You’ve got meetings to attend. Deadlines to meet. Errands to run. It’s hard to grow your career and expand your abilities in the midst of your daily grind, but if you don’t take the initiative, no one’s going to do it for you. Whether you feel like your career development is lagging or you’re chugging along nicely but want to give yourself that extra edge, here are a few steps you can take to make sure your career continues on the path to greatness.

Find a Career Coach, Mentor, or Buddy

Aside from the kind of coach who wears the eponymous short shorts, coaches of other sorts get kind of a bum rap. You’ve graduated from high school/college/grad school. You have a job. Maybe you’re even the boss now, or at least expert enough in what you do that you don’t need anyone telling you what to do most of the time. Most of us consider ourselves beyond the need for coaching.

Read the full article on lifehacker.com!

While I felt like I was extremely prepared to go up to bat for the salary negotiation (even if it could be just for an extra dollar or two per hour), I was taken off guard a little bit when the HR Business Partner immediately went into how my salary would be paid some percentile or another (I don’t remember what percentile it was exactly-I want to say that it was in the 90th percentile). She didn’t even miss a beat to get that in there.

At the time, I didn’t even really know what that meant that their offering was in such and such percentile. The HR Business Partner didn’t say it in so many words, but I remember she worded it in a way that made it sound like they wouldn’t negotiate because I was getting paid in X percentile. I accepted their initial offer because they matched my salary from the company that I used to work for as a contractor, so I was happy with it, plus all the other perks that came with the job.

So I guess my reason for writing you is to find out what your advice might be for a situation like that? Obviously, I could have just opened my mouth and asked, but at the same time I never really went up to bat for the salary negotiation before either, so I feel like I may have rolled over too soon. Maybe this could be a good learning opportunity for some of your other readers that may not know what it means to be paid in a certain “percentile”. Do you have any general salary negotiation tips you think are good to share?

Find out the answer on bnet.com!

Got a job that’s totally boring but pays the bills? Hold onto it. But don’t use it as an excuse NOT to go after your dream of being self-employed doing something you love.

A common misconception about successful independent workers is that one day, in dramatic fashion, they quit their dayjob, hung a shingle, and lived happily ever after. The truth is, most freelancers start off moonlighting, volunteering, interning, and doing client work at night and on weekends in addition to a nine-to-five gig. If you fantasize about living the freelancer life, you can do the same—even in a recession, starting now. Let’s turn some of your free time into a new career without giving up the steady paycheck.

Read the full article on lifehacker.com!

For many employees, lunch at work is typically about chowing down on last night’s leftovers or heading out to a nearby deli to grab an overpriced sandwich. For some, however, breakfast, lunch and dinner are just a few steps away from their cubicles, and come courtesy of their employers – even during this struggling economy.

So what are the companies where employees rave about food at work the most? The Glassdoor data team sifted through more than 375,000 company reviews to find out. In our latest report, we shine a light on the top 10 companies where employees love the food¹.  Plus, the report highlights what employee morale is like at each of the companies.

Read the full article on glassdoor.com

Reading through recent emails, I was struck by the number of questions from readers about how entrepreneurs can better manage their own time as they manage their complex businesses.

As a successful business matures and expands, bureaucracy usually starts to take hold and members of the senior management team find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer number of meetings and volume of correspondence. At this stage, an entrepreneur faces the challenge of how to effectively manage this new structure — a transition that has been the undoing of many enterprises.

First, let’s look at how to manage your own time. I receive 300 to 400 messages a day, so time management is an issue for me. I’m aware some senior executives simply delete all emails from people they don’t know personally, arguing that most of the messages just create distraction. To them, it is not worth the effort of weeding through the emails to find those that contain useful information. But I find this approach impolite and bad for business.

Read the full article on entrepreneur.com!

It’s no secret that working with a headhunter or recruiter can be an effective way to advance your career.

 Headhunters often have access to jobs that are not advertised elsewhere and can speed up the hiring process between an employer and potential candidate.

The trick, however, is understanding how a headhunter operates.

“As a career management coach, it is always surprising to me that even senior level job seekers often don’t know that ‘headhunters’ work for the companies, not the candidates,”

Read the full article on businessinsider.com!

Like many people, Evan Cunningham spends time on Facebook and Twitter while at the office. He sends out party invitations or chats about beer.

But unlike most people, he gets paid for it. And he gets a title.

Cunningham’s job is one of the newest in corporate America: social media manager. It’s also known, depending on the company, as social media wizard, social media ninja, social media diva or just plain online communities manager.

No matter what they’re called, experts in marketing a company’s name and wares on social network sites — such as Facebook, Twitter and special interest forums — are in demand.

Read the full article on chicagotribune.com!

In the last few years, executive resume writer Mary Elizabeth Bradford has noticed more of her clients seeking a career switch, even after having built successful careers in another field.

Nowadays, mid-level career changers — such as software developers who now work in finance or entrepreneurs who come back into corporate life — make up more than 45% of her practice. Many struggle to create an attention-grabbing resume, she says.

“The ability to objectively match up relevant skills to the position of choice is invaluable,” Bradford says.

Eager to switch careers? Here are 10 ways to improve your resume:

Read the full article on fins.com!

Technology is rewiring our brains, our culture and our habits.

