3 Tips to Succeed in Your Career - Hallie Crawford

3 Tips to Succeed in Your Career While maintaining and reaching goals in jobs and careers can be a challenge and sometimes overwhelming, it is possible to succeed! Many times success comes from maintaining a positive attitude and staying focused on what you want to accomplish. Consider the following three tips to help you reach your career goals. Conduct informational interviews. The best way to find out about what is needed to reach your career goals is to talk to someone who has already done it. Investigate in your network or organization to see if you know someone who has the job position you would like to have. Contact them and ask if you could conduct an informational interview to discover what is needed to reach your goal. Ask for support. If you find it’s hard to stay positive and focused on your own, ask a family member or friend to help you. Ask them to help you avoid negative thinking and to help you set timeframes for your goals. Schedule a coffee date or a phone call at reasonable intervals to discuss your plan. They will most likely be glad to have an accountability partner as well! Avoid “Negative Nellies.” If you find certain coworkers, friends, or others tend to be negative about their careers or your reaching out to do more, that can be toxic to your career growth. Instead, try to spend more time with those who are positive about doing more and have reached their career goals. If you need some inspiration to stay motivated, consider our client Lara. She recently wrote and shared the following: “Our new employee, that I had to fight for, started earlier this week. Several of my employees have given me random notes of encouragement one even brought me flowers.  We had something happen that could have ruined an entire partnership that weve built that would have canceled an entire six-week training and I was able to navigate it, while painfully, well enough that I think were still on track. AND, I somehow got a promotion. Im no longer an Assistant Director, I am a Director. Thanks for working with me, having confidence in me, guiding me behind the scenes to be more confident and self-aware.” If you are interested in career coaching, visit our career coaching packages page or sign up for a free consultation! We would be glad to help you find success in your career.

How to Use Free Modern Resume Templates For Word

How to Use Free Modern Resume Templates For WordThere are many free modern resume templates for word that are available online. The purpose of this article is to teach you how to use these free resume templates for word to get your resume done in the least amount of time possible. It is important to use these free modern resume templates for word in order to not waste your valuable time on completing your own.One of the first things that you will need to do is to find out which templates are the best suited for you. You will find different ones available online, and you will be able to find the one that fits your needs the best. You should not worry about how much the template costs because they are free. Just remember that they are all free and you can use them to get your resume done in no time.The next thing that you need to do is to make sure that you find a resource that has these modern resume templates for word for free. Once you have found one, you will be able to access the necessary information that you need to get started. Most of the websites that have these templates for word on their site offer you some sort of a trial period where you can try the free template for a limited amount of time.One of the basic thing that you should remember when using these templates is that you should be familiar with the basics of a resume. This is important because these templates have the same template that you are going to use in your own resume. In fact, some of these templates have the same information that you are going to use in your own resume. Make sure that you know the basics in order to complete the task that you need to do.In order to make sure that you get these templates for word the way that you want them, you will need to download them so that you can start working on them right away. There are several free resume templates for word that you can find online. In order to get these templates, you will need to get them from a site that has them.Now tha t you have these templates for word, it is time to learn how to utilize them. You will want to know that most of these templates do not have any color options. Some of the templates even have some fonts that will be used instead of the ones that you will use in your own resume. You will need to know how to change the fonts of these templates if you want to use them in your own resume.Lastly, you will want to make sure that you use free modern resume templates for word for your own resume. They are easy to use and they will help you get your resume done in no time. If you want to learn more about these templates for word, then you should take a look at the resource listed below.

