Top 10 Jobs tips

Don’t get me wrong—you absolutely must come across as polished, articulate, and professional throughout your job search. However, many people translate this into: Must. Be. Boring. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Realize that few people get hired because they had perfect white space on their cover letters, memorized all of the “correct” interview questions or used incredibly safe, common phraseology (i.e., clichés) throughout their resumes. All of this correctness is going to make you look staged and non-genuine. Instead, give yourself permission to be both polished and endearing. Memorable, likable candidates are almost always the ones who go the distance.

Give yourself an extra boost just before you interview by striking a pose. It might sound silly, but striking a pose can actually boost your self-confidence before you enter into a stressful situation.  Just before you go in to meet with your interviewer, take a few minutes in the bathroom or stairwell and strike a “power pose.” You’ll want your feet to be shoulder width apart.  Put your hands on your hips and keep your spine straight. By doing this for just two minutes before your interview, you’re conditioning your body posture to take up more space and open you up physically, two characteristics of a confident person…and confident people get jobs!

In many cases, a company will be hiring for a position in order to solve a problem or remedy an issue they have been facing. By studying the job description you can often tell if this is the case for the position you are interviewing for. If this is the case, take this opportunity to prepare a one-page proposal that outlines how you would solve the problem that the company is facing… and be specific! Even if they aren’t looking for you to solve the problem in the interview, they will be impressed that you took the initiative and more importantly, that as a hire, you will bring a lot of value to their organization.

Nursing has really taught me the benefits of having a “nana nap” at pretty much any opportunity I can.

• Before driving home from a night shift – Read: How to Stop Falling Asleep While Driving after Night Shift​
• After a 1st/early shift
• Before starting a night shift
• Recovering on days off.. etc And whilst naps are wonderful, they can be a curse too. I recently wrote a post titled, Should You Nap During Night Shift? which opened my eyes to what a nap should really look like. Click on the image to take a look. The bottom line with taking a nap on night shift is that it should be between 10-20 minutes long OR 90 minutes… nothing in between. While the world won’t cave in and smother you if you have a nap of say 50 minutes, you might feel groggy and disoriented for up to an hour. This is called sleep inertia and is basically caused by disrupting a cycle of sleep mid-way through. Avoid this horrible feeling by keeping it short, or making it long (if you have the time and luxury). Use an alarm clock on your mobile phone or one of the specialized night shift alarm clocks we reviewed here to make sure you don’t oversleep. Have you heard of a coffee nap? I know it sounds odd, but using coffee to enhance your sleep/nap is possible and can actually be really effective when feeling tired. Find out more here.

Considering that more than 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn as their primary search tool, this is not an understatement. If you’re a professional, you need to not only be on LinkedIn, you need to be using it to your full advantage. Don’t believe me? Think about it this way: If tomorrow morning, a recruiter logs onto LinkedIn looking for someone in your geography, with expertise in what you do, and you’re not there? Guess who they’re going to find and contact? Yes, that person’s name is “not you.”