My 5 Favorite Websites for Professional Development

I have a really deep relationship with my Google Reader*, so much that last week while I was totally wrapped up in my new kindle finishing the Hunger Games trilogy for my book club meeting today (can we say excited!?) I think I started to experience withdrawals. I felt like I didn't know what was going on in the world or in the blogosphere. I was so out of touch and disconnected.

Well this week I'm working on catching up, and thankfully my Reader is super organized. I have been skimming through the different topics I feel like catching up on and digging deeper into my "Daily Reads" folder that keeps track of my favorite sites.

After reading through a few posts it dawned on me that I should share some of my favorite professional development sites with you (listed in no particular order). I've even linked to some posts that I think you'll enjoy reading.

1) Harvard Business Review Blog

This is a fairly obvious choice for someone with a business degree, however the leadership and career insight is relevant to more than those of us with a love for business operations. Updated very regularly, this website always offers content with a fresh perspective on topics that have always been and will always be relevant to management.

2) Eat Your Career

Chrissy, a career coach, is one of my favorite bloggers. Her posts are always concise, straight-to-the-point, and extremely relevant to me. My favorite topic of hers is a series she has on bad career advice. In this series, she takes common advice and clichés that we hear throughout our careers and breaks down why it's a load of crap. I may not always agree with her, but she definitely gets her point across well.

3) Work Awesome

This website is one of my most recent discoveries.  I think that the name of the site says everything you need to know: it's for people who want to work awesome and be awesome. The site aims to "teach readers about starting things, completing things and trying new things – and be “awesomely productive” when doing so."

4) iGrad

Disclaimer: I am a contributor to this website.

It makes sense for this site to be on my list of favorites for the simple fact that I love its mission of providing career and money management advice and tools for recent graduates. I may not be that recent of a college graduate any longer, but there is still so much to be learned about entry into the workforce from my peers' experiences.

5) The Eloquent Woman

This blog is meant to inspire women by providing the information we need to become better, more confident public speakers. The site engagingly offers a plethora of ideas, lessons and research on public speaking that I haven't been able to find anywhere else.

What are your favorite professional development websites? My Google Reader always has room for more!

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*Google Reader is a web-based feed reader used to keep up with blogs and news.