“If you are driving your professional life by an 8 ½ by 11 sheet of paper, you are not doing all you can.”
The obsession with the resume means a work-seeker is putting all his eggs in one rather fragile basket and overlooking alternative ways of communicating his value.
Reading Robert Sullivan’s, The Thoreau You Don’t Know, recently inspired me to visit the Concord Museum in Concord, Massachusetts. The museum contains the furnishings from Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond along with a replica of Emerson’s study, and it is easy to imagine the two of them there engaged in lively conversation. Thanks to the [...]
Months ago, in the early stages of the economic downturn we’re in now, I read a report in the New York Times that over half of working adults were worried about losing their job. My instincts tell me that this proportion has significantly risen since then. Let’s face it—it’s hard to rest easy when giants [...]
I am often asked to present at large business gatherings, the kind that offer ample opportunities for networking. Recently at a particularly well attended event, I overheard a woman who was just leaving say with great excitement that she had had a great networking day. She had come with a hundred business cards and was [...]
A few years ago, I did a full-day workshop on transition for a group of alumni of Bentley College. Right after we finished lunch, just before we started back again, someone expressed frustration with the inefficiency and wastefulness of traditional job-search practices, and I made the offhand remark, “If I had my way, we’d throw [...]
The saying, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got,” finds pathetic voice in Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. As she did in her previous book, Nickel and Dimed, this cultural critic formulates a theory about jobs in America and sets [...]
Like any other professional, as a career counselor, it’s important for me to keep up with what’s happening in my field. I do this by reading and studying and talking with thought leaders I respect. I also periodically take a look at what the general public is reading by perusing the career shelves of bookstores. [...]
