In this day and age, with travel costs becoming more expensive for companies and the existence of cheap, reliable video options, it is becoming more important to try and connect with people via video conferencing or video chat.  There are, of course, large conference room systems you can get, but there is also desktop technology like Google’s Gmail-based voice and video chat (Windows and Linux) and Skype.  And most laptops these days have built-in web cams.  For web conferencing there are technologies like Sonexis, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Live Meeting, and many more.

In addition, more and more smartphones are coming out with front-facing cameras and software (i.e. FaceTime on the iPhone) to make video chatting even easier.  Staying connected has never been easier and travel just for the sake of presenting information is usually not necessary.

So, that’s it.  Small post today – just wanted to mention the importance of video conferencing/chat and how easy it is to use and adopt.  See you in cyberspace!

I came across a good article the other day about how to ace a job interview.  In this article, the author presents 4 techniques to keep in mind:

• Do your homework.  You need to know something about the company and position you are interviewing with.  It will demonstrate to the employer that you care about their company and are interested in the position.  Anticipate questions they are going to ask.  These days, you are almost always asked questions like “tell me about a difficult situation you had to deal with and how you handled it” or “tell me about a project you were unprepared for and how you made the project successful”.  You are not going to impress the employer by sitting there stumbling over questions like this.  However, you also need to be prepared to ask questions.  This shows them you are thinking about a possible career with them, that you are engaging, and a good communicator.
• Make the interviewer feel good.  This goes back to engaging the interviewer and getting a dialog going.  Ask lots of questions and try to connect.  Don’t just get in an answer-only mode.  And try to not be too serious.  Smile.  Things like this go a long way.
• Talk about weaknesses you’ve overcome.  Nobody is perfect and the interviewer will be looking for you to admit to a weakness.  Just mention something you’ve not been too great at in the past that you are either better at now or are actively working on.  This shows you can improve yourself.
• Correct your mistakes.  If you say something accidentally that isn’t true, correct it immediately and admit it.  It will be much worse if the interviewer finds out later that you lied or exaggerated.  And no one knows everything.  If you don’t have the answer, just say “I don’t know” and possibly bring up a similar example to show you can relate in some fashion.

Do you get involved with a lot of project work that takes weeks, if not months, to complete?  In most situations, it is difficult to run a project smoothly without a methodology in place.  As projects grow in size in terms of people, resources, and time, you need something to help with organizing the project and defining deliverables.

There are two popular methodologies out there:  “waterfall” and “agile” (with many derivations of each).  Waterfall has been around for a very long time and is what you typically see used on projects.  It involves taking an entire project from top to bottom through the phases of “initiating”, “requirements”, “design”, “build”, “testing”, and “closure”.  These phases tend to fluctuate, of course, but the general idea is that you define everything up front and take the entire project through each phase until it is complete, with clear deliverables at each step.  This, of course, has its downsides.  Usually, the client can’t see the finished product until the testing phase.  This can cause issues if the client or implementation team didn’t interpret a requirement correctly.  Also, issues found further down the line are more more difficult to react to because, worst case, it can result in going back to the design phase to rework components.

Agile is a newer methodology and designed for very dynamic teams.  Typically, you’ll see IT teams utilizing this.  It involves splitting up a project into iterations.  Each iteration is limited to a finite amount of time.  At the end of each iteration, a team will typically have created something that the client can see and test.  This is also the time during which the current iteration is reviewed and the next iteration is planned.  These iterations typically involve daily stand-up meetings with the team and key stakeholders.  They are usually no more than 15 minutes and are just for the purpose of getting status updates and reporting any roadblocks or issues.  In addition, this process also helps with estimating.  Functionality is broken up into epics, themes, and stories.  At the story level, points are assigned based upon level of difficulty (Planning Poker).  Over time, teams can accurately determine an overall project time frame based upon story points alone (i.e. story point = 2 hours).  Agile also helps with scope creep.  Each project will typically have a backlog of features/tasks, a subset of which is worked on in each iteration.  If some new functionality is desired, it can be added to the backlog and you can immediately see the effect it has on the overall project (something slides in, something else slides out).

