E-mail Etiquette Tips

There is still some debate in the professional world as to exactly what role e-mail should play in the professional communication process. Some people argue that e-mail has become too heavily relied on for important communication, in lieu of the preferred face-to-face or telephone communications.

E-mail interaction has definitely become common place in today’s workplace and business processes. The reality of the current fast-paced and technology-driven environment we operate in is that it often requires the use of e-mail. It is a mistake, however, to believe that regular use of e-mail means professional etiquette and communication standards are not expected. Using e-mail with recruiters, bosses, co-workers, clients, and others demands some proper understanding of good e-mailing.

Here are a few examples of some of the more common mistakes made by professionals with regard to e-mail communication:

1) Saying too much – It is very easy for people in today’s fast-finger world where typing 60-70 words per minute is normal to overuse the written word in e-mail. E-mail is purposefully designed to offer efficient communication and one sure way to scare off a potential employer or client is to overwhelm them with too many words and messages in one e-mail. On a related note, do not use e-mail to say things you would not say in person.

2) Writing like you speak – Another common, but undesirable habit of today’s e-mailer is to type like he speaks. Whereas slang, jargon, and misuses of grammar might often be missed in verbal communication (not too much you can’s hear spelling), these language issues, along with poor spelling and punctuation stand stick out like a sore thumb on a computer screen. Present yourself professionally in all business related e-mail communications, even if it is just one or two sentences.

3) Be clear with your message – Your business contacts have no interest in e-mail tag. Be clear and concise with your message by including the main purpose of the message and the most important details. Again, do not say too much, but get the point across so that the reader does not have to play 20 questions to get to the point.

Top 3 Steps: Start on the Right Foot

Many young professionals today start into their first job without any defined goals or objectives, says Ronnie Ferez @ RealWorldReally . Here is a great article for starting out on the right foot. The steps from the article are listed here:

1. Project where you want to be 10 years from now. Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound) career goals. If you are currently a Marketing Staff now, you might want to consider becoming a Marketing Manager 10 years from now. Then start setting, and writing, those career goals and objectives.

2. Build your core competencies. Your core competencies are special job skills and knowledge that make you effective and efficient in your job. Develop them. Learn new things about them. Learn new technologies that will make you more competitive. If you are aiming at climbing the corporate ladder, then better start acquiring those core competencies required to be successful in your chosen expertise.

3. Expand your influence. Develop your leadership and people skills because top jobs required these skills.

Dinner Etiquette for Business Meals

One natural development in our society from the increase in two-income families is that families are eating more meals on the go. This has contributed to strong decline in proper dining etiquette and table manners that used to be commonplace. Many colleges and universities have begun implementing dinner etiquette seminars and programs in order to better prepare their students to enter the demanding business world.

Many people might wonder why dinner etiquette skills are important in business and industry. Certainly, some industries have greater demand for these skills, but building better rapport with bosses, colleagues, and clients is always more possible if they appreciate the basic etiquette and manners you demonstrate.

The reality is that many business and organization meetings and decisions happen around a dinner table. Meetings with clients often include lunch or dinner. Bosses sometimes take their employees to lunch to discuss important issues. Coworkers sometimes use a meal outing as a way to build camaraderie. These job-based requirements have prompted many companies to use meal-centered interviews to see if they would be embarrassed to introduce the person to a client or partner.

There are too many detailed rules of dinner etiquette for us to explore them all here, so let us focus on a couple suggestions in sometimes overlooked areas that make a difference:

1) Don’t focus on the food – What does this mean? One thing to keep in mind in professional meal situations is that dinner etiquette is about making the other personal comfortable and you look professional. Be cautious about ordering your favorite food if it means getting spaghetti sauce on you or them, or having a thick sandwich that you can get your entire mouth around. Order something easy to eat and do not overdo it.

2) Your mom is not watching – When we are little kids, our parents often cut our meat into little tiny pieces before tending to their own meal. This is not the way of the proper etiquette eater. Meat, such as steak, chicken, or fish should be cut one piece at a time. In the US, we typically cut with our right hand and bring the bite to our mouth with the left. More formal European styles require switching the fork to the right hand after each cut.

Networking like it’s 2008

Networking has always been a necessary evil plaguing professionals in every industry and every profession. However, thanks to the internet and social networking, it is now much easier! Two awesome resources for networking are:

1. LinkedIn.com
LinkedIn is great for connecting with past and present coworkers, friends and others who you have met. It is also great for doing some research and finding people at prospective companies or interesting positions.

