We are big fans of Project Runway in my house which prompted me to read  Tim Gunn’s book, ‘Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Lessons for Making it Work.’  In the book, Gunn reveals stories of the fashion world’s greatest divas and dirt on Project Runway contestants and judges. The book outlines 18 rules for how to succeed in life and touches on the importance of good manners and hard work as a means for getting ahead. Throughout the book Gunn weaves sage advice on life and gives his readers plenty of career “don’ts.”

Here are some of my favorite “Gunn-isms” coupled with career advice inspired by Gunn himself.

Make it Work. This has been Gunn’s catchphrase on ‘Project Runway’ for years. It’s his reminder to the designers that they need to find solutions to their fashion dilemmas before they run out of time in the episode’s fashion challenge. In the book, Gunn recalls helping a contestant thread a sewing machine and getting called out by the producer for doing so. He realized he had to let the contestant struggle with the task in order to remain impartial and keep the competition fair. The contestant had to make it work without the help of others.

Career lesson. Not every work situation is perfect; sometimes you will be thrown into situations that seem overwhelming at first. Push through and try to embrace change rather than quitting. In other words, make it work.

The World Owes You Nothing. Gunn discusses the huge sense of entitlement that prevails in the fashion industry and shares some choice tidbits about designers behaving badly. He shares tales of a world-renowned designer making outlandish demands in a restaurant and another designer who is carried down five flights of stairs following a fashion show because she hates elevators.

Career lesson. Showing up at work doesn’t mean you will be the employee selected for the next promotion. The notion that putting in the time leads to better positions and bigger bucks is generally a myth. Being at a certain professional level in an organization doesn’t ensure that you will be there forever or that people will bend over backwards for you.

Take the High Road. Gunn reveals situations where ‘Project Runway’ contestants accuse each other of copying their designs. In the end, the contestants that take the high road and choose to concentrate on their work fare better than the designers who are busy pointing fingers.

Career lesson. If you are concerned that someone at work is stealing your ideas or taking advantage of the work relationship in some other way, take the high road. Keep your integrity and try to get out of the situation as soon as possible without burning bridges because you never know when you will need those bridges again.

Don’t Abuse Your Power or Surrender It. Gunn has quite a bit to say about bad bosses and the impact they have had on him in his lifetime. He dishes on a top producer that made people work on a 120-degree set and a top TV personality who banned Diet Coke from the set of her show.

Career lesson. Bosses should be realistic regarding the demands they place on their employees, and they should be cognizant of the impact of poor working conditions. In addition, they need to be clear about expectations and rules so employees know when there is a performance issue. When expectations are not met there should be logical consequences.

Get Inspired if it Kills You. Gunn remembers working with design students who claimed they couldn’t find inspiration for their designs. He says you can find design inspiration in everything — movies, museums, books, theater, or even a quick glimpse outside your window.

Career lesson. If you lack inspiration for your work, there will always be others around you who are working hard and pushing themselves. As Gunn says, “If you don’t keep up, it doesn’t matter how advanced you were when the race started — you are not going to win it.”

Physical Comfort is Overrated. Gunn thinks that the concept of comfortable clothes, dress-down offices, and casual Fridays is totally overrated. He believes that if you are in clothes that are as comfortable as your pajamas, you can’t be engaged in the world of work the way you need to be. He talks about mothers who have impeccably dressed children but take little to no care in dressing themselves. He notes, “If you see your family as a brand, are you not a brand ambassador?”

Career lesson. The way you choose to dress sends a message to others and it is an integral part of your professional brand. Remember that the next time you reach for a pair of sweatpants.

Use Technology; Don’t Let it Use You. Gunn makes some great points about technology and how some people hide behind technology to take care of things that should be taken care of in person. His rules include, “You can promote an employee via e-mail, but you can’t fire him,” and “You can ask someone out by e-mail, but you can’t break up with her.”

Career lesson. Technology can be leveraged to help employees complete certain tasks smarter, faster, and more efficiently. But it is not the right medium for every task. Certain transactions require a personal touch. Your fingers can’t always do the walking when you are trying to build meaningful and trusting relationships. Sometimes it’s better to pick up the phone or meet face to face.

This week my first child began her college career. I’ve told her dozens of stories about my college experience but on this day I was thinking more about the college experience from the parent’s perspective. The day brought back a memory of my father and bringing my older brother to college over 35 years ago.

My dad was one of the least pretentious people I have ever met, but when we brought my brother to school, dad decided to hire a limo service (we didn’t own a car) to transport us from New York to Philadelphia. When we arrived on the campus quad we were greeted by curious students and parents wondering who the “rich people” (we were far from rich) in the car were. We were mortified by the attention and teased my father about the unfortunate trip to Phili for years. When my other brother and I prepared for college, we told dad that Amtrak, Greyhound, or even a covered wagon would be a better method of transport for the occasion.

