You better reflect on your career: a starter’s guide

For many people, career reflection is not a priority, but done on a reactive basis, involuntarily, to an unexpected negative event.

Sometimes a boss forces you to reflect on why something bad happened, by asking…

Why I hate the word mentor: Tips for finding career advisors

I hate the word “mentor.”

(Ok, not for “young” people, but in the traditional business context)

8 Ways To Cope With A Professional Confidence Crisis (or, Even George Clooney Doubts His Looks Sometimes)

I tend to group crises of confidence into two categories.

Career coaching is not enough

There are a lot of career coaches out there. In fact, there are over 15,000 certified career coaches in the United States. The vast majority work in private practices serving individuals. Most are pretty expensive, typically charging between $150–250 per hour for their…

Should you love, like, or tolerate your work?

There’s a common platitude that emerges when people talk about work in America, which is that you should “find a job you love.”

I can’t stand that terminology or the expectations it propagates. Love is the stuff of pop songs…

Step away from the resume… and do this instead

It seems like far too much of my inspiration for writing blogs comes from the tendencies that frustrate me most when I am coaching or advising others. At the very, very, very top of that list is the request that I provide “feedback on my resume”…

You would ask friends to help in a relationship crisis, so why not a career crisis?

A few years ago, I had the dubious experience of exiting a romantic relationship and a working relationship of over a decade’s duration, each, around the same time.

Career pivots are common and predictable

Various studies conducted by Pew Research, the Department of Labor, and others clearly demonstrate that people will have more careers and more jobs over their lifetimes than ever before. This is especially true with Millennials, but applies to older workers…

The Fine Line Between Honesty and Desperation In Your Job Search

I’m returning from another month of career coaching on the road. To my friends I refer to these marathons of empathy as “empathons”, because so much empathy is required, I’m becoming quite an empathy athlete.

No, you don’t always need to get a job as soon as possible

When people talk about their work they most often say that they fell into what they are doing now. If their working life were a car, they hopped in, started driving and made decisions about where to go with limited information…