Vote Against Talking Politics in the Workplace

Vote Against Talking Politics in the WorkplaceVote Against Talking Politics in the WorkplaceMore often than not, talking politics in the workplace doesnt end with high-fives and likes. Its far more likely to generate ill will and productivity problems.Sure, you have a right to your own opinion, and free speech is protected by the First Amendment. But if youre interviewing for a new job or working in an office, its not the same as debating political issues with neighbors or sharing your views about a politicians tweet with like-minded friends online.According to a survey by Robert Half, 22 percent of more than 1,000 workers polled said theyd gotten into a heated discussion with a coworker during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Fifteen percent of respondents even reported that their productivity had suffered as a result of talking politics at work.These discussions can fray relationships with colleagues. In fact, a 2017 survey about work and well-being by the American Psychologica l Association found that 24 percent of workers avoid coworkers because of their political views.Bottom line Dont mix work (or your job search) with button-pushing politics. Following are some tips on how to deal with political talk. First, well address job landseekers, then employees.Advice for job seekers on all things politicalIf youre looking for a job in todays polarized climate, be mindful of politics even before your interview. Unless youre applying for a job with a politician or an organization with a political affiliation, theres no need to espouse your viewpoints on candidates, campaigns or current affairs. Consider this adviceConduct a digital search of your name. Type your name into a search engine using quotation marks, such as John Smith. Scroll through at least the first three pages of results. If you find anything online that you wouldnt want a hiring manager to see, including potentially controversial or off-putting political statements youve made, do your best to re move them.Consider going private. Do you ever use social media as a place to vent about political matters? You might consider locking down your accounts. With Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, you can set your profile to private, where only your approved friends can see your posts.Keep your resume and cover letter apolitical. A typo on a resume is a common red flag. Heres another one Providing too much personal information. Many jobs seekers make the mistake of oversharing. Employers dont need to know about your marital status, religion, hobbies, pet peeves - or your political persuasion. Dont list political affiliations on your resume or share political viewpoints in your cover letter, unless it directly relates to a job youve held or the one youre seeking.Maintain a politics-free zone during your interview. If youre preparing for a job interview and planning to bring up current news stories as a good way to break the ice, dont. Hot political issues in the news are a taboo subject best avoided. Even if you get the strong sense that youre in line with the hiring managers political persuasions, never play political pundit.SEARCH OUR OPEN JOBSAdvice for employees regarding politicsOnce youre in the workplace, you might find political banter is commonplace. But there are downsides to joining in. The conversations can be emotionally charged and divisive. And they can hinder collaboration.So, what are the best ways to manage political conversations at work? Here are four tipsDont debate or lecture on political topics. Obviously, the safest bet is to refrain from talking politics at all. But if you feel you must engage in some political chatter, because everyone in the room is doing it, try to approach it in a lighthearted manner. Limit yourself to general comments or try to change the subject. That reminds me of an episode of House of Cards, could help you move on to discussing favorite TV shows instead of real-life politics.Stand your ground. Dont feel pressured i nto offering your views. You can always politely excuse yourself by saying with a smile, Wow, Im staying out of this one If a group discussion becomes confrontational, reiterate your preference to keep political chit-chat to a minimum while at the office. Sorry, talking politics in the workplace just isnt my thing. Lets get back to work-related matters.Stay focused on your work projects. Pay attention to what you need to accomplish. Dont allow yourself to get sidetracked by others who are obsessed with monitoring the latest political news cycle. If a thorny issue irrelevant to the work at hand comes up in the lunch room or at the water cooler, take it as a cue to head back to your desk or put on headphones.Watch whats said after work, too. Remember that what you say to colleagues outside of work may cause them to form opinions of you. Exercise the same judgment of treading lightly around current events if you want to keep happy hour happy. The same advice applies when exchanging ema il and text messages with coworkers.What happens if you do talk about politics in the workplace and discover youve offended someone? The best etiquette is to apologize quickly and sincerely for any off-putting comments that made someone else uncomfortable.Final word? If you find yourself heading down the path to talking politics in the workplace, make a sharp detour and save your energy.Subscribe to the newsletter to get articles and resources to help you land a new job, succeed in your career, and build and manage a winning team - all sent directly to your inbox.

