The other day I dug up my copy of A Whack on the Side of the Head, the great creativity book by Roger von Oech. The book is like a Chinese menu, overflowing with exotic and delicious dishes, some of them familiar and some quite unknown.

I’m leaving it front and center on my desk and hope to grab one or two exercises a day to whack myself and refresh my creativity.

Today’s pages looks at all the ways we can get “whacked:” a question you never thought about, a joke, a paradox (such as artist Paul Gauguin saying “I shut my eyes in order to see.”), a job loss, a teacher pointing out your special talent in an area you hadn’t considered or even recognizing a connection between two things that previously seemed unrelated.

And I’m starting to consider creativity as a regular part of my life everyday, like the pet cat who sometimes disappears for a few hours but always turns up for a meal or jumps in your lap just when you least expect her.

Someone on Twitter suggested an excellent post on the PsyBlog titled: “Boost Creativity: 7 Unusual Psychological Techniques.” The blog is subtitled “understand your mind” and written by Jeremy Dean, a researcher at University College London, who covers an array of topics from memory to getting big project completed.

The creativity boosters also seem to come from eclectic sources and approaches.  I especially like No. 2, Fast Forward in time. The posting reads:

“Like psychological distance, chronological distance can also boost creativity.

Forster et al. (2004) asked participants to think about what their lives would be like one year from now. They were more insightful and generated more creative solutions to problems than those who were thinking about what their lives would be like tomorrow.

Thinking about distance in both time and space seems to cue the mind to think abstractly and consequently more creatively.

◊ For insight: Project yourself forward in time; view your creative task from one, ten or a hundred years distant.”

I am not sure I have developed the vision and creativity to see 100 years ahead. But I may be able to look at my situation from a decade into the future, especially if I keep Whack-ing and practicing creative techniques.

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Check out Roger von Oech’s blog and “Whack of the Day.” He also has developed it as an iPhone app.

Read more from PsyBlog on the psychology of relationships, or practicing gratitude. This blog really rocks! I’m going to add it to my favorites, whenever I find time to reestablish that list.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, an “enormous wave of good will and generosity flooded” VolunteerMatch with people and projects.  So the nonprofit that matches people with non profit organizations and assignments itself posted some volunteer positions, for people with tech skills.

Chad, an Intel veteran, showed up, and volunteered full-time for about two months. He loved  VolunteerMatch and so when a job opening came up, he said, “I want it.”

“He got the job from the volunteering bench. We all knew how smart and committed he was,” recalled Greg Baldwin, president of San Francisco-based VolunteerMatch.  Baldwin acknowledges that Chad’s story is “one in a hundred.” A more likely scenario, he said, is someone who is actively volunteering for one nonprofit ends up referred to another with an opening, perhaps even before the job is posted.

I wrote about this job-hunters benefit of volunteering for CareerFocus in a piece titled  ” Volunteer your way to new work.”  It provides some useful advice and suggestions to those who want to make their generosity pay off.  (You can see the article by opening this rather large PDF and looking in about three pages, or searching for the term “volunteer.” CareerFocus is produced by Washtenaw Community College in Michigan.)

Baldwin, of course, believes volunteering belongs on your resume – whether you’re working or not. And so do many employers and hiring managers, especially those who are active volunteers themselves.

Truth be told people who work part-time are much more likely to help out at a non-profit, school or religious organization than are unemployed individuals, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Maybe that’s because they haven’t realized the value of volunteering to their career as well as their community.

Volunteer assignments can be used right on your resume to show how you developed new skills or kept your current ones sharp. Integrate it into the paid work area if you’ve had a significant assignment or volunteered for more than one day a week at an organization. Label the assignment pro bono but you don’t have to make that a prominent piece.  Or create a separate category and call it Community Work or Pro Bono Projects.

A third approach, for those who are less actively volunteering:  Place it in the Interests section at the bottom of the resume. Definitely show volunteering ahead of hiking or baseball or mushroom gathering.

“It definitely matters. We don’t distinguish between paid work and unpaid work generally,” said Tracie Spinale, the Smithsonian Institution’s academic program manager who helps hire 1,300 interns a year. She likes to see previous internships, and also volunteer work at local museums or science centers.

