High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 6 Secrets to Preventing Procrastination

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 6 Secrets to Preventing Procrastination: "The hardest part of any project is often taking that first step. Once I’ve gotten started, it’s usually easy enough to keep going."

• The One Skill That Makes You More Employable: "Whether you’re communicating with partners, customers, or coworkers, the way you write influences how people view both you and your company. Clear communication builds confidence and creates more productive relationships."

• Top 8 Interview Questions & How to Answer Them: "The following are LinkedIn's most commonly asked interview questions, along with my take on the best way to answer them."

• How Smart Women Successfully Make a Career Pivot: "For anyone considering a career change or radically relaunching a career, here are a few things I’ve learned along the way that may help you get started."
• 6 Words You Need to Eliminate from Your Professional Vocabulary:"To ensure you’re being perceived in the way you want, begin eliminating these words from your professional vocabulary."

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: How to Answer the 10 Most Common Interview Questions

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• How to Answer the 10 Most Common Interview Questions: "We talked to six hiring experts to find out which questions trip up most job candidates, and the better answers that could win you the job."
• 15 Steps to Successfully Reinvent Yourself After Losing Everything: "Whether if it’s reading or attending a workshop or webinar, find ways to enhance your knowledge. It will make you a more well-rounded individual and help you grow both personally and professionally."
• 9 Skills Bosses See Lacking in New Graduates: "An online benefits and compensation information company unveiled which hard skills managers find lacking in new grads. Here are the results of the survey."
• How to Build New Leaders: "For any business that lasts, it’s incumbent upon current leaders to build a deep farm system of developing leaders. Mentorship programs are one answer."
• How to Ask Your Boss for a Raise: "However, it's important to keep in mind that it's okay to ask, even if the execution feels uncomfortable and comes across as awkward. Your delivery will improve over time."

5 Reasons to Be Thankful for Your Job

Some of us (many of us?) spend a good deal of time complaining about our jobs, our bosses, our companies, our salaries, and anything else we can muster a complaint about but, in reality, we have it quite well.

What better time of year to take a few moments and be thankful for our jobs? Need some reasons? Here are five:

1. Be thankful you HAVE a job. Yes, sometimes that old adage "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" applies to your job and while we might spend some serious time daydreaming about another place to work, our current gig is actually pretty good.

2. Be thankful for your co-workers. You likely work among friends or are at least on friendly terms with those you work with. That is a great, and undervalued, perk of the job. I still miss the people from the job I worked at longest (over 16 years). It was a great group.

3. Be thankful for opportunities to learn. Those opportunities can be very different depending on the job. You might be learning a specific skill such as how to code, or you might be learning a "soft skill": how to facilitate a good working relationship with a difficult co-worker or manager. But take some time to appreciate and be grateful for those new skills you are developing.

4. Be thankful for opportunities to apply your skills. Again, like the point above, you might apply some of your strengths and skills in limited ways but if you think carefully about your work you can creatively apply your skills to anything. The skills you have in handling a demanding boss are useful when dealing with an angry customer.

5. Be thankful for the chance to do something of value. Theodore Roosevelt noted that "far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

What are you thankful for? Do you have a flexible work schedule? A great boss or coworker? Opportunities to advance?

6 Ways to Become Indispensable at Work

Layoffs and change are unavoidable. Companies are constantly looking to improve processes and save money and so your career strategy should always involve a plan to make yourself indispensable. 

Of course, this doesn't mean you'll never lose your job but it does provide some safe-guards and make it more likely that you'll land on your feet if a layoff does come.

Here are 6 ways to become indispensable at work:

1. Become an expert. Understand how to do your job better than anyone else in your workplace. And then actually DO the job better than anyone. Become known as the person to seek out for knowledge and training about your job.

2. Learn new skills. Continue to grow and learn more in your job. Develop new skills and understand how best to apply them to your work.

3. Have a good attitude. When you have a positive attitude at work others want to be around you and collaborate with you. Use your positivity to encourage others.

4. Take a leadership role. You don't have to be a manager or supervisor to be a leader. Demonstrate a good work ethic, have a positive attitude, and share your skills with others. Take on a task that others don't want to do. Do it without being asked.

5. Be involved. Many workplaces have committees or other ways to be involved in improving the culture of your workplace. Join a committee and take a leadership role.

6. Mentor others. Use the knowledge you've gained by becoming an expert and learning new skills to train and mentor others in your company. When new staff are hired volunteer to train them and soon you'll be the go-to person for training.

And finally a bonus idea: if necessary, bring in treats. Everyone likes to eat!

Evaluating Your Career Goals Mid-Year

It's June and that's a good time to evaluate progress on your career goals and perhaps reset your priorities if necessary.