So I was initially turned off by the fact that my daughter’s school has a tradition that the entire Freshman class marches through the school gates to signify the beginning of their college career. It brought me back to that limosine ride and the event seemed equally silly and over the top to me.

But something happened once the procession started and I finally understood the ride in the limo that day as I choked back a few tears and watched 2,000+ freshman stop traffic to walk through the gate. I always thought the limo was about my father being proud that his first son got into a great college and he wanted to indulge for just one day and go in style. But now I think the limo ride was more about celebrating the journey and all the steps it took to get this first son into college. So while I was watching the class of 2015 stream through the gates I thought about where they were going but more than that I thought about where they had been. I thought about how many countless days and nights their parents had spent helping their kids with homework, coaching sports teams, being cub scout den leaders, attending teacher-parent conferences, and everything in between.

When you are raising kids you sometimes get so wrapped up in the process that you forget to celebrate all the hard work that went into the process or acknowledge all the people who helped you along the way. And I started thinking about how true that is in a job search. People get so wrapped up in the end goal of finding a job that they forget to celebrate the successes along the way. And by the time they get the job they so desperately want to forget the time they spent searching and just move on. But I think there is tremendous value in reflecting on the process. So when you land your new job and enter the building on the first day or attend the new hire orientation, think about the future, but also take a minute to reflect on the past and appreciate all the hard work that went into the process.

After 9/11 I took the subway down to lower Manhattan because it was something I felt I needed to do. Like many people, I’d been struggling with how to make sense of it all, how to explain it to my young children who were surrounded by reminders of that day, and how to come to terms with my own mortality. I felt like I needed to document the day in some way. I’d done quite a bit of journaling in the past, but somehow writing a journal entry seemed too real and almost too accepting of the situation. So I decided to put my thoughts into prose and the poem below was the result.

Saw the void
In the city sky
Didn’t know how to feel
Didn’t know how to cry

Missing towers
Between Church and Vesey
Disoriented
Streets were messy

Reading prayers
And words of hope
Missing persons
Hard to cope

Policemen’s jerseys
Children’s art
Emotions pouring
From the heart

Tattered buildings
With windows taped
Like damaged souls
Or young girls raped

Should only face
Such heartache
With someone special
Who can make

A positive comment
A comforting word
To remind me
How absurd

To take your anger
Out on others
Innocent spouses
Children and mothers

I’m so glad I put my thoughts down on paper that day. Not because I think this is the world’s greatest poem, but simply because it captured the story and the emotions of the experience. And it froze the memory in  time in a way that it can be shared and honored.

A lot of what I do as a career coach revolves around teaching people how to tell their story in a meaningful way that can be shared and honored. People with great career stories are a lot like poets. Great career stories are concise and easy to remember. But their brevity doesn’t lessen the impact of their message; instead it intensifies it.

If you are trying to come to terms with the story of your career as you embark on a job search, consider writing about it first. Chronicle your successes as well as your obstacles. Write in paragraphs, bullet points, or even in prose. But get your thoughts down while you are “in the moment.” Doing so will help you create a more authentic and compelling message when you are ready to share your story with others.

My three closest friends don’t participate in any form of social or business networking. You’ll never find a business profile, status update, family photo, or even a poke from any of them on any online networking platform. While I ponder a “social media intervention” I continue to reach out to my friends on their terms which includes email and phone contact and an annual snail mail holiday card. I have to admit, it’s a lot more work to keep in touch this way and it takes more thought and planning on my part. But since these three friends mean the world to me, I try my best to stay in touch.

But what if I weren’t as close to these people? Would I bother? Where’s the threshold between making someone’s life easy and too much work? What if you are a job seeker? During a search, you need a lot of contacts…both strong and weak networking links. Remaining top of mind with the weaker links is tough when you solely rely on email, a phone call, or a holiday card. With those limited means of communication and interaction, will your network bother to stay in touch? I often hear people complaining that social media is a frivolous waste of time. I disagree. I think it’s a time saver and an efficient way to keep up with people and let them know what’s going on in your world. This makes people feel connected. Feeling connected makes people more likely to offer help and advice.

I talked to one of my closest friends this week. It’s been a long time since we spoke. Long enough for major events to occur in both our lives without the other one having a clue about it. I must admit that I was a bit sad when I realized that 300+ virtual friends know what I did last weekend and one of my dearest friends hasn’t known what’s been going on with me for much longer.

Imagine sending your resume to a recruiter and letting it sit in his database for years versus reaching out to recruiters on LinkedIn or Facebook to actively network with them. Think about the implications of sending a resume into the job board black hole versus building engagement with a company via their Facebook fan page. Contemplate leaving a weak networking contact 10 unanswered voicemails versus including them in an online dialog. Social networking works. Whether it’s for maintaining friendships or managing your career.

