The YOU In Your Brand

I get to work with fascinating and inspiring clients. And a lot of what we do together as part of personal branding is making sense of the various threads of their stories. How they got here. What they offer. And where they’re going. I was meeting with a client this week who in addition to having built up a not-for-profit, has both an unusual early professional background and a rich, extra-curricular artistic life. The question:

How much of HER can and should go into her pers…

Stop Diminishing the Impact of that Valuable Visit to Your LinkedIn Profile

There's a LinkedIn feature that in most cases does you no good, and may even harm the overall impression you're making on your LinkedIn profile. You can't see it when your editing or viewing your profile. And you have no control over it. What it looks like on your profile is only discoverable if you view your profile from someone else's account. That is, the Viewers of this profile also viewed setting.

What's the problem w…

Are you paying attention to the newly designed experience section in your LinkedIn Profile?

Why the bar has been raised (again) on the market's expectations of your profile

LinkedIn's new interface puts a lot of attention on your current experience via three changes.

• They default your Summary content to closed (only showing two-lines of content)

• They default your non-current / older work experience to closed (needs to be clicked to see what's there)

• And they've defaulted your current experience co…

My daughter is learning to drive and I found myself in the passenger seat this morning gripping the armrest as we approached in traffic a tricky, double-lane, 100-degree curve.

My daughter is working through the very natural tendency to have too much confidence in situations with hidden danger and not enough confidence and decisiveness in the situations that require her to go for it. It’s easy to get it mixed up. Instead of caution, you drive too fast when more thought, preparation or awareness o…

Professional Gratitude

It can be very easy to get lost in the dark side of what’s not going well. What could you be grateful for right now in your professional life? For me, I’m feeling grateful on a variety of fronts and excited and energized by the work that I get to do. The Career Growth Program now has customers going through their first month with great feedback and there are more about to start. I’m working with some talented and interesting clients and I’m grateful for the trust they besto…

Professional Investing

When it comes to your personal development and professional development, long experience tells me that results come from when you consistently invest in yourself and your career. To not invest in yourself is like floating down a fast river without a paddle, map or knowledge of what’s around the next bend. Things may go fine for a while, but at some point, you’re going to realize you made a giant mistake. To avoid such unforeseen disaster in your career, you need to invest i…

At the root of failed career changes, bad job choices or an inability to make that next professional step is some level of what I call fuzziness around who we are professionally. Getting a clear and appreciative view of your professional assets is vital, foundational career development work. My friends at VisualCV, a leading online resume-building software provider, invited me to write a guest post. In response, I wrote an in-depth, step-by-step guest article for their blog on what to do if you'…

Updates on our Career Coaching Service Options

I've made updates to the career coaching service options available on the site with the addition of quarterly arrangements as well as the already existing monthly coaching packages. Much of my client work is done a project basis - either with in-depth career move programs, or specific deliverables like LinkedIn profiles, resume writing, etc. In some cases, a monthly or quarterly schedule works great. In the words of one my current clients working on …

Lessons in How to Manage Your Career & Personal Impact from My Dad

My Dad, David Christie, passed away peacefully on Sunday after a long but dignified journey with Alzheimer’s. Reflecting on his life and career, four themes occur to me that serve as valuable reminders for our professional and personal lives. My Dad started his career with the Royal Bank 3 days after completing high school and retired with the bank 43 years later. Here’s what comes to mind as being key lessons from his life.

Old fa…

Reputation Management

Is your professional reputation something you can build or accidental and mostly out of your control? A key pillar of career development is reputation management. I thought I would try and de-construct professional reputation as a way of shedding light onto something we’re all aware of but don’t necessarily try and intentionally influence.

Who Comes to Mind in Your Field?

Think of your thing: that is, the profession, spot on the corporate ladder, consulting niche that you oper…