It is harder to know who you are than it is to be who you are. Everyone says, “The important thing is to be yourself!”  I say that when I give them career advice. People like you better when you are being authentic. Gay people do better in their careers when they are out of the closet. [...]

I am going to be a better person at self-promotion because I don’t brag enough. Ryan Paugh, who was basically my intern when I met him, and now he's almost my boss and definitely my social-skills mentor, tells me that I am popular because I'm interesting but that I suck at self-promotion. (He uses, as [...]

In a recent interview with Fast Company, Ashton Kutcher – the celebrity-turned-Internet-mogel - said that privacy is more valuable than celebrity. This makes sense to me.
On the Internet everyone is a celebrity. I think Rebecca Blood was the first person to introduce this concept to me when she said  Generation Y manages itself like celebrities online, [...]

Everyone knows that the best way to get a job is to leverage your network. And almost everyone knows that social media is a great way to build your network.
But many of you are making lots of social media mistakes. I know because so many people tell me that social media is a waste of their [...]

Here is my advice about job hunting long-distance: Forget it. It's not going to work for most of you, and you'll need to relocate before you get the job. But for a few of you, there's hope for a long-distance job hunt will work. So, here's some advice if you must make it work:
1. Pitch [...]

I met D at a party. I was there with Ryan Paugh and a few bloggers from the Brazen Careerist network, and because it was SXSW and it was all parties all the time, I was pretty partied out. But the party was for Kirtsy, and I love the women who run Kirtsy, so I [...]

The guy I’m sort of dating asks me, “Do you know Glenda Bautista?”
I say, “No.”
He says, “We’re trying to hire her.”
So I check out her blog and dis her and he says, “She was dating Matt Mullenweg.”
I say, “Really.”
He says, “Yeah. I was talking with my business partner and we both thought it must really [...]

This is a guest post from Dan Schawbel. He is 25 years old and already, the New York Times has called him a "personal branding guru." Dan's book is Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, and it just came out today.
Personal branding describes a process where individuals differentiate themselves from [...]

This is another post about a book. Two days in a row. But before you get all giddy and think you should send your book to me so I'll write about it, forget it.
First of all, I get five to ten books every week. And I throw most of them away. Second, honestly, for the [...]

I do a lot of interviews. At least two or three a week — ranging from CNN to local newspapers. And no matter where the interview is running, there are some things you need to know about doing a good one:
1. Be interesting. The questions people ask you are not really what they want [...]

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 [...]