Career Advice & Insights

Recessionary Salary Questions How much should I ask for? Can I still negotiate if I’m desperate to take a job? How do I know if I’m overpaid or underpaid? How can I hold out for higher pay when there’s someone waiting in the hallway who’ll work for lower pay? […and they’re just as qualified as … Read More

Stay Positive During Your Job Search, Part 1 Deep Recession. Financial Industry Collapse. Taxpayer-financed Bailout. Consumer Spending Down. Nine Months of Job Losses. Worst Financial Outlook since the Great Depression. Even the most positive among us might feel deflated by the current newspaper headlines. With all the talk about the challenging economy, the failure of … Read More

In what turned out to be a 12-month search for a new job, an OpsLadder member named John did a lot to make things more difficult for himself. In what turned out to be a 12-month search for a new job, an OpsLadder member named John did a lot to make things more difficult for … Read More

Here’s some food for thought as we navigate through these difficult times. The sobering developments at Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, AIG, and UBS have served as a catalyst for many to examine their current work situations and future career management strategies. Here’s some food for thought as we navigate through these difficult … Read More

Contrary to popular belief, “the holidays” are actually a golden time to look for a job. How would you like to wake up on the morning of January 2 with a solid job offer in hand, while the rest of the job seekers are just getting started on their search? Do you think it’s too … Read More

Around the Web: If Age Is a Barrier Of the thousands of age-discrimination claims filed each year, about 10 percent are related to hiring. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “Age discrimination definitely increases during tough economic times.” The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 offers a protection against this, but as … Read More

Here are five pointers for candidates who may have a few years under their belts. Does age bias exist in the hiring process today? That’s a tricky question, as it’s often hard to prove. Yet many mature workers seem to face an uphill battle when competing against Gen-Xers and Yers today. Don’t let worries about … Read More

How to prepare to overcome objections screeners of different types will bring up. Age discrimination is neither legal nor fair. Nevertheless, it is prevalent in a variety of forms, job seekers, career coaches and recruiters agree. Most often the discrimination isn’t overt; it’s more a function of who does the initial filtering of resumes and … Read More

One small, negative step can sink a job search. Blogging has become an impulsive contemporary art for careerists. Should you develop your own blog or shouldn’t you? Will it help or hurt your career? Let me present this canvas to you as a primer of sorts to think about this issue. Much of my career … Read More