When it comes to finding the right job you are sometimes obliged to determine what box you fit into.  You are asked to define your talents, skills and gifts as if you were being asked to select off a fast food menu of options.  In today’s crazy and seemingly unstable job market, it’s not enough for you to guess which of your many skills will be the winning combination to pique someone’s interest.  There was a time when specializing in a certain area was of key interest to prospective employers.  The job landscape has changed and now more than ever you need to possess a diversified skill set to show how flexible and multi-talented you truly are.  So is it cool to be the specialist or the generalist?

When it comes to your career recovery is it possible for you to garner the strength it will take to to make the necessary changes?  Your career, like most things in life needs time and careful attention in order to change. It just doesn’t happen overnight.  When you are stalled in your career there is one thing you can do for yourself where no one else can help you.  In this, your career is very much an inside job.

When we become so consumed in looking for work, applying for everything we can get our hands on, taking every meeting and networking until it feels like a full time job, we don’t often stop to think about what we are doing?  It’s not just enough to follow our dreams, toss caution to the wind and pray for a miracle when we look for the next best thing.  Finding out what we really want from what we think we want is the first step in finding our perfect job.

So which ride will you choose?  Roller-coasters, ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, when your job search resembles the ups and downs, the thrills and spills of a carnival amusement park, do you ever stop & think, one more time around or is it time to get off?

When it comes to looking for work, how do you best approach your job search? Now that there is some movement in the job market with over 75,000 media & entertainment jobs posted on some of the job board aggregators, do you feel there is opportunity for you or do you like many, still hope that someone will notice your resume and pick you out of the countless number of others who may be applying for the same job? Are you confident that you can stand out in the crowd or, do you wonder whether you will fade into the background, resigned to post your resume and pray for a response?

If you’ve ever studied a course in spirituality you may have heard of a concept where before you decide to enter this earthly plane you actually had a choice on the selection of your parents.  Now whether you think that is an interesting concept, true or not, it certainly makes you think about the power we supposedly hold over our very existence. I thought about this in my own case and wondered what it was I would have gained by choosing the parents I did.  If this concept were true, then I believe I would have chosen my mother for her sense of humor, sensitivity, intelligence, creativity and my father for his loyalty, survival instincts and tremendous work ethic.  If you consider this for a moment and applied this concept to your career, would you be able to decide whether you chose your job or if your job chose you?

You may have heard the phrase,"Greed is Good" as uttered by the money-broker tycoon in the 1987 hit movie “Wall Street”.   It was a phrase often used to chastise those who cherished materialism over core values. Hey, it was the ’80’s, there was a recession and the world was at war and wait, does this sound vaguely familiar?  Well, it very well may be like the ’80’s when you think of our current economy, but one thing is for certain when it comes to looking for a job and pulling out all the stops, let me just say one thing, "Greed is Good."

When you struggle to find a job, keep a job or to perfect the job you have, you may find yourself battling the forces of good and evil.  Whether you are in the workplace, the interview room or the board room, you are faced with the inevitable choice of whether to put up or shut up.  Sometimes it’s not even a matter of whether you are good at or even value for the job you do.  What matters is whether you are in it for the respect you deserve or the cash you need.

Frustrated about your job search?  Ready to kick not only the tires?  It's OK, to get angry if you are not moving in the right direction.  Just remember to vent, release and move on...

Are you committing career suicide?  Setting yourself up for failure whether you intend to or not?  Stop sabotaging yourself and focus on how to help not hurt your career search efforts.