Tips For Work And Life With Andrew Lacivita

We’re about to wrap up a big month for hiring. How’s your job search coming?! I hope you’re getting those interviews and, today, I have a not-so-little something special to help. I’m covering one of my all-time favorite questions to ask an employer in a job interview… “What does success look like—exactly?” If you don’t know what success looks like, how will you know what goals to shoot for? How would you know whether you’re working toward the right results? How would you—or THEY—know how to “grade” your performance? It absolutely amazes me any organization can function, let alone survive, without knowing the answer to this question for every single person it employs. BUT (you knew this was coming), you and I know this happens frequently. Now, I already told you the question—which is the main theme for today’s lesson. But, how could I have possibly spent 26:32 on this ONE question? Because, THIS question will become the centerpiece of your entire job search. And (taking a giant deep breath here to say all this

Do you want to be known as “the man” or “the woman” in your field? A legend? I do. And, I’m proud to say so. But I don’t master my craft because I need external adoration. That’s not the driver. I do it for me and because it serves you. My friends and family don’t understand my uncommon drive probably because it’s uncommon—truly rare. If you want to be a 1%-er do you think behaving like the other 99% will get you there? In The Zebra Code (get the BOGO offer NOW while it supplies last), I wrote a chapter called “Mastering Your Trade.” I emphasize the importance of developing not just specific job skills, but foundational capabilities that transcend your particular trade. These are the skills that set you apart and enable you to excel no matter the industry you're in. I cover the strategic approach to skill mastery, starting with building the right mindset, cultivating an attitude of abundance and optimism, continually learning, and seeking the right mentors and educational opportunities. On we go to identifyin

Today, let’s talk how to answer negative job interview questions. These are brutal. Tricky. And, to boot, give you loads of opportunity to mess us. They are literally a complete waste of breath and give the interviewer absolutely zero data on whether you’ll be a star employee. But, for some unknown reason, instead of asking you bright and effective questions that elicit information to actually help them determine whether you’ll be a winner, they ask you… If we hire you, what would be the reason we fire you? Why should we not hire you? Why wouldn’t you take this job? Etc. etc. etc. until your eyeballs roll so high they get stuck in the back of your head. You get the idea. Good news is your beloved coach will give you a bulletproof formula for all of these dumb and useless questions. Take a listen! If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and

Happy Sunday! Let’s start the New Year with a BANG! Shall we? Full-fledged job search lesson today. 10 major tips on how to win your search in 2025! Key download you must take if you don’t already have my 10X10 formula. Inside the video and booklet, I hit the gamut from getting your requirements in order to resume writing to searching to interviewing and negotiating. Took me 31:10 to get that all in. So, pour the coffee or cocktail depending on whether it’s 8 AM or 5 PM by you, and enjoy the show! If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums. 2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel. 3. Grab any of my three books related to interviewing, hiring, and goal setting. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page. 4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, and Facebook. 5. Stay

Got a special, powerful message for you today. I discussed this concept back in August (on the 8th), but held it so we can wrap 2024 with a bang and get you pumped for all you WILL accomplish in 2025. It’s a lesson on the 3 factors of high performers. This isn't your run-of-the-mill pep talk—it's a masterclass on harnessing your mindset to fuel success and resilience. Inside, I hit… Attitude as a Catalyst: Attitude shapes not just your experiences but also inspires those around you. It's about manufacturing optimism from within and letting that optimism ignite inspiration in others. The Power of Passion, Vision, and Commitment: These three pillars are what all (truly) successful individuals share. It's about discovering your passion, nurturing it, and committing to your vision relentlessly. (BTW, these are not the 3 factors of high performers I mention in the title.) Framing and Priming: Understand the art of framing your thoughts and priming your emotions to align with your goals. It's about the internal dia

If you’re a smart person, work hard, have the right attitude, great! You get a pat on the back. All that goodness will only take you so far if you don’t have a few key guardrails set up to ensure you crush your career. These are like the common-sense, must-dos of developing yourself and your people. You know what they say about common sense. Right. Common sense in not always common practice. Lucky for you, that’s what I’m covering in today’s lesson. These are 10 major steps, broken into 5 pre-requisites and 5 absolutely most-dos for you to catapult your career. I know you want that hypergrowth, so let’s do this! If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums. 2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel. 3. Grab any of my four books related to interviewing, hiring, goal setting, and career development

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Job search is rough. It’s lonely. It’s confusing. It’s like the trifecta of pain.  I feel for you. I truly do. But, since I use a lot of “empathic concern,” I’m not just going to feel for you. I’m going to act by sharing 10 secrets to stay positive in your job search on your way to better results. (If you’re just dying to know what empathic concern is, check out page 118.) They’re secrets because, well, I don’t see a lot of job seekers implementing these techniques. You need them at your disposal when you get fatigued, but they are truly best practices from the start. Whether this is the first day of your search or you’ve been at this a while, this lesson is for you.  Let’s get you charged and on your way to getting hired! If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums. 2. I have hundreds of educational and