According to a recent survey of close to 2,400 US employees conducted by Mercer, half of US employees are not happy in their jobs. Here are some other interesting stats from the survey:

• Thirty-two percent of  US workers are currently considering leaving their organization, up from 23% in 2005.
• Twenty-one percent are not looking to leave but view their employers unfavorably and have low scores on key measures of engagement.
• Only 43% of US employees believe they are doing enough to financially prepare for retirement – down from 47% in 2005, and just 41% believe their employers are doing enough to help them prepare, up slightly from 38%.
• Sixty-eight percent of employees rate their overall benefits program as good or very good, down from 76% in 2005, while 59% say they are satisfied with their health care benefits, down from 66%.
• US workers show lower satisfaction with base pay (53% satisfied, down from 58% in 2005).
• Forty-two percent of employees believe promotions go to the most qualified employees in their organization, up from 29% in 2005, and 46% agree that their organization does an adequate job of matching pay to performance, up from 33%.
• The youngest workers are most likely to leave their companies – 40% of employees age 25–34 and 44% of employees 24 and younger.

Which half are you in at work? The happy half or the unhappy half?

According to a recent survey conducted by YourTango and ForbesWomen, 75 percent of women surveyed said they would not marry someone without a job and 65 percent said they wouldn’t get married if they were the one who was unemployed. But 91 percent of single women said they would marry for love over money. Huh? Some of the other survey stats intrigued me as well including:

• 55 percent of women would give up their careers to take care of children if their partners asked them to but only 28 percent would ask the same of their partner.
• 77 percent of women believe they can simultaneously have a fulfilling relationship and family life, as well as a successful career yet only 43 percent said their work/life balance is what they would like it to be.
• 62 percent of women in a relationship said they only spend 3 waking hours with their partner during the work week.
• 42 percent of women said that if they had an extra hour each day they would spend it alone rather than with their partners, friends, or family.

Is it possible that women have been conditioned to want love over money, but the prospect of being with someone who is unemployed challenges a need for stability? Is there a biological predisposition for women to assume the man will be the primary breadwinner?

And what about the work/life balance issue? Is it conceivable that women have been told for so long that they can have it all that they naturally believe this is so, even when their lives don’t reflect any such work/life balance? Do woman want it all and then decide to “chuck it” once kids come into the picture and there is an opportunity to raise a family full-time?

I don’t have the answers to any of these questions, but I think the survey represents the state of flux, turmoil, and confusion that many women feel. We want it all, but having it all simultaneously seems to be mathematically impossible. Maybe there just aren’t enough hours in the day to have it all at the same time. Are there other options? What do you think?

I try to follow social media trends and the impact it has on the world of work as best I can but lately I’m finding it hard to keep up with all the career-killing mistakes people are making due to inappropriate tweets.

The latest Twitter “whoops” I just heard about belongs to Scott Bartosiewicz, an employee at New Media Strategies, the marketing firm representing Chrysler. Frustrated about being stuck in traffic, Bartosiewicz tweeted:

“I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to (expletive) drive.”

The tweet was meant to appear on his personal account, but Bartosiewicz mistakenly sent it to the Chrysler brand’s feed. So now Bartosiewicz is out of a job and New Media Strategies is down one account.

This actually happened a few months ago and since I missed this one I did some research to see if I’d missed anything else. I came upon this great post from Mashable on Ten People Who Lost Jobs Over Social Media Mistakes. Read this and you’ll have practically every career-killing social media mistake covered.

Representative Anthony Weiner has fessed up and admitted that he was the one sending lewd photos of himself on Twitter and that his account was never hacked. I write a lot about managing your online presence and digital dirt during a job search but the same rules apply for people who are trying to hold on to the jobs they have. Here are 5 tips for Weiner and anyone else out there dabbling in social media or even just corresponding via email.

1. On Twitter, when you only want a message to go to one person (a DM or direct message) double check your messaging options (best to do this with both hands on the keyboard).
2. Don’t assume a private DM on Twitter is really that private. After all, it is the Internet.
3. Don’t put anything online that could be sliced and diced, misinterpreted or taken out of context.
4. Don’t put anything online that you wouldn’t want your grandmother (or your wife!) to see.
5. Don’t jeopardize a career that took years to build with one stupid picture or 140 character message.

Feel free to post additional tips for Weiner here.

Every year before Mother’s Day, a few annual surveys come out about working mothers. Salary.com has the What’s Mom Worth? salary wizard which calculates how much someone would be paid for all of the jobs moms do (teacher, cook, chauffeur, etc) and reminds moms that all the work they do is worth a six-figure salary even though they never actually see a dime. And CareerBuilder’s Working Mothers Survey reports that close to a quarter of working moms take work home and reminds moms that they are not alone in feeling guilty about not spending more time with their kids. So I never head into Mother’s Day weekend with a warm and fuzzy feeling; instead I grumble as I wash dishes that should be at least a $10 an hour job and wallow in  my feelings of being underpaid and overworked.

