Like the popular Gallagher family on Showtime’s “Shameless,” do you ever ask yourself what lengths you would go to get and keep the job you want?  It’s a scary thought but with the way the world is rolling these days, despite the decrease in unemployment, how you get and keep the job you want is becoming like a game show challenge with one contestant trying to beat out the other under the most extreme and at times obscene circumstances.

When it comes to finding and ACCEPTING a job offer we all have our lists.  It may be that your list contains what you would and would not want from your next job much like a list you’d create if you were picking the perfect mate.  But we all have our limits of what we would accept from a job regardless of how great it all sounds.  Even if you’ve been at this for a while, you still have standards, whether you choose to lower them or not is entirely a different matter. I’m not judging you by any means.  Let’s face it as we get older we seem less inclined to be as picky about certain things as when we were eager beavers graduating school wanting to take the world by it’s job-balls!

By Lisa Kaye

You've done the interviews, references have been checked, and your recruiter called and said they've prepared an offer. You wait and wait and then wait some more and two weeks pass and nothing. When your job world has gone stone cold silent and you are ready to sign it off, there are a few more things you can do to stir the proverbial job pot before throwing in the towel!

It’s really not that hard to kick your job search into high gear.  Some of us get so focused on building the resume, the bio and figuring out who to include as a reference that we forget to do a few basics which really happen BEFORE the resume re-write begins. When you think about preparing for your job search you might spend all of your time preparing a killer resume and think that is all you need.  Unfortunately, a resume is only one tool in helping you present yourself to a prospective employer or a recruiter. Your job search begins with your ability to research, goal-set and prepare yourself – three ways to plug and play to you’re your career forward and find your dream job.

You’ve got to do more to impress the masses these days but it does not take a lot.  Common sense, simple courtesy and an ability to make an impression will drive how successful you are, not only the interview, but everything you say and do in between you and the job offer you are wanting.

We all over-think the obvious.  Not because we necessarily like to complicate our lives, but the drama we play out in our heads at times has a way of confusing our ability to make even a simple decision.  It’s not hard to know the difference when you are happy, challenged, stressed or even when it’s time to ask yourself, “Should I stay or should I go?”

Time spent in quiet contemplation sets the necessary foundation to help focus you more than list building and speed-interviewing can any day. When you feel the need to plan ahead, think about slowing down and taking a career sabbatical.

You may feel the need to rush to get through your “Job Seeker To Do List” wondering how many more resumes you can send out or how many job interviews you can line up. When you think you’ve done enough job hunting for yourself and you are not sure what you can share, think of those who are still struggling and have not been as successful as you and next time you hear of a job you are not interested in or perhaps is just not right for you, remember you can easily just, pass it on. By Lisa Kaye

When all of your search efforts have gone by the way side, do you ever feel like holding up a sign across your chest with the words emblazoned in big red letters, “Try Me!”  When all else fails there is nothing like bold advertising.  But when you think about it, what harm would there really be if you let them try you for free?

We all like to plan and plan and well, plan what our lives will be like in the future. The romantic sounds of your thoughts as they sweep past all of the scenarios your active mind chooses to paint, is a great way to dream up your career the way you’d like it to be whether the fantasy is real or not. What you don’t want to lose is your imagination no matter how far-fetched your career dreams carry you. What you need to remember when you come down to earth is applying those dreams in the here and now. You can get there from here but you can’t if you don’t apply your vision to your reality. by Lisa Kaye