2. Meetup.com
Meetup.com is the best thing to happen to networking since the classic Yahoo! Groups of our time. Meetup.com is a website that allows users to organize clubs and organizations that meet offline. These are a great way to meet people and learn more about a particular skill or industry. If you are in a big city, you can find a group for just about anything, and the website is growing rapidly. If you can’t find a group you are interested in, it is just as easy to create your own!

The importance of a good cover letter

Most job seekers by now understand the necessity of a resume while conducting a job search. However, many do not realize how important a cover letter is to the process. How important is it? Many human resources professionals say the cover letter can have as much, if not more impact on whether or not a candidate is granted a job interview.

A cover letter is a job candidate’s opening to present his best marketing and sales pitch. Sure, a resume is vital and outlines your qualifications. A cover letter, though, is your chance to sell yourself on the most vital characteristics desired by the company and the position you seek. In essence, it is your statement as to why you must be concerned as a possible best match for the position.

The problem for many is that if a job posting does not specifically state that a cover letter is requested, they do not send one. This is a big mistake. In fact, at times, this is a test or prescreening step by the employer. There are many stories of people who have been told they either received or did not receive an interview based on their submission, or lack thereof, a cover letter.

Even people who do submit cover letters when requested by employers often fail to understand the seriousness of this personal sales tool. Some throw together a quick, meaningless paragraph. This not only does not make use of the cover letter opportunity, but often leaves the resume without review.

An effective cover letter must answer key questions that an employer asks him or herself before considering inviting you for a job interview. These include:

• Why are you interested in the position?
• Why are you a good fit for the position?
• Why is this position right for you?
• Why is now a good time for you to move into this position?

Find an organization with the “right fit”

Career counselors often tout three key areas that job seekers need to consider when trying to find the best job fit. These include:

1. Your interest in the position
2. Your abilities to succeed in the position
3. The appropriateness of the organization’s culture for you

Some people do not take any of these into account but rather are mainly concerned with income and benefits. Many more job seekers understand the importance of finding a job they are interested in and that they can succeed with. Unfortunately, it is the third area of cultural compatibility that often is under considered.

What is cultural compatibility? Simply stated, it is a desirable match between the employee’s personality and values and the organizational culture or values of the organization he or she works for. Why does this matter? After all, an employee’s job is to produce or create something of value for their employer. In return, they are to be paid a wage that is fair and acceptable to them for performing the work.

It does matter - Just ask the countless number of people who toil in positions that cause stress, heartache, values conflicts, family drama, and more. While these things can result from someone working a job they have no passion or ability to do, it more often comes from people performing work they do not believe in, feel is unethical, or feel has no value to themselves or society.

There is no guaranteed path to happiness in life or at work, but many career experts recommend that peace with work is a common characteristic of happy people. Job seekers need to ask questions and consider the culture and values of companies before taking a new position. It is often difficult for people once they start working to walk away from a paycheck. This is why some people spend years working jobs even though they struggle with many of the symptoms previously identified. People need to know the cultural elements and values that make an organization the right fit, and then find the right job within the right organization.

Goal Setting for Career Success

Very rarely has a research study or case analysis been introduced that suggests that successful people are the ones that do not set goals or have a vision. Obviously, quite the opposite is true. Goal setting is generally ranked near the top of the list of skills or habits shared by the most successful and most accomplished people in any profession or walks of life.

What is it that makes goal setting effective? After all, goal setting does not force one to work smartly, create brilliantly, or service with care. It does, however provide the direction that helps people do all these things and more. People that take the time to write down and establish goals usually have a plan, and have ambition. There is a very common, but inspiring saying, “What the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve.”

Implementation is certainly required for goals to be realized. Most people agree this step is much harder than setting the goals. However, people that have no goals to begin with often find themselves floundering about, completing tasks or putting out fires as they come up. This usually leads to uncertainty of purpose, lack of motivation, and a loss of the esteem that builds from seeing goals come to fruition.

Goals are a precursor to confidence, if used effectively. There are two basic elements that make goals useful:

1. The first is that goals must be achievable. Routinely setting goals that are virtually impossible is a setup for routine failure.
2. The goals must be challenging. This means there should be a possibility that the goal will not be achieved without solid implementation and consistent effort.

A goal should force someone to work hard and take steps that lead to growth and success. Combined with the confidence that comes from goal realization, growth develops overtime through continued movement higher of the bar for accomplishment.

