Last week, the Glitterati of the fashion world traveled to New York City for the most important time of the year: Fashion Week! It’s hard not to love the extravaganza that the week brings, but truth is, most of us can’t come close to affording those designer labels. Let alone show up to our weekly staff meetings wearing looks straight from the runway!

Luckily, we have fashion bloggers—the talented, creative, and super-stylish women that help us adapt high-fashion looks to something appropriate for the cubicle lifestyle (including our very own corporate attire experts, Cubicle Chic!). Get out of your black slacks and a button-up rut and get some workday inspiration with this list of our favorite office-appropriate fashion bloggers:

1. Most Original Wear-to-Work Looks: This Time Tomorrow

Appropriate for: A start-up company or a business casual office.

On This Time Tomorrow, Krystal features daily images of her creative office attire. She isn’t afraid of a bold print and four-inch-high stilettos, but she also wears classic pantsuits and separates that you can easily re-create for your next big meeting. She loves to mix things up, too, wearing her favorite pieces in unique, innovative ways. For example: wearing a cardigan backwards!

Twitter: @KrystalBick

2. Best Girly-Girl Outfits: The Pink Peonies

Appropriate for: A business casual office.

This blog makes over-the-top girly wardrobe choices, like glitter and pink, look totally professional—if Zooey Deschanel worked at an office, this is what she would dress like. Best of all, blogger Rach wears brands that you can easily find (and afford), like Gap, J. Crew, Tory Burch, and Banana Republic. Visit on days when you feel like indulging in your girly obsessions of pretty pinks, gingham, and bows.

Pinterest: Pink Peonies

3. Best Bargain Hunter: Saucy Glossie

Appropriate for: Business casual to corporate settings and the evening work event.

You may remember Lindsey Calla her from her recent appearance on TJ Maxx ad campaign—she’s “the voice of real girls” and most definitely a bargain shopper. Her posts on Saucy Glossie frequently feature pieces from discount stores. If you love wearing dresses to work, prepare for lots of great inspiration here.

Twitter: @saucyglossie

4. Best Use of Classic Pieces: 9to5Chic

Appropriate for: A corporate setting or a big, important meeting.

Although her clothes can be a little pricey for the average girl, Anh wears them so well it was too hard not to include her on this list. With sophisticated, classic pieces like trench coats and cozy sweaters, 9to5Chic has great ideas for those of us who work at a place where over-the-top flower print just isn’t going to cut it. But if you love power blazers and power shoes—or have a meeting with the CEO—look to her for inspiration!

Twitter: @9to5chic

5. Most Relatable: Gal Meets Glam

Appropriate for: A business casual environment, a casual Friday, or student life.

Love the minimalist look? Julia is your gal. She loves to keep it simple and casual with nude oxfords and clean lines, but also incorporates trends like bold color-blocking. No matter what, she makes every outfit look completely effortless (and affordable!) with pieces from inexpensive stores like H&M.

Twitter: @GalMeetsGlam

6. Best for Celebrity Look for Less Fashion: Viva Fashion

Appropriate for: A business casual or corporate setting.

If you’ve ever wondered how you can re-create celebrity style in the workplace, check out Viva Fashion. Carmen Ordonez teaches you how to get the latest looks from women like Rachel McAdams and Pippa Middleton, but with affordable items you can find at places like Kohl’s. She also reviews the latest looks from places like Target and Zara, so you don’t have to spend hours surfing the net doing it yourself!

Twitter: @vivafashion

7. Best for Curvy Gals: Girl with Curves

Appropriate for: A business casual setting or creative work environment.

Being a curvy girl myself, I had to pay homage to this amazing addition to the fashion blogosphere (which has already been featured on a billboard in Times Square!). For years, curvy girls have felt left out of trends and have been told not to wear fitted clothes or bold prints. Tanesha breaks all these rules and shows women of all shapes and sizes how to look work-appropriate and stylish. As a bonus, she gives beauty tips and easy instructions on how to build a functional wardrobe. Swoon.

Twitter: @girlwithcurves

8. Most Glamorous: Atlantic-Pacific

Appropriate for: A corporate office, your next important meeting, or a political setting.

