How to answer the job interview question: ‘How do you handle working with people who annoy you?’

Get this job interview question right, and maybe you’ll find yourself in a new job with less annoying coworkers.
It may sound like a question from an online dating profile, but when job interviewers ask what irritates you about others, they’re trying to assess how you will get along with your colleagues and clients, and how your personality will fit in with the company culture.

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Handle Your Work Hiatus On Your Resume

Whether it's been six months or 10 years, searching for a job after a workforce absence can be daunting. The work world somehow continued without you, and you may feel like you've been left behind.

The good news is that you can reenter the workforce armed with a dynamic resume and an aggressive job search plan. Whether you've been unemployed and looking for work, on sabbatical, raising a family, caring for an ill family member, attending school, on disability or in retirement, follow these tips to create your resume.

Before You Write Your Resume

Assess Your Skills and Experience: Research your job target to learn what hiring managers now find desirable in ideal candidates. Write a list of your matching skills, experience, training, and personal attributes. How would an employer benefit from hiring you?

Refresh Your Skills: Your research might have shown that some of your skills need to be updated. Because you are competing with job seekers who have been on steady career tracks, do what is necessary to compete successfully. Enroll in courses, study independently, and practice your skills whenever possible. This will boost your confidence and get you back in the game.

Maintain Ties to the Working World: Besides being a great opportunity to network, immersing yourself in professional activities will give you relevant, recent experience to add to your resume. Do volunteer work, join a professional organization, attend conferences, complete freelance and consulting projects, and accept temporary assignments.

When Writing Your Resume

Pick the Right Format: Many people returning to work assume they need a functional resume to hide the gap. But be careful about selecting this format, because hiring managers might suspect you're trying to hide something. You might do better with a combination resume, which is a reverse-chronological resume that leads with a Qualifications Summary. The summary emphasizes your most related credentials so hiring managers readily see your qualifications. Consider a functional format only if you've been out of work for many years and you need to emphasize your functional skill set.

Accentuate the Positive: Organize your resume so your key selling points are immediately evident. The top third of page one is the most important part of your resume, so include your most marketable skills and experience there. If you are concerned about your time gap, think about creative ways to obscure it. Maybe you traveled internationally and can mention your exposure to different cultures and languages. Perhaps you led or participated in a fund-raising event for a charity. Continuing education, volunteer work, professional development, and independent study are all valid uses of your time while out of the workforce. Try to tie in how your experience relates to your career goal. Convince employers that you still have what it takes to contribute to organizational goals despite your workforce absence.

Don't Call Attention to Dates: Try not to emphasize dates when formatting your resume. Avoid surrounding dates with white space, which will draw the eye. Instead, place them in parentheses next to your job titles.

Put Your Cover Letter to Work: Use your cover letter to explain why you temporarily stepped away from your career, emphasizing that you're now available and excited about pursuing employment. Let your enthusiasm for reentering the workforce shine through your letter.

Remember, you will need to work harder at job searching than colleagues with recent work experience do. Keep an open mind and positive attitude. You might need to take a pay cut or accept a position at a lower level than the one you had before you left. It might be a blow to the ego, but the reality is that employers like to hire workers with a recent track record. If you accept a position at a lower level than desired, use it as an opportunity to prove yourself and you'll soon work your way back up the ladder.

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6 Ways To Handle Interruptions At Work

We all face interruptions at workplace. Which, most of the time, disturb our to-do-list and work schedule. Most of us are not very efficient in time management at work as by the end of the day; we realize that the time has sneaked away, leaving us with unmet deadlines. Some workplace interruptions may not be in our control and can disturb our schedule and productivity. Things like a colleague stopping by to have a chit chat or seeking help, unscheduled meeting with boss/colleague, phone calls, unsolicited enquiries /consultancy etc.

All these interruptions can disturb the focus or thought processes and ultimately the work schedules. Following are some tips which can be used to handle work interruptions.

•Prioritize – There may be 10 tasks to accomplish for the day. Divide them in the category of important and urgent and accordingly assign time. Try to finish the important tasks in the morning hours where the chances of interruptions are comparatively less.

•Create and Share your schedule- While creating timesheet for the day keep buffer time to accommodate unscheduled urgent business requirements such as unplanned meeting/work assigned by your boss. You can use google calendar or Microsoft outlook to share this schedule of yours so that your co-worker/boss knows when you are free.

•Learn to say NO – If you have to deliver a report in an hour’s time and someone walks to you for a casual chat or some favour and you know this may be something unimportant.  Hence, to meet the deadlines and keep your schedule in line sometimes you have to say ‘No’ to people or postpone a little bit. However you can choose a delicate way to say that.

•Keep a check on Email and phone calls – Instead of keeping your outlook/personal mail open and responding to every email instantaneously, keep a fixed time to check and respond to emails like twice or thrice a day. Same goes with calls also. You can avoid unknown calls on mobile to keep the momentum of work going on and respond to them during lunch hour, coffee break etc.

