We’ve all had jobs that are seemingly impossible to tolerate. Whether it’s a poor boss, negative corporate culture, or simply a friction of ideas, there are sometimes factors beyond our control that limit our success. What you make of these situations determines how they will affect your success.

Consider really what you lose when you lose a position: First and foremost, there is income (including insurance); then there is the social atmosphere; and finally the sense of security. While all of these can easily cloud one’s mind when trying to consider future prospects, a careful examination of the benefits of leaving a company might at least temporarily relieve some of your anxieties.

Many tend to think all is lost when leaving a job. Sure it makes for a few bad days, weeks, maybe even months, but inevitably opportunity will arise (if you seek it out). In leaving a particular workplace-don’t dwell on whether it was by choice-you have gained invaluable life experience and an array of new skills. These two alone will assist you when selecting a new place of employment. If anything, you will be more careful about your future career choices.

This is not to say that staying in a bad situation is unproductive. In many ways, it is, with the knocks you take from a poor boss, and the need to always to compensate for his or her incompetence, serving a far greater purpose in the future. Consider a future job opportunity where the company has to decide between you and another candidate who has been through a relatively lax work environment throughout his or her career. More times than not, you will be the candidate they choose if you have properly positioned yourself by expressing just how you’ve excelled within difficult circumstances and taken on the mantle of other’s duties for the betterment of the company’s goals.

The main idea is to not give up hope. You’re in a similar situation to a lot of people, many of whom simply quit, took lower-paying positions, and settled on the mediocrity to which they’d been conditioned. But not you. Certainly I, and my other colleagues within career coaching, are here to listen to you and help redirect your goals to more positive ends. In the end, though, it will be up to you and your willingness to take the necessary steps to improve your future. Résumé, counseling, and job assistance, can all play a role in that, but never forget, you are the key. So tell me, what have you learned from your negative job experience?

Resume writers take note: Sarah Palin’s handlers had her shake hands with foreign leaders yesterday. It was a clear and important attempt to make her appear qualified to handle foreign policy issues. In fact, it was an effort to plug a loophole in her resume. She lacks foreign policy experience and has so far seemed uninformed on these matters.

Let’s acknowledge that all of us have imperfect resumes. The question for career counselors and resume writers is: What do you do about these imperfections? In this case: What is the Republican ticket doing about them?

I say that there are several choices to address problem resumes such as Palin’s:

1) Distraction: Try to prevent anyone from noticing your limitations by highlighting your strengths. For example, the great power hitters in baseball keep us focused on their power not on their strikeouts.

2) Complete transparency: Admit your weaknesses and seek to address them. For example, if you are a CEO but lack the ability to give a good speech, then take a seminar that teaches public speaking. People will admire you for the effort.

3) Try to pretend that you don’t have these weaknesses.

The McCain campaign chose the third approach. They sent Palin to meet with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Palin has not traveled overseas. Does a 5 minutes discussing family matters with a couple of heads of state convince us that she could step in and deal with the War on Terror? Probably not. Worse, it just looks foolish. Don’t do this on your resume.

Palin’s effort was not effective. But for those of us in the resume business it serves to illustrate the point about holes in your resume. It’s better to be open about them, or, address them concretely. If you do not, you’ll end up looking like Governor Palin: an ill-qualified candidate in search of higher position.

I would love to write a resume for:

• Yogi Berra. The interview alone would make it worthwhile.
• Martin Scorsese. A list of accomplishments is all it would take.
• Ringo Starr. He has excellent references.
• Steve Jobs. Difficult to work with, but he gets results.

More to come….

It seems Congress has been kicking around this idea ever since the release of the first rounds of checks meant to cushion Americans and improve their sense of the economy. However, the effects were short term as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi related:

“’The rebates had “a positive effect,”’ Pelosi added, ‘except they have been offset, as has been said by our experts, by the rising costs in other necessities for the American people. So while they may have saved the second quarter from a technical definition of a recession, the fact is that we are into a third quarter and we need to have another stimulus package.’”

Word has it Congress may implement the stimulus as soon as this fall or spring. Of course, the sooner the better in the eyes of politicians, given that stimulus checks have an added bonus of stimulating American appreciation of the government and by extension the President (or presidential candidates). And while it may be a bit too late for President Bush, Senator McCain and Senator Obama are certainly poised to benefit from the positive feedback. No surprise that promises are flooding in from both sides of the race, but how does that translate to the workforce?

Obviously the government has no magical money tree from which to draw these funds, which means the money is coming from somewhere. But where? Consider that these funds might’ve been designated for infrastructure, social programs, education, environment, and many other areas. The stimulus now might mean higher taxes down the road, possibly even higher inflation. To jobseekers on the search, a second stimulus might be the godsend that lets them keep looking for one more month without creditors’ or banks’ harassing phone calls. But what then? With the purpose of the stimulus to get money flowing back in the economy, how do you convince Americans to spend when their guts are saying “save, save, save”?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the upcoming stimulus boost. Plan on spending it? Saving? Paying down debt? Donating? Will it make the job search easier for you? Harder?