Career Blast in a Half

Networking for Introverts Who’d Rather Get a Root Canal I Greg Roche Networking advice was built for extroverts. Go to events. Make small talk. Collect business cards. For introverts, it feels like punishment. Exhausting. Fake. Pointless. Greg Roche—known as The Introverted Networker—disagrees. He’s living proof you can grow a powerful network without awkward icebreakers, or pretending to be someo...

Skip The Interview Prep, Lose the Job. Here’s How To Fix It I Varun Puri I CEO of Yoodli Most people treat interviews like pop quizzes. They wing it. Then wonder why they keep coming in second. Here’s the thing: If  you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your practice. And even for most execs? That level can be none. Varun Puri—ex-Google, debate shark, and co-founder of Yoodli—is...

The Future of Less Work—And the Executive Edge AI Can’t Replace | Nirit Cohen You’ve been told: “Work smarter, not harder.” But Executives are waking up to a harsh reality: AI is cheap. Fast. Scalable. And it’s replacing parts of your job that made your title impressive. Nirit Cohen saw this coming. As a former Intel exec, Forbes columnist, and Future of Work Strategist, she’s been tracking the tr...

Greywashing 101: The Illusion of Including Older Workers You’ve heard it before:  “We value experience.” Then they ghost you for having it!   Welcome to greywashing.  The corporate costume party where age inclusion is just a mask and older professionals are quietly filtered out by AI, ATS, and coded language. Lines like, “you’re overqualified” or “we want a digital native…” simply translate to:  Y...

Joseph Burns built the perfect AI recruiter. Then he did something radical. He shut it down. This isn’t a TED Talk about tech utopia. It’s a wake-up call for every executive in career transition who’s been ghosted by a bot, sidelined by bias, or fed the myth that “applying online” is a strategy. Joseph is a former Facebook product leader turned founder who speaks five languages. including the most...

Forget everything you knew about hiring.  That market died in 2021 and left no forwarding address. What replaced it?  A system where 75% of executive positions fill before posting.  Where referrals convert 900% better than applications.  Where your LinkedIn profile matters more than your résumé. This isn't temporary turbulence—it's permanent infrastructure.  Cost of nostalgia: $80K per quarter of...

🎙 The $47m Workforce Scam that Nobody Talks About | Bradley Schurman We Don’t Have a Labor Shortage — We Have an Age Problem The headlines say “no one wants to work.” The truth? We’ve pushed out the people who can. Bradley Schurman, author of The Super Age and a global expert on demographic change, joins Loren for a conversation that will make you rethink everything you’ve been told about the work...

🎙 Ageism Isn’t Discrimination — It’s Strategic Stupidity “Overqualified.” The word that sounds like a compliment but acts like a curse. Especially if you’re 40, 50, or 60+. Most professionals don’t get rejected because they’re not capable. They get dismissed because they show up from a time and place that’s decades long gone.  This is the #1 reason why the hiring game continues to confuse you.  Yo...

🎙 Episode: How to Reactivate Your Dormant Network (with 5 Proven Emails)  Most career doors aren’t locked. You just stopped knocking. You know these people—former bosses, colleagues, even competitors. You’ve solved problems together. Pulled off impossible deadlines. Shared memes. Shared war stories. And now? Silence. Not because they don’t care.  Because you’ve been focused on something else – but...

🎙The Price of Professional Invisibility When You’re Over 40,50 or 60+ | Corey Hurley “Do I have to be on LinkedIn?" Wrong question. The right question: "Can I afford not to be?" Invisible executives don't get hired. Most professionals over 40,50 or 60? Invisible. Not unqualified. Not past their prime. Just stuck. Not because they’re not Not because they’ve lost their edge. Because they’re still in...

The Booby Traps That Keep Women Broke I Billy Zerillo Money isn't math. It's war. And most women are losing. Not because they're bad with numbers. Not because they spend too much on lattes. They're losing because they're fighting the wrong battle—themselves. Billy Zerillo learned this the hard way, watching his parents weaponize money. A single mother making every financial mistake in the book. Th...

Breaking the Busyness Habit | Peggy Sullivan Maybe that’s why your job search feels like a full-time job... but without the paycheck? This week, Loren is joined by Peggy Sullivan—bestselling author of Beyond Busyness, corporate performance expert, and founder of She Can—to tackle one of the most destructive myths in executive career transitions: the busier you are, the more productive you must be....

