Stories by: Mark Cummuta

I have received several job offers, landed several contracts, and directly assisted a number of my peers in finding employment. But I have not yet achieved my own final goal. I've analyzed why this is, and I’ve come up with four major issues that I need to address.

Like you, I look at all the articles about layoffs, the financial crisis, the bailout, and I wonder, “How will I get through this?”

In an increasingly globalized world, how can you put yourself in the front running for the top positions? In this follow-up to "The Impact of Globalization On Executive Job Searches and Economic Prosperity”, I provide some tips and hints from readers and recruiters on how to succeed in your job search in today’s difficult economic environment and harsh employment market.

Denise Dubie recently reported on Forrester Research's August report on IT hiring trends.

Several readers have emailed asking about Informational Interviews. Today we're going to discuss how to use this method to perform in-depth research and analysis on your target companies.

I'm beginning to understand why it's been so hard and taking such a long time for me to find a new CIO job. It's not just the economy (i.e., "Bad News Comes In Waves For Economy"), the wildly fluctuating stock markets, a Presidential election year in the US, and overly cautious business and IT leaders that are complicating my job search. Major shifts in global corporate ownership are rippling downstream, affecting enterprises' hierarchical structures, executive roles, and hiring criteria, as I've learned from my recent discussions with David Gray, an international executive consultant and researcher based in Australia.

I've had three people in a month comment their concern about my blogging's impact on my job search. Now I'm concerned and looking to CIO Magazine's readers and fellow bloggers for your thoughts.

Last week I gave a presentation on how to apply one's project management skills to one's job search. After the presentation, I had several discussions and e-mail exchanges with people who were consistently coming up as the second place candidate in job searches. It's a source of frustration and stress for all of us, so in addition to the specific advice I offered them, I developed some ideas on changes we could make to our job searches that would result in making us the candidate of choice.

Aggressively pursuing your job search during the holidays CAN pay off, as my own personal results and research can attest.

After reading an article by business performance management consultant and executive coach Dan Coughlin on how to handle difficult corporate situations, it struck me how that same advice does not always apply to interviewing. Coughlin recommends confronting difficult situations head-on, such as when a peer is degrading your efforts around the office. But in job interviews, being direct isn't always the right approach. Some questions and situations surface during job interviews that you simply should not discuss. I've encountered a few recently during my job search. I share them with you here to show why the direct approach didn't work, along with some advice on how to handle these scenarios.