Job Advice Blog

Whether you are the type of person who works to live, or who lives to work, it is a good idea to maintain some balance between your working life and your regular life. It is nearly impossible to maintain a healthy lifestyle without working at all, but it is also incredibly difficult to maintain one working constantly. An ideal employer understands this and accommodates their employees’ needs- whether it be a weekly game night that requires leaving early, or child care changes that require a flexible schedule. Maintaining a healthy balance between work and life not only helps you be a healthier person, but will also help you to be a better employee. When you search for a job you want to look for an employer that understands this.

A lot of people dive deep into the well of online learning, thinking that every course is going to help their career. While knowledge is always better than ignorance, not all knowledge pulled down off the web is going to help your career. Today we are going to look at some dos and don’ts of online courses.

Unless your last salary was exactly what your employer wants to pay you and exactly what you want to make- your salary history might cause you a bit of grief. Either you were earning far less than you would like to- and your hiring manager might low-ball you based on that, or you were earning a lot more than you need- and your previous salary might scare off companies that don’t think they can afford you. Either way, you can escape your salary history it just takes a little bit of finesse.

As we all know, being a qualified candidate is not enough to ensure you a job. You could spend 20 years in a single field, win every commendation possible, know how to do every job related to yours, and still get turned down or ignored due to making simple mistakes. When push comes to shove your ability to perform as a job-seeker will be a deciding factor of whether or not you get hired. Today, instead of looking at tricks to making sure you perform well, we are going to look at the things that you cannot do without raising some red flags.

Your ability to control whether or not you like your boss is small at best- however, that does not mean that you cannot make your boss like you. When push comes to shove it is not all that important for you to like your higher ups, but how much they like you can (and will) drastically affect your career. This is why we are going to look at some ways to woo your bosses and ensure that they have kind words to say about you.

The ideal apology expresses 6 different sentiments, which is why “sorry” doesn’t cut it.

You do not need to tell your current employer that you are looking for a job, especially if you are not even sure if you will find one that you’d like to work. You cannot know how your employer will take the news, and if they take it badly it can be a lot of hassle for you. So don’t tell them- but also don’t tell your co-workers or clients. The only thing worse than telling your boss that you are looking for a new job is someone else doing it for you! Until you know exactly what is going on don’t rock the boat by running your mouth.

Tempting as it is, you cannot tell your interviewer you want the job because you have mortgage payments and would prefer not to be homeless. You can’t say you don’t want it, but you need it. You don’t want to say it is because you heard that this company pays better than competitors. Your personal reasons for wanting the job do not matter, your goal with answering this question is to show enthusiasm for the company and start explaining why you fit the role that they need filled. This question tests three things: preparedness, enthusiasm, and knowledge.

When we think of job interviews we mostly think about answering questions. We need to know how to tell stories about our accomplishments, talk about our strengths and weaknesses, and be able to explain our values- but the perfect interview requires more than perfect answers- it also requires perfect questions. So what do those questions look like? Perfect answers are fairly complex, and so too are perfect questions. The trick to these is to show that you are interested in the company itself, not to just get the most out of the job for yourself. This is done through asking questions about the company as well as asking questions about yourself.  Below are some examples of questions that should help you out!

One of the hardest parts about any job (especially any self-directed job) is just staying focused. In a world chock full of flashing screens and distraction machines, staying on task is becoming increasingly difficult. Today we are going to look at a tried and true method of increasing your focusing power by using Francesco Cirillo’s Pomodoro technique, all you need to start is a timer!