As we near the end of each year, we look back and pull together the ideas that are worth repeating. We pass those along today, with our wish that 2006 will be your best career year yet.

On deciding you want to change careers/companies: The instant of deciding you want to leave is often the same instant that your performance begins a downward spiral. When we look closely at people who get fired after long tenures, we can often detect that they, at some level, set themselves up to get fired. They quit mentally, and then the physical reality catches up.

So, you mustn’t be sanguine about your realization about needing to change; the time on your career parking meter might be running out.

On answering the “What are you looking for?” question: Nothing turns off a hiring manager more than candidates who don’t know what they want. The worst answer is “I’m not sure.” Nearly as deadly is a generality like “I’m looking for a job that excites me.” This amounts to telling the hiring manager that he or she is going to have to do the work of figuring out what motivates you.

Your job as a job-hunter is to know a great job when you see one and be able to explain that to an interviewer.

On conducting a nonpassive computer job search: A college English major, looking for part-time work, did research on the Internet and uncovered 38 organizations that did work related to her career goals. She sent a customized e-mail to each, saying how interested she was and why. She got a response from a small publisher who hired her as a copy editor.

Instead of putting in job-search time going around to places like Starbucks, that same time at her computer earned her a job in the field she wants to pursue.

On not getting credit for ideas: Ideas are seeds, and there’s a lot of work to be done between the seeds and the harvest. Say your idea is that your company needs to take all the books scattered around the offices and create a library. You could say to your boss, “I have an idea – let’s have a library!” But in doing so, you have dropped a lot of work on her.

But if you say: “I wonder if a library would be helpful to the staff. We have space in the second conference room, I know where we can get shelves, and I’d volunteer to get it organized.” Now the boss just has to make a decision – an easy one – and you get the credit because you deserve it.