ASMEs Position Strengthens Within the Scholarly Publishing Arena

ASMEs Position Strengthens Within the Scholarly Publishing Arena ASMEs Position Strengthens Within the Scholarly Publishing Arena ASMEs Position Strengthens Within the Scholarly Publishing Arena For a second year, the ASME Journal Program has experienced significant increases in both the total number of citations and its Journal Impact Factor (JIF) rankings.According to the 2017 Journal Citation Reports, published by Clarivate Analytics last month, the total number of ASME journal citations increased by 8.75 percent compared to 2016 data. This increase in citations has resulted in a number of ASME journals receiving improved JIF scores, which reflect how ASME journals are ranked relative to others in their fields or disciplines.Applied Mechanics Reviews is the top-ranked ASME journal with a JIF score of 7.848 in 2017. Several other journals experienced a greater than 30 percent improvement in their JIF from 2016 to 2017. These journals include the Journal of Turbomachinery (2.453), J ournal of Electronic Packaging (2.210), Journal of Energy Resources Technology (2.197), Journal of Fluids Engineering (1.915), and Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology (1.182).Publishing the best research and facilitating the widest dissemination for authors are the guiding principles of our publishing mission and philosophy and the improved JIFs are one measure of our success, said Colin McAteer, manager, ASME Journals.For a full listing of the 2017 JIFs for journals, visit the Journals home page on The ASME Digital Collection at https//asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/journals.aspx and review individual titles under the Journals tab.For more information about the ASME Journal Program, contact Colin McAteer at McAteerCasme.org.

Without a plan, you do whats passive and easy not what brings real progress

Without a plan, you do whats passive and easy not what brings real progressWithout a plan, you do whats passive and easy not what brings real progressA plan is a guide for daily execution.Its your reliable system for making progress.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moraWhat most people call plans are just wishes. They want to get more work done daily, read more books, start working out, or start a passion project, but they end up procrastinating.Without a plan, youre hoping.You hope youll find a way to make progress. Hope is a terrible strategy when you have deadlines. If you really want to achieve anything worthwhile, you will make plans.The biggest impediment to maintaining a high output is not being clear on what to work on next. Procrastination is usually a symptom of unclear next steps or insufficiently easy next steps. The latter is solved by good chunking, the former is solv ed by good planning,writesNat Eliason.The bitter truth is without an action plan, or working system, you will accomplish little in life and career.A plan helps you commit yourself fully to everything you want to do.Jim Rohn once said, Dont start the day until you have it finished. Dont start the week until you have it finished. Dont start the month until you have it finished. Plan your day.He is right. Its the best way to make real progress in life and career.You can plan time to do high-value tasks every day, exercise, eat healthy, practice gratitude, read, learn a new skill, etc. It helps you stay focused and avoid the many distractions that come your way every day.Simultaneously you can plan for downtime to take a vacation, go for a walk, spend time with family, etc.Just imagine what you could achieve if you actually made plans, commit to them and get them done?- ?your life would take a quantum leap forward over the next weeks, months, and years.When you think of things ahead of time, consider how to get them done, and make plans to do them on a specific day, week or month, you will put yourself in the best position to control your time and actions.A feeling of control motivates us to act, according toresearch.For a productive day, think in advance. Its the best way to make sure that you dont overlook anything important.An action plan can help you know how much time you have in a given day and how much of it youre going to need to complete your tasks. Once you have an understanding of what you need to do, you can focus on getting your high-priority tasks done.Successful people schedule their days strategically and maximise their time and energy for peak performance. Planning your day beforehand means you can literally orchestrate a productive day.Instead of depending on your mood and your circumstances to get you through the day, choose to be proactive and make mood and circumstances respond to your work.Either you run the day or the day runs you, said Jim Rohn.The alternative is a reactive day that is controlled by actions of others, or a distracted day with little to show for it.Jocelyn K. Glei, founding editor of 99U, and author ofUnsubscribe How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Donesays, Kicking off the day without a plan opens you up to the dangers of reactive work,letting other peoples demands dictate what you do with your day.Most people cant stick to a plan because they dont take it seriously or have no clear directions. Moving from to do to in progress is a big mental barrier, and poor planning can make it even bigger, says Jason Lengstorf.Clarity of purpose changes everything.Instead of rushing to gather your thoughts every morning, aim to start your days with more clarity of purpose.When you minimize your struggles in the morning, that overwhelmed feeling overwhelmed in the morning (and the rest of the day) will be a thing of the past. If you have an action plan every morning, your focus will cha nge. Even how you respond to the demands of others on your time will be different.There are thousands of reasons to get up each morning and start your day right. Youve got to find your reason. Once you find it, do everything in your power to make it happen.Ian Fleming, who is best known for his James Bond series of spy novels maintained a rigorous morning routine to stay prolific. He once saidWriting about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, Casino Royale dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired.By making concrete and realistic plans,What are your daily or weekly outcomes?When you review your day or weekly outcomes and plan your actions according to our expectations, your effort for the day will be aligned with the results you expect, and you will make progress towards those outcomes.Daily or weekly planning is personal.There is no perfect pla n. What works for Tim Ferris may not work for you. You can test and apply different systems for your own circumstance.You have to build a plan based on how you use your time and energy for maximum performance.And todays plan does not necessarily have to be tomorrows routine.While there are certainly benefits to daily routines in general, they dont have to the same, especially if you are not totally in control of your time.By all means, plan your day out, but dont aim for a perfect daily routine. Its OK to have unique days and still make real progress.As a general rule, the more unpredictable your days and the more interruptions and spontaneous tasks show up during your day, the more flexible your day planning method needs to be,saysChristina Willner.Find your flexibility sweet spot whilst you are still in control of your day.Planning your day is fairly simple?- ?write down all your pre-determined and high-value activities that you want to be included in your next day, identify the b est time of day to get them done, and the drag and drop them into your daily planner. You could even write out why you want to accomplish them.And most importantly, take it seriously. Commit to your schedule, and defend your time from distractions to get them done.In less than 10 minutes you can get a head-start tomorrow, knowing exactly how to start and end your day right.Proper planning doesnt need to involve hours of your time. It really just boils down to defining what success means to you?- ?before the work begins.To improve anything, build an actionable plan to continuously make progress.Key takeawayIf you dont design your own plan for tomorrow, the week, or your life, chances are youll fall into someone elses plan.Dont throw yourself headlong into projects- working as long as you can manage, hacking and slashing toward the finish line.If you strategically plan your days, it will snowball into a more successful day.This article first appeared on Medium.

This 5s Japanese principle will help you declutter your desk and keep it organized

This 5s Japanese principle will help you declutter your desk and keep it organizedThis 5s Japanese principle will help you declutter your desk and keep it organizedClutter makes you less productive.Your office space is just as important as your home space.If you spend a greater percentage of your time at work, its worth giving that space some attention to do your best work.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreThe mess on your work desk inhibits your overall productivity because everything is competing for your limited mental resources.The more stuff you have around your immediate work environment, the more each item competes for nerven betreffend representationi.e, your attention.A disorganized desk makes it harder to focus, according toresearch.So the more clutter kept on your desk, the harder it is to process information and switch between tasks successfully.Think about how stresse d you are when you cant find something (if you have to keep moving objects every day, or you cant see your desktop, its time to declutter your workspace).If you have to keep a few important things on your desk, follow the essentials only rule, according to Jennifer Ford Berry, best-selling author of theOrganize Now. Keep the items you need to get your job done within arms reach?- ?and only those items, she says.To improve mental clarity and concentration, keep items you rarely use away from your desk. Non-essentials should always be kept in desk drawers.Aim to make the space as open as possible.Use the5-S Principleto clear yourdesk5Sis a simple method for organizing your workplace in a clean, and efficient way to enhance productivity.Its the name of a workplace organization method that uses a list of five Japanese words Sort (Seiri), Set In Order (Seiton), Shine (Seiso), Standardize (Seiketsu), and Sustain (Shitsuke).Make work easier by eliminating obstacles (Sort)Arrange all necess ary items so that they can be easily selected for use (Set In Order)Clean your workplace on a daily fundament completely or set cleaning frequency (Shine)Maintain high standards at all times (Standardize)Self-discipline also translates as do without being told(Sustain)Its a simple principle to maintain a productive desk.You can use it as a guide just before you leave the office to declutter your desk.The last 20 minutes of your workday is the perfect time to prepare fortomorrowYou can easily embrace the declutter habit if you clear your desk before leaving the office.Clutter isnt evil during a project, but it certainly isnt necessary all the time. Thats why I adopted the practice of desktop zero, just like inbox zero for email At the end of a task or project, I clear my desk of everything I dont need sitting out, says Jeff Sanders, author ofThe Free-Time FormulaandThe 5 A.M. Miracle.When in doubt, rearrange.Your workspace is now your command center.You dont even have to spend a lot of time tidying your desk. A simple re-arrangement of essential objects can do the trick.Put frequently-used items on your dominant side. This saves you time.You wont need to reach across to grab an essential item when necessary.Getting up even just once a day for a pencil or paper clip is shutting your brain off a project you are working on and you will have to come back and re-center, says Amy Trager, a certified professional organizer.If you still feel still distracted after rearranging objects, try sweeping everything off your desk, except the computer, phone, planner, notepad, pen, and desk trays if use them to organize papers.Keep it nicht unter and functional with only the items you use every day.You can go a step further by making the one thing youre working on the only thing that gets to occupy space on your desk.Be deliberate and selective about what goes where.The same desk arrangement may not work for everyone.Adjust your workspace according to how you work. If you do a lot of brainstorming, paper trays, pens, and highlighters might be your essentials.If your work is primarily digital, a minimal approach ( computer, journal, and a pen) may be your essentials.Organize your desk based on how you get things done.For maximum productivity, reassess how frequent you use essential items on your desk. Take a weekly scan of your desk to make sure everything still deserves a spot on your desk.Commit to a personal organizational system to keep your desk clutter free.This article first appeared on Medium.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

