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  Water Cooler Wisdom is Moving Hi Everyone, it has been a pleasure hosting the Water Cooler Wisdom blog here at Getthejob.com over the last two years. I want to let you know that you can now view Water Cooler Wisdom at my personal website . Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you... 02-09-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom

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  Book Review: Bounce A few months ago, I had the opportunity to meet longtime entrepreneur and author Barry Moltz in our shared hometown of Chicago. Barry has founded and run small businesses for more than 15 years, and he’s a nationally recognized expert on entrepreneurship... 02-06-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Attitude & Motivation, Entrepreneurship, Handy Resources, Personal Development, Troubleshooting

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  How to Make Money While Looking for a New Job It’s easy for workers who have recently been laid off to quickly get discouraged, especially when faced with dismal economic news and grim job prospects. While traditional office jobs may be difficult to snag, there are many inspiring, nontraditional... 02-04-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Career Change, Cool Careers, Employment Trends, Job Hunting, Work

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  Accountability Groups Help Unemployed Stay Motivated The New York Times just reported on a new phenomenon in job hunting that has arisen as a result of the high unemployment rate among white-collar workers – accountability groups. According to the Times, membership in various networking organizations across... 02-02-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Employment Trends, Handy Resources, Job Hunting, Networking, Ownership & Initiative, Productivity, Goals

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  Get That Feedback and Get it Now Thanks to WCW reader Amy for turning me on to the cool new service Rypple , which seems to be a direct response to Gen Y's need for constant feedback at work. The premise of Rypple is that successful people have friends, mentors, managers, and clients... 01-30-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Communication, Handy Resources, Ownership & Initiative, Personal Development, Reviews & Promotions

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  Make a Deal with a Bigshot in 10 Minutes Thanks to ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse for sharing an excellent piece by Laura Roeder on making deals with bigshots in 10 minutes. Here are some highlights of Laura’s advice, which is sound and absolutely worth following, because no matter how great you... 01-28-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Communication, Job Hunting, Networking, Office Politics, Ownership & Initiative, People Skills

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  Economic Downturn Humbles - But Does Not Negate Needs of - Gen Y I’d suspected as much, and then I read it in the Economist . Sometime between the beginning of the economic downturn and now, Gen Y has become unentitled. Says the article that confirmed my thoughts: Jessica Buchsbaum first noticed that something had... 01-26-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Entry Level, Attitude & Motivation, Current Affairs, Emotional Intelligence, Employment Trends, News and Politics, Work

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  Book Review: Lead Well and Prosper Nick McCormick recently sent me a copy of his new book, Lead Well and Prosper: 15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good Manager . I’ve read a lot of books on management, and too often they’re gimmicky and theoretical. What I liked about this title... 01-23-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Handy Resources, Management, Mentoring, People Skills, Personal Development

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  Have You Taken the Myers Briggs Lately? Thanks to my friend Jason Alba , this week I headed over to HumanMetrics.com to take the Myers Briggs personality test for free. I’ve taken the test before, but it’s cool to revisit it occasionally to see if the results are the same. In the interest of... 01-21-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Attitude & Motivation, Communication, Continuing Education, Handy Resources, Personal Development

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  Are THEY a good fit for YOU? In their eagerness to get a job offer, many prospective employees forget that they are making a choice too. Presumably they’re going to spend a good chunk of their lives with this organization, and yet they don’t take the time to really evaluate whether... 01-19-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Emotional Intelligence, Business, Job Hunting, Plans, Hopes, Goals

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  A Global Perspective on Millennials at Work In a soon to be published podcast with the fabulous Peter Clayton at Total Picture Radio , I discuss this new survey from Price Waterhouse Coopers that aims to provide a brief insight into the minds of the Millennial. While I’m not sure I agree 100 percent... 01-16-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Entry Level, Current Affairs, HR Issues, Management, Plans, Hopes, Goals

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  5 Signs of Poor Productivity - And What to Do About Them Some people are just not all that productive at work despite spending significant face time at the office. And the worst thing is, you might be one of those people and not even realize it. Check out some signs of poor productivity and what you can do... 01-14-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Ownership & Initiative, Productivity, Project Management, Troubleshooting, Daily Life

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  Work and Play on the Other Side of the World I just received a press release about this incredibly cool overseas work opportunity, which my friend Lindsey Pollak also featured on her blog this week. Tourism New South Wales is sponsoring a contest to win a free working vacation in one of the greatest... 01-12-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Entry Level, Continuing Education, Cool Careers, Discovering Your Passion, Personal Development

