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.
Don’t Jump the Shark. Embrace It!
When Jaws went into production in the summer of 1974, twenty-six-year-old Steven Spielberg was on the precipice of disaster. The shoot, budgeted at $4 million with a 55-day schedule, ballooned into a 159-day ordeal costing over $12 million. At the heart of this nightmare was “Bruce,” the nicknamed full-scale mechanical shark. Built to terrorize audiences on the open ocean, the hydraulic monster suffered continuous breakdowns: its pneumatic hoses corroded in saltwater, its skin absorbed water and sank the rig, and its jaw mechanics frequently jammed….
Artificial Fibers & Artificial Intelligence: Finding the Right Blend
In the 1970s, you couldn't escape polyester. It was hailed as the miracle fiber—cheap, wrinkle-free, indestructible, and capable of holding the loudest, brightest geometric prints imaginable. From the iconic double-knit leisure suits to everyday office wear, synthetic fabrics promised to liberate us from the tyranny of the iron. But the initial utopian dream quickly hit a wall of cold reality. 1970s polyester didn't breathe. It trapped heat, retained odors, felt scratchy, and, when exposed to direct heat, was prone to melting….
How to Handle DARVO in the Workplace
Have you ever pulled a colleague aside to address a missed deadline, or spoken up to a manager about a pattern of undermining behavior, only to walk away from the conversation feeling like you were the one who did something wrong? If you left the room feeling dizzy, confused, and suddenly forced to defend your own tone or work ethic, you didn't just experience a difficult conversation. You likely encountered a highly effective manipulation tactic known as DARVO….
Reclaiming Your Career from Parkinson’s Law
We often confuse being busy with being effective. If we have eight hours to fill, we will fill it with minor details, extra formatting, or unnecessary research to feel like we put in a full day's work. In the modern corporate world, this manifests as endless email threads, over-engineered slide decks, and back-to-back meetings that could have been handled in a single message. We treat our workdays like expanding balloons, stretching tasks until they consume every waking hour, leading to burnout without necessarily driving meaningful results….
From Peer to Boss: The Survival Guide for New Managers
Congratulations! You got the promotion. You’ve traded in your old responsibilities for a shiny new title, a bump in pay, and… a sudden, overwhelming wave of imposter syndrome. First, take a deep breath. What you are feeling is completely normal. Transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager is one of the sharpest learning curves in any professional career. To help you navigate the messy, rewarding, and chaotic first few months, here is a practical guide to surviving and thriving in your new role….
Innovation Is Not Found in a Calendar Invite
You are familiar with exhaustion of the modern workday: a back-to-back gauntlet of calendar invites that leaves you staring at your screen at 5:00 PM, wondering when you will actually have time to get your work done. Meetings and meeting culture can stifle innovation, reduce productivity, and be a significant pain point for your team. In its push for cross-functional alignment, corporate culture has made a critical error. “Meetings" and "collaboration" have become conflated. Relying on meetings as your primary vehicle for teamwork is often the very thing stifling true innovation. To build high-performing teams, leaders must understand where meetings fail and how genuine collaboration happens….
Perishable Code, Enduring Minds
This week, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, was booed as he delivered a commencement address to the University of Arizona’s graduates. He told graduates that AI would "touch every profession" and urged them to embrace it, famously saying, "When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on." To a stadium full of roughly 10,000 graduates facing an incredibly daunting entry-level job market, the message was widely criticized as tone-deaf "AI cheerleading." Students felt the billionaire tech investor was minimizing very real economic anxieties about automation, eliminating the exact jobs they had just spent four years training for….
The Myth of Meritocracy
The term “meritocracy” has undergone a radical and perhaps tragic linguistic evolution. Coined not as a goal to be achieved but as a warning to be avoided, the concept originated in Michael Young’s 1958 satirical novel, The Rise of Meritocracy. Young’s dystopian vision of a future Britain was organized by a rigid social formula: Intelligence + Effort = Merit. In this world, social status was no longer determined by the circumstances of birth or aristocracy, but by objective metrics like IQ. Yet, this shift did not create a more just society; instead, it created a more arrogant one. Young’s primary thesis was that meritocracy is not a solution to inequality, but a more sophisticated way of justifying it….
The Downfall of Betamax and Why “Best” Is Subjective
Our story begins in the early 1970s, when several electronics companies were experimenting with ways to bring video recording into ordinary households. Before videocassette recorders, consumers had little control over television viewing. Programs could only be watched when they aired unless someone had access to expensive professional recording equipment….
Managing Your Career within the Paradox of Productivity
The history of technology is often defined by a frustrating lag between innovation and economic realization. In the late 1980s, the economist Robert Solow famously remarked that the computer age was visible everywhere except in productivity statistics. Today, we are witnessing a digital déjà vu. According to a recent Fortune magazine study that surveyed nearly 6,000 CEOs and executives, approximately 90% of firms report that AI has had no measurable impact on productivity or employment levels over the past three years. For a professional looking to future-proof their career, this productivity paradox is not a sign of AI’s failure, but rather a blueprint for how to remain indispensable in an era of work-slop, which is what happens when people use generative AI to increase their output without applying human oversight….