Career Center | Soft skills: Gen Y gets schooled in old-school professional etiquette

By Lora Shinn / Special to NWjobs Like many young professionals, Gracie Quatchon is learning how to navigate the business world with charm. It’s not necessarily something taught in school alongside marketing or budgeting, the 30-year-old Seattle banker says. Of

Career Center | Walking the personal, professional line on LinkedIn

By Cindy Krischer Goodman / The Miami Herald Have you ever received a request to connect on LinkedIn from someone you didn’t know or couldn’t remember? Josh Turner recently encountered this situation. The online request to connect came from a

Career Center | Career makeover: Longtime IT manager must draft new career plan

By Lora Shinn / Special to NWjobs For 17 years, Barry Nichols was the IT manager at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Seattle regional office. But in 2012, the bureau office closed, forcing Nichols to look for a job for the

Career Center | Unplugging: Some employers helping workers disconnect

By Tanya Mohn / New York Times News Service In this age of hyper-connectivity, some companies are adopting policies aimed at weaning employees from their electronic devices. Atos, an international information technology company, plans to phase out all emails among

Career Center | Do exclamation points belong in work emails?

By Rex Huppke / Chicago Tribune Hello! I want you to know that I’m super excited about this week’s column!! It’s about exclamation points!!!! I recently received a work-related email riddled with them, as if it was written by an

Career Center | Networking apps are bumping off the business card

By Julie Weed / New York Times News Service The business card has long since left the realm of the office Rolodex and entered the world of the Web. Business acquaintances and meeting attendees now transmit contact information between cellphones,

Job Calendar | LinkedIn Lab

Whether you have a LinkedIn account and wonder if you are making the most of it or you want to establish a LinkedIn account, this is the WorkSource workshop for you. This workshop is a computer lab. To attend you

Career Center | Want to be an 'expert' in your field? Here's how

By Ken White / Special to The Washington Post You’re reading the newspaper, watching television or looking at something online that features comments or advice from an “expert.” How did that person get there? Why do reporters call on that

Career Center | Networking mistakes can kill a job hunt

By Heather Dugan / Salary.com Effective networking is a game changer. It’s the unofficial homework of today’s professional. It’s not just who you know -- it’s who you know who knows who you want to know. Most of us can

Career Center | 2012's workplace trends loom large for 2013

By Cindy Krischer Goodman / The Miami Herald As the country recovers from a recession, our workplaces are moving forward in new ways with new rules. Changes are afoot from how our offices look to who runs them and what

Career Center | Shawndra Illingworth's cool bobblehead job

What do you do? I’m a sales associate at Funko, which produces licensed pop-culture toys. It’s often referred to as “slangin’ bobbleheads.” Some of my main focuses? Obtaining new customers, keeping current and potential customers excited about Funko items and

Career Center | 9 ways to make yourself more marketable in 2013

By Lora Shinn / Special to NWjobs Those pseudo-Mayan predictions didn’t come true, so you’ll need to prep for a new year. Why not make it one of the best so far, at least career-wise? Here are nine tips for

Job Calendar | Linked:Seattle networking event

With nearly 40,000 members, Linked:Seattle is the largest and most vibrant business community in the Pacific Northwest. Beyond networking, come help shape the Linked:Seattle group. Please consider bringing an unwrapped toy for a child in need this holiday season. Register

Job Calendar | Job Search Strategies workshop

This free WorkSource class provides tips on the value of labor market information and introduces other strategies like networking, informational interviews and utilizing the Internet to help locate jobs.

Career Center | Kaijudo community manager Andrea Cole's cool job

What do you do? I am the community manager for [Renton-based] Wizards of the Coast’s newest brand, Kaijudo, a collectible card game and television series. I manage the brand’s Facebook page and other social-media accounts and keep my ear to

Job Calendar | Women in Wireless networking event

For the second year in a row, thousands of professionals throughout the world who connect with the mission of Women in Wireless will unite to meet, mingle and speed network. Seattle joins New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Dallas, Calgary, Los

Career Center | Commentary: I'm so over oversharing at the office

By Peggy Klaus / New York Times News Service Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about 20-somethings who are too eager to tell all at work. Whether they are recounting their drunken exploits or their external job searches, their tendency

Job Calendar | LinkedIn for Professional Networking & Job Search workshop

Social networking tools, especially LinkedIn, are becoming a primary recruiting tool for employers. Learn how to use the features important for your job search at this free WorkSource workshop.