My entire life, I just needed to know. I’d never let myself wonder. How great could I be? The not knowing would just kill me. A regret I’d never let myself live with. Ever feel this way? Ever wonder how good you could be at something if you let yourself be? If you—literally—gave it your all? After going through my entire career (eh, life) all-out with no brakes (yes, I meant brakes not breaks), I’ve learned a thing or two about being a maestro. I’ve interviewed, met with, helped, taught, recruited, and coached tens of thousands of people. I can distill down, in a few seconds, what makes the best the best. This approach is bulletproof if you want to be the best you you can be. It’ll also help tremendously if you’re job searching. I know it’s Thanksgiving week for many in my community and you might be scurrying around town doing last minute turkey shopping. That’s why I kept this powerful message to a short 3:39. Squeeze it in somewhere when you have a few minutes. The lesson is simple to understand. Difficult

I realize it’s mid-November and the Christmas décor has already draped many stores for an entire month, but your career doesn’t take a holiday (nor do I). Today, I’m serving up a major lesson on why now is literally THE BEST time to job search. You’re at the start line of a 3-month hiring frenzy. It doesn’t matter whether the year is 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 or 2024 or any other years I omitted. It doesn’t matter what you do. Who you are. Who you were. Or, who you want to be. It's the SAME every single year. As an executive recruiter, I could have rolled out of bed on Halloween. Worked until the end of January. And taken the rest of the year off. Every year. Employers start hiring like crazy NOW. You might consider me nutso for thinking this. After all, it’s contrary to what most think. But just because many think it doesn’t make it so. I’ll debunk the myth for you. What’s more, I’ll teach you how to swap out couch duty for my Job Search Challenge®. That way you’ll know exactly how to approach this target-rich,

In my lifetime, I’ve prepared, oh, conservatively, about a bajillion job candidates for their interviews. Most are so worried about the wrong stuff. Most prepare backwards. They think What questions will I be asked? I need to come up with a good answer for [insert the dumb ones here about disagreements and conflicts and weaknesses, etc.]. Uh, no. As is, heck to the no! It’s not about what the interviewer asks. It’s about what the interviewer needs to know—so they hire YOU! Today, you’re in luck because you opened this newsletter which leads to a video on my YouTube Channel that teaches THE VERY BEST way to prepare for ANY job interview. After you watch this, you’ll wonder why you ever prepared differently. You’ll also start seeing magical results… If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums. 2. I have hundreds of educational and insp

Who doesn’t want to sound more accomplished? Amiright?!?! More accomplished = more attractive to potential employers. I’m not talkin’ “accomplished “in the “overqualified” sorta way. I wouldn’t run that risk. I’m talkin’ “accomplished” in the I’m-smarter, more-knowledgeable, performed-more-repetitions, solved-more-problems, achieved-more-goals sorta way! If you sound more accomplished, you have a better chance of getting more too. True story. But, what if you’re, well, junior? Or, what if you’ve been doing the same job for a long time? Or, don’t have a “big” title? Or, interviewing for a job that manages lots of people? And you haven’t, like, ever? For the bajillionith time, “Don’t worry!” Your Houdini of a career coach has you covered. Join me today for 10 nifty ways to punch up your resume and job interview stories to sound more accomplished, senior, and all-around desirable! If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1.

It hurts me when I see people make a mistake. It practically kills me when I see them repeating—on purpose—the same mistake. I’ve made lots of mistakes, so please don’t think I think I’m a know-it-all. I don’t judge anyone because they made different mistakes than I did. We’re all different and have walked different paths, experienced different things, and built different perspectives. I like to think, however, that age and experience have helped me test different theories and note the results. Today, I’m sharing 9 unconventional pieces of wisdom, tactics, and habits I’ve learned through my testing of life. It’s a gamut from building skills to solving problems to dealing with people I’ve learned from running all those tests and making those aforementioned mistakes. A real rainbow of goodness. I hope you enjoy it… If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for

The job market is tricky these days. It’s always confusing for some, but nowadays it seems like it’s unknown for all. Good news. Your favorite career coach has yet another timeless lesson on steps you should ALWAYS be taking to protect yourself, your career, your family, friends, neighbors, and everything else connected to you! Yes, there’s A LOT riding on this. Which is why I like the always-kinda-stuff. The stuff that makes you bulletproof or, at least, gives you an ability to get up quickly after you’ve been knocked down. Just think for a millisecond about what happens if you lose your job. You become unhappy. Then you’re sitting around the house all day annoying everyone. Ha ha. You get the picture. Maybe not that bad, but can we at least agree you in a great career and fully employed making lots of dough is better than you not employed making no money? K? K. That’s why today you’re getting 4 steps, questions and answers if you will, on how to determine your job security and the tactics to stand out from

