I just launched my new ebook called “I Want To Hire You But Your Resume Sucks,” filled with 30+ tips to get a job.  It’s packed with things I’ve learned as both an employer and employee.

Here’s a snippet about what it’s about really ….

A resume is just piece of paper. But it’s also a brochure that sells your services to employers.

But the fact is: Most resumes suck.

Not because of the paper or even format, but because you haven’t done the work building the key areas employers look for to make it rock.

The statistics about those who are underemployed or unemployed are depressing.

I have some theories on why those stats exist. Namely, you aren’t ready for a real job.

You haven’t done the work to GET hired. But I want to help.

In “I Want To Hire You But Your Resume Sucks,” I give you 30+ tips for how to start doing the things that will make you an attractive free agent to prospective employers.

Warning: They will cost you mostly time and energy. But you should have a lot of that on your hands.

You can get this ebook for free by joining my new blog community at Purposeful Paychecks where I’m going to be talking about work-life alignment and offering blunt career advice.

As I’ve looked back on my life, I have a couple of themes that I’m passionate about. And for the ones that rise to the top and that I can’t stop talking about or having an opinion on, I just start a blog around that topic. 

For my passion of entrepreneurship and for helping people start businesses, I started Startup Sofa. It’s been around for over a year now and I still blog on it about once a month.

But one other passion (and theme of my life) that I just couldn’t shake was about work. About work-life alignment. And my core value, philosophy or whatever you want to call it that work should be about the profitable pursuit of fulfilling your purpose while following your passions.

Plus my post on How to Be a Professional is consistently by far the most visited post on the Startup Sofa blog. And I needed an outlet for all this that went beyond entrepreneurship.

So with the help of my wife Lindsey we came up with a name for this new blog called Purposeful Paychecks.

I just did my first post on this new career advice blog … and have also had an ebook titled “I Want To Hire You … but Your Resume Sucks” in the works for a couple of months now.

I figure by announcing the blog it’ll give me the momentum or accountability to finish it (it’s not over 6000 words).

But I have much to say (I think) on this subject of finding meaningful work and I’m eager to share it. So go signup for the community email at Purposeful Paychecks today.

My post on How to be a Professional has been by far the most popular post at Startup Sofa.

So I thought I’d expand on that after getting asked to speak to high school students at our local career tech recently and repurpose for you in ebook form (there’s the slideshow below too).

I’ve got five basic keys to share that I believe if you do these things, you’ll be successful in your WORK, whether you go to work for someone else or start your own business.

[ DOWNLOAD THE FREE PDF EBOOK ON GETTING PAID WELL TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE HERE ]

Disclaimer: This post is just purely career advice for anyone starting out in their respective fields, whatever that may be …. I’ve experienced all of this personally and am merely sharing some things I think will make you happier and more successful in your work.

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I was reading this article on how to find the job you’ll love … and it’s loaded with great advice, but no. 4 really got me: “Ignore salary.”

As an employer, I want to pay our team well … I want them to be paid comparable to what their skills, commitment and their colleagues make. But we don’t just hand out money or raises or bonuses because they believe they deserve it … they, along with myself, have to earn it.

In general, and not just as an employer and boss, I’ve observed that some people think they are worth more salary-wise than they truly are. Just because you think you could make more money in another job doesn’t mean you’re willing to make the sacrifices and effort necessarily to do so.

The ones in this camp are the ones I’m aiming this post at.

They are the ones who will never make enough to satisfy their need for “more money.” They will generally flame out and leave their jobs. Or worse, get bitter because their unrealistic dreams don’t make their paycheck. They are perpetually unhappy and it has drastic ripple effects on teams and companies.

Yes, you need to make sure you and your family can put food on the table and pay your bills. But I love this post by Penelope Trunk (one of my favorite career advice bloggers) that says you need around $40K a year to be truly happy. (Of course it was written a couple of years ago, but generally, it still resonates.)

Live within your means – I really struggle with people who live in America and can’t make it on very decent or even “average” wages. The root of this is typically a skewed perspective on status. They think they deserve to live a richer lifestyle, and I’ve been guilty of it as well. But some of the happiest times in my marriage have been the times when we made the least … when we had one income, lived in an apartment and were extremely frugal with our money. We simply found some creative ways to enjoy and focus on each other. But even then, we lived a quality of life that millions of people around the globe only dream about.

