BORED at Work??? Challenge Yourself.

BORED at Work??? Challenge Yourself.

 

 

In case you are spending most of your days clock-watching & have started to feel like you’re stagnating, and you’re doing just the bare minimum, don’t fall into the black hole of boredom! The best way to stay on your toes is to make a conscious effort by pumping again.

When you’re emotionally invested and actually identify with your work, you’ll find yourself naturally more engaged and happier—which leads to more success. You can see where this is going. It’ll become a self-perpetuating cycle of engagement, success and happiness at work! Check out how:

1. Change Your Mindset: Work as if You Own the Company

“Challenge yourself by working as if the company is your own,”

When you’re working for yourself, work for yourself and you will be much more effective and definitely not bored.

2. Automate the Boring Tasks

If you're busy doing something that's very repetitive, explore options for automating that task. Constantly question if something could be done easier, better, or cheaper. For instance, use of MS Excel, can make your reports and number related work simpler. Work smarter, not harder!

3. Get Involved With Other Teams

Getting into conversations & networking within the company is an easy task.

Chat about what other folks are working on and challenge yourself to add value to their team with your unique skills.

Even if the suggestion is for another department and they reject the idea due to resource constraints, offer to help them implement your suggestion. Coming up with new ideas is okay, but it’s when an individual helps to get that idea implemented that they become challenged and excited.

4. Turn your job into a game

You can do that by setting timer & creating a realistic goal for your task at hand. If you are able to hit that goal within the time frame, reward yourself with a piece of candy, a soda break, or quick peek on FacebookJ. Or anything that motivates you within few minutes.

5. Learn a New Skill

Quickly finish the task at hand & then go help someone in another department if they promise to teach you about what they do. It is never late to learn a new skill.

6. Create Tough Soft Deadlines and Goals for Yourself

Maybe you’re bored because you’re not realizing your potential. If your goals right now are easy and breezy, create your own goals!

Sometimes you will find managers don’t have the time or inclination to tailor goals to you as individual goals that challenge and motivate you. So, the best way to challenge oneself is to set own goals.

7. “Done is Better than Perfect”

Another reason boredom strikes is when you’re too afraid to fail. If you haven’t started yet because you’re waiting for the perfect time and the perfect idea, you’ll naturally become too overwhelmed to start.

So, a great way to break out of this bad habit is to work with the mantra “done is better than perfect.” Even if you make mistakes along the way, you’ll have grown a lot higher than if you succumbed to your boredom!

Staying engaged and fending off boredom can help you in so many ways that it’s silly not to at least try. Your career happiness will benefit for both the short and long term when you make the decision to proactively end the cycle of boredom.

3 Mistakes of Secret Job Searching

***3 Mistakes of Secret Job Searching***

Taking smart precautions can help you keep your professional relationships intact. In our age of access to unlimited information and fluctuating privacy settings for popular websites, it’s worth going the extra mile to ensure privacy. Wrong impressions or hard feelings can cost you future recommendations, opportunities and connections.

This article covers the biggest mistakes folks make when job searching while employed. However, you have the right to conduct your job search privately.

Make sure your job search is discreet. Read the biggest mistakes of secret job searching below:

 
1. Forgetting to Manage Your LinkedIn Privacy Settings

In case, you are changing your job title to your target job title rather than your current job title, LinkedIn will automatically publish this update in your entire network’s newsfeed and possibly even email them. One of LinkedIn’s latest updates includes a privacy setting that could announce your job searching intentions.

LinkedIn sends out an automated email message to your entire network encouraging them to congratulate --- “Congratulate Mr. ABC on the new job” and also slams their LinkedIn activity feeds with ---- “Say congrats on the new job!” message.

Many of you might have experienced it more recently. This can be awkward, especially if people assume you got a promotion or a new job!

HELP AT HAND --- To prevent this from happening to you, go to:

Privacy & Settings >> Turn on/off your activity broadcasts

Make sure the box is NOT checked! This is the safest bet while you make changes you wouldn’t want everyone in your network to see. 

