At the end of this month, I'm stepping down as Community Manager for Brazen Careerist. As a founder and a stockholder I'll always be involved in the company, but career-wise I'm moving on.

Realizing your inner strengths can be a difficult process when you're early in your career. You can do it the hard way by struggling through years of crappy work until you find something you're good at, or you can find a career coach.

During tomorrow night's Blog Mentoring event on Network Roulette, you're going to get the chance to interact with some of my absolute favorite bloggers. The #1 thing that helped me out when I first started blogging was advice and encouragement from these people.

On Tuesday, February 8, we're hosting a Network Roulette event to help new bloggers get advice from experienced bloggers in the Brazen Careerist community. Sign up for this event over here >>

The most important action that takes place when networking is never the first exchange. It's actually the follow-up exchange when you start putting your new contacts to good use.

It kills me that most people don't understand this. Mostly because it's the same people who are whining about how networking doesn't work. It does work. You're just not doing it right.

On Thursday, January 20, we're hosting a Network Roulette event to help career/life coaches and young professionals seeking mentorship find each other. Sign up for this event over here >>

Attend this event and you'll be entered into a raffle to win one free hour of coaching from one of the great career/life coaches listed below.

Research indicates that people with mentors perform better on the job, advance more rapidly in their organization and have more all-around job satisfaction. But finding a mentor isn’t easy.

Speed networking is all the rage right now. It helps people break the ice with strangers at otherwise awkward networking events and it forces us to skip the small talk and get to what’s important: How can we help each other out?

Helping people out is one of the best ways to build your network. Whether you’re taking the time to review someone else’s business plan or just give candid advice on searching for a new job, these moments of goodwill help you build a stronger network of people who might be able to help you, too!

This post is part of a blog series on Brazen Careerist being sponsored by JobSTART101. They asked Brazen members to answer the question: What do I wish I knew before I started working? Here’s my response…

“This post is part of a blog series on Brazen Careerist, which is being sponsored by JobSTART101. The series is about the ”one thing I wish I knew before I started working”

Creativity, innovation, and brilliance: why do some people have it and other people don’t? Creativity and innovation are the source of new business ideas, excellence in entrepreneurship, and talented individual success stories.

I was one of the old heads at my hostel during my trip to Cairns a few weeks ago. As I sat with my dinner and laptop to work on some writing assignments, the other guests, some younger than me by a decade, guzzled goon and Tooheys, flirted with each other and laughed unabashedly at the antics around them. They donned bikini tops and board shorts, backwards caps and messy buns.

This post is part of a blog series on Brazen being sponsored by Entrustet.  They asked Brazen members to answer the question:  What do you want your legacy to be? 

I plan on living forever, and so far, so good.

This post is part of a blog series on Brazen Careerist being sponsored by Entrustet. They asked Brazen members to answer the following question: What do you want your legacy to be? Here’s my response…

Those of you who have read my blog may recall that I was a complete dud in my first corporate PR job. My boss despised me and my colleagues thought I was overeager, and it took me two years to get a promotion that people with half my work ethic achieved in six months.

I wasn’t feeling so hot last Wednesday, but was determined to make it to that night’s networking event. I left work around 5 pm and after grabbing a beer to help conquer my hesitation to talk to strangers, I met some really great people.

In preparation for this article, I was chatting with my roommate about the question, “What do you want your legacy to be?” His immediate answer was, “I want to be a good father to my son.”

This post is part of a blog series on Brazen being sponsored by Entrustet. They asked Brazen members to answer the question: What do you want your legacy to be? Here’s my response …