Forget good to great. Here’s what makes a great employee remarkable.

Great employees are reliable, dependable, proactive, diligent, great leaders and great followers… they possess a wide range of easily-defined—but hard to find—qualities.

A few hit the next level. Some employees are remarkable, possessing qualities that may not appear on performance appraisals but nonetheless make a major impact on performance.

Here are eight qualities of remarkable employees:

1. They ignore job descriptions. The smaller the company, the more important it is that employees can think on their feet, adapt quickly to shifting priorities, and do whatever it takes, regardless of role or position, to get things done.

When a key customer’s project is in jeopardy, remarkable employees know without being told there’s a problem and jump in without being asked—even if it’s not their job.

2. They’re eccentric… The best employees are often a little different: quirky, sometimes irreverent, even delighted to be unusual. They seem slightly odd, but in a really good way. Unusual personalities shake things up, make work more fun, and transform a plain-vanilla group into a team with flair and flavor.

People who aren’t afraid to be different naturally stretch boundaries and challenge the status quo, and they often come up with the best ideas.

3. But they know when to dial it back. An unusual personality is a lot of fun… until it isn’t. When a major challenge pops up or a situation gets stressful, the best employees stop expressing their individuality and fit seamlessly into the team.

Remarkable employees know when to play and when to be serious; when to be irreverent and when to conform; and when to challenge and when to back off. It’s a tough balance to strike, but a rare few can walk that fine line with ease.

4. They publicly praise… Praise from a boss feels good. Praise from a peer feels awesome, especially when you look up to that person.

Remarkable employees recognize the contributions of others, especially in group settings where the impact of their words is even greater.

5. And they privately complain. We all want employees to bring issues forward, but some problems are better handled in private. Great employees often get more latitude to bring up controversial subjects in a group setting because their performance allows greater freedom.

Remarkable employees come to you before or after a meeting to discuss a sensitive issue, knowing that bringing it up in a group setting could set off a firestorm.

6. They speak when others won’t. Some employees are hesitant to speak up in meetings. Some are even hesitant to speak up privately.

An employee once asked me a question about potential layoffs. After the meeting I said to him, “Why did you ask about that? You already know what’s going on.” He said, “I do, but a lot of other people don’t, and they’re afraid to ask. I thought it would help if they heard the answer from you.”

Remarkable employees have an innate feel for the issues and concerns of those around them, and step up to ask questions or raise important issues when others hesitate.

7. They like to prove others wrong. Self-motivation often springs from a desire to show that doubters are wrong. The kid without a college degree or the woman who was told she didn’t have leadership potential often possess a burning desire to prove other people wrong.

Education, intelligence, talent, and skill are important, but drive is critical. Remarkable employees are driven by something deeper and more personal than just the desire to do a good job.

8. They’re always fiddling. Some people are rarely satisfied (I mean that in a good way) and are constantly tinkering with something: Reworking a timeline, adjusting a process, tweaking a workflow.

Great employees follow processes. Remarkable employees find ways to make those processes even better, not only because they are expected to… but because they just can’t help it.

Thoroughly preparing for an interview makes a huge difference in how well you do. (And it can also make you a lot less nervous.)

Fortunately, while much of the hiring process can feel mysterious or like reading tea leaves, there’s a formula for preparing well for an interview:

1. Get to know the employer.

You’d be surprised by how many candidates walk into an interview knowing little to nothing about the employer they’re considering working for. And it shows.

It only takes 15-20 minutes to learn enough about the employer to be able to speak more intelligently about them than much of your competition. The simplest way is to use the employer’s own Web site. At a minimum, read the “about us” section. You want to get really familiar with what this company is all about–and, crucially, how they see themselves.

Then, poke around the rest of the site. Read enough to get a good feel for more than just the basics–read about their clients, their work, and their general approach. Ideally, you won’t leave their Web site until you can answer these questions: What does this organization do? What are they all about? What makes them different from their competition?

[See 5 Job-Hunting Ideas You Haven't Tried.]

2. Learn the job description like it was your own.

I’m amazed by how often I ask candidates to tell me what they know about the job so far and hear answers that are significantly off-base. If a job description is posted online, make sure you use it.

The best way to use the job description to prepare is to go through it line by line. Think about how your experience and skills fit with each line. Write this down for each one, making sure to include examples from your past as supporting evidence that you’d excel at this job.

And don’t be alarmed if you’re not a perfect fit; people get hired all the time without being a line-for-line match. The point here is just to get yourself thinking about how you are a match, so those thoughts are easily retrievable and can be turned into answers in your interview.

Now, picture yourself doing the job. What are the likely challenges? What ideas would you bring to the table? If you think through these questions now, you can weave those thoughts into the conversation at the interview.

[See Use Passion to Stand Out as a Job Candidate.]

