I hope you got as much out of reading and commenting about the posts in Career Week as I did writing them. While the posts themselves were written to speak to those who are currently unemployed, I think the ideas and tips I shared are applicable to anyone looking for a job. If you have employed and are looking for a better job, you can use the tips from Career Week to get to the next level. If you are employed and looking to change your career path, you can use the ideas from some of these posts to help you make that change.

For this week’s Your Take, I wanted to ask you to share your best career tip. It can be anything related to career advice from looking for a job to preparing your resume, from interviewing preparation tips to salary negotiation. There are many many topics I didn’t cover in the series, so feel free to cover them here in your best career tips.

I’m eager to hear the great ideas you have! (feel free to leave two or three or five, don’t feel like you need to limit it to just one)

(Photo: krishnade)

An MSNBC article this week discussed how women are increasingly earning more than their husbands. Twenty years ago, 17.8% of women outearned their husbands. In 2007, 25.9% outearned their husbands if they both worked and 33.5% of married women outearned their husbands period. It’s estimated that the percentage bas probably jumped because of all the jobs lost in the recession, it’s estimated that nearly 75% were held by men.

The Shriver Report conducted a survey and found that 65.3% of women and 61.2% of men were comfortable with women earning more than men. I want to know, what do you think?

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You never forget your first job, right? At the age of 15, you can’t legally work in New York yet unless you jumped through all these hoops to get a work permit. It was this stupid little green card that said you would only work during certain hours of the day, the total number of hours per week couldn’t exceed some number, and was a really big pain in the butt to get.

I wanted the card because I needed one to work the cushiest job I knew about, the library. I heard librarians were making ridiculous money putting books away in a nice, air conditioned building. After getting the card, I soon learned that everyone else had the same bright idea and some crazy people were doing it for free! The wait-list for a summer job at the library was months.

So we went to option two and my first job ended being at a Chinese takeout restaurant. I answered phones, prepared people’s take out orders, and banked a lovely $5 an hour tax free. Turns out the stupid card was completely unnecessary if they just handed me cash at the end of the day. I think I worked there for a year or so, getting a couple raises in the process (I think I ended at like $6.50 an hour), and getting a good lesson in life. All in all, I think it was a great first job experience.

What was your first job?

(Photo: rhoran)

Last week, I asked you what you’d tell yourself ten years ago. Today, I’m flipping the script… if you were visited by your future self, say ten years into the future, what would you like your future self to say about what you’ve accomplished the last ten years?

I would like my future self to tell me that I had started a family, started holding annual charitable events (much like my friend Scott and his very successful twice-annual Ghent Bar Tour), and built up Bargaineering to be a premier personal finance resource on the web. I’ve always measured success as a mixture of family, community, and career so to have reached those successes within ten years would be pretty exciting to hear. To top it all off, I’d like to know that I did it with hard work and determination mixed in with a little bit of luck, to help solidify what I learned the last ten years.

What would you like to accomplish in ten?

(Photo: bitterjug)

If you want to learn how to effectively build your brand, something you’ll need and take with you regardless of who you work for, then you need to get Me 2.0 by Dan Schawbel because it’ll teach you all the techniques and tools you’ll need to master. One of the most important lessons I learned in becoming a full-time blogger was the importance of building a brand. Bargaineering has grown, mostly by accident, to one of the top personal finance blogs over the last four years. I’ve learned to use tools like videocasts, forums, Twitter, and internet radio to build up the Bargaineering brand and I’ve been blessed that people like you find value in what I write and speak about and continue to read and visit the site every day.

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When I was a kid, my parents taught me that my job was to do well in school so that I could get into a good college. In college, my job was to do well, earn my diploma, and then get a good job. Once I started working, I was told that leaders take leadership training classes and took rotational assignments in areas others didn’t. I, of course, wanted to be a leader (that’s what’s next right?). I started signing up for all these classes that had great names and interesting content but really lacked any application in my day to day activities.

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“Excessive reliance on incentives demoralizes professional activity.”

