Are you unemployed? Or currently employed but still hunting for that better job? If so, career advising blogs could be a great place to start your search.  www.OnlineDegrees.org offers  help connecting you with the Top 100 Career Advice Blogs. Form this well put list, you can mix and match until you find  your favorite advice-flavored career blog(s).
Out of the extensive list, the top 3 (Career Realism,  WebWorkerDaily, and Position Ignition) offer some interesting and not so usual information for the current job seeker.
Career Realism’s founder, J.T. O’Donnell, who has been …

One of the key areas you may be struggling with as a job seeker is a feeling of rejection. This can cause a real slowdown in your job search activity. This downward spiral can happen for a variety of reasons including:

A poor response from companies and/or jobs for which you have submitted your resume.
Stopping your job search once you get one or two job interviews (to see how they pan out).
Hinging everything on one hopeful offer.
Only using one method to perform your job search (like responding to Internet job postings).

If …

If you’re job hunting in this tough economy, take heart from the following three stories of people who found work in three to four months — about half as long as the average job search, which takes nearly 8 months (31.2 weeks) as of March 2010.
How did they do it?
By using Guerrilla Resumes (explained below), LinkedIn, and smart networking, among other tactics.
Read on to learn more from the Q&A I did with each of them …
Case Study #1: Brad Viles, from suburban Madison, WI.
Time to hire: about four months (hired …

I’ve been following a stream of articles written by Michael Woodward (a.k.a. Dr. Woody) and he delivers so solid advice for job hunters of all ages.  He draws from the information from his recently published book  ”The YOU Plan: A 5-Step Guide to Taking Charge of Your Career in the New Economy.”  I’ve met Dr. Woody several times as part of my Miami networking  and even commented about his interview on Fox News in my article Dr. Woody’s Job Hunt Advice for College Grads several months back.
In these two articles called:

Keeping Passion in Tough …

My daughter gave me a copy of “Eat, Pray, Love” and it was a book that gave me some unexpected spiritual insight.   And it was a good addition to a few others I’ve reviewed to help explore our spiritual side.  I’ve read and reviewed “Silence on Fire” (follow this link for my review). I also wrote reviews for Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth“. These three books work at explaining and enlightening me about the spiritual. I recommend them, but cannot deny these …

How do you find a job quickly, in this rotten economy?
Hunt like a Guerrilla.
That was the experience of Mark Thomas, a systems administrator from Mesa, Ariz., who started a new job on March 8, 2010, after a search of only 6 weeks.
According to Thomas, he would have been hired sooner, but “the entire executive team was gone at a conference for a week.”
Thomas succeeded after using three unconventional job-search tactics:
1. The Job Shopping List
2. The Guerrilla Resume
3. The Coffee Cup Caper
Read on to learn how he did it …
1. The …

I make a habit of attending noon Mass near the place where I work.  It’s only a few blocks down and it gives me a chance to get away from what is typically a busy and stressful day.  It occassionally also gives me a chance to attend confession.
Before Fr. Eddy even saw me coming around the separator for a face to face confession, he started aloud with his prayers. Then he stopped abruptly, “Jorge, how are you? How are you and your family?” He wore his usual smile and, as always, slowly …

I am always surprised when I am talking to an executive in the midst of an interview…and they share with me how they approached the money topic.
Here are two very common things I hear:
“They asked me how much I needed and I said at least $250k.”
“I asked them what they had in mind for their salary package.”
What most people don’t realize is that these two statements put ALL the power in the hands of the employer! So, to alleviate these negative events from happening and successfully negotiate the maximum salary …

Can Twitter help you find a job?
Yes.
But only if you use it right.
It can be a huge challenge sorting the wheat from the chaff on Twitter, where millions of updates appear daily, only a few of which contain useful job-search information.
Let’s start at the beginning, then explore two case studies.
Twitter is the micro-blogging service that lets users send updates (“tweets”) of 140 characters or less to people in their network. You can follow the updates of any other Twitter member with one click.
When it comes to meeting hiring managers, Twitter …

I run into this topic over and over again when I meet with job hunters.  “How do I land next job?”  they ask.   I’ve repeated this over and over again right back:

“Network, Network, Network.”