3. Practice, and then practice some more.

Write down at least 10 interview questions that you’re likely to be asked and write out your answers to them. At a minimum, cover these basics: Why are you thinking about leaving your current job? What interests you about this opening? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What experience do you have doing ___? (Fill in each of the major responsibilities of the job.)

Now, make yourself practice your answers out loud. Practice saying them out loud over and over and over, until your answers fly off your tongue automatically.

And if there’s a question that you’re especially nervous about, don’t just hope it won’t come up. Decide exactly how you’re going to answer it and practice that answer, saying it out loud over and over and over.

Also, don’t forget to think about how you’ll answer questions about salary expectations.

The more you practice, the better you’ll get and the more comfortable you’ll feel.

[For more career advice, visit U.S. News Careers, or find us on Facebook or Twitter.]

4. Come up with questions of your own.

Come up with several questions of your own, because at the end of the interview you’ll be asked what questions you have. Good questions at this stage are clarifying questions about the role itself and open-ended questions about the office culture. You’ll also want to ask about their next steps and their timeline for getting back to you.

If you follow these steps, you’ll notice a significant improvement in how well you perform in job interviews.

Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog where she dispenses advice on career, job search, and management issues. She’s also the author of Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Leader’s Guide to Getting Results and former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management, hiring, firing, and employee development. She now teaches other managers how to manage for results.

Originally Published April 08, 2011

Reuters

Finding a new job can be expensive — particularly for professionals who spend money on pricey career coaches, resume experts and, increasingly, travel to interviews. But some 73% of professionals say they plan to ramp up their job hunt as the economy gains steam, a recent survey from job-and-career website Glassdoor.com survey found.

The good news for those itching to make a move or for cash-strapped layoff victims looking for work: If you’re hunting for a job in your current profession and you itemize on your tax return, you can deduct a whole host of job search expenses, even if you didn’t end up in a new job.

The IRS spells out a few deductions like employment agency services and the costs associated with printing and mailing your resume. But you can deduct a lot more than the basics. What, you ask? How about that $250-per-hour career coach who helped hone your interview and presentation skills or the $500 you paid to have your resume revised and polished? They’re both deductible job-search expenses, according to tax experts.

To take the deduction, your overall miscellaneous deductions (including job search expenses) must add up to more than 2% of your Adjusted Gross Income — and you can only deduct the amount that exceeds that 2%, says Jackie Perlman, a CPA and principal tax analyst at H&R Block’s Tax Institute. Professional association dues and subscriptions to professional journals are just a few of the miscellaneous, non-search-related expenses that can help reach the 2% floor.

If your AGI is $100,000, for example, your miscellaneous deductions must total more than $2,000; if they add up to $2,500, you can deduct $500. (One less-pleasant bit of fine print: Miscellaneous deductions could lower your tax burden to the point that you fall into Alternative Minimum Tax territory, which negates the benefit of claiming such expenses.)

Tax experts say diligent record-keeping to keep track of expenses and pre-planning your job-hunt activities when you travel are key since you’ll need to prove your expenses were primarily job-search related if you — yikes — happen to be selected for an audit. Here’s a look at what you can deduct and how to keep track:

Career coaching: If you use a coach primarily to bolster your efforts to find a job in your field, the fees are deductible. That session you used to work on achieving balance in your life or to decide whether to switch careers, is not. Keep records and notes about each meeting and claim costs associated with sessions directly related to improving the outcome of your job search.

Travel and transportation: Did you drive to a job interview 50 miles away? Fly three states away and spend two nights in a hotel — on your own dime — for informational interviews? Deductible. For mileage (reimbursed at a rate of 50 cents per mile), write down the date, miles driven and job search-related purpose on the day you travel, advises Perlman. Guessing later can prove problematic.

Airfare, hotel bills, and rental car costs associated with traveling for your search are deductible. So are meals on those trips. Log the date and purpose and save the receipts for those expenses. Do the same for tolls, parking and taxi trips related to your hunt. They’re deductible, too.

A word of caution: If you travel to Orlando with the primary purpose of two days worth of informational interviews, but your family flies joins you for two extra days at Disney, deductions are murky. Your roundtrip airfare is usually deductible, says Eva Rosenberg, an enrolled agent and the brains behind tax advice website TaxMama.com. Keep a log of your time and the expenses devoted to job-hunting; if the job search was the primary reason for the trip and not an afterthought, those are deductible.

Conferences: “Finding a job has to be your primary intent” to deduct expenses, says Perlman. If the main reason you attend a professional conference or trade show is to further your job search –maybe you know the networking events are famous for yielding job interviews later–your associated expenses (from conference fees to travel) are deductible, says Rosenberg. Keep a log of costs and how you spend your time in case you’re asked to prove your intent.

