Monica Lewis says she’s seen what it takes to succeed in a job search from working at LinkedIn.

Courtesy of Monica Lewis

• Monica Lewis is the senior director of product management at LinkedIn.
• Despite a downturn in many industries, she says job opportunities are still out there.
• Her job-search advice is to get specific with what you’re looking for and firm up your skill set.

As the senior director of product management at LinkedIn, I’m often asked for advice on landing a job, particularly now amid the economic uncertainty in many industries including real estate, tech, and retail.

While there’s no singular answer to this question, in my time at LinkedIn I’ve been able to learn from countless job seekers what makes for an effective job search. The good news is there are still opportunities out there, as the ratio of job openings to active applicants remains nearly double the pre-pandemic average.

Here are my top tips for finding your next role.

Figure out what you want and why

The clearer you can be about what you’re looking for in your next job, the better. Being specific helps give you direction — whether in researching companies, preparing for interviews, or asking others for help.

Ask yourself why a certain industry, job, or company appeals to you: Maybe you’re energized by the potential to make a positive impact at scale, or build something from the ground up, or be in a workplace with more flexibility.

Getting clarity on what motivates you may also help you find opportunities you hadn’t considered. Tech, for instance, isn’t just engineers and web designers — it includes roles in accounting, operations, sales, and marketing.

Prioritize your skill set

A LinkedIn report published last March suggested that more than 40% of companies globally, including LinkedIn, relied on skills to search for and identify job candidates on LinkedIn.

If you’re pivoting from one industry to another, determine which skills will transfer over to the new position. Identify your strongest relevant skills as a candidate and use your LinkedIn profile’s “skills” and “about” sections and your past job descriptions to show examples of how you’ve demonstrated them.

Keep finding opportunities to sharpen and adapt your skills via online courses, volunteering, or side gigs.

Network with people in similar positions

Once you’ve determined your goals and mapped out your transferable skills, try to talk to people who are in those roles to learn more about what their day-to-day is like. Start by introducing yourself and then explain the reason you selected them to reach out to. You could say something like: “I’m interested in moving from engineering to product management, and I saw that you made a similar transition. Would you have 15 minutes to share how you navigated the transition and any challenges along the way?”

If they agree to chat, do your research beforehand so you can ask intentional and informed questions that show your desire to learn and grow. Don’t lead by asking to be connected to someone on the hiring team. I recommend ending the conversation with something like: “Based on our discussion, is there anyone else you think I should connect with — maybe a hiring manager or someone who’s recently made the move I’m looking to make?”

You should view these conversations as tools to build relationships and learn rather than ways to land an easy referral.

Above all else, keep going

My top piece of advice is to stay the course. It may take a few swings to land your dream job, but it’s absolutely possible.

Rejection is a part of the process, not a failure. Use rejection as an opportunity to understand how you can better present your skill set and to see which companies your priorities align best with. Keep your skills sharp, share experiences with your network, build community with others who are searching and hiring, and, most importantly, be kind to yourself.

Activists hold cancel student debt signs as they gather to rally in front of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 25, 2022.

STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

• The Supreme Court is hearing two lawsuits that blocked student-debt relief at the end of February.
• One of the cases involves two student-loan borrowers who sued because they didn’t qualify for the full $20,000 amount of relief.
• Here are some key points that group argued in its case to the Supreme Court.

We have officially entered the month when the nation’s highest court will take on President Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan — and the groups opposing it are readying their arguments.

At the end of August, Biden announced his plan to cancel up $20,000 in student debt for Pell Grant recipients making under $125,000 a year, and up to $10,000 in relief for other federal borrowers within the same income cap. Just over a month later, on October 10, the Job Creators Network Foundation Legal Action Fund — a conservative organization — filed a lawsuit seeking to block the relief. 

The group filed the suit on behalf of two student-loan borrowers: one who didn’t qualify for the full $20,000 in debt relief since he was never a Pell Grant recipient, and another who has commercially-held student loans that do not qualify for Biden’s loan forgiveness.

On Friday, it submitted its argument to the Supreme Court explaining why it thinks Biden’s debt relief plan is illegal and should be blocked — especially because the two borrowers it is representing cannot benefit fully from the route the administration took to enact this relief.

