The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported mixed news on the job front Friday morning. The national unemployment rate managed to fall below 10 percent in January, but employers reported having 20,000 fewer jobs on its payrolls. Check out why the contradiction exists and what signs there are that the economy is rebounding in: "U.S. Jobs Report Offers Mixed Results."  read more »

You don't understand. You updated your résumé, you're applying to jobs every day, you've cleaned up your digital dirt and you network every day. Yet here you still are on the unemployment list. What is wrong with employers? Unfortunately, many job seekers don't stop to consider that the problem might not be employers. Applicants frequently (and inadvertently) display signs that tell an employer that they're not the best fit for the job. Here are 10 reasons why employers might have passed you by: "Not getting hired? 10 reasons why."  read more »

One of the most powerful weapons of the career search in today’s job market is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the leading “social networking” site for professionals. It’s not social networking like on Facebook or MySpace, but more business and career networking. There is so much you can do on LinkedIn, it deserves some of your time, attention and investment as it integrates all of your career search efforts and can help you be more effective and productive. Here are 6 ways to use LinkedIn to optimize your career search and find your dream job: "How to Find Your Job with LinkedIn."  read more »

How did all the great performers you admire get to be so good at what they do? A healthy dose of natural talent of course but talent only gets you so far. They also had real passion and coaching support that enabled them to improve their performance capacity continually over years of practice. Assuming you've got some talent and the requisite passion, let's look at your coaching network and see what we can do to upgrade it: "How to Cultivate a Peer Coaching Network."  read more »

As hiring companies get inundated with applicants, they save a great deal of time by screening out many ‘close fit’ candidates through an initial phone interview rather than having the person come in. Candidates often take these phone conversations lightly, assuming that if the company called, they will certainly bring them in. However, the phone interview is often a ‘make it or break it’ part of the process. Check out these tips on how to be well prepared: "Beware the Phone Interview!"  read more »

Are you heavy on tactics and light on strategy when it comes to networking? We always think we need to do more, and we look for solutions in the form of other tactics that we might not have tried yet. But imagine if you took 5 random ingredients from your refrigerator and threw them into a sauté pan. What are the chances you'd have a finished dish that you'd actually want to eat? Adding more and more stuff to an incoherent mess just gets you further and further away. Check out how to get results from networking in: "Overwhelmed by Networking? Focus on Strategy, Not Just Tactics."  read more »