How To

Assessing the cultural fit of a company extends far beyond age or interests, and it can make all the difference between success and failure on the job. The job description seems like it was written for you. The pay is right, the commute easy on your nerves, you even like your new boss, and the … Read More

Want to be the next vice president and GM? Look to the current vice president, and take notes about what makes her a success. Work is the learning laboratory for how to improve your career. All around you are positive and negative examples that you can observe and learn from. The key is to do … Read More

Whether you’ve taken a less-senior position or started serving coffee to pay the bills, you can create the impression of career progress. We like to consider our careers a progression. And a progression only knows one direction. What happens when you have to make a career move that feels like a step sideways, backward or … Read More

Private investigators and former government agents share trade secrets about how they conduct employment background checks for hiring companies. The questions most job seekers want answered about background checks are when they’ll be subject to one and what it will turn up. Depending on the amount of effort and money a company is willing to … Read More

How can you find and deploy the right keywords to aim your resume at the job you want? Keywords: They’re buzzwords that identify an industry or a profession. They’re also the currency of the job search. Keywords are the terms and phrases hiring managers supply to human-resources managers and recruiters to create job posts and find matching … Read More

Workshop participants and coaching clients often ask how to handle the question, “What is your greatest weakness?” After all, they know it will be asked at some point. This question has become such a staple for interviewers that it continues to spark discomfort, or even fear, in job hunters at all levels. Not surprisingly, the … Read More

The following eight steps helped job seeker ‘Paul’ put his online social networking into its proper place. Recently a colleague suggested I help an executive job seeker who was having trouble making sense of the online social networks he thought were supposed to support his job search. Let me call this person “Paul.” Paul came … Read More

Do you need to spend hours a day on some social networks channel or bopping from Facebook and LinkedIn to Twitter? Do you need to tweet? … Read More

Video is one way to stand out, but so is networking, researching the company and writing directly to the right person. Here’s how to ace it. Read More