Surprising Power of Questions

Surprising Power of Questions Do you really learn anything when you are talking? When we start working with a client we use a lot of assessments to understand both how someone approaches the work environment and what motivates them to do what they do. It is very common to discover that many people (and executives in particular) are highly motivated to take charge and talk a lot. Have you ever left a meeting and reflected on how you impressed others with your knowledge and opinion … and then thought:  What were they thinking?…Did I learn anything new? In our work we know, one secret to success in business and life is building trusted advisor relationships with a set of selected folks that will power your career and life success. To build a trusted advisor relationship you need to have the right conversations. Alison Brooks and Leslie John in the Harvard publication below put forward a very strong case we all know intuitively but rarely practice: First you need to be a good questioner, so the other person talks 70% of the time: Questioning helps you learn and build relationships Remember you really don’t learn anything when you are talking People who ask 9 or more questions in every 15 minutes are better liked by listeners Questioning unlocks the wisdom of others If you are a candidate for a job, your questions are more impactful than telling your resume story Have you ever met someone, thought they were a great conversationalist and then realize you know practically nothing about them because you actually talked most of the time? In our work, we often coach people on how to successfully onboard to a new position. One of the great lessons is that a recruit needs, in the first 30 days, to learn what is really going on and demonstrate they really care about other people’s opinions. This means asking a lot of question and suppressing the desire to demonstrate all your experience and knowledge that got you the position. Not easy for the dominant and commanding typical middle manager. We recommend that every aspiring executive have a set of questions they use as a reference to plan a meeting or interaction. Spend more time thinking of questions to ask vs. what you will say. Has anyone ever asked for your help because you are such a great questioner? Want to quick start your question list? Here is a great reference book that should be on every executive’s book shelf. The article that follows is a long read for our current ADD executive culture but I still strongly recommend you slow down read it and reflect: How could I master great questioning as a core leadership strength? The Surprising Power of Questions Alison Wood Brooks, Leslie K. John/Jul 5, 2018 source Much of an executive’s workday is spent asking others for informationâ€"requesting status updates from a team leader, for example, or questioning a counterpart in a tense negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honedâ€"or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive. That’s a missed opportunity. Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards. For some people, questioning comes easily. Their natural inquisitiveness, emotional intelligence, and ability to read people put the ideal question on the tip of their tongue. But most of us don’t ask enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in an optimal way. The good news is that by asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questionersâ€"a virtuous cycle. In this article, we draw on insights from behavioral science research to explore how the way we frame questions and choose to answer our counterparts can influence the outcome of conversations. We offer guidance for choosing the best type, tone, sequence, and framing of questions and for deciding what and how much information to share to reap the most benefit from our interactions, not just for ourselves but for our organizations. DON’T ASK, DON’T GET “Be a good listener,” Dale Carnegie advised in his 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. “Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.” More than 80 years later, most people still fail to heed Carnegie’s sage advice. When one of us (Alison) began studying conversations at Harvard Business School several years ago, she quickly arrived at a foundational insight: People don’t ask enough questions. In fact, among the most common complaints people make after having a conversation, such as an interview, a first date, or a work meeting, is “I wish [s/he] had asked me more questions” and “I can’t believe [s/he] didn’t ask me any questions.” Why do so many of us hold back? There are many reasons. People may be egocentricâ€"eager to impress others with their own thoughts, stories, and ideas (and not even think to ask questions). Perhaps they are apatheticâ€"they don’t care enough to ask, or they anticipate being bored by the answers they’d hear. They may be overconfident in their own knowledge and think they already know the answers (which sometimes they do, but usually not). Or perhaps they worry that they’ll ask the wrong question and be viewed as rude or incompetent. But the biggest inhibitor, in our opinion, is that most people just don’t understand how beneficial good questioning can be. If they did, they would end far fewer sentences with a periodâ€"and more with a question mark. Dating back to the 1970s, research suggests that people have conversations to accomplish some combination of two major goals: information exchange (learning) and impression management (liking). Recent research shows that asking questions achieves both. Alison and Harvard colleagues Karen Huang, Michael Yeomans, Julia Minson, and Francesca Gino scrutinized thousands of natural conversations among participants who were getting to know each other, either in online chats or on in-person speed dates. The researchers told some people to ask many questions (at least nine in 15 minutes) and others to ask very few (no more than four in 15 minutes). In the online chats, the people who were randomly assigned