7 Ways to Get Uncomfortable Writing Your Career Portfolio By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter #1: Metaphorically Speaking: Mix Prints | Get Colorful Have you ever revamped a stuffy wardrobe? For example, did your old wardrobe boast perfectly matched colors, solids and prints so that you would not stand out, be offensive or take a risk that someone may disapprove? During...

Disrupting Your Resume By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter “I feel like the resume is a good book I want to read again. It looked great the first time, but I know I’ll get more out of it when I read through it several more times.” The above quote was the BEST gift I could have received during any given business day –...

6 Key Traits of a ‘Good’ Resume Writer By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter “Beware hiring a resume writing amateur. A professional writer writes full-time and daily, and is well trained and experienced. Her words elicit a visceral reader response.” The above was a recent status update that I published on Facebook. It resonated with several...

Sail Into Career Dreams With Cathartic Resume Process By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter This post originally published at CourtingYourCareer’s blog. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “I have invested hours and hours in the attached (resume worksheet).  I found the process everything from cathartic, to exciting, to tedious and insightful.” These were the words of a recent...

Is Your Career Story Accessible? By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter I stumbled across the idea of story “accessibility” on a colleague’s blog this weekend.  In her post, “The Earth Is the Original Nonlinear Storyteller,” Katharine Hansen, PhD, a leading proponent for deploying storytelling for career advancement,...

Transitioning Your Career From Fortune 500 to a Small Business Market image: Sean MacEntee By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter If small firms truly DO offer the largest number of jobs (64% of net new jobs according to the U.S. Small Business Administration), then mapping a career strategy aimed that direction makes good sense. The key word here is ‘strategy,’ and an...

Are You Everywhere–Yet Nowhere–on Social Media? image: linkedmediagrp (flickr) By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter Visibility within the social networking channels is essential in today’s job search. If you are hunkered down, nose to the grindstone and confident that doing your job well will get you your next job, and that social media is not for you, then...

Job Seeker Clarity (Reality Check) By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter Part of my job owning a creative, service-oriented business is managing client expectations. I credit a conference presenter, Andrea Kay, for tipping me off about 10  years ago as to a best (or at least better) practice for setting expectations ‘up front’ with...

Words Breathe Life image: Zazzle.com By Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter In a recent, Glassdoor.com blog post, I spoke to the need to differentiate yourself in job search via a nuance-rich career story that will elicit emotion and interest. Interestingly, a commenter honed in on a particular phrase (i.e., ‘weaving in word...

What About the Results of All This Suffering? Sea's the Day By Robert P. Poindexter A few days ago, I began the mind-numbing task of refinishing the woodwork on our sailboat. I do not like anything about this procedure. It requires you to stay bent over most of the time. And, since it is a sailboat, you are usually bending over and twisting to avoid...