Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about the future of the workplace, tips for frustrated job seekers, help for introverts, surviving when you’re drowning in a new job, and lessons in leadership and career from old hands.

From the Wall Street Journal: What’s in Your Future?
“I’ve been pondering the future since my dad took me to visit the World Future Society headquarters in Bethesda, Md., when I was 10 years old. And now that I’m a career writer, it’s my job to think about what the workplace will look like — and what it will demand from us — in 2025.”

Wally’s Comment: Wall Street Journal columnist Alexandra Levit takes a look ahead and shares some ideas about what you should be getting ready for.

From Kapstone Recruiting and Training: 15 Tips for the Frustrated Job-Seeker
“Looking for a new job can be very frustrating. As with any new adventure that you embark upon, you must have the tools necessary to be successful in your venture. Job-hunting is no different. Here’s a short list of to-do’s for job seekers (not in any particular order).

Wally’s Comment: If your job search is stalled and you’re tired and frustrated, check out this post. It’s got fifteen suggestions for simple things you can do right away. If you can’t find something here, check to see if you still have pulse.

From Smartbrief: 10 tips to help introverts win at work
“Even in today’s noisy business world, introverts can still learn to build on their quiet strength and succeed. The goal is not changing your personality or natural work style, but embracing and expanding who you are. Here are 10 tips to help you make it happen.”

Wally’s Comment: Sometimes it seems like the workplace is designed for extroverts. If you’re one of the shy people, read this for some ideas about how to do what you do well to make what you don’t do well irrelevant.

From Anita Bruzzese: How to Survive When You’re Drowning in a New Job
“I’ve had a lot of “first days” at work in my career, but none were like the summer when I was 19 and got a job as a bank teller.”

Wally’s Comment: You’re new on the job and stuff is flying at you. You can feel the level of paper rising toward your neck. Your in-box is ballooning and the voicemail light on your phone just keeps on blinking. There are those appointments, especially the ones with your boss and you’ve got to go to HR and sign yet more forms. What do you do? What do you do? Well, first, sit down and read this.

From Management Excellence: Things I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me When I First Became a Leader
“One of the motivations in writing Practical Lessons in Leadership a couple of years ago was to take a stab at leaving behind that letter we all wish we would have received when we first became leaders.  You know the letter…it’s the one that if we had read it and actually followed the advice, we might have short-circuited a few years of learning things the hard way. ”

Wally’s Comment: Read this post. It will keep you from saying, “I wish I’d known,” at least about the wisdom that’s in the post.

You hear the phrase at parties. It shows up in text messages and tweets and emails. People get stuck in jobs they hate, but can’t leave. That only happens more often in a whitewater economy.

If that’s your situation, what should you do? Coach extraordinaire Shaun Kieran, likens the situation to being on a desert island.

Desert islands are staples of literature. We know the stories, from Robinson Crusoe, through the movie Cast Away and the TV show Lost. The environment can be hostile, nourishment is hard to come by, and you’re pretty much on your own.

Does that sound like the situation where you work? If it is, you’ve got two choices.

One choice is to do nothing. Just sit there, gazing out to sea and hoping for rescue. This is the worst of the choices. Rescues rarely happen. Even if there’s one in your future, sitting there waiting and hoping doesn’t make things better.

You need to make choices that make things better. Figure out how to survive on the island. As long as you’re there it pays to be on the best terms possible with your boss and co-workers. It pays to keep yourself as safe as possible.

You may find that changing things on your end changes the situation. If not, there’s another course of action.

You can plan an escape. Find a way to get off the island to someplace more congenial. Be careful, though. You want to wind up in a land of milk and honey and not exchange one desert island for another.

Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about starting a business (or not), credit reports, online classes, search buddies, and managing yourself.

From Inspired Startup: 10 Reasons Not To Start a Business Today
“If you are thinking about starting a business now, here are 10 reasons why you should reconsider.”

Wally’s Comment: There are lots of articles out there suggesting that once you’re laid off you should consider starting a business. After all many people who are now in business for themselves started just that way. If you’re looking for success models, there are plenty, including Bernie Marcus and Art Blank, the founders of Home Depot. And there are other people, like me, who used getting fired as the trigger to ramp up a part-time business. But there are some good arguments against becoming a “necessity entrepreneur.” You’ll find some in this post.

From Career Diva at MSNBC: Can an employer ask for my credit report?
“Many job seekers are stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. You’ve lost your job, so you’re having trouble paying bills on time, and that’s hurt your credit scores. At the same time, employers are increasingly using your credit history to make hiring decisions.”

