Category: Jobs & Recruiting

Which ride would you be? You can tell a lot about a person by what they do in their leisure time. You might ask how this helps you in your career pursuits but just hold on to your teacups and let me explain. Exploring what motivates you personally may help you define what motivates you professionally. You might seek to balance your lifestyle in a way that supports you professionally. Meaning you may be on the go at work and desire a more leisurely sport, or you may have a more sedentary job and therefore go thrill seeking during your playtime.

Wonder why recruiters are not returning your calls? How many resumes have you sent with little or no response? Ever wonder why a recruiter is reluctant to provide “feedback” in the hopes it will help you figure out what you are doing wrong in an interview? Next time you get the cold shoulder or a blank stare from a recruiter you might just stop and reflect, “Am I committing “recruitercide?”

As a colleague recently described, “Your job search is like the airlines. You have candidates in arrivals, those waiting in the departure lounge and then there are those who are lost in baggage claim.” When your job search resembles a plane stuck on the tarmac, it’s time to take matters into your own hands as opposed to waiting for a queue from air traffic control!Managing your career these days can feel like a trip to nowhere when all you want to do is get home. When the gates seemed closed, move forward and find the next flight out.

Knowing when to put yourself on the line for what you believe in these days can be a precarious task. Trusting yourself more than you trust your co-worker may be your first line of defense. Now you have to weigh the odds even when the top brass encourages you to “speak freely” under promises of providing an “open work environment.” Not true. When in doubt you have two choices: 1) Put up or, 2) Shut up.

Making sense of the rules and regulations that govern every aspect of our lives, particularly how we work and whom we choose to work with, isn’t always a case of black and right. You think there is a higher judge, a fairness police that sorts it all out, making the nimrods with jobs seem like the lucky ones when the rest of us need to struggle to survive the politics. Not knowing which end is up is never easy. Not knowing which end is down is even harder. When the rules of the game change and you seem to be lost in figuring it out, don’t sweat the small stuff, just change the rules.

Like Rapunzel in the ivory tower throwing down her long braid in hopes of a rescue, does your career feel like you need more than a prince on a white horse to help you out? Having a job these days has become more than a blessing given the alternative. But do you somehow feel that you are sacrificing more than you think? Feeling trapped in your situation even though you are collecting a paycheck is not any better than not having a job-you’re tangled by your circumstances no matter which side of the braid you are holding.