Other employers like to see community service and volunteering as a a way to develop leadership skills, add to your connections or make you a well-rounded individual.

“The people who get jobs are the people who are busy,” said Baldwin, who with his staff volunteers once a month at places such as Habitat for Humanity. “People seek those associations where people stretch beyond themselves – to see some acknowledgment that you’re concerned about neighborhood or community.”

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MORE RESOURCES:

Career coach Laura Labovich offers six ways to implement a generous job search on Careerrealism.com

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has advice on moving from volunteer to paid status, and ways to combine pro bono and paying gigs.

I wrote about the value of pro-bono and between-job assignments for the Washington Post in July. See my piece http://bit.ly/aXDMDr

If you’re not sure what kind of volunteer assignment to seek, my CareerFocus article has hints, or check out this list, which I produced for the Washington Post:

• Join a cause that is timely and relevant to the industry where you want to work. Read execs’ bios or check corporate websites to see what charities they support.
• Skip a controversial cause or charity – or at least don’t put it on your resume. Among the pass on them are abortion rights, gun advocacy, some religious groups.
• Community groups, food cooperatives, neighborhood associations can be valuable, as can chambers of commerce and business groups. They may introduce you to your next employer.
• Kids and pets are  safe popular areas, as is a professional organization or association.

If you’ve been dreaming or praying for a second career that will help others, consider becoming a teacher or a religious leader.

Educators and medical personnel are among the sectors that will offer the most new encore career opportunities this decade, according to a new report from Northeastern University and Boston Redevelopment Authority. Ministers and clergy also will be in demand. The report, called “After the Recovery: Help Needed,” predicts labor shortages by 2018 when an estimated 5 to 6 million jobs will be created but unfilled.

“When the nation comes out of the current jobs recession – and this may take two to three years – we will begin to see spot shortages in labor markets,” writes co-author Barry Bluestone, dean of Northeastern’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. “By 2018, with no change in current labor force participation rates and immigration rates and an expected return to healthy economic growth, we will have more jobs than people to fill them. That’s true within the entire economy and particularly true of the fast-growing social sector.”

The social sector consists of health care, education, social assistance, nonprofits, the arts and government. Though it accounts for one-third of all current U.S. jobs, it will represent 47 percent of the jobs growth through 2018, Bluestone’s report predicts.

Social sector jobs also will represent about half of the 5.0 to 5.7 million new jobs that will go begging in 2018.

To be practical, here’s the 15  job titles offering the most encore career opportunities, and the projected increases through 2018:

1. Teachers, primary, secondary, special ed          647,300

2. Registered nurses 581,500

3. Home health care aides 460,900

4. Personal and home care aides 375,800

5. Nursing aides, orderlies, attendants 276,000

6. Medical assistants 163,900

7. Practical and vocational nurses, licensed          155,600

8. Business operations specialists 143,200

9. Managers, general and operations 143,200

10. Child care workers                   142,100

11. Teacher assistants 134,900

12. Receptionists and information clerks   132,700

13.  Managers, medical and health services   100,800

14.  Clergy       85,100

15.  Social and human service assistants       79,400

If you want to know more about any of these jobs – including pay, educational requirements and what the work entails – check out the government’s incredible resource called the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

The full report lists another 15 encore careers from the social and government sector that won’t have as many openings (Table 9)

To be sure, about half of these jobs are low-paying — anything with an assistant in it will earn a smaller wage. Some may not appeal to a 60-year-old who does not have the strength to lift patients into wheelchairs or push five or seven babies in strollers.  They may not find the exact job that uses their passions and talents. Instead, trends outlined in this report are valuable as they consider the right path and the better sectors to target. (Near the end are four pages of industry sectors, including some obscure ones that you may otherwise never even consider.)

Plus, MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures have packaged this report with others that focus on green jobs, education jobs and health jobs. In those separate reports, some emerging jobs are identified, including teacher coach, chronic illness coach, energy auditor, patient navigator, sustainability consultant and home modification specialist.

If teaching sounds like a career track for you, you may want to check out the real case studies of people who moved into teaching and tutoring jobs, as well as some resources and how-tos for getting started down the education path. The organizations offer similar resources on health care and green jobs.

