Tag: skills

Seasonal Jobs

by candacemoody

According to Hourly Careers (www.hourlycareers.com) one in five Americans plan to take on a second job during the 2011 holiday season, while 12percent said they already had one according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive.

Hourly careers also cites a 2011 survey of 1,000 hiring managers and found that…

51% of hiring managers will be hiring for seasonal jobs this this year – up 8 points since 2008.
Each hiring manager, on average, expects to hire 4.1 seasonal workers – a 5 percent increase over last year’s 3.9 workers and a 32 percent improvement from a low point in 2009
That presents opportunities if you’re in the market for work or taking on a second job. Here are some of the jobs that post openings during this season:

The Optimism Bias

by candacemoody

Tali Sharot write The Optimism Bias, a book on why humans almost always view the future as hopeful and sunny. She has studied hundreds of subjects, young and old, and found that no matter the odds, we always believe that tomorrow will be better. We’re apparently hard wired that way. “We hugely underestimate the likelihood of divorce, cancer and unemployment,” she writes. “”We expect to be healthier than the average person and more successful than [our] peers.”

Love and Money in the Interview

by candacemoody

“What salary are you looking for?” Everyone hates the question. Everyone. Talking about salary is awkward for most jobseekers, and for good reason. If you mention a figure that’s too low, you leave money on the table if you get the offer – and that’s the best case scenario.

From Duties to Accomplishments

by candacemoody

If you’re still sending resumes that simply re-hash your job duties, it’s going to be hard to stand out in this economy. Your resume pages (usually one or two at the most) should be considered valuable real estate. Any words or phrases that don’t pull their weight should be eliminated so you can fill the space with accomplishments.

When to put it in Writing

by candacemoody

Volumes have been written about when not to write. If you have something difficult to say, it’s best to say it in person, or so the advisors will tell you. Email (that’s how most business writing occurs today) is certainly not an ideal medium for tough conversations; it can be cold and impersonal. If you have a good relationship with someone, you want to temper your difficult conversation with personal signals; empathy is easier to express in person. But there are times when writing is the best medium.

Dealing with Difficult People: Being Objective

by candacemoody

Arthur Bell and Dayle M. Smith wrote “Difficult People at Work; How to Cope, How to Win” to help us work and live with people who make us crazy. The authors call difficult people SOP’s: Sources of Pain. They don’t try to minimize the pain you feel from difficult people; they simply try to help you manage to get work done and keep from strangling your coworkers (which this column does NOT endorse.)

Asking for Help

by candacemoody

Jodi Glickman is the author of “Great on the Job: What to Say, How to Say it” and she offers readers a step by step guide to success by saying the right things. Glickman offers scripts for getting things done at work, asking for help and managing priorities. They’re good scripts; as a manager, I can vouch for her expertise in guiding workers toward more successful outcomes. Here’s her formula for success when you have to ask for help.

How to Succeed at Your New Job

by candacemoody

E is for EXCEL. If you know you’re good at something, Glickman says, you should take every opportunity to offer your expertise to the team. This is especially true if you’re good at something people don’t like to do. Offering to proof a large and complex document or to organize an event is a way to make friends among your team members or develop a great reputation with people you don’t know well.

The Five Floors of a Relationship

by candacemoody

The Floor One relationship is usually transactional in nature. We encounter dozens of people a week with whom we exchange simple greetings: the barista at Starbucks, the mailman, the clerk who checks us out at the market. We ask “How are you today” without really expecting much of an answer, and others respond with “Fine, thanks” no matter what they’re really feeling or thinking.

The Law of Random Relationships

by candacemoody

Spaulding tells the story of applying for a prestigious Rotary scholarship, one that will give him a year of study abroad. By the time he applies, Spaulding is in college; he managed to find one small school that would take a chance on his academic record. He applies for the Rotary scholarship and is notified that he is one of ten finalists. Spaulding travels a very long distance back to his home town to meet with the selection committee. When he arrives at a local restaurant for the interview, he sees the group of tense and wary competitors lined up to wait their turn. The finalists’ name tags read like a Who’s Who of prestigious universities: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. All but Spaulding’s, which read: East Carolina University. His spirits and confidence plunged as he considered the competition.