The surveys seem to suggest that working moms don’t spend nearly the amount of quality time with their kids as their moms did. But is this really the case? My friends and I often joke around about our moms and how they opened the door and said “Go out and play and don’t come back until lunch.” And when we returned for lunch we had about 15 minutes before mom opened that door again and said “Don’t come back until dinner.” Yet we all managed to make it to adulthood without being emotionally scarred and we have fond memories of our childhood and our moms.

I’ve decided that working mother guilt is “so 2005″ and I’m moving past it. And as for the “working for nothing” side of the equation, I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes the times you spend doing those seemingly thankless chores, making the extra batch of brownies for the school bake sale, or playing that third mind-numbing Game of Life are memories you end up cherishing for life that can’t be replaced by any monetary compensation.

While I was writing this post my daughter came into my office to chat. I told her I was working. She gave me her classic teenage eye roll. But ten minutes later I put the post on hold to chat. It was just ten minutes to reconnect and hear about her day. Maybe she would have liked 20 minutes. But she got 10 and 20 minutes wouldn’t have necessarily made it a better conversation nor would it have made me a better mother. Working moms give a lot. And kids know that and they like their moms just the way they are.  Happy Mother’s Day!

This month’s Career Collective post offers advice for career changers. You can find additional suggestions from my esteemed colleagues at the end of this post.

I frequently talk to people who want to change careers. They often tell me one of these four things:

• I hate my job.
• I don’t think my job is a good fit.
• I want to do something more meaningful.
• My friends tell me I would make a great (fill in the blank)

But when I hear these statements, I’m not always convinced that the person expressing these doubts really wants to change careers. Instead, I often believe that there is something else going on at work or in the person’s personal life that is causing the unrest or thoughts of quitting and it’s important to explore these factors before jumping into a career change.

Career change can be challenging on many fronts. Landing a job in a new career generally takes more time than landing one in a linear career path. You will need a robust network of contacts and many, many advocates to get your foot in the door. A career change  may require significant education costs and there is no guarantee that acquiring that education will lead to a new job. The most logical career changes are those that have a recognizable intersection between the old and new careers such as a sales person going into marketing or an operations professional switching to human resources.

In over 75% of the cases where I coach clients considering a career change, after in-depth discussion, introspection, and assessment it is frequently determined that the client doesn’t hate what they do; they hate the person they work for. Study after study shows that people don’t leave companies; they leave bad bosses. So before you embark on a full-blown career change, ask yourself the following questions.

1. What tasks that are part of my job do I enjoy doing?
2. What tasks that are part of my job do I hate doing?
3. Am I good at what I do? Have others commented on my strengths?
4. What types of tasks do I want to do that are not part of my current job? Is  there an opportunity to do these tasks in the future as part of my job?
5. What types of situations in my current job stress me out?
6. How much does my relationship with my boss affect my feelings towards my job?
7. Do my feelings about the company culture affect my feelings about my job?
8. Can I remember a time when I did similar work and enjoyed what I was doing?
9. Are there growth opportunities for me or is my industry/job function contracting?
10. Am I willing to put in the time and effort necessary to change careers?
11. Have I considered the financial ramifications of changing careers?
12. Am I willing to take a step (or two) backwards to achieve my new career goals?
13. What would my perfect job look like and is this a realistic expectation?
14. What are my priorities? How important are money, time off, meaningful work, or the goals of the organization to me?

Answering these questions may help you gain clarity around your reasons for embarking on a career change. Your answers may help you sort out what you can and cannot live with. Armed with this information you may decide that a retooling of your current career is more prudent than a total career change. Or your responses may validate that a career change is in fact the right path to take.

People change careers every day but it’s always advisable to make sure you are changing careers for the right strategic long-term reasons and not making a decision based solely on your emotions. Look before you leap and find others to support you in your journey.

Are You Ready for a Career Change? @Debra Wheatman

Changing Careers? Ask yourself these questions. @erinkennedycprw

Changing Careers: Not for the Fainthearted, @GayleHoward

Career Change Isn’t An Exact Science, @careersherpa

The 10-Step Plan to Career Change, @KatCareerGal

When it’s Time to Recycle Your Career, @WalterAkana

Best Career Change Advice: Target & Plan, @JobHuntOrg

How social media can help you change careers, @keppie_careers

Expat Careers: You Are Not Your Job Title, @expatcoachmegan

Changing The Direction Of Your Career, @EliteResumes @MartinBuckland

Career Changer: Can You Quell Bottom-line Ache? @ValueIntoWords

Top 3 + 1 Tips for Making a Successful Career Change, @KCCareerCoach