Get out your crystal ball or your trusty compass! What job trends already here or coming down the road could affect your career success? And what should you do to move forward in the right direction? If you’re not sure, join the club. You have lots of company. JOB TRENDS: CHANGE AND UNCERTAINTY Unfortunately, almost nothing stands still and remains predictable over long periods of time. Job trends certainly don&...

With the immigration-related political turmoil going on in the United States today–and many areas of the world, for that matter–the workplace is seeing some upheaval already, with the distinct possibility that it will increase over time. How does this affect your career, your job prospects, and the work environments you might encounter? Obviously, this is a touchy subject, and I’m not going to go into t...

Have you ever had a job search go exactly as planned from start to finish? Seriously? In case my question wasn’t clear, I don’t mean in your dreams but in real life! In fact, if you ever did have that experience, I’d love to hear about it, because I don’t think I’ve ever run into someone who could make that claim truthfully. JOB SEARCH SPEED BUMPS & ROADBLOCKS Since we recently entered a...

Unless you’re Superman or Wonder Woman, a workload overload situation could drive you to distraction–or worse! Since we’ve just started a new year, this might be a great time to evaluate what your work situation is and whether the workload is sustainable through the year ahead. OVERWHELMED AND NO END IN SIGHT When your over-the-top workload has you spinning in circles or hyperventilating from stress,...

Career decisions can cause you a lot of soul-searching and make you second-guess the choice you decide on after you’ve committed to it. How you choose to handle that dilemma is up to you, of course, but it made me think of a poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”: “I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: / Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– / I took the one...

If you “Google” the phrase “resumes are dead,” you’ll see a long list of items covering a wide range of views on the subject. More to the point, I think, is the question, “Is your resume DOA (dead on arrival)?” Why? Experience tells me that resumes in one form or another are likely to be around for quite a while yet, but that doesn’t matter if yours is lifeless when an empl...

Baseball legend Yogi Berra said a lot of things that caught people’s attention. One of the most famous was: “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” When applied to your career, that has a special meaning. Do you know where it’s going? Roadmaps figure in many different situations, not only for actual travel on the road but in less physically specific setting...

If you’re on the sunny side of 30, you might not see “older and facing a layoff” as relevant to your career and your future, but believe me, it is! The future arrives much sooner than you expect when you’re younger. As you mature, the pace seems to pick up, and this has a direct bearing in many cases on your experience in the world of work. For example, if you’ve built a solid, progressive c...

Details of your career planning process might vary from those of other career-minded professionals, because each of you is a unique individual–coming from different backgrounds, possibly targeting different overarching career goals. However, the crux of the matter is: Are you staying on top of your own career planning? WHAT DOES YOUR CAREER PLANNING PROCESS LOOK LIKE? I don’t have space to go into details,...

In a larger sense, your entire career could be viewed as made up of seasonal shifts, from your first job out of college (spring) to your retirement and possible second-act role (winter). Your job search might not have seasonal changes that correspond closely to those you experience in terms of climate-based alterations throughout the year, but as a microcosm of the overall career evolution process, it can and often does ch...