5 Unique Jobs Now Hiring and How Much They Pay

5 Unique Jobs Now Hiring and How Much They Pay5 Unique Jobs Now Hiring and How Much They PayTravel is enriching because it takes us out of our day-to-day routine. It gives us the chance to see different locals and to meet new people. During my recent travelingadventures, I was particularly mindful of the unique and interesting jobs that people were doing when I met them. I found myself repeatedly thinking I wonder what that job is like. Here are some of the professions that I looked up as soon as I returned.Music Minister Average Salary $48,330A strong music program is a key component of a church, synagogue, temple, or house of worship. It adds depth and richness to the congregations religious experience, and it keeps them coming back. Spiritually engaging people through music is an interesting job that often requires working with children, teens and adults alike. Music ministers typically work nontraditional hours, which gives them time to supplement their income with other gigsa co nvenient setup for musicians. Search Music Minister jobsBrewmaster Average Salary $61,000Brew masters are at the helm of a booming business. They help create and refine craft brew recipes that have changed the way Americans enjoy beer. Brew masters ensure that each batch is just right and develop future brews. There is great interest in this field, and those artisans versed in the trade can often find side jobs as instructors. Search Brewmaster jobsTailor/SeamstressAverage Salary $21,068In addition to assisting with basic upkeep and maintenance of clothing, these skilled artisans may also be contracted to create special garments such as costumes and occasion dresses. The DIY boom has also seen crafty amateurs aiming to hone their skills by hiring a professional to teach them the basics. There is plenty of room for an energetic entrepreneur to parlay this skill set into a bustling business. Search Tailor JobsToll CollectorAverage Salary $22,541A solitary but fast-paced job, toll coll ectors are stationed on highways, bridges and other high volume collection points throughout the country. They are responsible for receiving, counting and invoicing funds. Especially during peak times, they have to make sure that they are on their toes to keep traffic flowing smoothly.Search Toll Collector JobsEmergency Room NurseAverage Salary $57,000ER nurses have truly seen it all. Some skills they bring to the table include making sound judgements in an often chaotic work environment. They also help set an emotional tone of calm and cool in an environment that is frequently stressful. ER nurses have to be excellent team players who know how to treat patients empathetically and with medical expertise. From dog bites to car accidents, there is seldom a dull moment in the emergency room.SearchEmergency Room Nurse Jobs

Social Insects Inspire Design Autonomous Robots

Social Insects Inspire Design Autonomous Robots Social Insects Inspire Design Autonomous Robots Robots have overrun Hanover Fair, the worlds largest industrial exposition held annually in Germany. Exhibitors display hundreds of robotic arms, actuators, sensor systems, and feedback mechanisms.The growing presence of autonomous robots at Hanover reflects worldwide interest in robots that can clean house, fight wars, or serve as personal assistantsall by themselves.With autonomous robots, developers must wrestle with the most vexing of control questions How can a robot be made intelligent enough to operate without direct guidance? That goal is very different from programming an automated control system in a factory, where every piece of equipment and every possible interaction is understood ahead of time.A truly autonomous robot must be able to interact with a constantly changingand therefore, unknownenvironment.Learning from AntsOnce, theorists thought autonomous robots needed artifici al intelligencethe ability to assess the environment and make informed judgments before acting. Today, developers feel that type of thinking is far too slow for real-time decision making. Instead, engineers are looking for clues in the behavior of social insects.When simple behaviors work together, they can create what appear to be complex, problem-solving behaviors, noted Bryan Adams. Adams is a principal investigator at iRobot in Bedford, MA, which developed Roomba, the worlds most widely owned commercial robotand one inspired by the behavior of ants.Consider how some species of ants find the shortest route to food. When a randomly foraging ant finds food, it grabs a piece and wanders back to the nest, leaving behind a trail of pheromones.The RoboCup is a soccer competition for autonomous robots. To win, robots must play as both individuals and team members.Other ants set out from the nest, following that pheromone trail to seek provisions. At first, they follow it readily because the scent is recent and strong. Farther away, though, pheromones have begun to evaporate, and the ants begin to wander from the trail.The ants that find the most direct route to the food and back leave the strongest scent, and their trail is the easiest to follow.At the highest level, this looks like rationaleven intelligentbehavior. Yet it derives from rudimentary instincts walk randomly until you find food, bring the food back to the nest, follow the strongest scent back to food, and repeat.Such an approach guides Roomba, a disk on wheels that scurries around furniture and backs away from walls while randomly vacuuming rooms. Roombas instruction set looks something like wander and vacuum, go left or right upon hitting an object, back up or spiral when caught in a corner, and find the docking station to recharge when low on power.Learning Smart BehaviorCan robots actually learn behaviors with real intelligence? And can they do it with simple commands that enable them to function i n the real world?Stefan Wrobel thinks so. Wrobel, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems near Bonn, Germany, is active in RoboCup competitionssoccer matches played by robots. In robotics, Wrobel explained while scores of students put the finishing touches on their RoboCup contenders, behaviors are just the simplest building blocks. Robots that adapt to the environment go beyond manifesting behaviors they learn while performing tasks.At the least complicated level, a robot could use simple behaviors to confirm its model of the environment. When searching for power, if there is no power source in the northwest corner, it could remember that, Wrobel said.On a more sophisticated level, a robot could assign priorities to its own behaviors, such as when to move or what to grab. According to Wrobel, designers give robots goals, and when the robot does something right, it receives a numerical leistungspunkt as a reward.TeamworkHanovers RoboCup matches have a long-term goal to develop a team of robots capable of winning a soccer match against human opponents by 2050. Humanoid robots show themselves to be limited they must stop before kicking the ball they cannot pass effectively few can lift themselves off the ground they are also painfully slow.Wheeled robots, however, speed around the field, bumping the ball to one another and then finally bouncing it towards the goal. The robots can work together and still make rapid decisions because they are organized hierarchically.Robots have to react to different things as individual robots and as team players, said Sven Behnke, head of Bonns Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group.Each of Behnkes robots have four levels of control the entire team, an individual robot, isolated body parts, and single joints. At the team level, the robots are focused on plans for the immediate future, while at the individual level, they react more to their environment.Simple and reactive are good, but consistent is even better. That begins with physical robustness. For every minute of RoboCup play, there are untold hours of preparation and recalibration. At tables around the playing field, scores of students are repairing, upgrading, or salvaging robots.Winning boils down to consistency, said Ericson Mar, who teaches robotics at Cooper Union in New York City. The robots that win are the ones that can do the task over and over again.Now that engineers have developed robots to the level of ants, can they lift robotic sophistication to the next evolutionary step? Many challenges lie ahead.Adapted from From Simple Rules, Complex Behavior by Alan S. Brown, Associate Editor, Mechanical Engineering, July 2009.When simple behaviors work together, they can create what appear to be complex, problem-solving behaviors.Bryan Adams, principal investigator, iRobot

The Downside Risk of Best Resume Format 2019 That No One Is Talking About

The Downside Risk of Best Resume Format 2019 That No One Is Talking About If You Read Nothing Else Today, Read This Report on Best Resume Format 2019 Once youve reviewed resumes in your field, peruse resumes across fields to know how to vary using action verbs and receive a feel for what makes an effective accomplishment statement. There are many alternatives and tons of conflicting advice. Youre made to include everything, and the result is usually a resume that doesnt capture interest as it is not focused. Summary of someones qualification is also wise to put your very best foot forward right at the start of the resume. Whichever format you select, it should make you become selected for the job youre applying for. Just make sure, whichever format you decide on, which youre targeting it for the job that youre applying to. Giving a PDF copy will be a better choice. Some PDF format resumes are made by utilizing a document scanner to make an image of a paper resume. Its also wise to take care when creating a PDF format resume. Resume Templates also be sure that you dont miss out any beneficial item of information about yourself which can be important for the corporation. Youre now prepared to plek the best resume format for your requirements. A timeless style resume template is also simple to customize. Once you have selected your perfect resume template from our selection, follow our totally free expert guidance about ways to craft the ideal modern resume. You are able to use our professionally created resume templates and one-of-a-kind resume builder to rapidly and easily establish a standout resume. Therefore its vital that you email your resume right. When you format your resume you need to be certain your leave enough margin space to permit for printing. If youre developing a Word format resume, clearly Word is an excellent choice. The resume format sample ought to be carried out well. Rather than taking the danger of designing CV format you rself, it is preferable to download for sample CV collection. Its fast and simple to use. There is a range of templates offered for creating resumes. Using Best Resume Format 2019 You only ought to put jobs on a resume that relate to the role available. Resumes ought to be targeted effectively at the particular sort of marketing job applied for. Both may be used to create chronological or functional resumes. Everyone hopes to put on an opportunity to impress potential new employer at a job interview, but theres no denying that interviews can be quite stressful Below, you will discover a list of resume examples that could aid you with your work search. A targeted resume is utilised to focus your work search toward a particular career objective, performed in a particular industry, and for a particular firm. Notice how the example resumes are extremely specific when it has to do with technical skills. The work description might also earn a difference. For some jobs, you will want to highlight certain abilities, while for others, youre want to demonstrate related experience. Transportation jobs involve plenty of responsibility and your resume will want to reflect you can manage that. Customer service is an essential element in many jobs and its imperative that you concentrate on that in your resume.

