Summer career development

Summer in this part of the world. Please be aware that the summer does not have to be a wasteland of activity for your career and professional goals.

It is very possible to make profound progress on the development of your career, your job search plans or your career change goals during these two months. Consider 4 types of activity:

The Internal

You have complete control over this. From doing work like analyzing what you have accomplished, where you fit, what your interes…

Resume Problem Shooting

Someone posted their resume on a job board database, was getting a lot of views, but no results and had a question about what to do about it. Putting aside the obvious recommendation, which is to ensure that you should be pursuing other avenues than just resume databases, here is some more specific feedback: There may be other factors at work of course, but the reality is that an effective resume is a focused, results-oriented, easily scannable and readable resume. If you …

Using your truth in career development

Previously, I wrote about truth-based career management and truth-based resume writing. In this article, let’s explore a truth-based model for a successful job search.

Developing a solid understanding of who you are professionally is difficult work. It takes a lot of insightful observation on your part. In fact, this questioning is at the heart of many of the conversations I have with clients. Figuring out the truth about your professional self is important w…

The Executive Career Strategies at ExecutiveAgent.com newsletter came out today. The lead article for this issue was written by yours truly and focuses on how to make connections with executive recruiters.

I give 10 of my best pointers on making connections, and in particular, building rapport, with executive search consultants. I hope you find it useful.

Executive Career Strategies: Positioning Yourself with Executive Recruiters

There are times in life where family and personal requirements outweigh career considerations. In your case, you made a decision to resign for the sake of your spouse’s career. For others it might be moving closer to aging parents or, stepping-off the high-pressure ladder for a while so that more time can be given to children, or a sick family member. Taking care of your own health issue is another high priority item.

When you want to step back on the career track, the question is how to deal wi…

Broadening your hiring process

Where do out-of-the-box candidates fit in your hiring policies and strategy? In this age of talent vs. skills and tight labor markets, the out-of-box candidate will increasingly be a fact of life. It takes some experience and courage to seriously look at out-of-the-box candidates. And, it takes a willingness to be flexible.

Here are five categories of out-of-the-box candidates

Heavy on skills, light on domain / industry expertise

If you can’t find someone from within y…