If you want to infuse a dose of glamour into your daily attire, click on over to Atlantic-Pacific. Blair’s timeless style brings to mind images of fashionistas of the past like Jackie Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn. In addition to lovely and work-ready ensembles of ladylike dresses, purses, and heels, she also mixes it up and struts around town in up-do’s and faux furs. I promise, you’ll be coming back for more!

Twitter: @BlairEadieBEE

Want More?

For a comprehensive list of fashion bloggers check out my blog, Eastside Career Chic. And for more great fashion, beauty and lifestyle tips, visit:

•  The Glitter Guide
•  Who What Wear
•  Refinery 29

Thank you to the amazing fashion bloggers featured in this post, for allowing us to use their photos and get inspired by their impeccable tastes!

I was a good student in high school, but I didn’t think about college, because no one in my family ever had. I grew up in a working-class Latino neighborhood outside of Los Angeles. My mother worked in a toy factory and my father as a farmhand, a railroad worker, and a Teamsters shop steward in a battery recycling plant. Our neighbors and friends did similar work, often in conditions that were dirty or unsafe.

One day, my school’s career counselor told me I wasn’t college material. He told me I was best suited for office work and suggested that I become a secretary.

It turns out, he was half right. I was suited to be a secretary, and I did become one: the United States Secretary of Labor.

If I could go back in time, I would have told my younger self not to let him—or anyone else—tell me my value. And I would have told young Hilda what I’ve since learned to be true: Women, especially minority women, often have to work twice as hard to get our fair shake.

I learned these lessons, as many women do, through life experience. Today in America, the average woman earns about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men doing comparable work, and the gap is even greater for minority women.

This means that each time the average woman starts a new job, she’s likely to start from a lower base salary. It also means that, over time, the pay gap between her and her male colleagues is likely to become wider and wider. It means $150 less in her weekly paycheck, $8,000 less at the end of the year, and $380,000 less over her lifetime. It also means reduced pensions and diminished Social Security benefits for millions of retired workers.

Pay discrimination is immoral, it’s illegal, and it victimizes entire families. Two-thirds of American families rely on a mother’s wages for a significant portion of their income, so lower pay not only means less economic security for women, but also for the children and spouses who depend on them.

Hilda Solis' Younger Self

That’s just wrong, and I’m proud to work for a President who is committed to doing something about it. While I can’t go back in time to deliver life lessons to my younger self, I’m fortunate to be able to use my position as a cabinet official in the Obama administration to help other young women know their worth.

The truth is, we’ll never close the gender pay gap unless women have the facts about their pay relative to men. So, last month, my department launched the Equal Pay App Challenge, a national competition to develop new apps and software to help women negotiate starting salaries, raises, and bonuses. We’re encouraging entrepreneurs (or anyone who’s tech-savvy) to use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other public sources to create new tools that will allow women to earn a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

Our hope is that this challenge will inspire Americans to develop creative ways to provide support, information, and guidance to working women, so we can close the pay gap once and for all. If you have software development skills and believe in equal pay for equal work, I’d encourage you to check out our website.

Winners of the challenge will be eligible for five scholarships—including full tuition and housing costs—to participate in an immersive eight-week program in digital product innovation and entrepreneurship in New York City. There is also a $5,000 cash award being offered for a winner who wishes to sell their app to a non-profit organization that wants to broadly disseminate the technology.

We’ve come a long way since President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963. Back then, women earned only 59 cents on the dollar compared to men. It was President Kennedy who once famously said, “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

For American women seeking the full promise of equality in the year 2012, that’s a lesson we must all remember.

For more in this series, check out: Lessons To My Younger Self

If you have a sweet tooth, you know that a desire for something sugary can be stronger than your self-control! And sweet tooth or not, if you’ve ever tried to eliminate or restrict sweet foods from your diet, you probably found that it feels unnatural.

The truth is, it is! Depriving yourself of sugar is often unsuccessful and in many cases, unnecessary. People have always consumed naturally sweet carbohydrates in the form of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and our ancestors would never have dreamed of avoiding or eliminating them.