to ask many questions were better liked by their conversation partners and learned more about their partners’ interests. For example, when quizzed about their partners’ preferences for activities such as reading, cooking, and exercising, high question askers were more likely to be able to guess correctly. Among the speed daters, people were more willing to go on a second date with partners who asked more questions. In fact, asking just one more question on each date meant that participants persuaded one additional person (over the course of 20 dates) to go out with them again. Asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. Questions are such powerful tools that they can be beneficialâ€"perhaps particularly soâ€"in circumstances when question asking goes against social norms. For instance, prevailing norms tell us that job candidates are expected to answer questions during interviews. But research by Dan Cable, at the London Business School, and Virginia Kay, at the University of North Carolina, suggests that most people excessively self-promote during job interviews. And when interviewees focus on selling themselves, they are likely to forget to ask questionsâ€"about the interviewer, the organization, the workâ€"that would make the interviewer feel more engaged and more apt to view the candidate favorably and could help the candidate predict whether the job would provide satisfying work. For job candidates, asking questions such as “What am I not asking you that I should?” can signal competence, build rapport, and unlock key pieces of information about the position. Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influenceâ€"or had influencedâ€"the level of amity between the conversationalists. THE NEW SOCRATIC METHOD The first step in becoming a better questioner is simply to ask more questions. Of course, the sheer number of questions is not the only factor that influences the quality of a conversation: The type, tone, sequence, and framing also matter. In our teaching at Harvard Business School, we run an exercise in which we instruct pairs of students to have a conversation. Some students are told to ask as few questions as possible, and some are instructed to ask as many as possible. Among the low-low pairs (both students ask a minimum of questions), participants generally report that the experience is a bit like children engaging in parallel play: They exchange statements but struggle to initiate an interactive, enjoyable, or productive dialogue. The high-high pairs find that too many questions can also create a stilted dynamic. However, the high-low pairs’ experiences are mixed. Sometimes the question asker learns a lot about her partner, the answerer feels heard, and both come away feeling profoundly closer. Other times, one of the participants may feel uncomfortable in his role or unsure about how much to share, and the conversation can feel like an interrogation. Our research suggests several approaches that can enhance the power and efficacy of queries. The best approach for a given situation depends on the goals of the conversationalistsâ€"specifically, whether the discussion is cooperative (for example, the duo is trying to build a relationship or accomplish a task together) or competitive (the parties seek to uncover sensitive information from each other or serve their own interests), or some combination of both. Consider the following tactics. FAVOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS. Not all questions are created equal. Alison’s research, using human coding and machine learning, revealed four types of questions: introductory questions (“How are you?”), mirror questions (“I’m fine. How are you?”), full-switch questions (ones that change the topic entirely), and follow-up questions (ones that solicit more information). Although each type is abundant in natural conversation, follow-up questions seem to have special power. They signal to your conversation partner that you are listening, care, and want to know more. People interacting with a partner who asks lots of follow-up questions tend to feel respected and heard. An unexpected benefit of follow-up questions is that they don’t require much thought or preparationâ€"indeed, they seem to come naturally to interlocutors. In Alison’s studies, the people who were told to ask more questions used more follow-up questions than any other type without being instructed to do so. KNOW WHEN TO KEEP QUESTIONS OPEN-ENDED. No one likes to feel interrogatedâ€"and some types of questions can force answerers into a yes-or-no corner. Open-ended questions can counteract that effect and thus can be particularly useful in uncovering information or learning something new. Indeed, they are wellsprings of innovationâ€"which is often the result of finding the hidden, unexpected answer that no one has thought of before. A wealth of research in survey design has shown the dangers of narrowing respondents’ options. For example, “closed” questions can introduce bias and manipulation. In one study, in which parents were asked what they deemed “the most important thing for children to prepare them in life,” about 60% of them chose “to think for themselves” from a list of response options. However, when the same question was asked in an open-ended format, only about 5% of parents spontaneously came up with an answer along those lines. Of course, open-ended questions aren’t always optimal. For example, if you are in a tense negotiation or are dealing with people who tend to keep their cards close to their chest, open-ended questions can leave too much wiggle room, inviting them to dodge or lie by omission. In such situations, closed questions work better, especially if they are framed correctly. For example, research by Julia Minson, the University of Utah’s Eric VanEpps, Georgetown’s Jeremy Yip, and Wharton’s Maurice Schweitzer indicates that people are less likely to lie if questioners make pessimistic assumptions (“This business will need some new equipment soon, correct?”) rather than optimistic ones (“The