Networking events: Deductibility depends on why you attend. “It’s right on the borderline,” says Perlman. “There has to be some proximate connection between what you are doing and getting a job.” Rosenberg says that’s not as hard to prove as it might sound; there’s plenty of research about the importance of networking to a job search. Translation: The deduction survives an audit, if you keep a log and detail how attending relates to your search — or to a business purpose, which counts as a miscellaneous deduction.

Childcare expenses: Experts disagree on this one. But Rosenberg says if you keep clear records — a calendar that designates which hours you used a sitter for job-search related activities, like an interview or job fair — it’s a legitimate deductible expense.

Phone bills. You’ll need to show you incurred an extra expense, says Perlman. If you have a plan that allots you a certain number of minutes and charges you for extra time, those 30-minute calls to a recruiter or hour-long phone interviews might push you over the limit. Add up job-search related calls on statements where you incurred extra charges. You can deduct the overage related to the search, says Rosenberg.

The rest: Keep receipts for stamps; envelopes; copying charges and paper costs for printing your resume, cover letter or other materials for your job search; faxing costs at your local Kinko’s; cost of attending a job fair (that includes any entry fee or transportation expenses); and any other items you think might be related to your job search. A tax pro can tell you what counts, if you have the receipts.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/04/06/best-tax-deductions-job-seekers/#ixzz1lKUS8NOG

I’ve been dressing and preparing clients for professional interviews at Dress For Success for almost seven years. I have also prepared my paying clients for the job interview process. And of course, I have interviewed and been interviewed myself. So I thought I would try to distill a set of guidelines from my experience.

Your goal in a job interview is simple: you want the job. How does your outfit help or hurt your chances of being successful? In my opinion this all comes down to two things.
1.The impression you make on your interviewer. In the first few seconds of meeting them their brain will be trying to make the hiring decision on the only information they have: the way you look. Can they imagine you doing the job? Will you fit into the culture? This may not even be a conscious evaluation.
2.The impact that your outfit has on YOU. You must also be able to imagine yourself doing the job you are interviewing for. Above all, you need to feel confident and physically comfortable. It’s your time to shine and the outfit must complement your skills, not make you feel self conscious about them.

After the first few seconds, you want the interview to focus exclusively on your expertise and your ability to excel at the job. Your outfit should make the right first impression and then get out of the way. It is impossible to create a universal outfit to achieve this goal for positions in all professions, in all industries. But here is a checklist to get you started.
•Err on the formal side: It’s better to dress too formally than too casually for an interview. Interviewers will expect you to dress more formally than usual.
•Err on the conservative side: This is straightforward if you’re interviewing for a profession in a conservative environment, but the lines blur for more creative professions like design, art, literature, advertising and fashion. For creative professions, you can add trendy elements to the ensemble, but it’s a good rule of thumb to be more classic than the way you normally dress.
•Err on the modest side: Look tailored but don’t wear overly figure hugging clothes. Skirts and dresses should end on or around the knee and make sure you do the “sit-down-test” as skirts tend to creep up once you’ve sat down. No cleavage.
•Wear a jacket: A suit blazer or jacket adds bus loads of polish to your appearance. It really steps things up a notch so my suggestion is to wear a jacket no matter what the interview.
•Suit versus Separates: Conservative professional job interviews require a formal interview suit, whereas other job interviews are fine with the dressier side of business casual attire – which still means jacket in my book. A dressy dress like a sheath with a jacket is another good option for business casual.
•Skirts versus Slacks: You might perceive this differently, but I find skirt and dress suits more formal than pant suits. So if you want to make an even more formal impression, go with a skirt suit. But if you feel better in slacks than skirts, stick with the slacks suit.
•Blouse, shirt or item of knitwear: Wear one of these underneath your suit or separates jacket. Sometimes you’ll be able to wear a good quality knit top too, like a solid shell top. Wearing sleeveless blouses and tops underneath jackets is really comfortable so bear that in mind because your jacket does not need to come off during the interview.
•To tuck or not too tuck: Tucking is not essential, but you might feel neater if you tuck your top into your bottoms. When you tuck your top into slacks, finish off the look with a belt. Also do the sit-down-test for blouses and shirts as they can pull across the bust when you are seated.
•Neutrals versus Colour: Keep your suit and separates neutrally toned. Black is not your only option: grey, brown, caramel, olive and navy are great too, and so is a subtle pinstripe. What you wear under the jacket needn’t be neutral, but I’d stay away from anything too bold just because it might overpower you in the interview, and distract the interviewer.
•Wear good shoes: Keep them close-toed, heeled, polished and fairly neutral. Sling-backs, pumps, mary janes and oxfords are all fab.
•Limit the accessories: By all means wear accessories, but stay away from anything too flashy, noisy and oversized. Again, it’s distracting for the interviewer. A watch, wedding ring, specs and small earrings are flop proof, whereas chunky necklaces, bracelets and scarves are a little harder to get right. If in doubt, leave it off.
•Hose: I’m still not sure about this one. Should you wear hose with a skirt for an interview? I’m inclined to say yes, but you tell me.
•A hairstyle that stays in place: You don’t want to fuss with hair that you have to keep pushing out of the way during the interview, so make sure it’s secured.
•Light make-up and perfume: Wear just enough so that you smell sweet and look polished. Check for lipstick on your teeth just before you go into the interview.
•Neatly manicured hands: Your hands are quite visible in an interview, so if you can make them extra pretty beforehand, so much the better. Short nails and neutral nail polish (or no nail polish) is best.
•Handbag, brief case or portfolio bag: This will depend on you and what you need to bring to the interview. Keep the handbag fairly structured as opposed to overly slouchy, but there is no need to keep it neutral. Avoid neon colours, but a beautiful deep red or purple handbag can lift an interview outfit perfectly.

