I am in Seattle today, my old home town. I love this place with the grey skies, moss on the sidewalks and the really good restaurants tucked away on side Seattle streets with the rain dampened sound of the city and the faint sweet smell (at least to me) of low tide in the distance.
I met [...]

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I find news stories during the holidays filled who sadness and heartwarming hope. Sad stories of hardship coupled by heartwarming stories of generosity and courage.  Holidays always evoke emotion as we reflect on our priorities (hopefully not being disgusted in the process) and take stock of the past and future.
In addition to a few media pieces, [...]

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A few weeks ago, Duncan and I published an article called “How to Network Without Sounding Phony, Lame or Desperate” on the AOL/Careerbuilder site.  At last count, there were 73 responses, most of them angry, resentful, hopeless and raging. One commentator simply wrote, “Blah, blah, blah, blah.”  How’s that for effectively moving the conversation forward [...]

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The announcement by the Bureau of labor Statistics  that the Unemployment Rate is 10.2% is grim news indeed.  Of course, those in the news business who figure if bad news sells, worse news should sell even better have taken the “if you think that’s bad, look at this!” approach.  Brian Sullivan of Fox Business News [...]

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I was poking around a few of my favorite job sites this morning, and discovered that a particular company was announcing that it was hiring.  Great! So what’s the problem?  One of my dear friends had just been laid off from that very company not one month ago. Oh.  Ouch. Chances are excellent that candidates [...]

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My friend Patricia Varley is probably the only person I would call a natural networker. Her worldly possessions have been in storage for most of the last 10 years as she goes where her heart tells her to (always beautiful places: Hawaii; Aspen; Naples, FL;  San Diego; hey! Why not?). Jobs and projects fall into [...]

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A client of mine got a verbal job offer but the job will not start until January. What’s going on here? Why can’t he start now? What’s the big deal of a of a months of pay when the hiring manager tells my client that her team is swamped with work and desperate for help?
Simple, this is [...]

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This Sunday the New York Times reported that there were only 2.4 million job openings in July for the 14.5 million unemployed.  This means there is a 6-1 ratio of job seekers to jobs – the worst ratio since the U.S. Government began tracking the data in 2000. To get this number, the Bureau of [...]

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If you’ve been between jobs for, like, an hour, you already know that wishing will get you only so far.   In fact, you might have been wishing that you weren’t on the list of people to get laid off.  So you know better than just about anyone that wishing has its limitations.
Now. Luck. That could [...]

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I read yet another disappointing job search advice column in a special section of this Sunday’s Union Tribune.  It was the same old tripe that gets trotted out and passed off for quality job search advice.
I call it the 1-2-3 of job search.  Which often adds up to a big zero in today’s economy.   It goes [...]

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