Blog
Debra Wheatman, President of Careers Done Write, provides expert insight to the job search process that puts your career in gear with tips for interviewing, networking, job search strategies and how to create a winning resume and cover letter.
Avoid Unconscious Biases in Hiring
Unconscious bias, the most common heuristic trap, is a significant hurdle in contemporary recruitment and often results in a homogenous workforce and the exclusion of top-tier talent. Because these biases are involuntary, they cannot be abated with willpower alone. Instead, hiring companies should design processes that create “speed bumps” to disrupt these mental shortcuts….
Streaming Past Success: Lessons in Adaptability and Humility
On a Saturday night in 1990, the internet was in its infancy, Wi-Fi was a futuristic technology, and video streaming had yet to be conceived. Consumers went to physical stores to rent VHS tapes to watch at home. By the mid to late 1980s, almost two-thirds of American households owned a VCR. VHS had achieved market dominance over the technologically superior Betamax and had driven a new culture of at-home movie enjoyment. And no one was a bigger player in this market than Blockbuster Video. Their stores sprang up all over the country and were immediately recognizable by their blue-and-yellow logo, which also adorned the company’s membership cards. It seemed as though their growth was unstoppable….
‘Tis the Season to Stay Professional During Festive Times
The holiday season brings unique energy to the workplace; year-end deadlines collide with celebrations, schedules shift, and teams try to balance festive cheer with professional expectations. It’s a time filled with opportunities for connection, but also with potential for missteps. Whether you work in person, in a hybrid model, or fully remote, practicing strong holiday-season work etiquette helps maintain professionalism, reinforce team spirit, and ensure everyone feels respected during a time that can be both joyful and stressful….
When Failure Becomes Opportunity
In your career, turning failure into success is less about avoiding mistakes and more about how you respond. Treat failure as feedback, not a dead end. Act quickly to correct the course. Heed lessons, document mistakes, and avoid mishaps in the future. Leverage your failure for innovation. Take calculated risks and celebrate learning….
Don’t Fall into a Heuristic Trap
Heuristics are mental shortcuts that our brains use to make decisions quickly. Rather than carefully analyzing a situation, we rely upon past experiences, core beliefs, and patterns to come to a quick conclusion. These solutions may not be optimal, but given the limited time and information available, they are incredibly useful. People use this sort of intelligent guesswork, trial and error, process of elimination, and experience to solve problems or chart a course of action. In a world that is increasingly complex and overloaded with big data, heuristic methods simplify and accelerate decision-making through shortcuts and good-enough calculations. Without leveraging heuristics, our brains would suffer cognitive overload….
Create a Culture of Data Literacy
“Data is the new oil” is an overused metaphor that describes the potential value of data in the modern economy. Like oil or any other commodity, data doesn’t become truly valuable until it is refined and processed. Data on its own is neither good nor bad, but it is undoubtedly useless. It must be collected, cleaned, analyzed, and interpreted before it can be applied to a business problem. In the current oil boom that is the data-driven economy, companies that wish to be disruptive and innovative must intentionally foster and instill a culture of data literacy throughout their organizational DNA….
Common Advice to Job Seekers That Misses the Mark: “Just Start Your Own Business”
The idea that an individual can rise from humble beginnings and achieve greatness and success through determination, hard work, and ingenuity is a deeply ingrained component of the American Dream. Anyone can make it here! All you need is the drive, the gumption, the risk appetite! Look at all these entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley! In this precarious job market, a common piece of advice repeated ad nauseam online, in career journals, and at networking meetings is some version of “You should just start your own business.”….
Be Bold, Brash & Audacious and Stay on the Air
When you stay ready, keep showing up, and hold fast to your standards, you position yourself to seize the moment that can change everything. The world may not believe in your vision at first, but conviction paired with audacious execution can turn even the boldest idea into history….
Integrity: A Vital Component of Business Strategy
Between September 29 and October 1, 1982, seven people in the Chicago area mysteriously died after taking extra-strength Tylenol capsules. What began as a public health investigation transformed into a criminal probe that revealed that the victims had been poisoned—the Tylenol capsules that they had ingested were laced with cyanide. This highly toxic chemical can cause death within minutes. Tylenol was a behemoth in the over-the-counter pain relief category, widely used by American consumers and regularly recommended by physicians. As a result of the coverage of what would become known as the Tylenol Murders, market share fell from 35% to less than 10% literally overnight….
A Cautionary Tale of the Importance of Culture
History is littered with business flops, some catastrophic, highly visible disasters that were often hugely hyped before their eventual doom. This year marks the 25th anniversary of one such calamity when media giants AOL and Time Warner combined their businesses in what has come to be described as the worst merger of all time….