Even if you’re my age you’ve probably heard of her. In a very short period of time Lady Gaga has become a phenomenon – an internationally celebrated and very successful icon. So, the question is, how did this young, 24 year old performer – a total newbie – climb to the top of pop music and to the top of charts?
One thing we know for sure – it took more than just talent. The music industry is one of the most difficult and competitive of any professions.
So how did she …

A few weeks back, Miami’s private high schools sent their fall term acceptance letters.  It’s a big deal for us Miami locals as many of us are alumni and would like to see our kids attending our alma mater.  We were blessed when we got news our youngest daughter was accepted to her school of choice.  It’s the school one of her sisters attended. Both my sisters attended high school there.
Unfortunately, not everyone is so fortunate.  We have a friend whose son got rejected. Instead of celebrating, his …

Whenever I run into someone who’s a bit odd, I find myself whispering to myself, “What’s with that guy?”  I know.  I know.  I shouldn’t.  But I’m so used to having people behave a certain way that when they fall outside my version of the norm – whatever that is – it’s something that calls my attention.
Now I’m not always a fan of the heroes Hollywood lifts up for us, but let me point out a few that definitely inspire me and better yet – cause me to spend a …

Harry Backwith’s Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing was required reading at the system integration firm where I worked. All directors were given a copy and expected to finish them. I wasn’t sure what point our CEO was making when he assigned it to us, but I sure did when I was done with it.   Selling the Invisible explains the customer’s perception when buying something they don’t understand.   In our firm it meant buying technology they clearly didn’t understand.
What is it in your case?  About …

I just finished reading a Chris Anderson’s “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.” He’s the editor of Wired Magazine who also wrote “The Long Tail” (which is the shape of an economic demand curve and not related to kangaroos).  He proves his free point by making his “Free” book available for free.
I didn’t really read it.  I listened to a MP3 down loadable copy of it which I got for free on Audible.com.  It didn’t cost me a single penny and I even got Chris Anderson the …

No matter if it’s voice mail, email, your Blackberry, a text, your next meeting or perhaps even an letter delivered the old fashioned way – in an envelope with a stamp, every once in a while you have to pull the plug and scream an obscenity ridden with – ENOUGH!
What a concept…… becoming unattainable for some degree of time.
I was looking around a website belonging to Harrison Barnes, the Job Guru, and caught his article “The Importance of Disconnecting from Your Work.” That’s exactly what he’s promoting and …

No matter if it’s voice mail, email, your Blackberry, a text, your next meeting or perhaps even an letter delivered the old fashioned way – in an envelope with a stamp, every once in a while you have to pull the plug and scream an obscenity ridden with – ENOUGH!
What a concept…… becoming unattainable for some degree of time.
I was looking around a website belonging to Harrison Barnes, the Job Guru, and caught his article “The Importance of Disconnecting from Your Work.” That’s exactly what he’s promoting and …

My wife’s a lovely lady. You got to meet her. Today we visited the dean at the high school my daughter will attend this fall. Now you have to picture my wife. You get her talking about any one of our three daughters (one of her favorite topics in the world) and she’s on a role. You want details. She has them. You have to realize, she goes way back with these folks.

I wasn’t able to get a word in during today’s meeting, …

(Editor’s Note:  I’d like to introduce my long time associate, Jeannette Kraar.  We’ve been working together for several years – all related to helping job hunters – and have had a lot of fun at it.  She’ll be joining us every Wednesday.  Please provide us some comments to let us know what you think.)
I got this from someone in an email a long while back. I keep stuff much longer than most do only so I can use it for writing fodder someday in the future. Well I …

Monster.com ran a poll recently with a simple question, “Do you love your current profession/work?  Check out the results:

Yes – 35%
No – 65%

That’s an awful lot of no votes.   I just cannot imagine dragging myself out of bed every weekday morning, forcing down a cup of coffee only to have to walk into some place for more than 8 hours (Is there a real 8 hour day left out there?) and do a job I just do not like much less love.  What a horrendous chore?
Let me tell you about …

