Career Advice & Insights

If you’re not scoring many interviews by applying for jobs and forwarding your resume to HR, try more creative means to get the hiring manager’s attention. Got your eye on a specific job? Don’t want your resume to get lost in the shuffle? There are ingenious methods of getting an employer’s attention through the side … Read More

Consulting work can be a lifeline when you’re unemployed; it can also derail your job search and extend your unemployment. Any out-of-work executive is likely to hear the siren song of consulting. You can lend your years of expertise to a business part time and temporarily. It can be a paycheck when you really need … Read More

You can’t turn back the clock, but you can show hiring managers your passion and record of results. If you’re older than 50 years old, it often seems the deck is stacked against you. Following last year’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gross v. FBL Financial Services Inc., which put the burden of … Read More

How do you handle your own joblessness when your significant other is thriving? Your spouse just got a big promotion, while you haven’t worked in months and are struggling to get your foot in the door for an interview. How do you feel? Happy? At least your family income is more secure. Envious that he … Read More

Use a signature color to build your personal brand. Color is one implement in your personal-branding toolbox that will help express brand attributes and create emotional connections with hiring managers and recruiters. Deployed intelligently, color can help you stand out in a job search. Once you think of yourself as a brand, you require a … Read More

At current rates of unemployment, being without a job bears less stigma. It’s called “candidate forgiveness,” and companies are in the mood to practice it. Where do you find the silver lining in the darkest economic cloud since the Great Depression? It’s hard to think of positives. Supposedly, the roads are less crowded as fewer … Read More

Time for a change. Try this visualization exercise to figure out where you should go next with your career. Among the most distressing facts of the Great Recession is the length of unemployment. Previously, job seekers could expect a search to last four to six weeks for every $10,000 they expected to earn. The average … Read More

Will Bad Credit Hurt Your Job Chances? Tight times can blemish credit reports. How do background checks affect hiring decisions? Worried that recent economic travails have blemished your credit report? That those mortgage payments that went out a few days late might catch up with you? Or the cable bill you let slide for an … Read More

You don’t have to take this job. You have options. We’ve heard the comparison a thousand times: A job search is very much like the dating game. You never want to look desperate. You don’t want to come across as having low standards. You don’t want to come across as though you would go out … Read More