As part of my book promotion tour, my publisher sent me to media training with Clarity Media Group. I thought the media trainer would talk with me about being on television — how to sit, where to put my hands, what to wear. Instead, he focused on how to not be a loose cannon.
I know …

Today, people in their 20s change jobs every two years. This frustrates employers, who say, “Why should I hire someone who is going to leave? I need someone who is loyal.”
At the same time, employees look at the work they are given and say, “How can I spend my days doing work that doesn’t mean …

The good news about getting a contract for a nonfiction book is that you don’t have to write the book to sell it. You just have to write the proposal. The bad news is that often authors spend four or five months figuring out what the proposal is.
Where agents earn their commission is helping the …

By Will Schwalbe — Email is great for minor apologies – especially when you think your transgression might not really need an apology at all. A classic is the, “I’m so sorry I didn’t spend more time with you at my party” kind of apology, which is usually greeted with the classic, “Don’t be silly, …

I’m not a perfectionist. In fact, when I painted my walls I didn’t paint near the windows because I didn’t want to do the detail work. When I accidentally address an envelope upside down, I don’t get a new envelope.
You know what? Doing those things hasn’t made my life any worse. It hasn’t made me …

You need to be nice at work. This doesn’t mean holding the door. Well, it does, but you need to do more than that. You need to do high-profile, from-the-heart niceness. People who are popular at work do better at work. Yes, it’s true, the popularity contest never ends.
So why not try cupcakes? Wait. Stay …

By Ryan Healy — Unless you are a professional athlete or working on Wall Street, an entry-level salary is not very exciting. When you couple this with the fact that the average college student graduates with tens of thousands in student loan and credit card debt and the cost of renting a place in …

A few months ago, I saw Guy Kawasaki’s blog post, 10 Ways to Use LinkedIn, and it made me realize that you can use LinkedIn for a lot more than just networking. For example, journalists can get value from LinkedIn both as a research tool and as a tool for career development:
Here are ten …

A lot of people who would like to start a business think the task is too daunting. But following a passion is not as high risk as you may think. Conventional wisdom about entrepreneurs being big risk takers and living on the edge is not all that realistic. In fact, there are ways to minimize …

I met my husband when he was in film school at UCLA. He was doing quirky video art instead of mainstream feature films, which made me think he’d be good to date. So when he was interviewing people for a video about memory, I was happy to participate.
I tried to be really charming in the …

This list is from my agent, Susan Rabiner.
I love Susan because she just sold my second book proposal to the same editor who bought Barack Obama’s book. Susan also represents the author who just won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. So you can be certain that following Susan’s advice is a good idea if you …

So here I am in NYC, doing my book publicity stuff. I had grand plans for posting on the blog last night and today, but my Internet connection is terrible. As in, nonexistent. And it was going to be be the first weekday in months that I haven’t posted.
I started feeling withdrawal. So I called …

The best way to be happier at work is to take personal responsibility for your workplace well-being. Once you do that, any job can be better than it is right now.
Here are four ways you can improve your job yourself instead of relying on your boss or your company to change:
1. Make a friend at …

By Will Schwalbe — Even the most placid soul can find her or himself in the midst of a full-fledged, take-no-prisoners flame war. One minute you are scoring a minor point, then a few more emails go back and forth, and soon you are choosing the perfect vicious barb to complete an angry screed.
We all …

Will’s new book is Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home.
But let me take a step back and say that I get five or six books a week from publicists, and most of them seem to be some version of pictures of mountains on the cover with inscrutable management theory titles floating …

Time is more important than money. You think that you know this, but you probably don’t act on it as much as you could. If you spend your time buying material things then you are using up the one thing that can make you happy (time) on things that definitely don’t make you happy (stuff).
In …

One of the biggest issues for writers today is how to move between print and online. The issue is really authority. For print people, moving online is difficult because their established offline authority has relatively little meaning online. Conversely people who are mostly online understand that there is a much more structured way to earn …

I get a lot of email from people who want advice. I usually reply. Sometimes I get an email from someone who is clearly a pain but I’m impressed that he or she asked for help, so I answer. Sometimes I get such a good question from someone that I actually give him or her …

By Ryan Healy — Most of my friends would love to run their own business some day. Me too. However, we believe the first logical step is to get a few years of work experience, make connections, and save money.
A couple of months ago, my good friends from college, Matt, Cole and Adam, came to …

Here’s how I became a writer. I started writing when I was six and wrote nonstop, about things no one cared about.
Nineteen years later I thought, I like to write, I should get paid for this.
So I went to graduate school for writing, and the first day, the teacher said, “If any of you can …

I am speaking at the American Society of Journalists and Authors in New York this Sunday. So I thought that in addition to regular posts, I’d do a little series this week on tips for writers.
I have never done a series, but I’ve seen them done on other blogs, so I thought I’d try it. …