•I am in the middle of something – Don’t hesitate to say this whenever you get any interruption and you are working on something important. There is no problem in doing that. You also can add that I shall get back to you after this work or time. This way they won’t come and disturb you instead you can go to them whenever you have free time.

•Rescheduling – However after managing the interruptions efficiently by above points, still your schedule may get affected little bit. So you can always reschedule your work a little.
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How to Handle Counter Offers

Congratulations, you’ve just accepted an offer for the job you’ve been chasing for months. You are excited and relieved, but you’re wondering how your boss is going to react when you resign. Will the reaction be understanding, angry, shocked or dismissive. How do you react when one of your best performers resigns to you?

Some of the more common thoughts that the boss may have are:

• He’s one of my best performers. How am I supposed to replace him, keep the team together, and achieve budget?
• What inconvenient timing – I was about to go on annual leave for 3 weeks
• How am I going to look to the board/senior management for losing this person?
• Where is he going?
• Can I get her to stay until I find a replacement and have an effective hand over?
• How can I get her to stay?

If you are a valuable resource, then your boss and your company won’t want to see you walk out the door, especially to the competition. They will make every attempt to convince you to stay, either by:

• Making you a counter offer
• Making you feel incredibly guilty and disloyal
• ‘Loving’ you liked they’ve never ‘loved’ you before – be suspicious of this

Being made an attractive counter offer is instantly good for your ego, but you must take a number of things into consideration before saying “thanks” or “no thanks”:

• You have only received a counter offer because you resigned. It is a purely reactive tactic from your employer and should make you wonder whether you need to resign every time you want to improve your situation. If your employer thought you were truly worthy, why didn’t they improve your situation anyway?
• Do your reasons for wanting to leave still exist? You may have a number of reasons – salary too low, no promotion in sight, don’t like your boss. You may be offered more money to stay, which can be tempting, but if you still have other issues outstanding, you’ll probably end up leaving anyway.
• Despite what your employer is saying to you, they will probably now consider you a risk and may make contingency plans without your knowledge. You may not be seen as a true member of the team
• The counter offer could simply be an interim tactic from your employer to bridge a gap whilst they look to replace you.

Much research and many surveys have been completed over the years to measure what happens to employees who accept counter offers. Only 6 out of 100 employees are still with their company after 12 months, and 2 important points become apparent:

• Salary was hardly ever the prime motivator for resigning – more money didn’t ultimately change the true state of play
• Things didn’t take long to return to the way they were before the resignation

Before accepting a counter offer, ask yourself why your employer has made the offer. There is a strong possibility that the cons will outweigh the pros and you will realize that your decision to resign was right after all.

How to Handle a Request for Salary History

There are four words that strike fear into the hearts of even the most valiant job seekers: "Please include salary history."

Most job seekers fear that disclosing their previous salary could put them at a disadvantage during salary negotiations.

For example, if your past salary was lower than the position pays, an employer may offer you less than they had planned.

On the other hand, if your past salary was significantly more than a prospective job pays, you could scare off an employer.

Use these tips to keep the upper hand when sharing your salary history.

Timing Is Everything

When choosing your strategy for dealing with a request for salary history, give careful consideration to the timing of the request.

If the request comes at the beginning of your job search, there is usually less flexibility. For example, some job advertisements note that "only applications including salary history will be considered."

Employment applications are even tougher, forcing you to put numbers into a box that measures about an inch wide.

However, if you make it to the interview stage before the issue of salary history comes up, you have the benefit of having a one-on-one conversation rather than a one-way dialogue.

Here are tips for each scenario.

Putting It in Writing

If the job you're applying for requires salary history upfront, there are usually two ways to provide it: A cover letter or an employment application.

Of the two, cover letters are preferred as they allow you to put your salary into context.

Employment applications are designed to be less flexible. If it feels as if they're trying to get you to force your employment history and pay into a tight box, it's intentional.

If you are unsure of exact numbers when filling out an application, let the recruiter know that you've provided approximations and can follow up later with exact numbers. Usually, approximations are fine.

Money Talks

If you make it to the interview before salary history comes up, first thank your lucky stars. This really is the optimal situation for sharing your salary history.

You now have the opportunity to put your salary in context and have the added benefit of the interviewer's body language.

You can use these strategies if you find yourself in a tight spot:

• Shift focus to the salary you're seeking or that the job would command.



• Provide an idea of what you've earned without giving a specific dollar amount. For example, you could say you earned "in the 40s."



• Point out that other benefits (stock options, annual bonuses) boosted your pay package beyond just your base salary. If you adopt this strategy, you may still be asked to provide a number. If so, consider giving a range.

The Bottom Line

When divulging your salary history, put it in context.

