Clutter really does affect your career: there have been studies that prove it affects the way employers and coworkers view your ability to do your job. Forbes ran an article called “The Dangers Of A Messy Desk” where a study clearly showed that co-workers judge other’s work habits by their cleanliness, and Office Max did a similar study with similar results. Here are three ways that those piles bring your life to a halt:
You lose important information. The argument that it has to be in your view in order for you to remember to do it loses its power when you stop seeing the item that is in front of you. Honestly, what important piece of paper have you frantically looked for in the past few months?
You get overwhelmed. How many times have you said, “I can’t deal with that right now, I’ll get to it later”? How many times did you actually get to it and do it the way you should have?
You look inefficient. People assume that you are just like they are: overwhelmed by piles of papers and stuff while you stop seeing what’s in front of you and lose important information.
This isn’t just a workplace problem. UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families came out with a book on our clutter culture in America that is kind of fascinating and appalling and convicting all at the same time. But we don’t have to be handcuffed by our clutter habits! Get real and start small. Take ten or fifteen minutes (set the timer) and work on one pile…and stop at the end of that time. Do this every day and you will begin to see a big difference. There’s all sorts of decluttering advice out there, but the big thing is doing it; if you wait until you have time to do it all, you probably will never do it. If you are looking for a job, be professional about it and keep your surroundings professional. Make your job hunt a priority and respect your time job searching. Create a desk area, keep track of your papers and appointments, do the electronic weeding of your emails, etc. Take a picture of your desk, cubicle, office, or work area, and look at it. Be honest, now. What would you think if that were a coworker’s space? If you were the boss, would you want that person working for you? If you like the way it looks, then maintain it. If you don’t like the way it looks, you have the ability to change it – a little at a time.
If you’ve been dreaming of being able to work from home and have finally started to live the dream… the first month of working from home is a reality check.
This is the time you figure out what will and will not work for you. You might have set up your working space according to cute ideas on the internet and discovered that you hate actually working that way. You may realize that you need to get dressed in order to be productive. You certainly will discover that everybody (including you) thinks you can do all the household chores as well as your job. Working from home does not mean you can “do it all.” It means you can be flexible in figuring out what works best for you and your family, but some things will still need to be delegated or eliminated from your lifestyle.
Get everybody’s input on what is important and prioritize the top three for each person. One couple’s list looked like this: wife wanted laundry kept up, kitchen neat, and bed made. Husband wanted laundry kept up, living room neat, and cookies always in the cookie jar. So the family priorities were laundry, picking up once a day, making the bed in the morning, and keeping cookies around.
Everybody living in the home has a job. Let little kids make their own beds and put their toys away. They get better at it the longer they do it by themselves. Really!
Relax standards. Health & safety hazards are important, but perfectly folded towels aren’t.
Working from home means you CAN do a lot more! Most of the time you have the flexibility to move the laundry from washer to dryer during the day or keep an eye on something in the oven. You can plan work times around naps or get a mother’s helper a few times a week. Every family has different needs, and those needs change as its members grow. The reality of working from home isn’t like a daydream, but it is the best choice for many families.
When you sit down for that job interview, the last thing you want to be worried about is what you are wearing. That choice should have been made a few days beforehand, if possible, to give you time to put together an “interview outfit” that gives confidence.
The idea that you must “dress for success” never goes out of style because people see your clothing as part of your initial impression. Here are a few tips to work on now, so you will be ready to go the morning of your all-important interview:
Plan one or two “interview outfits” and keep them ready to wear (c’mon ladies, we have at least that many outfits ready for a night out!) That means they are clean, mended, and fit comfortably.
Get dressed in the entire outfit and have a friend take your picture from the back, side and front. Look at those photos and decide what needs to change. (You can’t change your body in two days, but you can pick a better shirt or shoes.)
Do your research and know what is appropriate for this interview. Go conservative if you have doubts.
Figure out the entire outfit, from shoes, socks and underwear to tie and jewelry. Have it all laid out the night before so you know it’s ready.
Have a backup in case you spill something on yourself. It’s been done!
Shine your shoes, give yourself a manicure (and pedicure if you’re wearing peep-toe shoes) and plan your grooming schedule. This is not the place for that just-stepped-out-of-the-shower-wet look.
When you have planned your outfit and know you look your best, you have confidence. Preparing ahead of time helps you focus on the interview instead of that button that popped off your shirt before you left home. Part of your job search includes dressing for success, so get ready to shine!
Newly Wed And Newly Working — Tips To Make It Work
Getting married means adjustments in your life. Often, there is a new address; always, there are attitude shifts. A new job has many of the same challenges as a new marriage, and sometimes both appear in your life at the same time! The challenge of training, learning to live or work with new people, and adapting to a new schedule at home and the job can be intimidating. Here are some tips to make it work:
Give yourself permission to mess up. It’s like someone gave you a beautiful, shiny new trumpet and now you have to learn how to play it. The first few attempts for every trumpet player sound pretty bad! Any trumpet player will tell you that there’s a lot of practice and a lot of mistakes involved with learning to make music. Marriages and new jobs are the same way — nobody does it perfectly the first few times they do it, no matter what ‘it’ is.
Look at the big picture. Every hour is part of a day, every day is part of a week, every week is part of a year, and every year is part of a life. The bigger your perspective on your marriage or your new job is, the less stress you will feel about smaller parts of it and the easier it will be to see how those smaller parts fit.
Prioritize. It isn’t possible to have every important thing be the most important thing; there will be times you have to choose. A schedule helps a lot here, so the priority can change if you are at work or at home. Expect to mess up here, too, because it takes a while to figure out what works for your new family or job.