Company Holiday Party Tips - Spark Hire

Company Holiday Party Tips - Spark HireIf employee engagement is on your list of things to improve in your company for the new year, what better time to start than the holidays? Not all companies partake in the holiday celebration, but many do and usually it comes in the form of a company holiday party. Just recently, Spark Hire touched on employee engagement over the holidays and promised to give out some more tips on having a company holiday party.It may seem like a simple gesture, but the truth is throwing a company-wide or department-wide party can be a difficult and stressful ordeal. Especially if you want to throw an appropriate and professional one. Sometimes the party planning will fall on the HR department and if its a flop, you may never hear the end of it. So before you get to planning or throwing a company holiday party, take a look at a few of the tips we provide below for some help.Although the holidays are generally a very busy and stressful time, most people want to e njoy the friendly and jolly atmosphere. That may be even more true if you work for a company that boasts great company culture. Therefore, having a holiday party may just seem like second-nature. Lets take a look at some of the things you can do to ensure your company is having good, clean fun at the holiday party.Leave Religion OutIf your company is diverse, as it should be, then chances are not everyone will be celebrating Christmas. That is why this is not called a company Christmas Party. If your company wants to throw a party, then you should not leave others out by creating an fest centered around a religious holiday. The truth of the matter is, many different cultures and religions partake in some sort of celebration this time of year and the politically correct way to refer to this season is the holidays. Be conscious of the many religions and cultures in your office and be sure not to segregate or leave a particular group out.In the same light, be sure not to focus on one r eligion during your holiday party. Leave out prayers or religious customs and focus on having a secular holiday party. If you cannot or do not want to do that, then make sure your company holiday party is not mandatory. You cannot force your employees to partake in any kind of religious activity, so certainly be aware of this when planning your party. Which leads us to our next tipMandatory Company Party?Before you make the company party mandatory, or hint that your employees are expected to be there, understand that any mandatory event you throw outside of geschftlicher umgang hours must be compensated. Meaning, if you throw a party outside business hours and tell your employees they have to be there, then you have to pay them for their time. That is why it is best to have a company party during business hours or to simply make the party optional.In fact, having your company party during business hours is much more convenient for your employees. As you know, the holidays are a busy time and employees may not have the time in their schedule to fit the week night company party into their schedule. If your company hosts an annual holiday party at a specific venue, then of course its tradition and most of your employees will show up. If you do throw an optional holiday party and many of your employees fail to show up, it may prove that you have a lot of work to do in terms of employee engagement, company culture or overall management style. When employees dont show support for fun work events like a holiday party, they likely arent very thrilled to be working for your company and changes should be made.Keep It Classy Mistletoe is part of the holidays, but does it have a place at the company party? The answer is a big no. Its a cute plus-rechnen to a family or friend holiday party, but it can make things very uncomfortable and awkward at a company party. Chances are the majority of your employees do not want to get that close to their coworkers- nor should they On top of that, if there is alcohol involved the situation can get really sticky. Leave the mistletoe out and keep it professional this year.Careful With AlcoholThis should go without saying, but for some reason every year there tends to be that one employee- or a couple of employees- that drink way too much at the holiday party. Since everyone is an adult, one may think that its a no-brainer to avoid getting drunk at the company holiday party, but it still happens. If you are planning the party, think about the kind of venue you want to hold it at. Are you thinking of going to a bar? If so, this can be a very bad idea. There is endless alcohol and the party can turn into a big mess full of embarrassment. Try and find a neutral venue like a restaurant where alcohol is available but is not the main focus.Similarly, if you are going to have an open bar make sure it is monitored. Have a cut-off time or a drink limit for each employee/attendee. This is even more important when you learn o f the law that holds you responsible for any injuries that result from intoxication at the company holiday party. Be sure to monitor drinking and let everyone know they should keep it professional.A company holiday party should be a fun and festive event for all involved. However, the potential for disaster is big when not handled correctly. Be sure to follow some of behauptung tips, and remember to keep it professional and classy.Do you have some company holiday party tips? Have you attended a company party that turned out to be a disaster? Share with us in the comments section belowIMAGE Courtesy of Flickr by Todd_Hobert

