Suzanne Aptman

Many of you are about to begin your summer internships. Wishing you "good luck" is clearly in order. So is offering you "congratulations". "Wait!", you say, "I haven't received an offer for full-time yet. Why are you congratulating me?"  Well, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article 

Lessons from a 4-year old with hearing loss

Anthony, a 4-year old boy, refused to wear his hearing aid after noticing that the super heroes in his comic books weren't wearing them.  His mother reached out to Marvel comics with his story. Marvel immediately started designing a super hero who wears a hearing aid. His name is "The Blue Ear". Needless to say, Anthony and his pre-school buddies with hearing loss were inspired. View the full story.

This story can inspire folks with disabilities to

One of the great programs that Lime Connect offers is a Fellowship Program in the U.S. for rising juniors who happen to have disabilities. (By the way, the 2014 Fellowship Program application is launching this week.)  We kick the program off with a 4-day Leadership & Development Symposium in New York City. Following the Symposium we ask our new Fellows to reflect, through writing, on their experience at Symposium and to share newly discovered perspectives on disabilty and success. I want to open this blog column in the New Year by sharing some of the inspiring thoughts and perspectives from the 2013 Fellowship class. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

True. Holiday time is a great opportunity to close the books, kick up your feet, relax, enjoy, and reconnect with friends and family. If you are job searching, it is also a great time to build momentum and stand out from the crowd. It is possible that recruiters and organizations will use some of the next few weeks to regroup and plan for the next year as recruiting season speeds up in January. Wouldn't you like to be top of mind while they are planning?

Here are some ideas to maximize this opportunity...

You spend hours preparing for an interview. You know your resume inside and out.  You feel comfortable answering behavioral-based questions and have lots of stories ready to share in your back pocket. But something you can't know for sure is the intent behind an interviewer's question. What are they really getting at when they ask you "tell me about a time you failed"?

Getting Things Done > Grade Point Average

A college student with arthritis takes some time off from school for a series of leg surgeries. Another student with dyslexia has a hard time on written tests and assignments. Their grades suffer as a result. These are some of the scenarios I hear from Lime Network members. And then they ask me the inevitable question, "how do I talk about my lower GPA in an interview?"

"Oh interviews, why art thou so anxiety provoking?" a famous line from an Elizabethan Era author.  That line expresses a sentiment that holds true today. But, if only we could reframe our perception of interviews from opportunities to be shot down TO opportunities to shine our lights, strut our stuff, showcase our worth. If only we could see the person on the other side of the interview room as a human who has stood in similar shoes RATHER than a courtroom prosecutor looking to poke holes in our stories. Perhaps the new line would be written as, "Oh interviews, how I long for thy company".

It is that time of year when we start to see an increase in hits on the Professional Development & Learning page of the Lime Connect website (find this page in the "Opportunities" section of our site). This increase in traffic is due to the great webinars and tele-talks that we have posted which help folks to make a great first impression with recruiters.

This month you might be particularly interested in...     

Can you imagine asking someone for a letter of recommendation and they then ask YOU to write it for them? This happens all the time and can be a great opportunity to get the perfect message across to prospective employers. But many folks have never written a letter of recommendation about anyone else, let alone themselves. This exact situation happened with one of our Lime Network members this week. Here are some of the tips I shared with her on how to write the letter of recommendation in the third person:

Recruiters are busy. Interviews can be short and pressured.  At networking events you compete with others for the recruiter's attention. No matter how hard you try to get recruiters to see just how accomplished you are, it is not always your fault if you don't get a chance to paint a full picture. Circumstances can get in your way.

So, at the very least, you want your resume to be the one tool in your job search tool kit that is fool proof; that lists your accomplishments and lays out your success story. What does that mean? Don't just