My Global Career
Advancing your career in the global economy.
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9 Steps to Prepare for Behavioral Interviews
In a job interview, you may field questions about your situational behavior and decision making. That’s based on the premise that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Behavioral questions (often not even framed as a question) typically start out: “Tell me about a time…” or “Describe a situation…” Example questions are: “Tell me about a time where you confronted an unexpected problem,” “Describe an experience when you failed to achieve a goal,”... |
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Seven Things to Say After Hearing You’re Fired
Let’s talk about getting fired. So the boss calls you in to her office. Things haven’t been going well lately at the company. Sales are down. So is new hiring. You take a seat and your boss says, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we need to let you go.” What do you do? What do you say? What should you not say? Here’s the first question: Do you want to keep this job? If you do, what’s the best way to try and paint a picture for your boss that portrays... |
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And Do You Have Any Questions for Us?
As a job seeker, your goal in an interview is twofold; you need to gather enough information to decide if you want to work at a company, and you need to convince the interviewer that you are the candidate for the position. Part of convincing the employer that your worthy of a role is showing them that you’ve researched the organization beforehand. Visit the company’s website as a starting place and look for the company’s brochure, annual report, or 10-K for perusal. (Publicly traded companies... |
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Getting and Staying Employed in a Shrinking Job Market
To call today’s economy tough is like calling Moby Dick a big fish. Let’s face it, with the threat of double digit unemployment looming ahead it is down right scary for the vast majority of people I hear from each day. However, if you can stay focused, determined, upbeat and flexible these times offer opportunities for not only continuing but also advancing your career. Here is the straight scoop as I see it. While the number of jobs may be on the decline there is still work to be done. Doing... |
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What to Know About Hiring Millennials
This spring’s class of college graduates is part of a whole new generation – the Millennials.The mistake would be to assume they are like the generations that have gone before them. In our new book The M-Factor we help leaders understand how best to recruit, retain, manage, and motivate this next great generation. We believe that the events and conditions that happen during the formative years of a generation shape who they will become as employees. Here are three of our favorite facts that... |
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Green Careers: Targeting Eco-Friendly Companies
Until fairly recently the main measure of a company’s success was determined by its financial bottom line. Was it making a profit or was it sustaining losses? Although companies have been managing their activities by using their financial profits as their guiding light for a very long time, many stakeholders have sustained losses while the company’s shareholders have celebrated their wins. Times are changing, and the way companies measure their success is too. Now in addition to watching financial... |
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Six Ways to Be a Smart Career Risk Taker
To be highly successful in your career requires that you engage in risk taking. But risk is accompanied by fear–fear that you’ll screw up, fear that others will judge you, and fear of the unknown. Confront your fear and use it as a motivator! The benefits of being a courageous risk taker are many. If you make a mistake, you’ll become wiser. If you succeed, you’ll learn something about your capabilities and potential. Either way, being a risk taker at your job will position... |
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Would You Invest In Your Career?
One-half of US employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, up from two-fifths 10 years ago. Are you one of them? If you are seriously dissatisfied, it’s going to affect your attitude. And that may show up in your performance. It could also put you at risk of losing out to others who are more satisfied with what they do. But are you really in the wrong job or business? Or is it just a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence? Are you dissatisfied or unfulfilled for little... |
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Leveraging International Experience to Launch a Global Career
The world economy is in flux but emerging economies continue to drive significant growth for global enterprises. Global companies recognize that their best chances for success lie with recruiting managerial talent with international experience – it’s the big resume differentiator. For students who have studied abroad, this is good news, especially considering the contracting U.S. job market. However, many students with who have lived abroad don’t understand how to package this experience... |
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Five Ways to Use Intuition in Everyday Life
In our modern world, we’re moving at such a rapid pace we often miss seeing extraordinary signs and messages that pop up in our daily life. Whether you’re a soldier in Afghanistan, a corporate executive, a parent, spouse, or employee, when you can slow down enough to recognize and listen to your intuition, it can reveal truth, warn you of danger, uncover an ingenious idea, or help you understand people and situations in new ways. In my new book, Second Sight, I show how to keep an... |
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Pre-Pave Your Way to Global Success
Whether you’re working at home, overseas, or all over the world at once, the surefire way to become a success is to first be a great worker. No matter if you’re self-employed, CEO of a multi-national corporation, assistant manager, or a laborer, when you pre-pave your work experience you’re putting your focus on the “now” and choosing what kind of worker you want to be — and what successes you will have. A pre-pave is a statement or command that you think, say, or write that describes... |
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How Do I Negotiate a Raise?