But the problem is, today, a disproportionate amount of our sugar intake comes from candy or junk foods. Fifty percent of Americans consume a half-pound of sugar per day (180 pounds per year!) in their processed, refined, or artificial form. Treats like soda, cookies, pastries, ice cream, and white flour lack the life-sustaining nutrients contained in fruits and vegetables, and they don’t do much good for our bodies.

The better answer is to eat sweet foods the way they were intended to be eaten: in their natural form. Choosing treats made with fruit, nuts, and natural sweeteners like honey and vanilla will satisfy your sweet tooth—and give you a huge nutritional bang for your buck, too.

Here are a few easy, delicious suggestions to get your sugary fix, the natural way:

Muddled Berry Mocktail

Drinking a tall glass of this fresh, fruity, and naturally sweet beverage is wonderfully refreshing, plus a terrific boost of energy and a delicious way to prevent dehydration (especially good since sugar cravings are often an indicator that you’re dehydrated).

Directions: Add fresh, muddled blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries (or a mix) and mint to a large glass, add juice from of half a lime, and pour sparkling water on top. Mix well and enjoy!

Baked Apple with Walnuts, Cinnamon, and Honey

Drizzle a little natural honey on your fruit, and you’ll get some added sweetness complete with a dose of vitamins, nutrients, and antioxidants that you can’t find in artificial and refined sugar. Plus, if you keep the skin on apples (and most other fruit), you get the added benefit of fiber. A sprinkle or two of ground cinnamon not only augments the flavor of the fruit, but it also helps to normalize blood sugar levels.

Directions: In a large bowl, mix 2 oz. of crushed walnuts with 2 tablespoons of honey, 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, and the juice of one lemon. Core two apples, score the skin around their middles, and place in a baking dish. Fill each apple generously with the nut mix, then bake for 30-40 minutes at 300 degrees until golden and soft through.

Banana and Cocoa Frozen Whip

This cold and creamy treat looks a lot like other artificial and refined sweet treats, but it’s totally natural, plus it contains things your body actually needs! Really ripe bananas provide tons of real natural sweetness and potassium, and cocoa gives a hint of chocolate flavor and a burst of flavonoids, which may have beneficial cardiovascular effects and protect the brain.

Directions: Put 3 large, very ripe bananas, 2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 tablespoons of natural maple syrup, and 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract into a blender and liquefy. Then pour into individual small bowls, top with your favorite chopped nuts or dried fruit, and freeze until just frozen.

Greek Yogurt and Blueberry Smoothie

This absolutely delicious milky indulgence is one you can enjoy for breakfast, a snack, or dessert. Greek yogurt has more protein and a lot less sugar then regular yogurt, plus has beneficial bacteria for your intestines. Blueberries are little drops of natural sweetness packed with vitamins, nutrients, fiber, and antioxidants that promote good health. And stevia, a natural sugar substitute, can be up to 300 times sweeter than sugar depending on the form (liquid or powder)—but it doesn’t affect your bloodstream.

Directions: Put 1 peeled banana, 1½ cups of frozen blueberries, 1 cup of non-fat Greek yogurt, ¼ cup of water, and 1½ droppers full of liquid stevia (or 1 tablespoon of honey) into a blender, and blend until smooth.

Photo courtesy of SweetOnVeg.

Snoring. Sudden body jerks. Nonsensical murmurs about Justin Bieber and your expense report. These are involuntary sleep behaviors—quirky, uncontrollable actions that your romantic partner may find endearing, but that could swiftly damage your career if they were witnessed by you co-workers.

Unfortunately, though, stretches of sleep-inducing dullness and exhaustion abound in the workplace. Busy schedules mean long work days, red-eye flights, and early morning meetings—and it’s entirely possible that you’ll find yourself in a conference room, sinking into that cushioned executive chair, nodding off.

When you’re dangerously close to falling asleep in a meeting, you must focus every remaining ounce of energy on staying awake. Your career and your pride are at stake (do you really want to drool in front of your CEO?). So here’s your guide to staying conscious in an emergency situation:

1. Make Yourself Uncomfortable

Instead of sitting in a chair that could potentially recline (or topple), stand up in the back of the room, or, if you work in a “cool” office, balance on an exercise ball. Keeping your body active will help your mind stay alert, and you’ll be able to power through the meeting.