That’s a quote from a TED.com video I watched this week in which Barry Schwartz, Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and social action at Swarthmore College and frequent contributor to the New York Times, calls for discusses how our society has gone mad with an abrupt loss of “practical wisdom” in the face of bureacracy, the failure of incentives, and rules often protect us from disaster but ensure mediocrity.

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Jonathan Fields was once a “high-powered mega-firm Manhattan lawyer,” who worked “endless hours and was literally getting sick from the demands of is intense career,” that is, until a 72-hour work bender had him rushed into a stress-induced emergency surgery. He had a perforated intestine. Afterwards, he decided to leave his six-figure job and seek a better life based on meaning. He became a serial entrepreneur, building up several successful health and fitness companies (among other things) and penned Career Renegade – How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love. What’s very interesting is that his story isn’t unique – Bargaineering contributor Gary Bonner worked himself into a heart attack and Professor Jim O’Donnell left a lucrative career in finance to pursue a life with greater meaning, but Jonathan Fields wrote a book about it.

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The first thing I do when I get a book is flip open to the inside flap of the dust cover and read the summary. I like to get a fifteen second feel for the book before I dive right in.

The first line on the dust jacket read: “Corporate and government scandals continue to deepen our mistrust of leaders.” Tony Simons, author of the The Integrity Dividend and an associate professor of management and organizational behavior at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, hit the nail on the head with that line. While the book was probably influenced by the Enron and similar scandals, corporate greed in financial companies and weak governmental oversight (or straight up looking the other way) the last five or ten years has combined to create an economic maelstrom the likes of which haven’t been seen in decades. Add it all together and you get an environment where employees may be distrustful of their management. Are the leaders of my firm focusing on the quick buck to keep shareholders happy or are they interested in building a long term future? Richard Fuld, ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers, earned half a billion dollars in cash between 2000 and 2008. Lehman is now bankrupt, leaving many employees with empty retirement accounts.

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Losing your job sucks and if you recently lost yours, I’m sorry to hear that but you are not alone (in May 2008, 861,000 joined the already 8.5 million unemployed, which is always undercalculated*). However, we live in the land of opportunity and there’s always something around the corner, so until that corner turns you should consider filing for unemployment benefits.

When people talk about unemployment benefits, you’re really talking about the Federal-State Unemployment Insurance Program and it’s a program you’ve been indirectly paying into with each and every paycheck. Your employer has to pay an unemployment insurance tax that you make claims against if you are eligible (and unemployed). You indirectly pay for the insurance because in the absence of that tax, you could theoretically be paid more (feel free to debate the merits of that argument on your own, either way it’s money that’s rightfully yours if eligible).

The eligibility requirements and benefit payouts vary from state to state. The US Department of Labor has a very handle list of all the state departments, along with address, phone number and website, to help you in your search and claims filing. You can also use this map to locate the proper office to contact.

File today. As soon as you lose your job, file immediately. There is often a two week lag between when you file and when you receive benefits, though benefits are effective as soon as you file (if you are eligible).

It has no bearing on you as an employee. In fact, being eligible for unemployment benefits couple a positive. One of the reasons for denying a claim is misconduct. Though it’s unlikely that an prospective employer would ever find out that you did receive unemployment benefits, if they did they could be reasonably sure that you didn’t get released because of misconduct.

It won’t affect your credit score. Collecting unemployment will have no bearing on your credit history or your score. If you do apply for a loan, it would be reported as unstable income which could cause you not to get a loan. However, if you think about it, unstable income is better than no income so you probably have a better shot at a loan with the benefits.

You need it. Even if you’re in solid financial shape, the reality is you don’t know how long you may be out of work. You may be great now, able to live off your emergency fund for a few months, but eventually your bank account will begin to dwindle. As the balance falls, you will be feeling more pressure at a time when pressure will already be at its highest. It’s important to swallow your pride, get yourself some additional breathing room, and file for benefits that are rightfully yours. Remember, it’s not welfare; it’s unemployment insurance your employer has been paying for.

If you’re reluctant to take a hand out, take it now and consider donating that amount to your favorite charity when you get back on your feet. Good luck.