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I don’t know why new graduates are being given the following resume advice, but I am here to tell you: Don’t.Do.It.

-Put everything you’ve ever done in school on your resume including individual classes, every activity you have ever participated in, Professor recommendations. At the *top* of your resume, I want to know where you went to school, when you graduated, and what your major is. If you had an overall 3.5+ GPA and want to include it, fine. Other than that, I want to see PROFESSIONAL development. That includes internships, certifications, professional associations you have joined, and relevant volunteer experience. Give me details about your experience: what was the project you worked on? What were the results of your efforts (accomplishments)? Did you learn any industry/job specific tools (ie software pacakges)?

For the sake of little green frogs, PLEASE USE BULLET POINTS, not block paragraphs.

-I am looking for QUANTIFIABLE skills as they relate to how you would do a job. Quantifiable means there is some sort of statistical value to what you are telling me. How long, how much, how many, how often. If you aren’t sure how to quantify it, look at either the job description or the project overview and see if what you did mirrors what was scoped out in the job description.

-Unless you have a few years of *work experience* i.e. you went back to school or had 4 internships, your resume should be one page.

-Don’t overwhelm me with extra-cirricular activities. If you were in a club your freshman year and went to meetings once a month, I don’t care. I’m most interested in the last 1-2 years in activities that show either a focus on your professional industry of choice, leadership activities (and tell me what that entails), or discipline/competitiveness (sports, performance, associations).

-Avoid references to politics and religious activities. *If you went on a mission or other sabbatical, position it in terms of professional development such as an active membership drive for a global non-profit organization. Cold calling, lead generation, SME on the vision, goals, and social objectives of the organization. You can use statistics like "increased local chapter membership by 45% in 18 months."

-If you are going to use a summary statement, keep it *short*. You most likely don’t have enough experience to justify a paragraph. AVOID OBJECTIVES. They are limiting. I recently saw a resume of someone that had been out of school for less than 6 months, had NO work experience, and the objective? "A director level position inside of three years." (Good luck with that.) I represent a global company with 1000 employees. Not only do you not meet the minimum requirements, you are arrogant and have no clue how publicly traded companies *function*. Go try the startup world or better yet, start your own company. I’m looking for someone that is interested in the *opportunity*, content of the position, and is willing to learn as much as s/he can.

-Don’t list useless skills. "Excellent penmanship"? Really? Unless I’m hiring a calligrapher for wedding invitations, this is giving me the impression that you cannot think of anything worthwhile and relevant to put on your resume.

I don’t need or want your references unless I offer you a job. I don’t care that you are looking for a "progressive company that utilizes my organizational skills and offers the opportunity to learn and grow". (Of COURSE that is what you want.) Skip the trite, overused, cliche phrases that tell me nothing I don’t already know. Please. Just…don’t.

Recently one of my friends in HR decided he might be interested in getting back into recruiting. Another former recruiter (now in HR) had asked me if I knew anyone for a recruiting role, and I put them in touch. His phone screen went well, but the day he was supposed to interview there was an emergency at work that he needed to take care of, and he had to postpone his live interview. In the interim, he decided to look more carefully at the company, their culture, and their reviews on Glassdoor.com. Based solely on what he read there, he decided to withdraw his candidacy. I was shocked he hand’t gone to the interieiw for the practice if nothing else. He has been with the same company for *a long time* and switching career focus means a new set of questions and answers to formulate.

The last time I interviewed, I also did my due diligence on Glassdoor.com. The company has a very large sales team, and almost all of the reviews were from sales and highly inflammatory. There had also recently been news that another major industry competitor was looking at entering the same niche. So when I had my follow up conversation with the Director of HR, I asked for clarification on those items. Most of our talk was around how the sales team morale was being addressed, what the competitor was lacking that made them a non-entity to this company. In short, my questions were answered and I proceeded with the process.

Doing your due diligence, be it on Glassdoor.com, through financial analyses, reading press releases, or talking to industry contacts with insider knowledge is critical not only for understanding the culture and the organization, but also to show your interest in a company. I cannot begin to tell you how many times an otherwise "good" candidate in terms of experience was back-burnered when they are asked the question "So tell me what you know about our company and products" and they have no answer or something they read on the website the night before.

