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​Congratulations! You’ve finally landed yourself a new job! My last piece of advice is to keep updating your Master Résumé on a regular basis. Set a reminder for the first of every month or every six months and when the reminder comes up, pull out your master file and make sure everything is still accurate. Don’t stop preparing for interviews either.

​We’ve all heard the saying “practice makes perfect” but when was the last time you practiced a job interview? If you’re like most people, it was probably DURING your last job interview and you were sweating the entire time because you felt you were out of practice.

​10-15 years ago, when the economy was booming and companies were hiring at a rapid pace, job hunters would often receive calls for interviews within days or even hours of an application being submitted. Not so anymore. Because there are often dozens if not hundreds of candidates applying for jobs both in person and online, only people who are being selected for interviews are contacted. This often leaves everyone else wondering what their status is.

​One of the most common mistakes regarding résumés is to assume that one size fits all. In the competitive job market that exists today, updating your résumé and applying for jobs can be a full time job in itself.

​Are you on the hunt for a new job? Did your employer just post a promotional opportunity that is the role you’ve been waiting two years for? Did you pull out your old résumé and realize that it hasn’t been updated since you took your current job?

​Everyone has a story to tell. I’m sure something has happened in your life in the past year that you could write a story about. It doesn’t have to be as long and involved as Tolstoy, elegant as Shakespeare or even as funny as Vonnegut (yes, I know some people don’t “get” Vonnegut’s humor). But there is a story in there that needs to be told.

​Small disclosure, it was recently my son’s birthday and he received a gift of a remote control car that is supposed to be able to drive on walls. I have yet to make it do this, but I’m hoping batteries might be the culprit.

​At the risk of angering John McWhorter I’m going to proclaim that the sky is indeed falling. The proper use of punctuation is a dying art. More generally, it sometimes seems like ANY use of punctuation is a dying art.

​Are you two tense? Rather, do you use two tenses in your writing? This can be a cardinal sin in writing and something that makes an idea very hard to follow. When you’re writing something that “is” happening, make sure that it continues to happen “now” and doesn’t suddenly become a past or future event. What exactly do I mean by this?