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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 6:07 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.