If you’re still unsure what your second career will be, join the club. Reading these reports may open up some new ideas, and so will some informational interviews and conversations with friends already in jobs you are considering.  The key is: Start your journey now and be sure to pack your curiosity and experience.

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The Northeastern – Boston Redevelopment report is based on data from the Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Boston Redevelopment Authority and Northeastern University’s specific occupational forecasts. You can read it online at encore.org .

If you want to learn more about education, green or health care jobs, three shorter reports are also available online. They each contain a lot of other resources, so it may be easier to read one a day and consider it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook has a wealth of information on hundreds of careers. To learn more about it and how it forecasts job changes, read this article in its quarterly publication. Or check out the BLS list of high-employment, high-wage jobs - including several found on the Northeastern list.

If you want to read about a wide array of jobs – from game developer to pharmacy technicial to sand sculptor – the BLS has published an array of articles over the last decade. (Scroll down a ways to the section titled Occupations and Industries.)

The New York Times published an article on encore careers that looks at patient advocates, health care mediator and green entrepreneurs.

Note: This post appeared originally on WorkingKind on April 1, 2009. The advice is still worthwhile so here it is for this year’s internship seekers:

If you – or your roommate, your daughter or son or nephew – are dragging their feet on going after a summer internship, here’s three good reasons to jump into one:

1. Interns often end up as the first people hired after the cutbacks stop.

2. Students who have had internships before are likely to earn more this summer, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

3. Interns this summer will earn more than last year – a 5 percent increase, according to NACE’s new research.  That means average pay of $15.93 to $18.26 an hour – much better than they’ll get at the  ice cream stand or amusement park.

The NACE research comes from surveys of 318 employers that are its members – they indicate that one-third of their college graduate hires last year were former interns. NACE contacts employers every year to ask about hiring prospects and pay – and its research gives a good benchmark for college hiring.

Yes, there are far fewer internship openings this year than in previous summers - NACE estimates a 21 percent reduction from the 2008 levelels. This reflects the lower workloads and layoffs that have claimed millions of full time jobs.

And yes, it’s late to get started on an internship search. But it’s not impossible. And many of those workplaces that laid people off in January may find by May or June that they’re short handed and need some extra help.

Here’s a Working item I wrote for the Washington Post in May 2007 that gives some smart advice on the last-minute internship:

College classes are winding down and summer internships heating up. Yet for some last minute lookers, it’s not too late to land an internship. Many organizations in and around Washington – - from the Consumer Electronics Association to Marvelous Market to some marketing firms- were advertising for for youthful talent and energy within the last week. And at some large corporations, which typically choose their interns in March or April, some inters will drop out at the last minute, leaving room for latecomers to slide in, said Mark Oldman, Vault.com’s co-founder. Vault publishes information on careers. That’s how Oldman ended up interning at MTV more than a decade ago while studying at Stanford University. “I was burning to work at MTV” with Downtown Julie Brown. Yet the music network didn’t choose him. Still, after classes ended, he called to see if there was any other work possibility, and the hiring manager told him that one intern hadn’t worked out and they wanted him to step in. “I was an internship junkie,” he said, completing six in college. Oldman, who is author of ” Vault’s Guide to Top Internships,” says finding a department head who hires her own interns – instead of relying on human resources managers – may be another door in if you’re running late. And he suggests the “create your own internship” plan. Identify nine or 10 intriguing people who are doing worthwhile or intruing work and write each one a personal letter offering to be their research assistant or intern. The letter must be customized to that person’s specific work and explain “why you’re excited to work with them.” “It shows initiative,” said Oldman, who notes that Vault still has internships to fill in New York.

-Vickie Elmer

So what are you waiting for? There’s still plenty of  time  and more than a few opportunities to find your summer internship.

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Here’s five new resources on landing a great internship this summer:

• Homework is key in the world of competitive internships. My Washington Post piece from Jan. 24, 2010
• How to Land the Internship You Want. Forbes magazine has tips and photos from last spring.
• “College Students: Do This – Get Hired!” a short book by recruiter Mark Lyden offers excellent advice and insider tips.
• The Riley Guide’s internships page offers many other resources and organizations - http://www.rileyguide.com/intern.html
• DCinternNet.  Sign up for the free daily e-tip and list of internships with deadlines soon, or view them online.

