Lifeskills Blog

"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....

When it comes to your career, just one person opening a door can make all the difference. That’s why our community of millions of members across the globe are such a valuable resource to job seekers. And, in challenging times like these, that resource is one of the best ways to support one another. We’ve added some new features on LinkedIn that make it easier to give and get help. Share That You’re Open To Work A good first step to finding a new opportunity is to let others know you’re looking. We made it easy to privately signal recruiters that you’re open to work, specify the types of jobs you’re interested in, and indicate your preferred start date and location -- ensuring you show up in more recruiter search results. More than 30 million members have used this tool to help them find their next job. We’re taking that to the next level with an Open-To Work feature so you can indicate to the...

Leadership Skills for the Modern Manager You just landed a promotion and you are excited about it. After all, you have worked so hard to get here and seeing your work bearing fruits is everyone’s dream. With this promotion comes the job to supervise a person or a group of people and you are not so sure about your supervisory skills since this is all new to you. Moreover, some of the people you will be supervising are people you have worked with at the same level and you need to keep being their friend as well as being their supervisor. You want to be an effective supervisor, someone who gets the job done and keeps a good and well-motivated team. While you definitely have the technical skills for the job, as evidenced by your promotion, you need the following additional skills so that you can be an effective supervisor as well....

It takes a lot of guts to quit your job. Often it means stepping into the unknown. So, it’s not surprising that it can be tempting to stick with the status quo, especially if your boss promises to up their game — and possibly your salary — in a counteroffer. However, once you’ve expressed your desire to move on, going back on that decision could be one of the worst moves of your career, according to recruitment specialist Oliver Cooke. “If you’re a good performer in your business, the likelihood is your current employers will try to counteroffer (when you quit). You should be prepared for that,” Cooke told CNBC Make It....