Your salary can depend on many factors in addition to skills and experience. Salary can vary according to company size, location, economic conditions, the job market and more.

In an interview or cover letter, mention special circumstances that make your past salary less relevant to your future salary. These can include a change of location or increased responsibilities.

If your last job offered perks or special benefits -- like a company car, flex time or inexpensive healthcare -- you may want to mention those too. It'll help the recruiter see the big picture beyond salary.

How to Handle a Pay Cut

Perhaps you've noticed that business has slowed down around your office. Or maybe you don't get any warning that your company has fallen on tough times.

The good news, you learn, is that you still have a job. But before you can say, "Whew," you learn the bad news: Your salary is being reduced.

Make No Accept-ion

When your supervisor breaks the news to you about your pay cut, do not accept anything immediately. In other words, refrain from conveying any type of agreement, either verbally or in writing. If pushed, you may say something to the effect of "This is a lot to process right now. I need to think about this and discuss it with my family this evening."

What you want to do is buy yourself some time. Why? You need to find out all the facts surrounding a salary reduction before you accept it. A pay cut can affect your future severance package and compensation for unused sick or vacation days as those numbers are usually calculated based on your current salary -- as are unemployment benefits. Also, the reduced compensation could affect salary negotiations with future employers as your last salary of record could be significantly less than what you are really worth.

ust the Facts

Once you're no longer reeling from the shock, go on a fact-finding mission. Questions to ask your superiors include:

• Is this a mandatory or voluntary pay cut?
• How much will your pay be lowered by?
• Who else is affected by the pay cut?
• How long will the pay cut last?
• Could there be retroactive reimbursement?
• How will this affect raises, bonuses and benefits?
• Are you going to have to work longer hours or take on additional tasks?
• What are the company's plans to turn things around?

Questions to ask yourself include:

• How much do you need this job?
• Do you have faith that the company will recover from this setback?
• Can you trust what your superiors are telling you?
• Is it time to move on?

After gathering information outwardly and inwardly, you may want to speak with an employment attorney to explore all of your legal options and your rights.

It Pays to Negotiate

Once you know the facts and think you may wish to continue at your current job, see if you can negotiate to make the pay cut more palatable to you.

Some areas to negotiate can include your weekly hours and where you work. Suggest a reduced schedule, such as a four-day workweek. Or try to arrange to telecommute to reduce your commuting costs.

You can also negotiate around stock options, if you still believe the company is viable -- and valuable. If you don't have any stock options, ask for some. If you have some, try to get more. If you're not sure what the shares are worth and where the company is headed, do some research.

Finally, ask the company for a written agreement around the salary cut, when your old pay rate might be reinstated and if there will be any recompense for lost wages. Your supervisor may balk, but if you work for a small company, you may be able to negotiate this.

Exit Stage Left

If at the end of your fact finding and negotiating you feel cornered, remember: you're not. You still have choices and options. However, to exercise any of them, you may need to consult with an employment attorney or your local unemployment office.

Because most people are employed at-will, you or your employer can end the arrangement at any time and your salary can be lowered, as long as it is done for a legitimate business reason. But, if your pay has been cut by an unreasonable percentage, you may be able to quit and still collect unemployment benefits. Rules vary from state to state; check with your local unemployment office before you do anything.

If you have an employment contract, you may be able to refuse the cut altogether or at least quit and collect unemployment, but only if the contract states terms of compensation and says that your employer cannot alter the terms without your consent. The pay cut could constitute a breach of contract and an attorney can help you negotiate the terms of your release or fight for your full pay.

Finally, you can temporarily agree to the pay cut, update your resume and upload it. Begin applying for new jobs immediately and look forward to the future with a different employer.

How to Handle a Job Performance Review

Try to find a career path for the job you are in. What is the next logical promotion or job that would give you greater responsibilities if you do your job well? Is it higher paying, does it have more responsibilities? If there is no career path and you are ambitious, you may realise that you are in a dead-end job and decide to start looking around. If, on the other hand, doing your job well may lead to a promotion, you will want to know what it is that you have to do to get the promotion!

Get your supervisor to explain in detail what the measurements of good performances are: What do you need to do in order to get ahead in the job you already have, or move laterally, or get an increase in pay?

Agree with your supervisor on your plan for accomplishments this next year. This way, you and s/he can be on the same wavelength as to how you meet these measurements, and you can feel confident about getting an excellent performance rating or a promotion for the next review.

By the way, don't argue or take things personally. It never works. The review is not a reflection or your own accomplishments or self-worth -- it's only a perspective of the reviewer given a set of priorities that the reviewer has. Try to find out where the reviewer is coming from and get a sense of his/her plans for the department, so that you can know how to deal with him or her in this next year.

If this does not turn out to be a good review, QUIETLY look for another job. Between the boss and the subordinate in a performance review, the boss usually wins! Good luck!