So, based upon what you are working on, your project will usually fall into one of these two methodologies.  Determine which one best suits your team and start working against it.  If you’ve never worked like this before, take baby steps.  Companies/teams who just try and throw the full breadth of these methodologies at a project will usually fail.  You need to do some planning and approach it in a systematic way.

Salary.com recently posted 7 Dos and Don’ts that you should consider when chatting with coworkers around the “water cooler”.

1. Do – Sunday Hike.  Sharing your hobbies and interests can help people get to know you.
2. Don’t – Sunday Service.  Keep religion out of the work place.  It is fine to tell people that you are religious, but this can be a very touchy subject if you are not careful.
3. Do – Book Group.  Tell people about the great book you are reading.  Can spark good conversation and lead others to try out the same book.
4. Don’t – Hot Button Book.  If you are reading about things like abortion, politics, global warming, or other “hot button” topic like this, don’t start discussing it.  Most people are very passionate about topics like this and it can lead to heated conversations.
5. Do – Travel Talk.  Your coworkers are always interested where you traveled on vacation.
6. Don’t – Pillow Talk.  Do I really need to explain why here?  Keep your private romantic encounters to yourself.
7. Do – Goals and Dreams.  Sharing these with people can help increase productivity and may spark new ideas how to achieve them.
8. Don’t – Personal Finances.  Never discuss how much money you make with coworkers.  It can create an uncomfortable work environment.
9. Do – Family and Friends.  Keep it positive.  This helps people see you for who you really are.
10. Don’t – Personal Problems.  Work can be stressful enough at times without bring your personal issues into the workplace.
11. Do – Restaurant Review.  Yet another good way to connect with people.  Everyone loves food!
12. Don’t – Drunken Disorderly.  Your shiny image could be tarnished if you share stories like this.
13. Do – Good News.  If you have good news in your life (i.e. promotion, bought a new house, new baby, got married), share them.  This can help boost morale.
14. Don’t – Bad News.  Don’t share this kind of information about other colleagues.  It is personal and if they want to share it, it should come from them.

Whenever you build something whether it be a new process, tool, or application, you need to make sure testing is a critical part of your plan.  Unfortunately, this is an area that is usually either skipped or limited due to time constraints or budget.  I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve worked on in the past where inadequate testing was done and customers found issues before we did.  Issues can range from minor grammatical errors up to your process/application outright failing and possibly bringing other systems down with it.  I’ve experienced these and everything in between.

I’ll attempt to speak at a more generic level, but I have a feeling this is going to take a technical slant quickly   There are several types of testing depending on what you are working on:

1. Unit Testing – this is typically done at a developer level and involves he/she testing their own work isolated from other systems or modules.  The goal is to make sure your own task is working as expected.
2. Assembly / Integration Testing – if you are working within a team of multiple people who are all working on difference pieces of the functionality or just need to integrate your module into a larger whole, this gives you the opportunity to make sure your module plays nice with the system you are integrating it into.
3. Business/Client Testing – once you have built your module/process and it is working well, you need to have the client test it out.  This is a final confirmation that it works as designed.  You always want someone testing the functionality beyond the person who developed it.  They will usually find something that you missed.
4. Load / Performance Testing – I can’t tell you how important this one is.  And this is usually the most ignored.  This is the one that can bring a system to its knees if not configured properly.  Now, depending on what you are working on, this may or may not apply.  However, if you are building something that hundreds, if not thousands, of people will be using simultaneously, you need to make sure it performs well.  This typically involves simulating a load against your application to make sure it remains usable and doesn’t crash.