How Not To Diss The Dream | Mitch Matthews What happens when high achievers stop dreaming? In this episode, Mitch Matthews—speaker, coach, and host of the Dream Think Do podcast—shares why reconnecting with your dreams isn’t optional, it’s essential. From navigating career pivots to understanding the neuroscience behind our emotions, Mitch unpacks how small experiments, emotional honesty, and defi...

Teacher to Google Big Tech | Keith Anderson What separates those who talk about making a big move – even a pivot from those who actually do it? Being unreasonable. Tenacious and not quitting when that goal is non-negotiable.  Keith Anderson - was an English teacher – with a love for linguistics (find out why this matters and how he used it) making $27k annually.  With sights on working at Google a...

The 411 on Ageism & How To End It Faster I Janine Vanderburg   For the life of me, given the choice between a strong, more profitable business and letting go of the back-assward stigma around age, the logic is clear. But is it?    Like me, Janine Vanderburg isn’t shy about why the math isn’t mathing the business reasons why it’s about impact not age..    Here’s what you’ll find out:  What empl...

In this me to you episode, I am delivering some tough love and strategic clarity for executives facing job search challenges in today's uncertain climate.  Uncertainty isn't new, and someone will get hired despite the chaos - here are the 5 key take-aways to make sure it you.  See uncertainty as feature, not a bug Extended interview processes are designed to find leaders who leverage uncertainty a...

The world is obsessed with metrics and status. But the most important currency is the one you’re missing.  Most of us spend our careers chasing validation – titles and paychecks. I did too. So did our guest Matt Emerzian. The brutal reality? Your job search misery, corporate culture complaints, and endless pursuit of status are all symptoms of the same disease:  The belief that mattering is someth...

Recruiting is big business ($10B) and that’s just at the executive level.  They don’t work for you, they work for their clients and it’s hard.  I know, I lived it.    Today’s recruiters are busier and pickier than ever.  They're not looking at your resume. They're looking through you.  Bottom-First Screening: While you obsess over that job title, elite recruiters scroll directly to your volunteer...

Corporate America is bleeding talent pretending the needs of working parents are asking for a perk, at the expense of being a profit engine.   This week Heather Powers, author of The Power Lane: Why Keeping Moms in the Workforce REVS the Economy exposes this hypocrisy.   "Women are not leaving the workforce, they're leaving the workplace."   Let’s get real with the facts:  The undeniable math:  Co...

“Kidnappers are just businessmen looking for a great deal”    That’s how Scott Walker, legendary hostage negotiator reframes his work (with a 93% success rate) in high stakes situations you can apply to yours.    Let’s call a spade a spade. You can feel like a hostage in your job search.    Every interview can fire off an emotion.  Your future, in limbo.  Your finances handcuffed Your head, unclea...

Doubt kills your job search faster than any market condition. It's not just hesitation—it's resistance holding hostage everything you want. The antidote? Certainty. That inner knowing that transcends credentials, perfect keywords, and competitive threats. My 3 secrets and your shifts:  Be a swordfish, not a whale  Swordfish slice forward with explosive acceleration and channel all energy toward th...

"Confidence isn't built—it's practiced."   The Confidence Myth What we call confidence is often just comfortable competence.  But true confidence is revealed precisely when we don't know what we're doing.   The 5 Confidence Killers External Validation: Outsourcing your worth makes you one criticism away from collapse. Comparison: Every minute comparing is a minute not creating. Comparison assassin...

We've created a system of fictional generational boxes that don't exist in reality. "Boomer," "Gen X," "Millennial" - arbitrary labels with zero scientific basis. Yet we use them daily to dismiss, categorize, and stereotype people who were simply born during a random year span. The cost?  Innovation stifled.  Talent wasted.  Workplaces poisoned. The coming demographic shift (longer lives, fewer bi...

There's a gap in the marketplace—a gap between what you know and how you share it. Most professionals +40 make the fatal mistake of assuming experience speaks for itself.    It doesn't.  Experience without relevance is a timeline  Past tense.    The marketplace invests in your future contributions   That’s what gets you hired.    This week I reveal my 5 secrets for transforming decades of experien...

The game of life (and work) has changed.   It’s no longer about whether to use AI, but how to wield it while preserving what makes us irreplaceable.   Kate O’Neill isn’t just another tech pundit.   As an early Netflix employee and a sought-after “human technologist,” she sits at the intersection of algorithms and imagination.   I pulled Kate away from her book tour and speaking engagements to help...