If you read my Love Dare article from a year back you’ll see how I dedicated 40 days last Spring to improving my marriage. It’s not that it was on the rocks and in bad need of repair. I just wanted to take a good thing and make it better.
In my Novena article I talk about a 9 day practice I followed to help get me re-focused and balanced. There are times when I get way out of whack and I need something like this to bring …

My granddad turned 89 this year. The old man we loving call “Lalo” has a Cuban saying that always stuck with me,
“The devil knows more because he’s old than because he’s the devil.”
It sounds funny reading it in English, but the message rings clear. He wanted to make sure we grandkids, who thought we were oh so smart, would listen to the advice of older folks if only because they’d been around longer than they had.
You look at Lalo today and you’d never know he was a successful …

The one thing job hunters have that the working population doesn’t have is time.  I remember how much of it I had when I was job hunting and how much I wasted waiting for emails that I only wished would come right away.  (You can learn about my job search in the Career Jockey About page.)
Here’s a suggestion you might consider to resolve this. I’m an avid reader. I enjoy reading and wish I had more time for it.  In order to squeeze in more reading time, I’ve …

As we look for work, wait for that anticipated raise (in this economy…right!) or hope for the right opportunity to arrive, we are forced to be patient. We set some expectations for ourselves and sometimes even attach a timeline to it. If we opt NOT to be patient, we set ourselves up for failure. We tee ourselves up for the perfect dose of disappointment. And from there to anger and resentment is a very short hop.

I spent some time thinking about this and wondered, “What is it about waiting or …

Recently, a job hunter approached me at a networking event.  He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him.  My first thought was maybe I had introduced him to someone that got him a job, but that wasn’t it.  He was still looking.
He told me he had heard me speak on a panel a few months back.  I remembered that presentation well.  It was held at a South Beach Miami hotel.  The venue was nice and included two other panelists.  It was well moderated.  The problem (for me anyway) was …

(Warning: Be prepared for some serious spiritual discussion.)

Those of you who follow Career Jockey may remember that in early December I published Five Steps for Beating the Christmas Bah Humbug Blues.  In step #1 of the article, I committed myself to 20 minutes of daily reflection. You may also remember I was hoping for an Amazon Kindle reading device for Christmas. (See Christmas Gift Ideas to Wow Your Job Seeker.)

Well both of these came together recently when my wife gave me a Kindle for Christmas and …

A college friend recommended “Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.  She’s in real estate and the book helped her promote her business differently.
With traditional marketing strategy, companies strive to build a better solution at a better price.  The idea is to outsmart and outdo the competition.  It’s an exercise in one-up-man-ship that frequently leads to each competitor releasing marginally better solutions over their competitors.  The authors describe that approach as a red ocean strategy.  Firms behave …

I ran into Salon Angelica written by Angelica Perez, a Latina, Ivy League educated psychologist with some valuable articles for women on their careers, mental health and other Career Jockey related topics.
She just published a great article called the “The Root of Workaholism.”   It covers the topic at length helping people understand some root causes that lead to it and how to gain insight into it.  Give this article a read and answer the 20 questions she poses to see where you stand.  You too many be a workaholic.
I’ve commented …

I just ran into “Get the Right Balance“, a blog post written at a simple blog site”Welcome to the Occupation” written by Paul Smith. Paul identifies himself as “an HR manager at a non-profit organization in the Northeast.” A simple guy promoting a simple way of life per this article.

Paul’s article chronicles a documentary he saw on Arthur Kane, the bass player for New York Dolls. Back in the ’70s, the New York Dolls were a thing, but by 2004 things were much different. The …

I recently wrote my Devil Wears Prada article discussing the potential outcomes of the choices we make. Few of us go out and make an intentional life or career blundering decisions. I, however, have made a string of smaller decisions, or better yet, no decisions at all that over time got me someplace all together wrong.

I’ve done it with Christmas, too. I let Thanksgiving go by without giving much thought to what comes next. The time slips by and before you know it, I shorted myself. …