If you’re struggling in your job search, you’re in luck today! I’ve got 10 big tips to help you ignite your results. They’re not your run-of-the-mill-tips and you can’t get them anywhere else. I know this to be true because I’m the only person on the planet who wrote The Zebra Code: A Step-By-Step Guide to Mastering Career Skills That Make You a Standout Professional. And that’s where these tips came from. You might think based on the title of my recent book it’s all about career development. It IS about career development and getting what you want out of life! But it’s about skillsets that are not a luxury, but an all-out requirement for success, in your job search or any endeavor. Would it help if you could focus to stay locked in? Were self-aware to know what to look for, how to evaluate whether it fits, and make great career decisions? Good habits? Effectively plan and run your (job-search) day? Have more confidence? Become more empathetic and use it to your advantage in interviews? Uh, network more effe

I have a new podcast this morning titled How to Tell a Story That Wows the Interviewer | A Job Seeker Case Study because, well, it wows the interviewer and it’s a real-life example from someone I coached (hence the case study part). It’ll be the best 11 minutes and 13 seconds you spend all week if you’re in job-search mode next to the few hours you can spend with me live this Thursday at 11 AM CDT when I offer up my NEW, FREE Job Interview Playbook Webinar. Join me this week to crush your job interviews! If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums. 2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel. 3. Grab any of my four books related to interviewing, hiring, goal setting, and career development. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page. 4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Thread

I spent more time coming up with complete title of The Zebra Code: A Step-By-Step Guide to Mastering Career Skills That Make You a Standout Professional than writing the entire book. 7 months for the title. 6 months to write the entire book (really 5, because I spent a month polishing). True story. Why? I wanted to get in… Something unique (and avoid generic leadership-y titles like The Leadership Code yawn). Short main title (2-3 words only). A metaphor people will understand. Ability to coin, copyright, unique URL for the title, etc. Ongoing books in a series (for future offsprings). Tell them what’s inside (of course). Demonstrate there’s a framework (but didn’t want to be wordy). Make a promise as to what will happen when they read the book. Be specific about reader avatar (title needed to include something about the “who”). So, it shakes out… Code = Takes care of the item on methodology inside. Guide = It IS a guide, but I could have used the word “system” here instead. Mastering the Career Skills = I

I’ve changed careers twice, which basically means I’ve got it down to a science. It’s absolutely brutal. You deserve the truth. How brutal? This picture of my office popped up in my “memories” on my phone. It's from August 25, 2015, a shade over 9 years ago. 3:43 in the AM. I was knocking off for the evening so I could catch an hour or two of shut-eye before Harley or Ginger started licking my face as if it was their food bowl. That’s a whopping 55 (calendar) days after I decided to “change careers” and become a career coach in addition to an executive recruiter. Of course, the long-term plan was to drive the jumbo jet on the runway until liftoff when I could go “all in” on the career coaching thing. I was on the runway for…let’s see…carry the seven…a mere 5 years. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Lemme go get Andy Sunshine. Okay, he’s back. I’d do it all over again. Anything worthwhile will take a bit of time. Fine, maybe a lot. But it’s incredibly rewarding IF and ONLY IF you truly want it badly enough. Ever con

What would you give to be happier in your job? In your office? In your career? Would you give 25 minutes and 52 seconds? If you’re willing to do just that, you’ll learn exactly what I’d do. Warning: I’m not going to say anything to you like smile, have a better attitude, or blah blah blah. I wouldn’t insult you with that trite stuff. I’ll get you focused on and building the six “deliverables” I’d create and have “at the ready” so I’d feel happier about my situation! If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums. 2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel. 3. Grab any of my four books related to interviewing, hiring, goal setting, and career development. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page. 4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, and Facebook. 5. Stay in touch with

Have you been struggling to get your career to the next level? Maybe you’re awesome at your trade. Maybe you are well networked in your company. Mayyyybe you’re even the go-to person that seems to be able to fix everyone’s “problems.” So, why is awesome you not getting awesomely ahead? It’s one thing to be great at your job. It’s entirely another to be all-out spectacular in your career. As a consultant, recruiter, business owner, and now career coach, I’ve long known skill stacking is what makes you powerful. It’s the mind-bending formula where 1+1=4 and 1+1+1=10. Truly exponential in nature. You might hear me say, “The more “layers” you have, the more desirable you’ll be to an employer.” I speak of how many boxes you check when it comes to their silly job descriptions. This is part of the equation. Now, skill stacking isn’t just about how you match. It’s about how much impact you’ll have. At this point, you might be thinking I’m using my 9 semesters of higher math to make up new formulas. But have you ever

Ever been snookered by a fake job? I mean, if you know you have? You might have been hoodwinked and didn’t even know it. Perhaps you applied and silence. I glanced over a survey from Resume Builder very recently (not a site I recommend, but they ran the survey so what the hey?). A few key findings... 40% of companies posted a fake job listing this year. 30% of companies currently have active fake listings. 70% of hiring managers believe posting fake jobs is morally acceptable. Their rationale… Hiring managers say fake job postings led to boosted revenue, morale, and productivity and alleviate employee workload concerns. They indicate “company growth” as one of the top reasons behind fake job posting strategy. Sure. So, you know these fakers are out there. Now, how can you spot them and what can you do about it? If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings: 1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for