Remember that when you are reading company reviews on a site like Glassdoor that the majority of those employee are either disgruntled ex-employees or dissatisfied current employees. Take things with a grain of salt. If you really do have concerns about a company’s culture or brand, go straight to the horse’s mouth (as it were) and show that you are interested, did your homework, and value your work experience enough that you are only interested in a company that "feels" right to you.

I attended a career fair at Stanford University this week. Most of the students had a fairly good idea of what they are looking for in terms of internships, but there were a handful of freshmen that haven’t even declared majors looking for "internships".

"An internship is a method of on-the-job training for white-collar and professional careers.[1][2] Internships for professional careers are similar in some ways to apprenticeships for trade and vocational jobs, but the lack of standardization and oversight leaves the term open to broad interpretation." (Wikipedia)

So here’s the thing about internships: they are usually geared as vocational training for people pursuing a specific career choice. Software Engineer, Marketing, PR, Finance/Accounting, Fashion Merchandising, etc. Internships are a very important way for collegiates to get valuable industry experience. The Federal government has redefined "unpaid" internships in such a way that most employers can no longer risk offering them, which means that the overall number of available internships has gone down dramatically.

It’s actually a waste of time to ask about internships if you don’t even know what you want to do, what you are good at, what you think you might want to do; I have several other people that want to speak to me, and I cannot help you if you don’t know what you want. I would recommend that students with no direction in school yet consider getting a summer temp job if they need money.

There are other things you can do with your time. Get a summer job (there is nothing wrong with working at the mall, at a movie theater or waiting tables); volunteer in some fashion, consider a summer quarter abroad studying, be a youth camp counselor, or even take a couple of classes for fun. The most important thing for me, as a recruiter, is to see that you are constantly challenging yourself and growing.

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As intern season is in full swing, I thought I’d share a few words of wisdom with aspiring students seeking oportunities.

1) Internships are generally filled by April. If you start your search then, you will most likely be disappointed. My suggestion? Try to find a summer job through a temporary firm. At least you will get some office experience.

2) Put your school information at the TOP of your resume. If I have to scroll to the bottom of your resume to find out where you are going to school, your GPA, and graduation date I may get bored long before then and move on. I have literally HUNDREDS of applicants for the half dozen or so positions I have open.

3) Speaking of resumes: you are not exempt from using key words on your resume. I had a Computer Science PhD candidate apply for an internship. I’m sure he was probably qualified, but *nowhere* on his resume did he reference the actual technical skills required for the job. For me to be able to evaluate you, if there are functional skills listed on the job description, *you need to include them* or I cannot legally consider you a qualified applicant. Yes, I said legally. (Read my post on keywords if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about.)

4) Please, don’t apply for positions you are completely unqualified for. It makes you look desperate and/or unable to read basic job descriptions. If you are an art history major, unless you have a minor in Computer Science, you should *not* be applying for a software engineering internship.

5) I’m sorry, but we most likely cannot hire an out of country student. It has to do with work authorization. If you are going to school in Germany but have a US passport, say so on your resume; but don’t expect us to pay for your flights to/from the US. Our budget is not limitless.

6) If you graduated already or will be graduating right before the internship starts, trying to squeeze a full-time job out of an internship may or may not be possible. It depends on the company, their budget, and need. It might emerge next year, but not this year. If you are looking for your first full time job out of college, be honest and say that is what you are looking for.

7) Unpaid internships are on the decline, mainly because of Federal Regulations in the last few years. Unfortunately, this means the opportunities to gain valuable work experience are severely limited for students. I would recommend you try volunteering instead.

Finally, if you have been out of school for over 6 months, you generally *do not qualify for an internship", especially when the job description requirements say "student" or "currently enrolled" in it. BR />

(Credit goes to Robert Brown of Abney Park):

Social Skills Lesson Number 2: How to make friends of strangers.

Step:

1. Ask stranger a question about them self.

2. Be interested as they answer.

3. Ask more questions.

4. Genuinely praise parts you like.

Done.

It’s STUNNINGLY simple, and almost never fails. Yes, there are other techniques, but I find this one to be most fool proof.

