Career Advice Blog

Career Tips, Insights and Career Advice by Paul Freiberger

Job Search: Don't Give Up

Don't give up

It's easy to avoid the job search. It's tough to take action, but doing so gives you the opportunity to improve your situation. Set aside the excuses, of which there are many. The best way to job search is to be: 1) patient and 2) relentless. These days ...

Facebook Proves that It's Less than Six Degrees to a Job Connection

Attention job seekers: The world is smaller than we thought, according to research published by Facebook and the University of Milan, which also provides a twist on the theory, “Six Degrees of Separation,” published in 1967.At last, there’s some science behind job networking. This theory, based on a ...

Personal Branding Tips to Help the Job Search

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Finding a new job involves search and self-promotion. The search requires online and plain old sneaker networking. You need to get out there with your charm and the best LinkedIn profile and make connections. You have to get yourself out there, too, with personal branding. This article will give you ...

When Good is Good, Don't Wait for Perfect

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For a French philosopher, Voltaire had potential as a job search expert. In a poem among his “moral stories,” he said, “The best is the enemy of the good,” a sentiment that has been repeated in many contexts. It’s in the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule that tells us ...

Launch the job search by asking the right questions

New college grad in the family?  Suggest to your child that a good place to begin thinking about a career and a job search is with the nature of your own unique self. Look within. There are a multitude of questions worth asking: • What matters to you? • What are your ...

5 Job Search Tips to Get you Moving Ahead

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We’re all different. We think differently, we feel differently and we respond to the world differently. Yet there are some things almost all of us agree on. Almost all of us agree that the job market is a stressful place, and most of us think “stressful” is a bit ...

Rev Up Your Job Search Engine

The season of resolutions is upon us, but let’s not even go there. That’s not what your job search engine needs. Resolutions are a lot of work. They take willpower. They take energy. Sometimes they fizzle out at the first sign of the slightest trouble. So be it ...

How to Make a Post-Pandemic Career Change

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A great work disruption is taking place and if you're thinking about changing careers, you're not alone. Switching vocations and starting a job search has transformed from a rare occurrence to a four (or more) times in a lifetime necessity. And today 41% of the global workforce are considering leaving ...

LinkedIn Now Helps You Hide Your Job Search From Your Boss

Job Search Advice

LinkedIn is today rolling out a new feature the company says will help you look for new jobs without letting your boss find out. The innovation, called Open Candidates, “makes it easier to connect with your dream job by privately signaling to recruiters that you’re open to new job ...

Mistakes C-Level Job Seekers Make: Part 1

Bay Area career counselor explains executive job seeker mistakes.

Every executive job search has much in common with every other job search. The rules of the game don’t fundamentally change according to industry, geography, or job status. Despite the commonalities, however, executives in particular are on a slightly different road than other job seekers. The difference manifests itself ...

Bay Area Job Search Presents Special Challenges for Older Adults

Bay Area Job Search Strategy and Advice

One of the biggest mistakes people make in their Bay Area job search is assuming that the process hasn’t changed much. It has. On the other hand, some older job seekers also overestimate how much hiring has changed. Despite Applicant Tracking System technology and video interviews, the fact remains ...

Job Search Strategy Jump-start Plan for the New Graduate

Graduate Job Search Strategy

Recent College Graduates: Develop a Job Search StrategyHow can you launch your job search after getting your degree? It’s hard when you continue to hear reports of how tough a new grad job search can be. Despite stagnant wage growth in the United States, there’s actually some good ...

Take Small Steps for Bay Area Job Search Success

Job Search Expert Advice - Small Steps in Career Planning Add UpFocusing on the big picture of the executive job search alone is a wonderful way to nurture procrastination. It’s not the best way to do your job search. When you’re faced with a big project break things into ...

How to Use Networking for Job Search Success

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It would be nice to just flip a switch and land your dream job. In reality, though, a job search is an ongoing process that networking is a crucial part of. No one denies that, but few of us are flinging our caps in the air about it.  Here are ...

Job Search Tax Deductions: Alleviating Job Hunting’s Financial Costs

Tax DEductions

If you are job hunting, tax deductions may not be your top priority, but your expenses may be deductible. If you can use those deductions, you’ll lower the real cost of job search services. In other words, the real cost of getting professional help in your search is lower ...

