Topic: Shawn Graham

Careers: Why a Job Interview is Like a First Date

Have you noticed any similarities between your dating experiences and your job searches? What these two puzzle parts have in common is a quest for better relationships. Granted, for some of us, both of these personal quests are ...READ»

Top Jobs 2008: Courting Your Career

Careers expert and author of Courting Your Career, Shawn Graham, tells FastCompany.com how dating and job hunting have more in common than one might think. READ»

• Top Jobs of 2008
• A Guide to Layoff Survival
• The Top 8 Jobs of 2008

Identifying and Acting Upon the Elusive “Critical Few”

Process improvement consultants often talk about the importance of focusing your efforts on the critical few—those 3-4 things that, as a business, you can (or can’t) live without. Everyone agrees that process improvement is ...READ»

Is having a long work commute such a bad thing?

  If you would have asked me that question when gas prices were not only through the roof, but also through the cumulonimbus clouds (take that 8th grade science class!!), I would have likely had a much different response. But ...READ»

Careers: When to Cut Some Interviews Short

You’re 5 minutes into a 45 minute interview and you know the candidate just isn’t going to make the cut. What do you do? Continue as planned for the next 40 minutes, or wrap things up and move on to the next candidate? This topic ...READ»

Careers: Creative Interactivity and Other Musts To Attract Young Talent

Because it’s a buyers market, when looking to attract young talent, compensation and location will continue to be increasingly important. But, over the near term, so too will your ability to reach them using new media, creative ...READ»

Careers: Without Questions

How much time do you spend coming up with questions that you want to ask the interviewer? Is it something you put a lot of effort into or do you typically ask basic questions like “What’s a typically day like?” or “Do you ...READ»

When the Going Gets Tough, Don't Sever Your Campus Recruiting Pipeline

2002. Rocky economic times; companies were still in the midst of drastic headcount reductions. They slashed, and in some cases pretty much eliminated, their campus recruiting budgets. Call it a knee jerk reaction, overcompensation ...READ»

Sharing negative customer feedback with your team

When it comes to customer feedback, you usually only hear from the people who really love you or the ones who really hate you but generally not from those who land somewhere in the middle. And, somehow, the negative always seems to ...READ»

Careers: Put Your Best Face Forward

It always surprises me when companies spend a ton of time and money developing slick marketing materials and a great website but then overlook the importance of putting the right people in front of potential employees. At the end of ...READ»

Careers: Avoid the Pedigree Pitfall

Is an applicant’s professional pedigree a predictor of his or her success with your company? Yes AND no. Some things, such as educational background and related work experience, can obviously be very important to a candidate’s ...READ»

Making the Most Out of a Rejection

168 people applied for the opening. We interviewed 5 which means, if you do the math, that we rejected 163. Our policy was to only notify those who were interviewed but not selected—potentially leaving those 163 in limbo as to their ...READ»

Is Bigger Better?

Are you better off working for a company with 10 employees or one with 1000 employees? Well, that depends.   When trying to decide on one opportunity over another, more important than size is optionality. Based on where you ...READ»

Careers: The New Leader Honeymoon Period

I was meeting with a colleague recently to help him prepare for an upcoming interview. As I pulled together questions, I wanted to make sure I asked him about how he would approach his first 30 days on the job. When being considered ...READ»

Careers: Pain-free Performance Reviews

Thanks to those of you who shared your thoughts on some of the drawbacks of creative resumes and cover letters. Many of you commented that, because of the sheer volume of applications and the fact that readers prefer that they fit ...READ»

Employee Incentives on a Shoe String Budget

"No pay raises this year." "Everyone is going to have to take 10 days of unpaid vacation." "Everyone is going to have to take 10 days of unpaid vacation and a 1% (or more) pay cut." I don't know about you, ...READ»

Careers: Unwanted Company?

Sometimes the toughest interview questions seem like the ones that should be the easiest to answer. “Based on your research, what makes us uniquely different from our competitors?” Time and time again, it amazes me how many ...READ»

Careers: Campus Recruiting Over/Under

This weekend, I had a chance to dive into Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent. Over the 7+ years I've worked in career services for a major university, I've had countless conversations ...READ»

Is In-flight Web Access a Good Thing?

I was convinced the answer was YES! Airlines, many of which have stopped giving away tiny bags of pretzels in an effort to contain costs, would love the opportunity to tap a new revenue stream. Passengers, who already are willing to ...READ»

Farewell to Polaroid instant film

Polaroid instant film went the way of the drive-in movie theater and the typewriter earlier this month when they announced they will close factories in Massachusetts, the Netherlands, and Mexico that make instant film. As part of a ...READ»

Branding Yourself as a One-Trick Pony

Gone are the days of companies branding themselves as specialty retailers. Dunkin' Donuts now offers pizza, Radio Shack seems to sell pretty much everything but radios, and Linens 'n Things is closing its doors. To survive, they must overcome the very brand that's made them famous.READ»

Do-It-Yourself Performance Reviews

In high school, the thought of giving yourself the grade you thought you deserved always sounded too good to be true. Most of my friends, myself included, would in all likelihood lobby for an “A” without giving it much thought. ...READ»

Careers: Onboarding

I recently returned from a conference of MBA career services practitioners and corporate representatives where I sat in on a session on onboarding delivered by a representative from Whirlpool. The session got me thinking about my own ...READ»

Back in the U.S.S.A

I'm happy to report that I arrived safely back in the states yesterday (Tuesday) after a two day bus/van trip from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and a 20+ hour flight. For now, I've got to focus on filling out one heck of complicated ...READ»

Keeping Your Boss in the Loop Without Causing Information Overload

  This was something I didn’t think I struggled with, until a recent staff meeting when day my boss asked me for an update of how things were going in my department. I’m pretty sure I started out on the right path, but, as I ...READ»