Career Resources

Expert Career Advice

Who is Peter Weddle?

Peter Weddle is a recruiter, HR consultant and business CEO turned author and commentator. Described by The Washington Post as "... a man filled with ingenious ideas," he has earned an international reputation, pioneering concepts in Human Resource leadership and employment. He has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, The National Business Employment Weekly, and CNN.com. Today, he writes two newsletters that are distributed worldwide and oversees WEDDLE's LLC, a print publisher specializing in the field of human resources. WEDDLE's annual Guides and Directory to job boards are recognized for their accuracy and helpfulness, leading the American Staffing Association to call Weddle the "Zagat of the online employment industry."

Weddle's Syndicated Content

Kindergarten Can't Help
It's commonplace these days to say that everything you need to succeed in human affairs you learned in kindergarten. If you follow that advice in your job search, however, you're likely to be disappointed in the results.

Don't Be a Job Seeker
Employers address you that way on their corporate sites. Recruiters use the very same term to describe applicants for their openings. But, you should never ever accept the label. Don't let anyone categorize you as a "job seeker." Compel them to see you as a "person of talent" instead.

The Introverted Job Seeker
Job seeking is all about putting yourself out there where employers and recruiters can spot you. It requires that you reach out and connect with strangers, both online and off. Finding a new job is fundamentally a social experience, so if you're an introvert, how can you succeed?

How to Compete with Employed Job Seekers
It's hard enough to land a good job in today's sputtering economy, but now it's going to get even harder. More and more people who already have a job have started to enter the job market. They're amping up the competition and creating a new challenge for those who are out of work: how do you compete with employed job seekers?

Being Realistic
The only way to conclude a successful job search is to apply for the right opportunities. You only have so many hours in the day so you must only compete for positions where you have a legitimate chance of being selected. How do you make sure you're being realistic? With a two-step self assessment.

You Can't Get a Job By Applying For It
Picture the scene: you're cruising through your favorite job boards on the Internet and come across a great job for which you are perfectly qualified. So, what do you do? You whip out your trusty resume and apply for that gem, right? Wrong. The key to landing a new or better job in today's economy is to campaign for it.

Use Your PALs to Network Effectively
You can now find hundreds of discussion groups on the Web that are specifically targeted to job seekers. They attract large numbers of people, but unfortunately, don't do most of them much good. Sure, it may help to commiserate with others in transition, but if your goal is to find a new job, there are better places to network.

Which Range Do You Want to Call Home?
Recent research from the National Employment Law Project contained a sobering finding. A majority of the jobs lost in the last recession were in the middle range of wages, while most of the new jobs added in the recovery have been in the lower range. This situation seems unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. It is your new normal, which means you have to ask yourself, "which range do you want to call home?."

A Talent for All
President John F. Kennedy once said that "all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents." While he was speaking of his civil rights initiative, his words are also applicable to the challenge of finding a job in today's economy. All of us should have a chance to express and experience our talent at work, but many, maybe even most of us don't. Why? Because we've been taught that we don't have talent and, therefore, don't know what our talent is.

Be a Career Activist, Not a Job Seeker
Finding a new or better job is fifty percent perspiration and fifty percent imagination. It takes hard work and a hard look at yourself. Success depends on both the effort you put in and what's inside your head and heart.

The 2 Questions You Should Always Ask in an Interview
The old axiom remains as true today as it was years ago. People join companies, but they leave supervisors. In other words, no matter how attractive a new job or employer might be, if you and your new boss are incompatible, you're unlikely to be successful ... or last very long on-the-job.

Don't Look for a Job, Look for Respect
These days, job seekers face not one but two equally difficult challenges. Not only do they have to find a decent job, but they have to find a decent employer, as well. A decent job may remove them from the ranks of the unemployed, but only a decent employer can ensure they stay there.

What to Do About Ageism & Sexism
In today's inhospitable job market, nothing could be more frustrating and demeaning than ageism and sexism. Finding work is hard enough, but trying to do so in the face of prejudice is the modern day definition of Dante's ninth circle. No one should have to endure it, and yet many of us do.

The Right Kind of Confidence
The journalist David Brooks once famously opined that "Human beings are over-confidence machines." We aren't as smart as we think we are, nor are we as smart as we need to be. That's especially true when it comes to networking in a job search.

They've Changed the Definition of Qualified
Many of you in transition have had the same confounding experience. You apply for an opening where you're a perfect match with its stated requirements and then hear absolutely nothing back. Ironically, many of you who hold a job are also having the same experience. Your work meets every requirement stated in your employer's position description, yet you still get only mediocre performance appraisals. What's going on?

The Time for Starting is Now
A recent study by Bellevue University found that sixty percent of Americans "have given some thought or a lot of thought to going back to school." With all due respect, what are they waiting for? Whether they're looking for a new job or trying to improve their performance in the job they already have, the pathway to success is education. So, the time for starting is now, and once begun, there is no time for stopping.

Using Job Boards to Best Advantage
Job boards have been around for almost twenty years now, so most of us think we know how to use them effectively. Unfortunately, that's often not the case. There are now over 150,000 job boards on the Web, so you have to pick the ones that will serve you best. I recommend a technique that I call NASCAR since a job search is essentially a race to re-employment.

Next Practices
The Web is crowded with articles extolling the best practices for finding a new or better job. I've contributed a few of those missives myself. Recently, however, I heard a fellow describe best practices as "stuff that used to work." In other words, by the time something has become a best practice, it's likely also to have become obsolete. What's the alternative? Next Practices.

A Safety Valve for Mom's Rule
It's all the rage these days. If you're in transition, you have to be using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. But why? The rationale seems to be that if you can just reach a person - no matter how distant and tenuous the link - you can depend on them to help you land a job. But, stop and think about it. If you were in their place - if you were a friend of a friend of a Web contact - would you risk your reputation and credibility to stand up for someone who was essentially a stranger? I doubt it, and that reality is the invisible flaw in online networking today.

A Multitude of Hope
Today's job market is a cold and indifferent place. It feels as if it is operated by uncaring organizations that are guided by a quest for machine-like productivity rather than by the bonds that join us one to another. I believe that's wrong. I'm certain that America's working men and women deserve better. I'm also certain, however, that they won't get what they deserve unless they put up a fight.

Search Budgeting
The job market has suddenly gotten a lot more crowded. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, half a million people came back into the market last month, lured by the news of an uptick in hiring. How can you stand out with so many others around? Search Budgeting - the strategy of focusing your job search where it does the most good for you.

Job Search Outside the Box
New research to be published shortly in Psychological Science reveals that the connection between our minds and bodies is much stronger than previously known. The best way to be more creative in a job search, therefore, is to behave the way we want to think.

The Networking Gap
Every year, WEDDLE's conducts the Source of Employment (SOE) survey, which probes the activities and preferences of both job seekers and recruiters. We use it to identify what's working and what's not in the job market and occasionally, to pinpoint an overlooked opportunity for job search success. That's the certainly the case with the networking gap at job boards.

Don't Transfer Your Soul (or Your Talent)
Taking a job offer from an employer you barely know is like ignoring the terms and conditions vendors impose when you make an online purchase ... only worse. If a product is defective, you can usually return it. When an employer turns out to be bad, however, there is no such recourse. And, the harm can be long lasting.