Whether you are the hiring manager or the candidate being interviewed, hiring is personal, now more than ever. Candidate behavior has changed more in the past 5 years than at any time in the past 30 years, but few employers have updated their hiring practices. This creates some real challenges on both sides of the interview desk, and more than a few opportunities to gain a real competitive advantage.

Job search advice everywhere tells you to research the organization before an interview. But it’s also important to conduct some research before applying for a job.

Interviewing is fundamentally an exercise in risk management. As a job seeker, your goal is to reduce any appearance of risk in hiring you.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

—Malcolm S. Forbes.

It is possible to tease out how toxic a potential manager will be from your brief interactions in an interview setting? It’s certainly not easy, especially since their toxicity is often odorless and hard to detect like carbon monoxide. Yet teasing out the truth of the manager’s behavioral tendencies is an important element of your interview strategy. Like with determining cultural fit, fully preparing for this aspect of the interview is vital, because you’ll come well-informed on the basics and can spend more time asking pointed, tough questions to tease out the truth.

With New Years' fast approaching, you may be thinking about those pesky resolutions. If one of them is to make a change in your career, but you're struggling to come up with an achievable, fulfilling resolution, here's a few of our favorite ideas to help get that Resolution Engine running again:

Employers ask for a lot of things - cover letters, salary histories, desired salary, first-born son…the list goes on. But do you have to comply with all those requests, every single time?

Once they're in the workforce, many people go through life wondering.

Wondering if they are in the right job.

Wondering if they have some hidden talent or secret superpower that would burst forth if only the environment were right.

Wondering if someone with a better knowledge of career paths and the job market could help them discover their latent talent and suggest a perfect job for them.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

So you landed the interview, did your company research, had great rapport with the hiring manager and breezed through the interview questions.  You gave a proper, firm handshake, and left the interview feeling pretty good about yourself. Then they didn't call you, or a month went by...and they turned you down. What gives?

Very few people know how to grab the attention of a busy person. As a recruiter, I get dozens of emails a week from job seekers, and daily requests to connect on LinkedIn. 99% of my LinkedIn inbox requests are the standard invitation, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”

When looking for a new job, most openings might not sound very appealing. Occasionally you hear about a job and think to yourself, "I am perfect for this job. It’s tailor-made for me." Excitedly, you dash off your cover letter and apply right away because you know your resume is ideal for the job.