I’ve been talking about the recruiting profession with several people in the last week or so. One of those conversations revolved around helping local area college students with an interest/focus in HR started in an understanding of recruiting, including an introduction to sourcing, the process of finding candidates. Since she and I are both considered local SME’s in Sourcing, this is a very valid discussion. A great way to start in HR or recruiting is as a Recruiting Coordinator, which entails a lot of scheduling, administrative tasks working with candidates, keeping databases up to date, participating in interviews, and as a Coordinator becomes more agile, often s/he is given some lower level requisitions to work on under the mentorship of a Senior Recruiter (I’m doing that with my present coordinator right now; she has done some recruiting in the past, and I’ve given her two Software Test positions to work on.) The other entry level stepping stone into corporate recruiting is to join a campus recruiting team, which involves heavy travel to schools and job fairs for months at a time.

Recruiting is a great stepping stone into other areas of HR because it involves a general knowledge of almost every facet of Human Resources. Compensation, account management from working with hiring managers on a regular basis, a working knowledge of benefits, immigration, contract/vendor management, working with various HRIS (Human Resource Information Systems), learning about employee relations issues such as internal equity (pay), headcount forecasting, and even Reductions in Force. Many smaller companies don’t have the budget for a separate recruiting function so generalists also recruit as part of their workload.

Another professional contact reached out to me to ask about getting *into* recruiting, how one does that, what sort of a background does one need? I’ve mentioned the entry level route but she was interested in making a lateral move. If someone has been a hiring manager for at least a few years in their own industry, it is possible to move into a recruiting role within the industry, but it needs to be combined with other skills and training. First, as a recruiter, you must understand how the process of data capture and workflow is necessary to comply with state and federal regulations such as Affirmative Action and the EEOC. The compliance piece of Recruiting and HR is the steepest and most important learning curve for a new recruiter. One must be comfortable around databases. A good portion of Recruiting is about managing workflow in some way. I’ve used everything from email folders, to an Excel spreadsheet, to enterprise and web hosted applications. Each requisition (job) is a separate project that must be managed, and most recruiters have anywhere from 15-45 requisitions at any given time. Recruiters spend a *lot* of time on the phone (30%-40% of their time) conducting phone screens and reference checks. If someone isn’t comfortable talking to strangers all the time, recruiting probably isn’t a good profession (it’s one of the reasons that a lot of sales professionals can be highly successful at recruiting.)

One of the best ways to start a recruiting career is with an agency, either a temporary firm (such as Robert Half, Volt, Adecco, etc.) or a direct placement or executive placement agency. Most corporate recruiting positions prefer or require some agency experience, because it is one of the best training grounds to learn the business of "recruiting" and becoming proficient at it quickly and able to identify good talent and write up a submittal.

As a recruiter becomes more experienced, s/he will also partake in different aspects of the business such as branding/marketing for the employer. A large portion of what I do is work on branding my employer in the local community, marketing our new products (as part of the recruiting process), and evangelizing our company 24×7. I am often one of the first in the company to know about new products, services or initiatives because of the need for staffing them.

My days are rarely boring, never the same, and intensely gratifying. I help people find jobs, help my hiring managers attract top talent, and I can walk down the halls and say "hi" to all the people I’ve brought on board. One thing it is vital to understand: recruiting is one of those careers where you are always "on", like a physician or a lawyer. You will constantly be asked your opinion on employment topics, for resume advice, and given names/referrals/resumes, and pointed to as the person to help job seekers find a job. This is not a career for introverts, but it is highly rewarding and can be very lucrative for the right personality.

One of the biggest motivators for starting a new job search is compensation. The common questions recruiters get asked: ‘I am looking for a new job and I know I am underpaid at my current position, how do I answer the salary question from the recruiter?’ and ‘How do I figure out what I should be making?’ Usually this is in response to base salary, or base plus bonus. In today’s world, the average length of employment has seriously deteriorated to 1-5 years. Factors leading to this statistic include GenY’s job hopping tendencies, some of it is a result of the massive layoffs and restructuring of the recession, technology that has created and destroyed market segments account for some of it, but the bottom line is this: new hire salaries rise faster than internal compensation.

If you have been at your job for more than 3-5 years and your salary increases tend to be a standard 3-7% ‘cost of living’ adjustments, I recommend doing some research on sites like <a href=’http://payscale.com’> Payscale.com </a>, <a href=’ http://salary.com’> Salary.com </a> or even a general overview on <a href=’ http://glassdoor.com’> Glassdoor </a>. Generally if you fall within the 65th+ percentile, you are being compensated fairly. Keep in mind that this is *just* base salary; if your company has killer benefits (like employer paid health premiums, or onsite perks such as free food), you need to factor these into your calculations. If you have equity in the company (for example stock) and the company has been growing, this could also make an impact in your decision.

