NetKiEnt Career Blog

Emojis supplied by EmojiOne Congratulations! June is the half-way mark to completing your New Year’s Resolutions! Yay?  According to statisticbrain.com , roughly 45% of those who make New Year’s resolutions make it to six months. However, 42.4% of those who make New Year’s resolutions never succeed at all. Unfortunately, I have fallen into both of those statistics more than once in my lifetime.  Sigh. Like many with good intentions and high enthusiasm in January, we rush out and begin working on our resolutions with grit and determination. Slowly, life happens and we give ourselves permission to “skip a day” here and there. As enthusiasm turns into boredom and wanes into tedious monotony, the resolution eventually falls to the wayside; ultimately discarded like yesterday’s trash. Guilt and disappointment immediately set in. Failure again . However, the guilt quickly subsides as excuses alleviate the sting of failure for yet another year.    Does ...

The problem of Ageism "I went to the interview and thought it went well, but still didn't get the position. Was it my age?" “I feel that I will have to settle for less money and lower position because no company wants to hire an older leader.” “Maybe I should just give up looking for my ideal position, they won’t hire me anyway.”   “I noticed the surprised looks when I walked through the door. I can tell they expected someone younger; like everyone else in the room.” The interview went well. What happened? Many workers over 40 are having difficulty getting hired to their next position because they believe they are victims of ageism or age discrimination.  Many 40+ workers have shared stories on social media of having great interviews, meeting all of the requirements of the position to later not hear back from the organization after several weeks. With their confidence now compromised, these workers feel humiliated, marginalized and rejected.  ...

In celebration of Women’s History Month, this article focuses on common professional challenges faced by women in the workplace. In this article, I discuss gender pay disparity and then empower women to leverage salary negotiation as a tool to even the playing field.   What do we tell her? I magine that your teen-age daughter came home from school deeply distressed. She tells you that her teacher told her that as a girl, the best grade she could accomplish if she did everything right was a 3.4 or B+. What would you tell her?  How many people would it take to keep you off of that teacher?    What if her best grade was “adjusted” to 3.78 or an A- due to the results of others including boys in her neighborhood and other factors?  Would that make things better? This scenario may seem extreme and impossible to imagine due to our laws. However, this legally occurs daily at many workplaces around the world including America through ge...

Who is at your conference table? In celebration of Black History Month, my articles during this month will focus on common professional challenges faced by people of color at the workplace. The topics themselves can be quite controversial due to the reluctance and avoidance of frank discussion.  My intention is that this topic becomes a topic of conversation at the workplace and evokes action among organizations and individuals to create an inclusive diverse workplace. My inspiration comes from some of my own experiences as well as those minorities who face bias silently or in private because they are afraid that their career will be negatively impacted.  In my article Hiring Bias: When what you know won’t get you hired, I discussed the challenges and considerations minorities face when applying for a new position. Once in the workplace, the added stress of bias and discrimination is an additional pressure that minorities regularly experience. The simple considerati...