Why good people turn bad online Defeat your inner troll

Why good people turn bad verbunden Defeat yur intern trollWhy good people turn bad online Defeat yur inner trollOn the evening of 17 February 2018, Professor Mary Beard posted on Twitter a photograph of herself crying. The eminent University of Cambridge classicist, who has almost 200,000 Twitter followers, welches distraught after receiving a storm of abuse online. This was the reaction to a comment she had made about Haiti. She also tweeted I speak from the heart (and of curse I may be wrong). But the crap I get in response just isnt on really it isnt.In the days that followed, Beard received support from several high-profile people. Greg Jenner, a fellow celebrity historian, tweeted about his own experience of a Twitterstorm Ill always remember how traumatic it was to suddenly be hated by strangers. Regardless of morality I may have been wrong or right in my opinion I was amazed (later, when I recovered) at how psychologically destabilizing it was to me.Those tweeting support fo r Beard irrespective of whether they agreed with her initial tweet that had triggered the abusive responses were themselves then targeted. And when one of Beards critics, fellow Cambridge academic Priyamvada Gopal, a woman of Asian heritage, set out her response to Beards original tweet in an online article, she received her own torrent of abuse.There is overwhelming evidence that women and members of ethnic minority groups are disproportionately the target of Twitter abuse. Where these identity markers intersect, the bullying can become particularly intense, as experienced by black female MP Diane Abinternet bott, who alone receivednearly halfof all the abusive tweets sent to female MPs during the run-up to the 2017 UK general election. Black and Asian female MPs received on average 35 percent mora abusive tweets than their white female colleagues even when Abbott was excluded from the total.The constant barrage of abuse, including death threats and threats of sexual violence, is silencing people, pushing them off online platfassons and further reducing the diversity of online voices and opinion. And it shows no sign of abating. Asurvey last yearfound that 40 percent of American adults had personally experienced online abuse, with almost half of them receiving severe forms of harassment, including physical threats and stalking. 70 percent of women described online harassment as a major problem.The business models of social media platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook, promote content that is mora likely to get a response from other users because mora engagement means better opportunities for advertising. But this has aconsequence of favoring divisive and strongly emotive or extreme content, which can, in turn, nurture online bubbles of groups who reflect and reinforce each others opinions, helping propel the spread of more extreme content and providing a niche for fake news. In recent months,researchers have revealedmany ways that various vested interests, including Russian operatives, have sought to manipulate public opinion by infiltrating social media bubbles.Our human ability to communicate ideas across networks of people enabled us to build the modern world. The internet offers unparalleled promise of cooperation and communication between all of humanity. But instead of embracing a massive extension of ur social circles online, we binnenseem to be reverting to tribalism and conflict, and belief in the potential of the internet to bring humanity together in a glorious collaborating network now begins to seem naive. While we generally conduct ur real-life interactions with strangers politely and respectfully, online we can be horrible. How can we relearn the collaborative techniques that enabled us to find common ground and thrive as a species?Dont overthink it, just press the buttonI click an amount, impoverishing myself in an instant, and quickly move on to the next question, aware that were all playing against the clock. My tea mmates are far away and unknown to me. I have no idea if were all in it together or whether Im being played for a fool, but I press on, knowing that the others are depending on me.Im playing in a so-called public goods game at Yale Universitys Human Cooperation Lab. The researchers here use it as a tool to help understand how and why we cooperate, and whether we can enhance our prosocial behavior.Over the years, scientists have proposed various theories about why humans cooperate so well that we form strong societies. The evolutionary roots of our general niceness, most researchers now believe, can be found in the individual survival advantage humans experience when we cooperate as a group. Ive come to New Haven, Connecticut, in a snowy February, to visit a cluster of labs where researchers are using experiments to explore further our extraordinary impulse to be nice to others even at our own expense.The game Im playing, on Amazons Mechanical Turk online platform, is one of the labs ongoing experiments. Im in a team of four people in different locations, and each of us is given the saatkorn amount of money to play with. We are asked to choose how much money we will contribute to a group pot, on the understanding that this pot will then be doubled and split equally among us.This sort of social dilemma, like all cooperation, relies on a certain level of trust that the others in your group will be nice. If everybody in the group contributes all of their money, all the money gets doubled, redistributed four ways, and everyone doubles their money. WinwinBut if you think about it from the perspective of an individual, says lab director David Rand, for each dollar that you contribute, it gets doubled to two dollars and then split four ways which means each person only gets 50 cents back for the dollar they contributed.Even though everyone is better off collectively by contributing to a group project that no one could manage alone in real life, this could be paying towards a hospital building, or digging a community irrigation ditch there is a cost at the individual level. Financially, you make more money by being more selfish.Rands team has run this game with thousands of players. Half of them are asked, as I was, to decide their contribution rapidly within 10 seconds whereas the other half are asked to take their time and carefully consider their decision. It turns out that when people go with their gut, they are much more generous than when they spend time deliberating.There is a lot of evidence that cooperation is a central feature of human evolution, says Rand. Individuals benefit, and are more likely to survive, by cooperating with the group. And being allowed to stay in the group and benefit from it is reliant on our reputation for behaving cooperatively.In the small-scale societies that our ancestors were living in, all our interactions were with people that you were going to see again and interact within the immediate future, Rand says. That kept in check any temptation to act aggressively or take advantage and free-ride off other peoples contributions. It makes sense, in a self-interested way, to be cooperative.Cooperation breeds more cooperation in a mutually beneficial cycle. Rather than work out every time whether its in our long-term interests to be nice, its more efficient and less effort to have the basic rule be nice to other people. Thats why our unthinking response in the experiment is a generous one.Throughout our lives, we learn from the society around us how cooperative to be. But our learned behaviors can also change quickly.Those in Rands experiment who play the quickfire round are mostly generous and receive generous dividends, reinforcing their generous outlook. Whereas those who consider their decisions are more selfish, resulting in a meager group pot, reinforcing an idea that it doesnt pay to rely on the group. So, in a further experiment, Rand gave some money to people who had played a ro und of the game. They were then asked how much they wanted to give to an anonymous stranger. This time, there was no incentive to give they would be acting entirely charitably.It turned out there were big differences. The people who had got used to cooperating in the first stage gave twice as much money in the second stage as the people who had got used to being selfish did. So were affecting peoples internal lives and behavior, Rand says. The way they behave even when no ones watching and when theres no institution in place to punish or reward them.Rands team have tested how people in different countries playthegame, to see how the strength of social institutions such as government, family, education and legal systems influences behavior. In Kenya, wherepublic sector corruption is high, players initially gave lessgenerously to the stranger than players in the US, which has less corruption. This suggests that people who can rely on relatively fair social institutions behave in a m ore public-spirited way those whose institutions are less reliable are more protectionist. However, after playing just one round of the cooperation-promoting versionof the public goods game, the Kenyans generosity equaled the Americans. And it cut both ways Americans who were trained to be selfish gave a lot less.So is there something about online social media culture that makes some people behave meanly? Unlike ancienthunter-gatherer societies, which rely on cooperation and sharing to survive and often have rules for when to offer food to whom across their social network, social media have weak institutions. They offer physical distance, relative anonymity and little reputational or punitive risk for bad behavior if youre mean, no one you know is going to see.I trudge a couple of blocks through driving snow to find Molly Crocketts Psychology Lab, where researchers are investigating moral decision-making in society. One area they focus on is how social emotions are transformed onlin e, in particular, moral outrage. Brain-imaging studies show that when people act on their moral outrage, their brains reward center is activated they feel good about it. This reinforces their behavior, so they are more likely to intervene in a similar way again. So, if they see somebody acting in a way that violates a social norm, by allowing their dog to foul a playground, for instance, and they publicly confront the perpetrator about it, they feel good afterwards. And while challenging a violator of your communitys social norms has its risks you may get attacked it also boosts your reputation.In our relatively peaceful lives, we are rarely faced with outrageous behavior, so we rarely see moral outrage expressed. Open up Twitter or Facebook and you get a very different picture.Recent researchshows that messages with both moral and emotional words are more likely to spread on social media each moral or emotional word in a tweet increases the likelihood of it being retweeted by 2 0 percent.Content that triggers outrage and that expresses outrage is much more likely to be shared, Crockett says. What weve created online is an ecosystem that selects for the most outrageous content, paired with a platform where its easier than ever before to express outrage.Unlike in the offline world, there is no personal risk in confronting and exposing someone. It only takes a few clicks of a button and you dont have to be physically nearby, so there is a lot more outrage expressed online. And it feeds itself. If you punish somebody for violating a norm, that makes you seem more trustworthy to others, so you can broadcast your moral character by expressing outrage and punishing social norm violations, Crockett says. And people believe that they are spreading good by expressing outrage that it comes from a place of morality and righteousness.When you go from offline where you might boost your reputation for whoever happens to be standing around at the moment to online, wher e you broadcast it to your entire social network, then that dramatically amplifies the personal rewards of expressing outrage.This is compounded by the feedback people get on social media, in the form of likes and retweets and so on. Our hypothesis is that the design of these platforms could make expressing outrage into a habit, and a habit is something thats done without regard to its consequences its insensitive to what happens next, its just a blind response to a stimulus, Crockett explains.I think its worth having a conversation as a society as to whether we want our morality to be under the control of algorithms whose purpose is to make money for giant tech companies, she adds. I think we would all like to believe and feel that our moral emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are intentional and elend knee-jerk reactions to whatever is placed in front of us that our handy designer thinks will bring them the most profit.On the upside, the lower costs of expressing outrage online hav e allowed marginalized, less-empowered groups to promote causes that have traditionally been harder to advance. Moral outrage on social media played an important role in focusing attention on the sexual abuse of women by high-status men. And in February 2018, Florida teens railing on social media against yet another high-school shooting in their state helped toshift public opinion, as well as shaming a number of big corporations into dropping their discount schemes for National Rifle Association members.I think that there must be ways to maintain the benefits of the online world, says Crockett, while thinking more carefully about redesigning these interactions to do away with some of the more costly bits.Someone whos thought a great deal about the design of our interactions in social networks is Nicholas Christakis, director of Yales Human Nature Lab, located just a few more snowy blocks away. His team studies how our position in a social network influences our behavior, and even ho w certain influential individuals can dramatically alter the culture of a whole network.The team is exploring ways to identify these individuals and enlist them in public health programmes that could benefit the community. In Honduras, they are using this approach to influence vaccination enrolment and maternal care, for example. Online, such people have the potential to turn a bullying culture into a supportive one.Corporations already use a crude system of identifying so-called Instagram influencers to advertise their brands for them. But Christakis is looking not just at how popular an individual is, but also their position in the network and the shape of that network. In some networks, like a small isolated village, everyone is closely connected and youre likely to know everyone at a party in a city, by contrast, people may be living more closely by as a whole, but you are less likely to know everyone at a party there. How thoroughly interconnected a network is affects how behav iors and information spread around it, he explains.If you take carbon atoms and you assemble them one way, they become graphite, which is soft and dark. Take the saatkorn carbon atoms and assemble them a different way, and it becomes diamond, which is hard and clear. These properties of hardness and clearness arent properties of the carbon atoms theyre properties of the collection of carbon atoms and depend on how you connect the carbon atoms to each other, he says. And its the same with human groups.Christakis has designed software to explore this by creating temporary artificial societies online. We drop people in and then we let them interact with each other and see how they play a public goods game, for example, to assess how kind they are to other people.Then he manipulates the network. By engineering their interactions one way, I can make them really sweet to each other, work well together, and they are healthy and happy and they cooperate. Or you take the same people and con nect them a different way and theyre mean jerks to each other and they dont cooperate and they dont share information and they are not kind to each other.In one experiment, he randomly assigned strangers to play the public goods game with each other. In the beginning, he says, about two-thirds of people were cooperative. But some of the people they interact with will take advantage of them and, because their only option is either to be kind and cooperative or to be a defector, they choose to defect because theyre stuck with these people taking advantage of them. And by the end of the experiment everyone is a jerk to everyone else.Christakis turned this around simply by giving each person a little bit of control over who they were connected to after each round. They had to make two decisions am I kind to my neighbors or am I not and do I stick with this neighbor or do I not. The only thing each player knew about their neighbors was whether each had cooperated or defected in the round before. What we were able to show is that people cut ties to defectors and form ties to cooperators, and the network rewired itself and converted itself into a diamond-like structure instead of a graphite-like structure. In other words, a cooperative prosocial structure instead of an uncooperative structure.In an attempt to generate more cooperative online communities, Christakiss team have started adding bots to their temporary societies. He takes me over to a laptop and sets me up on a different game. In this game, anonymous players have to work together as a team to solve a dilemma that tilers will be familiar with each of us has to zupflmmel from one of three colors, but the colors of players directly connected to each other must be different. If we solve the puzzle within a time limit, we all get a share of the prize money if we fail, no one gets anything. Im playing with at least 30 other people. None of us can see the whole network of connections, only the people we are dire ctly connected to nevertheless, we have to cooperate to win.Im connected to two neighbors, whose colors are green and blue, so I pick red. My left neighbor then changes to red so I quickly change to blue. The game continues and I become increasingly tense, cursing my slow reaction times. I frequently have to switch my color, responding to unseen changes elsewhere in the network, which send a cascade of changes along the connections. Times up before we solve the puzzle, prompting irate responses in the games comments box from remote players condemning everyone elses stupidity. Personally, Im relieved its over and theres no longer anyone depending on my cackhanded gaming skills to earn money.Christakis tells me that some of the networks are so complex that the puzzle is impossible to solve in the timeframe. My relief is shortlived, however the one I played was solvable. He rewinds the game, revealing for the first time the whole network to me. I see now that I was on a lower branch o ff the main hub of the network. Some of the players were connected to just one other person, but most were connected to three or more. Thousands of people from around the world play these games on Amazon Mechanical Turk, drawn by the small fee they earn per round. But as Im watching the game I just played unfold, Christakis reveals that three of these players are actually planted bots. We call them dumb AI, he says.His team is not interested in inventing super-smart AI to replace human cognition. Instead, the plan is to infiltrate a population of smart humans with dumb-bots to help the humans help themselves.We wanted to see if we could use the dumb-bots to get the people unstuck so they can cooperate and coordinate a little bit more so that their native capacity to perform well can be revealed by a little assistance, Christakis says. He found that if the bots played perfectly, that didnt help the humans. But if the bots made some mistakes, they unlocked the potential of the group to find a solution.Some of these bots made counter-intuitive choices. Even though their neighbors all had green and they should have picked orange, instead they also picked green. When they did that, it allowed one of the green neighbors to pick orange, which unlocks the next guy over, he can pick a different color and, wow, now we solve the problem. Without the bot, those human players would probably all have stuck with green, not realizing that was the problem. Increasing the conflicts temporarily allows their neighbors to make better choices.By adding a little noise into the system, the bots helped the network to function more efficiently. Perhaps a version of this model could involve infiltrating the newsfeeds of partisan people with occasional items offering a different perspective, helping to shift people out of their social media comfort-bubbles and allow society as a whole to cooperate more.Much antisocial behavior online stems from the anonymity of internet interactions th e reputational costs of being mean are much lower than offline. Here, bots may also offer a solution.One experimentfound that the level of racist abuse tweeted at black users could be dramatically slashed by using bot accounts with white profile images to respond to racist tweeters. A typical bot response to a racist tweet would be Hey man, just remember that there are real people who are hurt when you harass them with that kind of language. Simply cultivating a little empathy in such tweeters reduced their racist tweets almost to zero for weeks afterwards.Another way of addressing the low reputational cost for bad behavior online is to engineer in some form of social punishment. One game company, League of Legends, did that by introducing a Tribunal feature, in which negative play is punished by other players. The company reported that 280,000 players were reformed in one year, meaning that after being punished by the Tribunal they had changed their behavior and then achieved a pos itive standing in the community. Developers could also build in social rewards for good behavior, encouraging more cooperative elements that help build relationships.Researchers are already starting to learn how to predict when an exchange is about to turn bad the moment at which it could benefit from pre-emptive intervention. You might think that there is a minority of sociopaths online, which we call trolls, who are doing all this harm, says Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, at Cornell Universitys Department of Information Science. What we actually find in our work is that ordinary people, just like you and me, can engage in such antisocial behavior. For a specific period of time, you can actually become a troll. And thats surprising.Its also alarming. I mentally flick back through my own recent tweets, hoping I havent veered into bullying in some awkward attempt to appear funny or cool to my online followers. After all, it can be very tempting to be abusive to someone far away, who you dont know, if you think it will impress your social group.Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil has been investigating the comments sections below online articles. He identifies two main triggers for trolling the context of the exchange how other users are behaving and your mood. If youre having a bad day, or if it happens to be Monday, for example, youre much more likely to troll in the same situation, he says. Youre nicer on a Saturday morning.After collecting data, including from people who had engaged in trolling behavior in the past, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil built an algorithm that predicts with 80 percent accuracy when someone is about to become abusive online. This provides an opportunity to, for example, introduce a delay in how fehlte nicht viel they can post their response. If people have to think twice before they write something, that improves the context of the exchange for everyone youre less likely to witness people misbehaving, and so less likely to misbehave yourself.The good news is that, in spite of the horrible behavior many of us have experienced online, the majority of interactions are nice and cooperative. Justified moral outrage is usefully employed in challenging hateful tweets. Arecent British studylooking at anti-Semitism on Twitter found that posts challenging anti-Semitic tweets are shared far more widely than the anti-Semitic tweets themselves. Most hateful posts were ignored or only shared within a small echo chamber of similar accounts. Perhaps were already starting to do the work of the bots ourselves.As Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil points out, weve had thousands of years to hone our person-to-person interactions, but only 20 years of social media. Offline, we have all these cues from facial expressions to body language to pitch whereas online we discuss things only through text. I think we shouldnt be surprised that were having so much difficulty in finding the right way to discuss and cooperate online.As our online behavior develops, w e may well introduce subtle signals, digital equivalents of facial cues, to help smooth online discussions. In the meantime, the advice for dealing with online abuse is to stay calm, its not your fault. Dont retaliate but block and ignore bullies, or if you feel up to it, tell them to stop. Talk to family or friends about whats happening and ask them to help you. Take screenshots and report online harassment to the social media service where its happening, and if it includes physical threats, report it to the police.If social media as we know it is going to survive, the companies running these platforms are going to have to keep steering their algorithms, perhaps informed by behavioral science, to encourage cooperation rather than division, positive online experiences rather than abuse. As users, we too may well learn to adapt to this new communication environment so that civil and productive interaction remains the norm online as it is offline.Im optimistic, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil says. This is just a different game and we have to evolve.Advice and support on dealing with online abuse is availablefrom a range of organizations, such asHeartMob,Stop Online Abuse,ConnectSafely, and the social media services themselves, for exampleTwitter,Facebook,Instagram.This article first appeared on Mosaic.Wellcome, the publisher of Mosaic, has shares in Facebook, Alphabet and other social media companies as part of itsinvestment portfolio.