equipment is in good working order, right?”). Sometimes the information you wish to ascertain is so sensitive that direct questions won’t work, no matter how thoughtfully they are framed. In these situations, a survey tactic can aid discovery. In research Leslie conducted with Alessandro Acquisti and George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University, she found that people were more forthcoming when requests for sensitive information were couched within another taskâ€"in the study’s case, rating the ethicality of antisocial behaviors such as cheating on one’s tax return or letting a drunk friend drive home. Participants were asked to rate the ethicality using one scale if they had engaged in a particular behavior and another scale if they hadn’tâ€"thus revealing which antisocial acts they themselves had engaged in. Although this tactic may sometimes prove useful at an organizational levelâ€"we can imagine that managers might administer a survey rather than ask workers directly about sensitive information such as salary exp ectationsâ€"we counsel restraint in using it. If people feel that you are trying to trick them into revealing something, they may lose trust in you, decreasing the likelihood that they’ll share information in the future and potentially eroding workplace relationships. GET THE SEQUENCE RIGHT. The optimal order of your questions depends on the circumstances. During tense encounters, asking tough questions first, even if it feels socially awkward to do so, can make your conversational partner more willing to open up. Leslie and her coauthors found that people are more willing to reveal sensitive information when questions are asked in a decreasing order of intrusiveness. When a question asker begins with a highly sensitive questionâ€"such as “Have you ever had a fantasy of doing something terrible to someone?”â€"subsequent questions, such as “Have you ever called in sick to work when you were perfectly healthy?” feel, by comparison, less intrusive, and thus we tend to be more forthcoming. Of course, if the first question is?too?sensitive, you run the risk of offending your counterpart. So it’s a delicate balance, to be sure. If the goal is to build relationships, the opposite approachâ€"opening with less sensitive questions and escalating slowlyâ€"seems to be most effective. In a classic set of studies (the results of which went viral following a write-up in the “Modern Love” column of the New York Times), psychologist Arthur Aron recruited strangers to come to the lab, paired them up, and gave them a list of questions. They were told to work their way through the list, starting with relatively shallow inquiries and progressing to more self-revelatory ones, such as “What is your biggest regret?” Pairs in the control group were asked simply to interact with each other. The pairs who followed the prescribed structure liked each other more than the control pairs. This effect is so strong that it has been formalized in a task called “the relationship closeness induction,” a tool used by researchers to build a sense of connection among experiment participants. Asking tough questions first can make people more willing to open up. Good interlocutors also understand that questions asked previously in a conversation can influence future queries. For example, Norbert Schwarz, of the University of Southern California, and his coauthors found that when the question “How satisfied are you with your life?” is followed by the question “How satisfied are you with your marriage?” the answers were highly correlated: Respondents who reported being satisfied with their life also said they were satisfied with their marriage. When asked the questions in this order, people implicitly interpreted that life satisfaction “ought to be” closely tied to marriage. However, when the same questions were asked in the opposite order, the answers were less closely correlated. USE THE RIGHT TONE. People are more forthcoming when you ask questions in a casual way, rather than in a buttoned-up, official tone. In one of Leslie’s studies, participants were posed a series of sensitive questions in an online survey. For one group of participants, the website’s user interface looked fun and frivolous; for another group, the site looked official. (The control group was presented with a neutral-looking site.) Participants were about twice as likely to reveal sensitive information on the casual-looking site than on the others. People also tend to be more forthcoming when given an escape hatch or “out” in a conversation. For example, if they are told that they can change their answers at any point, they tend to open up moreâ€"even though they rarely end up making changes. This might explain why teams and groups find brainstorming sessions so productive. In a whiteboard setting, where anything can be erased and judgment is suspended, people are more likely to answer questions honestly and say things they otherwise might not. Of course, there will be times when an off-the-cuff approach is inappropriate. But in general, an overly formal tone is likely to inhibit people’s willingness to share information. PAY ATTENTION TO GROUP DYNAMICS. Conversational dynamics can change profoundly depending on whether you’re chatting one-on-one with someone or talking in a group. Not only is the willingness to answer questions affected simply by the presence of others, but members of a group tend to follow one another’s lead. In one set of studies, Leslie and her coauthors asked participants a series of sensitive questions, including ones about finances (“Have you ever bounced a check?”) and sex (“While an adult, have you ever felt sexual desire for a minor?”). Participants were told either that most others in the study were willing to reveal stigmatizing answers or that they were unwilling to do so. Participants who were told that others had been forthcoming were 27% likelier to reveal sensitive answers than those who were told that others had been reticent. In a meeting or group setting, it takes