Happy New Year! The phrase “The Coast Is Clear” was frequently used to advise seamen that the fog had lifted and the shore could be seen from out at sea, or that the oceans and shipping lanes were clear for smooth venturing onto open water. Metaphorically, and on dry land, it also implies that it…
An old friend got in touch recently to ask about some people in my contacts list on one of my social networks. She was digging through other friends lists as well in an effort to find familiar names from our common past. Her interest, as it turns out, was to make a late stage career…
If you’re looking for a job, In addition to all the online social and real interpersonal networking, job boards, posting sites and direct applications, are you still attending job fairs? Are these events still worth your job search time? For a great many job seekers, the answer is, “Yes”! Attending job fairs is still a…
Last time out I wrote about the importance of clarity in work communication and its effects on job survival. While at the gigantic Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month, I was continuously reminded of the importance of clarity in brevity, particularly when it comes to what we often refer to as…
Recently, I was reviewing resumes, cover letters and doing some interview preparation for job seekers at a job fair. Although the age of the participants skewed a bit older than most of these events, the employment hopefuls were as diversified in their skills, experience and positions of interest, as would be expected. But one of…
There was a time not too long ago when job seekers routinely sent out their job search documents to unknown recipients. More times than not job announcements instructed job seekers to send their resumes and cover letters to blind addresses – Post Office boxes or routing numbers in care of the newspaper that ran the…
Unless you’re devoid of any feelings, one of the toughest things to hear from someone is that they lost their job. This is a hard thing to hear from anyone, particularly if you know the person well, and know that they have committed themselves for a long time to that gig. And even if you…
In my last entry, we talked about Marilyn and how her efforts to find a new job were thwarted when she turned the focus of her interviews to her needs rather than those of the job and the employer. This time out I want to reiterate and expound further that you should not ignore your…
This is a question every job seeker eventually needs to ask her/himself. “How far am I willing to go for my job?” Certainly most folks want to go as far in their careers as they possibly can, but this is more a question of physical and geographic distance than of accomplishment. How far are you…
“Location, location, location!” usually refers to the three most important things to consider before buying or opening a retail business. But have you given much thought to the location of your interviews? Interviews today won’t always take place in an office. Your next interview might be in a conference room, in a lunchroom, at a…
Among the frequent discussions I have with clients is the topic of references and prospective employers’ attempt to confirm what job seekers claim on their resumes, applications and in interviews. You’d be amazed at the number of people who voice serious concerns about what others will say about them. And they should be concerned. But…
An old friend with more than 10 years in nursing needed to create a new resume because she wants to find another job. Having worked at several hospitals, in a number of specialized areas, she has a wealth of experience and accomplishments to convey to the medical professionals who could employ her. Not wanting to…
Listen and repeat! For many years, high school students had that phrase drilled into their heads when they were learning a foreign language. Regardless of the foreign language being studied, the prerecorded voice of the instructors in the widely used ALM series preceded each expression with “Listen and repeat.” In those days, students learned key…
Over the past few days I’ve been trying to find some hardware from a disassembled desk that had been in storage. This hunt necessitated going through some boxes that had been in tucked away for over 5 years, and I thought I knew where the hardware had been packed. When these boxes were being filled…
There are three old but still relevant axioms I’d like to quote here. The first is: You can’t judge a book by its cover. The second is: What you see is what you get. And the third is: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Now when we think of how…
For years I’ve been advocating that Libraries are a great place to do your job search! Here’s a great article by Carolyn Said of the San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/01/BURU1EK0UQ.DTL
Despite the recent slight uptick in job growth, the graduating class of 2010 will face the toughest job search challenge of the past 20 years, maybe longer. Sadly, it will be harder for most new graduates to find work related to their degrees than in recent memory. While so many earlier generations were promised unlimited…
The concept of up-selling (trying to sell the customer more than just what they asked for), has been around for a long while. Whether it’s the waitress asking, “Do you want fries with that?”, or the appliance vendor asking if you want the matching stand for the plasma TV, offering more to the customer than…
Recently while providing feedback to job seekers about their resumes at a local job search preparation event, I was surprised by the overall quality of information delivered by many of those in attendance. It seemed that many candidates I spoke with were trying, often successfully, to convey not just what they did on their jobs,…
Recently I attended a very large, and very crowded free outdoor 3-day music festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Moving between six stages of exceptional talent proved to be an arduous and exhausting experience; that thankfully wouldn’t diminish the inspiration and invigoration fueled by the great music. But I was thinking that it might…