For me, I’m a fairly detail-oriented person.  So, testing thoroughly is not too difficult for me.  If you are not so detail-oriented, here are some tips to help you test better:

• Create a spreadsheet or other document to list out all possible scenarios that can occur with your process/application.
• Think about the larger picture and how people/processes will interact with your component.
• If you are working on a web site or other application, test with guest users, registered users, or any other user type who might be interacting with you.
• Test all possible error scenarios.  You basically need to make your functionality “dummy-proof”.  Handle any errors gracefully and provide proper messaging to the user so they know what happened.
• If you are testing a web site or other application, make sure you test on different computers/browsers, different screen resolutions, and different devices (i.e. mobile).
• Does your functionality need to extend to other countries?  Test the application to make sure it is multi-lingual.  Often sizing and positioning can change with longer/shorter text.

So, please, test, test, test!  Often it is a difficult to bake in this time and sell it to the client.  Typically, creating something new is the less time consuming part.  I always recommend that about 1/3 of the time should be spent in development and the other 2/3 in testing.   The client will often ask why so much time is needed for this.  You’ve got to do your best to show how important this is and use statistics if you have to.  In my experience, this often gets removed to try and meet deadlines.  However, if a project is going to fail, it will fail because something wasn’t tested enough.  Of course, sometimes the best way to learn is through failure, so you may have to fail a few times to realize the importance of this.

Testing can be a science.  There are plenty of companies out there who specialize in this.  If you can’t afford the necessary tools or staff, try bringing in a third party to help.  Now, go forth and be productive

It is awfully hard to concentrate at work if you are in an uncomfortable environment.  Long term, this can also negatively effect your health.  Some of the problems you may develop are back pain, eye fatigue, vertigo, carpal tunnel, and neck strain.  To combat these, you may need to rearrange your work environment.  Here are some suggestions:

• If you are at a computer all day, get a wrist pad for your mouse and keyboard.  I’ve been using these for years and they’ve been keeping me productive with no pain.  Without them, my wrists start experiencing pain in about 10 minutes.
• Make sure you are at eye level with your monitor.  If you are consistently looking up or down, you could get neck pain over time.
• If you are using a mouse/keyboard, your elbow should be bent at a 90 degree angle.  Reaching down, up, or too far out to get to them can add pressure to your back.
• Make sure you are sitting upright and add any necessary lumbar support to your lower back.
• Your legs should be at a 90 degree angle with your feet flat on the floor (or footrest).
• Look away from your monitor every 20-30 minutes or so.  This will reduce strain on your eyes and allow them to refocus.
• Get up and walk around a bit every hour or so.  Let your body stretch out so you don’t get rigamortis sitting down all day

You’ll find that once you work in a comfortable position, you’ll be a lot more productive, have reduced stress, and less aches and pains at the end of the day.

No matter what your position at your company (unless you are the CEO), make sure you select a mentor.  This is someone you look up to that you can learn from.  This could be someone in the same department who has a similar position you want to eventually grow into or someone who simply has work ethics that you admire.  Ideally, though, you’ll want someone who is on a similar career track and who shares your goals.  This should also be a person who you think is trustworthy and has your best interests at heart.  This person should also be successful.  Duh.  Why follow after someone who lacks experience or doesn’t have their act together?

Once you have chosen a mentor, approach and ask if they are ok with this.  You’ll want to make sure the mentor has time for you.  A mentor should be available for questions, career advice, training, and anything else you might need that can help you be successful over time.  In some companies, choosing a mentor is required.  In these cases, a mentor is often judged based upon the success of his/her mentoree.

Make sure you touch base with your mentor on a regular basis and solicit feedback.  How have you been improving?  Are you meeting his/her expectations?  If not, work with your mentor to plan out a strategy and re-evaluate your goals.  If you have chosen a good mentor, they should be giving you candid, honest feedback on your work.

And, if you are in a situation where choosing a mentor at work is not possible or practical, then try and model yourself after someone in the industry that you admire.  See if that person has a blog or anything else that you can follow for career advice.

Having a mentor is not a sign of weakness, but rather just the opposite.  I’ve said this before – no one is perfect.  We could all use a little help improving something about ourselves and it takes strength to admit this to yourself and seek some assistance.  So, having a mentor is always a good thing.

