Career Management Alliance Blog

New graduates and continuing students can approach a competitive job market with enthusiasm and confidence when equipped with job-search tools that translate academic achievement into marketable job skills highly applicable to a wide range of professions. A resume of this kind successfully uses powerful career-marketing language, industry keywords, and professional formatting to look, sound, and perform just like a resume. Career marketing professionals advise college students to conduct a thorough inventory and evaluation of academic accomplishments and work with campus career development counselors or professional resume writers to translate academic achievement, internships, and club or volunteer activities into compelling language that effectively frames skills and educational background and highlights achievement.

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Anonymous writes: I have been a stay-at-home mom for the past 10 years and am currently going through a divorce. At the moment I am driving a school bus because the hours are great. But now that my children are older, I want to get back into the job world. I have a resume and have applied for many jobs with no response. I have plenty of experience. How do I get employers to notice me? What am I doing wrong? I really need the income and am willing to start just about anywhere. Continue Reading »

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St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner. Our family looks forward to an annual town parade and festival. I turn my attention to recipes and decorations around Irish themes. Having a fair amount of Irish ancestry, I was also recently thinking about discussions I had as a teenager with my Dad about Irish history and trivia. A phrase we explored was the origin of “Luck of the Irish”. Our research showed that there is little agreement and wide speculation.

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One of the things I love about being a career counselor is what I learn from my clients. They are constantly 'teaching' me something. Take last week, for example. My client was talking about people who lose their jobs (he had just lost his). He offered..."tell me who your friends are and then you'll know who you are." I have been thinking about his words since he said them. Do you agree with them? Do you disagree? What does that 'saying' mean to you? Another client said this is how she has been getting through a 'challenging' period of unemployment..."moping, coping, hoping" and that she has been dealing with a lot of the 'd' words...."depression, dejection, dismay, discouragement, despair, disappointment", etc. I have also been thinking about what she said. Moping -- when you're feeling really sorry for yourself and not much seems to be happening and/or working. (I remember when I lost my job -- one of my mentors told me to have a major "Pity Party" and be done with it already). I don't recall having a party; I do recall how seriously I took his remark. Coping -- when you say I've got to do something, anything that is healthy and constructive to help me 'manage' this period of transition. Moving from moping to coping...that's a big deal and a big step. What one thing can you do, starting today, to help yourself migrate from moping to coping? Coping -- and getting on. Getting on with it. Letting go of that. Hoping for the best. Hoping that it won't be long until you land a new job or take the first steps to starting your own business. Hoping that the economy will turn a corner. Hoping that you're doing most of the right things. Hoping that someone will notice. Hoping that you can get a good night's rest. Hoping that someone will value your credentials, your resume, your wonderful talent and positive attitude. Hoping that today might be the day...

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The CFO Rising conference yesterday morning was right up my alley with sessions on Creating Alignment in the C-Suite, A New Dynamic in the Boardroom, and ... particularly ... Finance Skills for a New Decade. My next few blog posts will talk about what I heard, but I’ll start with some interesting stats that opened the morning.

The CFOs in attendance were polled around critical issues they are facing, and here are some of the results ...

--89% felt the worst was over but do not anticipate a turn around anytime soon

--Only 4% felt growth was likely to happen in the next several months

--70% were concerned and VERY concerned (35%) around the cost effectiveness of proposed government regulations

--When asked about the proposed health care legislation, 69% were very concerned about the tax impacts and 62% were very concerned about the quality of care Continue Reading »

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I see it all too often with my c-suite executive clients. Many of them are baby boomers who come to me never having needed a resume (or any career documents) to land jobs over their 30+ year careers. Some haven’t been faced with job search for 5 or 10 years, or longer. In the past, jobs fell into their laps before they were even considering a career move. They were hot commodities, pursued by recruiters, and could pick and choose between opportunities. They easily slid into new jobs. Continue Reading »

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Ok, I can hear your hysterical laugh… I know; this might as well be a rhetorical question as I’ve yet to speak to a renaissance person who doesn’t find organization challenging. Or most people, come to think of it. When you have so many different interests pulling at you, it’s almost impossible not to have a hard time managing them all. Yet many renaissance personalities I work with or have interviewed are pretty organized types. I’m not one of them. Continue Reading »

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This Month’s issue of the Atlantic has as a lead story “How a new jobless era will transform America.”  I highly recommend it.  I generally take these doom and gloom stories with the proverbial “grain of salt”.  Unfortunately there is a section entitled “the recession and America’s youth” that resonates with me. There is a phenomenon that I have observed with my 20’s and 30’s clients that has raised alarm bells.  As the article points out, and as I have observed, many young adults do not have the proper perspective or temperament to deal with the circumstances of this recession.  The problem stems from the fact that too many young people have very high material expectations, but also expect that jobs and careers tailored to their lifestyles will be readily available if they just wait.  Based on a lifetime of esteem building by loving parents, these young people have enormous expectations with little appreciation of the hard work needed to achieve those expectations. Continue Reading »

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I woke up today with a smile on my face.  After a long winter, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and spring was finally in the air. Not surprisingly, my joy translated into a productive day; I tackled several projects I had been putting off and held an intense brainstorming session that resulted in key breakthroughs for a client.  It was one of those rare Mondays when everything just clicked. Alas, not every day will be as invigorating as today.  But, my sunshine-induced "can-do" attitude was a welcome reminder that success is directly tied to emotional well-being.  When you feel good, you do good. Continue Reading »

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Oswald Boelcke wrote down these rules as one of Germany's early flying aces, some of the first rules about aerial combat. You must combat the enemy within during your career probably more than the enemy you perceive outside of you. These are also some of the rules Eddie Richenbacker mastered as a Medal of Honor winner and the Ace of Aces in WWI who I grew up learning about in Ohio. I like military history and history in general. It has application to just about all things. These rules remind me of what rookies do during their career vs. advanced careerists or entrepreneurs. Maybe we need to talk about "No Guts No Glory" next.

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