High School Student Resume Example and Writing Tips

High School Student Resume Example and Writing TipsHigh School Student Resume Example and Writing TipsHigh school students may need a resume to apply for a job or as part of acollege application. Even if youhaventheld a paid jobbefore, theres still plenty of information to include on your resume. High schoolers can highlight educational achievements, after-school activities, and volunteer work. What to Include in Your Resume Provide your contact information.Begin your resume with your name, address, phone number, and schmelzglas address. Its best not to use a cutesy email address like tubaguyemail.com or mightyelfmageemail.com. Instead, set up a professional email account that you can use for job and college applications, comprised of your name only (Ex. janey_jordanemail.com). Emphasize your teamwork and leadership skills.Good teamwork skills are necessary in most entry-level jobs, and so its smart to provide examples of how youve participated in school, church, club, or scoutin g roles requiringteamwork. Its even better to describe anyleadershiproles youve held, since this demonstrates to your employer that you can hold responsibility, take personal initiative and organize and support others. Describe volunteer as well as any paid experience. Chances are that, since youre a high school student, you havent had much paid work experience. While you should definitely describe any actual real jobs youve held, its also a good idea to describe volunteer experience, accompanied by dates, your responsibilities, and your contributions in ansicht roles. Include a statement of selected interests at the end of your resume.Employers (and universities, if you are using your resume for a college application) like candidates who are well-rounded and involved in their communities. Theyll get a better idea of your personality if you mention a few sports that you play or interests like theater, music, or environmentalism. Be careful, however, not to mention interests that are too political or might distract you from your job (such as excessive video-gaming). Tips for Writing an Effective Resume Make a list.Start by thinking through what information you want to include on your resume. Take some time to write a list of any awards, accomplishments, and extracurricular activities you engage in. Just write down rough notes, for now. Later, youll sort this information into sections and add dates and details. Consider what you want to accomplish with your resume. Do you want to get a specific job or are you looking to highlight your work for a college application? Once you have a sense of the information you want to include in your resume, review the variousparts of a resume,resume skills for high schoolers, andtips for writing your first resume as a high school student. Review sample resumes. Before writing your own resume, it can be helpful to review samples such as thesestudent resume templates. Dont copy the content in samples instead, use them for ins piration for how to phrase things and proper formatting. Proofread your resume carefully.Resumes that are full of spelling and grammatical errors create red flags in an employers mind, because they hint that your work performance might be sloppy as well. Take the time to edit and correct your resume and titel letter, followingthese proofreading steps. If you feel unsure about your proofreading skills, ask a friend, parent, sibling, or teacher to help you. Write a cover letter to accompany your resume.Once youve finished your resume, you should craft a cover letter to introduce yourself to a hiring manager - review thesestudent cover lettersfor help in getting started. High School Student Resume Example The following is an example of a resume for a high school student. It includes both formal and informal work experience, volunteering, and academic achievements. The resume lists work experience first, followed by the students volunteer experience and achievements, and then her e ducation. If you have no formal work experience, you should know how to formatyour resume to appropriately reflect this. Also, note that the resume has asummarythat focuses on the students skills that are the best match for the job for which she is applying. This way, the employer can see at a glance why the applicant would be a good candidate for the job. High School Student Resume Example (Text Version) Carly Applicant6 Oak StreetArlington, VA 54321(555) 555-5555carly.applicantgmail.comSUMMARYHonor roll high school student with extensive experience working with youth all ages, who has been praised and awarded for her organizational skills and ability to develop fun, engaging activities for youth of all ages, seeks an entry-level child position with an area child care provider or retail firm.WORK EXPERIENCETHE RETAIL STORE, Arlington, VASales Associate/Manager, September 2016-PresentMaintain and restock inventory provide customer service responsible for training incoming associates in operating cash register ordnungsprinzip due to track record of excellence.Named Employee of the Month three times.Attended a Sales Associate Training conference in Washington, D.C. was selected as one of 10 out of 1,000 sales associates from Virginia to attend the conferences.Promoted to manager in 2017 was the youngest associate to reach the position in store history.KINDERFUN PRESCHOOL Arlington, VAChild Care Provider, September 2014-August 2016Provided childcare for a dozen families after school, on weekends, and during school vacations.Developed and implemented fun, educational activities for children, from ages 1 to 8 years.VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCERUN FOR LIFE, Arlington, VAPublicist, November-December 2017Assisted in marketing the charity run via social media oversaw cleanup after the race.Managed 20 volunteers of all ages in umgebung up booths, operating the registration, and facilitating the race.EDUCATIONHigh School Diploma (June 2019 Expected Graduation Date) GPA 3.9Arling ton High School, Arlington, VAHonor roll each semester captain of the debate team president of the Key (service) Club.Elective Classes and Activities Screen Printing, Culture Foods, Independent Living, Family Advocacy, Wind Ensemble, Stage CrewOther InterestsMember of the Arlington High School Tennis Team Girl Scout Piano, 10 years ExpandHow to Get Your Resume Noticed SHOW THAT YOURE WELL-ROUNDED In additional to describing any work experience you have, highlight after-school activities and volunteer work on your resume.EMPHASIZE YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS Be sure to mention educational achievements such as a strong high school GPA or any academic awards or recognitions you have achieved.FOCUS ON TEAMWORK AND LEADERSHIP Prove to a hiring manager that you have what it takes to be a good employee by presenting examples of your team participation and leadership in school and extra-curricular activities.

