Question: “After many years in the medical field, I suffered an injury that forced me to stop working with patients. I moved into an office job handling insurance claims. I was given three weeks of training and told that I would have time to “fit into the job comfortably.” However, at the end of my 90-day probationary period, I received a terrible evaluation. This has never happened to me before. My supervisor apparently has documented all the times that I required assistance. I viewed this as learning, but she views it as an inability to do the work. I now have two weeks to improve or be fired. This seems unreasonable, but I like this job and want to keep it. What do you suggest?” — Afraid of Failing
The challenge in leaving an effective voice-mail message is this: Leave a too-long message, and it could annoy recipients. Too short, and recipients may not understand the reason for your call. Follow these tips from Career Rocketeer when you need to leave a message that gets attention:
If you’re responsible for buying birthday cards for the office, buy several at a time so you don’t have to make a special trip every time one is needed.
Columns are easy in Word 2007 and Word 2010! On the Page Layout tab, in the Page Setup group you’ll find a button called Columns. There are 5 default selections and a More columns selection to customize your column layout.
Question: “I manage a group of four women who bicker constantly and ‘cop an attitude.’ To make it worse, I recently hired a young, inexperienced secretary who is very rude … I feel like I’m supervising a bunch of tattling 2-year-olds. Sometimes, I plan what I’m going to say about these issues, then I chicken out. I know I need a stronger backbone, but I don’t like dealing with conflict. What should I do?”
When seeking ideas to help solve a problem, tell the person what you already considered or tried. She might be able to build on one of those ideas.
Everyone has a preferred method of organizing to-dos and notes. Your computer monitor may be littered with Post-its, or you may use your e-mail software to track action items. Increasingly, though, people are turning to web-based tools. The benefit? To access these “cloud-based” tools, you don’t need to be on a particular computer, network or browser. A few suggestions:
When writing a phone message, jot down the correct way to say the caller’s name along with the other information. You don’t need to use the phonetic alphabet, just a note like, “Mr. Behr (pronounced Bear).”
Moving on up can be thorny if you’re not prepared to make the transition from peer to supervisor. David Peck, aka “The Recovering Leader,” offers six points to consider during and after a promotion:
Eye have a spelling chequerIt came with my pea see.It plainly marques four my revueMiss steaks eye kin knot sea. There’s a danger if you rely solely on your computer’s spell checker.
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