A lot of times we think we know what we're doing in the job hunt, and then someone surprises us with information we didn't think of. My latest bunch of surprises came from the book, What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here? by Cynthia Shapiro, who I have interviewed before, [...]

There's a lot of advice on this blog about how to interview: Tell good stories, ask good questions, be a closer. But here's only one most important thing to remember: when it comes to discussing your potential salary, never give the number first.
The right answer to the question, "What's your salary range?" is almost [...]

We spend so much of our careers doing good work, meeting interesting people, and learning new skills. But it really all starts with one moment: the interview.
Once you get there, you need to be able to package everything together for a nice, neat presentation that's memorable in exactly the right way.
Here are two mistakes a lot of [...]

Every once in a while I'll publish job-hunt questions people ask me a lot. And it's that time again. But today I'm publishing a question that stumped me:
"Why don't interviewers get back to me after the interview? I go to the interview, I feel like we click, and the hiring manager or human resource representative [...]

Is it okay to look for a new job while I'm at my current job?
Yes. You have to be able to look for a job while you have a job or it's indentured servitude. Most people in their twenties change jobs every two years. At any given moment 70% of the workforce is job hunting, [...]

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 this about [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Yep, that's right. Our very own Google Guy Jason Warner is doing Coachology this week. For those of you who don't know, Jason has interviewed a bazillion candidates as an in-house recruiter at Microsoft, Starbucks and now, at Google. And he has strong opinions about what works.
This week Jason is offering to coach one of [...]

Here are steps 7 and 8. Read the whole column on Yahoo Finance.
7. Manage your parents.
It's common today for parents to be involved in their twentysomething child's job hunt. Parental involvement is so ubiquitous during interviews for summer internship programs that companies like Merrill Lynch will actually send an acceptance letter to a parent if the [...]

By Jason Warner — I've been interviewing people for a very long time. Sometimes I think maybe too long. You have to go back to my very first recruiting job at Microsoft to understand. This was when Microsoft was The Place to Work in the Technology World, circa the mid 1990s.
In this [...]

When someone says, "So tell me about yourself," a lot of people stumble. When you craft your answer, you have 10 million hours of information to choose from. Many people actually hate getting this question because it's so hard to zero-in on an answer.
This is an honest question. Someone wants to know about you. You [...]

Here's the structure of an interview: The interviewer asks you a lot of questions about you, figures out what you like, what you're good at, and customizes as he pitches the company and the job to you.
This structure works fine if you are not all that interested in the job. But if you go into [...]

Business 2.0 reports in it's best-of-the-year roundup: "Last May The BBC invited technology expert Guy Kewney to its studios for an interview about Apple's iTunes Music Store. But when the cameras start rolling, the BBC correspondent found herself talking to the wrong Guy - Guy Goma, a computer technician who was waiting in the lobby for a [...]

Giving advice about careers is easier than taking it. People are always calling me on this — spitting my advice back to me at my most vulnerable moments. Like when I was late delivering my column five weeks in a row, and my editor said, "Remember that time you wrote about how being late is [...]

Hiring managers don't hire the most qualified person. They hire the person they want to work with the most. Whether this is fair is not up for discussion, because the philosophical and de facto practices of corporate hiring aren't going to change any time soon. However, we can discuss how to get hired when being [...]

The way you talk about yourself is very powerful. Whether or not you are conscious of it, the way you tell stories of your life frames how people see you, and how you see yourself. So you may as well do this consciously, and also be conscious that people get the most tripped up in [...]

The idea of having a perfect online identity is not realistic. Instead, maybe you should focus on making your offline identity one that you're proud of.
First of all, no one is getting away with anything online. Today recruiters are expert and tireless Internet researchers when it comes to scoping out candidates. I just read a [...]

Most people who want career coaching from me set up an appointment. My brothers send random emails that they tag as urgent. Here's one my brother sent at midnight last night:
"Why don't you ever write about how to interview someone? What do I do when someone goes on and on about himself and I don't [...]

I am a big advocate of blogging to give yourself an advantage in your career, but, as Seth Godin says, you need to have "candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, and controversy," (by way of Global PR Week.) In short, you need to have something to say that will interest other people.
I believe that each person has [...]