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How to Build the Career of Your Dreams: Try These Tips and Strategies Today

Career development is a continuous journey of self-improvement with the goal of advancing your skills, increasing your knowledge, and expanding experiences to serve your professional aspirations. While it's primarily your personal responsibility to generate this growth, employers can play a significant role in supporting their employees' career development by providing resources, coaching, and learning opportunities. This collaboration between employees and employers can be a win-win, where individuals achieve their career goals, and companies benefit from a skilled and motivated workforce. Let’s explore strategies to take advantage of your current employer’s resources, as well as advice for creating your own career development plan.

The Art of the Search: What You Need to Know to Land Your Dream Job

In today's up-and-down job market, finding your dream job can be a daunting task. The search for your ideal job requires more than just scrolling through job listings and sending out resumes. It's about honing your skills, understanding your values, and networking strategically. In this blog post, we'll delve into the art of job searching, providing you with essential tips and techniques to help you land a job that really works for you.

Building a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce: Why It Matters and How to Achieve It

Why it Matters: The Right Choice for People and for Business

Diversity and inclusion have been a point of focus in the business world for a long time. With more cultural education and Gen Z now included in the general workforce, the priority has skyrocketed in recent years, especially for job seekers. Employers are being pressured to deliver on big promises, and many of them have good intentions but just don’t know how to accomplish such an enormous shift. This blog will touch on several reasons why diversity matters and how to start building more diversity into your business.

Advance Your Career Today with These 6 Simple Habits

Career advancement is the process of moving through various organizations and/or positions in pursuit of your ultimate professional goals. There are many motivations behind advancing one’s career, including the desire to be a boss or leader, the inclination to expand one’s skillset, the pursuit of expertise in a certain field, and more. Here are 6 habits that can help you start advancing your career right now.

How to Benefit from Rest, Positivity, and Planning After a Layoff

Receiving the news that you’ve been laid off is often shocking. There is instant grief, fear, and uncertainty to navigate. It may be overwhelming to even think about searching for a new job (luckily, that’s not the first step.) You deserve to take your time through this next season. Take a deep breath and recenter yourself before moving forward; your efforts will be more productive with a clear game plan and a solid footing. Here are 5 steps to take after a layoff and fortunately, none of them are applying for jobs (at least, not yet.)

5 Actionable Tips for Achieving Better Work-Life Balance

Between digital business models, remote working, and hustle culture, our work is pushing its way further and further into our personal lives every day. If we are not intentional, it will easily take over, leading to burnout, excessive stress, poor mental health, and deteriorating relationships. Work-life balance is a personal goal that suggests that working is not our highest responsibility, but instead being whole, healthy people is. Developing work-life balance is an ongoing practice that involves prioritizing our values, creating boundaries, taking care of ourselves, and being accountable for how we spend our energy and our time – with the overall goal of feeling healthier and more stable in our everyday lives.

How You Can Ask Your Boss for a Raise or a Promotion

Asking your boss for a raise or promotion can be a daunting task, but it's a necessary step in advancing your career and increasing your earning potential. While it may be uncomfortable, approaching the conversation with confidence and a clear plan can increase your chances of success. Here are some tips on how you can ask your boss for a raise or promotion.

Networking Mysteries Revealed: How to Build Rich Relationships and Unlock Exciting Opportunities

Networking is a critical skill to develop and an important tool in your professional toolbox. Whether you’re currently employed, unemployed, switching industries, or otherwise progressing on your current track, networking will provide countless opportunities throughout your career. Building relationships through connections enables us to meet new people, link up with mentors, learn about new industries, and develop unexplored opportunities. Let’s consider several essential tips for networking and turning connections into opportunities.

Six Smart Questions to Ask at Your Next Job Interview

Congratulations! You've landed that interview for the job you were hoping for! While you're likely to be grilled with questions by the interviewer, don't forget that you should also come prepared with your own set of smart questions to ask. Asking thoughtful questions shows that you are genuinely interested in the position and the company, and it also gives you an opportunity to assess if the job is the right fit for you. Here are some smart questions to consider asking in your next job interview. 

Work Burnout: What It Looks Like and How To Recover

Your job is your livelihood allowing you to pay your rent or mortgage, put food on the table, make your car payment, pay for soccer gear for the kids, and hopefully spend at least a little time having fun. But your job shouldn’t control your life, make you eternally exhausted and cynical, or cause you to start becoming apathetic at work (or in life). If you’re able to relate to any or all of this, you likely are experiencing work burnout. But before you quit your job altogether, learn to recognize the signs and how to recover.

4 Time Management Skills to Help You be More Productive

When it comes to being productive at work, it can take a lot of work to stay on track for 8 hours a day. If you let yourself get distracted from goals or priorities or with new tasks that land on your desk, you can start to feel overwhelmed with everything on your plate. Practicing good time management skills can help you keep up with demands and feel confident that you’re going to meet your deadlines.

4 Great Ways to Increase Job Security

Since the start of the pandemic, the economy and the job market have been tumultuous and unreliable. A multitude of people lost their jobs and had to search for new ones. Even if you were able to keep your job, there still seems to be uncertainty as we move into a post-covid world. While some layoffs are unavoidable, here are some ways that you can increase your job security.

3 Tips for Talking to Your Boss When You're Struggling

Life inevitably brings struggles for each of us and balancing these with our day-to-day work life has the potential to become unmanageable. It might be in your nature to handle things on your own, but sharing your struggles with others can allow for support and understanding as you face life’s challenges. Whether your struggle involves work or not, when it starts affecting your job performance, sharing them with your boss can be helpful. Here are some tips on how to have this conversation.

