I announced last week that I'll be running a poll on my sidebar each week. I’m aiming for a new one every Tuesday.
The poll is a fun way for me to think about career topics. A new format always gets me going. But it's also fun because even after writing about careers for ten years, [...]

I was thinking that a new blog design would be frivolous, and I should just write good posts. But then I ran the post about my new headshots, and the comments section was filled with people saying how much they hate the photo on my blog masthead.
That photo is from a time when I was [...]

To manage your image effectively, you have to think constantly about how other people will perceive you.
Are you wondering if you're good at image management? Ask yourself how you responded to that first sentence. If you said to yourself, "I am not consumed by what other people think of me—I have enough self-confidence to just [...]

When I started doing Twitter, I put my Twitter feed on the sidebar of my blog. It seemed smart: more content means more traffic, and more traffic is good. But after two weeks of Twitter, I removed it. And then, when I was blogging about important topics like ditching Hebrew school as a career harbinger, [...]

My career is built on branding. The first time I tried it was in beach volleyball. Like many professional sports, the way to make a living is from sponsors. While other people changed partners every week trying to trade up for someone better, I picked someone shorter than I was, so she'd stick with me. [...]

That's right. Me on CNN today. On the show Open House. I know that often times I have posted about me being on TV have not been moments of genius. Like, me mispronouncing Kucinich's name. Or me not knowing how to put makeup on for TV.
So I haven't said anything about TV for a while. [...]

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 [...]

You know that people make snap judgments about you based on your appearance. But it turns out that most of those judgments are right. In a study where people viewed photos of CEOs, the people were able to guess the personalities of the CEOs accurately just by looking at their photo. (Hat tip: Recruiting Animal)
Sometimes [...]

I have been auditioning to host a reality show about work, and I'm supposed to fly out to Los Angeles for a test run in front of a camera. My friend Sharon, hair stylist to the LA jet set, told me that I have to get my teeth whitened.
I am a big fan of taking [...]

It used to be that authority only came after years of experience. Even then, someone older had to anoint you before you could begin spouting your opinions and advice from a place of authority.
For instance, I climbed the corporate ladder very fast when I was in my 20s, and had a hard time maintaining my [...]

The art of public speaking is actually the art of connecting. So the lessons in this field apply to everyone since each of us needs to make connections. If you can connect with a room full of people, then you can also connect with an audience of one. And the people we remember most are [...]

Being overweight or sloppily dressed is worse for your career than being a poor performer.
I'm not saying this is fair, I'm saying it's true. So manage your weight, and manage the image you project at work, and you'll do wonders for your career.
If you doubt that your image can inhibit your career, think about this: [...]

In a world where jobs no longer last forever, the only constant in your career is you. So instead of relying on the brand of your company to define who you are, you have to rely on your own brand.
Here are two tips for building a personal brand. Read the rest at Yahoo Finance.
Know what [...]

When I was playing professional beach volleyball, running around in a bathing suit every day, you'd think I would have been more conscious than ever about my image. But at the start, I was generally oblivious.
In fact, when I was in my first Bud Light commercial, we were told to bring three bathing suits to [...]

I get asked a lot of questions about self-promotion. Mostly I give answers like find something you are great at doing and be nice to people. It's a killer combination, really. But people always want more advice than that. So, here are five tips that I give a lot. And I live by them.
1. Specialize, [...]

I'm speaking at the BlogHer Conference in Chicago on July 27. My panel is titled Self-Branding and Self-Promotion. I'll be talking about how to use your marriage as a way to increase blog traffic. Just kidding. (By the way, I get way more traffic when I post bulleted lists about productivity, so keep your eye [...]

For those of you who don't know what's going on in my marriage, please read My First Day of Marriage Counseling, and maybe you will want to leave a comment about how if you were my husband, you'd divorce me for blogging about my marriage.
My husband, in fact, has brought up divorce for other reasons. [...]

A lot of people ask me if they should blog under a pseudonym. They ask me because I started writing under a pseudonym eight years ago, and it ended up being such a mess that I turned it into my real name. So I advise everyone to start out using their real name. Here are [...]

A few weeks ago I wrote about the braided career. The idea is that in order to create stability in a world where career change is frequent and job security is non-existent, you need to be managing three things at all times: your personal life, what you are doing for work now, and what you might [...]

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 [...]