You’ve been tasked to give a speech and you want to do a good job. So you ask for advice (or advice is given to you) on how to best prepare for a speech and someone tells you to practice your speech in front of a mirror. On the surface, it sounds like a great idea – after all you can see how your body movies and what you look like when you speak. But in reality, speaking in front of a mirror can actually cause you to develop bad habits and can add to your discomfort if you already find speaking to groups difficult.  Read more... (538 words, 1 image, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

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In today’s competitive job market, hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people are applying for the same job. To add make things even more challenging, many of the people submitting resumes meet only a fraction of the qualifications (if any) which makes the job of the person scanning the resumes even more challenging. But that doesn’t matter to you, the job seeker. What does matter is how you can stand out from the crowd so that your resume is actually read. Here’s how.

Resumes are not one-size-fits-all:  Read more... (763 words, 1 image, estimated 3:03 mins reading time)

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Speed networking has to be one of the coolest trends for business events in recent years. It’s not only good for experienced networkers, but it’s the best thing to happen to nervous networkers. Even if you have no clue what to do at a networking event, you can walk away from a speed networking event with dozens of connects.

If you’re not familiar with speed networking, it’s an event format that allows you to meet a lot of folks in a fixed amount of time (usually 30-90 minutes). You usually have two or three minutes to talk to your networking partner and then a whistle blows and it’s time to switch.  Read more... (975 words, 1 image, estimated 3:54 mins reading time)

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So you’ve heard (or read) me say it over and over again that the only way to overcome your fear of public speaking is to get up there and speak. Like telling someone not to rub their eyes, it’s easy to say but not so easy to do. Just keep in mind that the hardest step to take (and the most terrifying one) is that first step. After that step, everything gets easier.

Taking that first step:  Read more... (737 words, 1 image, estimated 2:57 mins reading time)

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If you’re like most people, you probably feel some sort of discomfort speaking to groups or going up to someone you don’t know and introducing yourself. As you can imagine, you’re certainly not alone as you’d be surprised at how many people are deathly afraid of either of these situations. But the good news is that there are things that you can do to deal with your fears – and they’re not as scary as you might expect them to be.

Practice makes perfect:  Read more... (655 words, 1 image, estimated 2:37 mins reading time)

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Unemployment is sky high and the talking heads on TV can barely conceal their pleasure when they share the latest bad economic news. So it’s no wonder people are panicked which means they spend less money which means businesses take in less money. This then means that businesses need to let people go and those folks will certainly spend less money…. The bottom line is that anyone with a job has a chance of losing it.  Read more... (890 words, 1 image, estimated 3:34 mins reading time)

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Networking is something that’s both easy and natural for us to do. We network with people practically every day (and most of the time, we don’t realize it). Yet when we’re at a formal networking event, something as basic as starting a conversation seems like a big challenge and many people walk away from networking events feeling like they accomplished nothing.

Part of the problem is that many people just don’t understand how to network. I’ve been going to networking events for about a decade and some of the things that haven’t seemed to change are the mistakes people make. Here are some of the big ones that you should try to avoid:  Read more... (798 words, 1 image, estimated 3:12 mins reading time)

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