Career Management Alliance Blog

We’ve heard them all.  Nightmare stories about firing squad panel interviews. Sinister mind games played by interviewers to see how well you’d hold up under stress.  And those impossible behavioral interviews that ask if you would nark on your shoplifting granny.  Who needs ghost stories around a campfire when you can Continue Reading »

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Jerri writes: I graduated college in December but am not having any success in landing a job in this economy. Any suggestions for what I can do? Continue Reading »

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Th X prize, a competition aimed at fostering innovation by awarding large million dollar prizes, has turned its attention to the Gulf oil spill.  The Wendy Schmidt Oil Clean Up X Challenge is offering $1.4 million in prizes to the top three teams.  The contest will be conducted in two phases.  The final phase will be conducted at the National Oil Spill Response Research and Renewable Energy Test Facility, where the winners will be chosen. In the next twenty years, three currently developing economies, China, Brazil and India, will have large urban populations that will be placing heavy demands upon the earth for resources to sustain those cities.  How can those countries develop sustainable business policies? A new report from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development attempts to answer this question. Continue Reading »

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“The most effective technique career changers can use in their resumes and cover letters is TRANSFERABLE SKILLS, TRANSFERABLE SKILLS, TRANSFERABLE SKILLS,” writes regular contributor Maureen Crawford Hentz. “I recently gave a workshop specifically on this topic for career changers at the National Environmental Careers Conference. I was shocked at the number of competent, successful individuals who kept referring to themselves as ‘totally unqualified for a job in the environment.’ These were adults with four to 12 years of experience as managers, editors, and engineers.” Read Hentz’s full article, Career Changers’ Most Powerful Resume and Cover-Letter Tool: Transferable Skills, on how you can use transferable skills to portray yourself as qualified for a new career.

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Do you dread job interviews? I don’t know anyone that doesn’t. Interviewing can be nerve-wracking. However, the more prepared you are the more confident you become. Research indicates that job-seekers spend about 35-40 hours to land an interview (and much longer now, I’m guessing) and less than an hour to prepare for the interview. And...it’s the interview that gets you the job! So, preparing for a job interview is critical to landing your next job. How can you prepare? First, learn as much as you can about the company. What is the culture like? What products or services do they sell? Who are the top people? Research them on LinkedIn. What is their mission? Are they publically traded? How are they doing financially? What is the company’s organizational structure? Continue Reading »

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Susan writes: I am a 52-year-old college student. For class, our assignment was to write a resume and a cover letter. While the professor liked my resume, he tore my cover letter up but didn’t give any help in writing it. My question to you is, how do I present myself. He wrote that “the resume begs the question why are you in college.” He has me confused as to what I should be putting in the cover letter between his comment and the fact that he didn’t like the cover letter. Any suggestions? It will be greatly appreciated! If I don’t turn this around, there goes my “A!” Continue Reading »

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Late summer and fall events in 2010 have enough traditional and non-traditional venues for networking, learning and development to satisfy anyone’s taste. Hopefully your budget will bring you to a few where Mark and I are having interesting conversations. We try to list all our meetings here. This year the more unusual discussions include: - The Human Resource Executive’s HR Technology Conference & Exposition held annually in Chicago (9/29-10/01). Elaine Orler and I will be formally debating the topic “Is the Candidate Experience Worth It.” For the first time I am taking the ‘con’ position and will argue that no one really cares or will notice so don’t waste your time. (I hope to lose the debate but have every confidence I will win. ) Continue Reading »

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Linked In is a great networking tool. Sadly, there are plenty of user errors  ... two of which continue to confound me.

Canned Invitations. I’ve written about this before. Other people have written about it. Sending a canned invitation to someone you don’t know is a networking faux pas. Think about it in offline terms. Would you walk through a networking event handing your business card to anyone and everyone without so much as a “hi, nice to meet you”? Of course not. But that is exactly what you are doing when you refuse to take 30 seconds to personalize an invitation to connect.

Canned invitations are a tip-off to one of two things ... you are building your rolodex and you don’t care who you connect with as long as you connect; and/or, you want to use [me] to get to someone to whom I’m connected. Neither of those sends a very positive message. Continue Reading »

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Although you may think it’s perfectly fine to take the Summer off, because you mistakenly assume no one is hiring, you may be missing out on the perfect time to position yourself for your next gig, before competition spikes with the mad rush in the Fall. Now is the time to get your foot in the door, while others are out catching waves and trying to forget about job search. Continue Reading »

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When I say I like hot weather over cold weather, I’m not saying I want to be hot necessarily. I’m just saying that temperatures that allow me to be comfortable in a pair of shorts and flip flops appeal to me more than mucklucks and parkas. Recently, a friend of mine agreed to climb the mast of my boat to take care of an issue that jammed up the line used to hoist my mainsail. Now, understand, climbing the mast of a sailboat is not a task to be taken lightly and requires a concentrated effort on the part of the person going up, and the part of the crew assisting down below. Continue Reading »

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