2. Participate

This may seem counterintuitive—why would you speak up now, when you’ve had one hour of sleep and three venti mochas?—but participating will help you stay engaged (and, thus, awake). Make eye contact with the speaker, share your thoughts on the meeting’s content, write detailed notes in the margins of the handouts. If you feel your eyes start to droop, focus on the speaker and try to silently paraphrase what she’s saying—anything to keep your brain at work.

3. Snack

Ignore any dietary or nutritional guidelines and snack on the first thing you can find. Is it loaded with sugar? Full of fat? Even better. This is not the time to be counting calories. Any type of snack will give you the little burst of energy you need, and the physical act of eating will help you stay awake.

4. Excuse Yourself

If none of these honorable tactics work, and you feel yourself about to face plant onto the conference table, excuse yourself from the meeting. Go to the bathroom and splash your face with cold water. And if you’re still not awake enough to face that board room? Go back to your cubicle (or to Starbucks). It’s better to leave with dignity than to wake up duct-taped to the water cooler with dry-erase doodles on your face. After you step out, send the meeting organizer an email, apologizing that you couldn’t participate and asking for a copy of the deck and handouts.

Photo courtesy of normalityrelief.

It’s been nearly 10 years since Sara Laschever and Linda Babcock launched a new phase of the women’s movement with their groundbreaking book, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. 

The authors proclaimed that women lagged behind their male colleagues in salaries, bonuses, promotions, and perks simply because they hadn’t “asked for it.” They were right.

They were also right in their judgment that women didn’t like to ask—and weren’t going to start asking anytime soon.

And that shouldn’t have been a surprise to any of us.

Not only has our culture instilled in women a disinclination to be self-serving, when we do work up the nerve to ask, we’re likely to experience “gender blow-back”—a subtle but powerful punishment for stepping outside our cultural gender role.

Take this example: Several years ago, I was the lead partner supervising a staff of five attorneys and two paralegals in a quarter billion dollar antitrust action, and was sitting in on my compensation committee meeting.

After reminding the committee members of the scope of my responsibilities and the considerable accomplishments my team had achieved that year, the managing partner asked me what I expected my salary to be in the coming year.

Not yet being a skilled negotiator, and not wanting to seem self-serving, I said that I believed I should be compensated in a sum that reflected the extent of my responsibilities and the amount of money I’d brought into the firm.

The managing partner’s eyes grew wide. He shook his head incredulously and said, “if we did that, you’d be making as much as I am.”

I knew there were other metrics to consider—his job included business development and participation in firm governance, neither of which were my strong suits. But I didn’t want to appear uncertain. So I responded by saying that if we were doing the same work and bringing in the same amount of money, my compensation should be similar to his.

Several months later, as I was taking my leave from that law firm, the managing partner told me that he’d never felt so insulted in his entire legal career as that day, when I’d said I should be paid as well as he was being paid.

As my experience showed, women suffer economically because we fail to ask, but we’re punished for our nerve when we do ask. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t, right?

No, we’re not. There’s another solution.

What we need to do is learn to powerfully ask for our true market value. We can do that by starting the conversation with offers of benefits rather than requests. Or we can courageously cross that gender boundary and bring those angered by the “gall” of our asking back into a collaborative negotiation. And we can do it in a manner that doesn’t leave anyone insulted or undercompensated.

Here’s the process in a nutshell.

1. Learn Your True Market Value

Women tend to underestimate our worth for many reasons, including the simple fact that we’ve gotten used to being paid 20 to 30% less than our male colleagues.

Once we get a handle on our true market value, however—what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller, gender notwithstanding—we can begin to have a conversation leading to agreement.

That’s all a negotiation is: a conversation between two or more people whose purpose is to agree to terms beneficial for all. The good news for women is that we love conversation. We’re also pretty fond of agreement. And because we hate the word “negotiation” so much, let’s just call it a conversation from here on out.

2. Start by Asking “Diagnostic Questions”

Any conversation aimed at creating an agreement starts most effectively when we ask the other person questions that will reveal his true needs, desires, fears, preferences, and priorities.

