Tag Archive for 'Survival Guide'

Drinking + Job Advice = Brilliant

Published on September 14, 2010 in Survival Guide. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

If you don’t have a job, where do you spend your days? The only acceptable answers are “at home watching Judge Judy reruns and scouring online job ads” and “at the bar.” Now, you can make your bar time more productive. If you live in Germany, that is.

The Kindl Klause pub in southern Berlin noticed that many of their patrons were unemployed. So they started offering job advice to the bargoers. They have set up a desk, which is staffed by social workers between 2-5 PM every Friday. So you can get a little motivation with your beer. It’s an even better pairing than cheese.

Do You Suffer from ‘Desk Rage’?

Published on August 23, 2010 in Survival Guide. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Sure, you know what road rage is. As a New Yorker who doesn’t drive, I occasionally suffer from bursts of “subway rage.” (Dear woman across from me, your purse does not need its own seat!) However, my fellow disgruntled cubicle dwellers of the world should also be on the lookout for “desk rage.” As we spend more and more time at the office and those offices try to squeeze more people into less space, it’s only logical that people get more fed up with each other and become less patient. Via Psychology Today:

A U.S. News and World Report poll says that 89% of U.S. workers said incivility is a serious problem and 78% said it is getting worse. The cost of workplace violence to employers is estimated somewhere between $6 to $36 billion annually.

Ever said “Such and such coworker makes me so mad I could just kill her?” Odds are good you aren’t alone. So how can we curb this growing problem? I vote for things like flex time, more vacation, and, if possible, working with people who don’t finish off the last of the coffee and then refuse to refill. Seriously. I hate that guy.

Do You Learn More from Bad Bosses Than Good Ones?

Published on August 13, 2010 in Quotes. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

There is a really interesting interview with Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz over at Fast Company today. In it, she admits to having been a bad manager in the past and talks about some of the mistakes she’s made and what she learned from them. Here are a couple of choice quotes:

  • “I think managing is a real job, something you should always work at and try to be better. I’m constantly questioning how people react to what I’m saying, if I should change something or if I should approach something differently. You have to take it as a craft.”
  • “The first thing I did was just set up 45 min sessions with as many people as I could and just listened. I said, “Okay, what do you think needs to be changed here? What’s good? What’s bad? What would you do if you were sitting in my seat?” And then I’d always ask, “Who else should I talk to?” If you sit quiet long enough, you find out what people really think. I filled a whole notebook up in those first few weeks, just gently asking and listening.”
  • “I didn’t have my first child until I was 40. I actually learned about motherhood from management. When you bring your first baby home you don’t know even how to pick it up. Jeez, is this thing going to break? I remember in the middle of the night right before I was going home from the hospital, I asked the nurse, ‘Would you give me a demo on how to change a diaper?’ She said, ‘What’s a demo?’”
  • “I tell people all the time that you learn so much more from a bad boss than from a good boss. When things are going well, you don’t think that much or analyze why this person is a good manager. When you work for a bad boss, you say, “I am never going to treat people the way I was just treated. I’m never going to throw a hissy fit.” I’m sure a lot of my managers say, “I’m never going to swear.” That’s fine. That’s how you form yourself.”

As for the last quote, it’s the one I spent the most time thinking about. To be honest, I did learn a lot from having terrible bosses. And it wasn’t only examples of how I didn’t want to behave. My first assistant job was the best lesson I ever got in flexibility and how to think on my feet. When you work for someone who is super inconsistent and changes his mind every five seconds, you’ll have to be able to come up with solutions really quickly. I also learned how to stand up for myself. Even though I’m by nature a pretty nonconfrontational person, being accused of shit I didn’t do (seriously, the guy once accused me of having changed all the fonts on his computer) made me learn when it was important to defend myself. That is a skill that has come in handy not only at work but in my personal life.

That said, I’ve learned a lot from good bosses. When I was the assistant to the editor in chief of a website, he taught me a lot about reporting. I wouldn’t have learned that from a boss who was standoffish or preferred I only do admin work for him. He was compassionate, understanding, and cared about my life outside of work, and those are all things I aim for now that I’m a manager myself. Ultimately, the important thing is to view every workplace situation – good, bad, neutral, boring, or whatever – as a learning opportunity. I haven’t only learned from bosses. I had a coworker who taught me how to craft professional work emails that didn’t sound like they were written by a corporate robot. There was a client whose constant diva fits reminded me to only get into arguments about stuff that was really important instead of becoming a constant overstresser who got ignored. It’s all there for the taking, if you choose to take it. And learning from a good boss has the added benefit of making you not hate your life in the process.

