In this motivational keynote delivered to a job‑seeker audience, Glen Gould frames career advancement around the principle that "it is more blessed to give than to receive," citing Acts 20:35. After a brief prayer, he engages the audience in defining "give" and highlights how giving and receiving are intertwined. Gould shares a personal anecdote about meeting Steve Forbes at a Pittsburgh convention center, where Forbes emphasized that his achievements were earned, not given, reinforcing the idea that one must recognize personal worth while still giving back. He then outlines three concrete steps for job‑search success: (1) give thought to the task – deliberately plan and consider what value you bring to potential employers; (2) give time to the task – allocate dedicated, uninterrupted hours each day to the job search as if it were a full‑time job; and (3) volunteer – engage in activities you are passionate about or strategically volunteer in circles that connect you with target employers, thereby expanding networks and deepening relevance. As a bonus, he urges listeners to "give your best" in every action, arguing that excellence combined with generosity creates a competitive edge. The talk concludes with an invitation to connect via social media for further assistance.
Chapters
I've actually seen your slides because you, uh, texted them to me yesterday, so I look forward to hearing what you have to say about all these great slides. Let's give Glen Gould a warm welcome. Thank you. You'll switch out? Yeah. Good morning. Good morning. I want to talk to you today about giving your way to career success. Giving your way to career success. And when we're done here today, I hope that you'll find that giving may be the most profitable thing you can do. Fair enough? I like to start every one of my talks here at Job Seekers. I like to base it on a Bible quote. So here's the verse that I picked, and I picked this verse before I really knew exactly what I wanted to talk to you about today. And it kind of came into my head about 2 o'clock in the morning about 2 and a half weeks ago. And it's Acts 20:35. You probably know part of it but don't know all of it. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: It is more blessed to give than to receive. Would you join me in prayer? Father God, thank you for your words and your wisdom and our lives and the time that we get to together. Lord, thank you for these people in this room because we know that your timing is perfect and they are here at the right place at the right time for just the right thing to happen. And all we need to do is be willing participants. Lord, as we go through today and the words that I would speak, I would hope they'd be the words that you would want me to speak and that the ears that would hear it would be just the right thing at the right time to inspire and bring these people more hope, and more success. And as we leave here today, Lord, I hope that we can all leave encouraged, inspired, and that we can be a positive influence on everyone that we interact with the rest of the day and beyond. In your name we pray, amen. So I'm just going to ask you, what do you think of when you hear me say give? Now, okay, I know a lot of y'all are new here today, so let me— I'm sorry, we left out part of the the instructions. This is the audience participation part of my presentation. If you don't participate, I don't get to go on. So what do you think of when I say the word give? Volunteering. Money. Love. Love. Yeah. What else? Time. Joy. Joy. You know what I think of? I think of receiving. Don't you think of Christmas? I mean, in our society, is there anything more giving than Christmas, right? I mean, we spend a whole month and a half— some people are already buying Christmas gifts for this coming year. Do you know that? Some people, some companies that they know that you are like that, they're sending you emails that say it's time to put things on layaway, it's time to put some money in the bank for Christmas savings club. We think about giving, we think about Christmas sometimes, don't we? Now somebody else mentioned giving. This fellow right here. I don't know that he's too focused on giving. He's focused on receiving, right? Do you blame him? Somebody mentioned giving money. I think Travis did. Boy, I'll tell you what, you can't go to the grocery store anymore without them saying, do you want to give to the Lions Club, the health club, whatever club? You know, donate, donate, donate, donate, donate. It's just all the time. And if you go back to my friend in the picture before, you can't stop at a corner without seeing somebody looking for you to give, whether it's somebody with a real charity or somebody, you know, panhandling. It's everywhere. And you guys, if you think about giving, you're going to— somebody give me a job, right? I mean, that's really what— are y'all still looking? Most of you still looking for a job? I heard we got some good news over here at this table. Congratulations. But we think of giving and receiving go hand in hand. You know, actually, you can't give what you don't have. Can you? Is it possible? Can you give something away that you don't have? When you're in need, you need to receive. How many of you have ever heard this before? You should give back. Yep. Alright, I have a cute little story that I share in this book that I wrote a while back, and I wanted to bring it because I wanted to quote it properly, because in my slide I didn't quote it properly. This is the convention center in Pittsburgh. I've forgotten the name of the guy that it's named after, but you can look it up. It's Richard somebody, and I feel bad about that, but we're going to move on. And in that convention center back in, I think, 2008, 2009, I was speaking to the American Chamber of Commerce Association executives. And at that time, have y'all ever been to a conference, big conference, you know, maybe an association meeting, something like that? You know, you have a couple of days, you spend a night in a hotel room, there's a bunch of networking and a bunch of training sessions and things like that. And every morning they have a keynote, right? Have you ever noticed it's always in the morning or in the evening, just before dinner or just before or at breakfast? And the keynote is supposed to set the stage for that day. It's supposed to make you think about what you're going to be working on that day. And I always, when I go to these things, I always get there early because you never know what you might miss if you're not there on time. So in this convention center back in August of 2008, 2009, I can look it up for sure. I think it was 2009. Um, I walk into this room, the Session's supposed to start at 8:00. I walk in about 7:00. And the lights aren't all the way up yet. We got it set for about, you know, 500. Tables everywhere. And I look over there by the stage, there's one lone man sitting there. His name is Steve Forbes. Now, I walked up to Steve Forbes because, you know, hey, I've got an audience with Steve Forbes. And because I was there early, I got about 45 minutes of Steve Forbes all by himself. We sat there and we talked about all sorts of things. We spent 45 minutes, we talked about politics, publishing, and any number of other topics. But I'll never forget that somehow we got on the subject of giving back. And when we were talking about that, Steve said, and