November 2007 - Posts

• Harsh Realities from Dancing with the Stars

  Okay, I confess. I’ve been hooked on Dancing with the Stars . I started watching this season because over the summer, while on a Southwest Airlines flight from San Francisco to Chicago, I met one of the professional contestants, Mark Ballas . It was especially Read More... Posted Friday, November 30, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Current Affairs, Personal Marketing, News and Politics

• 5 Personal Qualities Every Resume Should Demonstrate

  Employment Digest has an interesting post on the qualities that potential employers want to see, and how these qualities can be translated on a resume. Among them: · Communication Skills: For example, the phrase “Ability to be persuasive when interacting Read More... Posted Wednesday, November 28, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 1 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Job Hunting, Personal Marketing, Work

• Looking for the Small Blessings

  Though I rarely discuss my personal life on my blog, some of you know that it has been a pretty tough year for my husband and me. We’ve had more than our share of scary incidents, illnesses, deaths, and overall misfortune. Suffice it to say that we’re Read More... Posted Monday, November 26, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 3 Comments Filed under: Attitude & Motivation, Personal Development, Plans, Hopes, Goals

• If You Don’t Mean It, Don’t Offer

  Have you noticed that if you send an e-mail to a Web site address labeled “Info” (for example, info@company.com ), you will never, ever hear back from a real person? It seems that this “Info” address is akin to a black hole, and it’s particularly upsetting Read More... Posted Friday, November 23, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Communication, Business, Ownership & Initiative, Productivity, Work

• The Value of Sharing Stories

  Whenever I speak at a corporation, university, or nonprofit event, I always tell a lot of personal stories. Why? Because I feel that it’s the best way to crystallize the lessons I’ve learned for the audience, and provide examples of practical applications. Read More... Posted Wednesday, November 21, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Attitude & Motivation, Communication, Personal Development, Plans, Hopes, Goals

• Avoid Clichés Like the Plague

  One of my colleagues at Edelman, Dan Santow, has a great blog of writing tips , and I thought this week’s post on clichés was worth sharing with all of you. Says Dan: A cliché is a metaphor or phrase characterized by its overuse. For the most part, using Read More... Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 1 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Communication, Business, Handy Resources

• New Job? Don’t Be a Bulldozer

  During recent talks I’ve given about young people entering the workplace, a new issue has been cropping up. “These twenty-somethings come in and expect to take over the company right away,” older managers complain. Whether you’re twenty-two or sixty-two, Read More... Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Entry Level, Communication, Ownership & Initiative, People Skills, Professionalism

• How to Avoid Age-Bias Landmines

  Thanks to Todd Raphael’s World of Talent blog for pointing out TechRepublic’s new article on how to avoid age-bias landmines during the interview process . According to the article, you may encounter subtle age bias in questions and comments from interviewers. Read More... Posted Wednesday, November 14, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 2 Comments Filed under: Communication, HR Issues, Job Hunting, Personal Marketing, Troubleshooting

• New Episode: 30/20 Vision Podcast

  Just wanted to let everyone know that a new episode of the 30/20 Vision podcast is archived at Blog Talk Radio . This month, my partners in crime Christine Hassler (author of 20-Something, 20-Everything ) and Lindsey Pollak (author of Getting from College Read More... Posted Tuesday, November 13, 2007 4:00 PM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Entry Level, Life Balance, Personal Development, Work, School, Plans, Hopes, Goals

• There is No “And” in “Brand”

  Back when I was in college, I met Andy Sernovitz while working at an internship at the Association of Interactive Media in Washington DC. Since then, I’ve been tracking his movements, most recently as President of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Read More... Posted Monday, November 12, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Business, Personal Marketing

• How Necessary is a Top College?

  In his post about undergraduate colleges in the U.S , Seth Godin discusses the marketing hype surrounding the admissions process. Given the fact that today’s parents and their school-aged kids obsess for decades about the decision of where to go to college Read More... Posted Friday, November 09, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Continuing Education, Current Affairs, Personal Development, School, Plans, Hopes, Goals

• Your Easy is Another Person’s Hard – and Vice Versa

  This week on Adventures in Capitalism , Chris Yeh talks about how he recently worked with a team of entrepreneurs who had done a phenomenal job of building a product that their customers loved, but couldn’t figure how to sell it to big companies for the Read More... Posted Wednesday, November 07, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Management, Personal Development, Productivity, Work

• How is Your Career like a Plastic Insect?

  You know those creepy-crawly plastic insects kids play with around Halloween time? Back in the day, my friends and I would throw a bunch of them against the wall and then see which one would stick. When I saw these in the store last week, they got me Read More... Posted Monday, November 05, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Attitude & Motivation, Creativity & Innovation, Ownership & Initiative, Personal Development, Project Management, Plans, Hopes, Goals

• Stop Harboring Those Shoulds

  My friend Christine Hassler frequently talks about the concept of “expectation hangovers” in her books and lectures. Christine says that an expectation hangover occurs when we hold a certain expectation but things do not turn out as we thought they should Read More... Posted Friday, November 02, 2007 7:00 AM by AlexandraLevit | 0 Comments Filed under: Attitude & Motivation, Best Practices, Troubleshooting, Plans, Hopes, Goals