Holiday season is once more prepared to eat up your entire annual travel budget and this year, the landscape is worse than ever. “TheBureau of Transportation Statistics shows U.S. airline passenger growth steady at 5-6% annually and we’ve essentially maxed out landing and take off slots at most major U.S. airports,” says Richard Kerr, Senior Points and Miles contributor at The Points Guy.

Shutterstock People from your past pop up all the time. Whether they’re former colleagues, people you met at networking events or even acquaintances from your college years, old contacts may surprise you by reaching out to reconnect. This kind of gesture can often be exciting and flattering—though, sometimes, that’s not the case. Every now and then, you might receive an invitation to coffee from someone whose presence you haven’t exactly missed.

As of late, I find myself forgetting to bring business cards on business trips or to networking events. This doesn’t mean that I don’t expect to shake hands and kick off new relationships. But it’s 2016, I’m a millennial, and I like to connect digitally. The secret to remaining relevant and amplifying your personal brand is by maintaining your relationships, and one powerful way to do so is online.

Dear Liz, I’ve been job-hunting since I returned to the States from a two-year stint in Dubai three months ago. I’ve applied for for-profit, not-for-profit and government jobs and so far I’ve had two interviews but I wasn’t interested in either opportunity. I’m not picky but I’m not going to work in a toxic culture, and as you know there are a lot of those around. Two weeks ago I applied for a job with the county in which I live.

Dear Liz, I started a new job at a marketing agency a year ago when I finished grad school. It’s been a fantastic job. One month ago I got promoted. It wasn’t a situation where I applied for a posted job. The partner in our firm who supervised my last two projects said “Harper, you’re doing a great job and we’re going to put you in charge of your own account.” I got promoted to Account Manager and got a $6,000 raise. I went home ecstatic that night.

Shutterstock Dear Liz, I spent the period from 2008 through 2012 bouncing around through a series of “meh” jobs, but I was grateful to be working at all because a lot of my friends were out of work back then. I got my current job in 2012 andwill have my five-year anniversary next spring. I’m a Regional Training Specialist for a telecommunications firm. The pay is unexciting but okay. My job description is okay. I work reasonable hours and I like my co-workers.

IBM Watson has won the game show Jeopardy and now Bob Lord, IBM’s new chief digital officer, believes it can help him win the hearts of marketers. Hired to complement the recently hired CMO Michelle Peluso, Lord explains his role as “owning the progression of a client through the funnel and activating on the promise that Michelle is delivering.

Shutterstock I learned to recruit employees by doing it at a rapid pace in two companies. In the first company I recruited hundreds of newcomers and in the second company, I recruited thousands more. When you interview and hire huge numbers of people, you are going to make hiring mistakes. Here are five of my worst hiring mistakes — the ones that taught me how to recruit! Watch on Forbes: Barney We will call my first unfortunate hire Barney.

Courtesy of Startup Stock Photos This is the first in a two-part series on managing your workload in between meetings. Part 2 will offer tips on making the most of the meetings you do attend. If you’re like most employees, you probably spend most your workday in meetings, leaving you little or no time to get actual work done. “People are unrealistic about their workloads,” says Maura Thomas, productivity expert and founder of RegainYourTime.com.

Shutterstock It’s a day for celebration in Canada, as three of its large metropolitan regions scored honors on an annual list of the world’s most reputable cities. The top spot, however, is owned this year by Sydney, Australia, for the second year in a row. The ranking, in its sixth year, is compiled by The Reputation Institute, a reputation-management consulting firm based in Boston that launched in 1997.