The Cosmic Career Coach

Dear Cosmic Career Coach,

I'm not a good self-promoter in social situations. I have a good job and I'm not really looking for another, but I repeatedly watch people with more flash and less talent somehow take over a conversation about an area where I have more expertise. I'm a Capricorn with Pisces rising. Any tips for me on getting more credit for my professional persona?

—Janis in Jacksonville

Dear Janis,

Capricorns are blessed with talent and cursed with modesty. The other thing you mention—your rising sign—is actually the factor that mutes your already modest bragging voice. Your sun sign (Capricorn) symbolizes what you want in life, and in Capricorn you want structure, respect and mastery of the tradition of your chosen industry and social milieu. By nature you're not flashy. But your rising sign, which represents how you appear, makes you seem murky.

Pisces as a rising sign gives you an aura of mystery, compassion, fluidity and flexibility. It's great for making friends at an ashram, doing social work or trusting gut impulses, but it messes up elevator pitches. You have the spreadsheet-for-brains capacity of a Jeff Bezos or Henry Kravis (Capricorns) but appear like a dreamy Liz Taylor or escapist Jack Kerouac (Pisceans). Promoting yourself directly doesn't always work (thanks, Pisces), but working indirectly is effective.

How, you ask? Try this: The next time your pals are bragging at a party, make a modest or understated comment about yourself. The effect? Your argumentative and passionate pals will begin refuting you right away, outlining your talents, your background, all the reasons you're basically smarter than they are—and, like the extroverts they are, they'll do it in front of an audience.

Hot Careers For Capricorns

• Art & Design
• Business & Management
• Engineering

Dear Cosmic Career Coach,

I've met this giant batch of Geminis at work over the past two years. (I work as a Web content producer.) Are the stars trying to tell me something by piling on the contact with this other sign, or do I just work in a very Gemini profession? I'm an Aquarius.

—Lorenzo in Palo Alto

Dear Lorenzo,

Aquarians are tolerant, open, sociable, non-judgmental and easily amused by chaos. This is fortunate since you're surrounded by a bunch of schizophrenics who love nothing more than uploading and downloading and linking and blinking and blogging and logging their way across the ether, possibly under multiple personae and at all hours.

Yes, Lorenzo, interactive media is the ultimate Gemini profession. Mercury-ruled Geminis love blurring boundaries between print, TV, radio, video and so forth. They love crisply uploaded blog commentary, the immediacy of the e-mail newsletter, the paradigm-busting way web-based content is disruptive to dinosaur-age media formats like, you know, newspaper classifieds or ad-supported TV.

As the Zodiac's frontiersman and disrupter and, well, Geek (in a good way), your job among the Geminis is to hammer up the fence posts around their play pen and create a world in which these witty banter-chatters use their special wacky Esperanto to come up with something new, like Web 4.0. They're the verbal dada, you're the vision dude.

Geminis and Aquarians get along famously as friends (or, fyi, as much more, in case you've met anyone special at work), so looks like the planets threw you a bone and put you among your own kind. I expect that wherever you're working will be fun, possibly revolutionary. Regardless, cherish the good times while you can. They're your kind of good times, but they won't last forever.

Hot Careers for Gemini

• Education
• Multimedia & Web Design
• Psychology

About Jane Hodges, The Cosmic Career Coach Jane Hodges is a Seattle-based business writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, The Seattle Times, Seattle Magazine and many other publications. When she's not reporting on real estate or big business, she writes the "Seeing Stars" astrology column for Southwest Airlines' magazine, Spirit. She is also the author of Cosmic Grooves, a music and astrology book series (Chronicle Books/Rhino Records, 2001).