By Harvey Schachter, If your vacation is near and life is a frenzy, perhaps that’s because you don’t treat vacations like a project, and apply the proper organizational skills. Toronto-area productivity consultant Ann Gomez went through far too many pre-vacation scrambles before realizing that she needed to develop a stress-busting checklist. View Details

By Rosa Vargas, The bills are piling up. It has been months since you lost your job. You are becoming extremely concerned. You feel as if you have done everything you can to secure a new job opportunity, but nothing has become fruitful – not even an interview. If this sounds familiar, don’t despair.  I sympathize and many, unfortunately, are in your situation. View Details

By Ilya Pozin, When you think of the word etiquette, you might be imagining a Miss Manners book from the 1950s. Proper business etiquette, however, is about much more than using the right salad fork. Etiquette might seem old fashioned, but it’s also an essential business tool. If you’re ignoring proper business etiquette, you’re doing so at your own peril. View Details

By Emma Snider, According to Jill Konrath, it’s the number one competitive advantage for salespeople today.   No, it’s not having the firmest handshake, or the sharpest suit. You might have an extremely engaging phone persona, but that won’t ultimately set you apart in Jill’s book. Maybe your social selling prowess? Nope. To Jill, the one and only skill that can truly give you the edge is rapid learning. View Details

By Jack Welch, Careers rarely follow a smooth, linear trajectory. If you’re experiencing a stalled or faltering career — and most of us do at some point or another — take a good look in the mirror. Are you guilty of exhibiting any of these common behaviors? These ten career-killing pitfalls can mean the difference between an upward ride and a downward spiral at work. View Details

By Joshua Bjerke,Even as the job market improves and more employees are jettisoning from their old jobs for greener pastures, some workers are stuck in awful jobs they would love to escape, but they aren’t sure how to go about it. As they try to change jobs, they must do so on a hush-hush basis and try to remain honest and discreet. Here are some useful tips to help people in this sort of situation: 1. View Details

By Jim Schreier, Let’s begin with the ideal scenario. Based on your own preparation, this is a position at an organization that you’d really like. And you’re very pleased with how the first interview went. Now, what about this second interview? Is it with the same person from Human Resources, or the same hiring manager, or is with someone new? View Details

By Aaron McCoy, A common suggestion when it comes to updating your resume is to focus on accomplishments instead of duties. But what kind of accomplishments should you select? And what if your job doesn’t lend itself to easily documented successes? We’ve put together a few tips to help you learn what to put on a resume. FIRST: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DUTY AND AN ACCOMPLISHMENT? View Details

By Paul Drury, We’ve all been there, somehow muddling through the most important interview of your life, just about holding it together, question after question and then. . . . nothing. The interviewer starts to talk in slow motion (blah, blah, blah…. blah), your mind goes all hazy, and your future on the employment scrap heap flashes before your eyes. You can’t answer the simplest of questions that you would normally answer in your sleep. View Details

By Lauren Riley, Job interviews are pretty stressful situations, and sometimes you’re so busy fretting over what you’re going to say that you actually forget what you need to bring. Preparing yourself for an interview goes beyond practising your answers and making sure you look presentable – failing to bring the right equipment can make you seem unprofessional and unprepared. View Details

By Brendan Butler, As with so many interview questions, this one is very likely to throw you off if you haven’t practised an answer to it in advance. Interview questions that require you to have an example taken from your own work experiences are much harder to answer, and when in a stressful setting, can make it difficult to recall specific examples to use in your response. View Details

By Mike Bunch, Congratulations! You’ve made it to the job interview. Everything is progressing smoothly – you’re feeling comfortable, answering all the questions thoughtfully, making a personal connection with the interviewer – and then it happens. The interviewer asks an “out of the blue” question. “Why is a manhole cover round (an actual Microsoft interview question)? View Details

By Garrett Hollander, In this last installment, we cover what to do once you finally get a meeting with the CLE. It’s a B2B sales call with a completely different texture than others. So there you are with the CLE and a couple VPs. What’s next? Is there a blueprint for these type ofsales appointments? You better believe it. Your job is to be impressive right from the word, “Go! View Details

By Emma Snider,  There’s no wrong way to go about researching a prospect in advance of a call. Yes, there are a few efficiencies to be gained, and some networks are more important to check than others, but as long as you’re doing your research, you’re already more than halfway there.   The only way a sales rep can truly fail is by going into a call totally cold. View Details

By Emma Snider,  The door-to-door salesperson of old who won clients on firm handshakes and Cheshire cat smiles is gone. Today, buyers are much more well-informed about products and services, and that means signing deals on goodwill or slick sales pitches is a lot less likely. Customers are looking for salespeople who listen, educate, and collaborate rather than talk, convince, and dominate.   This new way of selling requires new skills. View Details