Find the Best News Stories

Find the Best News StoriesFind the Best News StoriesNews reporters are often judged on the quality of their nachrichten ideas. These 10 ways to find berichterstattung ideas will help you break stories and win the respect of your newsroom managers. Talk to People This may seem obvious, but many reporters spend their time talking to each other or listening to the usual government officials or public relations representatives that they miss talking to real people. Find people at a ball game, charity walk or grocery store and discover the news ideas that are important to them. The stories they want to be covered will likely go beyond the usual press conferences and other easy assignments you usually get. Research Social Media As a journalist, your social media strategy should involve more than just posting photos on Facebook or tweeting about a car wreck. You have unique tools to uncover what people are talking about with each other. Seek out the people who represent the audience of your media company and scan their posts or become involved in a conversation. Because more local news can save a TV station or newspaper, this is where youll find local stories about schools, churches, and talk-about issues. Look Backward and Forward Pull out a calendar to see what was making news one year ago, five years ago or a decade ago. Important anniversaries can make for compelling stories if your community had suffered through a devastating hurricane, hostage drama or city hall controversy. Maybe a huge construction project was launched to much fanfare exactly a year ago. Check on the progress. You can also look forward to telling your audience members that theyre just a year away from the opening of a new shopping mall thats being built. Profile Newsmakers You cover the mayor, police chief, and other dignitaries every day. But there are personal stories to share beyond the routine assignments. The police chief might be an expert golfer. The mayor might have bee n an only child. Reveal the hearts and minds of the people your audience members believe they already know. Youll find there are compelling stories waiting to be told. Localize a National Story Scan the headlines to see whats making news in Washington, New York or across the country. Even if youre thousands of miles away from the action, you can localize the story to bring it closer to home. School shootings have sadly become frequent. The next time it happens, investigate what your local school system is doing to keep students safe. A deadly apartment building fire in another city might be the peg for you to check on local fire codes to see if apartment dwellers are any safer in your town. Share Stories About Schools and Young People Classrooms are filled with news ideas, from new technology thats replacing textbooks to the latest teaching methods. Attending a parent-teacher association meeting might give you a list of topics to pursue. Best of all, these types of stories w ill help you reach your target demographics. fruchtwein media companies follow the latest demographic trends, which usually means targeting young families and children the advertisers dream audience because its easier to sell products to them. Investigate Weather Stories Weather is more than just presenting the forecast. Weather stories affect everyones life and some peoples livelihood. Unusually dry or wet weather can have an economic effect on farmers. The wrong weather can spell trouble for those in the tourism industry who count on sunny, dry days to attract visitors. Unless the weather is absolutely average, theres a story to tell. Reveal the Stories Behind the Sports Scores Your sports department can handle highlights and scores. But theres so much more to athletic competition and the desire to win that a news reporter can share. The use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports could lead you to a little league baseball game or high school football game t o talk with parents about whether pro athletes remain desired role models for their children. Sports injuries are a concern for every parent, especially when a child feels pressure to play hurt. Sports can build your audience when you deliver people-driven stories. Turn Economic Stories on Their Heads Economic stories have predictable winners and losers, at least according to conventional wisdom. You can challenge that thinking by showing the reverse of what most people think. Most people will report the good news that home prices are down, which is perfect for people looking to buy. You can report that its not good news for people hoping to sell, especially when their homes are worth less than what they paid for them. The bad news that dairy prices are up turns out to be good news for those in the cattle industry. Seek both sides of economic stories. Take a Drive Sometimes, your own eyes will lead you to great news ideas. Get in your car to cruise the streets in search of s tories. You may find abandoned homes being demolished, a long-standing business thats closing its doors or a dangerous intersection that needs an overhaul. These are stories that cant be found online or by working the phones. Get to know the community that you cover. Even the best reporters sometimes encounter a dry day when they cant come up with news ideas. Commit this list to memory and youll save time when trying to hunt down something to report.

Achievement Congratulations Email Message

Achievement Congratulations Email Message Achievement Congratulations Email Message One of the best ways to heighten staff morale and increase project or work ownership is to recognize those times when an employee has successfully achieved a work milestone. People like to have their extra work efforts acknowledged, and writing notes that praise this dedication are a simple way to inspire continuing excellence â€" particularly if your organizational budget can’t support employee bonuses or promotions. Below is an example of an achievement congratulations email â€" a letter you can email to an employee who has completed a goal ahead of schedule. Email is the most common communication tool of choice for many in the business world. Email is great because you dont have to be available at the same time as the person on the opposite end to be able to communicate. Transmission is instantaneous, and it allows us to keep projects moving when our co-workers are unavailable or on the other side of the world in a different time zone. But theres a problem: most of us are drowning in emails.  On top of that, emails are all too easily misunderstood because, with the lack of face-to-face contact, it can be difficult to communicate emotions like praise or urgency or concern.  Because of the volume of emails we send and receive, and because emails are often misinterpreted, its important to write emails clearly and concisely. Writing Clear Emails By keeping your emails short, youll likely spend less time on email and more time on other work. That said, writing clearly is a skill. Writing emails that are short and to-the-point will reduce the time you spend on email and make you more productive. Like all skills, youll have to work at developing it. To begin with, it may take you just as long â€" or even longer â€" to write short emails as it took you to write long emails. However, even if this is the case, youll help your co-workers, clients, or employees be more productive because youll be adding less clutter to their inboxes, making it easier for them to respond to you before moving on to their next tasks. Clear emails always have a clear purpose. Whenever you sit down to write an email, take a few seconds to ask yourself: Why am I sending this? What do I need from the recipient? Is this worth sending an email? If you cant answer these questions, then you shouldnt be sending an email. Writing emails without knowing what you need and what you hope to achieve wastes your time and the recipients time and means youll struggle to express yourself clearly and concisely. Writing Emails That Recognize Achievements Emails that are written to acknowledge work achievements should also focus on the recipient instead of you, the writer. Avoid overusing the first person “I”; instead, begin sentences with “You” or “Your” â€" “You continually inspire your team through your dedication, one-on-one mentoring, and “can do” attitude,” or “Your efforts have been invaluable in achieving our project milestone.” Although you should keep your email short and to-the-point, do include a specific example or two of the qualities your recipient has displayed that enabled his or her work accomplishment. These can be things like their leadership, work ethic, teamwork, willingness to work overtime, dedication, assuming extra tasks, covering for other employees, mentoring or training others, attention to detail, enthusiasm, or time/project  management skills. Achievement Congratulations Email Message Example (Text Version) Subject line:  Well Done!Dear Samantha,Congratulations on completing your teams project ahead of schedule.Your abilities to organize and motivate your team are a real asset to the company. Your innovation and persistence made all the difference in making this achievement possible.Thank you for your continued efforts.Regards,Steve ExpandMore Congratulation LettersHere are a variety of congratulation note examples to use to say congratulations on a promotion, a new job, and other employment-related accomplishments. Letter SamplesThese letter samples, including cover letters,  interview thank you letters, follow-up letters, job acceptance and rejection letters,  resignation letters, appreciation letters, business letters, and more great employment letter samples, will help you get an interview, follow-up with your interviewers, and help you to handle all of the employment-related correspondence you need to write.

Car Crazy Engineers

Car Crazy Engineers Car Crazy Engineers Car Crazy Engineers The connection between engineers and old-time classic motorcars can be as tight as a rusty lug nut. Engineers have been crazy about automobiles since Siegfried Marcus got the idea to bolt a two-stroke engine onto a horse cart in the 1860s. Vintage cars from the early-to-mid twentieth century hold special fascination for gearheads, reflecting the perfect balance of beautiful design, mechanical performance, and practical utility. Some engineers incorporate their auto lust into their daily working lives. Others simply have great cars handed to them. And, as often happens with devoted hobbyists, some have taken things a bit too far. Here are a few examples. On the Track With his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, a healthy dose of real-world auto industry experience, and a personal passion for racing, Chris Gerdes has what most engineer-car buffs would agree is the coolest job in the world. He would probably agree as well. Gerdes heads the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS), Stanford University, and co-directs Stanfords REVS program, a multidisciplinary center created to connect the past, present, and future of the automobile. He also gets to drive some of the coolest old cars ever made. Chris Gerdes is head of the Center for Automotive Research aT Standford (CARS). One of Gerdes research specialties is the psychophysiology of driving: what goes on in a drivers mind and body while operating a car. But hes not trying to help people drive better. He builds cars that drive themselves. Gerdes and other REVS-member faculty are studying the mechanical and human factors behind some of the top-performing cars in history as part of a broader autonomous vehicle design initiative at Stanford. With access to rare cars from the collection of philanthropist and REVS program founder Miles Collier, they put vintage hot rods and top-notch professional drivers to the test in real-world track conditions, using sensors, accelerometers, GPS, and gyroscopes to gather data that will make driverless cars smarter and safer. The 1960 Porche 356B Carrera Abarth GTL. Just as important as the data collected from the car is the information that data comes from the drivers brains, especially when it belongs to a real pro energized by the chance to race cars like a rare 1960 Porche 356B Carrera Abarth GTL. Gerdes team records the drivers brainwaves and vital statistics during a race to capture and duplicate their expertise and decision-making skills in algorithms that make tomorrows driverless cars safer and adaptable to changing conditions. The objective isnt to create robotic racing, but to study racing as a way of getting insight into obstacle avoidance and other challenges the car sees in everyday driving, Gerdes said. But why not use a new Prius instead of an old Porsche? Because life is too short to drive a boring car, he said. To the Moon NASAs daring Mercury astronauts were some of the first engineers and technology professionals to earn the undisputed status of cool. Chevrolet exploited this by putting early space travelers behind the wheel of the companys coolest muscle car, the sleek and powerful Corvette. After all, you cant expect a guy used to driving a Saturn V rocket to be seen behind the wheel of a DeSoto. Neil Armstrong’s blue 1967 Corvette Coupe. Late engineer and lunar pioneer Neil Armstrong had his blue 1967 Corvette coupe for only a short time before selling it to a private party who worked at the local dealership near Cape Kennedy. The Vette spent the past several decades undriven and decomposing until Florida collector Joe Crosby purchased it in February 2012. Although he recently drew bids exceeding $250,000 in an eBay auction, Crosby reportedly still has the car and is restoring it while he waits for an offer he likes better. Experts say an ordinary model in similar condition would be worth around $20,000, but Armstrongs name on the pink slip ups the collectability factor considerably, especially in light of his recent passing. Its another example of the value-added effect when engineers and classic cars get together. Over the Top The extreme example of the engineering-classic car romance gone too far is the case of Alexander Kennedy (A.K.) Miller. Born to a wealthy New Jersey family in 1906, A.K. landed a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at Rutgers University. But his career veered almost immediately from promising engineer to eccentric tinkerer, hoarder, and recluse. During his lifetime, neighbors living near Millers remote and run-down Vermont farm assumed he was destitute. But not long after his death in 1993, when tax collectors were combing through his assets, they found his astonishing secret: some four-dozen rare gems of automotive history from the early twentieth Century. Alexander Miller’s ’29 Stutz Blackhawk sedan sold for $7,000 at Christie’s Auction house in 1996. Perched on blocks in a series of falling-apart outbuildings scattered over his property was a stash of four dozen rare and luxurious cars including some 30 Stutz automobiles: Blackhawks, Bulldogs, and Bearcats. Others included a Stanley Steamer, a Locomobile, a 1926 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, and other makes that cause collectors hearts to palpitate. Most were in their original condition, although much the worse for decades of neglect and improper storage. In 1996, the hidden trove was auctioned on-site by Christies Auction House of New York for nearly $2 million. Despite his reclusive ways, A.K. did have to interact with the outside world when buying or selling his cars. Clients interested in his huge collection of original Stutz replacement parts had to settle for purchasing reproductions that the once-promising engineer fabricated himself out of scrap metal rather than give up one of his precious originals. Whether we own them, study them, or simply fantasize about driving them, classic cars keep our engineering brains firing on all cylinders. Michael MacRae is an independent writer. Why not use a Prius instead of a 1960 Porche? Because life is too short to drive a boring car.Chris Gerdes, Center for Automotive Research at Stanford, Stanford University

