The Shimmering Careers Blog

Your job used to be translating strategy into action. AI just learned how to do part of that. So what’s left? For years, much of mid-level management has been built around moving information through an organization: Synthesizing information. Writing status reports. Coordinating across teams. Preparing presentations and updates. Running alignment meetings. Translating directives from senior leadership into action. AI is increasingly capable of handling parts of this work. It c

Book excerpt: There must be some people who enjoy the job search. After all, there are people who wait with gleeful anticipation for the chance to dive into their income taxes every year. In the end, though, you don’t have to love the search. You do, however, have to be good at it. STEP 1: DECIDE TO DECIDE Before you make any first step, you make the decision to move your foot. The same thing happens here. You can spend a lot of time dreaming about your dream job, but that ge

Guest post by Ashley Lipman Good news: the healthcare industry is expected to grow almost 20% by 2024. That makes health care one of the fastest growing industries in the country, and it’s a great way to make a living while helping others. As the population continues to age, we need more qualified health care workers to meet this demand for care. Working in this health field is becoming a popular choice since you don’t need years of education or experience to get started at

Not every interview in your job search is a job interview. Consider the informational interview. An informational interview is a chance to meet briefly with someone in your field and talk about that person’s company, her career, and the industry as a whole. It’s as simple as that. It’s also a crucial facet of a best practice job search. Unlike a job interview, the informational interview lacks a predetermined structure. In most job interviews, you can expect to be asked a ser

What to do before accepting the job You’ve run the gauntlet of the job search and come out in one piece. In fact, everything has gone so well that an offer is on the way. All that’s needed is the quick finalization of a few details, and you’ll have the offer in hand. What should you expect to see? The first and most important answer to that question is contained in the question itself. What should you expect to see? For it to be real, an offer has to be in writing. Nothing el

How Good Deeds Help Your Cause, Boost Your Skills and Add a Spark to Your LinkedIn Profile Volunteer work often involves skills and responsibilities that translate nicely to the workplace, but people tend to neglect those activities and say “it wasn’t a real job.” Volunteering as a Big Brother was challenging and satisfying for me. I connected with a delightful young man and watched him grow. In addition, this activity led to unanticipated opportunities including a board of d

Guest post by Ashley Lipman Career change is rarely simple. While the fantasy of what a new career entails can make the change seem awfully easy, the reality is often different, and how different fantasy and reality are depends on the person making the change and on the career option that person has chosen. One option that has become surprisingly attractive in recent years is the chance to live life as a chef. What’s behind that choice? For one thing, quite a few of us can co

Whether you’re looking for your first job or trying to find a new job, the process might be as consuming as a full-time job. In fact, if you’re currently unemployed, you could find yourself spending as much as 30 or more hours a week on job search-related activities. If you’re already working, you might only have 5 to 10 hours to spare. No matter how much time you have to devote to the process, you can streamline and simplify by using good time management skills. As an added

When you have to include a salary One of the more delicate questions for job applicants, and the one that attracts conflicted opinions from the experts, is the one posed by job postings that require applicants to specify their desired salaries. When that happens, the applicant’s dilemma is all too clear. Of the three choices available, not one is obviously correct: Aim too low and you’re liable to leave money on the table. Alternatively, employers might conclude that your low

Create Your Brand When it Counts the Most As a sales and marketing professional are you prepared to promote yourself with an effective resume that will land you an interview? The average human resources manager spends less than 30 seconds reviewing a sales resume before deciding to keep it or throw it away. Needless to say, the vast majority of resumes end up in the trashcan. In the current job market, your skills do not matter if no one reads your marketing resume. “Your bra

“Congratulations on the new job!” Life will all be smooth sailing from now on. Won’t it? Actually, starting a new job is not all unicorns and rainbows. Mixed emotions are often the order of the day. There’s a deserved sense of accomplishment that comes from getting hired. There’s also stress, uncertainty, and fear. Those feelings come naturally when you are about to start a new job in a new place filled with strange faces. You will be entering a workplace governed by unfamili

The essentials of the job hunt don’t really change according to your employment status, but employed searchers do have to consider a number of special issues that don’t affect their unemployed counterparts. 10 RULES OF THE ROAD Rule 1: Mum’s the Word The first rule of the searching-while-employed club is: You do not talk about searching while employed. The one exception applies when, and only when, your boss tells you it’s time to look for a new job. For example, layoffs have

No matter the type of company, there are certain fundamental things you need to get right in the workplace to ensure success: 1) Show up. As writer Regina Brett once said, “Most of life is showing up.” You can argue with the how much of life is showing up, but you can’t argue with the saying’s corollary: “Failure to show up is 100 percent guaranteed to be bad for your career.” It’s not just a matter of being physically present. In this context, “showing up” means being there

Many of my clients ask what to do about age discrimination during the job search. The plain truth is if you’re waiting for ageism to disappear from the job market, one thing is certain: However old you are, you’ll grow much older waiting. Age-based discrimination may be illegal, but it remains pervasive despite its illegality. In any event, the law isn’t the recourse you need. “Failure to Hire” claims are difficult to prove, and that’s almost beside the point. You don’t want

For special situations, such as gaps in your career or frequent moves from one job to another, your resume and cover letter have to work overtime. You have to handle your resume in the right way, and you have to make especially good use of your cover letter. If you do that, you’ll keep your application in the running, and that’s your goal: Just get one step further down the road to an offer. Employment History Gaps There are gaps—and there are gaps. Not every period of unempl

Companies really do hire employees between Thanksgiving and mid-January. There are a number of reasons why November, December, or January could be luckiest months in the job search for you. You should not pause your job search during the holiday months. Use the holiday season to improve your job search. The notion that job search gets harder this time of year is a myth. Job search websites such as monster.com have sometimes listed more jobs in holiday months than at any other

There’s a skills gap in today’s mid-pandemic job market. Companies are struggling to attract applicants who have the skills they need. If you keep that situation in mind, there are ways to use the skills gap to your benefit in a job interview. You can also gain some leverage even if you don’t already have the specific skills that are on the wish list of an employer. You don’t have to be the perfect candidate. You do have to consider why they want to see you and what that mean

There’s a critical shortage right now that is holding up many cloud and edge computing initiatives. No, I’m not talking about supply-chain problems leading to a temporary shortage of some materials. I’m talking about the shortage of talent. In 2017, Gartner predicted that half of all companies worldwide would adopt an all-in cloud strategy by 2021. It hasn’t happened. Wait, that’s not quite right. Companies are adopting cloud strategies; they are just not following through on

In the first part of my job interview course, The Expert Guide to Job Interviews, part of my focus is on figuring out your overarching career goals as a fundamental first step in interview preparation. The basic idea is simple, though it’s often neglected: It really helps to have the proverbial dream, driven by the equally proverbial passion, to develop interview strategies that get you where you ultimately want to go. As part of the process, I’ve included a lot of material d

In my job interview course, I’ve talked a lot about networking as a key part of any job search, and about its equal importance to the process of finding interviews. Whether you’re seeking formal job interviews or the informational interviews, networking is a time-honored and effective way to grab opportunities. But one part of the networking world has taken something of a hit in the era of Covid. The in-person get-togethers, the conferences or events geared specifically to ne