WorkingKind

Margaret Dikel’s career path shows both adaptability and continuity. After a few years as a French horn player, she gave up her hope to become a full-time professional musician and became a librarian.  She worked for years as a librarian and webmaster at Worster Polytechnic Institute.

While there she developed the first Riley Guide under an unwieldy name - 10 pages listing places online to find job listings. It came out at the end of 1993, at a time when the Internet was fueled by the government, dial-up connections and FTPs (file transfer protocols).

“The students loved it. The faculty loved it. The career center hated it,” she recalled, noting they thought she was counseling. “I said ‘I am providing resources, which is what a librarian does,’ ” she said.  Students and staff wanted more resources and so the Riley Guide began at the university.

Dikel and her Riley Guide - gurus of the online job search and career management world - are the subject of my latest Jobs story in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Despite the array of articles, tools, resources and advice she unearths, Dikel doesn’t always get her own career moves just right. She quit her library job at Wooster suddenly in January 1996, frustrated by the “push and shove” on using the Internet there.

“It wasn’t a concerted plan,” she said.  Within a half hour of sending an email to her growing network of career counselors and experts, her phone started ringing with consulting offers. She worked as a consultant to DMB, a career management and outplacement firm, and found other gigs to help pay her expenses.

Yet she’s adamant that quick jump out approach is foolish.  “Don’t quit and then figure it out,” she said.

These days, Dikel  focuses the Riley Guide five days a week from her home office in Rockville, Md. She works amid books and paper, with a Dilbert calendar on the wall and her glasses near her computer.

She thinks her husband’s approach to his job search, almost a decade ago, still makes sense. At lunches and coffees, David Dikel, now a government contactor employee, would ask colleagues and friends  “What do you think my best assets are? What do I need to work on? . . . He learned a lot about himself and also got talking points he could use in interviews,” she said.

Much of what Dikel does still connects to her librarian career - she seeks out, evaluates and catalogs career information available online. She also is an avid reader - mysteries which are known as “British police procedurals” are her favorites. As for the best career books, those she’d recommend for anyone’s book shelf, here’s her list:

• “What Color is Your Parachute?” by Richard Bolles. “I have had more friends work through his exercises for job search and personal assessment and come out feeling better about themselves and more targeted in their search,” she said.
• “How to Work with Headhunters” by Nick Corcodilos  - available online at  AskTheHeadhunter.com.  An alternative to traditional “how to job search” book, it works for experienced people who want to improve their search.
• “Cool Careers For Dummies” by Marty Nemko. “A good book to help you decide what you want in life and in work, how well you perform in various situations, and how to take all of this and channel it into a career.”
• “Cover Letters for Dummies” and “Resumes for Dummies,” both by Joyce Lain Kennedy, “the Grande Dame of job search and career advice. “She knows more on these topics than almost anyone else,” said Dikel.

Dikel also provided a list of 10 great online resources for job seekers, which the Washington Post published. Two of my favorites from her list are Job-Hunt.org and LinkedIn, which I use every week.

And for unemployed individuals who are 50 or older, she suggests they learn to address employers’ arguments and concerns about being too old or overqualified. The employer won’t come out and raise the issues, but they still are lurking there and could trip up your chances.

Another avenue that works well: Find your way into a new job through a contact - a friend, someone at your church or synagogue or sports team.  ”Rely more on networking…. This person is introducing you because he thinks you are valuable, and you will be  valuable to the hiring manager,” she said. Employers also are predisposed to hire from employee recommendations more than from other arenas.

“You will get the best return on your time investment through networking,” she said.  That and checking the Riley Guide’s carefully vetted resources and links.