Fudge, Mexican Wedding Cakes, Scotcharoos, and Melt Aways. I decided to make Christmas treats this year. Those close to me know a voluntary venture into the kitchen is rare. The hubs plans meals and is chef extraordinaire at our house.I’ve not changed to a baking blog. I promise. This comes back around to job search.Knowing I wanted Christmas-type cookies I began the planning process. No matter how good the treats, hubs and...

A recent client had just completed his computer science degree. Currently, he was working as a delivery driver for a national courier service. Prior to that, he had been in the Navy. He was ready to launch his computer industry career starting as help desk technician. He told me he had absolutely no help desk experience. He feared finding even an entry level position “in this market” with his background. He told me I’d...

Today I tweeted: #Jobseekers: If you don’t make yourself a priority, no one else will. Won’t “find” & can’t “make” time. DEDICATE time to reach your goals. "Whatever Clock" from uncommongoods.com after a caller shared with me they: hated their current job, needed a resume to launch a new search, but “didn’t have time” to work on a new resume or search for a new position. (“Couldn’t they just send me what they had, and I’d m...

(This is a long post, but hang with me …) It’s unusual for our land line to ring much anymore. It’s more unusual for us to answer it. Most of our friends and family have made the transition to our cell numbers. I keep our “house phone” for ease and comfort during client intake consultations. Anymore, incoming calls on that line are telemarketers, and now, political pitches.When the phone rang at 6 o’clock on Friday night, p...

Every summer in Southeastern North Carolina, we experience a proliferation of yellow butterflies. {My ex (the organic farmer) called them cabbage lopers butterflies. I’m not sure that’s the correct species; for our purposes, yellow butterflies suffices.} They are everywhere. I can look out the window sometimes and count twenty or thirty dancing around the yard on a summer afternoon. Now. If I were to burst out the backdoor,...

Three times this week, (and it’s only Wednesday), I’ve had clients say to me, “If only I’d …”, or “How am I going to explain this gap in employment?”, “What will ‘they’ think, when they see …?” and other, self-deprecating comments about their career and the choices they’ve made in their lives. To which I gently SHOUT, “Stop apologizing for events and decisions you cannot change. Find the value or diminish the event, but sto...

I worked with a client recently. We spoke on the phone several times before she engaged my services. I had also provided a few samples, so she knew the type of document I produced and was confident in my capabilities and knowledge of best practices for this crazy, competitive job market.Shortly after our intake conversation, I received a polite email from her.“Hi Dawn, I just spoke to a friend of mine … He said that now a d...

On July 29th, 2010, I glanced at my left hand and noticed, to my horror, the main stone, a marquis-cut sapphire, in my engagement ring was gone. The day was my 11th wedding anniversary. (Gotta love the irony.) My husband and I checked into replacing the stone, but opted to put the purchase on hold for a while.This past Saturday, we decided to revisit replacing the stone. In preparation, we dug in drawers and old jewelry box...

I received the following via email a few Fridays ago:“Good Afternoon,I am currently unemployed and for the past few months I have been trying to present better ways to get my resume points of view across to recruiters. I have been trying to co-mingle value based information and actual job duties that I have done. When I do that it seems to create sort of a “laundry list” of my duties and I am trying to stay away from that,...

Yesterday, I shared an email from a job seeker and offered some suggestions how he (you) can improve on responses to requests for assistance. The job seeker’s questions and concerns are common, so I’m sharing what I told him with you.Here’s his original email:“I am currently unemployed and for the past few months I have been trying to present better ways to get my resume points of view across to recruiters. I have been tryi...