If you’re still not sure what to wear, visit the organization and watch employees coming in and out of the office to see what they are wearing. It might help you make decisions like skirt or slacks, blouse or knit top, or how formally you should dress.

Finally, be sure to find out whether the hiring company has guidelines on what to wear to the interview. When Greg interviewed for a well known software company, he was actually told not to wear a suit and that he had to wear really comfortable clothes because his interview would be grueling and would take the entire day.

I would love to brainstorm together with you and come up with a killer list of flop proof guidelines for effective interview attire, perhaps even across different professions. Let’s hear about how you like to dress for an interview and what you have learned along the way. If you are a recruiting professional or a hiring manager (or have been one in the past), please share your thoughts on what makes a great interview outfit, your likes and dislikes and any tips in general.

Frustrated by unemployment?

Job hunting is tricky business in the healthcare world. Getting hired is a subtle mix of the right qualifications, enough experience, interview chemistry, and a dash of luck. Assuming you’re making all the right moves and avoiding the really obvious job seeker mistakes, there are a few points to consider that could be your ticket out of unemployment.

Get out of your job search rut and back in the game by fixing these mistakes you might be making:

1. Job Description
Read it. Do you meet every qualification listed? If you think you can get away by not having that extra few years of experience or make do without the requested higher degree, think again. Job descriptions are a baseline for hiring managers. With so many job applicants, recruiters are naturally going to pick the best of the best, and that means you’ve got to meet every single one of the job requirements, at the very least. But that doesn’t mean you should give up, either. If you find yourself not meeting a certain job requirement time after time, do something about it! Nothing shows dedication like taking action.

2. Word Play
It’s not enough to have a clean resume free of grammar and spelling errors; you’ve got to go that extra mile. No matter how amazing your resume looks, everything lies in the words. If the hiring manager has to decipher your resume jargon, don’t expect a call back. Phrase your resume with the right keywords. Use powerful words that imply action and sell your experiences by highlighting specific achievements and accomplishments in your healthcare career. The right keywords are your key to getting your resume on top of the pile.

3. Job Search Tactics
Browsing through the classifieds? Going through Human Resources? Looking at company websites for job leads? One reason your job search may have hit a dead end is because your methods are outdated. Get with the 21st century and go online! The right social network can connect you directly with the job you want. Use Monster to find jobs in your field, post a resume and find your calling with their new Career Mapping tool, and AllHealthcare to maintain your connections. Spread yourself out and try something new — you never know which method will work!

4. Not the Right Fit
There is no perfect recipe to getting hired. You could do everything right — dress your best, arrive on time, and come fully prepared — and still not get the job. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of personality or a clash with the unstated hospital culture. At this point, qualifications don’t matter. It’s the sad truth — and completely legal. One consolation: It’s not you, it’s them.

5. Lady Luck
You’d think if you did everything right you’d be guaranteed a job. But job hunting isn’t always like an equation where the right steps will guarantee you the right answer. Lady Luck can play her hand and leave you in the dust. The position might go to another, equally qualified, candidate, or the timing will simply be off. Family restrictions may prevent you from taking the job or the company simply can’t afford to hire you right now. The best thing you can do in a situation like this is thank your contact for their time and keep that relationship alive. You just may be the person they call for their next opening!

6. High Expectations
It’s one thing to stay positive about your job outlook, and another to have false hopes about your prospects. Are you aiming at jobs out of your league? Expecting a certain salary range or health benefits? We’d all love to work at our dream job, but we take the job that’s good enough — because it is. Ask yourself what you’re willing to give up to get a job. Be honest with yourself. Changing your mindset can broaden your job search results drastically. You may find yourself on a regular payroll faster than you think!