Last month I was laid off and instead of it being a disappointment I found myself relieved and excited. Why, especially in these tough economic times? When you’re not doing what you want to be doing, even the safety of a job isn’t enough to quiet the calling. Are you called to do something other than what you are doing? Sometimes we experience a crack in our contentment when we are not answering our calling. Our contentm...

I often wonder what goes through the mind of a candidate who does not follow the directions for submitting a resume after reading a job description. Do they get so excited about the position that they skip over the application directions? Do they think the “rules” don’t apply to them so instead send a link of their LinkedIn account directly to the recruiter? Do they think applying differently makes them look special leaving...

There are many questions around leadership: What makes a great leader? Is leadership motivation or is it vision? Are leadership styles indicative to situations? Are good leaders created or born? The questions around management are similar yet distinctively different: What makes a great manager? Do managers coach or delegate? What results does the managed need to demonstrate to prove a manager’s ability to execute efficie...

To borrow from a well known quote about training employees: Mentor them and they will leave; don’t mentor them and they will stay. Like any quote, it only holds merit if the cause and affect are compatible. However, managers across the board have seen a trend where if they spend the time and resources providing development initiatives for their employees, the ones who develop into leaders leave for more challenging op...

GMX, a free email service, released the results of a survey of over 1,000 American adults who use email for professional and personal communications. They found that more than 50% of email readers will judge people personally and professionally based on the format and content of their email. They also found that 58% of email users confessed that they judge the writer’s intelligence on the language used, tone of email and wr...

There have been many articles, blogs, and ‘How To’ lists published about what recruiters have witnessed from candidates applying for positions. Recruiters enjoy passing around stories that highlight humor, frustrations and the ultimate eye-rolling “I-can’t-believe-they-did-that!” accounts. There will be at least a few times in our lives when we are the candidate applying for a position and we will make a few of those mis...

“We are where we should be, doing what we should be doing. Otherwise we would be somewhere else, doing something else.” - Richard Stine How we get from Point A to Point B is directly related to what actions we take to get there. If we are out of milk we need to find and purchase milk. Many variables can come into play which could slow our progress, distract us or seemingly prevent progress from Point A to Point B. How...

“There is only one thing worse in life than being talked about, and that is not being talked about” - Oscar Wilde When searching for employment everyone wants to create the “we can’t live without this candidate!” buzz. There is always the fear that your resume will go unnoticed or deleted. It’s easy to feel as though you are the opposing player in a ruthless game after sending your resume or after that first round of int...

Recruiters wear many hats ranging from fishing fedoras to courtship fezzes, fiesta sombreros to a wrangler’s 10-gallon. We are fishermen, curbside sandwich boards, talent agents, sales people, politicians, campaign managers, producers, schedulers, counselors, coaches, mentors, mediators, moderators, negotiators, facilitators, brokers, anthropologists, interpreters, translators, sleuths, private investigators, stalkers, flir...