Career stability or even predictability is a thing of the past. Change is hard, I know. But the personal benefits we gain outweigh the bad. Trust me — professional development, more meaningful work, greater autonomy and more control over your work/life balance are great potential outcomes. I love to research innovators — check out some […]

The WSJ reported last month that in 2009, 51% of job openings were filled through internal hires. Seriously? Someone got paid to do a survey to determine this? Without getting paid a dime, I did my own informal poll on Facebook. My FB friends are former colleagues, current colleagues, friends, former classmates, family members, former […]

Who’d turn down a job offer in this job market? I got a call from a friend last week asking me about whether she should accept a job offer. It was a pretty attractive offer at a high profile organization in the area (think sportswear). She told me about it – all the pros and […]

Yesterday I was talking to a young job seeker who was seeking advice about job opportunities. First, let me tell you that I was working like crazy to shift the focus from his pursuit of jobs to the benefit of gathering information and talking to people about what’s out there. From our conversation, I could […]

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately. It seems like almost daily someone asks me if people are getting hired, if the job market is getting any better, and if the worst has passed. I don’t really know how to answer these questions (my short answers are yes, a bit, I’m not sure) […]

Business Development – 14.8% Sales – 12.9% Operations Management (including Quality, Supply Chain and Logistics) – 12.9% General Management – 10.3% Finance – 9.1% Engineering – 9.1% Marketing – 8.7% MIS/Information Technology – 6.2% Consulting – 6.1% Research & Development – 5.7% Human Resources – 3.5% Source: ExecuNet 2008

Holy cow! Do I see some bad resumes. Smart people, with great experience, but horrible resumes. Here are a couple of my pet peeves: – An objective that makes no sense. “A position with a fast-growing company that will allow me to utilize my skills and talents.” Whoa Nelly. If I’m looking at 10 resumes […]

I think the fear of standing out keeps a lot of people from pursuing opportunities that they know are *perfect* for them. It’s scary to go after something that you really want, especially if it means having to take a risk–stand out–in the process. In an ideal world, the job search process would be just […]

I recently met with a creative team doing some research for a client. They wanted a career coach’s perspective about why people hate their jobs. As odd as it might sound, I found it really difficult to answer this question. If I look back on all the reasons clients have sought out career coaching, there […]

Someone asked me how long to wait before following up with a contact he was trying to reach. He had already sent two emails. It depends on the situation. In this case, he was trying to reach someone whose name he had received as a potential networking contact. It wasn’t a simple confirmation conversation that […]