There are some studies that make you go “hmmm” and others where the reaction is more along the lines of “yeah, I see it.” This is one of the latter studies. New research has found that narcissists do better in job interviews. That makes sense, right? I wasn't blown out of the water with shock.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska found that narcissists excel in interviews because they do not shy away from self-promotion. Non-narcissists, however, have trouble over-advertising their talents. That said, narcissists were also found to create toxic work environments, so their benefit really starts and ends in the interview stage.
You’ve just started a new job and your new boss wants you to add the position to your LinkedIn profile. Okay or not okay?
The question of how to deal with this was posed to a Globe and Mail career coach by someone whose boss was pressuring him to change his LinkedIn profile when he didn’t really want to. I was surprised by the answer to the question and would be interested in hearing what others think.
When one thinks about personal qualities that might matter to an executive, there are a number of that come to mind – honesty, responsibility, passion. Sense of humour is a quality that might not immediately seem relevant, but one that is apparently very important to employers. A recent survey found that chief financial officers seek out funny employees. Get your material ready.
The Accountemps survey found that the majority of the 1,400 CFOs asked felt that an employee’s sense of humour is crucial to his or her success at work. Fifty-seven per cent of respondents said that a sense of humour was somewhat important for fitting in with the company’s corporate culture. Another 22 per cent said it was very important. Only 20 per cent felt humour was unimportant from a workplace point-of-view.
I’m not sure I entirely agree, but entrepreneur Daniel Gulati, in a post on Harvard Business Review blogs, says Facebook is making us miserable at work.
The social networking site has become notorious for a few different types of posters in our friends lists. My favourites are those who “vaguebook” - posting “woe is me” status updates without saying what’s wrong, in an apparent effort to elicit sympathy. But I have a few braggarts in my feed as well.
A culture of comparison
Braggarts are the ones Gulati thinks are sabotaging our ability to be content with our careers and accomplishments.
Some people have a good poker face, a stealth demeanor, and nerves of steel. I have none of those things. Thus, I’m not exactly good in an awkward situation. This goes for uncomfortable scenarios in the workplace, at home, at the mall, in a graveyard, at a clown convention, – wherever, basically. When you rattle my nerves, it reads on my face, and when something annoys me, it plagues me and weighs me down.
Many people react the same way I do. Others handle awkward scenarios like champs. Uncomfortable situations are bound to arise in every office. The question is: are you a nervous Nellie (like me) or are you a master diffuser of discomforted circumstances? It’s not something I ever considered until I came across a Toronto Sun article suggesting ways to approach awkward moments. As such, I went through each suggestion and debated if it was something I could (or would) actually do. Here are a couple of them.
Are you a woman who’s just starting her career? I hate to break it to you but you’re already earning less than your male counterparts.
We all know about the wage gap, but apparently it starts from day one and may actually get worse from there. That’s according to research firm PayScale in an analysis – reported on by Forbes – of when college-educated women start earning less than the men.
Apparently federal government employees get sick more than the average Canadian worker.
CBC news is reporting on a confidential government report that indicates a record amount of sick time being taken by federal employees. Add up the dollar figure for those lost wages and it’s over $1 billion per year.
Generous sick time gets more generous
Most federal staff get 15 paid sick days every year, a fact I remember well from my time working there. What I also remember is that those employees are allowed to bank that sick time. In my few years there, I saw many cases of people taking extended sick time due to banked sick days (months and months, in some cases), especially right before retirement.
The old adage claims that it is not what you know, but whom you know. Most people with at least a little bit of work experience know that to be absolutely true, at least a good portion of the time. And since young adults have few contacts with any hiring power, parents often step in to help with the post-graduation job search. This is not a new concept, as parents have been helping their kids network forever, but a new MSNBC article attempts to make the case that parents are now going way overboard. That sounds about right.
Graduation season is among us, and some commencement speakers have been keeping it real with students, informing them of the struggles that lie ahead as they enter the job market. These troubles have existed for years now, and for Millennials, scoring that first job has proven to be extraordinarily tough. Many have taken to using connections to crack into their field of choice, and others have created their own opportunities as they wait for more doors to open. Enter Christina Mercado.
Unable to find work after graduating from Georegtown University last year, Mercado decided to get creative. Armed with a master’s in business administration, she decided to write and illustrate a children’s book. And what was the topic? Her job-hunt nightmare, obviously.
Do you live in Ontario? Are you unemployed because the business or factory you worked in closed? There’s a silver lining to this cloud: You can get up to $28,000 to retrain.
The program is appropriately called Second Career and there’s a list of high-demand careers that could potentially qualify you for this support, including:
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