Get the job you want with an effective resume

While many job seekers now understand the relevance of a good resume to the process of getting a job, there is still some uncertainty as to what exactly makes a good resume. The first basic thing people need to understand about a resume’s purpose is that it has one – to get you an interview.

The resume is a sales tool designed to sell your qualifications impressively enough to make a desired employer want to interview you. Thus, it is crucial that the resume be a concise, but high impact document with quality selling points. It does not and should not be used to say everything about you as that can become overwhelming to employers who are already overwhelmed by the average 120 resumes they see for each position.

So what makes a resume effective at accomplishing this purpose of helping you get the job interview? There are limitless details and fine points that could be mentioned, but for our purposes, let’s focus on a couple key factors that help a resume sell, but that are often misunderstood by job prospects:

      A resume can only be one page – Do not misunderstand the point here. Concise resumes are required. However, in today’s human resources environment, it is perfectly acceptable for experienced or senior level job applicants to have a resume that extends to two pages. Using two pages is only recommended when the content fills two pages completely, and when it is impacting enough to justify a second page. It is certainly better to offer one high impact resume page than two mediocre pages. Also, keep in mind that while you might have two good pages, a quick resume screen may only allow an employer to skim through the first page. Therefore, make the first page the most recent and the most beneficial.

      Presentation does matter – This is an extremely important point that is widely undervalued by job applicants, and often in resume service providers. The aesthetic appeal of your resume, including proper use of margins, white space, line spacing, and more, can make the difference between an effective resume sell and a resume that gets tossed. If a busy executive is sorting through a pile of resumes, one that has used brute force to cram tons of content into one page might be too overwhelming at first glance to even justify a read. Do not let your resume get thrown out because it is scary to look at!

To do lists for successful time management

Time management is one of the most important skills for people to have. Effective time management enables people to maximize their time at work, at home, and in leisure, in order to get the best balance and the benefits from these areas of life. Good time managers are usually more productive, more successful, and happier than people who waste time, or do not have good time management skills.

One staple of organization and time management is an effective planner, or to do list. A to do list is a great way to keep track of important tasks that must be completed during the course of a day. There are many benefits to a to do list, but two key ones stand out: 1) Greater overall productivity and 2) Greater prioritization of tasks.

Greater productivity results because when people take the time to write down what they need to accomplish, they are less distracted by external forces and require less time to refocus on tasks at hand. Additionally, writing stuff down makes it easier to keep track of the things that must be completed. Great productivity also provides other benefits including reduced stress.

Greater prioritization is at least as important as gains in productivity. There are two key factors that can help people decide what tasks are most important: The level of importance and the level of urgency of the tasks. Despite human nature and people’s tendencies to do the easier and more efficient stuff first, it is best to put items that are important and urgent at the top of the list. These tasks should be followed by others that are either important or urgent, with non-important, non-urgent tasks placed at the bottom of list.

The benefit of prioritizing tasks is that completing the more challenging and more urgent items sooner makes it less likely than these tasks do not get down. It is much better to find easier, less urgent tasks remaining at the end of a busy day, than harder, more urgent ones. It is also important to remember personal to dos. Having a daily planner or list that takes into consideration both professional and personal items can help keep peace at work and at home.

5 Websites to use while job searching

1. Indeed.com
Indeed is one of the easiest to use job posting search engines out there. Not only does it collect postings from all major websites (Monster, Dice, Newspapers and company career pages), but it also lets you set up an automatic email to send you relevant postings based on keywords you specify.

2. LinkedIn.com
LinkedIn can be a great tool if you have a sizable network already. If that is the case, search by companies or positions you are interested in to find out who you know in those areas. Reach out to them for information that you are curious about and will help you made a decision for a particular company or industry. If you do not have a network in LinkedIn, I would not suggest adding people to your profile randomly. It is more effective to create a strong relationship prior to asking in depth questions. (More to come on when and how you should invite to connect with people on LinkedIn and create a solid network).

3. Careerbuilder.com
This is one of the older sites on the list, but it can still be helpful in their immense amount of professional articles (If for some reason this blog is not enough for you!). Check out Careerbuilder’s free resume critique!

4. Craigslist.org
Craigslist has always been a great resource to find jobs. It can take quite a bit of time to sift through the advertisements or fake postings, but companies have been using Craigslist more and more for job postings.

5. Glassdoor.com
Glassdoor is relatively new. This site has a number of company reviews and salary information for the top tech firms (more and more firms added daily). The only drawback here is that it is a “give to receive” model, so you need to fill out reviews before you can see them.