The modern office isn’t quite a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it’s not always pleasant, either. If your workspace, your co-workers, or your sinking feeling of not getting anything done needs fixing, here are ten possible remedies. More »

Typical job interview questions—like "What are your strengths?"—are relatively easy to answer. The behavioral job interview takes a different approach, requiring, for example, concrete answers exemplifying your strengths. Without the right preparation, they can catch you off guard. More »









Job interview – Employment – Business – Job Search – Interview Advice

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The article suggests that managers spend too much time trying to figure out how to motivate employees—something most workers are perfectly capable of doing themselves. Instead, team leaders need to get out of the way and stop de-motivating employees with mindless policies and poor management strategies.

The authors say people have three main goals at work: 1) to be treated with respect and equity, 2) to take pride in a job well done, and 3) to have good relationships with fellow employees. If even one of these factors are missing, workers are three times as likely to be unhappy at work. Surprisingly, not even a better paycheck will make up for the loss of one of the three biggest motivators.

Inane company policies and procedures often do the most damage to employee motivation, and there’s often little middle managers can do about it:

Satisfying the three goals depends both on organizational policies and on the everyday practices of individual managers. If the company has a solid approach to talent management, a bad manager can undermine it in his unit. On the flip side, smart and empathetic managers can overcome a great deal of corporate mismanagement while creating enthusiasm and commitment within their units. While individual managers can’t control all leadership decisions, they can still have a profound influence on employee motivation.

The most important thing is to provide employees with a sense of security, one in which they do not fear that their jobs will be in jeopardy if their performance is not perfect and one in which layoffs are considered an extreme last resort, not just another option for dealing with hard times.

Check out the article for a list of ways managers can help workers achieve their goals, feel a sense of pride in their work, and build camaraderie with fellow workers. What keeps you motivated at work? Is it the companionship of your colleagues; cold, hard cash; or something else? Share what revs your motivational motor in the comments.

Photo by Mat Honan, who is himself a freelancer.

10. Make your schedule family-friendly

If you’re going to have to entirely ignore your kids and family when you’re working at home, you might as well head into the office. Career columnist and Wall Street Journal writer Alexandra Levit offered up six tips for working parents to spend more time parenting. They were aimed at anyone with a job, but freelancers certainly have an easier time of shifting their schedules back and ahead, taking web meetings instead of traveling for in-person summits, and involving their children in their work. Photo by Amit Chattopadhyay.

9. Do it without quitting your day job

Why freelance on the side instead of full time? The taxes are a lot more simple, the income a bit more stable, and, best of all, your day-to-day job provides you with countless opportunities to meet and greet future clients and referral helpers. That’s assuming your side gig is kosher with your boss, of course, but if you want to test the waters of selling yourself on the freelance market, do it without quitting your job.

8. Use discounts to get paid on time

Becoming your own Accounts Payable department is new to most freelancers, and not very fun. If you run into clients who are hesitant to pay on time, or leave you on the hook waiting for their next order, try offering a discount or repeat business incentives, as suggested by Web Worker Daily. Give clients a 5 percent discount if they pay within, say, 24 or 48 hours of invoice shipment, or whatever you consider prompt—the cash value is almost certainly worth the time you'll spend tracking it down and worrying. If clients make you wait forever for their next order, offer a coupon or discount after receiving payment on a gig, giving them a small bit off if they place another order within a certain time frame. It's easy for small businesses to lose track of freelance people, but they tend to pay attention to dollars and cents. (Original post)

7. Track your work and generate invoices simultaneously

The web is full of freelancers and contractors, and many of them have created better systems for tracking time and sending bills. There are too many free or “freemium” services to try and compile into one list, but, hey, let’s throw out a few. MakeSomeTime is simple, CurdBee handles everything up to the Google Checkout/PayPal payment screen for clients, FreshBooks covers a lot of different aspects of billing, Toggl is a great second-by-second live tracker, and BlinkSale has been generating crisp-looking invoices for years. Any of them are worth checking out, and probably fit the bill better than a gigundo spreadsheet. (Original post)

