Careers Café

After serving on a number of hiring committees and conducting hundreds of mock interviews, I think that one of the most useful and trickiest ways to prepare for interviews is to identify patterns – the patterns in your responses that you might not even be aware of. Grab a friend or relative who’s willing to […]

If you’re reading this blog, chances are excellent that you have invested years, blood, sweat and tears in graduate level education. And you may have concerns about “wasting” your education on unrelated jobs or those that seem beneath your level of training. On the other hand, if you’re also about to enter the job market […]

Liz Koblyk explores the pitfalls of short-term contract work.

Last month, I wrote about evaluating whether volunteering was worth your time. Let’s move up from unemployment to insecure employment! What do you do when you see an interesting short-term contract advertised? My quick take is that you don’t dismiss it out of hand, and do as much looking as you reasonably can before you […]

Turning problems into possibilities at the University of Calgary.

Know what to reasonably expect if you decide to pursue a volunteer opportunity.

Taming the digital anarchy for nerds.

Liz Koblyk wants you to figure out what the dominant theme is in the stories you tell about yourself.

Seldom do magazine cover promises of easy steps and good results live up to their claims. But sometimes, there actually is a set of short steps we can take to accomplish something worthwhile. That doesn’t mean we’ll naturally take them, mind you. Normally, if there’s something seemingly simple and time-limited that might be useful, we find endless […]

Career planning typically revolves around big choices. Move to a bigger city or stay close to home? Do an advanced degree or two – or none? Pursue a secure job – or one that feels riskier but more rewarding? Too bad that, just as minor changes in data can dramatically impact weather prediction calculations, small events in […]

What happens when the following truths collide? All of us are multi-potentialed and have the ability to enjoy and do a variety of work. All of us face the reality that some kinds of work are easier for us to secure than others, and that some offer a better standard of living than others. And, […]

Liz Koblyk looks at some popular job search advice that can be misleading for job seekers.

This is a guest post by Kriti Kapoor, a marketing professional, start-up advisor and angel investor, having worked across Asia Pacific & Japan, UK/Europe and the United States. Follow her on LinkedIn at sg.linkedin.com/in/kritikapoor/ and via Twitter @kriti_kapoor. My incredibly talented cousin graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in May this year. We […]

Removing some of your academic experiences from your resume may seem wrong, but Liz Koblyk says it will help you during the job search.

Liz Koblyk wants you to take a leap of faith, and imagine yourself doing something else with your life.

This is a guest post by Isaiah Hankel, author and consultant at Cheeky Scientist. Hard skills are dying. Think of how many hard skills have been outsourced or replaced by computer apps over the last 10 years – thousands. Remember when large companies used to hire people to write expense reports and to organize rolodexes? […]

Liz Koblyk wants you to focus on what you can produce rather than on whether you’re qualified to produce it.

This is a guest post from Rod Missaghian, an Ontario Certified Teacher and academic coach in the greater Toronto area. Check out his coaching website. I graduated in 2010 with a Master of Teaching degree, which at the time represented a rare two-year pre-service degree. I initially chose my program and the extra year of […]

This is a guest post from Christoper Buddle. Check out his blog, Arthropod Ecology. In academia, professors are sometimes offered interesting opportunities to take administrative appointments, and we have the chance to say “no” if the fit or timing isn’t good. Terry McGlynn recently wrote about declining an opportunity for such an appointment, and I […]

Liz Koblyk explores the role that confidence plays in both career exploration and the job search.