Shutterstock Over the next year I’ll be running a periodic series of answers to common management-related questions. This one involves employee evaluations — but even more importantly, the sort of managing one should be doing on a daily basis — that makes evaluations an easy conversation rather than a stressful event. Dear Victor: Wanted to get your advice. I have an evaluation coming up later this week with a valuable employee.

Shutterstock Dear Liz, I absolutely love your articles, which give me so much inspiration! You are a CEO. What do you look for when you’re hiring? Thanks! Marcel Dear Marcel, When I’m hiring a new person, I am very focused on the problem to be solved. I don’t write a job description that includes a bunch of tasks and duties. Anybody that I’m considering hiring will be able to figure out their own tasks and duties. I focus on defining the problem.

Shutterstock As an editor at The Muse, I’m often approached by people who have job search questions. Nine times out of 10, they’re not thrilled with my answers. Mostly because they involve doing work.

Shutterstock Whether you are a lifelong employee or a college-age intern, chances are you have sometimes found yourself daydreaming about vacation instead of staying productive at work this summer. There is a name for this phenomenon: the summer slump, brought about by melting temperatures outside, freezing temperatures in the office, plenty of summertime distractions and a burning desire to drop all tasks at hand. If you are a victim, rest assured that you are not alone.

Dear Liz, I am stressed about a work situation and feeling very unlucky that it happened to me. I have faith in your advice. I have an excellent job that I enjoy. I work as a District Manager in a growing company that has a great track record. In my district I have two senior salespeople and 12 account managers. My newest hire is a young but very capable account manager who has already made a positive difference to our company. He is an outstanding young man and one of my top performers.

‘Passive’ job candidates are people who are living their lives, not thinking about job-hunting, when an employer swoops in to contact them about potential job opportunities. ‘Passive’ job candidates are all the rage among lots of employers these days. They want to find their own candidates rather than running job ads and talking with the job-seekers who respond to those ads.

John Crestani was sitting on a beach in Thailand, poor and lost in his life when he opened a book that helped transform him from a job drifter to a successful internet entrepreneur. It was 2009 and Crestani, then 21, had fled to Thailand after dropping out of college. He was bumming around the country on a small loan from his family and trying to “find” himself. To that end, he brought along spiritual works like The Bible and the Bhagavad Gita (Hindu scripture).

Shutterstock Your commute and your morning cup of coffee may be leaving a big dent in your wallet. According to a new poll, it costs Americans about $3,300 a year to maintain a job. It may be time to ask for that raise! The average American spends about $276 each month on lunch, transportation and other work-related costs, according to jobs site CareerBuilder, who polled 3,031 full-time, U.S. private sector workers across various companies and industries how much they spend on their job.

Hiring people is such an organic and human activity, it kills me to see how many companies do it badly. They try to make recruiting a linear, data-driven and analytical process, but that’s impossible, because recruiting is all about the energy that flows between and among people. It has nothing to do with data. It has nothing to do with particles — like all human activities, it is all about waves! Recruiting has nothing to do with keyword-searching algorithms.

Shutterstock Over the next year I plan to run a periodic series of answers to common management-related questions. In the four years I’ve been blogging about management, I’ve received many questions from readers (and more are always welcome). I may sometimes modify a letter’s content (but not intent) a bit to make an issue as universally relevant as possible — but the emphasis will always be on providing helpful answers to common management problems.