Help new employees start on a good foot
Give new employees a running start at their jobs, with these little-noticed but much-appreciated assists.
Don’t let merger or downsizing squeeze you out
Don’t allow the uncertainty of a merger and/or layoffs freeze your career. While the powers that be decide who stays and who goes, stake your claim to the position you want and they need.
Update your style for citing sources
The basic information required for noting sources hasn’t changed since you wrote a high school term paper, but the wealth of information available in electronic formats continues to add new twists.
Being micromanaged? Let’s talk
If your boss’s micromanagement interferes with your ability to do your job, quit casting yourself as a victim. You can’t change the boss, but you can influence many of the situations you face, says Harry Chambers, a trainer and author of My Way or the Highway: The Micromanagement Survival Guide.
Set your mind on ‘success mode’
Saint Augustine postulated that the human mind is made up of little chambers that will hold whatever is directed into them. Fill those images with success, you become successful; fill them with regret, you will fail and become bitter. This is true of organizations as well. Here’s how one admin put that idea into practice while working for New York City’s government.
Grammar Repair Shop: Dangling modifiers
Problem: A case of “dangling modifier”: when the subject of your sentence doesn’t agree with the description that precedes it.
Working Smarter: Type once, enter twice, save time
Cut way down on your keystrokes, with these Outlook tools that let you mine information that’s already in your files.
Minimize the impact of interruptions
Consider yourself lucky if you can ever focus on your work for more than 12 minutes at a stretch. Use this plan to handle the interruptions you can’t avoid.
Stress test: Are you victim or master?
Stress may be inevitable, and it can be a positive force. But your ability to keep from burning out is important not just for your productivity in the office but your physical health, as well.
Would Thomas Edison hire you?
Broad knowledge is a great attribute for an admin pro. Thomas Edison valued it. He wanted smart, practical people to help run his empire of inventiveness. So, he devised a test to measure each applicant’s breadth of reading and knowledge.