Top 7 Career Killers

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Getting ahead means different things to different people but we can all agree that advancing in our chosen field is a good thing. There are pitfalls along the way so to make sure stepping-stones don’t become stumbling blocks; here are the top seven career killers to avoid.

7. Working Hard For The Money
It might seem difficult to wrap your head around the idea that hard work can damage a career. Well, it can’t. The thing to avoid here is having money solely as your motivation in the workplace. Without interest in your job and a dash of passion, you’ll be going nowhere fast.

6. Procrastination
Scrambling around at the last minute to complete slapdash work might get you out of a sudden, unavoidable bind but if it’s a work habit you indulge in frequently, you can kiss advancement goodbye. You won’t be able to get away with it for long and, once you’re stuck with the “lazy” label, you’ll find it hard to remove as your co-workers leave you in the dust.

5. Putting The “I” In Team
Almost no one gets anywhere, doing anything, without a little teamwork. Being a good team player is essential to success at work. Looking out for Number One and making sure your bosses are only aware of your contribution to the company will make you someone no one will want to have around. Work well with your co-workers. You’ll get more done and what you bring to the table will not go unnoticed.

4. Social Network Griping
Think your boss is too old, busy, or dumb to look at Facebook or Twitter? Think again. Venting your personal gripes or bad-mouthing your fellow employees or the company itself in a public forum where everyone can see is a recipe for disaster. You’re asking to be fired or kept back, if you do this. If you gripes are really so bad, you should be looking for another job – not jeopardizing the one you have.

3. Dressed For Un-Success
Want to be a manager, foreman, CEO? Then dress for success. If being low man on the totem pole appeals to you, then dress like a slob and forget about good grooming. You’ve got to dress for the part you want to play in most companies. Always present a professional appearance and it will get noticed.

2. Network = Net Worth
The ability to network has become as necessary a skill as the ability to breathe these days. In doing so, you can stay in touch with contacts in your field that can help your company meet its goals. Overlooking this vital work niche will make you more of a liability to your employer than an asset.

1. Attitude
It really begins and ends here. If you come into work with a chip on your shoulder or the misguided belief that everyone there owes you something, then you aren’t going to go far.

Love your work. Be passionate about it. Confucius said: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” That’s all you need to know to ensure you have a fulfilling career and a rewarding life.

Andrew Salmon is a writer, who, in addition to writing on financial topics like life insurance policies, is also a published author who has been featured on Amazon.

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Resume writing is an art form. That’s why there are professional resume writers that help people find great jobs every day. You might have more skills, better work ethic, and more experience but if your resume stinks, you wont be getting the job.
If you’re serious about getting that next job you should avoid the following resume red flags:

Sending out the same resume to every employer

Every resume you send out should be catered specifically to the job you are applying for.

Many people think they can send out the same resume to every potential employer but this is almost always a bad call. Chances are you have specific skills, knowledge, or experience that would make you look very qualified for one job but might make you a terrible candidate for another.

Make sure you customize your resume and cover letter to whomever you’re sending it to.

200-word resumes

Your resume needs to tell a potential employer why you’re going to be the best person for the job. It needs to sell you to the employer. If it looks like you spent 5 minutes typing up your work experience then chances are your resume will end up the ‘do not call’ pile.

Novel-length resumes

You don’t need to give your life story in your resume. Make sure that you have all your bases covered but don’t write so much that your fingers bleed from all the typing. Keep it clear and concise and you’ll do fine.

Spelling errors

Even if you’re applying for a ditch digging job it doesn’t hurt to use the spell check function when you’re writing your resume.

If the job requires you to write on a daily basis then make sure you have a friend check over your resume before you send it out. Nothing will get your resume rejected faster than basic spelling errors.

Getting personal

Personal information is better suited for the personals section of the newspaper.

Some people feel the need to fill their resume with information about their pet ferrets but then forget to include important employment experience.

