What's your skillset superpower? Are you great at at least 1 thing? Dan and Liz talk about how to either think about or articulate your superpower. This can be helpful in your focus as a job seeker, but also in your interview skills with recruiters. See, even though we have an active job market here in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, recruiters are still picky, looking for candidates that they know will help them further business goals.

Resources:

Book discussed: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

by Gary Keller

Amazon link

Library link

Check out the latest 400+ jobs on Corridor Careers

Hey, good morning, Liz. Happy Friday.

Happy Friday, got our coffee,

Got our coffee going

Careers and coffee. Friday edition.

Gotta have the coffee when we're when we're

talking about careers.

And let me say our market is highly caffeinated

when it comes to jobs right now.

Highly caffeinated, and more than

enough job openings, right now what, uh, what's going on

quarter careers?

Oh, my gosh, we have so many jobs, and so much

variety of jobs. If you have been curious about, you know, if

you're currently happy in your, well, let's see, let's say

you're currently unhappy in your current job. There are so many

jobs right now on Corridor Careers, and just in our market,

in general, that you could probably find something in your

career path right now. And, you know, have something to compare

it to. A lot of times, you might be working in a role where you

think, well, there's no other jobs like this. So I'm kind of

this is a good place for me to be

But if you're interested in looking out. I'm not saying we

want people who leave jobs that they're happy in. just just just

enough, a lot of opportunity out there. And that's what we're

going to talk about today. Opportunity.

We're going to talk about opportunity. And just

to follow up on that 455 current active jobs as of right now, on

Corridor Careers. But yeah, let's let's talk about

opportunity. And let's talk about, we're kind of getting

back to, before we started this Careers and Coffee episode

talking about our our one thing - our superpower in the

workforce, or just in life. So Liz, if I asked you, what was

the one thing that you think that your hands down better at?

or what have people maybe mentioned to you in the past

that, hey, wow, you're really good at this.

So I would go with, what do I feel most confident

in? Versus that because I'm really not comfortable with

people giving me praise or hearing, you know, hearing about

myself from other people. And that's just my own issue.

But I feel most confident in my curiosity. And I would say

curiosity is my superpower. I'm very curious about why things

work, how things work. When I dig into things. That's when I

find things through my just analysis skills. And I learn

things, I love to learn. And curiosity is what drives all of

that. I'm just inherently curious. I'm like a cat. So that

is probably my superpower. And I know it is a soft skill that

many job, employers, sorry, recruiters and employers are

looking for someone who's curious because they know

someone who's curious is going to notice when things go south,

or they're going to notice opportunities. But I'm just kind

of teasing what you think your superpower is Dan. So what do

you what would you say your skill superpower is?

My skill superpower. So I've been told in

the past that I'm really good at maybe finding gaps or

opportunities. Whether that is you know, maybe there were

problems, right? So in business and in work, like maybe that's

an opportunity to grow revenue, or, you know, find an

opportunity to save money, right. So as far as business

goes, like everybody's every company is in business to try to

make money and provide jobs and to serve people. Right? So as

far as in the workforce, that's at least what I've been told by

some friends or mentors, like, hey, wow, I'd never never

thought of that. That'd be a really good way to, you know,

maybe add to the bottom line or, you know, increase sales. So

I think I'm always been kind of a problem solver. And maybe,

maybe that's my, my greatest strength. And my biggest

weakness, too, that I see see problems maybe too frequently.

But yeah, going back to you. So yeah, that curiosity is very

interesting. And I would completely agree with what you

said, because when I see you work, you are always really good

at getting into like, maybe a CMS, like a content management

system or a brand new platform, and you just had the whole thing

figured out before, you know, it seems like in minutes, like

where other people like myself, you know, weeks or months to

figure out so.

Well, thanks, Dan. You're making me feel real

uncomfortable right now.

That's what we do. Yeah. here's, here's an

example. Here's an example.

I think just had, you know, we've talked about

this in the past on other podcasts, we both had tons of

jobs. And I was thinking about restaurants and why I was

working on a blog post of why restaurant work should be on

everyone's resume. And one of the one of the ways I used my

curiosity in the past was I was working at a cafe that also had

a bakery attached to it. And I noticed that the lemon bars

looked off. And I'm like, these lemon bars do not look like

yesterday's lemon bars. And so I brought it to the attention of a

manager who called over the pastry chef, and he's like, Oh,

yeah, those lemon bars are not right. And through that, I ended

up transitioning over to the pastry department, because I

noticed something that was critical to their quality, you

know, like making sure that their quality was always the

same, because they really relied on that reputation as providing

like amazing desserts. And if somebody would come in, and

they'd have a crappy lemon bar, they would tell everyone, they

had a terrible lemon bar, and they wouldn't go there and order

it anymore. And so those are the types of things that you can do

with those kind of like inherent skills that really don't,

they're not something I don't put, I mean, I might put

curiosity on my resume and just like something about me, but

it's not like a skill that you put in the skill set at the top

of your resume. And so you have to learn how to talk about some

of those soft skills when you're interviewing to let the

recruiter know, hey, this is something about me, you should

know. And this is why you should maybe consider me and this is

what I can bring to the table. But if you don't know that about

yourself, it's hard for you to tell that story.

Yeah, I love that. And I mean, just the fact

that you saw, you know, saw the issue and brought it up, you

know, I think there's a lot of people that maybe, maybe and it

depends on your work environment, or where your boss

and management to like, you might not be comfortable

bringing that up. But, you know, having, having the confidence

and everything and curiosity to go and bring that up. And, you

know, they moved you over they they really liked that about you

just the just the fact that you stepped up and said something.

So I think that's something that, you know, a lot of lot of

people can probably resonate with, that they've maybe seen an

issue at work in the past or something. And you know,

sometimes you say something, and sometimes you don't. but I think

that's, that's a really good trait.

But yeah, it's, I guess, it's kind of the

difference between that passive worker and someone who's

empowered as kind of like, got that ownership mindset of like,

hey, this may not be my job, but I'm noticing that something

about this could be improved, or there might be an opportunity

here and heck, you know, like, if they listen to you, Danny,

like, Hey, you could actually be making some revenue on this,

then that's obviously going to reflect well on you. If they do

take that action. Or if they don't take the action. Even if

they don't take the action to solve the problem. They they

realize that you've brought it up and you're paying attention.

And that's kind of what they're looking for when they talk about

employee engagement.

It's a kind of a buzzword in, you know, when employers are

talking about how can we improve our culture and employee

engagement? What does engagement mean? It just means somebody who

actually cares enough to, to say something when they see

something?

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so couple

things. Right. So take action. I love that you just mentioned

that. Definitely. Don't be afraid to take action and, and

find out what your superpower is like, what's your what's your

one thing that people are always praising you for? And, you know,

don't don't be afraid to go after that and use that in the

in the workplace.

And if you're looking for more ways to how to

figure out what that one thing is about yourself. Dan's gonna

put in the show notes, a link to a book that you read about this.

And what was it it's called the one thing the

one thing by Gary Keller, who was the founder of Keller Keller

Williams real estate, actually. Big brand, but yeah, really good

book. So check that out.

All right, well, that's gonna be it for today,

but we'll be back next week with another Careers and Coffee.