Career Center | Pinterest resumes: Should you get on board?

By Benny Evangelista / San Francisco Chronicle Pinterest is known as a popular online pin board for photos of fashion, food recipes, and arts and crafts projects, but it has also become a place to find creative job resumes. Not

Job Calendar | Workshop: Pinterest for Business

Social-media strategist Tracey Warren presents this workshop to offer tips for using the social-media site Pinterest for business. For more information, visit Biznik.

Career Center | When is it OK to use initials after a name?

By Rex Huppke / Chicago Tribune Q: I've been seeing many business cards and LinkedIn profiles listing "MBA" after a person's name. Is this appropriate? I thought that was reserved for those with specific certifications or J.D.s and Ph.D.s. A:

Job Calendar | Mobile Mixers kickoff

Mobile Mixers is a new community for the mobile minded, open to anyone working in mobile business. Mix it up with digital marketers, mobile agencies, mobile providers and mobile technologists. Bring your ideas for what you want this community to

Job Calendar | LinkedIn Basics workshop

This free WorkSource hands-on lab gives an overview of LinkedIn and covers how to set up your profile, make business connections, join groups and research companies.

Career Center | Spring grads: Boost your chances for job-hunt success

By Diane Stafford / McClatchy Newspapers Graduating soon? Congrats! Reality check: Are you in a serious job search yet? It’s past time to compete with your classmates for jobs. The job market has been poor for the last three years

Career Center | Multi-distracted: Juggling tasks causes more harm than good

By Anita Bruzzese / Gannett While you may know that studies have found that multitasking hurts productivity, the truth is you really haven’t stopped trying to do more than one thing at a time, have you? After all, while

Career Center | Hide your tracks when looking for another job

By Anita Bruzzese / Gannett Previously, the only way your employer might get a hint that you were looking for another job was when you showed up in a nice outfit suitable for interviewing during your lunch hour instead

Job Calendar | Introduction to LinkedIn webinar

Despite a flood of imitators, no one has invented a more powerful website for facilitating career and business networking success than LinkedIn.com. And yet, many people still haven't heard of this revolutionary tool -- or may have joined the site

Hire Ground | A divisive decade helped unite job seekers

I don't have to ask you what you were doing this morning 10 years ago today; I already know the answer. Like everyone, you were trying to go about a typical Tuesday, only you probably spent most of it either

Career Center | Cool Job: Social media manager Evonne Benedict @king5seattle

What do you do? I am the social media manager for KING 5 TV and KING5.com. Part of my job is to post news to Twitter and Facebook, but even more important is using social media to build our community

Hire Ground | Major help for the college major quandary

At this time of year, many young high school grads and rising college freshmen are wrestling with the same question: What are they going to choose as a major? Personally, I made use of my journalism degree immediately and have

Hire Ground | Underemployed and returning to the networking trenches

One of the key tenets of my Hire Ground advice to job seekers has always been to remain positive. Grumbling and negativity can spread like a plague and lead to desperation, which is deadly to any serious employment search. That

Hire Ground | Twitter-based jobs conference: Brave new world?

You knew it had to happen eventually. Since everybody these days seems to be conducting business in 140 characters or less, it was only a matter of time before the Twitter machine would take on the world of conferences. This

Hire Ground | LinkedIn weighs in on 'Battle of the Networking Sexes'

Looking for a lively discussion at your next career mixer? How about an argument about whether men or women are better at networking? That ought to break some ice (or perhaps ice over some people). While this humble blogger won't

Nine to Thrive | Online do-overs: Do we need a law to erase our internet mistakes?

Unless you've been living under a rock the past few years you're probably well aware that any improprieties you make online can come back to haunt you professionally. One suggestive tweet or drunken YouTube video can be all it

Hire Ground | Declaring your independence via freelancing

This holiday weekend, while we celebrate our nation's 235th birthday, I thought it would be an appropriate time to discuss other forms of independence -- namely the severing of ties with an employer and the launch of a new career

Hire Ground | Building two-way relationships with JobMatcher

One of the most useful aspects of social networking sites is the ability to build referrals and receive notifications about job leads far faster than a conventional scan of the want ads. The beauty of this arrangement is that it's

Nine to Thrive | Job seekers: Three reasons to censor your Facebook posts

By now, we've all heard the warnings about being careful what we say about work on Facebook, regardless of whether we have an employer or are looking for one. [Photo by altemark] Sure, it's smart to use the social

Hire Ground | What role does social media play in your job search?

