Metrics of Success: How to improve your Career Opportunities

The other day, while conducting a mock interview workshop, I asked the interviewee what compensation he was looking for. He proceeded to say that he needed at least six figures because he has two kids in college and alimony payments in addition to his mortgage payments. Now you might think that this is a reasonable

Are You Taking the Initiative to Master Your Role or Do You Just Do Enough?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog on 10 steps to optimize your career security. This is the second installment in elaborating on the 10 steps. It may seem like a no brainer that, in order to increase your career security, you really need to master your role. Unfortunately, the culture in most of

Are You Asking the Right Questions On The Job? 6 Questions To Improve Your Career Management

In my most recent blog, I discussed 10 practices that will optimize your job security. Today, I want to elaborate on the first practice; Ask questions and be an active listener. Are you asking the right questions on the job? The biggest challenge I see for people who are looking for a new job is

Job Interview Preparation – How To “Tell Me About Yourself”.

Almost every job interview begins with the interviewer asking the interviewees to tell about themselves. This seemingly innocent and obvious question sinks more interviews than any other part of the interview. Everyone knows this question is coming, however, very few candidates prepare for this. They assume that they know their background, and so they can

Does Restructuring to Cut Costs Really Work?

  Over the past several years, the news has been filled with huge layoffs by companies trying to cut costs. Is this a strategy that really helps a company? Every day, in the course of networking, I have the opportunity to talk with, not only people who are in transition because of cost cutting efforts,

What Does Jeremy Lin’s Story Tell Us About Perceived Liabilities?

  This is a blog I posted last year, during Linasity, but was accidently deleted. The ideas about perceived liabilities are still relevant, so I am re-posting. Perceived liabilities are what we or others perceive will keep us from being the best person for the job. The problem is that these perceptions are often based on

How Do You Answer HR’s Question “What Are Your Salary Requirements?”

Last week in my blog, I discussed how HR’s question of “What are your salary requirements?” is counterproductive to finding the best employees to achieve the objectives and missions of the position they are trying to fill. Regardless of this fact, there is one thing you can almost guarantee. HR managers interviewing you will try

What Should I Tweet About?

As a follow-up to my blog last week, I am continuing with the twitter theme. After the idea of filtering out the noise, the most often question I get asked is what am I going to tweet about?? Who would be interested in what I have to say? Anyone professional that is serious in keeping

How Can I Effectively Leverage Twitter When All I See Is Noise?

One of the most common questions I get about using Twitter as part of a job search strategy is, “How can I get through all the noise?” It is a very good question, with actually a quite simple answer. However, in order to get to the answer, it is very important to understand that to

Coal or Diamond – What is Your Personal Brand

A common theme of my blogs as well as workshops is that companies, for the most part view employees and prospective employees as liabilities instead of assets, or commodities instead of equity that bring additional value to the company. The other day I was talking with a client about the many types of experiences and