5 Simple Ways to Create a Productive Home Office

5 Simple Ways to Create a Productive Home Office 5 Simple Ways to Create a Productive Home Office Do you work from home? Youre not alone. Research published just last year found that 45 percent of U.S. employees work from home and 53 million people work as freelancers, contributing $715 billion to the entire economy. Wow! With the traditional 9-5 becoming a thing of the past, home working and flexible work schedules are  the new norm. But if youre finding it hard to stay motivated and get things done when youre in your home office, dont panic. Today, Im here to discuss  five of the best ways to create a truly productive home working space â€" with a little help  from Courtney Lake, interior design expert at Pottery Barn. 1. Be Regimented Do you wake up at 10 A.M., have a bath, put the radio on, make coffee, and finally log on to your computer at 11:35? Weve probably all been guilty of it, but is it the best way to be productive? Probably not. One really great way to keep on top of things when youre working from home is to be organized and regimented. Treat it like you would a job â€" plot your day out from start to finish and track your progress as you go along. Of course, thats not to say you shouldnt have the odd day where you let things slide a little; just dont let it become a habit. 2. Invest in Comfort For Lake, stylish, functional home office furniture is really important. Your furniture needs to look good and feel good, he says. While aesthetically-pleasing furniture might seem a nice-to-have, it can actually really help in making you feel more engaged and driven. Pottery Barn has created an interactive resource all about how to work from home productively.  It can be a great tool  for upping your home office game. Working well depends, first and foremost, on how and where you sit, Lake  adds. Find a spot with plenty of natural light, as well as a clear and level work surface that allows you to keep your forearms level and your feet on the ground. Choose a chair that gives your back firm and comfortable support. Its all about making your desk a pleasant place to be. From Pottery Barns interactive tool 3. Declutter, Declutter, Declutter â€" Then Declutter Some More If, at the end of a long day working from home, your desk is piled high with sandwich wrappers, coffee cups, long-completed to-do lists, and copies of last months Newsweek, then perhaps its time for a change. Physical and digital clutter merely serves to clog our minds and make us feel stressed, hurried, and not on top of things. Decluttering regularly â€" that is, tidying your working space and keeping your inbox clean and streamlined â€" helps you stay fresh and focused. Make sure to set a specific declutter time, Lake says. Once a week or once a day, whatever suits you best. Do it as quickly as you can and keep on top of it â€" that way, youll never have the problem of a messy desk and you can work in a much more productive fashion. From Pottery Barns interactive tool 4. Place a Big Divider Between Work and Personal Life One of the biggest barriers to productive home working is when we fail to separate the personal from the professional. Blending your personal life with your working one rarely makes for a happy marriage. Keeping them separate, with perhaps a little mixing here and there, is a far better solution. Remove any unnecessary distractions like DVDs and game consoles  from your home office, and only go into your home office for work. 5. Get Dressed Properly! Well, weve all had days where we slouch out of bed and log on to our laptops in our PJs. But doing this every day isnt a good idea. Itll probably only make you feel sluggish and lazy, which will have a significant knock on your productivity. Get up and prepare yourself for the day ahead. This means mental preparation, but also physical: Actually wear proper work clothes. Itll instantly make you feel more professional and will really help you get things done. Do you work from home? Tell us your tips and tricks for working from home productively! Irma Hunkeler works for  BlueGlass.co.uk, a digital marketing agency.

How to Write an Advertorial That Works

How to Write an Advertorial That Works How to Write an Advertorial That Works Advertorials are contrary to typical advertising that features 90 percent visual and barely any of the written word. Instead, advertorials seek to resemble the pages of the publication in which theyre appearing and are intended to be an interesting read, divulging a myriad of information about the product or service. The No. 1 rule is to entertain the reader. Advertorials are also known as long-form copy ads or native advertising in the digital world. To achieve advertorial success, start with whats known to work. Forgo the Sales Pitch When all is said and done, this is probably the most important piece of advice you can get when writing an advertorial. Your advertorial is your Trojan Horse. You may have an army of selling points but your audience wont read them if they see them coming. Readers dont want to read an advertisement, they want to read something interesting. Selling language and hard-hitting pitches are not interesting. To some, they may be offensive. To accomplish this, you have to create an advertorial that has a direct and logical connection to your product or service. If youre selling a cleaning product, an article about the unseen dangerous germs lurking in your home may work well. If youre selling a tool, write about 10 simple Do-It-Yourself projects that anyone can handle. As long as you can subtly weave in your specific product a few times, you will successfully tie the two together and plant a seed that may result in a sale. Blatant selling language is not going to convert as many people into customers. You can create an amazingly well-written advertorial that brings the reader from the headline through to the last paragraph. But if you suddenly travel from editorial language to sales speak, people will drop out. That translates to a big leap in tonality. Keep the selling messages toned  correctly. Headlines Do the Heavy Lifting Since your ads goal is to look more like an article or feature, leave the visual puns and expensive photo shoots out of the mix. The copy has to stand on its own merit. Your headline needs to be compelling, interesting, and jarring. Give readers something unexpected that calls to them to read the actual article. An advertorial headline from 1926 still captivates the ad community. John Caples wrote, They laughed at me when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play! Its success hangs on the emotions stirred within an instant of reading it. No hard sales pitch here, but the intended soft lead charms and beguiles. Involve the Reader Writers often misfire, overly concerned with weaving together the list of required selling points and dry research when readers want an emotional reaction. Looking again at John Caples work, the language in the first few lines of the copy continues to intrigue: Arthur had just played The Rosary. The room rang with applause. I decided that this would be a dramatic moment for me to make my debut. The selling comes toward the last half of the ad and is written with masterful tonality. Look at advertorials through the decades. Caples work is from a time long past, but it continues to resonate because of his ability to elicit that emotional response from the reader. Your aim is to take a cold prospect and give them a reason to call, visit a website, or email the client. Entertain, inform, and sell is the mantra. Research the Context Every great advertising star through the ages, like David Ogilvy, William Bernbach, and Alex Bogusky, knows the importance of researching the media. If youre designing a billboard, its all about the location and surroundings. Working on a print ad? You need to read the magazine from cover to cover. The same goes for advertorials. Your advertorial should be targeted to the readership of the intended magazine or newspaper. An advertorial appearing in Maxim magazine, for instance, will have a completely different tone from one in the pages of Vogue, although the product or service may be exactly the same. If you know the magazines readership well, youll be better equipped to write an attention-grabbing headline and copy to keep them interested. Use Photographs and Illustrations Sparingly Some advertorials overuse photos or diagrams, leaving little room for the copy. This is a wasted opportunity to intertwine more of the story about your product. Use visual content judiciously and intelligently. Only use the visuals if they help sell the idea and move the story forward. Look at a newspaper article or magazine feature as a frame of reference. With too many images, the words dont have the power to build a story and complete the sale.