Monday Coffee: Quitting With Panache

Published on August 9, 2010 in Week in Review. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Is “take this job and shove it” not creative enough for you? Try out some of these more outrageous ways to quit. – AOL

Are your coworkers making you fat? This might be a sign that that chick in accounting needs to cool it with her brownie-baking experiments. – Lemondrop

Sometimes a job is so precise it requires an animal to do it instead of a person. It helps that the animal is cuter and will not drink the last of the coffee. – Blisstree

Remember Eloise? She downgraded from life at the Plaza to working as an intern at Conde Nast. – McSweeney’s

Here are ten things that will help you survive office life. No, they’re not coffee and painkillers – they’re ways to get other people to do your work without realizing it and tips for making small talk with just about anyone. – Lifehacker

Prettier people get ahead at work. There’s actually a lot more to it than that, but that’s why this is a link roundup and not a whole separate article. – Newsweek

Downside of being an intern at a fashion magazine: you don’t get paid. Upside: sometimes you get to be in a photo shoot styled by the Creative Director. – Elle

Saving Assistants on Crushable.com

Published on July 20, 2010 in Survival Guide. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Today I fielded some reader questions over on Crushable.com, which is the sister site to the place where I work, TheGloss.com. Here’s some of what I had to say:

Q. I feel hopeless about finding a job, especially in this economy. Should I take whatever job I can get that pays the bills or wait until I find something emotionally satisfying (while living under my parents’ roof)?

A. I’d love to tell you that you should hold out for your dream job, but you know what? For many people, me included, that wasn’t an option. My suggestion would be to find a gig that pays the bills and in the meantime while your basic needs are being met start looking for a job that you find more fulfilling. One thing I really stress on my site and in the book is that there’s a huge difference between “job” and “career.” Just because you take a short-term job to pay the bills doesn’t mean you’re destined to be at that job forever. So, unless you’re planning to live off of your savings or have some other way of supporting yourself, you can’t be snobby about what kind of job you take when you’re broke. Just remember never to lose sight of what you really want to do, and don’t stop sending out resumes and checking job boards. It’s way easier to land your dream job when you already have a job somewhere else – that gives you the ability to play coy and negotiate a better salary for yourself.

You can check out the rest of the Q&A on Crushable.

How Not to Get a Job: Annoying Celebrities On Twitter

Published on July 19, 2010 in Survival Guide and Tip of the Week. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I have a search box set up for “personal assistant” on the Twitter application I use. Sometimes, that search box turns up good, usable stuff, like this post. But about 99 percent of the tweets can be divided up into one of two categories:

  • People complaining that they have too much work to do and asking if anyone wants to be their unpaid personal assistant/driver/cook/nanny/some combination thereof; and
  • People tweeting at a particular celebrity and volunteering to be his or her personal assistant.

This post concerns the latter category. I won’t get into the fact that being a celebrity personal assistant is not really a glamorous job the way that people seem to think it is, because that’s a topic for another post or five. This is a post about how completely stupid it is to think that a celebrity will hire you as their personal assistant because you asked them to via Twitter. So here’s why:

  • You are not the first person who has ever thought of this. Some celebrities get dozens of tweets a day from people who seriously or half-seriously would like to be their PA.
  • If a celebrity needs an assistant, they will probably obtain one via some more reasonable way than responding to random tweets. Most celebrity assistants are hired through private staffing agencies or by referral. If you actually want to be a celebrity assistant, you should probably move to New York or LA and reach out to one of these agencies. If you really think contacting someone via Twitter is a good idea, then maybe you should at least tweet about your credentials and experience.
  • Many celebrities aren’t the ones updating their own Twitter accounts. There are definitely some celebrities, like Ashton Kutcher, who love Twitter and compose their own tweets. But there are plenty more who just use Twitter for publicity purposes or to promote whatever they’re working on, and often Twitter accounts for celebrities are run by publicists – or, wait for it – assistants. Here’s a hint: a celebrity’s assistant will probably not need to hire an assistant or appreciate your offer to replace them.
  • The internet is unreliable. Even if someone decided they were going to hire a person who tweeted at them, who would know if said person really existed or wasn’t crazy? No celebrity with any sense would hire a personal assistant without meeting them in person or having them go through various rounds of interviews.