Wally’s Comment: Eve Tahmincioglu doesn’t simply answer the question in the post title. She also takes a look at trends, strategies, and your rights.

From Anita Bruzzese: Do Online Classes Make Sense for Your Career?
“As the job market continues to flounder, many professionals are turning to online classes as a way to help save a current career or start a new one — but both universities and students are warning that not all online educations are created the same.”

Wally’s Comment: Here’s some guidance on whether and how to choose an online class as part of your education or personal development.

From Marci Alboher: Do you need a job search buddy?
“After a while of navigating the job market on her own, DiRago decided that it would help if she found someone to meet with regularly to move along her job search. She says she is looking for the kind of person who’d hold her to task if she said she was going to make 5 career-related contacts in a given week.”

Wally’s Comment: A “job search buddy” is one variation of a concept that’s usually called “accountability partner.” Accountability partners help you achieve your goals by being someone you agree to report to on activities and results and by giving you feedback. For many, a job search partner could be a great way to stay on track and working on the job search, even when motivation lags.

From Steve Roesler: Managing Yourself
“Unlike Wally Bock, I never met Peter Drucker. Yet he has made a huge difference in my life (as has Wally).  I’m discovering that although a generation of managers were raised on Drucker’s wisdom and insight and benefited as a result, many who are new to supervision are unfamiliar with the depth and applicability of his work. In the March-April 1999 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Drucker did an article titled “Managing Oneself”.  It’s only about a dozen pages and there was a reprint in 2005. Here is a sampling that I hope will move you to seek out more of his writing and teaching:”

Wally’s Comment: Steve’s right, Drucker made a huge difference in my life. I only met him once, but he influenced me through his writing. I still keep his books around and I’ve found that a lot of the advice is timeless. Steve has some lucid comments on Drucker plus a pointer to a fine article. This post is a good intro to Peter Drucker if he’s new to you and a nice reminder of the value he delivered if you’re an old Drucker fan like me.

Joseph Campbell was a mythologist by profession. He studied and wrote about comparative religion and comparative mythology.

Because he was both a prolific and engaging fellow, many people know him through video and audio tapes with titles like The Masks of God and The Hero’s Journey. They also picked up his philosophy, “Follow your bliss.”

The idea that you should do what you love is powerful. But it’s led to a more specific and dangerous philosophy. That’s the one that says, “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

It sounds good. But it’s an idea that has lured an amazing number of people into a frustrating and unfulfilling life.

Why? Because the fact that you love something doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be good at it or that you’ll be able to make enough money to live the life you want to live.

I’m all for doing what you love. I just don’t think it’s the only career plan that works.

Take Vince. For most of his career, work was the way he made money so he could fill the woodshop in his garage with great tools. Vince worked at a refinery to make the money to follow his bliss. He’s happy.

Or, take Dan. Dan loves to play music. He was good enough to make a living at it, but he decided he would love music more if he didn’t have to go to work every day and do it. Besides, he didn’t like the late hours and life on the road.

Dan works as a computer tech during the day. He plays music in his off-work time. He’s happy.

What works for you? It might be following your bliss into a career or an industry you love. But there are lots of people out there who’ve fashioned happy and successful lives, doing something at work besides the thing they love most.

If you’ve got a job where you can make enough money doing something interesting with people you like, that’s a pretty good deal. You don’t have to love it to like it.

So follow your bliss, for sure. But think about whether your job should be part of your bliss or a way to make the money to follow it.

Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about getting more productive, being an interesting brand, “wild-card” interview questions, getting passed over and being yourself.

From Career Adventure: 15 minutes a day to more productive work
“In my house, no crime is more likely to end up in instant dismemberment than scuffing my Precious Portfolio.”

Wally’s Comment: Nothing fancy. Nothing brand new. Just good advice on a way to increase your own productivity. We all need this from time to time because we let our discipline slip.

From Personal Branding Blog: The Five Laws of Being an Interesting Brand
“The strategies and channels we’ve been using are becoming weapons of mass destruction and tools of great opportunity. We’ve seen brands, such as United Airlines, tarnished when a single person produces a YouTube video after a bad customer service experience.  We’ve seen other brands succeed, such as Susan Boyle’s viral bonanza on the internet and the reactivation of Michael Jackson’s brand after death on Facebook and other channels.”

Wally’s Comment: Not just a brand, but an interesting one. In his usual helpful way, Dan Schawbel boils it down to do-able steps.