Getting The Job in Tough Times

Getting The Job in Tough TimesGetting The Job in Tough TimesGetting The Job in Tough TimesLets admit it in these tough times, there are more job applicants than ever before. Today, Im going to share with you four solid tips on how you can stand out from the crowd and win the job away from the competition.To mix it up, Im going in reverse chronological orderFollowing upThe vorstellungsgesprchThe ResumeMaximizing ApplicationsFollowing upTheres a professional applying for a senior-level position here at Ladders right now who has reminded me of the Three Ps of Following Up persistent, polite, and perk up their ears.This candidate drops me an email weekly. She doesnt demand to know when we are making a decision, but just sends an email every week to remind me she is there, and by implication, she is interested. And when she emails me, she always includes a little nugget of information that she has picked up that week something about my industry, or an interesting comparison to abedrngnis her company, or a trend that shes noticed that might impact us.So my recommendations for following up after the interview?Follow up weekly, by phone or by email. But just once per week, and if you dont get a response after five weeks, well, then, the opportunity probably isnt for you.Be polite in your persistence. Theres no need to push for deadlines or decision making. But just let them know youre still interested believe it or not, this will really set you apart. A simple voice mail that says, Hi Ms. Johannsen, this is Sharon, and Im just calling to follow up on our meeting of three weeks ago. As you know, I think this is a really great opportunity for me to contribute to your company, and I will look forward to hearing back from youAnd its even better if you drop in a nugget of info that shows you are a good, proactive employee-to-be.My favorite form of job seeking judo is for you to use the fact that youre job hunting to your advantage. Youre job hunting, theyre not. But as I c an tell you from being the CEO of Ladders, people are very, very interested in the inside scoop on whos hiring and why.So send an email that says Did you know that Competitor X is hiring a new VP focused on direct marketing? I thought that was a pretty interesting indication of where they are headed in this market. Take the fact that youre job hunting and use it to your advantage.The InterviewThe interview is not a chance to go in and have a nice fireside chat with the interviewer over a Diet Coke. Realize it for what it is a sales call. What youre selling is your ability to do the job better than anybody else.So do me a favor. Your next interview, go in, make the polite small talk, and then get right to the point What are the three key things you are hoping to have the part in this position achieve? Even better, ask that question over the phone before you go in for the interview and prepare ahead of time.And then spend your time in the interview showing them that you are the right person to achieve those three key things. Stay focused, no matter what. If your interviewer keeps veering off into your hobbies, or regaling you with tales of the internal politics on their most recent project, please keep bringing the conversation back to those three key things.This is called staying on message. When you watch politicians or movie stars on TV, have you ever noticed they answer a different question from the one asked? It may be frustrating as a viewer, it may be a different answer than the interviewer was expecting, but theres a reason for doing it it is so darn effective.You need each of your interviewers to walk out of that interview room with a very clear sense of how you, the candidate, are going to make the company better in this rough, rough year. Thinking that you are a nice guy or gal simply isnt enough in this environment you need to make sure they have a solid understanding of how you will contribute.So find out the three key factors of success, and connec t your work history and accomplishments to them in the interviewers mind.(For extra credit, the very advanced version of this strategy is to admit that you cant do one of the three things, but that your track record is very clear on your ability to hire and manage the people who can do things that you can not. This shows flexibility and growth potential, which every company is implicitly looking for in these very, very turbulent times. So it might sound like While I havent personally led a.NET application team, I have hired and developed programmers in many, many computer languages everything from COBOL to Cold Fusion to C++. I think the important thing youre looking for isnt the ability to lead a team in any particular language, but what you really want is the capability to lead teams in the ever-changing languages that arise in computer science. So while youre granting the point that you cant do one of the three things, youre actually pointing out that you can do something even m ore complex and useful. This is a deadly effective strategy.)The ResumeHey, weve all seen a ton of commercials on the tube, right? So why do we have an advertising department? Why dont we just shoot the TV commercials ourselves? Well, we leave that to the professionals.And what is a resume? A lot of people view it as a chance to list all the true facts about their work history. But that reminds me of the old joke about HPs very straightforward engineering culture if they had invented sushi they would have named it cold, raw dead fish on rice wrapped in seaweed. Now, thats true, but it is hardly appetizing ??Similarly, your resume is advertising copy. A great resume advertises your accomplishments in a way that makes it clear what youve contributed in the past, and by implication, what you are capable of doing in the future.So its not Managed a group of 40 professionals or Responsible for a $77 mm budget. Those lines are kind of reminiscent of the old HP way true, but not particula rly appetizing. (And before all you HPers write in, let me just say I am very happy with both the performance and the marketing of the modern HP organization)The right way is to point out your capabilities Re-organized department, cutting 15 positions and adding 10 new sales staff to increase profitability by $7 mm (17%) or Created successful task force that identified 103 efficiency opportunities and implemented 92% of them within 6 months, saving $13 mm in annual costs.But its not just what you put in, its what you leave out that really makes a resume. As Jerry Garcia said, its not the notes, its the holes between the notes that make the music.Now I would be crazy to suppose I could teach you how to be a great resume writer in just one newsletter. We have a whole staff of advertising copy writers here at Ladders that are specialized in writing resumes for professionals like you. Use them.Maximizing ApplicationsThe best way for you to maximize the effectiveness of your job applicat ions is to minimize the number of applications you make. Or more succinctly apply for the right jobs, and only the right jobs, for you.Cmon, what would you do if that bundle of joy called your teenager came to you and said Mom, Dad, Im going to apply to 100 colleges this fall?You would say, rightly, Honey, youre just spreading yourself too thin. Why dont you focus on six, or a dozen. At absolute most 20. That way youll be able to apply the time and effort you need to making those applications really great.Well, folks, thats how I feel when I hear people tell me they are applying to several hundred jobs per month For example, last week, one of your fellow subscribers clicked on 799 jobs on Ladders Theres just no way you can put your best foot forward and have the energy and time to follow up with that many jobs.Youre just frustrating yourself.So even though I know its tempting and easy, dont waste your time and your attention on applying to hundreds of jobs. Thats a fools errand, and , unfortunately given this economy, what many of the unsophisticated job seekers are doing. Only apply for the jobs that truly make sense for you. That way youll leave yourself the extra time to really do the important work I outlined above doing great follow up, studying in advance for the interview, and crafting an awesome resume.By the way, one of the advantages of our system here at Ladders is its exclusivity. While job postings on the major job boards get literallyhundreds of applications, the typical job posting here at Ladders receives just 21. The screening that we do charging a cover charge, reviewing every single resume, asking people to apply for jobs primarily in their functional Ladder (sales, marketing, operations, technology, HR, law, finance, etc.) really does help cut down on the noise for the recruiter or hiring manager. And that means you have a much, much better chance of standing out.OK, folks, thats what Ive learned about the job hunt in my decade in this bus iness, and what I wanted to share with you this Monday morning.Good luck with the search this week, and please make your luck by following these tips to get the most of your scarce job hunting time.I am rooting for you