6. Know what you can write off

If you’re starting to get actual, notable income from your freelance work, the first thing you should do is find someone who knows how to handle the taxes of independent contractors. Gina proved the value of a good accountant in her human versus TurboTax.com showdown, but noted that an experienced filer could probably make due with the tax software solution. The Freelance Switch blog also offers 10 easy-to-miss freelancer deductions, like coffeeshop meetings, unpaid invoices, and gig hunting expenses, that any independent worker would do well to look into. (Original post)

5. Find more work

Cold calling is not fun, and if you think it might be, watch Glengarry Glen Ross again. A good lead comes from knowing where people are looking. FreelanceSwitch has compiled a monster list of freelance job sites, though some of them are going to be hired-gun-type, low-paying grunt work. On the other hand, a 10-minute call to your clients can get you all kinds of results you weren’t even looking for. (Original post)

4. Track your pitches with a custom spreadsheet

Who should you call with a reminder that you’re available, and who needs a quick follow-up on a pitch? Those are questions you should have answers for. Web Worker Daily’s Celine Rogue explains how to set up a spreadsheet with drop-down choosers, collated data, and other tools to become a great pitch, client, and job tracker. Half of life is just showing up, after all, and some extra percentage is knowing exactly where and when to be present with an offer. (Original post)

3. Get into the estimated tax groove

If you don’t cover the tax burden throughout the year of not having an employer to deduct social security, unemployment, and other taxes for you, the month of April will truly be the cruelest. Read how our own self-employed readers set aside money for estimated tax payments four times each year (or in other installments), and read how Gina automates her finances to always have the money on hand, even when her income is very variable.

2. Learn your legalese

Besides having to learn the basics of contracts and work rules, freelancers should try to grab the basics of selling and regulating resalable (and different) stock work, as well as know how to stand their ground on copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons. It is, in short, not enough to simply create cool things—you have to know how to shepherd them through the cloudy worlds of commerce and the web these days. Photo by MikeBlogs. (Original posts: legal resources, stock work).

1. Determine your hourly rate

Not every contract will rely on hourly rates, but you’d best be prepared to offer a price if someone asks. The general advice is to aim slightly higher than you figure you should really charge, because you will always, always aim low when you’re determining the time and administrative costs of getting the job done. If you want a more concrete number to base your rate on, try FreelanceSwitch’s hourly rate calculator, which takes your office and supply costs, experience, and other factors into account. (Original post)

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The post offers three ways to avoid getting blamed for a sub-par group performance when your work was anything but. One key to making your work visible without bragging: use the pronoun “I” when speaking about the work you did and, if you have to present your work, take the lead and become the more active participant during the presentation where your work is highlighted.

Both are ways to take credit where credit is due. Of course, doing so requires some degree of tact, especially if you’ll be working with the same colleague in the future.

Browse the full post for other ways to avoid becoming the fall guy, then tell us your own tips for how you’ve successfully confronted a colleague for below average work in the comments.

Photo by Incase Designs.

If you’re faced with questions concerning your age, religion, disability, family situation, or another off-limits topic, Yahoo says to avoid answering the question and instead “answer the intent behind the question.” When doing so, it’s best to tactfully rephrase the question into a legal one before answering.

To answer the intent behind the question, try to figure out what the interviewer REALLY wants to know. For example, if the interviewer asks if you are a U.S. citizen (which is an illegal question), a smart answer would be, “If you mean to ask if I am legally authorized to work for you, the answer is yes.”

Of course, since the question is an illegal one, you can always be direct and refuse to answer, indicating that you are within your rights to do so—but then, if you're looking for a job you may not want to come off as hostile, especially if it seemed like an honest mistake. The post also explains that you can just go ahead and answer the question, but that "you should only answer the question if you truly are comfortable providing the information."

Browse the post for other advice on how to handle illegal questions, then prepare yourself more fully for that interview by knowing the answers to key questions before your job interview and what questions to ask during it.

