Today is a special day because it is our début. The Career Development Carnival is the result of many hours of planning and work that Hannah Morgan and I have done over the last few months. Our vision is to help you find information on how to develop your career, regardless of your employment status.

Here’s how our carnival works. There are six major topic areas: Career Exploration – Career Management – Job Search Resources – Networking Tips – Personal Branding – Reputation Management. Each month, selected posts will be featured. Some posts don’t make the cut (and here’s why). This month 15 out of 47 submissions made the cut.

We highlight each post by title, author’s name, hosting blog and a teaser – hoping you will be inspired to read more! To read the entire article, simply click-through the link. If you like what you read, show your support by tweeting, liking, forwarding, posting or Google+ it to your network. If you have something to say – leave a comment – bloggers love to interact with their readers!

Settle in with your favorite hot drink and enjoy the show.

 first act: career exploration

Patrick Mullarkey presents How Fight Club is your career. So man up! posted at Mentoring Mullarkey, says, “I think career exploration might be the closest fit but the blog is a mix of ideas in career/professional development and management.”

Meg Montford presents Find Career Solutions By Taking Time to Process! posted at Career Chaos, tells us “Meg Montford, Executive Career Coach, partners with executives and professionals that are seeking radical career changes and need the strategies to make them happen.”

Lynn Dessert presents How I defined my future as a 13 year old posted at Elephants at Work, reflects on “Your early childhood memoirs may be the best barometer for what you should be doing in your career today.”

second act: career management

Terrence Seamon presents To Your Specific Success posted at Here We Are. Now What? is very clear that “When setting your sights on success, set very specific goals.”

Karla Porter presents The Annual Performance Review and You posted at Karla Porter Human Capital & New Media. Karla poses 12 employee satisfaction questions that can help you manage your career and employer more effectively.

Dawn Bugni, MRW, CPRW presents The power of value in salary negotiations posted at The Write Solution, says “Articulating value is integral to successful salary negotiations and ongoing career advancement.”

Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, MRW presents Disrupting Your Resume posted at CareerTrend Blog, asks “Does your resume ‘come alive,’ like a work of art?”

third act: job search resources

Hannah Morgan presents 10 Ways to Boost Your Job Search posted at Guide for Lifetime Career Navigation | Career Sherpa, shares her wisdom, “By putting all or some of these 10 pieces into play, your job search will be supercharged!”

Miriam Salpeter presents Gain some perspective for your job hunt posted at Keppie Careers by Miriam Salpeter. Be sure that none of the speed bumps Miriam discusses are impacting your perspective.

Melissa Cooley presents Measuring Job Hunt Success: The Unsolicited Call posted at The Job Quest, reflects on “”The measure of your job search success is not the number of resumes you send out, but the number of unsolicited calls you receive.” ~Steve Levy What is this “unsolicited call” Steve is talking about? Find out in this post!”

Mark Babbitt presents 7 Phrases I Never Want to See on Your Cover Letter posted at YouTern, tells us that the same rules apply from an earlier post about resumes – how many mistakes do you make?

Deborah Mourey presents I’m telling Mom, (no one likes a tattletale) posted at Hell in the Hallway and believes “Information on a potential employer can be very powerful. Check out new online tools like glassdoor that provides feedback from current and former employees and salary information.”

Margo Rose presents LinkedIn, Your Job Search and You! posted at HR Margo Rose HireFriday Boot Camp 2.0 talks about leveraging LinkedIn to advance your career.

Eric R. Derby presents Why do people really get hired? posted at Staffing Insights. There are three reasons people get hired according to Eric. Do you agree?

fourth act: personal branding

Meg Guiseppi presents Brand New Year. New Personal Brand? posted at Executive Career Brand, shares “Meg Guiseppi is a C-level Executive Branding and Job Search Strategist, helping you differentiate your unique ROI value proposition to Land Your Next Great Gig.”

future submissions

Submit your blog article to the next edition of The Career Development Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. You can find out more information about carnival guidelines at Career Development Carnival.

On February 16, 2012 the Career Development Carnival will hosted by Hannah Morgan at CareerSherpa.