From Yahoo Hot Jobs: Answering Wild-Card Interview Questions
“While a rare interviewer may ask these questions simply to watch you squirm, many wild-card questions serve a purpose. Generally speaking, interviewers ask these questions to see how well you perform under pressure and think on your feet. They also might ask wild cards to break out of the routine of a typical interview in order to get a glimpse of your genuine personality.”

Wally’s Comment: These are the ones you can’t prepare for because they come out of the blue. Well, maybe you can prepare. This post tells you how.

From Business Week: Getting Over Being Passed Over
“You didn’t get the promotion you wanted, deserved, and expected? Don’t get mad. Get going on further refining your professional profile”

Wally’s Comment: Unless you are a freak of nature, there will come a time in your career when an assignment or promotion you really expect to get goes to another and in your eyes, less qualified person. When that happens, this advice will help.

From Marshall Goldsmith: Do You Have an Excessive Need to Be Yourself?
“If we buy into our behavior definition of ‘me,’ which most humans do, we can learn to excuse almost any annoying action by saying, ‘That’s just the way I am!’”

Wally’s Comment: Marshall Goldsmith is the master of turning the puzzling into the obvious. If you’ve ever said or thought: “That’s not me!” or “That’s just the way I am!” then this post is for you. I put it last in the list because you may need some time for self-reflection when you’re done reading.

Who are you? What’s your personal brand?

If you’re employed, a personal brand is your identity. You want it to help you keep the job you have and advance to something better.

If you’re looking for work, a personal brand is the face you present to potential employers. You want it to show your strengths and employability.

That’s what’s behind the explosion in books and articles and blog posts about personal branding. Amazon lists almost seven hundred books on the topic. Ten percent of them have been published within the last six months.

The books run the gamut in quality and helpfulness, but most of them have a single thing in common. They’re about tactics.

So you can learn how to present yourself. You can learn how to use social media to increase awareness of your personal brand. You can learn how your clothing and your resume and even your handshake tell the world about you.

That’s good. But what’s missing is that your brand should be you.

Your brand should be you. It should not be what you wish you were. You need to be realistic about who you are and your strengths. Otherwise you’re writing checks you can’t cash.

Your brand should be you. It should not be what someone else is. Examples are good for guidance. But you are a unique individual and your brand should reflect that.

Your brand should be you. It should not be what “they” want. Your brand should help you live the life and have the career that brings you success and joy and fulfillment. It needs to be based on who you are, not what happens to be hot in the market just now.

Use the tools of personal branding. Master the techniques. Just make sure the brand you present is the person you are.

Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about one successful job search, giving a great interview, emotions at work, and increasing self-discipline.

From Liz Wolgemuth at US News & World Report: 7 Lessons From a Successful Job Search
“For the past few months, I’ve been helping someone look for a job. By that I mean that I have been offering my advice by the bucketload to a receptive, if discriminating, job seeker who then had to do the actual work of finding employment. Last week, this job search ended with some of the greatest words in the English dictionary: “We are pleased to extend to you an offer of employment.” Here are seven lessons from the hunt.”

Wally’s Comment: Don’t be jealous of someone else’s success. Learn from it.

By definition a successful job search includes a successful interview. Here’s advice from two bloggers about how to do better at interviewing.

From David Silverman at HBP: Ace the Interview
“In any event, through a combination of skill, perseverance, and luck, you’ve landed the interview. In short order, you’ll be alone in front of a gauntlet of interviewers with no recourse to the backspace key to fix any verbal gaffes. Now what? ”

Wally’s Comment: This may not be ground-breaking or startlingly new to you. That’s OK. It’s good advice worth hearing in lots of different ways. One great point involves answering questions.

From MN Headhunter: The 7 Most Difficult Interview Questions…And How to Answer Them
“Because you will have only about fifteen minutes to sell your yourself to an interviewer (statistically, this is the total amount of real “talk-time” you have in an interview), you must be prepared for the “tough” interview questions and be prepared to answer them succinctly and effortlessly. Through your role-playing exercises, you will have prepared solid and candid answers to questions, which will vastly improve your success in every interview.”

Wally’s Comment: David Silverman’s post suggests a general strategy for answering interview questions. In this post, Lorraine Russo gives you a specific strategy for seven of the toughest questions.

From the Wall Street Journal: Dial Down Emotions
“When it comes to displaying feelings at work, you have to be careful. There’s passionate — and there’s emotionally unstable.”

Wally’s Comment: Alexandra Levit gives you some good advice on what to do when your emotions have you heading toward the edge.

From Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist: How to Have More Self-Discipline
“Something I’ve noticed in the last year is that most of our happiness is actually dependent on our self-discipline.”