 There you have it.  The three ways, but they are actually one thing that you need to do three, four, five as many times as possible.
You have to get your message out to as many people as possible in a clear, concise and memorable way.  This is similar to what a salesperson does.  They package their message in the form of …

Let’s face it—sometimes a job search can be a tiring and depressing process!
It’s one of the most challenging things we do as professionals, so it makes a lot of sense to invest in your career through gaining knowledge about how to do a “job search right”.
So, what is “right”? Well it’s a job search that does the following things:

Has a crystal clear plan (so you always know where you are going—which helps you to know what opportunities to take full advantage of and which ones to let go).
Gets you multiple …

This week, I’ll address two common job-search frustrations found in the Hundreds of emails I’ve received this year from people across America
Do either of these apply to you?
Frustration #1: There just aren’t enough jobs out there to apply for.
Solution: Let’s analyze this one …
When I speak to job hunters, in seminars, by phone, or via email, I ask the same question: “How are you looking for jobs?” Almost invariably, the answer is: “I look online or in the paper.”
So the actual frustration here is this: There aren’t enough advertised jobs …

A fellow salesman recommended Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time to me several years back.  We both attended a lead sharing group and he couldn’t help but recommend it to the rest of us.
Ferrazzi vividly describes how his father enabled him to break with his blue collar background by networking throughout his community. It led to Ferrazzi:

 attending a prep school well beyond his parents means,
gaining the benefits that come by knowing the well off parents of his peers (he became a caddy) …

Do you feel overwhelmed when you think about changing industries? After all, with long workweeks, job-performance demands and trying to have a personal life too it’s a wonder any professionals find the time to strategically reposition themselves for a more fulfilling opportunity.
However I have coached many professionals who have successfully done just that! And I know firsthand what works and how you can easily begin to point yourself in a different direction that brings about the positive change you have been dreaming of. Here are four steps you can take …

 I’ve read a ton of books on job hunting as part of my work these past years and I forced myself to pick the three top ones you should have to optimize your job hunt.  You can take a look at the set of books I’ve already reviewed at Career Jockey’s Book Review topic but the ones I’ve listed below are the ones you need on your bookshelf.
Book #1 – What Color Is Your Parachute? 2010: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles
I wrote my What Color Is Your Parachute …

You think it’s tough to find a job now?
It’s been tougher.
Like in the Great Depression of the 1930s, for example.
Try to imagine a world without Twitter or Facebook, when the unemployment rate ranged from 14.3% to 24.9% (1931 to 1938).
Would you be interested in learning two ways to find that worked back then — and still work now?
Here they are …
1) Appeal to the self-interest of the employer
In the book, “Pick Your Job And Land It!” published in 1938, the authors, S.W. and M.G. Edlund, share the story of one …

I ran into this great article from The Positivity Blog.  It includes a ton of Mark Twains best quotes and organizes them into nine self improvement tips I wanted to share with all of you. 
Job hunting can be about as unmotivating as it gets.  It’s like getting a punch in the gut and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better anytime soon.  I hope this can be of help to you. 
Hope this helps.

I thought I’d share with you this article written by Bill Leonard of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM).  There’s a lot of news about the extention of unemployment benefits to the jobless, but seems like there’s a lot of confusion on the specifics.
If any of you readers have specific experience with what’s going on and your experience on applying for the payments retroactively, please chime in so the rest of us can benefit from your experience.

I launched another site recently at http://www.PurelyCatholic.com.  There I publish a weekly audio program called “My Take on the Sunday Readings” where I read the upcoming Sunday Mass scriptures and give a short reflection on them. 
I know this is a bit off topic for Career Jockey, but if you are of the Roman Catholic or related slant and are out of work, this could be a way to help you stay  motivatived and spiritual uplifted.
Hope this helps.

 Looking for a job?
Raise your hand if you love networking.
I thought so.
And why don’t you get a thrill out of talking to friends and family about your job search?
For many folks, it’s a problem of how to start. There’s really no way to ask, “Know anyone who’s hiring?” without feeling awkward.
To fix that, here are two ways to open your next networking conversation that are proven to produce job leads — and won’t make you feel self-conscious .
1) Use Me as an Excuse to Call
Over the past year, I’ve quietly …