Most jobs will either give you about 2 weeks of vacation when you first start or you earn hours as you go.  And usually those benefits will increase the longer you stay with a company.  If you’ve got vacation time, take it!  Working hard is all well and good, but you need to take a break every now and then.

I admit, I often check my emails on vacation just to keep up to date so I don’t have quite as much catching up to do when I get back.  However, this has drawbacks.  A vacation is supposed to be work-free.  If you are checking emails, participating in conference calls, or communicating in other ways with people in the office, you are not really on vacation are you?  If you’ve got a lot going on in the office, this can actually add some level of stress to your vacation.

The whole point of a vacation is to stop working and recharge your batteries.  It allows you to focus on some family and fun.  That way, you are much more refreshed when you return to work.  If you live in the USA, you certainly need to take this time off.  We work more hours than most other countries in the world.  We also get less time off for vacations, maternity leave, etc than most countries.  Personally, I think this needs to change, but for now this is the reality we live in in the States.

You don’t even have to go anywhere (although I would recommend it).  You could just take a “stay-cation” and bum around the house doing fun local activities with the family.  Ideally, if you can swing it, don’t save it all up and use it all in one shot.  Spread it out throughout the year so you have several vacations to look forward to.  Or you can create a bunch of 4 day work weeks.  Whatever your choice, as long as you are not doing work, that is the whole point.

So, take your vacations.  You are overworked! 

Every workplace has this policy – the dress code.  Depending on where you work, this could be business professional, business casual, casual, or no dress code at all.  I had never heard about the latter until recently.  At this particular company, they have employees coming to work with ripped jeans, shorts, earrings connected to nose rings, bodies covered with exposed tattoos and much more.  Sounds crazy right?  But for these guys, that is their culture and reflects their product and the customer segment they are targeting.

Whatever dress code your company has in place, make sure you adhere to it.  You definitely don’t want to look unprofessional in the eyes of your employer by not following the rules.  The dress code is in place to reflect the culture of your company and they want to make sure all their employees look the part.  I’ve worked for consulting firms in the past that have additional policies in this regard.  Some have their own internal dress codes and others always adhere to the policy of their clients.

If you are business professional, this usually means dress shirts, coats, and ties for the guys and pant suits or dresses for the women.  For business casual, this is typically Dockers or some type of khakis and Polos for the guys and almost anything for the women, short of tennis shoes, jeans and T-shirts   Casual is typically jeans and a collared shirt for the guys and similar for the women (most shirts ok, except for t-shirts).  Tennis shoes are ok in a casual dress environment.  But, again, these are general guidelines and you should check with your company’s policy just to make sure.  There are always exceptions

Don’t worry, you can still be different and individualized.  I mean, this isn’t like a school dress code or anything like that.  But, yes, you are conforming to the established dress code.  You may not like to conform to anything, but if you want to keep your job, it would be wise to stick to this one.  Most companies these days have a business casual dress code.  If you are still business professional, hang in there.  Hopefully, your leadership will switch over in the near future.  In the meantime, try to get them to establish a dress-down Friday to move you in the right direction.  Or, as Stewie wanted Brian to do in a Family Guy episode, suggest a wacky tacky tie day

I’m sure most of you out there want to try to work on things yourselves without any help.  There isn’t anything wrong with this – unless you spend too much time here spinning your wheels.  At some point, you have to ask for help to keep your work on schedule and meet your deadlines.  Especially if you are juggling multiple tasks, you need to practice good time management skills and determine how much time to spend on something before asking for help.