only a few closed-off people for questions to lose their probing power. The opposite is true, too. As soon as one person st arts to open up, the rest of the group is likely to follow suit. Group dynamics can also affect how a question asker is perceived. Alison’s research reveals that participants in a conversation enjoy being asked questions and tend to like the people asking questions more than those who answer them. But when third-party observers watch the same conversation unfold, they prefer the person who answers questions. This makes sense: People who mostly ask questions tend to disclose very little about themselves or their thoughts. To those listening to a conversation, question askers may come across as defensive, evasive, or invisible, while those answering seem more fascinating, present, or memorable. THE BEST RESPONSE A conversation is a dance that requires partners to be in syncâ€"it’s a mutual push-and-pull that unfolds over time. Just as the way we ask questions can facilitate trust and the sharing of informationâ€"so, too, can the way we answer them. Answering questions requires making a choice about where to fall on a continuum between privacy and transparency. Should we answer the question? If we answer, how forthcoming should we be? What should we do when asked a question that, if answered truthfully, might reveal a less-than-glamorous fact or put us in a disadvantaged strategic position? Each end of the spectrumâ€"fully opaque and fully transparentâ€"has benefits and pitfalls. Keeping information private can make us feel free to experiment and learn. In negotiations, withholding sensitive information (such as the fact that your alternatives are weak) can help you secure better outcomes. At the same time, transparency is an essential part of forging meaningful connections. Even in a negotiation context, transparency can lead to value-creating deals; by sharing information, participants can identify elements that are relatively unimportant to one party but important to the otherâ€"the foundation of a win-win outcome. And keeping secrets has costs. Research by Julie Lane and Daniel Wegner, of the University of Virginia, suggests that concealing secrets during social interactions leads to the intrusive recurrence of secret thoughts, while research by Columbia’s Michael Slepian, Jinseok Chun, and Malia Mason shows that keeping secretsâ€"even outside of social interactionsâ€"depletes us cognitively, interferes with our ability to concentrate and remember things, and even harms long-term health and well-being. In an organizational context, people too often err on the side of privacyâ€"and underappreciate the benefits of transparency. How often do we realize that we could have truly bonded with a colleague only after he or she has moved on to a new company? Why are better deals often uncovered after the ink has dried, the tension has broken, and negotiators begin to chat freely? To maximize the benefits of answering questionsâ€"and minimize the risksâ€"it’s important to decide before a conversation begins what information you want to share and what you want to keep private. DECIDING WHAT TO SHARE. There is no rule of thumb for how muchâ€"or what typeâ€"of information you should disclose. Indeed, transparency is such a powerful bonding agent that sometimes it doesn’t matter what is revealedâ€"even information that reflects poorly on us can draw our conversational partners closer. In research Leslie conducted with HBS collaborators Kate Barasz and Michael Norton, she found that most people assume that it would be less damaging to refuse to answer a question that would reveal negative informationâ€"for example, “Have you ever been reprimanded at work?”â€"than to answer affirmatively. But this intuition is wrong. When they asked people to take the perspective of a recruiter and choose between two candidates (equivalent except for how they responded to this question), nearly 90% preferred the candidate who “came clean” and answered the question. Before a conversation takes place, think carefully about whether refusing to answer tough questions would do more harm than good . DECIDING WHAT TO KEEP PRIVATE. Of course, at times you and your organization would be better served by keeping your cards close to your chest. In our negotiation classes, we teach strategies for handling hard questions without lying. Dodging, or answering a question you?wish?you had been asked, can be effective not only in helping you protect information you’d rather keep private but also in building a good rapport with your conversational partner, especially if you speak eloquently. In a study led by Todd Rogers, of Harvard’s Kennedy School, participants were shown clips of political candidates responding to questions by either answering them or dodging them. Eloquent dodgers were liked more than ineloquent answerers, but only when their dodges went undetected. Another effective strategy is deflecting, or answering a probing question with another question or a joke. Answerers can use this approach to lead the conversation in a different direction. CONCLUSION “Question everything,” Albert Einstein famously said. Personal creativity and organizational innovation rely on a willingness to seek out novel information. Questions and thoughtful answers foster smoother and more-effective interactions, they strengthen rapport and trust, and lead groups toward discovery. All this we have documented in our research. But we believe questions and answers have a power that goes far beyond matters of performance. The wellspring of all questions is wonder and curiosity and a capacity for delight. We pose and respond to queries in the belief that the magic of a conversation will produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Sustained personal engagement and motivationâ€"in our lives as well as our workâ€"require that we are always mindful of the transformative joy of asking and answering questions. A version of this article appeared in the?Mayâ€"June 2018?issue (pp.60â€"67) of?Harvard Business Review.