Focus on quality of life – This is why I love living in Oklahoma. My money and salary go a lot further. Penelope moved to Wisconsin for a similar reason: quality of life. As I’ve traveled I’ve wondered how people in San Francisco or Boston make a living. I believed with enough commitment and work I could climb the latter at different organizations and make a lot of money. But I never wanted to make the sacrifices in my quality of life to get there. Confession: In the last couple of months, I’ve had to really assess my quality of life and ask myself, ‘Am I having fun?’ It’s not worth it if I’m not having fun. Trust me. I want to enjoy my work or else it’s simply a prison.

Find awesome work you’re passionate about – if you hate your work, you better be paid handsomely. But your paycheck is payment for pain and suffering and enduring your work, not enjoying it. If you love your work, you’ll generally be content with your pay and … yes, the money will come. Happy, passionate people are a joy to work with … and they do accomplish more. Everyone wins. Some on our team could be making substantially more than what they are making now. But we’ve tried to create an environment where it doesn’t matter because they love what they do and they cherish the environment we provide …. to me, and maybe I’m biased, that’s priceless. Some have turned down better offers to work here because of it.

Yes, you should be paid fairly – and by this I mean comparable to other colleagues and being reasonable about salary expectations. You have to be realistic. If you really want to earn twice what you’re paid, count the cost of what it’d take to achieve that. I don’t know about you but my happiness is worth more than simply twice my salary. Employers should pay their employees fairly and adequately. One value I treasure and repeat often is … those who invest themselves in our business and team will be rewarded. I don’t know exactly how that shakes out. It’s not always money. Often it’s me buying their lunch … or just a verbal word of encouragement … Or recognizing and giving them credit for their work publicly … or sending them on a fun, productive business trip.

If you aren’t happy, change it – I remember a coworker from one of my first jobs out of college. This coworker was habitually unhappy. No one wanted to be around her. I realized she had been working this job longer than I had been alive. She was stuck. In a rut with nowhere else to go. I vowed from that time forward to always enjoy my work or change it. Go somewhere else. But don’t get bitter. You’ll look at yourself in the mirror … and hate yourself. And when you look around you, no one will be there because no one wants to be around bitter people. If you don’t like what you’re doing, do everybody a favor and CHANGE IT.

Conclusion: More money is never the key to happiness. Just ask any miserable “6 figure salaried” person you thought of when reading this.

OK … just my two pennies worth.

This is a quick follow-up to my Be the Solution post.

It occurred to me that the opposite of BEING the solution is BEING the squeaky wheel. (I know, I’m Captain Obvious.)

The sour grapes of the office. The chronic complainers. The permanently unhappy, miserable.

I’ve worked with a few of those type in my life.

They make life for everyone miserable. They are a drain on energy and joy.

You can even feel your mood shrink in their presence sometimes.

You’re probably thinking of someone like that right now.

When I’ve encountered these types of people, I always wonder how they got to be so miserable.

I’m shocked that there are people that miserable at work because here’s some facts …

We live in America (or at least I do).

With the proper initiative (a resounding theme in my life currently), and some basic job skills, we can choose what type of work we do. No one can force us to do work we don’t want to.

My point is … we have choices. Lots of choices in this life.

More choices afforded to us then previous generations before us. Some of our ancestors even died for the freedom of having those choices.

And I’ve always thought that if someone, living in the U.S. at least, is so miserable by the work they do, then they can change that.

I’ve done that numerous times myself. When I hit some ceiling in my work, or squeezed out the challenge, excitement and potential of a position, I made a conscious decision to find different work.

Most people might think I was a job hopper. On paper, yeah, you could assume that.

But when I went to a job interview for a new position, I could always tell the person who interviewed me: “I’m confident that if those former bosses had a position open for me, they’d hire me again.”

… because I tried to be the solution, to provide value to those organizations and bosses, to enjoy my coworkers, be authentically interested in their lives, to be someone they looked forward to working with, talking to, and going to lunch with … which is the opposite of squeaky wheels.

This is one of the best pieces of career advice I can recommend to someone looking to get ahead in almost any career field.

Learn and get really, really good and proficient at the most popular (or used) software programs in your industry and field. 

When I was aspiring to be a newspaper journalist, I learned QuarkXPress and Adobe Photoshop. Those were the two dominant programs used at newspapers at the time. And knowing them very well got me my first job. Then it helped me get offers and other jobs years down the road.

In fact, because I quit college before finishing my degree the first time around, I know that knowledge was the only reason I kept getting jobs, which typically required a college degree. (Of course, experience helps too, but that’s another blog post.)

Now, fast forward a couple of years, and because I started learning another software program — you might have heard of it: WordPress — I’ve been able to successfully freelance for 10 months and eventually built an entire business around that particular software program.

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