Real-world advice for today's job market
Real-world advice for today's job market
As if today’s job applicants didn’t have enough to worry about. You’ve got the quality of your applications, making sure your resume is up to snuff. You’ve got the hiring managers who are doing their best to screen out as many people as possible before interviewing anyone. You’ve got competition from other job seekers – possibly hundreds of them.
There’s another adversary you might be hearing a lot about. Artificial intelligence. Spoiler alert: it’s not your adversary. Read More
After a big game – win or lose – a good coach always gathers the team together and talks about how they played. After each performance, a world-class musician reviews where they made mistakes, and practices those passages repeatedly before the next performance. I could go on, but you get the drift. We have to figure out what needs improvement, before we can improve it.
Think about your last job interview. Did you leave the meeting, head home, send a thank you, cross your fingers that you’d hear back soon, and – more or less – leave it at that? If you said yes, you’re not alone. This is true for most people. Read More
If you’re on the job market – whether you’re employed or not – responding to job postings is usually the starting point. And rightly so; to borrow sales terminology, these are the ‘hot leads’ of the job-seekers world. But if you’re stopping there, you’re missing out on a lot of potential opportunities. The way to tap into that opportunity is through networking. If you’re wondering why or how, read on. Read More
We all know people who just never seem to doubt themselves, who can walk into any room or any conversation with sure-footed ease. The truth is that nobody is really always sure of themselves. Even the people who exude confidence outwardly are often just putting a brave face on, when they feel differently inside.
Make no mistake: when you’re interviewing, you must project confidence, optimism, and positivity. Those are qualities that are desirable in any future employee, so that’s what an interviewer is going to be looking for. Read More
I’ve done the math, and I figure I’ve read and reviewed well over 50,000 resumes throughout my career. Some were excellent, many were very good, and some were … well, they were awful. Most, though, were just okay. Mediocre. Lukewarm. And when I think about the resumes that I’ve seen that were just ‘meh’ in that way, there’s a common thread: the most common mistake that people make when writing their resume. I’d like to share it with you here, so that you can make sure you’re not making it as well. Read More
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the so-called ‘Great Resignation of 2021’. The premise is that a large number of employees, since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, have been hanging onto jobs that didn’t make them happy, and their collective pent-up frustration will lead to mass resignations and changing of jobs, even careers. Read More
Most of my blogs focus on what happens between the last day of one job and the first day of the next, and the job search process in between. Today, I want to share something you should think about during the times between, when you’re employed: filling up your brag book. Read More
Almost everyone, at some point in their career, will experience a period of unemployment. For some, it’s an intentional thing – a break to upgrade education, parental leave, or some time out of work to care for a loved one. For others, it’s the last thing they ever would have wanted. Perhaps their company downsized or shut down and their job was affected. Or worse, they were fired.
Have you ever experienced this? Losing a job unexpectedly, whatever the circumstances, is in fact one of the most stressful experiences a person will ever have. Worst of all, at the exact moment you need to project competence and confidence, those very things have been shaken to their core. And the longer you’re on the hunt for your next job, the more you may find your self-confidence slipping. Read More
“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
That’s one of my favourite sayings in business and in life, and I firmly believe it to be true. Here, visiting this site and reading things I’ve written, I hope you do care about the things I know. Why do I care? Because happiness matters. Read More
Behavioral interview questions are the reason you should invest some time early in your job search to develop a bank of stories you can tell. If you don’t, you risk being caught off guard. Having to mentally scrounge through all your previous work experiences for a good example to use, before you can even start to answer the question. Here’s how to avoid that. Read More