That said, Twitter is not the only way that people try to get jobs as celebrities’ assistants. Any time I do a post relating to a celebrity looking for an assistant, I get several emails or comments from people who seem to think that I am personally hiring for the position. Some people even send me resumes with their private phone number and home address on them. So far, I haven’t published any of them, because I feel sorry for people who can’t tell the difference between an actual job ad and a website that regularly snarks on celebrities who abuse their assistants. But let this serve as a warning – if, for some reason, you are desperate to be slave labor for a famous person, please just call an agency, and leave me – and Twitter – out of it.

what we can learn from NBC

Published on February 3, 2010 in Survival Guide. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

As the entire universe apparently now knows, NBC bungled it big time when it came to letting Jay Leno retire and hand the reins of The Tonight Show over to Conan O’Brien. In addition to the obvious lessons we can learn from this disaster, such as “Jay Leno sucks” and “Conan O’Brien is hilarious,” FedLine (aka the Federal Times’ blog) points out some management lessons that we can learn from the mishandling of the whole situation. Let’s hope some TV executives take these tips to heart.

Lesson #1: Career progression is crucial to retaining top talent.

In other words, if your most talented people know they’ll be stuck in their jobs a long time because there’s nowhere for them to go internally, they will leave. And it will be your fault for not providing enough incentives.

Lesson #3: If you’re going to fire someone, just do it already.

One of the most embarrassing parts of the whole late night fiasco was the way that it was handled so publicly and that it took seemingly forever to resolve. That worked out nicely for Conan’s audience, who got to enjoy weeks’ worth of him taking potshots at NBC and putting together hilarious skits about wasting the network’s money, but it only protracted the whole situation. Good for viewers, not so good for NBC.

And while we’re on the subject of the lovely Mr. O’Brien, let’s all take his incredibly classy goodbye speech advice to heart:

Continue reading ‘what we can learn from NBC’

advice from the person interviewing you

Published on December 29, 2009 in Survival Guide and Tip of the Week. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

In the semi-regular feature here at STA, “The Other Side of the Aisle,” bosses get a chance to talk about work from their perspective. Here, one boss (we’ll call her “Cheryl”) talks about her experiences interviewing potential assistants and gives helpful pointers about what bosses want people to say or do in interviews.

__________________

As someone who interviews 15-20 people a year, mostly for part time admin positions, I see a variety of folks come through my office: some who think they have found the perfect job, others who are just simply in need of anything that will keep them busy or pay the bills. The following are a variety of patterns I have seen over and over again – they are truly meant to help people like you who are on the search. It may sound strict, but when you get over 200 applicants for one position, it’s the little things that stick out. Here are some simple tips that anyone can use to set themselves apart.

If you read this and these things sounds super crazy obvious, all the power to you- you’re probably already getting to the top of the resume piles!

DO: Follow the instructions on the job posting.

AND: If it says no calls, please don’t call. Even if you are super-qualified and experienced, it will likely get your name on a list of people who won’t get interviews because why bother interviewing someone who can’t follow directions?

DO: Show up on time for the interview.

AND: If you get to the area early, grab a coffee nearby or take some time for yourself to transition into “interview mode.” More than 15 minutes early is overdoing it – it’s tacky and if you’re interviewing at a small office, your presence can actually be awkward for those who are about to meet with you. If the folks interviewing you don’t jump to take you early, especially if they are just finishing with someone else, don’t act disappointed. I suggest waiting patiently with a magazine in the lobby or simply reviewing your resume. Yes, excessive text messaging will give the impression that this is what you will do with all of your in between time, or when the boss isn’t looking.

Continue reading ‘advice from the person interviewing you’

maybe the best work angst song ever

Published on September 27, 2009 in Survival Guide and Video. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I cannot fucking believe that I have been running this website for three years and have never posted this song. Time to remedy that immediately.

Fun fact: Prince wrote this song! He apparently had a huge crush on Susanna Hoffs, the lead singer, but she wasn’t interested.

Lame fact: I think I know all the words to this song. OK, that’s a lie. I definitely know all the words.

work advice from ‘law & order’

Published on September 25, 2009 in Survival Guide. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Law and Order, the show that wouldn’t die, airs its 20th season premiere tonight. In honor of that huge anniversary, Examiner.com has collected a list of workplace lessons you should have learned from past episodes of the show, including:

Literacy is important in any profession. When drug dealer Michael Ingrams is stiffed by a real estate agent in a deal, he needs to get revenge for the fraud. Obviously, it only makes good business sense to hire a contractor to do this dirty work for him, but little does he know his teenage hit man is illiterate. As a result, the hired killer goes to work at the wrong house. (Episode: Mushrooms, Season 1)

If you want to get revenge on a rival colleague, make sure you know where he lives. Physicist Edward Manning steals a revolutionary scientific idea from struggling scientist Max Weiss. Weiss, who is having trouble supporting his family, gets revenge by sending a bomb to his rival. However, he didn’t realize that Manning had moved when he separated from his wife, and as a result the unsuccessful scientist ends up killing her instead. (Episode: Big Bang, Season 4)

The rest is here.