Why Passion is the Ultimate Job Hunt Secret for Success

Passion

The Best Job Search Tool Isn’t an App or Spreadsheet.Are you tired of reading countless self-help blogs in the quest for landing a job? Are you crumbling under the weight of unemployment? For millions, the waking nightmare of unemployment, and even underemployment, feels like a never-ending cycle of ...

The Only Job Search Guide You Need

Book Cover

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 ...

Navigating the Informational Interview

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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 ...

What you should expect in a job offer

Job Offer

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 ...

Career Benefits of Volunteering

Volunteering

How Good Deeds Help Your Cause, Boost Your Skills and Add a Spark to Your LinkedIn ProfileVolunteer 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 ...

Strategies for Self-Assessment and Employer Analysis to Improve Your Job Search

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A job search is an exercise in analysis. You must analyze yourself and also the employer you hope will hire you. Ask not what the employer can do for you; ask what you can do for the employer. Keep that thought in mind throughout your job search, especially during interviews ...

Time Management Tips to Help Manage Your Job Search

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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 ...

LinkedIn: Don’t Underestimate its Value to the Job Search

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Updating and improving your LinkedIn profile should be at the top of your career improvement resolution list. So should learning to use LinkedIns useful features. Let me explain.Do you want recruiters to find you? They will find you if you have a stand-out LinkedIn profile. Recruiters are spending millions ...

Describe Yourself in Your LinkedIn Profile for the Job You Want, Not the Jobs You Had

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Your LinkedIn profile is an essential job search tool to attract companies. You want your resume and your LinkedIn profile to tell a consistent story. However, while you can modify your resume for each job that you apply to, your LinkedIn profile remains constant.That’s why it is so ...

The Black Hole in the Hiring Galaxy

The Only Job Search Guide You'll Ever Need

Why do you receive no response at all when you apply? One part of the job search that almost all applicants find brutally frustrating is the failure of employers to offer any response at all. As it turns out, that failure doesn’t just happen at the beginning of the ...

Having a Hard Time? Don’t Compare Yourself to Others During Your Job Search

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You know someone who found a great job in a week. But you’ve been looking for the last six months. What’s wrong with you? Chances are, nothing. It’s entirely possible that your strategy needs help, but that’s why there is help here, and of course, not ...

Engineering Skills in the Job Search: Leonardo’s Resume, Tools for Greatness, and Career Improvement

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At first glance, an engineer in the job market looks like a fish out of water. After all, the job market is all about selling – selling yourself to prospective employers – and that’s not a conventional engineering strength. Sales skills aren’t part of the engineering curriculum. As a result ...

Job search assumptions in the time of Covid-19

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“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” – Gever TulleyIn the job search, making assumptions can be a dangerous thing. One assumption that might be especially dangerous right now would be calling off your job search because of the Covid-19 pandemic.Sure ...

You’re Hired! And then Along Comes Another Offer

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Can you and should you back out of a job offer?If you’ve accepted a job offer, what should you do if other opportunities then present themselves?I’m a firm believer in keeping your job options open until the day that you actually start work. Things can fall ...

Special Tips to the Employed for the Job Search: Rules for Job Seekers

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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 ROADRule 1: Mum’s the WordThe first rule of the searching-while-employed club ...

Information Station

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Make Informational Interviews Help Your Job SearchResearch and networking complement each other in your job search. One under-used strategy takes advantage of that overlap and should be part of every applicant’s arsenal: the informational interview.Despite its value, the informational interview has become the poor relation in the family ...

The Best Way to Follow Up After the Job Interview

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Your resume worked. Your interview preparation put you in contention for the job. What next? What are the rules for following up after a job interview?If you halt your efforts to reach an employer after interviewing, you may undo much of what you have accomplished so far.There’s ...

Job Search Help Can Get Results During Holiday Season

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Companies really do hire employees between Thanksgiving and mid-January. I see it every year. Do not pause your job search during the holiday months.Job search websites have sometimes listed more jobs in holiday months than at other times.Beat the CompetitionIf you've heard the theory that businesses don't hire ...