Here are a few things to consider:

1. Evaluate career goals. What goals, if any, did you set for the year? How are you doing? You might realize that a goal or two you set no longer fits your current situation and it's time to revise. Or perhaps you've accomplished several goals already. If so, celebrate!

2. Update resume and LinkedIn profile. Take a few minutes to update your resume and LinkedIn

profile now with any important accomplishments or skills gained during the first half of the year. This will make updating your resume and profile easier next year.

3. Evaluate skills. In light of your current responsibilities and career goals take some time to assess your current skills to determine where you might want to focus your attention. Then you can sign up for a training session or online course over the second half of the year to develop these skills.

4. Evaluate your relationships. How engaged are you with your networks? Have you been staying in touch with your friends and key business contacts? If not, make plans to reconnect before the year passes you by.

By taking a few minutes to evaluate your goals now you ensure that you progress steadily throughout the year rather than getting off track.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share these every weekend so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!


1. 10 Ways to Battle Job-interview Jitters
"Being prepared to answer, clearly and concisely, the most common interview questions will have you feeling sharp."


2. 10 Ways to Get Ahead in a Bad Economy 
"In order to advance, identify ways you can affect the whole organization rather than just focusing on your career. How do you get the big picture? By broadening your experience and your exposure to other managers at the company."


3. Develop a Skills Plan for the Life Cycle of Your Career
"Workers who do not bolster their degrees with continuous skill development risk leaving their careers exposed to the volatility of the global economy."

4. 6 Life Lessons from the New Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer
"When there's that moment of 'Wow, I'm not really sure I can do this,' and you push through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough. Sometimes that's a sign that something really good is about to happen. You're about to grow and learn a lot about yourself."


5. What You Need to Say to Land a Good Job
"Talk about your desire for a great mentor. Companies typically value employees who want to grow professionally, and mentoring arrangements help both parties improve their skills."

Wanted: Strong Communication Skills

Employers want their employees and prospective new hires to have strong communication skills, but have you ever wondered what exactly this means and why communication is important no matter what work you do?

Depending on your job, you may communicate with managers, co-workers, clients, and suppliers. Each of these audiences may have different communication preferences or protocols. For example, managers might require occasional but formal communication, including presentations, while co-workers typically require frequent but more casual communication.

Communication is key to defining expectations and exchanging information that enables people to do their work. Therefore, regardless of audience, employers want employees who can convey their thoughts clearly. To accomplish this, your professional communication should have a clear purpose. And whether written or verbal, you need to be able to articulate your main point(s) and provide relevant details in an organized and logical manner. Choosing the right words and enunciating and pronouncing your words correctly can also impact your message. Even your use of non-verbal communication, like effective eye contact, hand gestures, and tone are critical to reinforcing what you’re saying.

Employers appreciate employees who can communicate well in various situations, including stressful settings where people are exchanging conflicting views. Additionally, employers expect their employees to work positively and productively with different personalities and communication styles. And of course, being a strong communicator requires you to be a skilled and active listener. Remember, communication is an exchange, and without the ability to listen carefully, your communication will likely fall short.

Effectively communicating takes practice. Exercise and improve your communication skills by offering to facilitate team meetings, create and deliver presentations, and write or edit articles for an organization’s newsletter or magazine. Communication opportunities like these can be plentiful on the job, through professional networking associations, or with non-profit volunteer organizations.

Wanted: Basic Computer Skills

Computers are an integral part of almost any work environment today. As such, employers expect employees and prospective employees to be proficient in basic computer skills. For those returning to the workforce or transitioning from manual labor into new and different roles, learning basic computer skills may seem daunting. The good news is that basic computer training resources are available in most communities—often at no charge. Look for these in local and regional public workforce offices and public libraries. Also, computer courses are usually offered for a reasonable fee through community education programs and community colleges.

The Basics

To get an idea of what many employers perceive as basic computer skills, review the list below.

• Turning on and off a computer
• Navigating with a mouse, including clicking and scrolling
• Typing on a keyboard
• Using email, including opening, sending, and deleting email, as well as pasting text from another document into the body of an email
• Starting a program
• Opening, downloading, and saving electronic files
• Using a word processing program, like Microsoft Word, to create a new document or edit an existing one and to perform basic formatting tasks
• Launching an Internet browser and performing a search with keywords
• Typing or copying an Internet web address (aka: a URL) into a web browser address bar

Advanced Computer Skills

Once you have mastered basic skills, you may want to continue developing your computer skills. Learn to reboot a computer and to distinguish between various file formats, like JPEG, PDF, and GIF files. Venture beyond word processing and e-mails in getting familiar with other popular computer programs used for the following business purposes:

• Creating spreadsheets
• Developing presentations
• Managing calendars and contacts

Of course, specialized occupations may have their own computer requirements. If you’re interested in a specialized field, learn what the computer requirements are and look for training opportunities before you start your job search.