The Best Ways to Give and Take Constructive Criticism at Work

Part of working for any company is giving and receiving feedback to grow your career and your business. Many people want to avoid criticism, but if done correctly, it can be a beneficial tool for everyone involved.

How You Can Be A Great Team Member at Work

While hard skills such as graphic design, data analysis, or accounting experience can help you land a job, the truth is that many employers are looking for workers who are team players, great communicators, and can adapt to changing plans or dynamics. While these soft skills might call for self-awareness, they require no training or experience and they are abilities that will help you land the job you want - and keep it!

Six Tips to Help You Overcome Meeting Anxiety with Confidence

You’re getting ready to go into a meeting and that old familiar feeling starts bubbling up. Your heart rate increases, your chest starts to tighten, you start sweating, and you feel nauseous. Meeting anxiety is common, but you have the opportunity to overcome it and step into the conference room (or click into the video call) with confidence. Here’s how:

How You Can Set SMART Goals and Boost Your Career

Feeling stuck in your job or your career overall? Setting goals is a great way to make headway when you’re feeling in a rut and can give you the boost you need to get where you want to be. Without goals, getting that new job or promotion you’ve been hoping for could be difficult.

How You Can Learn to Manage Up & Reach Your Career Goals

Some of the most difficult-to-manage relationships in our lives are our work relationships. We don’t usually get to choose who we work with or who manages us at work. Many bosses and people in middle management are promoted not because of their ability to manage people but because of their skills, knowledge, or experience in a particular field. 

7 Bad Work Habits to Quit this Year

After you’ve been at your job for a while, it can be easy to get into a routine or go on autopilot - that’s when you start developing bad work habits. You’ve likely been caught up in at least one of these seven common work habits, and we’ve got some advice on why it’s time to kick them to the curb. 

3 Paths Toward a More Productive Workday

All of us have hours of the day and times of the year where we are more focused, more productive. Whether we do our best thinking in the morning or can’t seem to wake up when it’s cloudy outside, our levels of productivity and accomplishment are always shifting. But there are things you can do to make yourself more consistent in your productivity. 

The Art of Negotiating

Whether you’re looking for a new job or celebrating working at the same company for years, the time will inevitably come for you to negotiate. 

Building Your Career

As we’ve grown our business to the place it’s gotten to, expanded service offerings, built and sustained a team, and adapted our workplace to changing social and economic environments, we’ve learned a lot about what makes some people successful. Those who learn as they work, who ask good questions and respond to training and correction move ahead. 

New Jobs and Better Perspectives on Your Work History

Are you in a place of starting fresh? Maybe you’ve just graduated with a degree and it’s time to put your education to work. Maybe COVID took your life on an unexpected detour and now you’re plotting a new course. Or maybe you’ve finally said, “Enough is enough” and you are redefining yourself and your future, taking control, taking some risks and doing something you’ve never done before. Wherever you’re at, starting something new takes hard work and a lot of nerve. 

Turning a New Year into a New Professional Season

Since the start of the pandemic, our job market has been in a profoundly volatile place. From supply chain issues to workforce shortages, budgetary restraints, and new standards for productivity and effectiveness, there’s not an industry unaffected by the changes forced upon us.

The Secrets to Changing Industries  

Depending on what you do for a living or what you are expecting out of the career you’re building, you may feel like a new job is the wrong choice. Sometimes, “starting over” at a new company or in a new industry means giving up seniority, specialized expertise, and opportunities for promotion and pay increase.

The Essential Message to Communicate in a Job Interview

In this job market, it’s hard saying what will get you hired. For some places, it’s a simple question of whether you’ll show up. That’s all it takes. For other jobs, the standards certifications needed to do the job well are still a requirement, but the context and setting for the work may be up for discussion.

How to Find a Job When Everyone is Hiring

Have you ever been voicing your frustrations of the hassles and hurdles of finding a job only to have someone feel compelled to share the not-so-helpful quip, “Lots of places are hiring.” The statement is clearly not being made by someone who is actually looking for a job. The actual process of searching for, interviewing for, preparing for, and starting a new job is something altogether different when you’re the one going through it. While many places may say they’re hiring, that doesn’t mean they’re hiring you.

And so as you consider how to go on this journey of job hunting, there are things to think about. 

Making Work Work for Your Company

The past 18 months have taken all of us by surprise. None of us knew how vulnerable our companies were — even in one of the most thriving economic seasons we’d ever experienced. None of us could have predicted that we’d have to redefine the workplace and realign expectations we put on performance. Now as we move forward within a new economy that essentially has pushed a massive restart button on all of us, we have to revisit some of the most fundamental components of employment.

You and Your Boss: Tips to a Better Relationship

Let’s face it. Some bosses deserve a mug that calls out how great they are at their jobs. Other bosses will only get one if they buy it for themselves. Not every boss is a great leader, and not every great leader is a boss. Deciding whether someone is worth following isn’t always about the title they hold or the authority they’re given. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a better relationship with the boss you have.

Here’s some advice from some seasoned professionals on how to make your relationship with your boss as good as it can possibly get.

Positioning Yourself for Promotion

The job market across the country is in a funny place right now. The recently-subsided COVID lockdown put many people out of work. Many small businesses suffered irreparable setbacks as they were unable to keep their doors open. Many large businesses changed the way they thought about their employees, the way they measured success, and even how they defined the word “office.”

This economic season has some people struggling to return to work. It has others wondering where they should go next after their last job was lost to the pandemic. But if you are one of those employees who has been able to maintain a job or has returned to work, there are ways to take advantage of this economic new world. There are ways to position yourself for new, better opportunities.