March 20 was the first day of spring, and you know what that means! It’s time for a bit of spring cleaning. While you’re cleaning out the garage or shaking a few cobwebs loose in the attic, why not take a feather duster to your resume as well? It’s never a bad idea to update things when you can, and the season of change can be a great time to change things up on your resume. Here are some quick tips! (more…)
Traditionally, employers saw job hopping as a red flag. However, with more and more job seekers choosing to embrace the gig economy, it’s become more acceptable to have a few short-term jobs on your resume. There’s nothing wrong with working a job just for a paycheck, but ideally these jobs all fall into a certain career path. How can you tell if a position is just a job or part of your career? Let’s dig in. (more…)
One of the most difficult times a leader faces during the course of a career is dealing with change within an organization. From company mergers and account closings to employment shifts and adopting hybrid workforce solutions, leading a team through the uncertainty of change and company transformation can be challenging. However, leaders can expect at one time or another, they will have to face change head on.
According to a study by Garter, organizations have averaged five major companywide changes in the past three years, and surprisingly, not including changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, 75% of companies expect major change initiatives to increase in the near future. With change affecting organizations across North America, leaders will have to embrace a few techniques to ensure successful transitions for their teams. (more…)
No matter what your job is, you probably spend more time than you’d like in meetings. We held a poll before the pandemic, when most work was still in-person, and 36% of respondents had one to three meetings a week, while 28% had four to six meetings weekly. Twelve percent attended more than 10 meetings. And out of those polled, 52% said a majority of those meetings could have been accomplished by email.
The pandemic changed the way we work, which led to an even further increase to the amount of time we spend in meetings. As reported by TechRadar, Reclaim.ai, an intelligent productivity and time blocking app for Google Calendar, sampled data and held a poll, ultimately finding that workers now spend around 25% more time in meetings than they did before the pandemic.
If you’re suffering from meeting burnout, it might be worth discussing with your boss. Here are a few ways to cut down on the time you spend in meetings.
Before you talk to your boss about getting rid of the of the more extraneous meetings, you’ll need to discover what those meetings are. The best way to do that is to make a list of all the meetings you take part in and analyze the data. Which meetings absolutely need to take place? Which ones are important for others, but not necessary for you to attend? Could some be cut in time or be better solved by an email or message? Once you’ve found the answers to those questions you’ll be better positioned to talk to your boss about the subject.
Now that you’ve discovered which meetings are absolutely vital, how can you make sure your time in those meetings is well spent? By being prepared and having an agenda set ahead of time. This is easy to control if you’re the one in charge of the meeting. You can plan out the meeting and send everyone agenda prior to meeting. But if you’re not the one in charge, you can only suggest to the meeting organizer that agendas go out prior to meeting. A little bit of organization can go a long way.
Finally, even if we’re using technology more and more to hold meetings, that doesn’t mean we’re robots. It’s easy to schedule meetings back to back when you can switch meetings with the click of a button, but you still need mental breaks to refresh and change subjects. Ask your boss for at least 30 minutes in between meetings.
Meetings can be tough, especially when they’re remote. But if you focus on having fewer, but more impactful meetings, you can really supercharge your work productivity.
Do you like remote meetings? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments section below!
We’re still in the early days of 2022, which means it’s totally fine if you’re continuing to figure out what your annual goals are. We wanted to know what you were thinking, so we asked what type of New Year’s resolutions you were considering for the year. Here’s what you had to say. (more…)
Sometimes the job search can feel like you’re looking for your happily ever after, even if you’re stuck editing your resume to get there. We already covered how Disney princesses would tackle the job search, but what about their ever-so-evil villain counterparts? How would Maleficent fair without her magic? Would the Evil Queen land the fairest job in all the land? And what would Ursula do on dry land? (more…)
When you fill out applications online, sometimes going to the trouble of writing a cover letter is the last thing you want to do. But the application requires it, so you write something in a few minutes and send it off.
This isn’t really the best way to write a cover letter. Instead of thinking of a cover letter as an annoying thing you have to do at the end of a job application, think of it as something you always have on hand. A cover letter is a tool that can push your application over the edge! Here are a few things to keep in mind. (more…)
