06 Feb 10 A Job-Search Guide to Help People Over 45 – VII
You have tried everything from being cool to begin smart to playing your age to hiding it. You even tried offering discounts and accepting cuts, but have you tried your connections?
Yes, I am taking about connections. Personal connections. If you do not believe it works then come over and see what I have to show to you. In this article, you will see how connection plays a role in getting you the job you deserve, and almost the pay you deserve—well, almost because you may have to give in for pay cut. So, let’s get started.
Give everything
Are you wondering how this topic made it connection part of the series? Well, it shouldn’t but I am mentioning it near the top of this post because giving your 100% is required. It is not an option, not anymore; you have to do it. Give everything you got to convince employer of your eligibility, and your connections of your suitability for the job you are asking recommendation. Do not hold anything back.
Use your personal connection
Back in your youth when you were working, you worked with many individuals: you worked for some people, you worked with some people, and some people worked for you. If you are not D.B. Ross who intimidated everyone working with him, I am pretty darn sure that you got some connections that are still in the business. Ask them for help. They certainly will help you out. You can even ask people whom you knew but never worked with for leads and job interviews. It will go a long way.
Talk to your ex-employers
Ex-employers are the people whom you worked for in the heyday of your career. These people knew you will go places, and these people will understand that you have lost a job not because of your ability—because they have witnessed your work themselves—but because of something else. They will pop their hands out and pull you onboard. They will do it even if you were not such an extraordinary employee. They will do it just because they have known you for so many years, and they believe that you will not let them down.
These three tips will play a critical role in getting you the job you need.
Tags: Career, Heyday, Job Guide, Job Help, Job Interviews, Job Search, Leads, Lost, Personal Connection, Personal Connections, Plays, Ross, Search People, Smart, Suitability
08 Jan 10 How to get a Proper Feedback for Anything Under the Sun
A feedback is important. It plays a crucial role in our personal or professional development, but it works only if we get a proper feedback. An improper feedback like, “things look good to me” does not do any good. Therefore, the real challenge is to know how to get a proper feedback from people around us.
In this article, I have tried to provide a workable “feedback seeking system” which you can use to get a proper feedback. You can also modify the system, if you feel something is missing.
Step 1: Define your feedback goal
Why you want a feedback and on what? The answer to this question matters a lot. A generic feedback like, “all is good” or “there is some problem here and there, but the rest is good” will not do any good. Set a target for why you want a feedback. If you have written something then the feedback you can seek could be related to your writing style, coherence, grammatical and punctuation errors, or overall understandability. You can subdivide your work in this way and ask for feedback about the particular thing you want to know.
Step 2: Qualify your feedback source
Do not seek feedback from anyone and everyone. It will do no good. A proper feedback should come from a qualified source. Ask your senior, your client, your boss, your teacher, or anyone who is more qualified than you are on the subject for the feedback. A washerwoman’s feedback on the structure of your SQL database will serve nothing.
Do not ask your family or the closest friend who knows everything about your project for the feedback. Good or bad, it will never give you the feedback that you can use.
Step 3: Ask targeted question
Ask questions relevant to the feedback goal you set in step one. Do not pose generic question, as it will not fetch desired answer. Ask a targeted question and listen patiently for the answer.
Step 4: Promise anonymity
If feedback sought is for something or someone else then assure your source that his or her identity will be kept hidden if he or she wishes to do that. And if the feedback is about you then tell the feedback source that his or her honest opinion will not tarnish your relationship. This is very important.
Conclusion
Do not lose heart if you do not get positive feedback from all quarters. No matter how smart your source is, he or she can still be short-sighted or wrong. Show confidence in your ability.
Tags: Anonymity, Ask Question, Boss, Closest Friend, Coherence, Generic Feedback, Generic Question, Lot, People, Plays, Professional Development, Promise, Proper Feedback, Punctuation Errors, Sql Database, Step 3, Sun, Target, Washerwoman, Writing Style
03 Nov 09 Role of Intuition in Web Designing
We are often led to believe that web designing is nothing but a principle-led mechanical activity, which has very little to do with creativity. Well, I do not think so. It indeed is a principal-led mechanical activity as far as laying out a final page is concerned, but laying out is not when a page is designed. Creation of a web page is nothing but the final execution of the output a designer get during the long ideation. The web page is created then only in the mind of the web designer.
Creativity plays an important role in web designing and so does intuition.
What did I say…intuition?
How could intuition possibly be related to web designing?
Role of Intuition
Well, do not get bogged down by thinking that intuition does not matter in the process of designing a website because it does and it does a great deal. Talk of anything creative and you are talking of intuition playing a role in how it comes about. In terms of web designing, intuition play a significant part when:
- We chart out navigation map for the website. How users move from one place cannot be known by any other mean if not intuitively. You cannot explain how you know that the website visitors will go to c from a then come back to b then again to a then d and so on and so forth. An experienced web designer just knows how a visitor is going to interact with the website.
- We chose the color scheme. Indeed color theories are there to assist us on which color will look good with which color and which will look awful. But you cannot explain why a certain type of website works well with certain color scheme, while it fails when other color scheme is chosen. And why one color scheme works well with one type of website and does not work will with another kind of website.
- We decide the placement of elements in the website. There are many elements that are important for our website, but not all the elements will work at all places. Some elements work well when placed at the first position on above-the-fold while other works at eye-level. Can you explain why this subtle difference matter?
Can you help me find where else intuition plays an important role? Use the comment box and help me know more about this.
Tags: Color Scheme, Color Theories, Creation, Creative, Creativity, Designing A Website, Elements, Execution, Experienced Web Designer, First Position, Fo, Intuition, Map, Mechanical Activity, Plays, Principle, Web Designing, Web Page, Website Visitors