Serena Williams Winning a Grand Slam while pregnant wasnt easy

Serena Williams Winning a Grand Slam while pregnant welchesnt easySerena Williams Winning a Grand Slam while pregnant wasnt easySerena Williams is the no. 1 ranked female tennis player and probably the worlds best living athlete.And she won herbei 23rd Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open while pregnant.We didnt know that before. At a Vancouver TED Conference on Tuesday, Williams told the audienceshe did not know she was pregnant until two days before the turnament. When she found out, she became nervous. Williams said she wasnt sure what to do. Can I play? I know its very dangerous in the first 12 weeks or so, so I had a lot of questions.But she was determined to not let the worry distract her from trying to win the tournament. She told no one.It wasnt very easy. You hear all these stories about people when theyre pregnant - they get sick, they get really tired, really stressed out I had to really take all that energy and put it in a paper bag, so to say, and throw it aw ay, Williamssaid.Even the most powerful woman in sports recognizes the pressures of working while pregnant. But to win a championship, she knew she had to persist, no matter what condition she was in.Every tournament where I show up, Im expected to win. If I dont win, its actually bigger news.Howto accommodate pregnant workersBy speaking publicly about the difficultiesof working while pregnant, Williams is raising awareness aboutan experience that is not being openly discussed enough pregnancy can be hard.82%of working womenwill continue to work through their pregnancy up until one month of the birth, but the nausea and common side effects of pregnancy too often getminimized. No one wants to come off as less productive to their employers. But that means not asking your boss for help when you most need it.Miscarriages are even harder to understand for manyPregnant workers are minimized by our society thatdoesnt respect the experience as difficult. Women often dont even tell their fri ends, let alone their co-workers, about their early pregnancies out of fear that to do so, may jinx themselvesif the pregnancy becomes a miscarriage.And miscarriages are even less understood at work than pregnancy, surveys have shown while miscarriages are a huge loss and require grieving, many people dont understand how hard they are, or may be at a loss for what to say.Andrew Horn explained why he and his famous partner Miki Agrawal chose to go against this advice and tell people when she was only four weeks into her pregnancy to reduce the shame around the possibility of a miscarriage.Horn said that our culture doesnt allow for an open dialogue around miscarriage and it leads to isolation and a unfair shame being placed on women.Pregnancy is physically difficultOther women are going forward about their experiences. Avra Siegel, the Director of Public Policy and Strategic Partnerships at Care.com., decided to reveal the brutal truth about being a pregnant worker for Fortune. Spoil er its pretty awful.She explained how she would arrange meetings around her daily nausea during her pregnancy. Other physical effects of pregnancy back pain, swollen feet, and a general tiredness. Coworkers may not understand how physically taxing it can be, especially if the mother-to-be seems highly active or is trying to hide the impact. (Of course, for some women, pregnancy is a cinch - it depends on the woman and her health.)How to help pregnant employees work betterSiegel suggested that easy, low-cost fixes to workplaces could include flexible work arrangements such as teleworking, flexible start-stop times, and even the new rage of nap-rooms.Above all, Siegelsaid maintaining open communication with her higher-ups fostered a culture of trust that could help women beyond her each and every time you tell your manager how you are feeling, you empower other women to do the same. This single action gives confidence and credence to those around you and helps to change the workplace culture from the ground up.Thats the power we all gain each time a powerful woman like Williams comes forward and reveals the human behind the superwoman we publicly see to reduce the stigma around pregnancy as something that could hold you back at work.As Williams proved, you can still achieve on the most scrutinized of stages while pregnant.I definitely plan on coming back - Im not done yet,Williams said about her plans to continue playing tennis after motherhood. She expects that next year her babys going to be in the stands and hopefully cheering for me.