The Confident Career

How You Can Network If You Don’t Know A Lot of People

We get this question a lot, “How can I successfully network if I don’t know a lot of people in my field?”

While networking can be intimidating it doesn’t have to be. Start by asking your friends and family if they might know anyone you could talk to. Even if you can connect with just one person, that’s a great start. That one person might have two contacts in mind that you could also connect with and they might have two contacts as well. And pretty soon you’ll have a network. Easy, right?

3 Resume Questions We Hear All the Time

This week’s resume writing blog post will take on a mailbag format with questions from real job seekers.  Below I have listed out three questions related to resume writing that I received this week with my advice below each one.  We’ve noticed a lot of you have some great questions in the comments section so feel free to provide your own questions there at the bottom of the article. 

7 Things You Should Know As You Enter The Workforce

With college seniors heading down the homestretch, I can't help but think of  the best graduation present I received when I finished school. While some people I know got cars and others a simple bouquet of flowers—my parents were somewhere in between when it came to my gift—I received a ticket to see Avenue Q* on Broadway.                                       

Princeton an Avenue Q resident

For those of you not familiar with the concept of the show it is a spoof on Sesame Street and it shares life lessons for young professionals. Some of these lessons include getting a job with a BA in English, how to find your purpose in life, and many more.

Now that I’ve been out of school for some time I really appreciate what a great gift it was. While everything I learned about being a 20-something in the working world didn’t come from the show, it was a nice starting point. It taught me that it’s okay to not know what you want to do, even if it seems like everyone else does (they don’t), finding your purpose isn’t always do-able, but you can still be fulfilled, and nothing lasts forever, so be ready to accept that—for the good and the bad.

So why am I telling you all this? I figured I should pay it forward, so for all of you recent or soon to be college grads, here we go:

Running, Resilience and Your Career

This post is about facing challenges and setbacks, and ironically, we had some on Monday (and Tuesday) when we originally tried to post this. Our blog host was down, but fortunately we’re back up and running now. And, even though the marathon is over, the message is still relevant…

On Monday, nearly 36,000 runners participated in the famed Boston Marathon. It marked the 118^th time this race has been held – but the first time since Boston, the running community and the nation were rocked by a bombing at the race’s finish line last year. Since that day, “Boston Strong” has become a mantra for the city, the victims and everyone affected.

This week, we got to see how strong a year of healing can make you.

So, what does that have to do with your career?

Resume Advice from. . . Edgar Allan Poe?!

When you created (or last updated) your resume, did you open up a word document and start typing in or editing bullets? If you are like most people, you didn't spend time planning your resume so much as you started writing your resume. The result may be highly professional and accurate, which puts you in good company with the other 300 people applying for the job who also have professional and accurate resumes.

How can you stand out in the crowd? Edgar Allan Poe has some tips. In 1846, he wrote an essay, The Philosophy of Composition. In it, he provides the advice:

"Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen."

 

Tailoring Your Resume for a Career Change

My daily conversations with job seekers cover many topics, but one that I hear quite often about is individuals looking to change careers.  Embarking on this transition can seem daunting, but not if you have armed yourself with the right tools to update your resume accordingly.  Here are 4 resume tips to implement when looking to change careers:

Interview Advice I Can’t Believe I Have To Share

I recently heard a story about a job candidate that was asked to leave a job interview before the interview even began. Apparently the candidate bad mouthed the company in the reception area by casually mentioning that they didn’t have a desire to work there. When the interviewer caught wind of this, they asked the candidate to leave, because they didn’t want to waste their time on a candidate that wasn’t interested in the job.

So what can we learn from this?  

Question of the Week

Sometimes, industry-specific terminology can be a hurdle to understanding — and job hunting might be one of those times! Today, we'd like to hear from you about "keywords" and your resume.