Annoying Office Habits You May not Know You Have
A huge part of almost any job is getting along with and working well with others. That can be hard to do though if there is a member of staff or two that simply drives everyone else nuts. It’s easier than you might think to rub people the wrong way at work so take a look at this list and if you recognize any of these annoying traits in yourself it’s time to put a stop to them before your bad habits earn you the “office nuisance “label:
Lack of Preparation – You show up for meetings on time alright but you always seem to be missing one little piece of information, one spreadsheet or one memo that is crucial to your participation and the meeting is held up for ten minutes as you dig through your desk to find it.
This kind of behavior not only demonstrates to your coworkers that your organizational skills leave a lot to be desired but to many it may seem to be a mark that you really do not respect your coworkers time. Take an extra ten minutes (even if it means coming to work early) to make sure that when you walk into that conference room you are ready to go.
Bad Phone Etiquette – Your phone conversations are so loud that they can be heard all the way across the office and everyone knows that you have a hot date tonight/ your spouse is an idiot/ your cat has flu. People who spend too much time on personal phone calls tend to be resented by their coworkers (its wasting on the clock time) and when those details have to be shared with everyone else because you can’t keep your voice down the resentment doubles.
Keep personal calls short and sweet and if you really must leave your cellphone on (if you are allowed) put it on vibrate; you might think your latest ringtone is the best ever but everyone else might not agree.
You Love to Play the Walking Wounded – You may think that you are doing everyone in the office by dragging yourself to work with a 103 degree fever and/or a somewhat unusual rash but it is unlikely that your coworkers will agree. Instead they are likely to be locked in their offices frantically covering everything (including themselves) with Lysol spray and cursing about your sickly presence under their breath.
If you have anything more than the sniffles stay home, your coworkers will pick up the slack while you recover and they will thank you for not sharing for once.
You er..Smell
Not the “hasn’t had a shower in a month” kind of smell but the “oh my gosh did he bathe in a vat of Drakkar Noir” or the “smells like a ten year old ashtray” kind of smell. Your scent is important, especially when you’re working in a small, poorly ventilated space with lots of other people around, so be considerate of other people’s noses.
If you must smoke “air” yourself out before you come in, save the fancy cologne for date night and don’t eat boiled eggs or onions for lunch, it tends to put everyone else off theirs.
How a Great Resume can Help New Grads Score their First Job
You have spent the past four years living off Ramen Noodles and driving a ten year old rust bucket just to ensure that you reach the point you are at now – a new college grad ready to enter the workforce, shiny new degree in hand. You got good grades and all your professors loved you – so why aren’t prospective employers clamoring for your services?
Your resume may not be helping. The problem is that employers want to know what you can do for them and are just not all that interested in what you did in school, so you need to tailor your resume to convince them that all that experience you gained in school and all that knowledge really does transfer to the workplace. Some tips:
State your Goals – As a new graduate your resume has to feature a good, targeted objective statement. Whether you add a formal objective section or reference it in a qualifications summary is up to you, but whichever you choose avoid the kind of flowery jargon laden nonsense that too many new college grads tend to use. Investing a few dollars to have a resume writing service come up with a good one for you is a wise move if you are not sure how to put your aspirations into words.
Highlight the Positive – If you have little in the way of real world work experience your academic achievements should be highlighted in as positive a way as possible. And that doesn’t just mean stating your GPA, or mentioning the fact that you made the Dean’s list (although that certainly won’t hurt) Did you do an internship while you were in school? If so make sure you mention it. Did you win Employee of the month at the restaurant you were waiting tables at to pay the bills? Mention that too. Although the job duties may not be related to the job you are chasing now such things do go some way to demonstrating your worth as an employee in general.
Pick the Right Format – A traditional chronological resume format, which emphasizes employment history, rarely works well for a new college graduate. A functional resume, which highlights all those academic achievements and unique skills that you can bring to the table will be far more successful. Again, if you are not sure that you have done a great job by yourself consider hiring someone to do take your rough draft and polish it into a resume that will really help you land that all important first job.