While money is never the only reason to leave a job, it can be an indicator of a company’s culture, growth, and overall value of employees. I have one friend that has been with her company a very long time and she shared her salary with me and I was floored at how low her pay is. I have been actively helping her look for a new job and given her detailed information about what she *should* be making, which is more than double what she currently brings home.

Looking for a new job is scary and stressful, especially if you have been with a company for a very long time. Money should never be the only reason to look for a new job, but it isn’t unheard of for someone to leave a company for a year or two and come back and start again with a significantly higher salary. That is what a friend of mine is contemplating. His manager basically told him that he wasn’t ever going to be able to get a raise to make what he is worth if he didn’t leave. He’s been gone just a little over two years, and is checking his old company to see if there are any openings, just in case.

There was an inflammatory article earlier last weekend on LinkedIn titled ‘Why We No Longer Need HR Departments’. There were a few decent suggestions in the article, but the majority of the author’s assumptions showed a decided lack of understanding of just what HR *does*. I saw it late last Sunday and wrote a rebuttal from an HR point of view. The result? Over 2000 ‘likes’ and agreements with my comment, 108 replies (both agreeing and disagreeing) and over 30 LinkedIn requests to me based on my reply.

This is one way you can build your professional online brand. Dissenting with someone that takes a stand on something you disagree with, and supporting your side of the argument professionally shows a Subject Matter Expertise that gets noticed, and is at the heart of having ‘social influence’, which can also be translated as ‘your reputation’.

Dissenting with such an obviously provocative statement or theory does carry risks. Upsetting the status quo or having the appearance of trying to persuade people to change their thinking can be detrimental to your online reputation if you are not confident in your assertions and able to back up your own statements with data and anecdotal evidence.

For those professionals with a lot of experience in the field but that are still trying to get a handle on social media, start small. You don’t have to take a diametric opposition to an online piece like I did. You can disagree with points, or even question some of the assumptions the writer is making. The point is just to show an intelligent response to the original piece that offers a different viewpoint. Your goal is to get noticed and attract like-minded individuals (such as hiring managers and industry leaders) to want to know more about you.

This week my favorite radio station was talking about how poorly Lady Gaga’s current album is doing in relation to her last one, and one of the DJ’s attributes her success directly to a fallout she had with Perez Hilton in the last year or two. He called for a boycott of her latest album, and her sales are much weaker. This is an extreme example of how social influence can affect a career, and a good model to learn from.

The road to becoming a published author is long. It starts with an idea…a topic, a person, a plot. Before anyone starts thinking of publishers, agents or editors they have a lot of work to do. First, of course, is writing an initial draft. And your first draft is the very basic starting point. There are an almost infinite number of resources on the market that will help you with the process of writing, editing, re-writing, re-editing, revising, etc. For any sort of novelist, I highly recommend a critique group. For a non-fiction writer (including biography, memoir, self-help, history or non-textbook) manuscript you need to have readers along the way. These readers should not just be friends and family, who will think anything you write is wonderful. They should be subject matter experts, other published authors, book critics, editors, or someone that will give you an honest and fairly unbiased opinion. Until you have gone through several evaluation cycles by your peers, you don’t need to worry about anything else. This part of the process, honing your manuscript, can take weeks, months or even years. But until you are sure it is as clean as you can make it, you aren’t ready to think about publishing.

Once you do reach the stage where you feel ready to send your creation out into the world, you have one very important question to ask yourself: are you absolutely committed to your work as is, or are you open to changes? Because the truth is that unless you are ready to have it changed, re-worked, and otherwise edited, it is pointless to even consider trying the "traditional" publishing route. If you are open to having someone you have never met tell you they are interested if you make this, that or the other change, the next thing you need is a thick skin: rhino, elephant or armored tank thick. Because the odds are you will get rejected several if not dozens or hundreds of times.

If you are committed to keeping your baby "as is", you are looking at a couple of choices via the self-publishing route (this includes epublication such as an ebook via Amazon). In the hard-copy realm you have two basic choices: a vanity press or print-on-demand (POD). A vanity press will publish your book in quantity and ship it to you once you have signed the contract and paid the fees for printing and shipping. Print-on-demand is just what it sounds like: your work isn’t printed until someone orders it. A vanity press prints your manuscript, may secure your ISBN number, ships it, and you are done financially with them. A POD service will generally charge you an upload fee, and may also charge you a percentage of royalties for each order. If you choose the ebook route, there are a number of ways you can get your manuscript formatted; basically an ebook is a .pdf file that is encrypted against digital duplication.

