Like zombies looking for their next meal, your career can start to resemble the survival of the last few humans looking to escape the clutches of a hungry mob.  Someone once said, “Just because your dead is no reason to let yourself go,” which begs the question, Does your career deserve a proper burial or perhaps a resurrection?  It’s no time to give up even when you’ve lost all hope?  You’ve got to decide if you are the type who gives in or gets going when all the world is surrounded with rotting job offers and decaying careers.  When your career resembles a scene from The Walking Dead you’ve got to make a decision-Do you stand and fight or do you succumb and become one of the walking dead?

It’s never too late to begin your job search BEFORE you graduate!  You may be thinking I have MONTHS to decide where I’m going to work.  Guess again.  If you are only thinking about this now, you are actually very LATE FOR YOUR IMPORTANT JOB DATE!  It’s not that I want to pressure you or anything, and it’s not like you don’t have enough pressure from mom or dad who are wondering when you’ll get off their payroll and onto your own!  It’s not that we don’t love you but, you really do need to get in gear if you are thinking you are going to want to do more than hit the movies, video game stores or soak it up on the beach come May or June.

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...

Walking on a tight rope?  Feeling like you may need them, but they don’t necessarily need you?  Wondering when you might be fired or worse just “ignored” enough to make you want to quit?  Managing to survive in your career when the odds are building up against you takes a certain amount of courage and guts.  It’s not easy not to feel wanted or needed when you were hired to do a job and you feel like you are constantly looking over your shoulder, uninvited to attend meetings or questioned at every turn. Managing to survive and managing your career can be one in the same when you are ready to jump ship or feel like you are being pushed off.

You may be a high-ranking executive, or someone who is still working his or her way up the corporate ladder, or perhaps you are just trying to break into the business.  Wherever your position on the career chain, you may now or in the future be in a position where you have to navigate the politics of your work environment. Knowing how to maneuver in a complicated system holds the same challenges whether you are a veteran or a newbie in the business.  If you are figuring out your next career move within your own company, or exploring what opportunities might lie elsewhere, remember that wherever you may roam the politically savvy attributes you hone will come in handy along the way.

Making sense of the rules and regulations that govern every aspect of our lives, particularly how we work and whom we choose to work with, isn’t always a case of black and right.  You think there is a higher judge, a fairness police that sorts it all out, making the nimrods with jobs seem like the lucky ones when the rest of us need to struggle to survive the politics.  Not knowing which end is up is never easy. Not knowing which end is down is even harder.  When the rules of the game change and you seem to be lost in figuring it out, don’t sweat the small stuff, just change the rules.

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.

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?

Second-guessing is a natural part of the process especially when you’ve been out of the job search game for a while.  Or, maybe you are so sure of yourself that you know what you want and don’t feel the need to waste your time on networking outside of your comfort zone?  It’s okay, no one is judging you, however, when it comes to knowing what you want from what you don’t want, it’s always a good idea to take the meeting to help you figure it out.

Living your best career not merely implies if you are lucky enough to have a job or not, but it does make you think about how you choose to spend your time in what you love vs what you do.  Making a living is vital to most all of us.  But how we manage our time and focus our attention on what we have to do as opposed to what we love to do separates you from living your best career from just working.

Sometimes you find yourself in situations where the choices are limited and you have to do what you have to do to survive.  But finding something you love in what you do, even if it’s not your primary choice, helps to guide you towards living a meaningful and fulfilling career no matter what your job title is. How you find your drive, passion, potential no matter what your job is today is key to living and finding your best career.