Looking to resign soon? While you should always leave on good terms, according to a recent survey conducted by OfficeTeam, a few people gave bizarre reasons to leave which made us chuckle. Instead of just saying the norm like leaving to pursue another opportunity, one employee said he was joining the circus while another said “she lost her cell phone too many times at work.”

The survey also revealed someone quit to participate in a reality show and someone else said it was his routine to switch jobs every six months.

The survey is based on telephone interviews with 1,300 senior managers at companies in the U.S. and Canada with more than 20 or more employees.

Some people were simply honest in their approach. Here are a few other examples:

Author and journalist Susan Orlean (left) has written two nonfiction pieces that have been turned into films. She’ll discuss her new book, Rin Tin Tin, in Mediabistro’s first online Literary Festival & Workshops starting July 16. Other speakers include Rebecca Skloot, Jason Boog, and Jason Allen Ashlock. Register now.

As creator of The Real World and Road Rules and producer of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Project Runway, Jonathan Murray gets asked one question an awful lot:

How do I get a job in reality TV?

In mediabistro.com’s latest So What Do You Do? interview, Murray said it’s all about getting that first gig — any gig — in the business.

“I think we hire 20 to 30 young people each year to start out as PAs and loggers and all these different entry-level jobs. And I always tell them that you really need to work in it to understand it. Get a good liberal arts education,” he explained. “I’m always looking for people who think well, who are curious, who can write well, who are well-read, who understand story, and then we can teach them most of the rest of the stuff as a company.”

Murray also discussed how he was able to get MTV to take a chance on the genre and whether Kim Kardashian‘s 72-hour marriage was really a sham for the cameras. Read the full interview.

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression but what happens when you’re already in the door on a new job and made a blunder right off the bat?

According to The New York Post’s “Go to Greg” column, Greg Giangrande advises, “empty suits and lazy people who don’t pull their weight” will naturally develop a poor reputation. But, what if you’re not one of those guys or gals and simply didn’t step up to the plate on one little task? After all, we all make mistakes, right?

The chief human resources officer at Dow Jones says in this case “the only thing you can do is demonstrate a new, proactive and productive work ethic that is equal to that of your peers.”

Considering you’re still new on the job, people’s thoughts of you haven’t been cemented just yet so there will be plenty of opportunities to redeem yourself with outstanding work to shed that initial impression. He adds in the piece, “Own and apologize for all of your mistakes, and chalk them up to a newbie’s anxiety — say that what they’ve seen is not the real you and tell them you’d like a fresh start.”

Buyer beware: If poor performance continues on project after project, there won’t be many opportunities to prove everyone wrong and offer up another excuse.

Are sharp interview skills and a relevant resume paramount to landing a job? You bet. Does meeting deadlines with ease and working well with others make you a delight on the job itself? Of course!

Although tactical approaches to a job search and success on the job itself are important, so, too are your beliefs. That’s right — all the things you tell yourself from whether or not you’ll get the job to whether or not you deserve a raise. If you’re on track internally, chances are you’ll be able to shine externally, too. Read more

Not fair! A new study by Millennial Branding has found that while most companies think new graduates should have one or two internships, at least three months long each, they’re not hiring their own interns into full-time jobs. (In other words, they want someone else’s interns, maybe because their own weren’t impressive enough.)

This gap between employer expectations and employer actions is one of the reasons half of all recent grads are jobless or underemployed, Millennial Branding says.

Another interesting gap comes when looking at the types of majors that get jobs versus the skills employers say they’re looking for. In short, 34 percent of companies say they’re hiring engineering and CS majors (and 75 percent of companies that hire STEM talent say it’s hard to compete against other brands for talent). The market is tight. Yet nearly all companies surveyed (98 percent) say that communication skills are the most important and 91 percent say that not only is communication important, but it’s hard to find in a recent grad. Yet all 225 companies surveyed believe that college adequately prepares graduates for the working world. Who on earth is filling out these surveys? Bosses with multiple personality disorder?

At any rate, the “someone else’s intern” phenomenon puzzles us, but it is likely to stick around. And people wonder why the job market is so messed up for millennials.

Infographic is below, click here for a larger one.

Ah, workplace friendships. We know them all too well. You spend every waking hour of every work day with your cubicle mates and chat at the water cooler so at some point the lines between friends and co-workers may begin to look a little bit blurry.

According to Lindsay Olson, blogger at U.S. News & World Report, it’s important to keep your business and personal lives separate. She writes in the piece, “Keep your personal chat reserved for your breaks and after work. You want your other co-workers to still take you seriously as a professional, and getting too chummy on the job might get in the way.”

Next, it’s important to go slow. Trust is a big factor here and for a friendship to blossom and work out outside the office, you’ll need to slowly let the other person into your life. Need proof? She writes, “So you don’t want to embarrass yourself (i.e., going overboard on Tequila Tuesdays) or reveal too much about your personal life (maybe you’re thinking about a career change) and have it come back to bite you.”

