This year, I’ve been analyzing a lot of trends that will have a major impact on our careers and how companies will manage, retain and recruit employees moving forward. A lot of my predictions involve technology because people have already started changing their behavior, but technology is going to open up even more opportunities.

I hate to keep harping on about the same old thing; we all know that unemployment is at an all-time high; and to say that the job market is competitive is quite the understatement. So this makes it extremely important to establish your brand and differentiate yourself from the competition. You want to stand out from the crowd – but in a good way – not the kind of way you did in high school.

As a creative professional you have every opportunity to leverage social media to your advantage in your career. More than any other profession, creatives are judged on both the appearance of their work and their personal appearance. Creative professionals include people who work in industries like design, advertising, media, art, and more.

As candidates become more and more desperate in their job search they often turn to desperate measures that more often than not hurt the candidate. One example of this is with the resume.