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 responding to a rejection, career must-haves, when it’s time to leave your current job, making career choices, and the secret to staying energetic in your career.

From Ask a Manager: job rejections and vitriol

“My organization emails rejection notes to all applicants we don’t offer a job to. It’s a friendly and polite letter, and we send it within a few days of knowing that we’re not moving the applicant forward in the hiring process. Sometimes we hear back from people thanking us for the notification (which I recommend — reflects well on them), but every once in a while a candidate sends a nasty email back, outraged that they’ve been rejected.”

Wally’s Comment: Read this post. Keep it handy. Read it before you respond to any rejection letter.

From Steve Roesler at All Things Workplace: 5 Must-Haves for Careers and Career Leadership

“The problem is that just one or two of these criteria are typically not enough to keep us excited about our choice. We soon we find ourselves not enjoying our work. Although we love the pay maybe the boss is difficult; or, we’re not getting to do the tasks we enjoy; or, something else we overlooked is now an issue. You can avoid this problem by thinking about 5 C’s of your career at the outset.”

Wally’s Comment: Good advice on being picky enough.

From 45 Things: How to Know When It’s Time to Take Your Job Off Life Support

“You can’t exactly put your finger on it, but somehow your job has started sucking the life force out of you. Every day you feel a little more depressed, a little more like maybe you should just call in sick and sit home and watch “Cash Cab.” Still, the thought of looking for another job is even more depressing. There’s the business of writing the resume. You know you’ll face rejections. You’ll have to go on interviews, and that ranks right up there with having someone wax your entire body.”

Wally’s Comment: We’ve all been there. We’re sure we should go, but …

From My Global Career: Forget the laws of supply and demand

“What if you could glimpse the future and foresee low demand for your skills in 2012? Would you change careers based on that data or would you continue to chase your dream?”

Wally’s Comment: Good advice to start with yourself when it comes to career planning.

From Curt Rosengren at US News: The Secret to Staying Energetic in Your Career

“What if you had a way to make sure you’d never need to come to someone like me to help you figure out how to inject the energy back into your career? Better yet, what if the process were easy and painless? Would you want to know about it? Well here’s the secret sauce: Make your work a nonstop research experiment focused on you.”

Wally’s Comment: This is a simply stellar post about how to get the most out of every situation. My mother always said that the two most important things were to make good of whatever situation you were in and to learn from your experience. She would have loved this post.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under Tools and Strategies for Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.