Social media networks are disrupting industries including marketing, sales and knowledge industries. The job search market is also being reinvented as social media platforms provide the tools and information that HR managers had only dreamed about 5 years ago.

LinkedIn provides more than 100 million people with a platform that essentially is an on-line CV with additional networking benefits. Recruiters spend hours a day on LinkedIn researching and finding candidates for their clients.

Read the full article on jeffbullas.com!

You’re a smart, productive person capable of amazing things, but every so often you’re your own worst enemy. You’ll often convince yourself you’re going to fail, put off important tasks that need to get done, make choices based on pride rather than logic, and potentially end up making your work life miserable. Here’s a look at the stupid things you do all day at the office and how you can fix them.

Read the full article on lifehacker.com!

Everyone knows great employees are dependable, reliable, proactive, great team players, have strong workethics… all the standard (yet often uncommon) qualities. So what traits take a great employee to the next level and make them a truly outstanding employee?

The extra 1%: The qualities that often go unnoticed (and unremarked in performance evaluations) yet make a major impact on performance.

Read the full article on bnet.com!

Panelists will share their expertise on how to safeguard your reputation online:

• How to handle social media crises
• Tips to prevent and avoid them
• How to successfully manage the intersection of private and business online
• Recommended policies, guidelines and training

Location: Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, 200 East Randolph Street, Suite 2200

Tuesday, September 20 at 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM

Details!

I recently found an array of online job postings that greet seekers with these encouraging words: “MUST BE CURRENTLY EMPLOYED, NO EXCEPTIONS.”

How lovely. In a country with 13.9 million unemployed residents, that’s akin to a restaurant requiring a hungry person to bring a sandwich in before they can buy a sandwich.

Still, these postings are on multiple job-search sites, coming from companies ranging from retail shops to law firms.

Read the full article on chicagotribune.com!

So you have been looking for a new gig for a while and finally you find one that is worth checking out.  You get on LinkedIn and see if you know anyone in your network working there now or even in the past.  You find out the company is indeed a place you could see yourself in the future and continue to take the next steps.

You ask your colleague to make an introduction for you with the hiring manager and you also apply online through the company website.

All of this assumes of course you actually HAVE a LinkedIn profile which you have been building as well as the fact you are utilizing the relationships you have been cultivating.  If however, for some reason you have not then please let me know and I would be more than happy to assist you.

Read the full article on recruitingblogs.com!

Personal Marketing Plan

What is a personal marketing plan?

Well, it’s just that!  It’s a marketing plan that you create to promote your most important (and probably favorite) brand- yourself.  It brings focus and direction to your job search and allows you to spend your time actually getting closer to your goal instead of figuring out what to do.

In short: it’s a plan that lays out how you will launch your brand into the workplace.

Why It Works

There are two main reasons:

1. It provides personal focus and direction for your job search.

2. It directs networking contacts to provide the right type of help.

You will see what I mean by this if you continue to read on.

Read the full article on brand-yourself.com!

“Creativity is like chasing chickens,” Christoph Niemann once said. But sometimes it can feel like being chased by chickens — giant, angry, menacing chickens. Whether you’re a writer, designer, artist or maker of anything in any medium, you know the creative process can be plagued by fear, often so paralyzing it makes it hard to actually create. Today, we turn to insights on fear and creativity from five favorite books on the creative process and the artist’s way.

See the list on brainpickings.org!

Millions of professionals donate their time volunteering that impacts the lives of others, but it turns out volunteering is as good for your career as it is to those you help. Here’s how:

Helping Others Matters – All that time you spent raising record amounts of money, the year-end event you planned to perfection all felt like real work and…it was. New research from LinkedIn shows that one out of every five hiring managers in the U.S. agree they have hired a candidate because of their volunteer work experience. Your volunteer experience counts and if you don’t include it in your profile, on your resume or when you’re negotiating for a promotion you’re not getting the credit you deserve.

Test-Drive Your Passion – A truism of career success is that passion correlates with talent and talent translates to reward (both financial and emotional).  One of the safest ways of test-driving your passion as a career is to volunteer your talents.  Not only do you get to try your hand at a repertoire of new skills and experiences in a low-risk forum, but you’ll also be showcasing these talents to a whole host of peers who may just happen to have the connections you need to get hired.

Read the full article on linkedin.com!

(WASHINGTON) — Companies advertised the most job openings in three years, a hopeful sign after the worst month for hiring in nearly a year.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that employers posted 3.2 million jobs in July, up from 3.17 million in June. That is the largest number of openings since August 2008. Typically, it takes anywhere from one to three months to fill an opening.

More openings don’t guarantee more jobs. The government said last week that employers failed to add any net jobs in August, the worst month for hiring since September 2010. The unemployment rate stayed for the second straight month at 9.1 percent.

There’s heavy competition for each job. Nearly 14 million people were out of work in July. So roughly 4.3 unemployed workers were competing for each opening. That’s a slight improvement from June, when the ratio was 4.45. In a healthy economy, the ratio is closed to 2 to 1.

Read the full article on time.com!

Most people view creativity as an asset — until they come across a creative idea. That’s because creativity not only reveals new perspectives; it promotes a sense of uncertainty.

The next time your great idea at work elicits silence or eye rolls, you might just pity those co-workers. Fresh research indicates they don’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm.

Read the full article on sciencedaily.com!