Last night was the Miss USA pageant. Normally, the big news would be that Connecticut’s Erin Brady won. However, the buzz is all about an answer from Miss Utah, Marissa Powell. No, this time it wasn’t something racist or bigoted or otherwise shocking. Instead, she got nervous, stumbled through her answer and used improper English.

If you’d like to see her answer, the video is below:

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As if job interviews weren’t stressful enough, some employers are asking people that come in for job interviews to log in their email accounts or their Facebook (or other social media) accounts. Plenty has been written about why not to do this. My personal favorite is the knee-jerk reaction that typically comes from people that either run small companies or blog for a living: do you really want to work for a company that would make you do that?  Read more... (669 words, 1 image, estimated 2:41 mins reading time)

If you’re not up to your eyeballs in debt, consider yourself lucky. Millions of people each year find themselves in tough financial situations. In some cases, they’ve done something irresponsible but in others, they’ve just been hit with some bad luck. Whatever the case, the best way to deal with debt is to avoid it all costs. Here are a few habits to help you stay in the black.

1. Spend less than you make.  Read more... (1080 words, 1 image, estimated 4:19 mins reading time)

Sometimes it seems like a meeting where everyone practices their public speaking skills can only be so fun. I mean honestly, how many speeches about people’s dogs, families, jobs, etc… can one tolerate? I personally love these types of speeches because I’m fascinated with people and like to learn about them (and truthfully, I’ve actually walked away from many of these types of speeches with useful advice). Of course, not everyone is like me so sometimes you need to change things up.  Read more... (1014 words, 1 image, estimated 4:03 mins reading time)

If you walk into an office of a company that operates in either high tech or creative services, you’ll probably see their employees dressed casually. A lot of these companies take great pride in their relaxed corporate culture – the employees can use the money they’d otherwise spend on dry cleaning to get the latest iPad or Xbox. So if you’re interviewing at such a company, would you come across as too stuffy if you wore a suit?  Read more... (548 words, 1 image, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)

Everyone wants to be better. We want to look better, feel better, perform better, get better results, etc…. I’ve fallen into this category and as I’ve realized as I’ve  interacted with thousands of people via social media over the last couple years, I’m not the only one. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with focusing on improving yourself – after all, we can do some amazing things when we improve ourselves.

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Interview preparation is something that few people do correctly. Writing down the address, contact info and grabbing a few extra resumes doesn’t cut it in today’s highly competitive job market. You should plan on spending at least two full hours preparing for an interview. If you haven’t interviewed for a while, you’ll want to spend an additional two hours doing things like having mock interviews and researching the latest interview techniques in your field. Once you’ve set aside that time, here are five things that you should do before an interview:

1. Plan Your Route:  Read more... (770 words, 1 image, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)