Can social media help you find a job faster? Can tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles help your personal brand? Will tools like LinkedIn replace our resumes in the future? From my experience working with professionals in transition,

Nine to Thrive | Could your name predict your profession?

A new LinkedIn study says yes. [Photo by Swift Benjamin] LinkedIn data analysts evaluated more than 100 million profiles on the business networking site to suss out the most common CEO names. The top name for women CEOs? Deborah.

Hire Ground | Can meeting strangers on Twitter land you a job?

I regularly meet people skeptical of social media tools such as Twitter or LinkedIn. But it's important to remember that the tools themselves don't provide the solutions, it's all about the access they can give you to other people. In

Career Center | Build your brand before launching your job-search campaign

By Dawn Dugan Salary.com One of the best ways to articulate your skills, experience, knowledge and overall worth in today’s competitive job market is to create a personal brand that helps you stand out from the crowd. According to management

Hire Ground | Strengthening the bonds of community, in good times and bad

As I researched this week for the latest networking events and seminars for job seekers, I couldn't help but get pulled into the heartrending tragedy that has continued to unfold for the people of Japan since Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake. Over

Nine to Thrive | Are you a digital drag at work?

So many ways to communicate at the office, so many ways to hang oneself by being a total digital drag. [Photo by Paul Keller] In a poll of 650 North American HR professionals conducted by staffing firm Robert Half,

Nine to Thrive | Entrepreneurs, unite! Can't-miss Biznik event this Thursday

For many new and veteran entrepreneurs, one of the biggest drawbacks of working solo is, well, working solo. Sure, it's great to finally be in control of where and when and for whom you work, but often that means working

Hire Ground | Groundhog Day check-in: Job hope springs eternal

With the winter midway point of Groundhog Day nearly upon us, I think a certain Pennsylvania-based rodent might look favorably on its outlook for Seattle for the next six weeks and beyond -- not just for our warmer weather, but

Nine to Thrive | Want a promotion this year? Start angling for it now

Looking to move up in the work world? You may be surprised to learn that along with the start of the year, summer may be one of the best times to nab a promotion at your company. LinkedIn announced today

Hire Ground | Knowing when to shift gears in your job search

As the economy continues to stagnate, it has become an almost too-convenient excuse for people to give up on their job searches. Employment experts often say that unemployment rates don't reflect the true number of people who have been searching

Nine to Thrive | The top 10 words to banish from your LinkedIn profile

On NWjobs, we give a lot of advice on how to get the most from LinkedIn (examples here, here, here, here, and here). But I don't think we've addressed in how to improve the written content on your LinkedIn

Hire Ground | Exploring new paths at the 2011 career crossroads

The new year is still new enough that almost anything seems possible. After a dreary few years, there seems to be hope that the local job market may soon begin to show sustainable growth. Some economists are saying that 2011

Hire Ground | Podcasting your way to a new job

As any good networking expert will tell you, job seekers who are discussed among their peers will have a leg up in terms of finding employment. In the last decade, the advent of blogging has been the easiest and cheapest

Nine to Thrive | Prediction: The biggest workplace stories for 2011

Although it was no 2009, this past year was another doozy for the U.S. workforce. So rather than reminisce about the many ways 2010 whooped the collective hide of the working public, let's look forward to the new year. Following are

Hire Ground | Networking for the miracle comeback win

If there's one thing Americans can agree upon -- especially after the recently expired decade of divisiveness -- it's that everyone loves an underdog. To surmount impossible odds and beat an overconfident opponent is a theme that is practically spliced

Career Center | Work smarter, not longer -- and ignore your e-mail (at least for now)

By Cindy Krischer Goodman The Associated Press Jessica Kizorek used to start her day by reading and responding to e-mail until she noticed she wasn’t getting to the priorities on her to-do list. “Half the day had gone by and

Career Center | Facebook: job-seeking friend or foe?