Depending on your personality and the culture you work in, you may not want to look uneducated or you may think that your peers will think less of you if you have to ask for help.  It is ok if you don’t have the answers.  As I have said before, no one is perfect.  There are no omnipotent beings out there that know it all.  Even in your career field, trust me, you don’t know everything.  If you did, wouldn’t you think you’d be running the company by now?    And, hopefully, you don’t work in an environment where they expect you to know everything because that is not fair.  Everyone at one point or another has to look up information and struggle through issues to figure them out.  Most learning comes from failure.  So, if you don’t know something, just ask around for help.  I wrote a previous article about proper research techniques, so definitely run through those first and don’t be afraid to seek help if you exhaust your options.  The earlier you can seek help and get the answers, the more time you have to fix issues and move onto something else.

Another tip in this area is to write down the answer once you have it.  You will definitely start looking bad if you keep going back to the same person asking the same questions over and over again.  Not making the same mistakes repeatedly shows your employer that you can learn from your mistakes and move forward to resolve problems more effectively.

If you are currently looking for work, Salary.com recently published an article about what NOT to put on your resume.  These are things that an employer might quickly find on your resume and push it aside without looking at it any further.  Here are the 10 things they came up with:

1. A Crazy Objective – If you sound overconfident or a bit “out there” with your objective statement, an employer is not going to take you seriously.
2. Irrelevant Job Experience – Make sure your experience is related to the job you are looking for.
3. Achievement that aren’t Achievements – You should only list actual awards or accolades – only professional ones should be mentioned.
4. Physical Characteristics – This should be obvious.  Employers don’t care about your physique nor do they want to see pictures of you.
5. Strange Hobbies – A few are ok if they are respectable, but don’t list anything where an employer is going to question your sanity (i.e. I like feeding the ducks in my neighbor’s backyard)
6. Private Matters – You are putting together a professional resume to try and get a job.  Your personal life has nothing to do with this endeavor and should be left out because it is none of the employer’s business.
7. Bad Grammar and Obscure Words – Your employer will think of you as uneducated or, at the very least, lazy enough not to use a spell/grammar checker.
8. Unprofessional Contact Information – Use a professional email address – not one that sounds goofy or inappropriate
9. Personal Information – Leave off anything that could be used for identify theft (i.e. social security number)
10. Attention-getting Tactics – Don’t use different color fonts, crazy fonts types, huge lettering, colored paper or anything else like this that can make your resume stand out negatively.

Those are definitely good tips.  For more, please refer to their full article here:  http://salary.com/Articles/ArticleDetail.asp?part=par1734

I can’t imagine too many jobs out there where you haven’t had to do a little research from time to time.  But, how effective are you at it?  Do you stumble around trying to find the answers but don’t have the patience, don’t know where to look, or don’t know who to ask?  I’d like to lay down some basic steps to doing proper research.

First, when you encounter a problem that you don’t have the answer for, there are some things you can do before asking someone for help.  If you lean on people too much as a crutch, you’ll be lost when they are not around.  In addition, not going directly to someone first will result in better data retention (you learn better) and you won’t waste their time (they’ve got a lot going on as well).  There are several sources you can go to for information:

• Google should normally be your first stop.  I find most of my answers by doing a Google search.  I don’t typically use any other search engines because  . . . well . . . why waste your time?  If you can’t find it on Google, other search engines probably won’t help you much.
• Your company’s knowledge base (if you have one).  This can take the form of a database, document repository (like network folders or software), Wiki, or portal.
• Search use groups.  Find a few groups on the Internet that involve your topic area and search for similar issues.  If you can’t find what you are looking for, ask a question.  This is a not a guarantee you’ll get an answer.  I’ve posted things before that never got a single response.  So, don’t rely on this method 100%.
• Search blogs.  Again, find a few blogs that are related to your topic and see if you can find your answer.
• Books.  I would use this as a last resort.  It can be very difficult to find what you are looking for in a book.  15 years ago, this would have been the preferred method.  But, with the advances of online information, this is becoming more archaic.

The key is to not spend too much time looking up the information yourself.  If you are on a deadline or have lots of other tasks on your plate, this can be a time sinkhole.  Spend an appropriate amount of time based upon your workload and then ask for help.  I’m not saying that your peers are not a good source of information.  They can be a great source of information.  But, as I stated above, you normally don’t want to start with them because you should spend some time figuring out the answers yourself first.  Someone who can resolve problems independently is always preferred over those who can’t.