For any of the self-publishing options, I highly recommend at the very least a professional copywriter, and wholeheartedly suggest you hire an independent editor to help make your work the best can be. A freelance editor should be able to provide you with references and examples of work s/he has done.

The most recent iteration of innovation in publishing has been epublishing. For a decade or so, epublishers such as Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, Loose-Id,offered online downloadable .pdf files of authors that were often novella length. The cost was significantly less than hardback/paperback print versions. These online publishers had varying levels of editorial support available, depending on their business model. Then came the Nook and Kindle. Originally designed as an alternate delivery method for publishers to reach their audience, when Amazon opened the door to CreateSpace and self-publishing on Amazon, the literary industry was irrevocably changed. Now anyone can self-publish on the single largest bookstore in the world. The royalties are much greater from a percentage standpoint but the price per unit is significantly smaller. So a 70-80% royalty structure might sound really good, but if your ebook is only selling for $2.50, that works out to significantly lower profit than 20% of a $8-9 trade paperback. At that point it is all sales. If you can get 2 million people to purchase your ebook, obviously you are looking at a significant profit. But if you only have 300 people purchase your ebook on Amazon, you might be lucky to clear $500.

There are major tradeoffs between traditional publishing and self-publishing. The most notable are financial and operational support, with quality control also being a major differentiator. When a large publisher makes the commitment to publish your book, you are generally paid a royalty advance, to give you the time to finish your book or create another. In addition, you receive the services of professionally recognized editors that generally have years of experience making a manuscript the best it can be. You also have the huge advantage of a professional marketing department and multiple distribution channels. In return for these not insignificant advantages, you give the publisher a hefty portion of the profits, and they control the distribution of the royalties with exclusive distribution and dissemination rights. There are also small presses, which offer much less in the way of marketing support but which you may have better chance of being published. Most of them do not pay advances, but they do offer editing and reviewers. There are many discussions on Absolute Write about the advantages, pitfalls, and warning signs about small presses.

Let’s talk covers for a moment. One major misconception many beginning authors have about traditional presses is that they will have significant input and decision-making on their covers. You don’t. Covers sell books, and all presses have dedicated artists or departments they work with that not only know the setup needed to create a book cover, but also to make sure publisher’s brand is consistent. Publishers are in the business of selling books, and like everything else, there are trends in what sells. It used to be that an artist could create a cover and it would be photographed and then typeset. Nowadays, covers tend to be a combination of photos/digital art, depending on the genre or subject of the book. Obviously if you are self-publishing you have full decision making over the art for your cover, but make sure you use art that won’t be detrimental to your book; when in doubt, go with a plain or abstract cover.

One question often arises for those pursuing traditional publishing: do I need an agent? The first thing to understand about agents is that they are the equivalent of an executive headhunter. They choose their clients based on the content of their manuscripts so they tend to be selective. Most have a range of genres they specialize in; they may be niche or broad, depending on factors such as agency size, the backgroound/s of their employees, and industry contacts. They generally take a 15%+ cut of publication royalties for each project. That may seem like a lot, but here is what you get from agent representation: direct access to publishers (submitted on you behalf) and contract negotiation expertise. Since your agent makes their living off of your deal, you are guaranteed they will get you the best contract terms possible. Publication contracts are a breed apart, so if you don’t use an agent, at the very least do yourself a favor and use an attorney to review your contracts *that has a specialty in publication contract law.* You should consider submitting to an agent for representation if you A) have an accepted manuscript and want their negotiation services B) you aren’t sure where to submit your manuscript directly C) you have previously submitted your manuscript, had it rejected from a significant number of publishing houses and you have made major changes. In the case of A, if you have been offered a multi-book deal, a one-time attorney fee may make more sense.

