Fear of rejection, fear of looking stupid, fear of the unknown.. these are all fears you have experienced in your life. These are also fears that you may associate with the idea of  ’informational interviews’. As a result this concept may appear to be very intimidating and not worth the trouble. This article will take a look at some reasons why informational interviews are worth it and provide some less intimidating ideas on...

You may think that getting involved with organizations and groups is too much of a time commitment and not worth the trouble. I am here to tell you that it is one of the BEST things you can do for yourself and your career. Over the years I have been involved with many different organizations and groups ranging from Toastmasters, various employee run organizations to specialized “virtual” teams. As a result of this involvement I have...

This is part of a series on opportunities for students to acquire real-world experience and how to highlight these experiences on your resume and at the job interview. In this post, I will discuss a prominent and easily accessible strategy to getting development experience: open source projects. With such a popular and broad topic of open source development, I will spend the next several posts in this series discussing it. One popular way...

This is part of a series on opportunities for students to acquire real-world experience and how to highlight these experiences on your resume and at the job interview. In this post, I will discuss the role of programming contests in describing programming experience at job interviews. One thing you should not use as real-world development experience is a programming contest. Employers are looking for people who can write high quality,...

Everyone understands that networking is extremely important. How to create a good network however is something that few people appear to understand. Creating a network is always important but there are times when the opportunity is greater and the time is easier to go about it. The start of a new job or internship is one of those times. This is the first in a series of blogs that will focus on creating a network. One of the first topics to...

What is a Career Road Map? The answer depends on who you ask. I like to think of a career road map as a guide for keeping yourself pointed in the right direction. Imagine you are on a journey from California to New York City. There are many different ways to to get there. From highways, back roads, side roads, country roads, to super expressways, there are an unlimited combination of roads you can take to get to the...

Imagine waking up to the sound of soldiers with machine guns marching down your street and the sound of jets flying overhead. This is exactly what happened to the people of El Salvador in the 1980s. Chapter 9 of “The Leadership Moment” by Michael Useem looks at civil strife in El Salvador and how Alfredo Cristiani took the oath of office and face this challenge. The conflict was between three separate groups with Alfredo leading one....