By Kristen Fife NWjobs Q: I have a personal Facebook page that I use fairly frequently, and a business Facebook page with very few followers. I prefer keeping my personal and work life separate, but I know there are people

Hire Ground | Good news/bad news/good news about holiday networking

Like the last two holiday seasons, this new one -- still in it's infancy -- looks like it will come packaged in the now-familiar mixed bag of economic indicators. On one hand, there is optimism for a healthier economy in

Nine to Thrive | Forget shopping -- 5 things you can do to advance your career today

Want to make sure you have a place to land should your current position unexpectedly evaporate? Or do you just hate your job, plain and simple? Then don't spend Black Friday waiting on checkout lines, scouring the web for bargains,

Career Center | How to use social networking to power your job search

By Kristen Fife NWjobs Q: How can I use social networking in my job search? -AH, Issaquah Kristen says: There are two ways you can incorporate social networking into your job search. The first is to take advantage of tools

Hire Ground | Rely on your network to dig you out of your hole

This week, as the TV cameras of the world focused on the 33 Chilean miners emerging, one by one, from what could have been their tomb, half a mile below the surface, I marveled at not only their immense collective

Nine to Thrive | You and your boss: BFFs forever or strictly professional?

Who says the recession hasn't brought coworkers together? In a recent survey by employment agency Adecco Staffing U.S., 78 percent of managers polled said they felt a stronger bond with their team members than they did three years ago.

Nine to Thrive | Trying to get noticed online? How to rise above the digital din

Ever since "tweeting" and "personal branding" became household buzzwords, business experts have been beating us over the head with the notion that if we want to attract employers or customers, we have to jump into the social media fray and

Career Center | Brand yourself: How to create a successful professional website with your resume

By Kristen Fife NWjobs Q: My professional history has been turbulent over the last two years. I started working as a contractor in 2009. Thankfully employed, but grossly overqualified for the work I do, I don't have much job security,

Hire Ground | Matchmaker, matchmaker, find me an internship

The leaves are changing. A chill is in the air. The kids are back in school. Time to start thinking about summer. Not the swimming-pool, shorts and sunglasses kind of summer -- I mean summer internships. Since the needle on

Hire Ground | Freelance Nation: Surviving the new reality

Most livelihoods have taken a huge hit during this stubbornly persistent recession, but few professions have been as much of a punching bag these days as journalism. Seemingly every day, we hear stories about the imminent demise of magazines and

Nine to Thrive | The perils of on-the-job oversharing

On NWjobs, we talk a lot about what makes for appropriate use of digital and social media -- and what can happen when workers overshare the intimate details of their personal life online. Today I caught wind of a

Career Center | Are you careful about what you post on social-media websites?

Are you careful about what you post on social-media websites?online surveys

Hire Ground | T-Mobile turns to social media for seasonal hiring

Late August is not a time most people are thinking about "ho, ho, ho" and mistletoe. But at Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA, the holiday season is just getting under way as it prepares to make its seasonal hires in the next

Hire Ground | Prepare for landing: Late-summer networking events

OK, have we gotten it all out of our systems now? This wave of workplace catharsis that has rippled across the country in the days since our new 15-minute folk hero, Steve Slater, famously grabbed those beers and pulled the

Career Center | How to get an executive job when you’ve got the experience, but not the title

By Kristen Fife NWjobs Q: I’m stuck at the director level in a privately held, owner-managed company with a president and two VPs. I’m doing executive-level work in my organization, but it’s clear I’ll never get the title. Any

Hire Ground | Job search events to get you through the 'dog days'

As we turn the corner into August this weekend, we officially enter summer's "dog days." While we Seattleites are blessedly free of the infernal heat and humidity that usually stifles the rest of the country this time of year, August

Nine to Thrive | No swearing in office e-mail? WTF?!

Straight from the You Can't Make This S--- Up! files comes my favorite workplace news item of the week: Goldman Sachs announcing its plans to use software to screen employee emails, texts, and instant messages for expletives. [Image by

Hire Ground | Social network feature rewards those who follow

Most companies these days are looking for good leadership qualities in their job candidates. But to get to that all-important interview, sometimes it's good to be a follower. The social media landscape has made the act of following -- friends,

Hire Ground | Private sector provides encouragement for job seekers

Before getting into the list of job-seeker events for the rest of this month, I thought it was necessary to point out some recent jobless figures this week that may have gone unnoticed amid the good news down in the

Hire Ground | Networking tips for the video-game job market

To gamers, it seems like a natural progression: After mastering every nuance of their beloved video games like Halo or World of Warcraft in their teens, game aficionados learn some C++ programming skills in college and land jobs in Seattle's

Nine to Thrive | Do we really need anonymous peer reviews of workers online?

