Some people love grammar, some people hate grammar. Some people love serving dutifully as the “grammar police,” while others enjoy ridiculing grammar fanatics. I’m going to let you in on a little secret most people don’t know: grammar can be arbitrary. Really. In English, some of our most rigid “rules” have no basis historically. They …

If you are conducting a job campaign, you’ve surely encountered countless pieces of advice. That advice can be overwhelming and even at times paralyzing. Why is it so difficult to get an interview? I would argue it’s actually not complicated—although you should not misinterpret this to mean it is easy. Here are the two key …

Well, it’s not “the shot heard ’round the world,” but high school students should still pay attention: Starting in 2016, the SAT will have 8 major changes from recent years, including a reversion to a total score of 1600. This overhaul is an effort to address legitimate complaints from students, educators, parents, and college admission …

Newsflash: don’t light an interviewer’s desk on fire or ponder aloud your child’s paternity during an interview. I bet that sentence got your attention, much like those actions got the (negative) attention of the candidates’ interviewers. I recently read an article that discusses some of the most outlandish mistakes interviewees have made, with the previous …

Through my company I assist individuals as they navigate their career paths, but I can also personally relate to the trepidations they often feel about changing jobs and industries. Any career transition can provoke anxiety, and making the change from working in the Academy to outside of it, or from a tenure-track professor path to …

By this point, it should come as no surprise that companies and recruiters often review an applicant’s social media presence before making a job offer. If this phenomenon is news to you, then read this article that cuts to the chase about the importance of a clean web presence. Put simply, social media can be …

If you are looking for your next job, you might consider doing a job search “in reverse.” Oftentimes, people seek out job advertisements to look for job openings. They scroll through job search websites, such as Indeed, Simply Hired, Monster, and Idealist looking for jobs that suit them. This is certainly a common—perhaps the most …

One of the biggest struggles applicants, and writers more generally, face is evaluating their work. That’s natural, as you can’t be an outsider to your own writing. An outsider views a piece of writing without any of the assumptions the writer might have had when writing the text. Even though there will always be a …

Oftentimes when people are in search of a job, they need one soon. Really soon. They have bills to pay, kids and pets to care for, and food to buy. But if you have the ultimate luxury—time on your side before needing to start a new position—then you may want to consider declining a job …

If you are struggling to write something—whether it’s a resume, personal statement, business document, or even social media content—you may succumb to tried-and-true procrastination techniques. Checking email constantly? Seeing what’s happened in the news in the past 10 minutes? Writing a list of the things you need to do today and including things like “Wake …