Author: murika

If you want to have a successful career, maintaining an online presence on LinkedIn is crucial. Not only is it an effective way to network with other professionals in your field, but it can get you noticed by others and potentially land you several job opportunities. In fact, I landed a great job at a major company because I regularly updated my profile and published career-related content almost daily. (That job ultimately inspired me to start my own company.) Believe it or not, that was six years ago — and today, LinkedIn has only become increasingly important....

"In an interview, how do you answer 'What is your desired salary?' without seeming too cheap or too expensive to get the job?" originally appeared on Quora--the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Answer by Molood Noori, career coach at BreakYourBarriers.com, on Quora: You should not answer this question. I'll give you a scenario that is likely to happen. An interviewer asks about your desired salary, and you say, "I prefer not to answer that question at this point" or something similar. He then asks you the same question a few times in a few different ways to try to get you to give in and quote a number. That would be a big mistake! You have to do everything in your power to refuse answering this question. The rule of the negotiation game is that the first quoted number has to come from the employer. Never from the candidate. Let's continue the scenario. When you said, "I prefer...

Got a toxic coworker? You’re not alone: Google lists 231 million pages on the topic. Now researchers from the University of Bonn have finally asked humanity’s burning question: How the hell do workers noted for their greed, unfairness, immodesty, and untruths succeed? They studied 203 employee-colleague-supervisor trios, gathering their self-appraisals and coworker evaluations. The success of toxic people is so common that there’s a phrase for it: the “toxic career model.” It goes like this: A toxic employee schmoozes and charms and politicks, which results in high job performance reviews from superiors. (Peers, meanwhile, often know the ugly truth.) All success revolves around social skills. And because the same socializing that can foster strong, healthy work relationships can also be used to deceive others, toxic colleagues are able to use their social skills for their own gain. ...

Growing up, my family taught me, Never quit. We even had a motto, “quitters are losers,” which, when I was little, was mostly applied to things like sports or board games. No matter how badly I was losing to my brothers in a pickup basketball game or Monopoly, quitting wasn’t an option. That attitude served me well — until I started working full-time. When I graduated from college four years ago and started my first “real world” job at a non-profit in Boston, I felt prepared to tackle anything that was thrown my way, which happened to be a lot. The workdays were long, tough and not what I thought I’d signed up for. I felt unsatisfied and unfulfilled at the end of each day, and I couldn’t see what opportunities the job would lead to down the line. Still, the thought of quitting never crossed my mind. After all, you can’t leave your first job at age 22, especially not after just...

Google made waves recently by announcing its new program, "Google Career Certificates," a collection of courses designed to help participants get qualifications in high-paying, high-growth job fields without attending university. The courses should take about six months to complete, and will cost a fraction of a traditional college education. Last week I described this as "Google's plan to disrupt the college degree." The response was huge. The article has been shared thousands of times and has prompted thousands of comments. Additionally, tons of people have reached out to me personally to share their thoughts. ...