“The Secretary decided the key details of the Program behind closed doors, including which individuals will receive debt forgiveness, how much of their debt will be forgiven, and which types of debt will qualify,” the group wrote. “The result was predictable: some will benefit handsomely, some will be shortchanged, and others will be left out entirely.”

Alongside this lawsuit, the Supreme Court will also be taking on a separate case filed by six Republican-led states who argued the debt relief will hurt their states’ tax revenues, along with the revenue of student-loan company MOHELA. 

Biden’s administration filed its full legal defense in January, where it expressed confidence in its usage of the HEROES Act of 2003 to cancel student debt, which gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify student-loan balances to help borrowers recover from a national emergency, like COVID-19. 

“Extra breathing room for millions of Americans is on hold because of lawsuits brought by opponents of this Administration’s student debt relief plan,” the White House wrote on Twitter this week. “We are continuing to fight to deliver relief to tens of millions of eligible borrowers.”

And those opponents are keeping up the fight on their end, as well. Here are some standouts from the Job Creators Network’s argument on why Biden’s student-loan forgiveness should be blocked.

Borrowers didn’t have a chance to comment on Biden’s plan

This lawsuit argues that enacting debt relief using the HEROES Act violates the plaintiffs’ procedural rights because they did not have an opportunity to submit public comment on the plan. The filing said that the administration should have gone through the negotiated rulemaking process, which includes a public comment period, and failing to do was not in the best interests of borrowers.

For example, one of the plaintiff’s parents made too much money while he was in college, therefore making him ineligible for the Pell Grant, but the lawsuit says he now “makes less than $25,000 a year, but individuals making exponentially more than that ($250,000 for joint filers or $125,000 for individuals) will receive $20,000 in debt forgiveness if they received a Pell Grant.”

“The Secretary could reconsider this arbitrary line if forced to hear from low-income borrowers and defend his decision in negotiated rulemaking and notice-and-comment,” it said.

Biden’s Justice Department previously pushed back on these claims. People familiar with Biden’s legal filing told reporters in a press call earlier this month that “the plaintiffs don’t have standing to raise that procedural claim.”

“The HEROES Act expressly exempts the Secretary’s actions from notice-and-comment procedures. It doesn’t have to do it. It just has to publish the action in the Federal Register,” a person familiar said.

The person also said that with the plaintiffs’ claim that the administration doesn’t have authority under the HEROES Act to enact this relief, the court wouldn’t be able to address that injury, invalidating their standing.

The debt-relief plan demonstrates “gross over-inclusiveness”

Leading up to the announcement of Biden’s debt relief, many advocates and Democratic lawmakers were urging him to make the relief as expansive as possible, without any thresholds. Still, to avoid criticism that if he made the relief completely universal, the highest earners would benefit most, he placed income caps on the relief.

Nonetheless, the Job Creators Network argued his plan exhibits “gross over-inclusiveness” under the HEROES Act.

“Nothing in the Act’s text or history indicates that Congress authorized the Secretary to cancel student-loan debts, let alone for tens of millions of borrowers at a cost of $400 billion,” the legal filing said.

“And because a ‘national emergency’ is simply ‘a national emergency declared by the President,’ nothing would stop the next Administration from identifying other ’emergencies’ (say, income inequality, climate change, the war on drugs, or even the student debt crisis) to justify any amount of debt cancellation,” it added.

The filing said that not every borrower who would receive relief would be at risk of default or delinquency on their loans, and therefore, they wouldn’t need this type of pandemic relief. But the White House has been clear that the economic impacts of the pandemic are long-lasting. 

After Biden announced the emergency declaration for COVID-19 will end in May, an administration official told Insider in a statement that the debt relief will still be necessary, and legal.

“There was a national emergency that impacted millions of student borrowers,” the official said. “Many of those borrowers still face risk of default on their student loans due to that emergency. Congress gave the Secretary of Education the authority under the HEROES Act to take steps to prevent that harm, and he is.”

Photo by Tracy A. Woodward/The Washington Post via Getty Images

• Chick-fil-A restaurants average $8 million a year in sales.
• Its restaurants are among the busiest in the US, leading to out-of-control drive-thrus lines. 
• One city recently ordered the chain to demolish and rebuild a restaurant to address traffic woes. 