Reviews of the Brazen Careerist book are starting to come in. Next week I’ll link to a bunch of reviews on blogs. This week, here are three of my favorite quotes:
Guy Kawasaki
author of The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
“Take everything you think you ‘know’ about career strategies, …

One of the most important career moves of the new millennium is getting out of paying dues. Paying one’s due is an antiquated idea in a workplace where few people aspire to climb the same corporate ladder for 45 years.
Eve Tahmincioglu interviewed 55 leaders for her book, From the Sandbox to the Corner Office: Lessons …

There is room to be true to yourself within the framework of a career. Today we have so many options that when we are not being true to ourselves we cannot really blame the system. We make our own choices and create our own lives.
It’s very hard to know what we want, though. So often …

The first thing I did when I sat down to work today was do the easy stuff on my list that does not need to be done until the end of the week. Then, when I should have been going to bed, I started working on the stuff that has to be done today.
I know …

One of the biggest complaints I hear from employees is that no one is listening to their ideas. In a large part this is not because the ideas are bad, but becuse most employees don’t sell their ideas to their company properly.
Selling an idea to an organization requires that you understand how the decision makers …

I am excited to announce two things. The first is that traffic to Brazen Careerist increased by forty percent last month. The second thing is that LinkedIn agreed to sponsor this blog.
The two are related. Of course, LinkedIn wouldn’t be sponsoring the blog if there was not a lot of traffic. But to be honest, …

Here’s a fascinating piece about an Amazon tribe that has no ability to use numbers. Even when the tribe members asked anthropologists to teach counting, the tribesmen couldn’t learn. The tribe is good at other things — fishing and making jokes, for instance — but not counting.
This immediately reminded me of couples therapy with my …

I am always coming across new ideas for being more effective when you look for a job. Here are some I’ve collected:
1. Don’t answer the phone when it wakes you up.
I know people get giddy for interview call backs like they get giddy for good-date callbacks. But the combination of giddy for phone calls, and …

By Ryan Healy – I want to work, I want to grow and I want to learn. What I’d really like is challenging, fascinating projects and the perfect mentor. The typical entry-level job doesn’t always allow this to happen. Below are a few simple ways to keep me interested and motivated.
1. Be Spontaneous
You don’t …

I took down a blog post today. I made a pretty big mistake in taking a critique of a book and making a personal attack. I am sure sorry that I did that. I sure don’t want to be that kind of writer. I probably made a bunch of other mistakes in that post too, …

There is a glut of people who are dying to fund business plans. Especially now, as starting a business online becomes less and less expensive, people require less money from investors, so investors have to look harder for startups to fund.
The problem is that people only want to fund good business ideas. It’s very hard …

More money is good, right? You’re going to be doing your job anyway, so you might as well ask to get paid more for doing it.
But you actually have to do a lot of preparation in order to ask for a raise effectively. The most obvious preparation is to find out what everyone else is …

One of the important lessons in entrepreneurship is to figure out your goal: Do you want to run a small business forever? Grow into a multinational corporation? Or do you want to sell as fast as possible? Your business should fit your personality and your vision for your life.
New York magazine profiles a drug dealer …

By Bruce Tulgan – Each person is different. There are six questions managers need to answer about each employee in order to know how to manage that person. What if you’re not a manager? Consider asking yourself these questions to figure out how to manage yourself better.(requires the Flash 9 Player)
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Yesterday Ryan posted about creating a blended life. His post makes me think a lot about my own set up. I am pretty sure people would say I have a blended life:
1. I work from 8-1pm and 8pm to 12pm seven days a week. Except when I don’t, because my two young sons need something.
2. …

The last phone interview I did was for my job at the Boston Globe. And let me just confess that I wasn’t that great in the interview, and I stressed a lot afterwards about not getting the job. But, of course, I did get the job, which I think might be evidence that I write …

By Ryan Healy – At the office full of twentysomethings where my girlfriend, Niki, works, everyone was comparing their salaries, and the owner of the company got really angry. And his being angry made for a tough week, so Niki asked him if she could take Friday off.
He said, “If you’re going to be successful …

Ryan Healy will write a new feature on Brazen Careerist called Twentysomething. Presently, he is working at his first job out of college, at a Fortune 500 company, and thinking of starting his own company (of course).
I met Ryan through Brazen Careerist. He told me he was starting a blog with his friend and he …

It’s official now: Young people are in the driver’s seat in corporate America. Job offers are plentiful, and hiring managers are scrambling. Stephanie Armour, reports in USA Today that he majority of hiring managers feel like they have to convince a candidate to take their job. And one-third of employees are already looking to leave …