Reasons Why You Aren’t Getting Hired
Have you been on dozens of interviews but still have no job to call your own, even though you thought everything went well every time you sat down with a potential employer? If you really have not made any huge interview faux pas there may be other, slightly less obvious reasons why you job search is taking longer than you had hoped:
Job Descriptions – Read it properly. Do you really meet all the criteria? In years past, when there were plenty of jobs to go around a few extra years’ experience could compensate for a lack of skill in a certain area but in a tight job market that is simply no longer the case. If you find yourself discounting (or losing out on) job opportunity after job opportunity because you cannot meet one certain criteria don’t just give up, do something about it.
Words mean a Lot – It is one thing to have a resume that is free of grammar and spelling errors but if that resume is full of “jargon” chances are it is hurting your chances of landing a job every bit as much as a resume that is grammatically incorrect as a first graders English essay. Use keywords yes, they catch the recruiters eye but do not stuff your resume full of incomprehensible nonsense.
Wrong Fit – Your interview suit is killer, you meet every point in the job description and your resume would make Bill Gates blush, but you still don’t get the job. Unfortunately there really is no perfect recipe for getting hired. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of personality or a clash with the unstated corporate culture. You just don’t fit and you will probably never even know why. . It’s all perfectly legal (if a little sad) but the point to remember it’s not you, its them.
Unreal Expectations – Are you simply aiming too high? Are you still sitting in the backyard at home scoring the classifieds for the perfect job while the bills mount up? We would all love to snag our dream job but the fact is you have to settle for one that is good enough. No one says that you have to go to work in McDonalds if you were previously a NASA engineer but you do need to be willing to make a few compromises if you want to end upon somebody’s payroll.
Learning to Let Go – Leaving the office Behind when you go on Vacation
Your vacation plans have been set for months and you should be as excited as a little kid at Christmas. Trouble is you are still checking your emails as the plane is taxiing and there is that nagging feeling at the back of your mind that your assistant will forget to call that client if you aren’t there to remind him.
Sound familiar? Most of us have a really hard time letting go of the office and actually enjoying the vacation we waited all year long for. Here are some really good reasons why you should make that extra effort to disengage though, since it will not only benefit you but your company as well:
Time to Recharge your Mind – Stepping away from the everyday pressures of your job you will actually find that when you return you will have a better perspective of many of the everyday issues at the office, just like you did on your very first day when everything was still shiny, exciting and new.
Let Others Step Up – if you are a supervisor chances are you got to be one because someone else once gave you the chance to step up and show the world (or the company at least) what you were really made of. Keep this in mind when you are tempted to check in with the office every fifteen minutes from the beach. Step back, sip another pina colada and let your team cope alone, they can.
Your Family will be Happier – Most of us occasionally neglect or spouse or children when back at home in favor of the office. It’s not the ideal scenario but it is hard to avoid sometimes. Don’t do it to them when you are all supposed to be on vacation though. Your vacation is a chance to atone for all those occasions when dinner was a lukewarm burger special from the drive thru and you missed the first three innings of your kid’s ballgame so take it.
Top Five Things that Will Annoy your Interviewer
Even though many people read article after article about what they should and shouldn’t do at an interview, read up on the company they hope to join and spend a small fortune on a new interview outfit there are still some very common things that many of these candidates do or say during an interview that drives the person conducting it nuts. Annoying your interviewer is never a good idea, so here are the top five things you must not do to avoid ruling yourself out of the running, however impressive your resume (or that new suit)might be:
Too Much of a Good Thing – Preparing to go on an interview is not like preparing to go on a date. Your beau may love that expensive perfume you wear but your interviewer may not. Not only might they be allergic (a lot of people are) but human beings tend to equate certain smells with specific memories so if you show up slathered in the same cologne as your interviewer’s terrible ex used to wear she may subconsciously mark you as doubtful right away.
Clamming Up – An interview candidate who simply won’t talk, or who answers each query with a “yes, no or maybe” really frustrates many interviewers. Most interviewers these days ask deliberately open ended questions in order to try to learn as much as they can about the candidate in the short timespan they have. Go to your interview prepared to speak and keep a question or two in mind yourself when the inevitable ‘Now it’s your turn to ask questions,’ line comes up at the conclusion of your interview.