Chick-fil-A’s snaking drive-thru lines, which frequently spill into city streets, are notorious throughout the US. 

In one North Carolina city, the problem is so vexing – and potentially dangerous to pedestrians – local officials ordered the chain to demo the restaurant and start over.

The city’s solution to the restaurant’s traffic-clogging line was to add more drive-thru lanes and eliminate the dining room. 

On the surface, the fix offered by Charlotte, North Carolina, city planners doesn’t make sense. 

Won’t more lanes welcome more cars? 

But city planners say the restaurant’s new design prevents cars from backing up onto the main road. The two drive-thru lanes wrap the restaurant, according to the proposal approved by the Charlotte City Council last month.  

 

A Chick-fil-A in Charlotte, North Carolina, is being rebuilt as a drive-thru only restaurant to address traffic in the retail center.

Charlotte, North Carolina documents

New walkways linking public sidewalks to the drive-thru-only restaurant are also expected to keep pedestrians safe and prevent cars from blocking the sidewalk, city documents show. 

The demo and rebuild are expected to begin soon and could take six or more months to complete, Chick-fil-A told Insider. The drive-thru-only restaurant will have a walk-up area and patio dining. 

“Our goal is that these updates to Chick-fil-A Cotswold will not only ease traffic concerns for the community but also allow the restaurant to better serve our customers with the great food and service they expect from us,” the chain said in a statement. “Chick-fil-A restaurants in Charlotte always strive to be a good neighbor and have been strong supporters of their local communities.”

Chick-fil-A is contributing $70,000 toward the price of a new traffic signal and other improvements outlined in the project. The Atlanta-based fast-food chain did not provide the cost of razing and rebuilding the restaurant, operated by a local franchisee. 

Chick-fil-A won’t have to start from scratch to design the new drive-thru-only format. As of October, the chain had more than 30 drive-thru-only locations in the US. 

Chick-fil-A restaurants average $8 million a year in sales. As such, the chain’s restaurants are among the busiest in the country.  

Intouch Insight’s national drive-thru survey consistently ranks Chick-fil-A as having the slowest drive-thru times, with its latest average time clocking in at nearly 8.5 minutes. But the survey also said Chick-fil-A is efficient. For three consecutive years, the chain’s drive-thrus were ranked the fastest when accounting for the total number of cars served. 

Still, the chain faces irate residents and small business owners in many cities across the US. 

Last year, Santa Barbara, California, known for its resistance to fast-food chains, nearly declared Chick-fil-A a nuisance. But, the chain and the city devised a traffic drive-thru plan to prevent cars from spilling into State Street, one of the city’s main thoroughfares.  

Since the onset of the pandemic, at least four lawsuits linked to out-of-control drive-thru lines have been filed against Chick-fil-A, Insider previously reported. 

Over the last three years, the chain said it has rolled out programs to improve drive-thru service, including adding extra drive-thru lanes to restaurants, building new takeout-focused stores, and expanding order-taking with tablets. 

In June 2022, Chick-fil-A began testing drive-thru express lanes, allowing mobile app customers to bypass the traditional drive-thru line to pick up their meals. The chain called the express lanes “a game-changer for our busy customers.”

Are you a fast-food insider with insight to share? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at nluna@insider.com.

The Kremlin on Wednesday welcomed a Russian company’s offer of “bounty payments” for soldiers who destroy Western-made tanks on the battlefield in Ukraine, saying it would spur Russian forces to victory.

The Russian company Fores this week offered 5 million roubles ($72,000) in cash to the first soldiers who destroy or capture U.S.-made Abrams or German Leopard 2 tanks in Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian troops would “burn” any Western tanks that were delivered to Ukraine, adding the bounties were extra encouragement for Russian soldiers.

“This testifies to the unity and the desire of everybody to contribute as best they can, one way or another, directly or indirectly, to achieving the goals of the special military operation,” Peskov told reporters.

“As for these tanks, we have already said they will burn. With such incentives, I think there will be even more enthusiasts.”

The Western-made tanks – far more advanced than anything used by Ukraine or Russia in the conflict so far – are unlikely to arrive at the frontlines in eastern and southern Ukraine for several months.