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  Help! My Co-Worker is a Communist! Back in the 50s, admitting you were a communist at work would be enough to land you in jail, so you’d keep your mouth shut. But nowadays, people will divulge any and all details about themselves to colleagues. The question is, what do you do when a close... 01-09-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Emotional Intelligence, Ethics, Office Politics, People Skills, Troubleshooting, News and Politics

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  Don’t Annoy People by Committing these E-mail Sins For those of you who need New Years resolutions (and by the way, I’m not doing a post on career resolutions because I feel that topic has been substantially covered in the blogosphere already), here are two ideas for improving your reputation through... 01-07-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Communication, Networking, Office Politics, Technology

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  Laid Off NPR Reporter Uses Irony to Her Advantage In September, Ketzel Levine, a senior correspondent for National Public Radio , came up with an idea for a series about how Americans were handling economic pressure. Called “ American Moxie: How We Get By ,” it began in early December. The subjects were... 01-05-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Creativity & Innovation, Current Affairs, Personal Marketing, Troubleshooting

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  Book Review: Dig Your Job G.L. Hoffman has long billed himself as the wise, older mentor. He’s behind the successful blog What Would Dad Say? , and like most highly educated fathers, he always gives excellent advice. G.L. is a 25 year veteran of the business world. He’s also a... 01-02-2009, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Handy Resources, Job Hunting, Ownership & Initiative, Personal Development, Personal Marketing, Productivity, Work

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  My Work Life Balance is in Jeopardy! This just in from a WCW reader: “Dear Alex, my new department works really hard. How can I maintain the work/life balance I’ve tried so desperately to attain?” One of my favorite managers used to say that perception is reality, and there is nothing stronger... 12-31-2008, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Life Balance, Office Politics, Daily Life, Work

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  2008 Career Lessons From High Profile People For the third year, I was invited to weigh in for Yahoo! Hot Jobs’ annual assessment of career lessons learned from high profile people. Here’s the article , and what I had to say about each of editor Tom Musbach’s picks: DO stay focused on achieving... 12-29-2008, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Current Affairs, Personal Development, News and Politics

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  Making a Case for Telecommuting In order to encourage better work/life balance, and as a response to technology that allows workers 24/7 accessibility, many organizations are implementing telecommuting policies. In fact, according to The Telework Coalition , more than 45 million U.S.... 12-26-2008, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: HR Issues, Life Balance, Productivity, Technology, Daily Life, Work

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  5 Ways to Be Productive Between Christmas and New Years If you have to be at work during the “dead” week between Christmas and New Year’s, what are you planning on doing with yourself? For corporate employees, this is traditionally a time where people sit at their desks and twiddle their thumbs because the... 12-24-2008, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Networking, Productivity, Daily Life, Work, Goals

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  Should You Take a Voluntary Severance Package? Way too many of my friends and acquaintances have been faced with this dilemma recently: my company has given me the option of leaving the company voluntarily with a severance package that sounds pretty good. Do I take it and run, or stick around and... 12-22-2008, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Compensation, Current Affairs, Employment Trends, HR Issues, Job Hunting, Troubleshooting

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  Book Review: The 29% Solution Says Ivan Misner, the founder and chairman of BNI , the world's largest business networking organization: “It’s not Net-SIT or NeT-EAT, it’s Net-WORK. Successful networking is about learning how to work the networking process, not just letting it happen.”... 12-19-2008, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Attitude & Motivation, Networking, Ownership & Initiative, People Skills, Personal Development

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  Free Agency: Are We Talking Near Future or Far Future? If the journalism world is any indication, one would think free agency is just around the corner. I’ve heard through word of mouth that nearly a dozen of the top media outlets have announced layoffs in the last month, and lately, when I do an interview,... 12-17-2008, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Current Affairs, Employment Trends, Life Balance, Daily Life, Work

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  Should You Accept a Counteroffer? My friend Anita Bruzzeze has a terrific post on the perils of accepting a counteroffer. You might not think this applies to too many people in this rotten economy, but you’d be surprised. The counteroffer dilemma is something that faces nearly every halfway... 12-15-2008, 8:00 AM by AlexandraLevit to Water Cooler Wisdom Filed under: Best Practices, Career Change, HR Issues, Job Hunting, Office Politics, Ownership & Initiative, Reviews & Promotions