I’ll likely return to this topic from time to time with specific troubleshooting and issue resolution strategies.  For now, these are some guidelines to keep in mind.  Happy hunting!

Do you use office software on a regular basis, such as word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations?  Who doesn’t, right?  If you work independently and don’t have the cash to spend on an expensive software package, work for a company/department that doesn’t use Windows as the primary OS, or just want to boycott Windows altogether, there are a couple of really good alternatives out there that are free.

OpenOffice has been around for about 20 years and is open to the user community.  In other words, anyone can make suggestions, request enhancements, or fix issues.  There is a web site out there called Ninite from which you can easily download and install the latest version.  Or you can just go to the OpenOffice homepage.  It has several modules available including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics and diagrams, and a database.

Lotus Symphony is a free office package provided by IBM and is actually based on OpenOffice technology.  It appears that IBM had this integrated into Lotus Notes and then decided to release this in a standalone version.  The nice thing about Lotus Symphony is that it has IBM behind it to deliver quality updates based upon the ODF document standard.  This isn’t quite as feature rich as OpenOffice, but it has a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation editor.

So, take these out for a spin.  No one ever said that we all have to use Microsoft

There is a great program out there called DiSC.  It is designed to help you understand how you behave based upon your style tendencies.  After taking a questionnaire, you’ll know your tendencies, needs, preferred environment, and strategies for how to be most effective.  DiSC is broken down into four primary behavioral responses:

• D = Dominance
• I = Influence
• S = Steadiness
• C = Conscientious

Each person tends to have one or two dimensions that are dominant (and in some cases, three).  The model below shows how each style relates to the others:

Based upon the combinations possible, there are about 15 unique patterns that commonly occur in most people.  These are:

• Achiever
• Agent
• Appraiser
• Counselor
• Creative
• Developer
• Inspirational
• Investigator
• Objective Thinker
• Perfectionist
• Persuader
• Practitioner
• Promoter
• Result-Oriented
• Specialist

In my particular case, I came out as a “SC” dominant which is “Steadiness” and “Conscientiousness”.  Based upon my ranking within this group, I fall into the Perfectionist pattern.  This means I pay great attention to detail, have fierce devotion to accuracy, have a tendency to follow clear procedures and rules, restrained in emotions, remain tactful and diplomatic under pressure,  and maintain high standards.  This fits my personality to a tee.  In fact, the moderator who was running the program for us came up with an activity that showed how accurate the results were.  He split us up into groups, some with conflicting behavior styles and some that were complimentary.  He had us plan a party.  He paired me up with the only other “SC” in the group.  Our party was the best planned out, had the most detail, the most activities, and factored in even the smallest details that other groups didn’t consider.  That’s what happens when you put two perfectionists together   The moderator was also able to show how conflicting styles can interfere with progress.

I would highly recommend that you introduce this into the company you are working for.  It is extremely helpful to know how others behave, which directly affects their working style and interactions with others.  For some people, what is revealed may not be much of a surprise.  However, for others, it could be a very enlightening experience.  The program also takes the collective styles of the entire team and shows how this can affect the team’s culture in the workplace.  For example, my team’s results showed that we have a “C” culture (80% of the team).  The attributes of this culture include quality, accuracy, and order.  Such a culture values high standards, careful analysis, and diplomacy.  And since we are an IT group, this works for us quite well.  This can show you the advantages and disadvantages of your team so you can adapt and increase your effectiveness with individuals or other teams.

“DiSC” is a program offered by “Inscape Publishing” and is called “Everything DiSC Classic 2.0“.  It is a program that that has been taken by over 40 million people in 20+ languages over the past 30 years.

So, what’s your behavioral style?