Using Slang – Even if an interviewer may occasionally use slang themselves in their everyday lives (and most of us do from time to time) they do not want to hear at an interview. Another big interviewer’s pet peeve? Candidates who say “like” or “uh” in every second sentence.
Lack of Eye Contact – You probably are very nervous but avoiding making eye contact with your interviewer because of that fact just does not give the right impression at all. If you really have problems maintaining direct eye contact with someone in tense situations try focusing on his third eye, just above and between the person’s two eyes.
Little White Lies – Every candidate wants to impress their interviewer but lying – even if they are little white lies or slight exaggerations – is never the way to do it. Do not be tempted to over embellish your accomplishments or leave certain things out that you should have revealed, since even if the interviewer does not catch it (which many experienced ones will very easily) chances are that a background check will.
Job Ads Decoded
Most of us know that online dating profiles are written in a special language that if you take the time to decipher it tells you a little more about the person posting it than they may have intended. The same holds true for some job descriptions. Decoding some of the language you encounter as you search for the right position may help you get a better idea about what you really might be in for. A basic primer:
“Great growth opportunities” – This line comes most often from smaller and startup companies whose dreams tend to be a little larger than their budgets. Roughly translated this phrase often means “if you work for us for 60 hours a week, for less than you were looking for, you may get to exercise some stock options when we go public.”
Before you consider a job like this think carefully. If it is in a field you truly love and your lifestyle can accommodate a little belt tightening it may very well be worth going for. If you need a little more stability though, growth opportunities don’t mean a lot if the company goes belly up in a year.
“Ability to Work Independently Essential “– Sometimes this phrase can be an indication that there is a lack of actual leadership at the company and that new employees have to be able to fend for themselves. For some people this might be a dream come true, no boss breathing down your neck every five minutes. If you snag an interview try to glean from your interviewer what the real day to day responsibilities of the position are. If she doesn’t seem to know (generate media coverage is not a good answer for instance) that’s a sure sign that you’d have to figure out most of it yourself.
“Flexible on Work Hours” – Although it is not always the case this line often means that the prospective employer wants you to be flexible, not the company. And by flexible they mean the willingness to come in on a Sunday afternoon on two hours’ notice or work long into the night to get a project finished. In other words they want you to accommodate them, not the other way around.
Do Resume Gimmicks Ever Pay Off?
Job seekers hear, read and see so much advice about what to include on their resume, as well as what not to, that you might think that most people have a pretty good idea of how to write a great resume by now. However, as demonstrated by a recent Career Builder study that is not always the case. Human resources professionals were asked to submit the strangest resume inclusions they had ever encountered. Some of them were obvious ploys to grab the recruiter’s attention, while others? Who knows. Here are some of the best (or is that the worst?)
- A female candidate included a letter of recommendation – from her mother.
- A candidate explained (as he should) the reason for a gap in his employment history. He took three months out to mourn the death of his cat.
- Another candidate tackled the always sticky issue of a criminal record. He stole a pig, but it was, he went on to assure recruiters, only a really small pig.
- A gentleman listed one of his hobbies ( a no no these days in itself) as sitting on a levee at night watching the alligators.
All very funny, but in a job market that is still rather tight do gimmicks (and humor) actually work when you are trying to stand out from the masses? Once in a while you will hear a tale or read a news story about how a clever trick piqued a recruiter’s interest and helped the poor candidate get the job but in the real world it’s rare. On the whole whatever the industry, such things will not get you job. More likely you will become an anecdote for the recruiter you targeted to share after dinner at some future event (or to share with a national survey) but that will do little for your personal career prospects.
Cover Letters – More Important than You Might Think
Many jobseekers know how important it is to have a great resume and spend a great deal of time (and in many cases money) making sure that theirs is just right. But if you look at most of the job applications you encounter either on or offline they ask the candidate to submit a resume and a cover letter, and it is that cover letter that lets them down. If the cover letter is bad often the recruiter is so turned off by it that they never even bother to look at the perfectly crafted resume. Here are a few tips for an effective cover letter:
Keep it Short and Sweet – You are writing a cover letter, not your autobiography. A pleasant greeting, a few lines summarizing the highlights of your resume and a polite closing requesting an interview is quite sufficient. Any longer than that and a recruiter is likely to lose interest and move on to the next application in their pile.