Those are just a few resume red flags that will keep you from getting great jobs. If you need help with your resume then find a friend that knows what they’re doing or better yet, get a professional to help you.

SHAPE
This post was written by Gary Kohler from the website  LifeCover.ca – a website that provides information about  life insurance in Canada.

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Going just by the indication of the name, it is pretty clear that the job of a medical assistant is to take care of medical documents and reports safely. Both in small and large hospitals you can see these assistants doing work right from the basic responsibilities to the clinical and medical aspects of the work. Now days, medical assistants can choose from a lot of specific departments in which they can specialize in. Some specialties include optometric, orthodontic, orthopedic, physician or in the general field of medical studies.

So if you’re interested in becoming a medical assistant, one of the biggest things you’ll need are organizational skills. When you have the responsibility of taking conscientious care of all the health care documents, you should possess extraordinary organizational skills. Other important characteristics are patience and good communication skills. These two are indeed very important because you, as a medical assistant, form a communication channel between the doctors and patients while fixing appointments, taking feedback, etc…
The daily routine job of a medical assistant is highly dependent on your job description and work location. Administrative tasks include filing patient reports, fixing hospital admissions paperwork or filling out forms and bills. Clinical tasks include explaining treatment procedures, instructions for medicine prescribed, changing dressings, first aid and preparing patients for x-rays and other tests. Another advantage of this job is that you work in clean and calm environments and generally face minimum work pressure.

Some people who are pursuing studies to become a medical assistant also work as part-timers during the weekdays and weekends. You can do this while you’re completing a one year or two year program for some extra cash. Once you obtain a degree in that program then you can start as a medical assistant. Most of the time, you will undergo formal training and work in real time situations. These training programs are available in major institutes, and they give you a cutting edge for being hired as a medical assistant.

The complete coursework for assistants include many aspects such as lab training techniques and medical and clinical knowledge and procedures. Almost 416,900 medical assistants were hired in the United States in the year 2006, with most working in physician clinics. Career growth opportunities for medical assistants are expected to rise much faster than the average for all jobs through the year 2016. Almost 147,099 additional jobs are expected to be added to this field thanks to an expanding health care field, technological advances and an aging population. Medical assistants who can manage both administrative and clinical duties of the job have better chances of being hired.

Advancement in this field typically requires more training, expertise and certification. Most medical assistants choose to become nurses or other health care workers at some point down the road. Administrative jobs provide alternate popular career paths because an administrative medical assistant can become an office manager without additional qualification. With more and more technological advancements taking place, medical assistants have a good chance of getting hired by physicians and hospitals.

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When writing a résumé, you are often tempted to include as much information as possible. After all, you want prospective employers to be able to focus on unique aspects of your job history, special skills, or literally anything that will allow them to pick you out of the lineup of faceless applicants competing for the same position. But sometimes what you don’t say can be a lot more compelling.

Consider for a moment what happens when you do a Google search. You don’t look at every website that pops up (since there may be quite a few, to put it mildly). You only look at the first three to five sites (if that). This is how most people in our modern world operate. A harried HR manager who has to comb through a hundred résumés does not want to see that you spent the summer between high school and college helping underprivileged kids learn to ride horses. They want to know what qualifies you (and makes you the best) for the position. So here are a few items that you’re better off removing from your first impression.