Note: I hold the copyright to my Washington Post articles and much of my other writing. If you’d like to republish a piece on your website, please contact me for details and rates.

“Better late than never” doesn’t work in tight economic times. And it especially doesn’t work for anyone whose paycheck comes from a retailer, a hotel or other hospitality employer.

Punctuality is preferable when jobs are scarce – and  more workers are arriving on time, a new CareerBuilder.com survey shows. Yet a few inventive staffers come up with crazy explanations for showing up late. Among the examples collected by CareerBuilder.com from hiring managers:

-”I dreamt I was at work already.”

-”I had an early morning gig as a clown.”

-”I had to go to the hospital because I drank anti-freeze.”

-”My dog swallowed my cell phone.”

And this one, clearly offered by someone who’s living on subsistance wages: “My car door fell off.”

The biggest reasons for running late: traffic and lack of sleep. Seven percent of the tardy types blamed their children’s preparations, or drop off at school or day care, and another seven percent blamed weather.

Overall though, fewer workers showed  up for work late in the last year, CareerBuilder reports, based on a HarrisInteractive survey of 5,231 full-time employees.

Some 16 percent admit to tardiness at least once a week, down from 20 percent in 2008. The margin of error was 1.8 percent. CareerBuilder says the tighter job market may contribute to less lateness.

Or perhaps workers got the message when a colleague was fired for oversleeping a few times.  One-third (34 percent) of employers surveyed by CareerBuilder say they have let go someone for arriving late, up a bit from the previous latecomers survey.

But some sectors are more of a stickler for on-time staff. Nearly two-thirds of the leisure and hospitality managers and half of retail managers surveyed said they had dismissed someone who was late, CareerBuilder said. Least likely to fire slow pokes were government and IT managers.

It’s not just the repeat offender who’s late every day who’s at risk. Based on a survey two years ago, one-fifth of employers said they’d likely fire someone who was late only one to three times. Another 8 percent would take that drastic step after four to six late arrivals.

As one who has shown up after the usual start time at more than one newspaper, I’m hoping this punctuality trend loses  momentum as the economy gains some. And I wish that all my bosses and yours fall in the 43 percent who said arrival time doesn’t matter as long as the work is done on time, and with high quality.

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If you need help getting to work on time, start by looking for motivation and time saving steps.

Allen Teal’s blog post on Socyberty offers 10 common-sense tips for on-time arrivals. Among them: Raise the priority you put on your job.

And Deb Gebeke with North Dakota State University Extension offers some good advice, aimed mostly at working Moms or Dads, on avoiding the morning rush. Have children make their own lunches, if they’re old enough. And remember to reward yourself if you arrive to work on time.

I won’t add any suggestions here, but welcome your best tips to be on time for work.

Note: This WorkingKind post originally appeared on March 27, 2009. I am reposting it now as Wendy Enelow prepares for her Career Thought Leader Conference in Baltimore.

Wendy Enelow describes herself as an “old hippy girl” who lives on a 35-acre farm outside of Lynchburg, Va. And she does have long hair and dangling earrings – and apparently wears Birkenstock sandals and her PJs to work sometimes.

Enelow also is one of the great resume writers whose work helps advance and relaunch careers of executives all over the country. She spends about half her time as a career coach and resume writer for individuals – most earn well into six figures – and the other half with “career seekers,” people who want to become resume writers or join the career advice field.

So the hippy chick assists the corporate chieftain with career advice – at $2,000 to $3,000 and up for a resume redo.  And then she uses some of her earnings as a “do gooder” — someone who lends a hand freely to those in trouble. She and her husband “adopted” a family displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and helped them relocate to rural Virginia. (They’re still there and still friends and Enelow, a skinny Jewish woman who grew up outside Pittsburgh, now considers herself almost Latina from their connections.) She helped organize Volunteers for Careers after Sept. 11, providing free career counseling and advice for a year to anyone who had lost their job or their spouse to the terror attacks. They reactivated it for Katrina victims and stand ready for the next huge disaster – “God forbid,” she says, yet she knows it may come around again.