Photo by ghindo.

A while back we discussed how to call in sick when you’re not. This time around, CNN offers some advice for those who are in fact sick, but worry that they’ll still appear as though they’re pulling a fast one on their superiors.

Foremost among the tips, CNN recommends speaking to your boss over the telephone, not through more indirect measures like email (even though your low energy level may push you towards the easier email route). When you're sick, odds are in your favor that you'll sound it, which will help to appease any concerns—if your boss is prone to such concerns—that you may be playing hooky. Keeping the call short and direct, and apologizing for not coming in to work are also important in maintaining a professional tone.

The post also says that following this advice is more important on Mondays and Fridays when more employees are prone to calling in sick. Hit the full post for all the details, then let us know how you handle calling in sick in the comments.

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While most of their suggestions aren’t revolutionary (see: printing out your résumé), one of their tips seems like an interesting way to help avoid glaring errors. According to the post, prospective employees should review their résumés from the bottom up. The writer contends that this backwards approach will more fully ensure that you don’t skip over sections, as opposed to reading from the top down, which may lead to skimming more readily than working your way up.

The article also offers some embarrassing résumé gaffes to watch for. Hit up the full link to check them out, then let us know what you do to ensure that your résumé appears spotless in the comments. And remember to ditch these six words from the fold when creating yours.

Alboher notes that bios shouldn’t be short resumes, and should never be outright boring. You’re usually getting your one and only chance to leave an impression or spark an interest in somebody who may need to contact you, or preferably hire you, in the future. She digs novelist Laura Zigman‘s example of a human-sounding bio line that gets the job done:

“Laura Zigman grew up in Newton, Massachusetts (where she felt she never quite fit in), and graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (where she didn’t fit in either) and the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course (where she finally started to feel like she fit in).”

If you had to write two or three lines about yourself for publication, what would they be? What kind of bio lines stick with you, and which drive you nuts? Tell us all about it in the comments.

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Most of the debate centered around whether an interviewer could figure out your current salary by calling your HR department—with plenty of readers on either side of the fence, and a few readers outside the US that noted it's standard practice in some other countries to freely divulge that information. Whether your current job is allowed to give out your salary or not, there were quite a few interesting comments that we felt deserved a little more attention.

Reader William writes in with two ideas for what to say when directly asked for your salary information. The first pads your salary numbers without *really* lying about it:

Whenever I’m asked for my salary, instead of padding my base salary and lying outright, I tell them that I make x salary with regular bonuses for a total of around X. This has the benefit of being potentially true and fairly unverifiable as long as you don’t go overboard.

The next tactic is a great way to push them to pay you a little more:

When the subject of money comes up, I find a way to mention that my performance review is coming up shortly at my current job and so I'll be making 4-6% more in a month. It increases your salary number without really lying, and also indicates to the interviewer that you must be worthwhile if your current job is going to give you a raise—and if you are a hard worker it has the benefit of probably being true.

my secret identity used a great tactic to both answer and side-step the question, and although it might not work for everybody, it’s a useful way to answer the question and also show that you are willing to work with them.

Anyway, they did ask what I would like my salary to be and I replied: “Well, the most I’ve ever received per hour is (blank), but that was in a completely different field. Honestly, I would be good with anything you give me, because I respect your decision.”

kenposan had a simple solution for what to answer when they ask what you want, not what you make:

If I am asked ‘what kind of salary are you looking for?’, I always says “it’s negotiable”. Or I turn the question around and ask what they are offering. That has worked for me.

Ninja007 side-stepped the question entirely by claiming it’s confidential information:

I always say that I am not allowed to disclose that because of a contractual agreement with my former employer. This usually throws them off. However I would not be making as much as I got if I told them what I really made before. You should never ever tell them how much you made before.

Whether you choose to lie, dodge, or answer truthfully, one thing is certain: you shouldn’t go into an interview without doing your research on what salary to ask for, and reading through some simple negotiation tips for getting a better salary.