Most people who are on top of their game respond to most emails within 48 hours. However some emails are so terribly written that it’s actually impossible to send an answer. Other emails are so terribly written that the amount of time it would take to figure out what to answer is simply not worth [...]

Remember the post about how I got dumped and still made it to a meeting with a venture capitalist in Menlo Park?
But that's not actually the end of the story. I got back to my hotel, which, you may recall, I did not even need because I was not staying overnight in that area, and [...]

The question “Did you vote?” is viral. It feels good when someone asks me that question, and I feel good asking you: Did you vote?
It feels good because voting tells everyone that you care enough to leave work—not always easy—and do something that contributes to the greater good. You should ask that question today–it’s a [...]

For a while, I was a visual artist. Well, sort of. I mean, I made money from it. But as you may know, I am a big advocate of specializing, and I realized that I had a better chance of being outstanding in my field by focusing on writing instead of visual art.
But I did [...]

Recently, I went to Cornell to speak to the MBA students about networking. Whenever I go somewhere to speak, there's a lively Q&A session afterward, and Cornell was no exception.  I love the questions after a speech becuase I always learn so much from the discussion. I couldn't stop thinking about the topic, so I wrote [...]

I am always harping on how important it is to be nice. I have written about how you will be happy at work if you have three friends there, you will get promoted if people like you and you should try to be more likable no matter how likable you think you are right now.
A [...]

I get a lot of invitations to connect on LinkedIn. This is no surprise because it's a great tool for professionals to connect. What might surprise you is that I say no to a lot of invitations. Sometimes I feel bad saying no, so I send back a little description of the lessons I've learned [...]

One of the hardest social situations to face is starting a conversation with someone you know very little about. You might already understand that the key to being a good conversationalist is to be a good listener; You need to ask questions that will get to the interesting part of someone, and then be truly [...]

Time magazine just hired me to write a piece about workplace trends among young people. One of the things I wrote about was how much people value the opportunity to volunteer for non-profit organizations through their company. And one of the best examples of this is Salesforce.com.
So I called the publicist there and set up [...]

One of the best ways to make a big leap in your career is to blog. Blogging allows you to create a high-quality network for yourself based, not on the old model of passing out business cards, but on a new model of passing out ideas. Contrary to popular opinion, blogging is not for college [...]

By Jason Warner - One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they get caught up in the tactics of their job at a particular company, and they then don't do anything to advance their career beyond their current employer. This is a significant error in life strategy.
I see people all the [...]

Today's careers are made and broken by one's ability to network.
Please don't post comments about how unfair this is — I know that people who are bad at networking think it's not fair that the world rewards networking so much. But that's the way the world is. You're not going to change it by whining.
Instead, [...]

A lot of people ask me how living in Madison is going. For those of you who don't know, I moved from New York City to Madison, WI about six months ago. I can't believe it's already been six months, because I still feel like I'm in culture shock.
It is shocking, for example, that five [...]

A reader asked this question: Would you mind writing a post about dealing with multiple job offers and declining some of them — politely and gracefully?
This is actually a question about networking. When someone offers you a job, they have identified you as someone they want to be connected with. That you have multiple offers [...]

Forget the idea that networking is a job-hunting tool. Networking is the job hunt. But networking is not just passing out your business card and e-mailing your friends' friend. Networking is making yourself buzz-worthy so people want to be connected with you.
This is not the old networking that celebrated extroverts and crushed introverts. Building buzz [...]

Men love it, women think it's a time sink, and business deals are made over a couple of rounds.  

I noticed that among the ten ideas for job hunting in my last post, the idea people talked about the most was using LinkedIn. This doesn't surprise me. The promise of LinkedIn is to make your network work for you, and that's enticing.
But the process of building a network on LinkedIn has always felt very [...]

It's a lot easier to give advice than to implement it. You can imagine how acutely aware of this I must be.
After I've given out the same piece of advice twenty times (for example, get a mentor), there comes a point when I can't face myself if I don't follow it. Sometimes I try to [...]

Who you hang out with has so much to do with the quality of your life. I think about this all the time, so I was happy to see that the neurobiologists finally came up with some evidence that if you hang out with positive people, your brain actually starts thinking more positively (subscription soon).
I [...]

John Annabel, of Northampton, walked into the office one day to find himself working side by side with a new employee whose only qualification seemed to be that she was having an affair with Annabel’s department head. Annabel says people didn’t particularly care that she was in the office doing no work until she started [...]