Wally’s Comment: Creativity and success grow best in the soil of discipline. Penelope Trunk’s post lays out the why and some of the hows.

Social media is a hot buzz phrase. Sometimes we talk about social media like they’re technology. Other times we act as if social media are a separate world, where “followers” are a goal and “to friend” is a verb.

If you think that way, you’ll miss the main advantage of social media. Used well, they can improve the quality of your life.

Last week Jackie Cameron had a marvelous post her blog titled: “Social capital and why you should start building your network when you are young.” Definitions of “social capital” differ, but they all agree that there is value in our social connections.

It’s the social part of social media that delivers the value. It’s the friends who support you and the friends of friends who help you find out about job opportunities. It’s the people you connect to and the knowledge and relationships they share with you that are the value.

All the rest is technology. Technology is constantly changing, but human nature is constant. Human habits change, but slowly, adapting to new technology.

So what can social media do for you? Social media can extend your reach and help you stay in touch with more people.

Social media can help you reap the benefits that social networks have always offered. People with strong social networks are happier. They’re healthier. They handle stress better. They live longer.

Your challenge is to use the new social media to do the things that human beings have always done. Use them to stay in touch with your friends for life. Use them to reach out to old friends and new friends.

There are other things you can do. You can pick up ideas and new information. You can share information easily and broadly.

But social media will do the most to enrich your life when you attend to the social aspects. Make new friends. Stay connected with friends old and new.

Every week I check dozens of “career” blogs and other online publications, looking for things that will help you find a job, get promoted, develop your skills, and keep everything in perspective and balance. Here’s the pick of the lot for this week. I’m pointing you to items about helping your boss de-stress, keeping promises, your appearance, being coachable, and career lessons.

From Anita Bruzzese guest blogging at Cube Rules: How to support your stressed-out manager
“While many employees are losing sleep these days worrying about their jobs, it’s a bit doubtful that they also are losing z’s fretting over how the boss is faring in these tough times. Still, it may be time workers started giving some consideration to what a manager is going through.  Because as everyone knows, when a manager is stressed, that stress can often roll downhill and land directly on employees.”

Wally’s Comment: A friend of mine used to say, “When it rains on the boss, we all get wet.” When the boss is stressed it’s not good for anyone. Here are some things you can do to help.

From the Wall Street Journal: Appearances Matter
“When you’re reinventing yourself in a new career, first impressions are even more important because everyone secretly doubts that you have what it takes to be successful. Without waiting for you to explain why you’re qualified, people will make a snap judgment based on your appearance and demeanor. Do you look and sound like someone who does this job?”

Wally’s Comment: Perhaps, in theory, only your qualifications should matter. But in reality, “fit” matters. That’s why you should pay attention to how you look.

From Andy Robinson: The Magic of Keeping Your Promises and Commitments
“How effective are you at keeping the promises and commitments you make – those commitments you make to others and those commitments you make to yourself? The cost you pay for not keeping your promises may not seem like much at the time, but the true cost is a cumulative cost, a cost that, over time, will significantly erode (1) the trust others place in you, (2) your personal integrity, (3) your self-esteem, (4) your self-confidence and (5) your self-respect.  A high cost indeed.”

Wally’s Comment: There is almost nothing more important than keeping your promises.

From Dharma Consulting: Why Should You Be Coachable?
“When I was learning to ride a bike, my father would run along side of me holding the back of the seat to stabilize my balance. At a certain point, he would let go – and I’d be riding on my own. For a few seconds. Then my balance would wobble and he’d take hold to stabilize me again. All learning is like that.”

Wally’s Comment: Careers lead you from one learning experience to the next. At each step, you’ll have to learn new skills that weren’t important before. Coaching is often the best way. But you have to be coachable.

From Pick the Brain: 8 Powerful Career Lessons They should’ve Handed out on Graduation Day
“It has been 7 years since my graduation day and I still remember the excitement; I was relieved that the ”exam phase” of my life was over; I looked with enthusiasm towards my first job. Little did I know that the “working world” would require an extraordinary effort and loads of other skills! My journey on the career ladder would have been smoother, had I known a few important lessons. While there are many “on the job” lessons, some things in life must be experienced, to be truly understood. What follows are 8 such career lessons, I wish they’d handed out to me along with my diploma.”

Wally’s Comment: Don’t you wish you could tell the world what you wish you’d learned before you hit the workforce? If you had a blog you could. But then you’d find it hard to top this post. It’s worth reading despite the typos and spelling errors. One additional lesson for the author might be to get an editor or at least a spell checker.