Recently, I started using an old family friend as a travel agent. Before then, we’d never had occasion to email one another. From the start, I was shocked to find that she regularly wrote her emails exclusively in all uppercase letters. I politely mentioned that using all caps in an email is the equivalent of screaming in voice conversations and she said she appreciated the tip. Still, I couldn’t help wondering how a professional could get by today without mastering one of the most basic tenets of email manners.

And that’s not the only email etiquette breach that makes me scratch my head. Every time I have to scroll through 50 email addresses before reading a message from a colleague who used the cc rather than bcc function, I find myself wishing that some kind of licensing or training were required before people were allowed to get on email.

Since that’s never going to happen, here are a few ways to ensure that your email style makes you look as smart as possible and doesn’t annoy those on the receiving end of your messages. {Read the rest at Yahoo!}

Last week, I had yet another coffee date with an acquaintance who was recently laid off. Before we met, I thought a lot about how I could be helpful to him without offering tired cliches like “It will all work out for the best.” Less than a year ago, I lost what I had thought was a dream gig — writing a regular column and blog for The New York Times. As I prepped for my meeting, I tried to remember how I was feeling during that time and which people made me feel good and which made me want to clock them. Here’s what I came up with.

When you reach out to someone who’s recently been laid off, keep in mind that layoffs hit people differently. The good news is that there’s little shame in being out of work today. Still, for almost anyone who has been laid off, it is a sensitive time; emotions can be unpredictable. So try to be gentle. Especially if you’re a member of the family. What might be considered a polite observation by a friend could easily be interpreted as offensive meddling by a mother, sister, or in-law. And now, a few specific tips: {Read the rest at Yahoo!}

Wondering whether your idea for a pet rental business would be viable? Whether you should go back for an MBA? How best to structure a loan from a family member to your business? Or anything else having to do with running a small business now?

My colleague, Kevin Salwen, is answering questions about small business as part of a contest being sponsored by Yahoo! Answers and Bank of America.

{Read the rest at Yahoo!}

I spend a lot of time thinking about improving the way I make decisions so I was intrigued to learn that two new Web sites Let Simon Decide and Hunch, offer free services to help on that front. At first, I thought the whole idea of going online to work on making decisions sounded hokey, but I have a weakness for tests that promise to help with self-awareness and these sites have a little of the same feeling.

If you like to make lists of pros and cons, you’ll probably like Let Simon Decide, which feels like the more serious of the two. Simon (as the site likes to be called) is promoting itself as a tool to make career decisions, among other things, so I spent some time checking it out. To start, the site takes you through a series of questions to identify your decision-making style (e.g. When you buy a car, do you research different models, specs and costs or buy it based on how it looks, or a little of both?). You also get a chance to identify your goals, your current life situation, your personality type, and your favorite activities. Once you’ve filled in all of this — or at any time in the process – you can jump over to the “make a decision now” red button and get started.

{Read the rest at Yahoo!}

Usually I’m on the advice-giving side of things. But some readers have recently given such good advice in the comments that it’s about time to shine the spotlight on those wise souls who are teaching me something about careers, putting me in my place when I’ve failed to see the whole picture on something, or simply disagreeing with me.

Here’s a few of my favorite nuggets from the comments section: {Read the rest at Yahoo!}

When I posted about how to ace a telephone interview, several people wrote to me saying that whether the interview is in phone or in person, there were several questions that they anticipate with dread. I’ve been collecting those questions and talking to some pros about how best to answer them. Here are the top five, with suggested answers. Of course, there are no right or wrong answers, only ways of thinking about answers that will get you to the next stage of the process. Have a look at these and when you’re done, chime in if you have better ideas about how to approach any of these questions: {Read the rest at Yahoo!}

Ever wish you had a trusted team of career advisors — a group that would help you analyze whether to push for a higher salary, how to keep up morale during a job search, whether to go back to school for more training, or even how to handle little things like how to respond to an email that raises your blood pressure?

For almost a decade, I’ve had such a team. It started with a small writing group that formed when I was transitioning from law to journalism. Before long, that group morphed into something even bigger. We edited each other’s work and helped one another find the perfect publication for a particular pitch. We made sure that each of us had goals and stuck to them (e.g. get that book proposal finished by January). We shared our contacts so that we each had a deeper network than any one of us could have had alone. And we were always available for an emergency session on how to tackle any problem one of us faced.

I often recommend this idea to anyone committed to career development and thought about writing a book about how to create groups like this, but I don’t need to because Keith Ferrazzi’s new book, “Who’s Got Your Back,” is a blueprint for how to find the collection of key people who will help you succeed and keep you accountable to your goals. The book is worth reading, but as a teaser, here are a few takeaways: {Read the rest at Yahoo!}

There is a natural tendency to want to hire someone who is already working, but in this economy, how do you convince those who you want to hire you that you are already doing what they want you to do?

When I decided I wanted to be a writing coach, I did two simple things. I added a “slash” to my business card (writer/speaker/writing coach) and to the signature line of my email address. Before I had even figured out the details of my coaching business — what I’d charge, where I’d meet with clients — people started asking me about my services. Within a couple of months, my coaching practice was off the ground.

The business card and email signature work well if you’re consulting or freelancing, but if you are looking for a full-time job, you’ll need to use different techniques. Here are some other ideas: {Read the rest at Yahoo!}

Graduation speeches are long on lofty advice, cliches that ring true, and humor: follow your dreams, be authentic, wear sunscreen. But they are often short on career advice. So now that we’ve all watched videos of the best of the lot on YouTube and shared them by email or on Facebook, it’s time to get down to what new grads need to know about how to get a job and build a career. And since 50-somethings and 20-somethings are likely to be competing in today’s market, most of these principles make sense for the rest of us as well.

{Read the rest at Yahoo!}

A few days ago, I got an email from a friend — yet another — who told me that he had just been laid off from his journalism job. The job losses in our field are so huge that there is at least one website entirely devoted to tracking the loss of journalism jobs day by day.

My friend wrote that he wished he had done some planning before the ax had fallen, and he is not the only one feeling that way. Many people are in situations where they know layoffs are a possibility, yet they do little to prepare themselves.

Here’s a few suggestions I would have given to my friend had he called me before he got his official notice. But it’s not too late. These things still make sense once a layoff is official. {Read the rest at Yahoo!}