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The Biden administration will announce Wednesday it is awarding $800 million to redesign roads, improve sidewalks and make other upgrades to address the sharp increase in U.S. traffic deaths.

Traffic deaths jumped 10.5% to 42,915 in 2021, the highest number killed on American roads since 2005. After declining for decades, traffic deaths jumped sharply after COVID-19 lockdowns expired in 2020 and more drivers engaged in unsafe behavior.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Reuters the United States must reach “a decision as a country that we need to treat this seriously and this isn’t just routine…. We face a national emergency on our roadways, and it demands urgent action.”

Most of the 510 awards for regional, local, and tribal initiatives are for planning grants funded by a $5 billion, five-year program under the November 2021 infrastructure law.

USDOT is also awarding 37 implementing grants funding low-cost measures like new sidewalks, crosswalks, protected bike lanes, roundabouts, speed bumps, better lighting, and speed-management strategies to slow cars in high-pedestrian traffic areas.

Other projects include mid-block crosswalks, rumble strips, narrower lanes and backplates with reflective borders to improve traffic signal visibility.

USDOT has also launched a data visualization tool showing where traffic crashes occur.

“We literally as we were making the decisions had a map pulled up — you could see the hot spots,” Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg said preliminary data indicates 2022 traffic deaths “seem to have leveled off” near 2021 levels. “We’ve got to change the plus sign to a minus sign,” he said.

The number of pedestrians killed jumped 13% in 2021 to 7,342, the most since 1981. The number of cyclists killed rose 5% to 985, the most since at least 1980. Both categories are still rising.

The awards include $10.4 million for rural Fayette County, Iowa to add rumble strips along 50 miles; Missoula, Montana will get $9 million for new bike lanes, sidewalks and bus stops.

Boston is receiving $9 million for upgrades at nine key intersections, while Seattle was awarded $25 million to build four miles of protected bike lanes, 1.5 miles of new sidewalks and other improvements.

Upgrading America’s roads will not be cheap. The United States has 4 million miles of roads and nearly 300 million vehicles that travel more than 3 trillion miles annually.

Last year, a top lawmaker said highway planners for years only emphasized “fast throughput for cars and trucks.”

Global stocks edged up on Wednesday as signs of slowing U.S. wage growth supported expectations that the Federal Reserve could signal an end to interest-rate hikes at its meeting later in the day.

Wall Street indexes had rallied, as had bonds to a lesser extent, while the dollar gave up gains overnight when the Fed’s preferred wages gauge, the U.S. employment cost index, showed a 1% rise last quarter, its smallest increase in a year.

The MSCI All-World index (.MIWD00000PUS) was last up 0.2% on the day, having ended January with a 7% gain, thanks in large part to investors growing more optimistic about the outlook for global inflation and interest rates.

The Fed will announce its rate decision at 1900 GMT, followed by a news conference with Chair Jerome Powell.

Interest-rate markets have priced in a slowdown in the cracking pace of hikes, with Wednesday’s expected 25 basis point (bps) hike seen bringing the Fed funds rate target range to 4.5-4.75%.

Barring surprises, the focus will be on Powell’s tone. Investors will be trying to gauge whether and how hard he would push back on market pricing for rate cuts beginning as soon as the second half of this year.

“The market is anticipating some pushback from Powell, although it’s difficult to pin down how much is enough to convince the market,” said Brian Daingerfield, head of G10 currency strategy at NatWest Markets.

“Anything short of Powell going 10 for 10 hawkish may ultimately be seen as being not hawkish enough. Conversely, the market may take even the smallest dovish concession and run with it.”

Strategist at ING said economic data should play a greater role in shaping investor expectations for monetary policy.

“One of the reasons is that central banks are purposefully behind the curve,” Padraig Garvey, who is ING regional head of research for the Americas, said.

“Their past mistake in anticipating the inflation surge means they’re unlikely to acknowledge it is going back to target until they have a much higher degree of confidence than now,” he said.

“The other reason is that markets are correctly priced for the next few meetings.”

In Europe, the STOXX 600 (.STOXX) rose 0.2%, catching a lift from healthcare stocks including Danish pharma company Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) and London-listed rival GSK (GSK.L), which reported results.

Currency markets have also been treading water in the run-up to the Fed meeting, and ahead of the Bank of England and European Central Bank meetings on Thursday.

