November 2011

chat with me live tomorrow

Tomorrow, I’ll be participating in a live online Q&A about how to impress employers in a job interview, hosted by The Guardian (the U.K.’s third largest newspaper). I’m one of their six participating experts. Stop by! Ask questions!  Watch me say something British. The chat is from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. British time, which […]

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can blogging help your career?

Blogging might help your career … or it might just be a huge annoyance that you resent forever. Done well, blogging can be a boon to your career. It can help you build your reputation, increase your expertise, assist you in keeping up with what’s going on in your industry, and give you a place […]

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employer requires us to include our photo in all emails we send

A reader writes: Recently, my company added each employee’s I.D. badge picture to their email. This image appears on every email the employee sends and receives. Employees do not have the option to turn this feature off. Several people in our dept., including myself, are uncomfortable with this. When we approached upper management, we were […]

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how can I tell my relative her career advice is out-of-touch?

A reader writes: I have recently found your blog and really appreciate the advice that you offer. You have written many times that the job search/hiring process has changed in the past times and to generally ignore the out-of-touch advice parents are offering. As a recent grad, one of my relatives offered to help me […]

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am I a job candidate or a free consultant?

A reader writes: I was contacted by someone for a job opportunity for the business he’s planning to start. We spoke on the phone several times, during which he asked my advice on some aspects of his business that are in my area of expertise (and I gave him some, which he seems to have […]

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my whole team is going to resign at once

A reader writes: My team and I are in a small satellite office, 50 miles north of the main office. The team consists of myself, my manager, and 3 other staff members. We rarely are visited by upper management, even when they are on this side of town to visit clients. Any issues that are […]

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how college doesn’t prepare students for the work world

For all the talk about how college is essential to landing a good job after graduation, higher education often fails to prepare students for the workforce in several key ways. Even with a degree from a competitive school and a high GPA, many students graduate without ever having been taught these 10 essentials for the […]

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short answer Saturday: 6 short-ish answers to 6 short questions

It’s time for short answer Saturday, although some of these answers got a little longer than could technically be called “short.” Here we go… 1. Employee doesn’t respect my experience I have a supervisee who likes to point out that she has done my job before and has more experience than me. I run a […]

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my interviewer was obsessed with anger management

A reader writes: I just had a second interview meeting with the director of the department for the region I would be working in. He does work in a different location so my interaction with him would be primarily limited to phone and email. During our short interview, he questioned me about anger:  “What was […]

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