In today’s Wall Street Journal, Sarah Needleman writes about companies who mis-handle employee firings. It’s hard to say which is more cruel: getting a phone message, getting invited to a meeting to be told the company will be dissolved or simply ordered out on five minutes notice.
But you can’t control how a company chooses to […]

When you lose your job, the first question that comes to mind is, “How will I survive financially?”
I haven’t seen much good advice for dealing with the financial side of career change, but I like this article:
http://www.fpanet.org/public/tools/jobloss.cfm#steps
Some points I especially like:

Cobra may not be your best option for health insurance.
Make at least some effort to […]

I just ran across a pretty good Wall Street Journal article What To Do After a Layoff by Erin Chambers. Read it here.
Essentially, the advice is:
Don’t hide (this is tough).
Get a sense of energy and momentum.
Get your references in gear.
Line up the resources you’ll need: financial planners, career coaches, recruiters and even therapists. The article […]

I finally got around to reading How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill.
You can read my review on amazon if you click here.
Mostly I felt this book could inspire a lot of discussion.
Was Gill’s experience typical? Are most Starbucks managers as charismatic and competent as Crystal, the manager who hired him?
Which of the […]

Q: My company was just sold. My whole job descriptionchanged and my workload nearly doubled with no increase incompensation. Our friendly culture is now snarly andgnarly. I used to love coming to work and now I dreadMondays. Should I quit?
A: Maybe. I say, if your mental and physicalhealth have not been compromised, hang on.
But effective […]

For some reason, queries tend to follow patterns. And recently I heard from two people, in two different industries, at opposite ends of the US:
“Hi Cathy,
“Last year we decided to buy a house. We fell in love with a home that’s a 30-minute commute from where I work. I went to my boss. I […]