Enelow doesn’t have any specific cause or charity as a volunteer focus. “There’s always something that just appears in my life – formal or not – that is the “right” do-gooder thing to do at that exact moment in time,” she says.

Of her kindness and assists, she says, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Community service and volunteering looks right on your resume, she says, providing a “glimpse into who a person is.” She suggests steering clear of political and religious causes on your C.V. since those can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on who’s viewing it. Write about your volunteering in a section called either Personal Profile or Volunteer Experience.

Now Enelow has some excellent advice on her website on making your resume into a key sales tool for your career.  (A bit of it showed up in this week’s Working in the Post. Enelow recommmends the “sell it, don’t tell it” approach to highlight achievements and quantifiable results. A good trick for this, she says, “for each bulleted point you have on your resume, read it out loud and then say and — and … .” And then fill in the result, the impact, the contribution, whether it’s new multi-media materials for sixth graders or reducing the accounting cycle by three days.)

But the biggest inspiration comes from Wendy Enelow’s choices — and her passion to make a difference – whether by creating the Resume Writing Academy with a colleague or by lending a hand for a food drive or another “do gooder” activity.

That generosity of spirit says almost as much as any resume could.

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To learn more about the Career Thought Leaders conference, check their website

You also can follow some of the key career coaches and resume writers who will be presenting there on a Twitter list managed by Chandlee Bryan.

“Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.”  ~George Scialabba, book critic, essayist.

Imagine your life and work infused with creativity. It’s not only possible, it’s available to us with only a little effort.

Anyone can have more fun while increasing their creative and imaginative muscles. And it doesn’t take a trip to some fancy creativity camp in Sedona, Ariz., or any new software or hardware for our laptops.

All it requires is 15 minutes a day and embracing and acknowledging ourselves as creative people who are opening up to our ideas, interpretations and imaginative approaches to work and life.

Break out the poetry, the balloons, the games. Here’s my 15 ways to increase your creativity in 15 minutes or less:

1. Take a walk around the block. Take time to appreciate the beauty, the energy, the surprises there.

2. Brew a new flavor of tea, and then savor it away from your desk.

3. Meditate. If you are able, use a phrase that affirms your creativity.

4. Browse in your favorite shop for the brightest, the cheapest, the funniest item.

5. Play with your dog or cat — or child. A quick game or a run around the yard will revive your spirits.

6. List your creative projects and successes. Take a few minutes to look back at a favorite project, poem or piece of work – it will reinforce your talents and confidence — and encourage you to use them wisely today.

7. Watch the clouds go by your window. Better yet, go outside and locate the cloud dragon.

8.  Read three poems aloud. Or one chapter in some trashy novel or escapist book.

9.  Call an inspired or upbeat friend for a creativity chat.

10. Pull out your magic wand or your magic feather (ok, a colorful pencil will work too). Be a wizard for 10 minutes.

11.  Take a new route to work. Take a different street to go to the gym. Vary your way to the coffee shop. Enjoy the journey and don’t worry if you get a little lost. It’s part of your creative path.

12. If you work from home or an office with a locker room, take a shower and sing something silly.  Have notebook handy afterward for great thoughts ideas that show up.

13. Develop a daily ritual or mantra that underscores your creative abilities. Write it down. Post it on your desktop, bulletin board, mirror. Doodle it on your to do list or legal pad.

14.  Engage your brain in something frivolous. Here’s two possibilties:  A: Which cartoon character is most like me? My boss? My best friend?  And how could I make one cartoon show that captures what’s happening today, but more funny? B: Which super powers do I really really want?  And which super hero really is the one I most resemble? What would I be doing right now if I were X Man or Wonder Woman?

15. Sign up for a class at the Y, Parks & Rec, the local community college or elsewhere – something new and foreign and surprising. Something that will require effort and put you in new spaces with different kinds of people. (I admit: The class will take more tan 15 minutes – but it could bring you so much inspiration and newness, worth the time investment in creative dividends.)

Only a couple of these  ideas requires you to spend more time hunched over your computer and staring at the same piles and projects on your desk.  Instead, I’m focused on activities that encourage you to move out of  the workspace and into your new groove.