Maybe you've heard about Unvarnished, the new social networking site that allows peers to review past and present colleagues -- anonymously. [Image by RubensLP] Think LinkedIn meets Yelp. Only unlike LinkedIn, Unvarnished -- which is still in private beta

Nine to Thrive | Give me Facebook or give me unemployment?

Would you turn your nose up at a job that didn't allow you to access your personal e-mail or social networking sites like Facebook on company time? One in five younger workers would, says a new survey from London-based software security

Hire Ground | Support your local library, find job-search tips

It's a holiday weekend, time to relax, recharge and prepare for another week of job hunting. You'll need the rest because, even with this short work week, the summer season of job-search seminars and networking events is kicking into high

Career Center | Online presence helps companies such as Amazon, Expedia and Microsoft notice you

By Randy Woods Special to NWjobs To stand out from the crowd, job seekers should demonstrate initiative online, tech companies say. (Thinkstock) Last fall, Liz Stinson, a recent graduate of Stanford’s Ph.D. program in computer science, wanted to get

Hire Ground | Beating the resume-tracking numbers game

One of the most common mantras that is drilled into every job seeker's head is "personalize." Personalize you cover letter, your networking, your interviewing techniques to make a connection with hiring managers and convince them that you are the exact

Career Center | Business social-networking tools take collaboration to a personal level

By Mike Swift The Associated Press Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010, released Wednesday, includes features that allow co-workers to personalize their profiles. (Screen shot courtesy of Microsoft) For those who thought they could avoid joining the more than 400 million residents

Hire Ground | Networking events that mix business with pleasure

As Seattleites, we can be a bit stand-offish at times. Perhaps a little distant. But when the weather is nice and the days are long, it's like we all turn into garrulous Californians. How else can we explain the large

Career Center | Would you friend your boss on Facebook?

Would you friend your boss on Facebook?survey software

Career Center | Facebook plans to open Seattle engineering office

By Seattle Times technology staff The Seattle area's pool of engineering talent has won over another major Silicon Valley company. Facebook, the hugely popular social-media service, is planning to open an engineering office here. Announcement of the Palo Alto,

Hire Ground | Casting a wider net to find networking opportunities

When compiling my weekly roundup of job-search events, it's always gratifying to find a few new listings thrown in with the usual weekly or monthly regulars. This coming week, I discovered a whole array of job-search activities down in Tacoma

Hire Ground | Jewish networking group teaches professional development

When times are tough, it's natural for people to band together into groups with a common purpose. Most of these networking groups have been formed around certain professions, neighborhoods and age ranges. Ben Meyerhoff, a former sales executive, has taken

Career Center | Website that rates people triggers controversy

By Jessica Guynn Los Angeles Times Peter Kazanjy, a little-known San Francisco entrepreneur, has launched a controversial new Web site that overnight has turned him into a very public and not very popular figure. His site, Unvarnished, is like

Hire Ground | First buds of the spring job fair season in bloom

As we finish dotting the decimals and checking the boxes on our Form 1040s this week, it's easy to note a change in the air. Now that we have the freakish hailstorms of last week out of our system, we

Career Center | How often do you check social-networking sites at work?

How often do you check social-networking sites at work?answers

Hire Ground | Five ways to maximize your tweet power

Have you tweeted yet today? If so, did you get more out of it than a few marginally funny forwarded video clips, some lunch-menu updates from friends or perhaps a few hundred re-re-re-retweets from a long-obscured author? Hire Ground readers

Nine to Thrive | Big Brother is watching (to see if you're breaking confidentiality)

Forget dinging employees for using social media to gas on about how many cocktails they drank Saturday night or how they really spent their last sick day. A new software application allows companies to monitor whether employees are revealing trade

Hire Ground | What a year it's been -- No foolin'!

Today marks a full calendar year since I carved out my little cyberniche with this Hire Ground column. So far, I've posted more than 140 entries about interviewing tips, networking events, resume advice, development of interpersonal skills and some random

Hire Ground | How to build a personal brand in five days

Getting the attention of college students is always difficult, but it's especially hard to do toward the end of March, when basketball overtakes their brains. While it's important for graduating seniors to get serious now about networking for jobs, you