A Harvard Junior Who Got Internship Offers From Google, Apple, Facebook, and More Shares Her 7 Tips to Ace an Interview

A Harvard Junior Who Got Internship Offers From Google, Apple, Facebook, and More Shares Her 7 Tips to Ace an Interview Jessica Pointing knows how to interview. The Harvard University junior received internship offers from companies including Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, McKinsey, Bain, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. A computer science and physics major, she has received offer letters for roles in software engineering, data science, product management, consulting, investment banking, trading, and quantitative finance. How does she do it? She credits being prepared and relaxed with her string of successful interviews. Pointing published her best interviewing tips on her blog, the Optimize Guide, which features educational and career advice for high school and college students. Business Insider has shared her tips below, with permission. 1. Do your homework Pointing made sure to hit the books before interviewing. “I treated the internship interviews as a class â€" I studied material from books and did practice problems before the test (aka the interview),” she said. “There is usually a go-to book for each industry.” These books help prepare job candidates, covering likely interview topics and even featuring practice problems. For example, for software engineering interviews, she recommends “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell, while people going for consulting gigs should brush up on “Case in Point” by Marc Cosentino. 2. Develop a structure for problem-solving The stress of interviewing can make it pretty easy to blank when you’re speaking to a hiring manager. That’s why Pointing says it’s important to adopt a problem-solving mindset. Here’s the structure she used for answering questions in her software engineering interviews: Repeat the question to make sure that you understand it and have all the relevant details. Clarify the function input and output. Check assumptions. Give an approach to solving the problem. Discuss the tradeoffs of the approach. Code the solution. Test the solution with a normal test case. Test the solution with some edge cases. She also broke down the approach she uses for consulting interviews: Repeat the question to make sure that you understand it and have all the relevant details. Explain the objectives of the case and ask if there are any more objectives. Ask any clarifying questions. Generate ideas and a solution. Organize and structure the answer. For calculations, give insight into what the calculated number means. Summarize the case at the end. “These structures ensure that I hit almost everything I need to mention for a successful interview,” Pointing said. “In consulting, giving insights into a number you just calculated separates a good candidate from a great candidate.” 3. Practice and strategize “It is very important to practice in an interview setting before the interview,” Pointing said. “If your college offers mock interviews, take them! Some companies offer mock interviews, too. There are other services out there, such as Refdash, that give you free mock interviews. Do a practice interview at every opportunity.” If at all possible, Pointing recommends scheduling your “dream interview” last. That way, all of your interviews before can serve as practice sessions. 4. Have a backup plan Interviews can be pretty stressful. So how can you keep your cool when the stakes are high? Pointing advises having a backup plan in mind. You should always have an alternative path to pursue if your job or internship opportunity falls through. “If you are interviewing for the summer and you go into an interview with no plan for the summer, then you will probably be way more stressed,” Pointing said. “Instead, if you already have an offer or a vague idea of something you would do in the summer (e.g. travel), then the stakes for the interview aren’t as high. The more options you already have, the more relaxed you will be in the interview and the higher your chances are for the job.” So take some pressure off yourself and make sure to sketch out a backup plan. 5. Invest time The interviewing process isn’t just about setting time aside to talk to a bunch of hiring managers. You’ll need to devote time to reading, practicing, and perhaps even traveling. “I traveled across the country more than six times in 12 weeks for my interviews and spent approximately 80 hours in planes,” Pointing said. “Make sure you have enough time in your schedule to invest in your internship search process. You should dedicate a few hours each day practicing for interviews. I scheduled time in my calendar for interview practice for every morning (after my regular morning routine).” 6. Create a question bank Pointing recommends that after each interview, job candidates write down interview questions and solutions, as well as their own strengths and areas they could improve on. “In one of my software engineering interviews, I missed a particular data structure that would have allowed me to have given a more efficient solution, but I made a note of it, and in another interview later on, I ran into a question where I could use that data structure,” she said. “After doing enough cases and problems, you will start to recognize patterns, and you will become more confident and quicker in solving problems.” 7. Don’t skim over behavioral questions Don’t just focus on industry-specific questions. Pointing says that interviewees must also come prepared with answers for common behavioral questions. “Behavioral questions usually fall under several categories: leadership, teamwork, challenges, and successes,” she said. “You should identify stories in your life that fall under each of those categories. You should also write down those stories and all the details. Writing down your answers to behavioral questions before the interview is important.” This article originally appeared in Business Insider.