3 Effective Self-Promotion Strategies Backed by Science
Self-promotion is tricky. If you want people to notice, like, and respect you, then you have to actually show off your positive qualities. But then again, no one likes a show-off. Bragging too much can damage your credibility, and we generally don't like people who come across as arrogant and self-absorbed. So what can you do to promote yourself more effectively? In this post, Cangrade...
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4 Ways Listening to Music Boosts Your Career
Wouldn't it be nice if you could kick back and relax on the sofa, listen to your favorite music, and suddenly find that you've magically been promoted or found that dream job? Would that it were so! But of course, listening to music isn't going to make any magical career transformations happen. What listening to music can do, however, is improve your performance and productivity in...
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How to Get the Most out of Your Performance Review
Do performance reviews suck? Not just in the sense that they often induce gut-level, God-I-hate-this fear and revulsion in the employees who anticipate them (and they often do), but in the sense that they don't really achieve much of anything. Research from GuideSpark says that, yeah, performance reviews are kind of a mess: 45 percent of employees feel they are a waste of time; 75 percent of...
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How to Manage Depression in the Workplace
Every year, depression costs U.S. employers billions -- $100 billion to be exact, according to a survey from Employers Health Coalition, Inc. That's a large chunk of change, and employers will keep losing it until they start to do something about depression in the workplace. In general, depression is a serious societal problem, and it's one we don't often acknowledge. Of the 40...
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Confessions of a Boomerang Employee: What Led Me Back Home
Leaving Shutterstock was a hard decision for me in 2012, but at the time it felt like the right one. It turned out, however, that returning to Shutterstock 18 months later was an even better decision. I originally came aboard to launch and develop the Shutterstock affiliate program. During my two years with the company, I turned that project into a revenue generator. My key accomplishment was...
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5 Tips to Help You Descend the Corporate Ladder Gracefully
Perhaps you've been soaring in the corporate heavens for a few years now, and maybe you're starting to find that things don't look so great from 30,000 feet up anymore. Perhaps you flew a little too close to the sun? Maybe you are tired, you no longer enjoy the work, or you are out of your depth? Maybe you just want out: you want to dial it down a bit, take an easier, more engaging job, and get...
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Ask Away: Should You Ever Date a Coworker?
Welcome to Ask Away, Recruiter.com's new weekly column! Every Monday, we'll pose an employment-related question to a group of experts and share their answers. Have a question you'd like to ask the experts? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in next week's Ask Away! This Week's Question: Is it ever okay to date a coworker? "About 14 years ago, I met my wife at...
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What to Do When Favorites Get All the Promotions
We may find it hard to believe that favoritism still exists in our "more enlightened" age of equal opportunities and transparent internal job markets -- but yes, favoritism is real, and it does happen. We're not just talking about superficial forms of favoritism, where some people are allowed to sit with the boss at lunchtime, either: we're talking about the kind of career-corrupting favoritism...
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Ask Away: Do MBAs Really Matter?
Welcome to Ask Away, Recruiter.com's new weekly column! Every Monday, we'll pose an employment-related question to a group of experts and share their answers. Have a question you'd like to ask the experts? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in next week's Ask Away! This Week's Question: Do MBAs (and similar business-oriented degrees) really matter? "Running several...
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Whistle While You Work: the Benefits of Listening to Music at the Office
History has shown us that people have used work songs to boost their motivation and aid productivity for centuries. We may have replaced these simple folks songs with personalized Internet playlists, but the impact remains the same. "Melodious sounds help encourage the release of dopamine in the reward area of the brain," Dr. Amit Sood, a physician at the Mayo Clinic, told the New York...
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4 More Ways to Remote Control Your Difficult Boss
Because everyone seemed to enjoy my last article on dealing with difficult bosses, I've decided to share four more ways to remote control a manager who's making your work life unbearable. I'm not saying you'll have your boss dancing like a puppet, but these tactics can definitely help you manage upward more effectively. 1. Deliver on Your Promises One of the best ways to capture your...
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Why and How to Fit Exercise Into the Workday
Many of us have that voice in our head nagging us to exercise. The obesity rate among American adults hovers around 35 percent (obesity here defined as having a body mass index of 30 or higher). Being overweight is unhealthy, but it also costs the U.S. workforce quite a bit of cash -- about $8 billion per year in lost productivity, in fact. Being fit is healthier for us and lets us work better,...