The dollar dropped for a fourth straight month in January, and lost 1.5% on the euro and 0.8% on the yen . The euro was last up 0.2% at $1.0882, while against the yen, the dollar fell 0.2% to 129.81.

U.S. Treasuries were cautiously firmer in Asia, with benchmark 10-year yields down 2 bps to 3.5069%. S&P 500 futures fell 0.3%.

Japan’s factory activity contracted for a third straight month in January, a private survey showed, while South Korea posted a record monthly trade deficit for January, mainly due to a far worse-than-expected drop in exports.

Facebook owner Meta (META.O) reports earnings later on Wednesday. Company executives had struck a cautious tone at earnings calls on Tuesday as a slowdown looms.

Exxon (XOM.N) posted a record $59 billion adjusted profit, though Caterpillar (CAT.N) and McDonald’s (MCD.N) shares fell as the companies warned of inflation squeezing profit margins.

In commodity markets, optimism for demand supported oil prices and Brent crude futures rose 0.1% to $85.57 a barrel, while gold , which rallied on the dollar’s weakness through January, fell 0.2% to $1,923.84 an ounce.

Indian conglomerate Adani Group, meanwhile, remained under pressure, with its flagship Adani Enterprises (ADEL.NS) shares down 3% and below the lower end of the offer price for a $2.5 billion stock sale that ended on Tuesday.

Prices for dollar bonds in Adani Group companies steadied after last week’s rout.

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President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are set to discuss the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling on Wednesday, a meeting that will give a first sign of how the two will work together, or fail to, in a divided Washington.

The Oval Office talks come as Biden, a Democrat, and the Republicans, who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November’s elections, are locked in a standoff over raising the federal government’s borrowing cap. Failure to reach a deal by June could lead to a default that would shake the global economy.

Neither side is expecting a solution to emerge from just one meeting, and observers say the talks are most likely to serve as the opening bell for months of back-and-forth maneuvering.

House Republicans want to use the debt ceiling as leverage to exact cuts in spending by the federal government, though they have not united around any specific plan to do so. The White House contends that it will not negotiate over the increase, which is necessary to cover costs of spending programs and tax cuts previously approved by Congress.

The 80-year-old president, who served as vice president during a similar 2011 showdown that led to a historic downgrade of the federal government’s credit rating, enters the talks with what some of his aides think is a strong hand, including a narrow Senate majority, a party that is unified on this issue, and a strong message for voters.

McCarthy, 58, leads a fractious House Republican caucus with a narrow 222-212 majority that has given a small group of hardline conservatives outsized influence.

Biden is expected on Wednesday to call for McCarthy to release a specific budget plan and to commit to supporting the nation’s debt obligations, according to a White House memo seen by Reuters.

Biden has long-established relationships with both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, where he served for decades. But he has far less personal history with McCarthy, who joined the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill under former Speaker John Boehner after Biden had already left to become Barack Obama’s vice president.

Just one in four Republicans serving in the House today held their seats in 2011, and observers said they may not be fully aware of the risks of courting default, or the difficulties of negotiating in a divided government.

Unlike most other developed countries, the United States puts a hard limit on how much it can borrow, and Congress must periodically raise that cap because the U.S. government spends more than it takes in.

The 2011 crisis was resolved with a bipartisan deal that cut spending and raised the debt limit but left Obama administration officials smarting. Many felt that they had given up too much in negotiations and had still caused harm to the economy by letting talks persist.

McCarthy has less room to maneuver than his Republican counterpart in 2011 did. To win the speaker’s gavel, he agreed to let any single member to call for a vote to unseat him, which could lead to his ouster if he seeks to work with Democrats. He also placed three hardline conservatives on the Rules Committee, which would allow them to block any compromise from even coming up for a vote.

Biden seemed to question McCarthy’s ability to keep Republicans in line Tuesday at a fundraiser in New York, calling McCarthy “a decent man, I think,” but noting the concessions he made to become speaker.

McCarthy, for his part, said Biden needed to be willing to make concessions to get a debt-ceiling hike though Congress, saying it would be “irresponsible” not to negotiate.

The Treasury Department has already started taking “extraordinary measures” to stave off a default until summer after hitting the borrowing limit earlier in January.

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