How To Negotiate A Job Offer Getting a job offer is no easy task. Assuming that you’re selective about the kind of work you do, the first order of business is to find a company with a job opening that suits you. Once that feat is accomplished, you have to write a resume — preferably…
If you’re using a functional resume, you might be starting out the job search process with two strikes against you. Most recruiters and gatekeepers despise functional resumes. The consensus is that if a person uses a functional resume they are hiding something. Using a functional resume is like pulling your hood up and turning your…
What is an Invisible Character? There are two kinds of invisible characters: those you create intentionally, and those you create by mistake. If you use beta readers, you’ll spot the mistakes quickly. They’ll be the characters that your readers don’t remember the names of. Or what they looked like, or what role they played in…
A lot of writing, whether or not it’s books or, especially formal business writing, has become excessively bloated, quite pretentious, and very confusing. It has been heavily bogged down with redundancies, and it seems to be quickly getting much worse. Whoa! I hope you made it this far, because if it had been me reading…
How a Character Can Interrupt Your Story Many writers say that sometimes characters do things on their own. Things they didn’t want them to do. I don’t necessarily agree, but things like that do happen in real life. I learned that lesson the hard way, and once again, through one of my animals. This time…
Understanding Your Strengths Since we’ve had our animal sanctuary, I’ve come to believe that there’s a lot we can learn from animals. Sometimes it’s a tidbit of wisdom from watching them do what comes naturally, like how the pigs keep cool by digging mud pits to lie in. Or how they use sticks and leaves…
It seems as if every other month someone is writing an article on the “10-second” rule of resume screening—that you only have 10 seconds to get the recruiter or the gatekeeper’s attention. I even mention it in my book, No Mistakes Resumes. I don’t like the way it’s presented in many cases, but I wouldn’t…
Two-Dollar Words Many people think that the bigger the word you use the better it sounds. They seem to equate the number of syllables, or scarcity of word usage to sounding scholarly. What these people don’t understand is that the trick is not to find the biggest word, but the word that works best in…
What Do Your Characters Look Like? Many writers don’t take advantage of the most powerful tool in their arsenal—imagination. Whenever you get the urge to tell us how beautiful your characters are, or how perfect their nose is, or their body, or how enchanting the eyes are, down to the perfect shade of blue…stop! Don’t…
Resume Killer What Are The Biggest Resume Killers? Resumes are complicated — at least that’s what many people think. But in reality, they are one of the simplest documents to write. Despite being simple, a lot of resumes from qualified people end up in the trash. Why? Sometimes it’s a single item, at other times…