Archive for June, 2012

Useful tips for career advancement

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

Everyone wants to look ahead and boost his chances of getting promoted. No one wants to stay in just one position forever. So here are some powerful career advancement tips to increase your value to employer.

  • Always volunteer for other tasks not related to your career. This would give you the opportunity to learn new and different things and broaden your vision
  • Keep focusing on improving your soft and technical skills. Don’t miss the opportunity to take job training courses or skill enhancing courses at your own.
  • Be sincere with your organization, boss, colleagues and work.
  • If you don’t know something, simply accept it. Don’t try to fake it. Rather try to learn from other colleagues and get the answers
  • While working in a team, share the credits. This would make a better impression of yours
  • Try to avoid offensive behaviors. If u don’t like someone, it’s not necessary to expose it. But, try your level best to change others attitudes with you by your politeness and kindness
  • Make others feel comfortable and relaxed with you. Appreciate others, be gracious and diplomatic and never hold grudges for your colleagues
  • Networking is one of the keys to career success. Join other societies, groups, organizations related to your field/career. This would help you learn more and enable you to explore new opportunities
  • Be patient, firstly prove yourself of handling extra/difficult tasks, take initiatives at your own and carry out your work before being asked and show yourself capable of handling responsibilities and meeting deadlines. Don’t expect to be promoted without demonstrating your potentials and abilities over time
  • Respect everyone around you—-superiors, sub ordinates , clients
  • Never say no to extra work. Your eagerness for work which nobody else wants to do would be noticed by your employers and appreciated
  • Last but not the least Identify your weakness and holes in your career advancement that you need to fill up

Posted in Career Planning | No Comments »

How to build successful work teams

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

There are many organizations that ask their employees to work as a team. Working as a team has various advantages like the possibility of making new contacts, distribution of work related activities (responsibilities), less work stress and a sense of group accomplishment. Effective communication among the colleagues eliminates much of the anxiety and negative feelings about each other. This is the responsibility of the group leader to encourage all the team members to communicate clearly with one another while they are working together.

A team is mostly collection of people from various backgrounds. When the team members understand each other well and they are able to communicate effectively then, this cultural diversity becomes a benefit. People listen to each other’s suggestions/inputs more openly and thus give productive results.

While working as a team member we need to recognize our role. If all the persons in a team are concentrating on the same job, then little will get accomplished. So the distribution of tasks fairly among the team members matters a lot to achieve the ultimate goal.

Teams require resources, and especially, time. Teams are mostly more effective when:

People from diversified groups are involved

A proper target is set for all members to chase

Responsibilities are assigned clearly among the team members

A regular meeting schedule is set to discuss all activities carried out in certain time

Commitment toward work in a team is the most important of all. Team members need to be committed to accomplish the mission of their organization and understand the importance of their skills and services to the organization.

Posted in Career Development | No Comments »

7 jobs for people with a teaching background

Friday, June 8th, 2012

People belonging to teaching jobs think that they have only this job and never even try to look for new horizons. Following are some of the jobs which even teachers can pursue and can be good at;

1. An instructional coordinator: Such people are often called curriculum experts who are busy working on the strategic side of education. They have the job of assessing teaching techniques and improvising new methods for better output.

2. Corporate Trainer: As the teachers are good in teaching, many companies usually tend to hire teachers as corporate trainers in order to train their staff. They can help in keeping the staff up to date with the new approaches and developments.

3. Private Tutors: Teachers who are good at dealing can also start their own business by becoming a private tutor. They will then work directly with the student on one to one basis. There are some academies who also hire private tutors if you are not willing to work alone or don’t have contacts. They charge on per student  basis.

4. Administrator: An administrator does not work directly with the student but on the other hand has to manage and control the staff. Teachers with good managerial skills can easily apply for this job and will be good at this.

5. Test Developer: Test developers are only required to devise tests for a specific class. They make questions and improvise ways to review the accuracy of the tests.

6. Program director: Those who are working in the public sector such as museums, zoo or national parks develop educational plans as a medium of learning for the schools who bring their students to visit such places.

7. Author: Authors especially who write text books do a lot of research on the particular subject and then after verifying the information compile it in a form of a book. They can do it as a full time job or on a contract basis depending upon their preference.

Posted in Career in Pakistan | No Comments »

10 useless resume words and 10 eye catching ones

Friday, June 8th, 2012

If you are looking for the perfect job then the  first most important thing you need to do is to clean  your resume from the unnecessary words you have used in it. Give your resume a critical look and then you will realize how many of such useless words are written in your resume. Following are some of those useless words;

1. Outstanding

2. Effective

3. Strong

4. Exceptional

5. Good

6. Excellent

7. Driven

8. Motivated

9. Seasoned

10. Energetic

It is not right to use words of self appraisal, and the sentences that follow those words are also lame and do not give the right impression you want.

Where as on the other side, there are certain words which can make hiring managers do a double take in your favour. Try to light up their eyes by using these 10 words and phrases:

1. Created

2. Increased

3. Reduced

4. Improved

5. Developed

6. Researched

7. Accomplished

8. Won

9. on time

10. Under budget

It is always best to use words that are related to your job and to the job you are applying for. Such verbs and nouns help to convey your meaning and your intentions.