Professor Leigh Thompson at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University says that 93% of all negotiators fail to ask these “diagnostic questions” in circumstances where getting them answered would significantly improve the outcome of our negotiations.

So that means that just by starting the process with questions about what your bargaining partner wants—you’ve entered the realm of the super-skilled 7% of all negotiators!

3. Then, Offer Benefits

Once you know what your negotiation partner wants, you can offer to provide it to him before you ask for a single thing yourself. Remember Oliver, the orphan shamed for asking for another spoon of gruel? If Oliver had begun his negotiating strategy by offering rather than asking, he could have set into motion a chain of events that would have led to a better breakfast.

Imagine if Oliver had approached the headmistress with an offer to clean the dining hall and polish the flatware after breakfast. “I’d be able to include a shoe shine for both you and the headmaster if I only had a little additional gruel, and perhaps an egg for energy,” he’d say, smiling with his most ingratiating grin.

Perhaps Oliver wouldn’t have gotten everything he wanted that way, but he would have had a far greater chance of if he’d learned about conversations leading to agreement before holding up his bowl and asking for more.

4. Tit for Tat

You’ve tried all that and it hasn’t worked? I’m not surprised. I’ve had some pretty high-flying executive clients shamed for seeking a 20% raise. But I’ve also seen them walk through that shame, concluding their agreement-conversations with 30 to 40% increases in pay.

If you know how to play “tit for tat,” your negotiation partner will often feel shame for having allowed his temper to flare up at you for simply asking.

“I’m surprised that you’re angry,” one of my clients said to her negotiation partner after I’d taught her this strategy. “I assumed a law firm as prestigious as yours was paying market rates.” On another occasion, she used silence, which brought not only a quick apology, but an additional concession.

When you respond to insults with dignity, penalize your negotiation partner for his outburst with a proportional punishment, and quickly return to cooperation when he apologizes, you can turn your superior’s harrumph into your triumph in short order.

5. Next Steps

No one, of course, can expect to learn everything she needs to know to become a powerful asker by simply reading about negotiation theory in an article. It takes practice. And, of course, every situation is different.

And that’s why I’m kicking off this series. Starting now, I’ll provide guidance right here to help you get what you want—and what you deserve—out of negotiations. So try it out. If you see an opportunity—start the conversation and go negotiate. Send me your toughest questions as you go, and I’ll answer them right here, so that everyone else reading will benefit from your experience, too.

In that way, we’ll all begin to expect wage parity. And as we come to expect it, our employers and customers will come to expect us to ask for it.

And before we know it, the wage gap will recede so far into the distance that we’ll talk about it in the same way we laugh at how we once put up with those “Help Wanted: Women” and “Help Wanted: Men” classified ads.

So go ahead—ask me anything. And join me as the rubber of this new wave women’s movement is about to hit the corporate road.

Send your toughest negotiation questions to negotiation@thedailymuse.com, and we’ll answer them in an upcoming column! (We’ll keep you anonymous, of course!)

Photo courtesy of Victor1558.

The Highlight Reel

• Jan. 31: Mitt Romney wins Florida.
• Feb. 4: Mitt Romney wins Nevada.
• Feb. 7: Rick Santorum wins Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri in a clean sweep.
• Feb.11: Mitt Romney comes back, winning Maine by a wide margin.

• Obama has been taking fire (as well as mounds of cash) in the wake of his decision to fundraise through the super PAC Priorities USA Action. Critics’ charges of hypocrisy cite Obama’s stance against the Citizens United ruling that allows opaque, unlimited, and relatively unregulated election spending through super PACs. But as re-election campaign manager Jim Messina says, “we’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back…  Democrats can’t be unilaterally disarmed.”
• Rick Santorum released four years of tax returns. The joint returns with his wife reveal income ranging from $659K to $1.1M and a tax rate of around 30%—roughly double what Mittens pays.

