needs to know someone you just met.
Ever have a gig mysteriously land in your in-box by a friend of a friend? Or how about connecting with someone at a party who, out of the 300 people there, is in your exact line of work? That, my friend, is karma. It comes back to you big time so as you’re a kind person forwarding leads, exchanging contact information, and connecting the dots, the laws of Universe will send that goodness back to you big time. And goodness can be characterized in all forms such as a new contact, sparkling opportunity and/or additional income. It can also manifest itself in other ways too like a lead on a new apartment, new mate, friend or hobby so when you pay it forward with career karma, suffice it to say eventually the Universe rewards you in ways we couldn’t even imagine.
It also works conversely and if you believe that karma’s a biotch, then listen up. When leads land in your in-box and stay there, they remain stagnant. As in motionless. As in a body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest. If one opportunity or new connection stays at rest, how will others progress? How will the Universe maintain its constant ebb and flow? That said, how will you progress and evolve? When you consciously think about others and how you can contribute to the big delicious pool, this karma, my friend, will eventually find its way back to you. So, it’s no surprise that when you stop an opportunity dead in its tracks and someone asks who you know to recommend and you’re drawing a blank, at some point your karma currency will default, too.
In a way, it’s almost like a game as you’re ready to cash in your chips and don’t know how you’ll be paid but know in the end you’ll be wealthier for your efforts.
Why not see how many new contacts and opps you can pay forward? How good will you feel when you forward things along the Universe’s highway while detaching from the outcome? It’s quite scrumptious, actually. The more you do good, the more the good will come back to you. Yes, it’s really that simple of an equation. And the more you withhold, detract, and withdraw from opportunities you have to nudge, push, and propel your friends forward, well, the more you’ll eventually hold yourself back. What goes around comes around and if you want to move up that ladder with your career, the best way to do it is providing your colleagues with juice to make that first leap onto the next rung.
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