Never use a canned cover letter – If you are going to send a cover letter take the time to actually write one that is specific to the job you applying for, not just the same missive sent out again and again to dozens of different potential employers. Human Resources personnel and recruiters tend to be able spot these a mile off and your application is likely to be passed over right away.
Be mindful of your tone –A cover letter is a missive from one professional to another and the tone should be professional yet relaxed. Don’t be funny, ridiculously wordy or over flattering. Most importantly though confident is good but cocky is very bad. You want the recruiter to read your cover letter and come away with the impression that you may indeed be a helpful, useful addition to their team, not that the author believes that they are living on Mount Olympus and deigning to come down to work with mere mortals!
Proofread – Failing to proofread the cover letter they are sending out is a mistake made by many a job hunter. They have worked to develop a flawless resume and then ruin the whole thing by attaching a cover letter that is badly written and has grammar and/or spelling mistakes. Keep jargon to a minimum as well, as excessive use of it just tends to make the recruiters head spin.
What Recruiting Firms can do for Employers
In a time when the economy still isn’t quite where everyone would want to be, companies who are still hiring may wonder why they should incur the potential additional expense of working with a recruitment firm rather than going it alone on the hiring front. However, whatever the state of affairs in the world there are still a number of excellent reasons that a company should certainly consider enlisting outside help when trying to fill vacancies:
Lack of Time – Much of the time a company has to hire quickly, to fill a void that has been unexpectedly opened up in the company, leaving others to fill in and perhaps even important tasks neglected. When hiring in a situation like this employers tend to “settle”, hiring someone who has most of the attributes they were looking for but not all.
Recruitment firms have a pool of prescreened talent and will usually only send candidates to be interviewed by their clients if they really are a match for the job requirements, increasing the chances that an employer will find talent that is truly capable of getting the job done.
Lack of Experience – As an employer you may know what you are looking for but that is rarely enough. Some people will say anything to get the job, especially in times like these. They will pad their resumes, make up degrees even have friends pose as references. Recruitment agency personnel are used to weeding these people out – they come across them all the time – and have the time to conduct the kind of in-depth background check that really needs to be performed, but the employer probably does not have time for.
Hiring from the Heart – In many companies, big and small, if there is a vacancy that desperately needs to be filled the boss will consider hiring a current employees mother, brother, sister , boyfriend, anyone if they seem to match most of the criteria. This however is rarely a good idea, how are you going to face Mars Jones, who has been with you for years, when young Wayne turns out not to be the man for job and has to be let go? Letting someone else locate and screen candidates for you takes much of the emotion out of the situation.
Here Come the Grads – What does the Future Hold for the Class of 2010?
Throughout the months of May and June there is an excitement on college campuses across the country that is unmatched by any other in academic life (except for maybe $1 beer night) as thousands of students get ready to leave their school books behind and graduate into the “real world”.
Heady times indeed, but what kind of job market can the Class of 2010 expect to walk into? According to a recent survey conducted by NACE (the National Associate of Colleges and Employers) their prospects are not as gloomy as one might think, given the current economic climate.
According to that survey in 2010 44 percent of the employers questioned do intend to hire college graduates. Last year 43 percent said the same thing so the good news is that the number went up (even if ever so slightly) rather than down. These same employers do admit however that they intend to scale back the compensation packages they offer to new grads though.
So what does the new college graduate need on their resume to put them ahead of the competition and land their first “real world’ job? Of the employers surveyed a massive 62% said that the candidate having completed some form of internship would be impress them greatly with only 31% caring about the level of class work a student had maintained over the course of their academic career.
When asked about what they personally might look for when interviewing graduates the top answer was a candidate that comes to the interview well prepared, asks intelligent questions and has some knowledge about the company that they are hoping to work for. In other words, exactly what they are looking for from any potential new hire.
So the bottom line is that there will be jobs out there for the Class of 2010, as long as they are willing to put as much work into finding the right one as they were their lessons over the last four years.