Posted in Resume Writing | No Comments »

3 questions to ask yourself about a new job offer

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Gush of happiness surrounds you when you receive your offer letter. You have your fingers crossed and think that hopefully this will be the job you always wanted. It is not easy to leave your old job. No matter how much research you have done about the new company still it is an unknown territory for you. What looks good while hearing or on paper does not necessarily be good when it comes to real life.

While you think its a good thing to get rid of your old current job, but still this decision might prove reckless for your career and you should give it a second thought. For many people, accepting the new offer is not a big deal. But following are the three questions which can help you in thinking logically and objectively into evaluating the position:

1. Will this advance my current skills and knowledge?

Sometimes, it happens that without realizing we jump into exactly a similar job and similar salary packages, because we have been so keen into leaving our current job. You have to be calm and patient when looking for a new job. Hopping from one job to the other is not a good thing to do and leaves a bad impression on your Employers.

For this, you should sit down and think that, is this job helping me grow in any way? Is it helping me in learning any new skill? If no, then sit back and think that its not always good to start from a scratch. It is better to put in a little effort in your current job where your boss and co-workers will appreciate your efforts.

You can also try exploring other departments of your current job, as this can also give you the motivation which you felt was missing.

But, if you are facing bad work environment or any other problem then don’t hesitate in grabbing the new opportunity.

2. Does this match my present lifestyle?

After having decided that you are leaving your old job, then be ready to invest a lot of time into the new job. Leaping for a higher post have its own pros and cons, you become more accountable and also more responsible. An unseen document is signed automatically with this jump.

The role of a leader is not an easy one. You have to be mentally prepared for all the responsibilities that come with this job. But keep in mind that, is the job close to your house? will you travel more? will you be able to keep a balance between your job and family

These are some things for consideration which do not seem big but become big when you fail to keep the balance.

3. Will this fit my long-term career plan?

If everything about the new job is according to your desire, then the last thing to keep in mind is that does this job fit into the larger scale of your career plan. If you want to be the manager of a company then you have to choose that job which will lead you towards that.

For this you will have to be clear in your mind first of all, only then will you be able to decide your future in a better way.

Posted in Organizational Learning | No Comments »

Tips to reduce stress at work

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

Majority of us have stress sometimes at workplace. Over longer periods, stress can lead to diminished health, less work efficiency, mood swings and irritations and increased susceptibility to illness. So it needs to be managed properly.

Some of the tips we can adopt to avoid stress at our workplace could be as follows:

Prioritize you work

The first and most important step to reduce stress at work is to prioritize your work. All assignments/tasks are not equally urgent. You can make a list of all the assignments/tasks assigned to you and can prioritize them based on their importance and deadlines. The work not very urgent could be pushed back to later dates. Think ahead about how you have to use your time. When you prioritize your work, you will spend your time and energy on those that are truly important and to be done on urgent basis.

Tactfully say no to additional work

Do consider your assignments/tasks before agreeing to take on additional work. Otherwise you would be over stressed and would not be able to complete any of the tasks.

Improve your Soft Skills

Soft skills can help you feel at ease and improve your working relationships and ultimately reduce your stress.

Identify negative attitudes

The very important tip to avoid stress at work is to identify the negative attitudes and knee jerk habits that enhance your burden of work and make you to take stress.

Take a time management course

Do take a time management course. It would help you a lot to manage your work load. If your employer offers any, then that is good. But if not then find out if any other organization, college, university offers such course and do get advantage of it.

Recognize warning signs of stress at work

When you are stressed while carrying out a jab, you lose your concentration and become withdrawn. This would ultimately reduce your productivity and make the work a burden for you. Other than less productivity you can also face the physical and mental disorders just because of this work stress.

So the most important step is to identify signs and symptoms of work stress and get your doctor’s advice on it to overcome the problem.

Take care of yourself

When your job stress threatens to overwhelm you, take a break from work and manage your personnel life. Take care of your physical and mental well being and carry out the activities that make you feel happy and relaxed.

The better you feel at workplace, you would be more strong and resilient to stress.

Since everyone responds to stress in a different way, so there is no single solution to managing it. But we can experiment with different techniques and strategies to cope up with stressful situations.

Posted in Organizational Learning | No Comments »

Timeless job-search tactics

Tuesday, June 5th, 2012

If you are going to find a job then you should groom yourself rather than sitting down and fretting about it. Getting the job depends mainly upon the impression you leave on to your employer. Become well-equipped with the latest techniques and trends.

Following are some of the tactics that can help you in maintaining a positive impression;

  • Go for cover letter. According to a survey 91% said that cover letters are very important as they leave a positive image onto the employer.
  • Follow up. Do not forget after submitting the resume, try to follow it by calling and talking with the manager. A call definitely leaves behind emails or snail mails.
  • Say thanks. Try to show gratitude by writing a thank you note to the manager. Your handwritten note will do wonders which nothing else can.
  • Tailor made resume. There is no excuse for submitting the same resume to two different companies. Always alter it accordingly for proving your skill and expertise.
  • Resume relics. Be creative while writing your resume. A boring resume full of summaries and stories about the past would not be appealing, whereas a well written one would be more eye catching.
  • Manners. Good manners never go waste, they always pay. Try finding out the managers name so that you can address your resume directly to him. Be polite, formal and precise, its all that is required.

Posted in Job Search | No Comments »