I was sitting in the Taj restaurant the other day, having lunch with my friend Jill.

A woman approached our table a bit hesitantly and asked, "Are you Liz Ryan?"

That is me, I said, wondering whether her child and mine might be in the same kindergarten class or whether I was late paying my son's marching band fees.

"Can I ask you a quick career-advice question?" she asked.

While the vindaloo chicken cooled (temp-wise, not spice-wise), we figured out how she could handle her at-work issue, and everybody was able to finish their lunch.

Luckily, Boulder Valley folks with career and workplace issues don't need to haunt Indian buffet spots to get answers to their questions.

We have some great local resources that will provide advice as well as moral support for job-seekers and others with career-related hurdles to surmount.

First on our list is the Career Center at the YWCA in downtown Boulder, a program that provides sliding-scale career guidance to job-seekers in all functions and industries.

Browse the center's Web site at www.ywcaboulder.org/programs/careerservices.html to learn more, and make an appointment to get the center staff's help on your job search issues.

My online discussion community is another handy, free resource for job-seekers, job-holders and anyone with business and career issues that need solving.

It's called Ask Liz Ryan, and it's online at www.yahoogroups.com/group/asklizryan. In this Yahoogroup, we answer questions daily from, "How do I politely decline a job offer?" to, "How do I return to the workforce after 10 years at home with my children?"

We also provide free resume spruce-ups in the discussion group. That means that we rewrite our members' resume summaries or objectives to take out the dry corporate speak and add a human voice. Resumes that sound like human beings wrote them are coming back in style -- thank goodness!

Today at 3 p.m., I'll be in the KGNU (88.5 FM) studio taking calls from listeners and answering workplace questions. If you're near a phone and have a question on your mind, call in -- 303-442-4242 -- and share it with us!

If you're tied up this afternoon, can't get to the Career Center anytime soon and don't do online discussion groups, here's another easy way to get a bit of workplace advice.

Just leave a comment beneath this story on the Camera's Web site describing your job-search or workplace issues, and look for an answer to appear on the same page a day or two later.

Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can take advantage of that offer (and there's always the library, if your connection is down).

Liz Ryan is the CEO of Ask Liz Ryan, a Boulder human-resources and organizational strategy consulting firm. She can be reached at liz@asklizryan.com.