By this, I mean when it is that time of the year for your workspace review, perform a self-review rather than have someone else do it.  If your department typically does not work this way, suggest it.  I realize this is more work on you, but you are always your biggest critic.  You will find that you are much more critical of yourself than someone else is.  If you are truly interested in improving yourself over the course of your career, this is a great way to analyze your faults and to map out an action plan to resolve them.

In my own situation, this was forced upon me (rather than it being my choice).  However, I have found it to be very valuable.  Our department breaks down review goals into the following areas: “Business Alignment”, “Reliable and Secure Applications and Processes”, “Advancing in the role of <role here>”, “Technical Leadership within the Team”, “Quality Focus on all Job Aspects”, “Customer Focus”, “Professionalism and a Team Approach”, “Initiative, innovation, and risk taking”, and “accountability and dependability”.  Sounds like a lot right?  I’ve actually worked other places before that had quite a few more than this!  So, it can take a bit of time to rate yourself across many categories, but it will help you in the long run.  And, in a previous topic, remember when I recommended to keep track of your accomplishments?  Here is a good time to bring them up as examples to support your self-rating.  You’ve done all the work throughout the year to jot those down as you worked on projects.  Here is where the payoff comes in – making your life easier during quarterly/annual reviews.  Your boss will likely be impressed at the level of detail you start putting into your reviews.

In many positions out there today, you will often have to multitask amongst several tasks each day.  Over time, it will become more difficult to try and remember what you worked on and how well you did.  It is important to keep track of your accomplishments for a couple of reasons:

1. You can later transfer this information to your resume to keep it updated
2. It can be leveraged for examples and/or supporting data during annual/quarterly reviews

I’ve been tracking this kind of information for years now.  It definitely takes a level of discipline to keep it updated.  But, once you get accustomed to doing it, it isn’t that bad.  Here is an example of a spreadsheet that I came up with to keep track of everything.  Feel free to use it, if you wish.  The first tab “Project List” is a run-down of all the projects you have worked on in the past or are currently working on.  I use the “B” column for color coding – green means an active project and red means a closed project.  In the “C” column, I list each project name and make it a hyperlink to that specific project on the second tab.  On the second tab, “Project Details” is where all the details are located.  Here, I have a section for each project and track the effective dates, any skills I’ve gained or used, and details surrounding my role and accomplishments.

Trust me, this will save you a lot of effort when it comes to review time, job search, or any other time you need to dig up this type of information.  I hope this is helpful for you!

Many people make friends on the job.  There is nothing wrong with this at all.  It makes coming to work more enjoyable and helps with team collaboration.  However, you need to continuously sensor yourself and watch what you say, especially if one of your friends is your boss.

It is very easy to get into the gossiping habit with your friends and forget who you are talking to.  You never know who is listening and you never know when your colleague might take something the wrong way.  For example, if you are making fun of another employee to your friend, he or she may let it slip to that person or may actually be friends with that individual, unbeknownst to you.  This gets more complicated with a boss-employee relationship.  For instance, I’m on pretty good terms with my boss and I feel more open to discuss things with her that I might otherwise not.  I always make it a point not to talk about others behind their backs or ramble on about someone or something I’m disgruntled about.  Your reputation could be at stake here.  You certainly don’t want your boss thinking less of you because of something you said, even if it was in confidence.

Along these same lines, NEVER add coworkers to your favorite social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc, unless it has a business focus.  If you have personal accounts, coworkers have no business being on there.  It opens you up to be scrutinized for how you behave outside of work.  Once your colleagues know what you are really like (assuming you have some behaviors you don’t want known on the job), your career could be at risk or, at a minimum, folks may not react to you in the same way anymore.  This is exactly why you don’t want your social profile open up to the world.  If you are looking for a job, believe me, recruiters are searching for you on the Internet to dig up any dirt on you.  So, don’t give them any ammunition to keep you from getting a job.

So, the moral is definitely make friends on the job, just don’t be too open with them.