For those pursuing the traditional publishing route and an agent, it is absolutely vital that you do research to find reputable agents and for anyone that is using an independent editor, the same holds true. There are several online resources such as Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write, Query Tracker, Publisher’s Marketplace (subscription), Association of Authors’ Representatives, and good old fashioned professional word of mouth from friends/peers. Get references *and check them out*. LinkedIn has several writing Groups you can join at no charge to solicit feedback from other members. One trick to finding an agent is to read the dedications and forewards from your favorite authors; often they will name their agents in their thanks. You can also run a Google search on other authors to find out who their agents are; truthfully, it is pretty rare for a professional author not to have an agent. An agent can represent you on different projects to different publishers if you decide to branch out in your work. It is also very possible that attending writer’s conferences that have agents and industry editors at them will result in finding the right contacts. Just make sure that, as with any other professional relationship, you get a written contract explicitly spelling out expectations and fees.

Probably the most important thing to understand about being an author is knowing that this is not a profession that is likely to make you *rich*. Even the NY Times Bestsellers don’t all make millions. Being an author is a career option, but there are many authors that have "day jobs" or other external careers. Remember, if you are writing with any expectation of selling that you are creating a *product*, and that means you are to a great degree subject to the marketplace, in this case your readers. There was a question over on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago about whether or not an author should be required to change his "voice". His small press publisher closed shop, and no one else was interested in picking up his very narrowly-focused voice, which was that of someone from a very specific part of the UK, in dialogue, setting, characterization, etc. Lots of people were saying that no, an author should not pander to the marketplace if it was "inauthentic", but my response was that if he depends on writing is his livelihood, then he needs to create product that people will *buy*. Otherwise, writing is an investment of time, emotion, and effort into nothing more than a literary exercise.

Twice in the last two weeks I’ve had to deal with passive-aggressive behavior in the business world. The first time was from someone I have been working on an independent project with. We both had similar ideas for media projects dedicated to helping out job seekers. She approached me about working together, which we did from about January until June, when we mutually agreed to take time off from actively working on the project until the end of summer. Well, I had a huge opportunity to promote the project fall in my lap, and I emailed her about it to discuss how we should position it. I heard nothing for over a week when I got a text from her saying she had decided to withdraw from the project that she felt we were going in different directions…all this the day before I had a key meeting scheduled. She had been thinking about it for "several months".

First off I won’t even dignify the manner of her "communication" with me as a touchstone as anything beyond highly disrespectful. And I am not unduly upset that she changed her mind. What has me boiling is the fact that she didn’t give me the common courtesy of *telling* me immediately, either to address the issues and talk about it or else to just withdraw completely. Her excuses, "busy" and "we agreed to take the summer off" don’t hold water in this respect. She and I live less than 5 miles apart and there is no excuse. This was conflict avoidance, pure and simple.

Today I had to call out an internal client for failing to hold up the SLA they had agreed to with me when it came to candidate/resume evaluation. The manager called a meeting, and when we got into it, stated "I’m not going to dwell on the past", which is a way of playing ostrich and refusing to own up and be accountable for mistakes that have been made. If this had been a first time for the same issue, it wouldn’t even be a blip on my radar, but this has been a repeated pattern for the last couple of years.

I found a good in-depth <a href=’http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellor-articles/what-is-passive-aggressive-behaviour’>article</a> that really clarifies and explains passive-aggressive behavior in general. I freely admit that this is a personal trigger of mine but the truth is, it is unacceptable in business. In a nutshell: "Instead of communicating honestly when you feel upset, annoyed, irritated or disappointed you may instead bottle the feelings up, shut off verbally, give angry looks, make obvious changes in behaviour, be obstructive, sulky or put up a stone wall. It may also involve indirectly resisting requests from others by evading or creating confusion around the issue. Not going along with things. It can either be covert (concealed and hidden) or overt (blatant and obvious)."

Dodging confrontation is huge in our culture; think about when you are out with friends and you meet someone cute and go on a date. One person is really into it, another is not. But the person that isn’t interested says "I’ll call" but never does and just blows off the other person. That is passive-aggressive. Rather than just saying "you know, I don’t think we’re a good match" it’s become acceptable to just ignore people and hope they "get the message." It’s disrespectful and hurts feelings way more than a polite and candid truth. In the business world, it manifests in a variety of ways, from not taking accountability for mistakes (passing the buck), to simply not responding to email that is critical, to not completing work or projects to the best of your abilities because you are unhappy with your job and as a "silent protest" and the hope that your employer will be forced to "do something" about it. It is also important to recognize that if you have any desire to go into a leadership role that it is a major barrier to progressing in your career.

Conflict, disagreements, and critical assessments in the workplace are not easy, but learning to manage them and the process is both good for self-esteem and for instilling respect from colleagues.