Career Development

How do you decide what jobs to apply for? Referral from a friend? New alert from Monster.com? There will always be temptations due to the nature of being in transition. Most of us while looking want to stop looking and find a job (I say most as some really love being out and free!). And anything that looks kind of close gets our heart palpitating.

I often write about things you should do on LinkedIn to maximize your effectiveness. Today we're going to look at the other side of the equation…the mistakes. The five mistakes listed here are related to your ability to eventually monetize LinkedIn.

The recession is driving home a bitter truth about the 21st-century job market: A tidy, linear path to a secure career is increasingly hard to find.

Those who are unemployed certainly undergo one of life's most traumatic experiences. It is a stressful, life-changing event that can lead to negative mental, physical, and emotional consequences, jeopardize financial security, erode the sense of identity, and cause family relationships to deteriorate.

When I was training to be a professional counselor (1969-1971), the vast majority of my professors (and my colleagues) stressed that the "ideal" counselor would strive to view all clients with 'unconditional positive regard' and conduct their counseling sessions in a 'client centered' and 'client directed' approach taught by Carl Rogers, the most prominent and respected counselor educator of the era. While my natural personality is to be very extroverted, assertive, and directive, I learned and practiced the Rogerian techniques as I began to provide career counseling and train other counselors.

For learning to occur, younger students in particular often need to experience learning in a way that is meaningful to them. Teaching about careers to these students can be challenging especially since the concept of a career represents an aspect of human development which is far off in the future and associated with something that is "adult-like." The idea of a vocation or career represents a certain level of abstractness that students may not be developmentally ready for. Teaching middle and high school students about careers through activities and games may serve as the perfect conduit as students naturally like to learn while being active and engaged.

A few months ago, Andrea Kornfeld was working on a computer program to shave milliseconds off of transactions at Merrill Lynch. Now, she's spending her severance pay on a mosquito net and malaria pills for her new job: as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching computer skills to high-school students in Cameroon.

Every year at about this time I find myself humming, "It's May; it's May," a song from the musical Camelot. This year I took a closer look at the lyrics. I had missed the second half of a couplet mid-song: "The month of great dismay." For the many people on the job market who are still in limbo, that line has probably become a too-familiar refrain. Now that you've reached May without a job, what are your options?

With the unemployment rate hitting a new 25-year high Friday, many workers and layoff victims in the worst-suffering industries are looking for safer sectors.

With the unemployment rate hitting a new 25-year high Friday, many workers and layoff victims in the worst-suffering industries are looking for safer sectors.

Melissa & Doug LLC, a fast-growing toy maker in Wilton, Conn., puts applicants through an interview process so grueling that one job seeker says she left in tears and felt psychologically traumatized.

So, as you might expect, there are those who have NOT knocked my socks off. In fact, their actions left me wanting to double knot the shoe laces. Bad people? No, not at all. Maybe lazy. Or perhaps, just perhaps, these folks had never been in a positive networking environment before. One in which people give first - not as a result of being helped in advance.

Melissa & Doug LLC, a fast-growing toy maker in Wilton, Conn., puts applicants through an interview process so grueling that one job seeker says she left in tears and felt psychologically traumatized.

View numerous job search videos posted and created by the WSJ.

You might think that being at home for an interview means a more relaxed environment. But experts say the key to success is being as diligent as you would be in person. Advice to help you ace the phone interview.

Job seekers, beware the telephone. For years, the phone interview was a preliminary step that allowed an employer to give a candidate the once-over and schedule an in-person interview. But these days, many recruiters are using the phone interview to pose the kinds of in-depth questions previously reserved for finalists. What's more, job hunters say the bar for getting to the next level has been raised much higher, catching many of them off-guard.

ALAN KENNEDY, 54, had never used social networking sites until he was laid off from his job as an engineer last November. Then he did what many job seekers are now advised to do: he set up profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn.

ALAN KENNEDY, 54, had never used social networking sites until he was laid off from his job as an engineer last November. Then he did what many job seekers are now advised to do: he set up profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn.

IN an environment of rapidly rising unemployment, scores of managers and executives have had doctor-as-patient, "aha" moments, as they find themselves among the millions of American workers looking for new jobs.

Q. You're a recent college graduate getting ready for the working world. Can your college wardrobe make the transition with you?