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Category: Career

Spice up a ‘same old, same old’ job

If you’ve ever wanted a new challenge to keep your administrative job from feeling “same old, same old,” consider how Catherine Russell must feel. She has played the same role in an off-Broadway play for 25 years. She offers good advice for staving off the feeling that your work is repetitive:

1-Minute Strategies: Dec. ’11

Focus on knowing where to get information quickly rather than knowing how to do everything … Watch what you say on Face­book: More than 90% of job-screeners say they’re using social network tools to weed out applicants … Take the lead in developing your own professional skills.

Career mistake #4

Executive search firm CEO Skip Freeman calls it “Fatal Career Mis­­take #4”—not branding yourself as a person who can save or make money for a company. These days, you won’t be hired merely because you have the know-how, he says. You’ve got to be a problem-solver.

Speak up without losing your job

Stupidity isn’t what stops good teams from being successful. More often, what happens is that people see a problem but choose not to speak up about it because raising the issue could be taboo. How to speak the truth without losing your job:

1 in 5 know a résumé fibber

A recent survey by OfficeTeam reveals that one in five em­­ployees knows someone who has lied on his or her résumé. Here’s the type of information employees are most often misrepresenting or exaggerating about:

Admin career advice that never gets old

A few bits of career counsel from Lilit Marcus’ Save the Assistants: A guide to surviving and thriving in the workplace: Know the difference between a job and a career. Do your job, and do it really, ­really well.  Pay your dues intelligently. Learn everybody’s name and develop the right allies.

Clear out your life plaque

Your desk isn’t the only thing that needs occasional decluttering. Our lives could use some decluttering, too, says Gail Blanke, author of Throw Out Fifty Things: Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life. Blanke calls the extra physical and emotional debris “life plaque.”