It dawned on me while I was at a breakfast meeting for some Association of Whatever. It was the typical event with time set aside for networking before the program began. I don’t remember what the program was about but I do recall I wasn’t interested in the topic.
So why did I spend $35 to attend? I [...]

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I was at the boat yard last week and got an unexpected reminder on how to conduct a networking based job search from a Jamaican boat worker.
He was an older man with the rough weathered face of someone who has spent a lifetime working in the glare of the sun on the sea. He was repairing [...]

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The issue of age and the job search is a hot topic in the job search world lately.  Age is one of those variables we have little control over and everyone will have the frustrating experience of being judge by age (too young or too old) as opposed to skill and capability.  (And of course [...]

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In the last couple of weeks I have had conversations with several  twenty-somethings about professional communications and the job search. I was shocked but should not have been surprised when they told me how uncomfortable they are talking on the phone.
Why? Because this group rarely uses the phone to communicate verbally to one another. They [...]

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Kim Thomson wrote today in the SF Gate (The San Francisco Chronicle’s website) about a woman who had exhausted her primary network of friends in her job search. She decided it was time to turn to her “acquaintances” network and it was from one of these “weak tie” sources where she unexpectedly landed a job [...]

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“I didn’t get the job because they promoted someone from within.”
I have heard this story before. It happens. Unfortunately, if you are a job seeker on the outside of the company you would LOVE to work for, it’s easy to conclude you have no chance hell of getting in the door unless it is on [...]

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When the market is tight I often have job seekers tell me that they are very open to any kind of opportunity. Open to move for the right position, open to take a pay cut and open to ‘just about anything”.
The hope of course is that openness will help land a job more quickly on [...]

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Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World” ride is where guests ride passively in a half-sunken barge through a darkened canal to an endless choir of animatronic dolls singing the same verses over and over and over again. I wonder in awe at the ability of that darn song to get trapped in the subconscious. Can you hear it [...]

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I am all for college degrees. In fact I have a couple myself. But for many people, getting the college degree didn’t happen either by plan or by circumstances. Despite this they have built a good career holding the types of professional jobs even though their peers in similar positions had degrees.
How does this happen?
Simple actually. These degree-less people [...]

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I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday week.  As for me, I’m spending much of it doing my all-time favorite thing. No, not eating – which does happen to come in at a close second. I’ve been reading.  And I spent much of Christmas Day reading Kay Redfield Jamison’s book, Nothing Was the Same. And [...]

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