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4 Ways to Remote Control Your Difficult Boss
More weight has been thrown behind the old adage that we don't leave companies, we leave bosses: this recent study of 4,500 Danish public-sector workers shows it's not excessive workload or pressure that cause employee depression; rather, it's the environment, particularly the feeling that one is being treated unfairly by their managers. With most of the workforce currently disengaged at work,...
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8 Tips to Help You Manage Your Former Teammates
The dark side of being promoted can be the trials you may face when suddenly stepping up and managing your former peers and teammates. A fundamental change in the balance of workplace relationships occurs, and this can lead to you feeling isolated and alienated. It may even lead to a loss of friendships. To help those workers who may be considering a promotion ahead of their peers or who are...
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8 Key Action Points for Quitting Your Day Job to Freelance (Part 2)
With surveys suggesting that up to 40 percent of the workforce could be of the freelance/contingent persuasion by 2020, we can see that we are moving toward a world where freelance work is the norm. Of course, this change can't happen unless full-time workers make it happen by quitting their day jobs and moving to freelance. But workers can't go into this transition blindly: there are...
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8 Action Points for Quitting Your Day Job to Freelance (Part 1)
We are clearly moving towards a more freelance-friendly working world, one driven by a growing sense of entrepreneurialism among workers and employers' desires for a more flexible workforce. Some studies suggest that freelancers could make up around 40 percent of the work-force in just six years. For now, we are in a transition period, moving from the traditional fixed workforce to a...
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The 5 Worst Ways to Leave Your Job
Most of you are probably aware that there is a talent war going on that employers are struggling to find the right talent; it also seems like plenty of you are looking to take advantage of this candidate's market to bag a higher salary or boost your career, as shown by an illuminating study from the Hay Group , which expects exceptionally high levels of voluntary resignations -- that is, folks...
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Why the Tech Skills Gap Is an Opportunity for Those Willing to Learn
We've all heard about the tech skills gap: thousands of jobs available, but not enough people with the right skills to fill the positions. As an industry, technology is expanding at a faster rate than any other. However, it suffers from a huge gap in basic education. Children aren't being trained in tech skills like Web development at school, and many adults are unaware of how the products...
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The 5 Bummers of Telecommuting
Death to the office! Long live the telecommuter! Or something. As we all know, telecommuting is fast becoming the new norm: according to data compiled by Ken Hess for ZDNet, 24 percent of American employees (a 20 percent increase from 2012) already do some of their work from home, and 90 percent of U.S. employers say they're providing or expanding telework options for their...
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Failure Is a Possibility: Facing the Hard Truths of Life and Business
"You're Going to Die," by John Cox Eran Dror is an interesting man. You might call him a polymath: after studying history, philosophy, and film in college, he became a tech journalist. Then he moved to the states from Israel and worked in product-related roles at a series of startups. Dror has also seen some stuff: in 2011, as he turned 30, he found himself single again, working at a...
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4 Bright Pathways out of Your Dead-End Job
With just 13 percent of employees currently engaged at work, we know there are an awful lot of workers out there who aren't deriving much value or satisfaction from their jobs. Even more concerning are the controversial findings of a recent study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior Organization, which suggests that many people who end up in dead-end jobs may only have themselves...
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8 Tips on How to Leave a Job
When you leave a job, it's important to give notice in a professional manner. You don't want to burn any bridges: networking is crucial to your career. Here are eight tips for leaving a job the right way: 1. Give Your Employer Ample Notice Two weeks is typical, but you may want to consider giving even more notice, depending on your job. As U.S. News and World Report says, "For...
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Is Your Reputation Still Suffering From a Christmas Party Blunder?
We spend about a third of our waking lives at work. As the world becomes ever more image conscious, reputation management grows more crucial for everyone -- especially office-based workers. But work -- challenging as it is -- can leave us vulnerable to committing the odd blunder, which can damage our reputations. These mistakes often occur when we are under pressure or, ironically, when we...
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5 Career Reality Checks to Make in the New Year
Fewer than half of us make New Year's resolutions, according to data from Statistic Brain, and just 8 percent of those who make resolutions manage to achieve them. This is not completely surprising, as New Year's resolutions are generally not a serious exercise in intellectual rigor; rather, they are often quite lighthearted and superficial. More importantly, if you don't achieve these...
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