Leave work behind for 10 or 15 minutes and your brain opens up to fresh perspectives and possibilities.  That’s why my favorite creativity refresher means taking a walk outside and embracing whatever and whoever I find there.

Before I head out for a few blocks in the sunshine, I’ll close with this from PBS journalist and great thinker Bill Moyers: “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”

If you think all the salaries being offered to fresh young grads are rice-and-beans low, you haven’t talked to any chemical engineering majors.

Their starting pay for this year is $65,142, second highest in the National Association of Colleges and Employers just released list of majors with the best salaries. The top spot went to petroleum engineers, a scarce lot of barely 500 graduates in recent years. In a year when salary freezes and reductions were common, they will earn $3,000 more on average than last year.

In fact, engineers claim eight of the 10 highest salaries in NACE’s annual survey, and they’ve been near the top for a few years.

The top five this year are:

1.  Petroleum engineering  - $86,220

2. Chemical engineering  - $65,142

3. Mining / mineral engineering – $64,552

4.  Computer science  - $61,205

5. Computer engineering – $60,879

Others in the top 10 include electrical engineering, manufacturing engineering and information sciences; each will start at salaries above $53,000 on average.

“Many of the engineering disciplines benefit from an imbalance in the supply/demand ratio,” NACE executive director Marilyn Mackes said in a report on salaries last summer. That scarcity of candidates leads to higher pay.

B-school graduates salaries start around $45,000 to $49,000 this year, a small drop from last year.

NACE will give more entry level college grad salary details in April. The 2009 grads experienced a 1.2 percent drop in average salary, to $49,353.

This year’s average declined to  $48,351 based on NACE’s preliminary estimate. Many newcomers start their first job out of college at $30,000.  The average figure covers liberal arts majors, b-school and the techies too.

It’s easy to get discouraged when you’ve fallen off your career track and feel the weight of your misstep on your reputation and your resume.

Yet so many famous and successful people have been fired, screwed up their careers and otherwise needed to stage a comeback.  Harvey Mackay featured dozens of amazing people – from Michael Bloomberg to Larry King to tennis great Billie Jean King in his book “We Got Fired!…. And It’s the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Us!”  It came out a few years ago and I still refer to it as a powerful reminder that sudden departures can open doors.

My recent Washington Post article gave some advice oncareer comebacks.

One of the experts for the piece is John A. Sarkett, who compiled two books “Extraordinary Comebacks” and “Extraordinary Comebacks 2.”  He’s an marketing and public relations firm owner in the Chicago area who blogs about comebacks.

He believes the one essential trait of the 450 people in his two books is simple: “They never gave up.”

“Some forge ahead with great family support, others don’t have that, in fact they have instead the derision of their family (restaurateur and Food Network star Paula Deen).  Some of our comeback stories are genius visionaries, some are very ordinary people.  But they all have desire,” Sarkett told me.

As part of our email interviews, Sarkett provided these seven smart actions for making your way back:

1. PERSIST. Don’t quit.  It took Sir Edmund Hillary two attempts to climb Everest, Perry eight times to reach the North Pole, and various authors scores and sometimes hundreds of tries to get their works published. “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”  Sir Winston Churchill.
2. WORK HARD. Great “comebackers” use every hour in the day: Food Network star Paula Deen barbecued late at night; boxer George Foreman out-trained younger fighters to win the championship.  You may find your comeback  in the effort you make.
3. UNDERSTAND TRANSIENCE. Don’t extrapolate temporary setbacks into permanent defeat.  It won’t last. Lance Armstrong was given a tiny chance to survive cancer, yet he won seven Tour de Frances.   Churchill again:  “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
4. CHANGE DIRECTION. Sylvester Stallone was stymied as an actor, so he wrote Rocky after seeing the Wepner-Ali fight.  Quincy Jones was a talented trumpeter, but after a stroke, he had to quit. He transformed into a renowned music producer.
5. DEVELOP SUPPORT. Stay away from  nay-sayers, even if they’re famous or going to be. Hang out with friends who won’t let you quit.
6. STAY HUMBLE. Attitude  is everything.  When tennis master Andre Agassi fell from No. 1 to No. 141 as he abused drugs including crystal meth , he started over, back to the minor leagues, upped his training.  It set the stage for greater things.  Attitude – not image – is everything.
7. DREAM BIG. Your effort and ideas are worth many times what you may imagine.  Fred Smith wrote a college paper that got a “C,” as the story goes, then turned it into $40 billion FedEx.  J.K. Rowling wrote her ideas about a fictional boy.  Harry Potter sold 100 million copies, and $4 billion movie box office, and counting.  You too can more than you imagine.  Dream big.