Revealing the Secrets of Networking for Job Seekers

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Networking Tips that WorkOutside of keeping a positive attitude, networking is the most common tip given to job seekers. Do it well to gain referrals, leads, and advice. With hundreds of books, and countless blog posts, dedicated to networking, you’d think this topic would be easy for most to ...

Job Searching in the Time of Covid-19

Mask and Spray

History will record this time as the “Great Pandemic of 2020” when the world’s economy nearly ground to a halt at the hands of an invisible virulent pathogen.It’s naïve to say that the coronavirus may not impact a job search. But that’s all the more reason ...

Despite a pandemic-riddled economy, many companies are hiring

Credit photo to Hu Chen on Unsplash

If you’re a job seeker, this is not the time to adopt a retreat or wait-it-out attitude despite the outward signs. Yes, the current Covid-19 pandemic has extracted an enormous toll on the national and global economy and the ranks of the newly unemployed are swelling by the millions ...

Job search assumptions in the time of Covid-19

sergey-zolkin-_UeY8aTI6d0-unsplash.jpg

“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” – Gever TulleyIn the job search, making assumptions can be a dangerous thing. One assumption that might be especially dangerous right now would be calling off your job search because of the Covid-19 pandemic.Sure ...

An Offer You Can’t Refuse: Paying it Forward

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Especially during the pandemic, getting someone’s help is often the biggest determinant of success or failure in the job search. If you had a productive informational interview, received some advice that led you to change your job-hunting strategy for the better, or were introduced to the right person at ...

Research Preparation Before Job Search And Job Interviews

Research is one of the most important things to do when you conduct a job search and prepare yourself for a job interview. Even if you have been in the industry for decades, you need to embark on a journey of discovery to find out what’s going on within ...

The Pandemic has made the Hidden Job Market More Important

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I want to discuss what’s called, rather mysteriously, “the hidden job market.” I’m not talking about some secret place. It’s simply a term used to describe at least 80% of available jobs and they are not posted or advertised.Instead, these jobs are filled through the hidden ...

How to Turn Down a Job Offer

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A client turned down an offer a few years ago at one of Silicon Valley’s favorite employers, only to get recruited and accept a better position at that same company recently. Saying “no” the right way prevented her from burning bridges and led to a great opportunity.If you ...

Employee Opportunities for You in the Great Resignation

Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash

What does the “Great Resignation” mean to employees, the people who have remained in their jobs but who may be thinking of greener pastures?More and more employees are in that position, as the Great Resignation shows no sign of abating. In September, 4.4 million people quit, setting a ...

Time to Polish Your Cloud Skills for Today’s Job Market

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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 ...

Networking Pandemic-Style

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

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 ...

Tips for Keeping the Job Search Confidential

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There’s no better time to look for a new job than when you’re already employed. You’re getting paid, there’s nothing pushing you to look elsewhere other than your own desire to find greener pastures, and there’s no doubt that employers look more kindly on candidates ...

LinkedIn and the Secret Job Search

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Why Always Updating Your LinkedIn Profile is Good for All Like it or not, LinkedIn is an indispensable part of the job search. But let’s say that you’re currently employed and not quite ready to disclose to one and all (and especially to your employer) that you’re ...

Coping with Job Search Exhaustion

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It’s a truism that the job search is a job unto itself. But if a truism is a statement that, while obviously true, adds nothing to the conversation, this may not be a truism after all, because it does add something to the conversation. In fact, the idea that ...

Strategies for Overcoming Anxiety and Stress in the Job Search

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I often get requests for career help issues that are a bit unrelated to the common needs of resume writing and job hunting. One that I hear consistently is: “How should I handle stress and anxiety?”That’s a pretty broad area to delve into, but we’re not looking ...

Weather Extremes, Climate, and the Job Market

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With “Sustainability Analyst” appearing at number 13 on LinkedIn’s list of today’s fastest growing jobs, the weather is more than a topic of polite conversation for job seekers.LinkedIn defines the role as researching and tracking “an organization’s environmental impact to develop strategies, practices, and programs that ...

Pawsitive Job Search Vibes

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I’ve seen all sorts of creative ways people try to get ahead in their job search. I’ve seen people dive into unusual hobbies like beekeeping, volunteering in their community to meet new people, and even studying a new language to stand out to employers.One of the most ...

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