Why do career counselors make such a big deal of values? This is something I get asked a lot. People sometimes find it frustrating because they just want to find a new job. But the truth is, our values are probably the most important part of a job search and of satisfaction with…
Your work skills may be influencing you too much. Have you been looking for work you can do based mostly on your skills? If so, you’ve run afoul of the Skill Trap! Skills are important, of course, and many of us are proud of having gained the ones we have, but your career search really…
Ultimately you will need social media if you’re looking for a new job. According to a 2018 Career Builder survey, 70% of employers use social media in the hiring process, and when they can’t find anything online, they may well not call you. And that survey was before the pandemic! What business do they…
I’ve been there too. I get all kinds of bent out of shape when people tell me that unfriending people for “just politics” is silly and petty. I’m Japanese American. I haven’t forgotten that “just politics” sent us to the US concentration camps, and if my family hadn’t been living in Hawaii at the time,…
Once you’ve chosen your initial platform, what’s your goal of being on social media? Do you want to get hired? (That mostly happens via LinkedIn, just so you know.) Are you looking to connect with others in your field? Do you want to establish a reputation as a go-to person for something? Think about your…
The spaces can be really confusing. Should I be on Twitter? How complete does my LinkedIn profile need to be? What the heck is the point of Snapchat? And the truth is, there’s no real solid answer to any of this. However, it is important to be somewhere on social media so that prospective…
Remember that an interview goes both ways. You’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing you. It can be hard to keep that in mind when you feel desperate for a job, but it’ still true, even then. One of the worst possible outcomes of an interview can be a bad-fit job. Most of…
Behavioral interview questions like this are popular because your answers can illustrate what kind of colleague you’ll be and what your approach to the situations really is. Your temptation might be to give a generic answer, like, “Well, on our last big challenge, we really pulled together as a team and got a difficult…
Questions like this are terrifying at first, but there really is a reason for them. Your best plan to approach a surprising question like this is to take a few moments to try to figure out why they’re asking it. The question above (and its siblings, like what kind of animal you would be,…
One of the best things you can do for yourself is familiarize yourself with the most common questions and have a general idea of how to approach them. If any of the questions seem hard or you’re not sure how to approach them, let me know! Here are the 50 that Glassdoor ranks most common:…