Honey, I Shrunk the Job Market
A fantasy of shrinking your family can be entertaining, especially if you know from the start that it is a Disney film intended to entertain the entire family. We love to be entertained — taken away from the real world for a while. But what about the real world of today’s job market? It is …
Death Battle: Resumes vs. LinkedIn Profiles
I am writing this post because I want to help you be more successful in advancing your career, whether in active or passive job search mode. I want you to avoid the wasted time and frustrations arising from ineffective activities that produce minimal results. At the top of my ineffective activities list are applying for …
Who’s “Directing” Your Career?
Shakespeare is famous for penning “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts”. How can we relate this metaphor to your employment and future career? Let me give it a shot….
The traditional and …
Keeping Your Job Search Confidential
Staying in a job too long can retard your career, depress your income, and diminish your brand. Surveys conducted over the past five years have indicated that over half of all employed workers are not satisfied with their current jobs. Why don’t such people just go out and look for a better job? One major …
Job Seeker “Employment Date Codes”
I like milk. For my entire life I have purchased it based upon the date code on the carton. The assumption is that the later the date code, the fresher the milk. You have date codes, too. Few people talk about them, but they can have major effects on your employability. Let me explain what …
Don’t Give Me Your Resume
Are you one of those people who feels, similar to applying for jobs online, that giving people your resume is a productive job search activity?
Let me save you the effort. Don’t give me your resume. In most situations, I don’t need it. Giving it to me will require me to find a convenient trash …
Eliminating Age Discrimination
Companies who want to sell their products to Baby Boomers use advertising slogans like “60 is the new 50”, implying that somehow older people today are younger than their chronological ages. This psychological approach has worked well for selling Harleys and Viagra® to aging Baby Boomers. However, corporate hiring managers and recruiters are not buying …
Goodbye Job Security, Hello Employment Security
I meet lots of job seekers each month and see lots of resumes. The stories I hear and the resumes I review indicate that, increasingly, job tenures have shrunk and people are changing employers much more frequently than they did in the last century — in most cases, through no fault of their own.
My …
Say Goodbye to Corporate America: Create Your Own Job!
To some extent, Corporate America is saying goodbye to employees. Should you, likewise, consider saying goodbye to Corporate America?
Early in this century, many IT jobs were lost in 2000/2001. When the economy revived, a significant portion came back as contract work. In effect, employers said to these workers: ” You get no benefits or …
Job Hopping: A Smart Career Strategy!
During my 30 year career in “Corporate America”, I worked 14 years with my first employer and 16 subsequent years with 6 different employers. I increased my income and job satisfaction tremendously during the second half of my career because I changed employers proactively whenever I was able to find something better. Despite the potential …