Before this year, I believed in plans. I assumed things would happen because they always had – annual events, friend vacations, and team training. I didn’t think anything could stop our lives from marching on.

It has been nine months since I realized just how wrong I was. On March 3rd, I had the perfect plan. Speaking gigs booked. Projects that would keep my team busy until October. On March 23rd, I had none of that. The projects were gone. Speaking gigs canceled. There would be no new normal to transition into, at least not this year.

Despite this year looking nothing like I expected, I survived. I even started a blog that recaps 2020 without a swear word. Go me.

It’s all a blessing in disguise, I guess. I’ve never spent so much time thinking, learning, and reworking it all. I’m grateful for that. A friend said to me, “2020 has revealed so much of me to me,” and I feel that more than I can begin to explain.

I see many of my reveals and realizations in the posts I wrote over this last year. See, I also had an editorial calendar and three months of blogs scheduled when this pandemic hit. A few days into lockdown, all my canned content seemed stupid.

All of a sudden, we were talking lockdowns and layoffs. Pandemics. Trust. Honesty. That’s where most of these blog posts came from – a feeling that something about this world needed to change.

That’s probably what made this year so uncomfortable – everything changed for us. But in all that mess, I see a little bit of magic—a chance to change everything for the people who want more from their careers and their lives. A ripple effect of good that we can create today with powerful stories that will propel someone into believing they can do it, even this year.

Top 10 Blogs of 2020

So in case these posts can serve a purpose for someone else, I’m doing a recap,.

I hope you’ve found silver linings and re-discovered great friendships. I hope you love your life, and if you don’t, I hope you believe whatever comes next will be better than today. I have faith it will be better for you someday.

1. They: A Pronoun At Work : An HR leader contacted me about using the they pronoun at work. Here’s our conversation and my advice. I’m beyond proud that this was the top blog of the year. Thanks for that.
2. Don’t Use This LinkedIn Headline (Use These 4): Looking for a job? Update your LinkedIn headline to get more views.
3. LinkedIn Profile Photos You Should Never Post: If you are going to spend time writing a LinkedIn profile, make sure you update the profile photo. Here are some profile photos you should never post.
4. Crisis Communication: Writing Like A Human In Chaos: When you write any crisis communication message, there are 3 things I want you to address – in each one, and over the coming weeks as the situation evolves.
5. Your LinkedIn Profile Will Get Results if You Fix These Mistakes: Your LinkedIn profile should be written for a human, not a machine. Here are a few ways you can do that.
6. How-To: Find Out Who’s Hiring Now: In 1 easy search, I’ll show you a new way to find recently posted jobs.
7. Job Postings Are Stories You Can Imagine Living: We were taught that great job postings are impersonal, unfriendly, templated content. But that’s not what candidates want. They want to read stories. This is about how you write one.
8. 3 Requirements To Reconsider When Writing Inclusive Job Postings: Three standard “requirements” that need to be reconsidered to create inclusive job postings for your company.
9. What I Learned Writing 1000 Jobs: New Job Post Training: After writing over 1,000 job posts, I turned my expertise into a job post training that will teach you to write effective postings quickly. Here’s a free preview.
10. Creative Questions: Hiring Manager Intake That Works: If you ask better questions during the hiring manager intake, it’s a lot easier to write a great job posting and hire the right person. This is my template.

Cheers to you, thanks for reading, and I’ll write more next year.

recruiting blog