Who is looking out for your career - your boss? Probably not. Your accountant? Doubtful. Headhunters, search people, and employment agencies may seem to have your interests in mind, but they're retained - and paid - by the company. So although they can be very nice to you, at the end of the day, their goal is to place candidates and collect a fee.It's time to think like an entrepreneur, with marketable business skills and abilities. It's time to conceive of your career as a high-potential venture, with you as CEO. In this environment, you've got to be your own agent.Learn to look out for your ... view article details

Job Hunting & Zombies? Maybe it's the zombies. When interviewing young professionals just out of college, one of my favorite questions to ask is “So, what other companies are you interviewing with?” At first glance, it’s a strange question. In many ways an interview is like a first date, as both parties try and see if there’s a mutual connection. So asking what other companies they are “seeing” is the equivalent of asking who else they’ve been dating.The real reason for the question is to see how focused their job search efforts are. In many cases, their approach to getting a job is l... view article details

'Why would anyone want to put savings somewhere unsafe? But the fact remains that a large percentage of popular saving and investing vehicles provide no guarantee of earnings, nor even assurance that the original capital will be preserved.'     Saving your money in a safe place may seem like an obvious priority. Why would anyone want to put savings somewhere unsafe? But the fact remains that a large percentage of popular saving and investing vehicles provide no guarantee of earnings, nor even assurance that the original capital will be preserved. Those that do make such a guarantee are conside... view article details

Have you noticed your international friends are always traveling and on the go, while your state-side buddies complain they’ve barely been able to make it to the beach at all this summer? The reason for this may be a lack of paid time off (PTO) for American employees. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the U.S. is the only advanced economy (and member of the OECD) that doesn’t guarantee workers even a single day of PTO. The CEPR's report also confirmed 25 percent of America's workers in the private sector don’t get any time off at all. The statutory minimum paid l... view article details

What does it mean to work hard, really? The answer is different for everyone, but you might be curious to learn which states work the most hours per week or spend the least amount of leisure time per day. Using a variety of direct and indirect metrics such as these, the folks at WalletHub published a comprehensive ranking of the fifty U.S. states according to “how hard” their populations work. Here are the top 10 states and their respective total scores based on Wallethub’s methodology: Alaska: 69 North Dakota: 66 Wyoming: 62 South Dakota: 61 Nebr... view article details

Putting a price tag on a priceless job is hard to do, but we gave it a shot anyway. On Mother’s Day, Salary.com, the leader in compensation data, planning and analytics, would like to honor all the Moms out there who work their hardest day-in and day-out. We would like to recognize both professional and stay-at-home Moms on their unwavering dedication to their families and other responsibilities. We selected a handful of jobs that reflect a day in the life of a Mom, and using Salary.com’s Salary Wizard we uncovered that the medium annual salary of a mother is $162,581– rising nearly $5,000 fr... view article details

70% of people believe they have above average leadership skills. This effect is called the Superiority Bias. (Sometimes, it’s called The Lake Woebegone Effect, Illusory Superiority, or The Better Than Average Effect). It is one of many cognitive biases that prevent us from seeing ourselves and others clearly. Everyone has a set of unconscious biases that support their view of the past, present, future, and how the world works. These unconscious ideas are based on our own perspectives and experiences. We believe that our own perspective is correct and applies to others the same way it works fo... view article details

Performance review season is upon us and many employees feel like the process doesn't matter or has little impact on their professional development or compensation. However, performance reviews are critical in demonstrating your accomplishments to your employer.To see what employees and employers think about the performance review process, Salary.com conducted a survey of over 2,000 employees and 330 HR professionals. The results of the study illustrate that the majority of employees don't understand how important the performance review is to their ongoing success and professional development.... view article details

We at Salary.com are politically neutral, preferring to simply crunch our numbers as opposed to engaging in the heavy-handed back-and-forth leading up to Election Day. But seeing as this presidential election is largely focused on jobs -- which is our bread and butter -- we decided to stick a toe in the political waters and have a little bit of fun.We recently put a poll question up on our homepage for a little more than a week, asking people who they'd rather have as a boss: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. We were curious if people would go with President Obama since he's been leading the US for... view article details

If you’ve elevated into management, you can often negotiate higher bonuses, stock options, and profit sharing, tying your performance into the success of the overall company. Since you may have put your stake down on a house, priorities change in that you might take a job that’s closer to home, has a less brutal commute, or allows you flextime to work from a home office a few times per week. And with your kids reaching school play and Disneyland age, you’ll want to lobby for more vacation to keep up your work-life balance.For those not ready to throw in the flag on middle age just yet, many pr... view article details