2.  Taking Appointments, Phone Calls or Submitting Documents at Work

Why risk it? Using company time and resources for your personal job search just adds another layer of disrespect on top of the existing bad news that you’re looking for another job.

You never know when your boss or IT team may be monitoring your work devices. Beware, because you current employers have every right to monitor what you’re doing on company-owned equipment & of course in office hours.

Since most of your time is spent at work, it can be tempting to take that phone screening interview during lunch. Better yet, it’s more fruitful to keep bridges intact and stay amicable with your team by respecting company time and resources.

3. Publicizing Your Resume and Job Search Online  

Be incredibly careful about what you say online. Also, if you post your resume on public job boards, you risk the possibility of your current boss stumbling upon it. If you know your boss looks at dozens of resumes all the time, you might consider concealing your name and company name on your resume.

However, if the role is a more general role (i.e. HR Manager or Director) we wouldn't recommend you listing yourselves as a confidential candidate because no recruiter is going to reach out to you if you don't have the basic information listed.

The more niche your job is, the more willing hiring managers will be of checking out your resume without basic name info.

Bonus: Not Taking Advantage of Job Alerts

Well, this point isn’t exactly a mistake—it’s more like a missed opportunity if you don’t take advantage of it. As an alternative to No. 3, rather than posting your resume online publically, you can sign up for job alerts and let new, relevant job openings come to you. If you’re interested, you can apply specifically to the jobs you love.

Create as many job alerts for similar jobs as possible so that you don’t miss a beat!

 Happy NEW JOB finding to you!!!

5 Habits of Amazing Conversationalists

5 Habits of Amazing Conversationalists

All of us are not Born Conversationalists...Next time you find yourself in an uncomfortable networking situation, try to practice these 5 habits. 

You know the type:  That colleague of yours who can charm her way to a brand new opportunity. If that sounds like you, consider yourself lucky!

For the rest of us, it can be really uncomfortable to build rapport with a stranger without running into awkwardly long pauses, immediately followed by a quick getaway. “Excuse me; I need to use the restroom!” Who hasn’t used that one? It’d be a lot easier if it was an innate skill, but here’s the good news: Conversation is a skill that we can hone just like any other soft skill.

1. Practice Talk: Listen Ratio ----   1: 10

In case we truly want to understand the person we are with, our talk-listen ratio should be 1:10.

If you make it a goal to try and get the other person to talk 90 percent of the time, you’ll be better off than most people who “listen with the blatant intent to talk. Don’t be that guy who’s just waiting for his turn to speak & who eagerly injects words whenever possible, or worse, interrupts in between.
Ten out of 10 communication experts agree that to be a great conversationalist, the most important thing you can do is listen, think and respond in a way that shows you’re truly listening.

A great, simple way to build rapport is to refer something she mentioned before. “Hey, I visited that place you mentioned and it was amazing!” Boom!!! She’ll not only know that you listened but also respected her opinion. It’s the little things that earn trust and boost conversational IQ!

 

2. Genuinely Ask Great Questions

Your [conversational] IQ goes up when you ask a question that exhibits genuine curiosity. Done authentically and with integrity, it's natural for a conversation to then move into new territory. Inspiring questions create that elusive thing we call chemistry between people.

Communications experts can’t emphasize this point enough: We find others to be interesting when they are interested in us. So if you want to be an interesting person, be interested in her.

3. Avoid telling someone they’re wrong

Great conversationalists want to make others feel good about them during the conversation. If one makes someone genuinely feel good, he/she is one step closer to making an ally.
Even if one comes across someone whom he thinks is totally wrong, it’s crucial to respect their opinion. This also doesn’t mean we necessarily agree but no one likes to be told their opinion is wrong. It’s always better not to be too argumentative in a great conversation.

