Professionalism is an art that challenges us to put forth our best public image and manifest our highest self-image. To be professional is to maintain a level of conduct that produces positive outcomes for all parties involved. This is how we build credibility. When we think of professional development, often …
Thoughts on Years of Experience in Job Postings
How Important Are Years of Experience (YoE) in a Job Posting? Like education requirements, this is an area for revision. Quantitatively, this is the amount of time a person has been immersed in a space. If John Doe has 3 years of experience, it can mean he’s been “in the …
White Paper: The Career Development Psyche
A professional’s emotional state is instrumental in each step taken towards career growth. What’s an emotion? The word is broken down into E (for energy) and Motion (for movement). So an emotion is an energy movement, an electric current that physically rushes through the body. Depending on the emotional current, …
Networking for Long-Term Value
Imagine yourself at a networking event. There you are, dressed in your best professional clothes because that’s what the advertisement suggested on Meetup.com. You’re standing at the front entrance. It’s about 45 minutes after the event started; you didn’t want to be the absolute first one to walk in without …
Reputation Management for Career Growth
Strategic planning is at the core of career reputation management. Preparation. Positioning. Thinking not just of how circumstances are now but how they can be in the future. How a professional intends to direct that future. This connects quite conveniently to the knowledge of time in metaphysics, which proposes that …
Ask Questions to Enhance Workshop Engagement
A workshop differs from a presentation or lecture in the focus on the “work” in the “shop” the space creates. Some kind of effort is done that places the audience in a direct experience of the topic. In a workshop, the audience tends to leave with results from the activities …
How a Blog Creates Career Development Value
If you use an Internet search engine to research a topic, if you aren’t absorbing information from an organization you’re likely to do so from someone’s blog. Test it out for yourself. Search “The best way to shine shoes” and scan the first 10 links. Blogs. “Blogging” is defined by …
The Value of Having a Business Card
The business card is one of the most common resources for professionals and non-professional interests alike. I remember experimenting with a number of card designs during undergrad. I’d go to Vistaprint and toy with the options. Choosing different titles, seeing which resonated most. With a large stock available and card …
2 Ways to Have Empowered Meetings
Meetings appear to be dry gatherings of little worth, but they can be useful opportunities to expand your influence for missions you resonate with. P.S. – Meetings don’t just happen in companies and can take many forms (masterminds, lunch out, the classic golf scene, impromptu) so it’s essential to know …
Harmony in Chakras Available for Order
Harmony in Chakras is now available for order! The book is a substantial text. The 30+ authors contributing I knew would make it a lengthy piece, but the book quality itself is also impressively robust and heavy like a true textbook. I see this supporting the feel a reader may …
Chakras and the Career Psyche – New Book Chapter
From the upcoming book, Harmony in Chakras Vol. 1, created by the Chakra Collective. In this book, I write a chapter on chakras and their influence on the career psyche. Q: Can you share a story with us on how you work or use chakras for yourself or with your …
Contact Follow-Up Basics
Lack of follow-up is a dastardly habit many of us suffer from. It looks like this: John Doe meets Jane Doe. John and Jane have a valuable conversation. They sync and recognize they could do business together. John gives Jane his contact information. Jane gives John hers. They part ways …
3 Reasons to Take Meeting Minutes
Unless you’re working in a well-developed organization, you may not come across meeting minutes. “Meeting minutes” are literally the minutes (or moments) recorded from a meeting. When there are many members in the meeting, it’s likely there will be plenty of information, recommendations, cross-talk, possible disputes, ideas, all sorts of …
3 Questions to Ask Employers on Interviews
An interview is an opportunity for the candidate and employer to evaluate each other and confirm if value matches the role offered. Mentioned in one of my previous writings, this engagement is a reciprocal relationship and should be treated as such. When the candidate forgets this, she becomes susceptible to …
How to Master E-mail Management
Two conversations over the past days sparked interest in covering E-mail management. Checking my inboxes from the multiple E-mail accounts, I thought having 40-60 new messages was a large number. Some of us are working with 1000-18,000 new inbox messages! Reflected on my time career counseling college students and this …
Cover Letter Philosophy
You might be thinking: a philosophy about a cover letter? What’s the importance of that? It’s important to understand there’s a philosophy to each document or activity involved in career development. These philosophies deal with the “Why” of them. So while one might know how to write a cover letter …
Corporate Mindfulness with Passionate Talk Podcast
A few weeks ago I had the honor of being interviewed by Gary Karp of Passionate Talk. In the sense of a formal “interview,” it was not. Rather, it was more of a conversation about the value of mindfulness and its importance in professional life. Gary has a skill with …