Whatever email system you use at work, whether it be Outlook, Lotus Notes, or something else, archiving off your old emails is always a good idea.  The only downside is that, over time, it can take up a lot of space.  My Outlook archive file has been running since late 2004 and is over 2GB!

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to go into the archive to pull up old information.  I have all of my Outlook folders organized by topic and project.  This makes finding the information easier.  I also have keyword search capability if I still can’t find what I’m looking for.  Beyond just using this as a knowledge base, it is also useful to help people remember prior conversations   Sometimes, especially if a colleague swears up and down that you never provided them some information or notified them of an important event, this is a great way to show that you did.

I would highly recommend archiving all of your folders, your inbox, and your sent box.  If you question the latter, just think about all of those emails that you send to people that you don’t manually save off.  Many times, much of the critical information you send around are in replies to other emails.  And, every now and then, you’ll want to go through some of your archived folders and remove content you are absolutely certain you will never need again.  This will help to keep your archive file smaller.

To make this as mindless as possible, you should definitely have your email client auto-archive on a regular basis.  Then, you don’t have to constantly remember to do it.  What settings to use for archiving depends largely on how much work you do and whether or not your company imposes a space limit.  For example, I have my Outlook set up to archive every 14 days and it will save off items older than 2 months.  My company has a 150 MB space limit per employee, so I’ve found that I can only keep 2 months worth of emails before I need to start archiving.

So, play around with it a bit and determine the best strategy that works for you.  The important thing is that you are saving your data!

I believe the majority of people have an innate fear of failure.  Nobody wants to fail.  Unfortunately, this often results in under-performing employees.  If you let your fear rule you, you’ll never take risks and achieve results.  A good lesson here is that the best way to learn is through failure.  You must come to the realization that no one is perfect, not even you   Everyone makes mistakes.  What differentiates people is those who learn from their mistakes and don’t repeat them over and over again.

Now, if you work in an environment where people call out your mistakes on a regular basis, it can be a bit more difficult to get over this fear.  However, as I have said before, you are only in competition with yourself.  If you don’t fear your own mistakes, no one else’s opinion matters.  Block out the critics and push forward.

If you are able to conquer your fear, you’ll be more apt to take risks and take the initiative on tasks/projects.  And since taking risks/initiative is the primary way to get yourself noticed in the eyes of your employer, it can lead to increased confidence in your skills and potential advancement in the company.

I admit that I suffer from this from time to time.  It can be a hard thing to overcome.  The key is to do what is right for you and the team.  There are always going to be people who say you can’t do something or point out your flaws.  You just can’t let it get to you.  Absorb any constructive criticism you receive and take the next risk.

People are far too overworked these days.  This leads to increased stress, lower energy levels, and increased tempers.  At some point, you’ve got to step back and realize that work is not everything.  You have got to strike a good balance between work and your personal/family life.  If you work for an employer that demands 60+ hour weeks consistently then you might want to look for a new job, especially if you have a family.  No one can keep that pace up for long.

If your position is in a support/service role to that of the rest of the business, they are usually going to ask for things and want it as soon as possible.  My particular role falls here.  To balance things out, I can’t always do something immediately when the client asks.  In these cases, I’ll give them an estimate when it might be completed.  You can’t make everyone happy.  If you are under this disillusion, you will be working quite a few hours every week and not spending as much time with your family that you should.

Having a life outside of work gives you that break you need to recharge your batteries.  After all, work is just a means to an end.  We don’t live to work, we work to live.  Go for a drive, take a vacation, smack a ball around the racquetball court, take up a hobby, spend time with your kids – do anything that isn’t directly or indirectly related to work.  Try your best not to take your work home with you.  Sometimes this is required, but keep it to a minimum.  Beyond just the physical load you might take home, you can take the emotion along with it.  The worst thing you can do is get irritated at work, bring that stress home with you, and take it out on your family.

Having a life can also help you in the workplace.  You might be able to leverage certain skills you use on a regular basis outside of work such as leadership, multitasking, competitiveness, or networking.  So, it is a win-win