Shutterstock Dear Liz, I got laid off in 2015 and I decided to take a sabbatical, because I got a decent severance package. The sabbatical came just at the right time, but now I am finding it hard to get back into the workforce. I am starting to wonder whether my age is working against me. I am 49 but I was blessed with my dad’s hairline and I could imagine that I look older than I am.

Shutterstock As a millennial in the trenches of Corporate America, I see some of my peers become wildly successful while others desperately struggle to get promoted. Those who struggle to get promoted aren’t necessarily bad at their jobs. It’s actually the lack of professionalism and soft skills I see holding them back. If you are a millennial in a corporate job, here’s what you don’t want to do. 1.

The career aisle on Amazon is flooded with career advice. I’ve sifted through much of it, but the climate of the job market can change quickly. What was once good advice is now outdated like spoiled milk. As I’ve been reflecting on my own career, I’ve taken inventory of my strengths and weaknesses. The reflection breeds questions.

The end of the year has arrived — faster than ever! You’ve changed over the past twelve months. You are a different person now than you were in January. This is the perfect time to update your LinkedIn profile. Take a few minutes to log into LinkedIn and visit the Edit Profile page, read through your profile and see whether it still describes you. You can updateyour profile to move things around, change them or get rid of them if they’re no longer accurate or relevant.

Photo credit: Shutterstock As a public speaker, I travel every week. It’s a requirement of the job; clients never send 500 people to you. So as someone who reaches executive platinum status with American Airlines before Summer every year, I don’t think of travel when I think of fun. But according to a recent FlexJobs survey, I am the exception to the rule. According to their survey, travel is one of the key reasons millennials work.

I love to hear about employers who are stepping out of the old-fashioned Machine Age mindset to treat their employees and job applicants like valued collaborators. I am glad to hear those stories, but I am never short of correspondence describing the opposite scenario! Too many organizations cling to outdated beliefs that damage their employer brands and drive the most talented job-seekers away.

Last week, Microsoft completed its acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. After winning a purported bidding war with Salesforce.com, Microsoft again battled the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) leader in front of EU regulators. Salesforce argued that the acquisition would make Microsoft too powerful in the CRM market, an argument the regulators rejected. In reality, this battle wasn’t over CRM – at least, not directly. The stakes were much higher than that.

Shutterstock Dear Liz, Something funny but also appalling happened to me last week and I knew you would get a kick out of it. My ex-boss “Stanley” contacted me out of the blue and suggested that we have lunch together. Stanley was my boss for two years, and we were always at odds. Stanley is a “my way or the highway” kind of guy, and he’s loud and opinionated and he doesn’t listen.

One day I will dig through the boxes in my garage and find my original, paper job application from acompany I worked for when I was very young. In the summer of 1979 I was 19. I had just arrived in Chicago from New York. I loved living in Chicago – the lakefront, the parks, my friends and the crazy-low cost of living compared to New York — but I had a problem. I lost my job as a waitstaff member at an outdoor cafe when it closed for the winter. I needed an office job.

Shutterstock Do people respect you? Respect is often defined as a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements. The key word is elicited. Our actions and the outcomes we create are directly proportional to the amount of respect we think we should have and the amount of respect we think we should receive.