Always Be Job Hunting

Job hunting while you have a job: here’s some important advice

Posted on April 1, 2014 by John N. Frank

Always be job hunting is the name of my book and my career mantra. No job is secure or lasts forever and you should always be looking ahead to where you want your career to go. But job hunting while you have a job requires special approaches, and precautions, so you don’t tip off your current employer and risk being fired before you find something new.

Fidning a job while working at one you want to leave requires special approaches to keep from tipping your hand.

This was brought home to me in a recent post I read on Forbes.com. “Hiding your job search can be difficult in this era of social media use, so always think before you act when it comes to posting anything online or discussing your activity with others (especially co-workers),” writes Lisa Quast, who herself has written a career book similar to mine. Continue reading →

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Internships and how to make the most of them

Posted on March 28, 2014 by John N. Frank

PR pro Ron Culp does a great career guide blog for PR students and is always Tweeting out interesting articles about job hunting. He recently sent one on making the most of internships which I thought worth sharing with you.

Internships are time to learn and network

The piece notes internships are opportunities for you to increase your skills sets and also to show you if you’ll enjoy a chosen profession or career niche. Its advice for how to make the most of an internship includes principles I’ve touched on here and in my book. Chief among these is to take on responsibilities and projects to learn as much as possible while interning. Continue reading →

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10 job interview questions to prep for

Posted on March 26, 2014 by John N. Frank

Job interviews can intimidate people. You only have a few minutes, perhaps just the first few seconds, to make a positive impression once you finally get to the interview step of the job-hunting process.

With many first interviews being done via phone calls these days, your tone of voice and ability to speak in complete and direct sentences is more important than ever. People are judging how you sound and how well you can articulate ideas in phone interviews. How you look isn’t playing a role, after all.

Interviews can be intimidating, so be prepared for these basic questions as a first step to overcome that feeling of intimidation.

So being prepare for questions is more important than ever. That’s what attracted me to a recent post on Doostang.com, a site for careers in finance. Continue reading →

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More effective resumes: know these four myths first

Posted on March 24, 2014 by John N. Frank

Resumes are normally where the job hunting process begins and most of us have sent out hundreds if not thousands of resumes in our job hunting careers. So advice about creating a more effective resume is always welcome.

That’s why I was attracted to a recent article on four resume myths from Doostang.com written by Sebastian King, a member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches.

Your resume is your sales tool, use it effectively.

The myths are:

Your Resume Can Only Be One Page
Nobody Will Read Your Resume
Your Resume Should Be Exhaustive
Your Resume Should Have an Objective Statement Continue reading →

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Why didn’t I get that job? Don’t beat yourself up

Posted on March 23, 2014 by John N. Frank

Failing to get a job you felt you were perfect for, and which you thought you’d interviewed great for, is a heart-breaking experience. I’ve written how that happened to me last year and it threw me off my job-hunting game for months.

So how do you pick yourself up and quickly recover from a failed effort to get a job you thought was yours? I saw some good advice about that recently on the Ivyexec.com blog. Th advice of the career coach there reminds me of the old date break-up line, it’s not you, it’s me.

How did I not get that job? Losing out on a spot you thought was ideal can be frustrating beyond belief.

Continue reading →

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Guest Post: 4 Great Online Grad School Degrees for Jobs of Tomorrow

Posted on March 21, 2014 by John N. Frank

Investing time and energy into earning a graduate degree may be highly rewarding, not only at the personal level but with respect to one’s career. Some master’s degrees are particularly appealing because of the career opportunities that could become available to individuals after they earn their degree.

Today’s technology makes earning a master’s degree more convenient and accessible than it has ever been before. The availability of master’s degree programs offered 100% online is growing every year. Online master’s degree programs may help to eliminate historical roadblocks, such as geographic and scheduling limitations, to earning a degree. There are many popular and useful masters degrees available to students interested in online learning. Here, we’ll outline some of the hottest online master’s degree programs available to students today that may help them launch their careers tomorrow. Continue reading →

Posted in education, job hunting | Tagged education, master degree, online masters degree | 1 Comment

What are five college majors to avoid?

Posted on March 19, 2014 by John N. Frank

Articles on majors to avoid, usually because of a lack of job prospects for majors in those degrees, pop up quite frequently. I doubt they convince many people to drop majors they love, but they can prepare you for what you’ll face in the job world. So here’s a list of five majors to avoid that appeared n Yahoo! Education recently.

Studying for a degree? Here are five to think long and hard about along with five with brighter prospective

The degrees are:

Architecture
Anthropology
The arts
Philosophy
Religious studies Continue reading →

Posted in education, job hunting | Tagged back to school, college degree, skills training | Leave a comment

Job interview misconceptions you should know

Posted on March 17, 2014 by John N. Frank

Job Interviews are rarely an enjoyable experience. You need to be prepared for anything and everything an interviewer might ask, including some of the more off-the-wall questions some companies like to throw out just to see how you handle the unexpected. You also need to know about misconceptions you might have walking in, so I was drawn to a recent post on doostang.com that lists three interview misconceptions.

A job interview, whether in person or by phone, is stressful. So know what to expect, and what not to expect.

The three misconceptions listed in the piece are:

The Most Qualified Candidate Gets the Job
The Interviewer is Prepared for…the Interview
The Interviewer will Ask All the Necessary Questions Continue reading →

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Journalism jobs: how do you plan for a changing profession?

Posted on March 11, 2014 by John N. Frank

I recently took part in a student/alumni networking event at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, the school I have a journalism masters degree from myself. The event was called speed networking, setting me up with a student every seven minutes to talk about their career aspirations and the profession in general.

Almost every one of the seven I met told me they want to work in magazines. I found that shocking, given how few magazines are left and how many will be gone in the not too distant future. Simply put, the advertisers who once paid to support magazines so all us journalists could write long-form stories in them don’t want to pay anymore. They’ve found more cost-effective ways to reach their customers (ie Web ads, social networking, one-on-one marketing).

The magazine I work for these days is one of the few islands in the storm of change sweeping print journalism. I sometimes feel like we’re in one of the mountain glens that haven’t been inundated by the next ice age, but that age is coming. Continue reading →