Career Advice

The best thing you can do to help you get a new job is to make yourself indispensable at your current position. It doesn't matter if you have a full-time job now. Whether you're employed in a traditional position, serving as a temporary worker or even volunteering while seeking your next full-time gig, keep the...

By Susan Ricker In a memorable episode of "Star Trek," Gandalf said, "Use the force, Harry." Whether or not you're a nerd, you most likely know that four separate movies and TV shows contribute to that joke. "Nerd" used to be a negative social label, but now it can be used to describe anybody with an...

Retail salesperson is the most common job in America. The sector is still growing, but most of the jobs come with lousy compensation. The average salary? Just $25,310 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

By Susan Ricker Everybody has an opinion about what makes a good leader, but you know one when you see one. You also know an incompetent boss when you see one. If you've just started a new job, or you're working with a newly promoted boss, what should you do if it's clear you know more than he does? Don't...

By Ashley Lutz Retailers are keeping track of employees suspected of stealing in databases that could keep them from ever working in the industry again. These databases are used my major retailers including Family Dollar, Target, and CVS, report Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg at The New York...

Donna Read never planned to spend the rest of her life working at a grocery store. But the decent wages and great benefits kept her there for 12 years, until she was fired last summer. At age 58, Read fell into poverty, and into a depression that kept her in bed for three months. But now Read is going back to...

Geoffrey Dunlap spent his young years working in a plastics factory in Mexico, Mo., making plastic bags for newspapers and little plastic mailboxes. But when a motorcycle wreck in 1997 caused him to lose his right leg below the knee, he suddenly discovered a whole new use for plastics: prosthetic limbs. At the...

I've had the privilege of being career coach to some of the world's most successful people: from college presidents to Fortune 50 C-level executives to world-class scientists. Here are commonalities among them:

How do you stay focused when working on the go -- in airports, co-working spaces, Starbucks? -- Ashley