Stages in the Resume Writing Process

Stages in the Resume Writing ProcessThe following represents stages in the resume writing process that will help to ensure a quality document. These are different than the standard resume and cover letter, which usually contains introductory information and gives you an overview of your career and past experiences. It is not recommended that you include these elements in your resume.The first stage in the resume writing process is the introduction, which includes information about yourself. It can be a resume cover letter or just a brief overview of your qualifications and objectives. Your resume should reflect this. In fact, it is a bad idea to use the resume template provided by your company as this is the very thing that they are reviewing.The next step is to define your skills and experience in your resume. Start with bullet points or short paragraphs and summarize your work experience or education. Then summarize what you have accomplished so far, listing your accomplishments an d what you wish to accomplish in the future. These should be focused on key areas that are relevant to the position you are applying for.Next, you need to provide a key objective that describes why you are looking for the position. It should be specific and a good candidate should use it when applying for the position. The reason may be a particular skill that you have that is in demand or some other reason. You want to make sure that your potential employer can see what you are looking for. The goal is to ensure that the reader can clearly see what you are trying to achieve.The next two stages are all about how you have organized your work history. These are chronological in nature and should be separated by at least two years. You should also start at the top of the page and work your way down. Most likely, your employer will not have space to include additional information after the first year.This is where you will provide details about your current job. Whether you have been em ployed at the same place for a long time or just recently, you need to provide details about the position. Make sure you identify yourself on the resume and cover letter. Next, give details about your current supervisor and his/her contact information.Highlights and skills are the next areas. You can include brief quotes from your education or work history to give a summary of what you have done and what you are seeking. Some people may prefer to include a 'for hire' statement. Others do not and wish to emphasize more on what they are seeking.You should be able to understand what is included in the resume and what is not. It is important to consider the length of the document, as well as the general look and feel of the cover letter. Remember that in the industry, resumes are frequently reviewed as well as the letter that accompanies it.

Denmarks best workplaces - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Denmarks best workplaces - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog I spent today at a conference that accompanies the announcement of Denmarks best workplaces, arranged by the greatplacetowork institute of Denmark. This year the winner is Kjaer group from my hometown Svendborg who sell cars to developing countries. Their motto is Love cars, love people, love life. You gotta love that. The day was fairly interesting, though I have to admit that once you get used to the efficiency, spirit and energy of open space meetings, more traditional conferences such as this one seem a waste of time. I did manage to get in some good conversations with other participants, though tellingsly enough, these all happened in the breaks. The keynote speaker was Robert Levering of the original great place to work institute. He set an international context by telling some stories from other such events in the rest of the worlds. Nice to know that the focus on creating good work places is growing all over the world. He also announced that the institute will focus more on the how of good workplaces; so far its only been about measuring the current status. The next couple of events were moslty forgettable with a few interesting highlights. This includes the panel debates; my life is too short for panel debates, though a good side effect seems to be, that while Im thoruoghly bored by whats being said I seem to get a lot of good ideas. The day ended with Peter Aalbaek of Zentropa, who has some very interesting ideas about how to run a company. Among other things he: * Once walked into the accounting department with a straight face and no pants (or underwear) on and asked for some invoice * Demands that people work menial and gruelling tasks for six months for free, before hiring them for real * Insists that contracts for employees are merely a sign that you expect trouble * Claims that it is the job of the workplace to save employees from their otherwise meaningless and boring existence. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Evolutionary Job Search - Survival of the Fittest - CareerAlley

Evolutionary Job Search - Survival of the Fittest - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. If youve been working for 10 or more years, no doubt youve seen the dramatic change in the approach to job search. It wasnt all that long ago when looking for a job meant researching companies at the library (remember those?), printing and mailing resumes, filling out applications at company HR departments, calling your contacts, and going door to door to visit recruiters. While we still do some of these things in our job search (except for the library bit), the primary method for job search has become the Internet. But even Internet job search has changed dramatically over the last 10 years. Using job search sites (like Monster.com and HotJobs.com) was the first method of Internet job search, but this quickly evolved to dynamic job search boards (like SimplyHired and Indeed.com), online company job sites, automated email job match notifications and, of course, online networking (namely, LinkedIn). Of course the human aspect still exists (in the form of interviews), but you must first clear the many online hurdles before the interview process begins. Likewise, the method of accessing the Internet has changed over the last 5 years from hardwired desktops to wireless laptops and finally our smartphones. If you are 20 something, none of this is news or a big deal; it is just the way things are done. However, if you are over 30 (yes, the infamous over 30 crowd), youve had to adjust your job search methods to the new normal. But if youve been happily employed at the same company for the last 10 year s (or more) and now must look for a new job, the challenge can be daunting. Darwins survival of the fittest certainly applies to job search. Credentials and experience are obviously important, but if you dont have the right tools, the likelihood of success decreases dramatically. Internet Job Search Tools of the Trade: The Internet Unless you live in the Outback or on some desert island, I am sure you have access (so that is the good news). The challenge is that you need several ways to connect to the Internet: Broadband The term is generally used to describe high speed/bandwidth access to the Internet. This is typically your cable connection at home or work (hardwired or wireless). This is most likely your primary means of accessing the Internet and where most of your offline (resumes, etc.) and online job search activities will occur. If you are still using DSL (or by some freak of nature, dial-up), its time to consider upgrading your Internet access. Comparison sites such as Broadband Genie often include useful buyers guides explaining the best deals. Mobile This term refers to your smartphone (3G, 4G, LTE or WiFi). Your smartphone or tablet is generally your secondary means of accessing the Internet. Speed/bandwidth are generally slower (unless on WiFi) and ease of use (typing thank you letters, updating your resume, emailing your resume, responding to job openings, etc.) can be challenging (but can be done!). However, a smartphone/connected tablet will increase your chances of landing your dream job (so if you dont have one, you should consider getting one) and there are many alternatives for reasonable data plans. Equipment, Software and Applications Resumes Regardless of whether you are a PC or Mac fan, MS Word is very much the standard for submission. Versions of the software exist for both platforms (there is a cost depending on the package). If you dont want to spend the money, there are free alternatives. Two alternatives: Google Docs OpenOffice Desktop / Laptop Your primary job search toolkit factory and your primary access to the Internet. There are some basic, reasonably priced PCs for those who are on a tight budget. Email It is a good practice to have an email address that is used primarily for job search. Pick a user name that includes some or all of your name (or a user name that will not embarrass you!). Free email accounts are available via Googles gmail, Yahoo! Mail or HotMail. Smartphone There are countless alternatives in the smartphone market. Android phones or Apples IOS iPhone are the most popular phones and deals can be found for inexpensive smartphones with your carrier. Whatever your preference, a data plan is a necessity to ensure road warrior during your job search. Smartphone Applications The list of available smartphone apps to help with your job search is too long to list here. Checkout the following articles: 300+ Android Job Search Apps Top 25 Must-Have iPhone Apps for Your Job Search 5 Ways to Leverage the Internet in Your Job Search About the author Joe Linford writes for Broadband Genie, the online comparison site for the best broadband deals. This is a Guest post. Good luck in your search. We are always eager to hear from our readers. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions regarding CareerAlley content. Good luck in your search,Joey what where job title, keywords or company city, state or zip jobs by

Interview Follow up for Maximum Success

Interview Follow up for Maximum Success You have a killer resume and you feel like you aced the interview. If you want to maximize the positive impression that you leave following an interview, be sure to send a thank you note to the interviewer. Keep the interviewer thinking about you With so many people applying for every job, you need to set yourself apart from the crowd even after the interview is finished. This is often even more important than the initial impression because the interviewer is looking to actually hire or do second interviews at this point. You need them to think about you in positive terms for this to happen, and when they receive your thank you letter after the interview, you are showing them that you were grateful for the opportunity to talk with them, as well as are serious about the job. Exhibit  class and ambition Face it, the competition is steep, but as every company is now finding out, its not all about the skills. Many people with matching skills are going to apply for the same jobs. Just because they have the skills to do the actual job doesnt necessarily make them a good fit for working well with a team in a corporate setting. A simple thank you note for the interviewers time and consideration shows that you are not only ambitious, but that you also have the class to recognize social  protocols. This attribute can be  invaluable  in a business setting and is not something that even the best resume communicates. Show courtesy Courtesy is very often lacking in the workplace. Always remember that while you are applying for a job in a company, the person doing the hiring is is also human. Showing them courtesy is a great way to generate a positive attitude on the part of that person. More importantly, if you flubbed part of the interview, it also gives the interviewer a reason to overlook the mistake and give you a chance.   If you are courteous before being hired, then chances are you will be a pleasant person to work with. Rememberbeing polite never hurt anyone!

The Pitfall of Custom Resume Writing Help

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