4. Body Language is the Key

The way you present yourself while chatting can convey a lot more than you might assume. For instance, the general consensus is that tensely folded arms mean you are closed to what someone is telling you, while if you like what you hear, you’ll likely adopt an open posture, and even lean forward a little.
Standing too far away can signal discomfort. Lack of eye contact can have the same effect. Touching your hair too much is a dead giveaway that you’re nervous. If you simply focus on making good eye contact (without being creepy) and mirror their body language, you’ll have a stronger connection.

5. Read about Issues from Different Point of Views

“Read newspapers!” Whether print or online, one should take time out to read newspapers from around the world. To get a sense of what is happening from different perspectives.
This way, while conversing one can dig into something one has read about and add cool, new information to the conversation. For a totally holistic perspective, one may pick an issue and then read five articles about the issue from five different countries. This can help an individual to relate to brand new people from all walks of life.
 

Getting Tattooed??? Think Twice!!! Is Tattoo a Taboo at the Workplace?

Getting Tattooed??? Think Twice!!! Is Tattoo a Taboo at the Workplace?   No wonder, tattoos are the most popular today. Still it seems that, despite their popularity, Hiring Managers may still be influenced by the stigma associated with tattoos in the past. While Hiring Managers may not have any personal aversion to tattoos (and may have some themselves), companies that want to portray a certain image are afraid of alienating their customers. Most Hiring Managers agreed that visible tattoos carry a stigma that may damage the organization’s professional image. It has been proved that a candidate’s visible tattoo is the first thing that is discussed when the candidate leaves the interview room. Organizations are concerned that their customers may perceive tattoos as "dirty," "abhorrent," "repugnant," and "unsavory." However, Employers don’t express great concern over visible tattoos where employees do not have a great deal of customer/public contact. Can Tattoos Be Banned at Work? The rapid popularity of body modification has caused some companies to adopt policies that either prohibit or place restrictions on visible tattoos and other body art. Basically, companies are striving to have their employees exhibit a professional and business-like appearance. Nevertheless, because they are so commonplace, there is some confusion as to whether employers can prohibit their workers from having visible tattoos, and if so, to what extent. To compound matters, employees find any policy that restricts their freedom of expression as an invasion of their personal lives. No surprise, then, that the prohibition of visible body art has resulted in a plethora of employment discrimination claims. There is no national law governing employee dress codes, including tattoos. Employers may implement whatever dress guidelines they feel are appropriate, as long as they do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, disability, or any other federally protected status. In general, courts have ruled that Private Employers may implement dress standards for employees as long as they can provide business justifications for them, and as long as the standards do not affect one group of people more than another.  But Beware! Tattoos may sometimes indicate a religious belief. For example, there are religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism that use the process and the outcome of tattooing as an expression or representation of their beliefs. In that circumstance, an employer could only ban the tattoo if it demonstrates an undue hardship.

What constitutes a hardship is still not clearly defined. Few people claim that their religious belief require them to wear body piercings There may be cases where employee, have body piercing like pierced eyebrow & are in frequent contact with customers. E.g. sales executive, store manager, cashier. Employers in these cases believe that allowing employees to show their tattoos would adversely affect their public image.

The employer’s neutral dress code had been implemented to cultivate a "neat, clean, and professional image" —a business determination within the employer’s discretion.

Only SOLUTION to the issue…

History has demonstrated that fighting current trends may turn out to be a lost cause. The best practice for employers in this area is to base dress codes on objective criteria such as workplace safety and professional image and to be prepared to make reasonable accommodations for employees with dress and grooming-related requirements that do not adhere to the dress code, but that do not present health or safety concerns. Ultimately, decide whether your fear of tattoos is reasonable.

If employees have no customer contact, a ban on tattoos may be too stifling. One may also want to decide whether one needs an ultimate ban on all tattoos. Some employers have found success in implementing a policy where employees only have to conceal body art that is, for example, offensive or frightening to children. Finally, it is also advisable to include a statement in the employee handbook or written dress code reaffirming that the company will comply with applicable legal requirements to provide reasonable accommodation for employees’ religious beliefs.