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8 Tips to Fit More Reading into Your Schedule

8 Tips to Fit More Reading into Your Schedule

There are plenty of reasons reading more is important for professionals, from improving brain functions to keeping up on trends and developments in your industry, giving you something to talk about and think about outside work and family, to just feeling like you are using your brain.  But when was the last time you sat down with a novel or any other book you didn’t have to read for work?  In fact, 31% of Americans report that they have read just 1-5 books in the last year.

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8 Tips to Fit More Reading into Your Schedule in 2020

8 Tips to Fit More Reading into Your Schedule in 2020

There are plenty of reasons reading more is important for professionals, from improving brain functions to keeping up on trends and developments in your industry, giving you something to talk about and think about outside work and family, to just feeling like you are using your brain.  But when was the last time you sat down with a novel or any other book you didn’t have to read for work?  In fact, 31% of Americans report that they have read just 1-5 books in the last year.

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How Holiday Parties Can Help You Expand Your Network

How Holiday Parties Can Help You Expand Your Network

It’s holiday party time!

Whether you love everything about networking opportunities or started sweating just reading the title of this post, December can be a great time to expand and deepen your network. Here are some tips to do just that (and avoid the alternative scenarios that are the stuff of office gossip everywhere). This topic is so important and so fraught with peril that has been addressed by numerous people over the years. No one blog post can fully exhaust it, but our goal is to get you ready in 1,400 words or less.

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7 Strategies to Manage Stress, Burnout, and Anxiety During the Job Search

7 Strategies to Manage Stress, Burnout, and Anxiety During the Job Search

“Kate” has it all together.  We’ve worked to ensure her resume is excellent.  Her cover letters are customized and strong.  She is focused in her job search.  She knows that networking is (usually) where the jobs are, and has worked to build an engaged and supportive network.

But . . . she’s at that point where she’s waiting to receive an offer for a job, waiting on another interview that needed to be rescheduled, waiting for a couple of key people in her network to come back from vacation and make introductions. And she’s hit a wall.  She is tired from the stress of job interviews, networking, tired of working to find her next job at the same time she’s working ridiculous hours at the current job, tired of also doing her share at home, anxious about how much longer she’ll have to continue enduring this process. . . . 

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8 Tips to Fit More Reading into Your Schedule

8 Tips to Fit More Reading into Your Schedule

There are plenty of reasons reading more is important for professionals, from improving brain functions to keeping up on trends and developments in your industry, giving you something to talk about and think about outside work and family, to just feeling like you are using your brain.  But when was the last time you sat down with a novel or any other book you didn’t have to read for work?  In fact, 31% of Americans report that they have read just 1-5 books in the last year.

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How to Improve Your Executive Presence Quickly and Easily

How to Improve Your Executive Presence Quickly and Easily

When you think of executive presence, what comes to mind?  Is it looking rested and like you just came back from a vacation?   Having just the right outfit for every event?  Having a booming voice that enables the speaker to be heard over chaos?  After decades of working with leaders throughout my career, I can tell you that you don’t need self-tanner, a personal shopper, or elocution lessons to have executive presence.  (In fact, being inauthentic can actually hurt, rather than help, the cause.)

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Highly Effective References

Highly Effective References

Many job seekers put together a thoughtful job search plan, prepare their resume and cover letter carefully, and agonize over their interview attire, but when it comes to their references, they just type up some names, phone numbers, and email addresses and call it done. The good news: because so many people just throw their reference list together, this is an area where it’s easy to stand out.  

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How Listening to Leslie Knope Changed My Life

How Listening to Leslie Knope Changed My Life

“As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration.  Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.”

-       Amy Poehler 

 Three years ago, I didn’t know what a mastermind was.  Today, I know that my accomplishments over the last two years are attributable in many ways to the focus, accountability, and development that a mastermind provided.  In short, Amy Poehler (or, as I prefer to think of her, Leslie Knope) is right.  Let me back up.  

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Career Lessons from a White House Internship: Alongside a Stalker

Career Lessons from a White House Internship: Alongside a Stalker

When someone sees my resume, the item I’m most likely to be asked about is my internship in the West Wing of the White House.  That is usually followed up by asking whether I know there’s a character named Amy Gardner on the “West Wing” TV show.  (Yes, I do, and I have a great – mostly true – story about how she really could be named after me.  And if you know any different, don’t tell me.  I like my version better.)  Until now, though, I haven’t publicly shared how I got that West Wing internship.  It wasn’t due to connections or networking and certainly not any special expertise.  Instead, I got my internship in the White House press office largely because of the lessons I learned from a stalker.  

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