Don’t take on any new challenges for a while. Now is not the time to learn a new language. You are already learning a new life and/or a new job, so your energy is limited.
Realize that “this, too, shall pass.” Do you remember how completely intimidating starting at a new school was? How about learning how to drive? You are at the beginning of a steep learning curve, but it will get better every day.
Some of the same characteristics that help you with a new job help you with a new marriage. These “trainability factors” really apply to just about every area of life I can think of. So if you are at the beginning of a kind of scary new phase of life, relax. It will be worth it!
Nobody likes to be told they didn’t get the job. Rejection has a sting! But there can be some good things about it if you use that “NO” like a tool for making your job search better. There are more, but here are three reasons that job rejection can be good:
It gives you a chance to find out where you can improve. Most interviewers will have no problem explaining why you did not get the job if you ask them respectfully without arguing. Think of it as free career counseling and use it to focus on what to work on in your job search. Sometimes they will tell you that they’d like to keep your name on file for future positions as they open up and the only reason you didn’t get this job is because someone with more experience or seniority applied.
It gives you an opportunity to learn from any mistakes. Maybe you really didn’t do that interview well, or you forgot to turn off your cell phone. Is your resume updated and appropriately designed for the job? Did you vent your frustrations with your previous job? Were you dressed like you cared about this position?
It gives you motivation to keep looking if you change your perspective. To paraphrase a famous quote by Thomas Edison, now you know that job isn’t right for you. Job rejections are like a search engine, narrowing down the choices by reducing the possible matches.
It’s tempting to put all your hopes on getting a specific job, but that is surely going to disappoint you.The reality is that many more rejections will probably be part of your job search because we rarely get the first job we apply for. Most of us have applied for jobs more times than we like to think about. Use these rejections to improve your skills and your resume: this is your chance to polish things up and that’s good!
It is very easy to think that, when you have sent out hundreds of resumes, those resumes disappear into thin air.However, if you post your resume online or email it in response to a job ad, your resume usually gets stored in a database. This database could be a job aggregator like Career Builder, or it could be an applicant tracking system for a company or staffing agency. Just because you do not get a response to your job application, it does not mean that nothing is done with your resume. What is does mean is that you want to be careful who gets access to your resume and the information on it.Many people eagerly post their resumes on a job aggregator only to be contacted for jobs they do not want, such as franchise opportunities or life insurances sales or other jobs that require you to put thousands of dollars down to get started. One thing that smart job seekers do is to create an email separate from your personal ones for just this purpose, that way your personal email won’t be bombarded with annoying spam mail. If the company is interested in you, they will email you. However, be sure that you regularly check both your email inbox and spam for messages from potential employers. Putting your resume on LinkedIn is also another way for your resume to ‘live on’.As LinkedIn can be used as an online version of your resume, it will still be working for you even when you aren’t in an active job search (as long as you keep up with your profile and don’t ignore it).
It’s important to remember that once your resume is ‘out there’ in cyberspace either on a job board or LI, it will stay there until you remove it. Be strategic about where you put your resume and you will have better results.
Salary negotiation can be one of the most stressful parts of getting a new job.On the one hand, it is exciting to think about a new job and the possibility of earning more money. On the other hand, it can be nerve-wracking waiting to hear what your new salary will be. Do you accept the salary offer, negotiate it or reject it? What if you make a mistake and accept a salary offer that is too low, or try to negotiate one that is too high? These events are unlikely to happen if you do your homework before you get to the salary negotiation stage. A salary calculator can help you with this important homework.It can give you an idea how much your current salary is worth in another city. It can also give you median, low and high end salaries for given positions and industries in a geographical location. Some salary calculators allow you to compare the cost of living between two cities. You can compare the cost of living between the city you are in and the city where you have a job offer, or the cost of living between two cities where you have job offers. These calculators aid you in thinking practically about moving for a new job. Remember to factor in whether your new employer will pay relocation costs. If the employer does pay relocation costs, find out what the cap is on those costs. If you go over the cap amount, say, by hiring movers to move your grand piano, you may end up paying the extra costs. You are more likely to get the salary you want if you go into a salary negotiation meeting with facts based on the information you gatheredfrom salary calculators and other job search resources. This information backs up your work experience and your education. You put a great deal of energy into both, so make sure you get what you are truly worth.
It used to be that you always ended your resume with the line “References Available Upon Request.” Now that statement is mostly left off of resumes because it is deemed a given that you have references and you will be able to produce them when asked. However, if you have been job searching over a long period of time, you need to recognize that your reference page or list is not a static list. Who you use as a reference will depend on the type of job you are applying for. For example, it would be better to use a former boss who supervised you at the IT help desk when you apply for your next help desk position rather than someone who supervised you as a cashier. Professional references, people with whom you worked or who have supervised you, are usually preferable. However, some positions may allow you to use personal references too, friends or community members who know you well. Keep in touch with your references. Make sure that everyone on your reference list is someone who will give you a positive reference. How do you know if they will give you a positive reference? You ask. Don’t hint around. Ask each person on your potential reference list, “Are you able to speak highly of my skills and qualifications to potential employers?” If you sense any hesitation in their response, do not use that person and move on to the next person on your list. Provide each person on your reference list with a current copy of your resume or curriculum vitae. Also give each person the job description for which you are applying or at least a summary of the type of position you would like. This way, when your reference(s) is called by a hiring manager, he/she can speak with some knowledge of how your qualifications fit into the job requirements. Keeping in touch with your references helps them better able to speak to your strengths so that you get the job. It also provides good opportunities to network.