Although it’s rewarding to forge friendships at the office and certainly infuses the day with more fun, it’s important to remember why you’re there. As in the whole paycheck thing. Don’t let friendships thwart you from focusing on the job, your numero uno goal of each day.

As hard as it may be too resist, one of the ultimate ways to maintain boundaries is to resist complaining about your boss. In the piece she writes, “It’s almost a natural instinct to complain about work to a friend, but realize that a workplace friend makes that a treacherous path to travel. If he or she is friends with or connected to your boss, your venting may cause problems for you in your department.”

Negativity never serves any good anyway, especially if you end up transferring to another department or it gets out of hand. Just like gossip.

Lastly, it’s important to keep boundaries intact. Not all friendships work out (similar to how budding office romances may fizzle); remaining focused on your work situation will instill much needed distance between you and your colleague. Her advice? “Socialize with friends outside of work to balance out the time you spend with your work friends.”

Even if we say all the right things on a job interview, it won’t matter if you don’t have the enthusiasm to back it up.

Adam Lyons who, as the founder of Insurance Zebra, has interviewed “hundreds of applicants” said, “If you don’t care, I don’t care. Sell yourself and get me excited to work with you. Sometimes people come off like they are sleeping — no excitement, no passion — and it’s a big turn-off.”

Find out how to fix eight more pet peeves of hiring managers in 9 Things You Should Never Do on a Job Interview.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

By now we all know how important it is to have a consistent and professional presence on LinkedIn and Facebook but with the rapid growth of Pinterest, experts are saying it’s important to build your portfolio there as well.

And by experts we mean recruiters! According to a recent post on ERE, Dr. John Sullivan writes, “Many users use it to show off their work, so recruiters can use it to spot great designers.”

Considering the site’s demographics lend themselves well to “targeting women or young people as recruiting prospects,” Dr. Sullivan mentions companies are getting on board on using Pinterest for recruiting. Since it’s such a visual platform, in particular graphic designers may bode well by pinning their own work to get noticed.

Plus, recruiters may start using it more frequently to post screen grabs of job announcements. Given his advice to fellow recruiters, it seems we should all lend an ear by what they’re doing, yes?

In the piece he wrote, “Make your pictures easy to find by including the most popular keywords and hashtags. You should also include QR codes and links to your careers page or your LinkedIn profile if you want to communicate directly with interesting prospects. And don’t forget the important benefit that your brand image will likely improve because you’re using this hot app.”

Ok, it’s not time to cue the hysterics just yet. But there’s this new site out there for job seekers and employers called ShinyNeedle (as in, in a haystack, we presume). It’s a job board with a twist. In order to apply for any job on ShinyNeedle, you must complete a “challenge” associated with the job.

So for an interactive marketing manager position, the challenge is:

Demonstrate how you would most effectively use technology partners and vendors to drive the success of an interactive campaign targeting an early 20 year old demographic. For the purposes of this challenge consider the demographic both male and female and recent college graduates with new jobs.

For a social media manager position at ShinyNeedle itself, your scheduling capability will be challenged as you’re asked to “Demonstrate through a written statement and an example document that displays how you would improve and manage several [social media] channels.”

Applying without completing the challenge is forbidden. Posting a job without a challenge is (supposedly) forbidden (though we found a few that sneaked through). It’s an interesting idea, we admit. Giving a job applicant with an otherwise blah resume (perhaps because he is a new graduate or has been out of the workforce) a chance to prove himself is an appealing thought. And often, those who take the initiative to solve a company’s problem before being asked to in an application process end up being the ones who get jobs. But formalizing this process? Count us as undecided for now.

Besides, how would a jobseeker be assured that her brilliant idea wouldn’t just be stolen by the company? As ShinyNeedle’s FAQ says, “While there is some risk your idea might be shared in some way other than for the job post our website terms of use and privacy policy prohibit use of the responses for anything other than hiring. Anything written by an individual is also protected by US copyright law automatically.”

Doesn’t inspire exactly the most confidence. Hopefully Shinyneedle can figure out how to create trust between its employer clients and jobseeker users in order to create a product that really truly improves hiring.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm in Chicago, six media CEOs indicated they planned to leave their jobs last month.

John Challenger told FINS, “CEO turnover can often set off a series of management changes throughout an organization, particularly if the new CEO is an outsider.”

So, how does this affect an internal organization?

Two words: Expect change.

“Change is typically inevitable as a new leader brings in other trusted C-level executives who mesh well with his or her leadership style,” he added.  ”Those executives bring in their own people, who, in turn, bring in their own people.”

As for the identity of one of the execs, according to the piece, Jeff Haley joins Marketron, a media software solutions company, after leaving the Radio Advertising Bureau; Erica Farber is his replacement. She’s the former publisher and CEO of Radio & Records, a defunct trade publication.

Regarding year to date numbers, the six CEOs from last month bring the total to 15 execs this calendar year. Although the press release doesn’t itemize the reason of departure by industry, the top three reasons for leaving were resignation, retirement, and pursuing a new position in another company.