These “to dos” were edited down from Sarkett’s original list and they are valuable even if all you can muster is following three of them.

Sarkett also thinks Tiger Wood’s fall from grace after an accident and disclosure of his string of affairs carries an important message for anyone who’s making it today. Woods showed up in Sarkett’s first book after rebuilding his golf swing. Now he has a bigger comeback to stage. The lesson: “No matter where you’re at, you’re not more than one day’s drive from a comedown and that life is nothing but a series of comebacks strung together.”

If you really really want to work, pack your laptop and your best career clothes and head for Anchorage or Washington D.C.   Burlington, Vermont,  Memphis and Killeen, Texas, also may be profitable places to move.

According to a new Manpower report, they are among the metro areas with the strongest second-quarter hiring outlooks. Some  - notably Anchorage and Washington – have made the best places for jobs list several time.

They show up in a report that shows possibilities in many places. Hiring will “inch ahead,” Manpower said this morning in announcing this report. Twelve of the 13 industry sectors Manpower tracks expect positive net hiring in April through June, with construction and manufacturing experiencing notable improvements compared to a year ago.  The biggest gains, though, were in leisure and hospitality – good news for all the concierges, hotel managers and maids who have been looking for work.

Nationwide, 16 percent of employers expect to add to payrolls, while 8 percent are reducing them, according to Manpower’s survey of 18,000 workplaces. This means a net 8 percent hiring outlook for the second quarter —a continued gradual improvement from previous quarters.

“U.S. hiring activity is still in neutral, but revving toward first gear,” Jonas Prising, Manpower president of the Americas, said in a statement.

The overall modest hiring expectations has some exceptions, or exceptional metro areas, including:

• In Anchorage, a net 22 percent of employers are adding to staff, and the jobless rate — 7.7 percent– is pretty low.
• In Washington, D.C. 20 percent of employers expect to hire — and the jobless rate — 6.4 percent — has been among the lowest in the country for a while. (For more, check out my jobs outlook for the Beltway published in January in the Washington Post.)
• In Burlington, Vt., the jobless rate stands at 5.5 percent and a net 22 percent of employers are hiring in the weeks ahead.

These three each have hiring outlooks that are more than 2 1/2 times better than the United States as a whole.

Other cities where employers are growing ample jobs this spring include Fort Collins, Colo.; Greenville, SC.; Portland, Maine; Albany, N.Y.; Shreveport, LA and Raleigh, N.C.  About 16 to 17 percent of employers in Memphis and Milwaukee expect to bring on engineers and electricians, waiters and administrative assistants.  (There are more than five in the top five metro areas because several areas have tied net hiring scores.)

And workers still are moving for jobs. About one in seven job mid-level and higher seekers relocated to find new jobs last year, about the same as in previous years, according to a  separate Right Management report.

If you’re thinking you don’t or can’t relocate for work, the strongest hiring will come from leisure, closely followed by professional and business services – from lawyers to management consultants to advertising agencies.  Manpower said financial sector, mining and manufacturing also will experience strong hiring, and construction,  deeply in decline last year, will add jobs too.

Government was the only sector to show a negative employment outlet in the second quarter.

And the regions that are weak and struggling – and not good markets for jobless refugees –  Manpower points to San Juan, Puerto Rico and Merced, Calif., with a net negative 7 or 8 percent on the hiring prospects.  Other down areas include Las Vegas, Reno, Atlanta, Macon, GA; Portland and Champaign-Urbana.

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For updated, metro area unemployment, watch for a Bureau of Labor Statistics report tomorrow (March 10).

For more on the Manpower forecast, check out details here.

For another hiring forecast which has shown six months of gains, read the Conference Board’s report here.