At some point in your career, you are going to have to ask for a raise (or a promotion or a better benefits package). You’ve been working hard at your job, and now is the time to reap more rewards. How do you approach your employer? What do you say, and how do you say it? The ground rules for asking for a raise are basically the same as those for negotiating any deal. Here are some tried-and-true tips: Never begin by asking your employer to say yes and agree. In fact, start by... |
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Developing Leadership for Growth Companies
Not all executives are leaders. Not all managers are executives. Not all career people are professional. Top company management usually comes from the ranks of those who sell the core business product-service, not from those on the firing line who deliver it. That’s why in media, programming and news people rarely become management. Since advertising sales is the primary product of media, the sales people become the managers. In education, good teachers stay in the classroom. ... |
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Six Tips for Newbie Freelancers
I fled the cube 15 years ago to work as a freelance writer, and I’m happy to report that I’ve yet to be evicted from my home or wind up on food stamps. As a result, I’m constantly asked to share my top tips for would-be and newbie freelancers. Here are a few of my tried and trues: Turn down some of the gigs. Don’t automatically accept every project you’re offered. Instead, choose a handful of topics and industries to specialize in. Building a niche or three makes... |
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Engage Workers By Letting Them Think
“If you see a fork in the road, take it,” and “You can observe a lot by watching” are some of the many one-line quips of baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra. Yogi’s comments are both fun and a blinding flash of the obvious that often draw us back to simple truths. My favorite is “The future ain’t what it used to be.” One blinding flash of the obvious that is often missed, and that could be extremely pertinent in the age of employee engagement,... |
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Eight Steps to Make Communication a Vital Skill
The art of everyday communications should be every executive’s number one priority. Every statement and every communication must contain the elements connected to company success, including its values, motivation, goals and objectives. However, successful communication is not just about idea, it’s also about how it is said. These eight steps will help you turn communication into a hot skill, pivotal to advancing both your career and your company’s agenda: The first step for leaders... |
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What You Need to Lead – Negotiating Tactics
If you think about it, we’re negotiating on the job all the time. Whether we’re asking for the big promotion, the funding to attend a training or conference, or to take a vacation during “busy” season, we’re in more bargaining situations than we realize at work. Women, in particular, need as many negotiation tools as possible, given that we’re still paid less than men for equal work, and don’t have a critical mass―and therefore equal decision-making authority―at the top of... |
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Shop for a Job Before Writing a Resume
Writing a resume without a specific job in mind is like jumping off a diving board without knowing how deep the water is. Your chance of success is small and you could even hurt yourself. We all know that a resume is the primary tool for marketing your skills, knowledge, and experience to prospective employers. Most people make the mistake of treating their resume simply as a 1-2 page career history. A more accurate perspective is to see the resume for what it is: an advertisement for a wonderful,... |
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Your True Impression
Most of us have a pretty solid idea about how we think others perceive us. We tend to be aware of what we look like when we head out the door, especially if we are going someplace where we know it matters, like an interview. Yet few of us realize that because of our online presence, we are potentially always on an interview… 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you have any type of social media presence, from MySpace to Facebook, you should realize that all of those potential employers are watching.... |
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Decoding the Job Postings
Job seekers know, it’s brutal out there. Giving yourself every advantage in your search for employment plays a vital role in landing the job you desire. That being said, in a media savvy world, there really is no excuse not to investigate and find out everything you need to know about a prospective employer before you ever walk through the door for your first interview. But in reality, very few people spend the time and energy needed to accurately research a company in a way that will positively... |