The Briefing
Career communication, personal branding, AI ethics, marketing strategy, and 24 years of Seoul. Written for professionals who treat communication as a craft, not a task.
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Why AI Literacy Can No Longer Be Optional
Every organisation is investing in AI tools. Almost none of them are investing in the one skill that determines whether those tools produce anything worth reading.
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You Are the Startup. What Are You Building?
Most students think of university as something that happens to them. The ones who leave with a real advantage treated it as a launchpad they designed themselves.
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What Twenty Years in Korea Taught Me About Professional Trust
Most Western professionals think about trust as something you earn quickly and rebuild if it breaks. Korea taught me that is the wrong model entirely.
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눈치: The Communication Skill the World Is Finally Starting to Notice
Western professionals have spent decades developing emotional intelligence, communication frameworks, and leadership presence programmes. They have been missing the thing that actually makes communication work in real rooms with real people.
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AI Will Write Your Email. It Will Not Save Your Reputation.
Outsourcing your professional voice to AI is not a productivity strategy. It is a long-term credibility risk. Here is what the research says, and what smart communicators are doing instead.
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Stop Starting Emails with I Hope This Finds You Well
The phrase is not warm. It is a habit. Here is what warmth in an email actually looks like. Every week, somewhere, a startup founder sends a cold email to a potential investor that opens with “I hope this finds you well.” A student emails a professor for a recommendation letter: “I hope you are…
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The STAR Method Is Lying to You
The STAR method has been the gold standard for behavioral interview preparation for roughly 30 years. Built around four elements, Situation, Task, Action, and Result, it gives structure to answers that would otherwise sprawl into five minute rambles involving four different stakeholders and project details nobody needs. Structure is good. I am not here to…
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Your Resume Is Not the Problem. Your Story Is.
Most job seekers spend 80% of their energy on the document and 20% on what actually gets them hired — how they talk about themselves.
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What Working in Korea for 20 Years Teaches You That Business School Doesn’t
Twenty years is long enough to stop being surprised. Long enough to stop interpreting silence as rudeness, hierarchy as inefficiency, or indirectness as dishonesty. Long enough to understand that what looks like a communication breakdown from the outside is, most of the time, a communication system — one that’s operating exactly as designed, just according…
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What No One Tells You About AI in the Workplace …. Yet
The conversation about AI and work keeps getting stuck in the same two positions. Neither one is particularly useful if you are a professional trying to figure out what to actually do right now. Here is what the headlines consistently miss.
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How to Write a Blog Post That Doesn’t Read Like a School Essay
You can tell within one paragraph whether someone wrote a blog post for a grade or for a reader. Most professional blogs are still writing for the grade. Here is how to stop.
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Why Most Marketing Campaigns Fail Before the First Post Goes Live
If you are building a content or communication strategy and want tailored guidance on the strategic gaps, work with Matthew before the first post goes live. Free tool How does your own writing score? Paste a blog post, email, LinkedIn piece, or bio. Get an honest score, your biggest gap, and what to fix next.…
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Most Candidates Fail the First Question Before It Is Finished
The question is not an invitation to recite your resume. It is an audition to see whether you know how to tell your own story under pressure. The first question in almost every interview is also the one most candidates answer worst. “Tell me about yourself.” Four words. And most people respond with a chronological…
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Start Here: What CareerComms Is and Who It Is For
Twenty years is a long time to think about one thing. That is roughly how long I have been living and working in Seoul, teaching at Hanyang University, training corporate teams, coaching professionals through career transitions, and watching what happens when communication works and when it does not. What I have learned is this: the…
The Briefing goes out twice a month. Practical thinking on communication, branding, and career strategy. No filler.
What’s in The Briefing
Career communication insights for professionals navigating English-language job markets in Asia