Whether you are out of work, in between assignments or just taking a break from it all, you have the right to set the bar in terms of how you value your time and more importantly, your worth.   Just because your friend calls and asks for some “free advice” doesn’t mean you should always put yourself in a position to discount your services.  It’s good to help out a friend or former colleague or make referrals because you want to in turn help someone else land a job, but this does not mean you should give your services away for free.

Making the most of a bad situation these days takes a lot more than prayer, a glass of champagne, and getting lost in your iPad.  If you’ve been lost looking for a ray of hope in the otherwise cloudy skies of the job market, just look up and if that doesn’t help and you are still in some serious doubt, then change it up.

When you feel like your job track has been all over the place and you’ve been running the relay like the Long Beach Grand Prix, it’s time to figure out how many laps you’ll need to get to the finish line.  It’s not enough to make sure you are in top order, but going the distance when the road is anything but clear makes you wish you were a bystander rather than in the race. When you are not sure where you are headed other than the circles you keep running, it’s time to course correct your career and get yourself moving in the right direction.

Everyone knows we are in a down economy.  If you don’t, then you are either richer than rich, or have been living in a cave for the past two years.  Just because you empathize with the state of the economy, does not mean you should forfeit your worth or value when it comes to what someone is willing to pay you.  So many of you think that you may have made a certain salary, earned a certain income level in the past and you can’t or don’t deserve to ask for the same amount of money now. What’s changed? Have you gotten less experience over the years? Have you depreciated in value? Just because you may not have worked in awhile or are trying it on your own for a change, doesn’t mean you are worth any less?

Like Rapunzel in the ivory tower throwing down her long braid in hopes of a rescue, does your career feel like you need more than a prince on a white horse to help you out?  Having a job these days has become more than a blessing given the alternative.  But do you somehow feel that you are sacrificing more than you think?  Feeling trapped in your situation even though you are collecting a paycheck is not any better than not having a job-you’re tangled by your circumstances no matter which side of the braid you are holding.

So maybe you’ve been focusing on your Plan A now for quite sometime without any real momentum. Or maybe you’ve been striking out but somehow you keep thinking it’s going to come together for you any day now.  Still, you stick with it, follow through and do everything you were told would help you get a job or move up in the job you currently have but, nothing.  So you might go to a career coach, figure you might need to tweak your resume or maybe splurge for a career makeover.  Trying to stay focused on your original plan, you continue to go out of your way to make it work even when nothing is coming together for you.  Do you dare ask yourself, “Is it time to initiate a Plan B?”

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.

Sometimes you walk in cocky and so sure of yourself that you may wonder why you even need to interview for the job in the first place?  Come on already you can’t be that good?  It’s great to possess self-confidence and to be self-assured when you are handling the interview process so well, but how do you really know you are acing the interview or living up to a higher standard?

Here are five ways to know you are hitting it out of the park whether you ultimately get a job offer or not:

It’s always good to be ahead of the curve.  Pushing your way through the crowd of angry job seekers like a mob scene out of “The Walking Dead,” you have the right to want to move past the rest of the herd.  It’s not that you aren’t ambitious.  But even a hungry zombie needs a break every now and again.  When you are just plain TIRED and you’ve been at this for a while, it’s okay to just chillax your search and sit this round out.

Sometimes you feel like no matter what you do you just can’t seem to get it right.  All the resume rewrites, networking parties, email requests, introductions and you still can’t get a job offer. When the going gets tough you don’t necessarily need to get going-in the other direction. When the jobs fall through, you...