I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas. My wife and I had a fabulous dinner Christmas Eve with our kids. We open presents a little early, since all the kids are grown up & spend time with other families as well. We received several BluRay DVDs as gifts; Princess Bride, District 9, Lost Season 5. Our kids also brought over Terminator: Salvation in BluRay. It wasn’t a gift, but it will probably stay here for awhile. I love watching BluRay videos. We’ve been totally amazed at the detail of the movies in 1080p. It’s just amazing to watch. The most important thing...

Your social networks are made up of people you’ve known in your past and present.  The question is where do you find these people?  Some of them are not as obvious as you would think. I have listed some of the obvious candidates for your social network. Social Networking candidates: Friends Colleagues Family Organizations Professional Associations I can think of some others, but I’d like for my readers to chime in. Can you think of other sources for Social Networking that are not listed...

Informational interviewing is an informal way of building your networks and expanding your understanding of an organization or gaining new information in the industry.  The cool thing about this kind of interviewing method is that you’re not asking to be hired.   This kind of interview actually encourages a free exchange of ideas and information that probably would not have happened in a normal hiring interview.  Many times in an informational interview you might receive a referral to another person or department that is hiring. I have done a few of these informational interviews...

When a business wants to understand where they are in the market compared to their competitors they would perform a SWOT analysis.  SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  When an individual wants to figure out where they are in the job market compared to their competitors they would perform a personal SWOT analysis on their chosen career. A Personal SWOT analysis evaluates our Strengths, our Weaknesses, our career Opportunities, our career Threats.  Seeing it all on paper helps when you’re trying to make some hard decisions about what to do next. The SWOT...

We live busy lives.  Some of us have busier lives than others.  We often make appointments days, weeks, or even months in advance.  When recording an appointment, we write down the person’s name, reason for meeting, location of the meeting, in addition to the date and time.  If you’re like me, you have the name, time, and reason written down on a calendar. Many of us expect to retrieve the driving directions on the day of travel.  This practice of scheduling and Just In Time trip planning sounds perfectly reasonable to most people.  That is until you discover the...