I'll paraphrase here, paraphrased it there. I hate that term. It sounds as if I didn't earn it. I'm perfectly willing to give, but don't tell me that I got to give back because everything I got I earned. And I want you to think about that because sometimes in the situation you're in right now, you're kind of feeling depleted, right? Everything you've got you earned. Every bit of it, and you've got a lot to give. So don't forget that. But it was a powerful message for me. So let's talk about the 3 steps that you can use to grow your, uh, to grow to success faster. You gotta give thought to your task. You need a job, you need to give a lot of thought to it. So most of us We're so busy in the process that we stop to go— we rarely stop and go, okay, what exactly do I want to accomplish? I have an opportunity that I haven't had in a while to completely change my financial and career trajectory. What really matters? If you got to start over, why go back to where you were? Maybe you were perfectly happy doing what you were doing. That's a good reason. But at least give it some thought. Don't just go and apply for what you've always done so you can get what you've always gotten. Because if you do that, then in all honesty, that's what got you here too, right? So give a lot of thought to your, to your process. Think about what it is you are about to do and what you need to do in order to get what you want. You need to think about what you will give And you need to think about what they will get. This is really, really important because if you're not thinking about what they will get, when you get in front of somebody, all you'll tell them is what you need and all they'll hear is me, me, me, me, me. You never started to sing the song that they wanted to hear. You were just warming up because they want to hear, what will I get? Make sense? Number 2, give time to your task. So many people who are looking for a job spend the vast majority of their time in their days doing things that have nothing to do with looking for a job. They wake up in the morning, they check the emails, they fire off a couple messages on LinkedIn to people that they might want to connect with, they look through the job boards to find out if their job is open, And then they take the kids to school. You know, kids got to go to school. I mean, they could ride the bus, but you know, I'm available and I want to spend time with my kids. And then, you know, on the way back, well, I got to stop and get a cup of coffee at Starbucks because, you know, I might meet somebody there that, you know, you probably won't through the drive-through, but, you know, that's okay. And you got to listen to the news. Man, with Bernie and all that, it's very exciting right now, isn't it? Before you know it, it's lunch. And after you have a nice lunch with your spouse or your best friend, it's time to pick up the kids. And then before you know it, it's time to go to bed. You got to give time to this task. It deserves your full attention. It's a full-time job. What will you give up to do this task? What are you willing to give up? And when will you give it? So if you're going to give time to this task, it should be a job, and it ought to have a set amount of hours, set amount of time that you do this work. And it's a full-time job until you get a job that's a full-time job, right? You ought to, you ought to have it carved out in your calendar. Nothing else intercedes. And don't let your family or your friends intercede too. Oh well, you know, Bob's not working right now, he can certainly go do this for me. No, Bob's working. Bob's looking for a job. Okay, remember, you've got to give time to this task. And number 3 is volunteer. This is probably the most important thing you can do, is volunteer. You have time, you can give it, you need to volunteer. Now I'll tell you the 2 ways you can volunteer. Number 1 is you volunteer in something that you're passionate about. Volunteer at your church, volunteer at the school where the kids are going to school with the PTA or PTO, whatever they call it today. Volunteer in the things that matter to you. Maybe you're part of a biking club or a running club or a rowing club or whatever. Volunteer there. These are things you're passionate about. They will enrich your soul. You will feel better. And people who feel better get jobs quicker. Now there is another way to volunteer though, and that is to find the people that you need to connect with that have access or actually are the people that you need to talk to to further your career. Now don't go volunteering where the guy that's going to hire you for your job right away is, you know, volunteering because that's just going to look obvious. But if you think about it as a strategic move in your career, And you know, 3 years from now I want to be working there. And what are those people interested in? Because I better be interested in that because I'll be working there. And so if they're interested in that, I need to volunteer in that so that I can be— I can have access to those people, so that I can start to think like those people, so that I can be those people. If you volunteer In an organization, you're gonna find that you're working side by side, elbow to elbow with people on a cause that matters. And you'll become more passionate and they'll become more passionate. And when that happens, you get access to things you've never had access to before. So volunteering is a powerful tool. Proactively give time away from your task as well. And that's what I mean by volunteering. Okay, this is giving time away from your task. So here's a bonus for you: give your best in everything you do. Give your best in everything you do. This seems to be something that misses pretty much everywhere. The only thing that I think this society is giving its best at is we're very good at being negative. We're giving it all, and, uh, and everybody kind of feeds off each other. It's really a lot of fun. But give your best in everything you do. If you give your best in giving time to your task and thought to your task and volunteering, you're giving a whole lot. And you know what? It is given that it's more blessed to give than receive, correct? Especially in a fight. Especially in a fight. You definitely want to give more than you receive. And the truth is, Gordon's right. I mean, you're in a fight. You're in a fight. It's time to— time to, you know, get aggressive. Don't let it happen to you. Make it happen for you. I've always liked this quote: Do your work, not just your work, do a little more, but that little is worth more than all the rest. And if you suffer as you must, and if you doubt as you must, do your work. Put your heart into it and the sky will clear. Then out of your doubt and suffering will be born the supreme joy. Of life. Ladies and gentlemen, working is something that is a gift to us. I know that you know that because you've lost that opportunity. There are so many people out in the workforce who have forgotten it. You've got an edge. You've got an edge. When you go in and talk to these people, you've got an edge because you know the joy of work, and you can bring that joy back to an organization. So go in and give all you've got, and I'm sure your job search will end quite quickly. If there's any way I can help, I'm Glen Gould. You can find me on Facebook and everything else at Glen Gould. Have a good morning.