• Santorum has also been leading Romney in national polls, further wearing away Romney’s air of inevitability. This is extra impressive given that Team Santorum lacks a campaign headquarters, a pollster, a competitive budget, or an inspiring candidate. As Josh Marshall puts it, “running around the country in a long twilight struggle with Rick Santorum is… like struggling to land a one-pound fish or searching for the way out of a paper bag.” Nonetheless, as of Feb. 20:
  

  Courtesy of Real Clear Politics

• However, Santorum is increasingly taking hits for his conservative stances, controversial statements, and perceived hypocrisy. An example: Top Ten Catholic Teachings Santorum Rejects while Obsessing about Birth Control.
• Mitt Romney is now being flanked by Secret Service protection. As predicted, the Internet had a ball contributing suggestions for possible code names. Top entries: Grey Poupon, White Shadow, Mom Jeans, Vanilla, Dry Toast, and Mitt Romney.

Good to Know

What is a Super PAC?

“Super” Political Action Committees were born in 2010 and are officially known as “independent-expenditure only committees.” Unlike campaign committees, where donations are capped, super PACs can raise unlimited cash and are not legally obligated to disclose their contributors. Most of the negative campaigning we’ve seen this season has occurred not from candidates’ own campaign committees, but from super PACs aligned either with a particular candidate or against a candidate. Since candidates cannot “coordinate” with such super PACs, they can dissociate from attacks on their behalf while reaping the benefits of driving up their rivals’ negatives.

Primary vs. Caucus vs. Binding Caucus

What’s the difference between a caucus (Iowa) and a primary (New Hampshire)? What about non-binding vs. binding caucus, or the difference between an open, semi-open, and closed primary?

A caucus is basically a private meeting run by a political party. So in this case, Republican voters attend local private meetings to express their selections for a nominee, and Democrats aren’t invited. Party members collectively decide on their candidate preferences. A regular caucus binds that state’s delegates to vote for the chosen candidate at the party convention, but a non-binding caucus means that these delegates are not committed to the candidate who wins. Unbound delegates remain up for grabs going into the convention in the late summer.

A primary election is run by the state or local government and works by typical ballot casting. Primaries can also be binding or non-binding, with the same rules of commitment applying to state delegates.

A closed primary only allows registered party members to vote, whereas a semi-closed primary allows party members and independents, and an open primary allows voters with any party affiliation.

The delegate allocation can be winner-take-all (winning candidate gets all the delegates and they are committed), proportional (candidates get committed delegates in proportion to their take of the vote), or convention/unbound (which means they don’t officially get the support of any delegates at the time of their victory, although delegates generally do end up voting for the candidate that wins their state).

Example 1: Even though Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have carried four states each (compared to one for Gingrich and zero for Paul), Santorum’s pledged delegates can be counted on one hand, whereas Romney has around 90. Why? Essentially, the states won by Romney have bound delegates, often winner-take-all, while Santorum’s states all have unbound delegates. Santorum’s only pledged delegates have come from his small minority take in states that allocate delegates by proportion of the vote.

Wait, what?

Example 2: Team Ron Paul has publicized its expectation to take Maine’s delegates at the Republican convention in August, despite the fact that Maine was won by Mitt Romney. This is because Maine’s delegates are unpledged, which means that they are not bound to support a specific candidate and could independently decide to support a candidate that didn’t win their state, e.g., Ron Paul.

What’s Up Next

• Tuesday, February 28: Arizona and Michigan vote in their primaries. Mitt Romney is backed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. Yet despite Romney’s political ties and heavy spending in Michigan, polls show Santorum leading. Romney is leading Santorum in Arizona polls, but just barely (36-33). Looks like the McCain endorsement hasn’t helped Romney a whole lot in the Senator’s home state.
• Romney and Santorum are the current national frontrunners to watch. Expect Romney to keep attacking Santorum’s senatorial record and lack of executive experience. Expect Santorum to keep attacking Romney’s failure to pass the Turing test.
• “I don’t blame Santorum for not believing in evolution. It’s really let him down.” —Andy Borowitz
• Bad news, America. According to Michele Bachmann, you missed your chance with the perfect candidate.

Daily aMusements

• There was never any possibility that this wouldn’t happen: Ladies and gentlemen, the “Sh*t Mitt Romney Says” video.

• Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Mitt Romney condom line made its debut in New York. The tagline: “Never Settle.”
• Heartbreak: Herman Cain has turned down an offer to appear on Dancing with the Stars. According to an assistant, “he can’t dance in an eight-count. He can only dance in a nine-count.”
• We all know the results of spreadingsantorum.com. Now it’s time to welcome spreadingromney.com. It’s still only the second Google result for “Romney” but the term might start to get more mileage if polling data keeps pummeling Mitt. Have a better idea? “Spreading Gingrich” is still up for grabs.

Photos courtesy of Gage Skidmore and David Fred.

Everyone’s heard the expression: Job searching is a full time job. But it isn’t until you find yourself sitting in front of a laptop, eating take-out, and scrolling job sites night after night that you realize how much of your life becomes consumed by the search. It takes time to find the right position. And yes, it’s a lot of work. But, like anything, there are things you can do to make it a little easier on yourself.

Discovering RSS feeds was probably the best thing that happened to me last year. Well, okay—finally getting the job I wanted was slightly more exciting. But I would never have gotten there if I hadn’t figure out how to optimize my job search. For the longest time, I was visiting 20 different sites a night and exhausting my browser’s bookmarks feature—when I could’ve been accessing all those same postings faster, in one easy-to-organize place with RSS feeds.

When it comes to jobs, it’s about searching smarter, not harder. And here’s how you do it.

1. Save Your Searches

Almost every job search site allows you to save your job searches and add them to your Google Reader (or any other RSS Feed Reader). At Craigslist, just scroll to the bottom of any search results page and click the big orange RSS feed button. After you create an account at Monster, you can make any search a feed. CareerBuilder even has feeds for each job category and an entire page with directions and widgets to help you create customized job search URLs.

2. Keep an Eye on Your Favorite Companies

We all have crushes on companies. You know, the ones that make things you love or just have a vibe that fits who you are. The ones you check every single day for new jobs. If your company crush has an RSS feed for its job posts, add that to your reader, too. If not? It probably has one for its Twitter account (here’s how to set that up), blog, or news section. Just browse for companies directly from Google Reader, click “subscribe,” and you’re all set.

3. Organize by Job Type and Skills Focus

Now that you’ve brought all your searches and company postings into one spot, you can organize them into categories. Most of us have skills that apply to a variety of jobs (for example, Marketing Manager vs. Copywriter vs. Communications Coordinator), so sorting by job type is a great way to keep things organized. That way, you can focus on positions that have similar requirements at the same time, which will get you in the groove as you’re adapting your resume and cover letter for each job. After a while, you’ll also start to notice trends—that certain types of positions always ask for the same thing or use the same keywords—and you can take what you’ve learned and use it to strengthen your resume.

4. Scan, Star, and Send

The absolute best thing about using RSS feeds is that after you have everything set up, you can scan the jobs in your reader from anywhere you have internet or mobile access. Use your phone to look for jobs on the train, while you’re waiting in line, or ordering coffee. (If you’re feeling really fed up, you can even look for jobs at work without worrying about your browser history showing you on a job site.) While you’re scanning, star or flag the positions you want to apply to, and you’ll be able to easily go back and find them when you’re ready to prepare your resumes.

Using my feeds, I was able to send out 10 or more resumes a night, usually in about 30 minutes to an hour. That still left me time to work out, grocery shop, cook, and even have a life. My roommate at the time called me a resume robot (and yeah, I was pretty focused, and maybe a little crazy). But hey, it worked. I got calls, I got interviews, and eventually, I got the job I was looking for.

Photo courtesy of Pimkie.

During Job Search Month in January, we gave you eight great looks perfect for any interview, from a super-conservative corporate job to a super-fabulous fashion gig to the super-casual start-up world. And now? We’ve simplified the process even more with this easy, all-in-one infographic:

 
 
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</p> <p><img src=”http://www.thedailymuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/fashion_graphic_2.jpg” alt=”" width=”500″ height=”3282″ /></p> <p><br></p> <p>View full image</p> <p><a href=”http://www.thedailymuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/fashion_graphic_2.jpg” title=”Looks That Land The Job” style=”color:#0000FF;text-align:left”> Looks That Land the Job</a></p> <p>

Photo courtesy of Pierre LaScott.