Can you exert a positive influence over your work environment and career prospects even if you don’t hold a senior management or executive position? Does holding such a position give you both authority and influence? Good questions! First of all, what’s the difference between the two terms or concepts? “Authority is a social, political and business structure that grants an individual rights to make deci...

If you believe there are resume secrets hidden from you and you don’t know how to crack the code, this post is for you! Because. guess what: There are NO resume secrets–unless you believe a resume that will get you interviews is somehow mysteriously concocted by writers who have a pipeline into a well-protected Fort Knox of resume-writing secrets. Anyone Can Write a Resume, Right? Well, no. Or maybe yes, i...

You get a phone call or an email from someone who urgently needs your resume to submit for a great but time-limited job opportunity. Fantastic! Except for one problem–you haven’t updated your resume in at least 10 years. So you quickly throw together an “updated resume” that you figure will do for the time being and send it off. HUGE mistake! Last-Minute Resumes: Why They’re a BAD Idea...

Wouldn’t it be great if job searching were a “piece of cake,” with no real challenges or speed-bumps to get past? Theoretically, that would mean you wouldn’t face any serious tests of your self-respect and integrity during the job search. Is that likely to happen in practice? Maybe not. Even the best-planned and -executed job search campaign can encounter obstacles. The list of possible obstructio...

If you’ve been out of work for even a few months, you could already be experiencing some of the emotions of someone who’s been unemployed for several months or longer. It’s a situation that intensifies as your job search lengthens without an end in sight. This post is not intended as a panacea for the major challenges of long-term unemployment. It’s just meant to direct attention to something that...

Have you ever conducted a job search that produced ZERO results–no interview opportunities, no phone calls, not even a template email saying, “Thanks for your submission. We’ll keep it on file”? This is the extreme scenario that keeps many job seekers awake at night. It’s the job search black hole that sucks in all your efforts to attract employer attention and doesn’t shoot anything b...

Nostalgia can be fine to indulge in–if kept in its proper place. When you’re engaged in planning a job search or trying to do smart career management, nostalgia might be a costly indulgence! Why is that? Because the core ingredient of nostalgia is looking backward, rather than forward. The word is defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with h...

You might be saying, “Learn from nature about my job search? That’s crazy!” While it might sound a little off-the-wall, it’s not as crazy as you might think. I’ll admit today’s post is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but sometimes we can use a little humor to lighten a task that often stirs up negative emotions in us. So bear with me, as we take a stroll through lessons you can learn about success...

Financial compensation (salary/wages) might not be the only measurement you use to determine whether you’re in a good place in terms of career success, but it’s often one of the top factors you look at. If you’re out of work and looking or considering a move from your current job for some reason, you’re probably including compensation as something to think about. It’s a complex situation and...

Clients often ask me about using executive recruiters in their job search. My first response frequently addresses a key misconception about what recruiters do and don’t do, followed by a few cautionary pieces of advice. If you’re considering recruiters as part of your job search strategy, you might want to take note of this. MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT RECRUITERS The most common mistaken idea is that recruiters w...