Long gone are the times when job searching involved sitting down with a newspaper and stack of resumes and envelopes. These days, job hunting is more likely to include a lot of time spent searching online, exploring job boards, and tweaking your LinkedIn profile.

So, how can you navigate the ever-changing landscape of online job searching?

I'm very glad you asked!

To start, you can check out my recent guest post, "How One Word Could Wreck Your Job Search," on Joshua Waldman's Career Enlightenment blog, which contains information on relevant tools and offers helpful job search tips.

Enjoy, and happy job hunting!

I’ve been down the post-secondary education path more than once, and I can say with the confidence of first-hand experience that college stress sucks. These days, my shiny transcript, sparkly GPA, and lack of any degree whatsoever only serve to remind me that perfectionism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and college stress can be a killer. If I could hit “rewind” and give advice to 17-year-old me heading off to university for the first time, I would tell myself a few things. My first piece of advice would be to stop wearing baby pink all the time—Ashley, you are not a toddler. And, given the opportunity, I would make my younger self listen to a few more important things:

Don’t be a Control Freak

One of the biggest keys to combating college stress is to focus on what you can control. This means you also need to identify factors in your life that are beyond your control. Getting caught in the “What if?” cycle can be totally self-defeating.

By accepting a certain level of powerlessness, you can release some of the tension that can build up from trying to control for the uncontrollable. You’d be surprised how much mental energy is eaten up by worrying. My husband loves to tell me, “You worry too much.” (To which my response is usually a dirty look.) But, I have to admit, he’s almost always right (but only on this one issue!). When I focus less on worrying and controlling, I am better able to focus my energy on dealing with the things that are within my power to change.

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I recently had a conversation with a friend that went from laughing and general catching up to more serious topics: biological clocks, careers, and the seemingly necessary choice between them.

Considering that we are in our late 20s, it's no wonder that our conversation went in this direction. For the majority of our generation, this is the time when the very separate goals of starting a family and having a kick-butt career collide (with the final outcome often being that one gets shelved and collects dust for the foreseeable future).

For some people our age, baby fever hits with the ferocity of a forest fire and causes career goals to go up in smoke. For others, any thoughts of children and marriage are pushed aside and "making it" professionally is what they eat, sleep, and breathe.

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You don't trust your abilities. You worry you have no talent. You fear that, any day now, you'll be exposed as a fraud. A phony. A fake. An idol made of wax—soon to melt into a formless blob. A wax amoeba.

You're not alone.

I feel like this almost every day. It's not because I'm actually trying to con anyone. It's because I experience a lot of self-doubt despite a track record of personal and professional accomplishments.

Yet, I push on. I don't want to become that blob.

("Dude needs help," I hear you saying.)

Look, we all want self-esteem. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want to feel worthy. Heck, today's college students cite self-esteem as the thing they want most—more than sex or money.

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So where do you work?

At Beelineweb.com. They're a marketing company in Lake Country, BC.

Oh yeah. What do you do for them?

I'm a computer programmer.

I know from experience that the instant I say those words your eyes will glaze over and you'll start looking around the room for a different conversation to join. And I don't understand why. I love programming and find it exciting and rewarding. Maybe I'm not communicating effectively what it is that I do. Maybe your perception of programming is that it's extremely complicated, boring and only a genius can do it.

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If you want to know the truth, I could have used a magic pill to help me write this.

Keyword being magic. As in, does not really exist. (Kind of like a college roommate who never farts or disturbs your serenity.)

You see, I don't actually believe that there is a perfectly harmless miracle drug capable of helping me sift through mountains of research, learn the truth about a complex subject, and produce a must-read article about it within a relatively short period of time.

Nevertheless, I did approach this topic with an open mind. I employed no bias. I just didn't find any reliable evidence to support the notion that trying one of the so-called "academic steroids" so fashionable among young adults would be a good idea.

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Forget about the lemons. When your world is falling apart, life is not giving you lemons. If you were receiving lemons, you'd probably feel a lot more grateful. You're not gonna feel paralyzed with anxiety or get pissed off or lose all hope over some stupid lemons. Sure, they're sour. But you can easily digest lemons without having to make lemonade.

No, when your world is caving in, you're not getting lemons. You're getting a turd sandwich on pee-soaked rye with a side of "eff you" flatulence fries. And there's no way you're gonna try digesting that kind of crap—even if Martha Stewart transforms it all into a sparkling poo-poo cocktail for you.

Whether you've already experienced a personal doomsday or just sense that one is approaching after getting punched in the mouth a thousand-too-many times, the result is often the same. You feel like you've fallen into a sinkhole from which you can't escape. You believe you might drown. It's the last place you want to be. (Given a choice, you'd prefer to suck lemons.)

The uncertainty that comes from a big loss—or the belief that one might be just around the corner—can be all-consuming. You feel bloated with fear. You feel helpless. You feel lost.

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You can thank me later. For now, I give you permission to call me whatever insulting (but amusing) names you can dream up. What you're about to read might piss you off. But it might also help you avoid becoming just another living stereotype forced to trudge through the lonely swamps of unfulfilled ambitions.

To put it bluntly, your unrealistic expectations could be killing your future.

If you were born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, you are part of the generation varyingly referred to as Generation Y, Millennials, NetGen (or the Net Generation), iGen, Failures to Launch, and Generation Me.

Those last two labels sound pretty harsh. You can debate whether or not such nicknames are fair, but there is no denying the trends responsible for their conjuring. Like it or not, there are enough people within your generation displaying troublesome characteristics that they've fostered a whole array of negative stereotypes.

I'm the poster child for feeling like a lonely misfit at the center of the universe. Being the new kid—over and over again at different schools—has a way of doing that. It makes you hypersensitive and distorts your perception of other people. It's not an easy condition to cope with.

So I understand the worry that comes from realizing you may not know anyone at college. The waiting and anticipation between high school and post-secondary school can fill you with crippling doubts. It's a time when you may feel more vulnerable than ever before. It can lead to some serious blues.

In fact, I recently engaged in a heartfelt email exchange with a reader who was desperate for a little reassurance as he stares ahead at this next big phase of his life. His emails made me quake with empathy. I've been where he is. It's not a pretty place.

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Few things feel more overwhelming than trying to pick a career. It's so tempting to believe that the rest of your life depends on the path you choose right now. The pressure to make the "one right decision" can consume your emotions and leave you paralyzed with anxiety. But it doesn't have to be that way. Instead, the process can be fun and enlightening. You just need a different way of viewing things. Here's one way. Bottoms up!

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