1. Old or irrelevant jobs. You really shouldn’t list more than the last three jobs you held, since that’s probably all people care about anyway (unless, of course, your relevant experience dates back farther…in that case, include it). Nobody wants to read a novel of your job history, so keep it short and to the point.
2. Gaps. This is sort of like negative space that you don’t want to leave empty. If you were laid off and couldn’t find work for seven months, simply write in “seeking employment” with the missing work dates. Or if you are a stay-at-home mom whose kids are now in school, fill in “homemaker” to cover the five-year hiatus. This way, hiring managers won’t be left wondering if you were simply sitting on the couch collecting unemployment or living it up as a trophy wife.
3. Dates for schooling. If your interviewer asks for this information, you can certainly supply it, but most people only care if you have a degree, not when you got it. And if you offer up the information in your résumé, you may not get a callback due to age discrimination. So nip it in the bud by excluding your culmination date.
4. Personal information (including a photo). Yes, you were probably taught to incorporate these items and most templates still list them as appropriate. However, landing a job has very little to do with the fact that you played piano for twelve years, you enjoy boating, you are a supportive member of your religious congregation, or you spend your weekends volunteering with the Young Republicans. This information not only clutters up your résumé, it can sometimes work against you. Ditto on a photo of yourself. This is not a beauty pageant. You want to be hired for your ability, not for your looks, so let them see you in the interview, after they’ve already decided they’re interested.
5. Lies. You may think you are getting a foot in the door by listing experience, schooling, or credentials you don’t actually possess, but all you’re really doing is shooting that foot. Even if you somehow manage to trick the company into hiring you, the truth is bound to come out sooner or later, and then you may find yourself not only on the chopping block, but virtually un-hirable (you will not be able to add the experience to your résumé and believe it or not, word spreads in almost any industry). So stick to the truth and you’ll have a far better chance of getting a job (on your own merits) and keeping it.

Guest post by Leah Darvis of  Debit Cards where you can find a prepaid GreenDot card.

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There is a long-standing tradition amongst office-workers of gathering at the water cooler to sip coffee and discuss who got drunk and rowdy at the office party, who blew a big deal by sending the wrong report, or which co-workers have been getting cozy on the copy machine. And while office gossip is generally in good fun, the wrong rumor could not only cause a lot of trouble for those it is about, it could also get the messenger shot (that would be you). So here are a few things you should avoid chewing over, no matter how juicy the tidbits.

Anything sex-related. Sure you took the course on sexual harassment, like everyone else, but you just have to know if anyone else has noticed that the CEO’s new secretary is showing off her thong every time she bends over, or that the “sensitive” mail guy gets picked up every day by another dude. Then there’s the marketing director and her assistant, who take “long meetings” in her office with the blinds closed. While talking about office sexploits can be more fun than watching telenovelas, it won’t seem so great when you get slapped with a lawsuit…and then fired.

Social networking (personal issues). While discussing the personal lives of coworkers is nothing new, social networking has made it much easier to uncover their exploits outside of the office. But just because you happened to spot the receptionist on Facebook and found a bunch of racist propaganda on her personal page does not mean you need to announce it to the whole office. Besides the fact that her personal life has nothing to do with her job performance, do you really want to get on the bad side of some gun-toting Nazi-lover?

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Suspected criminal activity. If you catch someone stealing from the supply closet, you may want to report it to the proper authority (not every person in the lunch line). However, if you somehow uncover the criminal past of one of your co-workers (a stint for gang-related activity, say), you could actually get fired for spreading it around, as you might unfairly prejudice others against him.

Medical issues. If a co-worker is in the hospital and you get everyone to pitch in on flowers and sign a card, you are well within the bounds of acceptable behavior. But spotting a girl from legal at Planned Parenthood and speculating about the state of her oven (bun-filled or otherwise) is a bad idea. If you don’t know why she’s there (or even if you do), it’s best to leave the personal lives of others to them. You don’t want to damage someone’s reputation and risk a formal complaint (or legal action).

Salary. Nothing has the potential to get you fired faster than talking about salary since it can directly affect the company’s bottom line. It is generally understood that monetary compensation is not something discussed between co-workers and if your pal across the hall uses your salary information to leverage a better wage for himself, who do you think the axe will fall on? Probably you.

While it can be extremely tempting to spread a little “harmless” gossip, it won’t be long before it comes back to bite you. Whether you simply upset the person you’re blabbing about, incite complaints or legal action, or end up losing your job, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself and your big mouth. So show a little restraint and shut your trap. If you can’t, you may find yourself out of a job.

Chris Parsons is a content writer for Get Debit where you can find a selection of prepaid debit cards and browse prepaid debit card reviews.

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