3 reasons to start napping in the afternoon

3 reasons to start napping in the afternoon 3 reasons to start napping in the afternoon For any employee who has slept too little the night before, there is one tantalizing idea that gives us hope as the bags under our eyes sag and our attention lags: What if we… just took a nap? Too many of us are sleep-deprived zombies because we failed to get the eight hours of sleep science says we need, or else, we act like we are legally drunk. One proven way to avoid acting like a drunk zombie: naps.We ultimately cannot game sleep, but research has found that we can play its game by incorporating short, timed naps at key hours of the day. But what time is best? The consensus among sleep experts and sleep studies find that afternoon hours work best.Here are three reasons why afternoon naps are the superior form of siesta.1) Our bodies are engineered for afternoon napsSleep experts are not sure exactly sure of the biology behind why our bodies naturally want to nap in the afternoon, but they theorize that it comes down to evolution. Because our human ancestors grew up in tropical , sweaty climates, afternoon napping was our body’s way to escape the heat and work in cooler times of the day.2) They boost brain powerHaving trouble remembering what you just did this morning? Try an afternoon nap. University of Pennsylvania researchers  found  that a one-hour nap after lunch improved 3,000 elderly seniors’ ability to recall tasks better and solve more math problems. At best, the participants’ brains would perform as if they were five years younger.A University of California study found that adults who took afternoon naps not only performed better than people who took no naps, but that nappers were able to complete challenging tasks better than they had in earlier in the day.3) Powerful people nap on the jobIf the science of sleep doesn’t sway you, trust in the powerful people who take napping very seriously.  Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Salvador Dali, and Johannes Brahms are reportedly among the famous nappers in history.U.K. Prime Minister Winsto n Churchill even credited his success in World War II to his afternoon snoozing habit. In his memoir, Churchill called his afternoon naps the “refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts 20 minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.”

What your boss wont tell you about raises and promotions

What your boss won't tell you about raises and promotions What your boss won't tell you about raises and promotions The four top items your boss won’t reveal to you about getting a raise or promotion:1) Stop thinking doing a good job is the most important thingHard work isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Performance is only  loosely  tied to who succeeds:Via Stanford business school professor Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book  Power:The data shows that performance doesn’t matter that much for what happens to most people in most organizations.  That includes the effect of your accomplishments on those ubiquitous performance evaluations and even on your job tenure and promotion prospects.Research shows being liked affects performance reviews more than actual performance:In an experimental study of the performance appraisals people received, those who were able to create a favorable impression received higher ratings than did people who actually performed better  but did not do as good a job in managing the impressions they made on others.2) Be a little self-obsessed, be a little obsessive“Narcissism and obsessive compulsiveness were correlated with success.”Dark side traits have been associated as much with success as failure in specific occupations.  This study examines the possibility that some “dark side” traits may be advantageous in particular occupations by focusing on the relationship of eleven dark side traits with six, self-report, validated measures of occupation behaviour and potential.Nearly 5000 British adults completed the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) which has six criterion-based measures of occupational scales. Whilst some disorders (i.e. Excitable, Sceptical) seemed consistently associated with low work outcome and potential ratings, others seemed either neutral or positively associated (Bold, Diligent). Some dark side traits were highly variable being positively associated with some occupational scales, but not others (Mischievous, Colourful). The total ‘potential’ index of three potential measures showed most positive correlations with dark-side traits.  The present results suggest that the manifestation of specific dark side traits may not always lead to work problems.3) Manage up or Move outJeffrey Pfeffer, author of  Power, explains  the three keys to moving a career forward: Let higher ups know what you’re accomplishing Shape perceptions of your work, early and often If it’s not working, moving on is better than trying harder 4) Most pay raises are given to prevent good employees from leavingIf you’re not good, and it doesn’t seem like you might leave,  don’t count on bigger checks:This paper studies the ex-ante effect of worker separations on wage negotiations using matched workerâ€"firm data from The Netherlands.  We find that wage negotiations aim to prevent separations; workers with a high propensity to quit are offered higher wages, while workers with a high layoff probability give up some of their wage.Join 315,000 readers.  Get a free weekly update via email  here.Related posts:What are the 18 secrets to giving a presentation like Steve Jobs?Silicon Valley’s best networker teaches you the secrets to making connectionsThe top FBI hostage negotiator teaches you the 5 secrets to getting what you wantThis article originally appeared  at  Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

CDL Skills and Knowledge Testing in Ohio

CDL Skills and Knowledge Testing in Ohio CDL Skills and Knowledge Testing in Ohio Commercial drivers licenses and learners permits tend to be heavily regulated in all states, and Ohio is no exception. A CDL is required to operate most large commercial vehicles. In most cases, you cant even apply for a job in commercial trucking without one.   Vehicles That Require a CDL Ohio considers any vehicle that weighs in excess of 26,001 pounds to be large, so the driver must have a valid and current CDL to operate it. In the case of trailers, its the combined weight that counts if the trailer or vehicle being towed weighs 10,000 pounds or more. If the truck has an F placard and will be hauling or carrying hazardous materials, no weight limits apply â€" a CDL is required. Operating a school bus or other vehicle that is intended to transport more than 16 passengers requires a CDL, as well as any vehicles that are defined as commercial by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Learner's Permit Youll need a current Ohio drivers license and you must be at least 18 years old to apply for an Ohio CLP. You must be a permanent resident or citizen of the U.S. The CLP is valid for six months and can be renewed once. It allows you to drive the type of commercial vehicle youve cited in your application on the highway if a CDL holder accompanies you. The holder must be endorsed by the Ohio BMV specifically for the type of vehicle youre driving.   Driver's License You must pass a knowledge test for each type of vehicle you wish to be licensed to drive in order to move up from your CLP and its restrictions to a CDL. You must also pass a skills test, and youre responsible for providing the vehicle for the test. It must be of the same type that youre seeking a license to operate. The skills test includes maneuverability and a road test, as well as a pre-trip inspection. A vision test or a vision waiver from the federal government is also required.   You may have to undergo additional testing if, after receiving your CDL, you want to upgrade it or renew it.   Where to Go for Testing You can go to any Driver Exam Station in Ohio to take your knowledge test. The skills test can be taken at a state-operated facility or at a testing location operated by a third-party thats approved by the state. It costs somewhat more to take the test at a third-party location.   State Operated Skills Testing Locations: 1361 East Main Street, Newark, 740-345-48188730 Lake Road, Seville, 330-769-50908210 County Road 140, Findlay, 419-423-284125 McCarthy Lane, Jackson, 740-286-42453701 Tytus Avenue, Middletown, 513-217-4742 Third Party Operated Skills Testing Locations: Atlas CDL Testing Company, 1211 3rd St NW, Massillon, 330-809-0791CDL of Northern Ohio, 3905 State Route 103, Willard, 800-446-8875CDL Testing, Inc, 4060 Perimeter Drive, Columbus, 614-294-3684Northwest CDL Center, 26718 Oregon Road, Perrysburg, 419-837-9400Pike County Joint Vocational School, 175 Beaver Creek Road, Piketon, 740-289-5860Rathburn Enterprises, 1688 Pricetown Road, Lake Milton, 330-538-2216Commercial Transportation Testing, 1475 Upper Valley Pike, Suite 140, Springfield, 877-384-6902 US America/ Manufacturing Inc., 8334 State Route 36, Gnadenhutten, 740-254-9313Warren County Education Service Ctr., 5140 Princeton-Glendale Road, Liberty Township, 513-695-2927

5 Tips for Job Seekers Who Want to Work for a Nonprofit

5 Tips for Job Seekers Who Want to Work for a Nonprofit 5 Tips for Job Seekers Who Want to Work for a Nonprofit Whether you are a recent graduate or looking to make a career change, working in the nonprofit industry can be incredibly fulfilling. Most of us will ultimately spend the majority of our waking hours at work, so why not spend those hours passionately engrossed in a job where you can do your part to impact humanity? At least, thats how I felt after I left a three-week-old job in the for-profit sector to go work for a  nonprofit. That was 13 years ago, and I havent looked back since. To gather the following tips, I enlisted the help of some former colleagues and associates â€" 27 of them, to be exact. These 27 nonprofit employees range from program directors to  fundraisers, from lawyers to executive directors. Some have been working in the nonprofit field for  as little as 10 months, others for more than  32 years. Here is what they â€" and I â€" had to say: 1. Network With Other People Who Work in Nonprofit Ask friends and family for introductions. Peruse LinkedIn to find connections and send carefully crafted personalized messages to people you are interested in getting in touch with. In general, meet as many people as you can who work in or know people in the nonprofit industry. 2. Set Up Informational Interviews With Organizations You Admire Take your networking to the next level. Reach out to the nonprofits you are interested in learning more about. I have found that most people in the nonprofit world are happy to help. 3. Intern! Jump Right Into the Volunteer Experience Full-Time or Part-Time Hands-on nonprofit experience will open many doors. If you can afford to give some or all of your time as an intern or office volunteer, you will gain priceless experience and continue to solidify your nonprofit network. 4. Attend Conferences and Join Groups Geared Toward the Nonprofit Sector This, of course, will help you expand your nonprofit network (see tip No. 1). 5. Go Back to School â€" or at Least Take Some Courses/Workshops in Your Area of Interest This will also help you expand your network. But dont spend an exorbitant amount of money before â€" you guessed it â€" you network to make sure you are making an educated and thoroughly researched decision. â€" Remember that your previous experience, whether as a student or a for-profit employee, can translate and become a sought-after asset to nonprofits. However, you should be  cautious about walking into a new opportunity with too much confidence. Be open to learning, ask lots of questions, and most importantly, be a team player. Most nonprofit employees wear many hats out of necessity. Take their lead and be willing to stretch beyond the job description. As with any job, there can be frustrations. There was a time at one of my previous jobs when we couldnt afford to replace the colored ink, and I desperately needed to print hundreds of invitations for an upcoming fundraiser. There were several times when our computers and servers crashed, putting us days behind in work. We couldnt afford to replace them. And then there is  the Fortune 100 of nonprofits â€" you know, those national organizations that actually have marketing budgets and can pay for fancy PSAs and celebrity influencers? Ive also had the pleasure of working for one of those. They can be wonderful and really give you the sense that you are impacting thousands, if not millions, of people â€" but you might also be up against just as much bureaucracy and red tape as you would be at a for-profit company. For all the compromises nonprofit employees often have to make, I asked my former colleagues: Whats the best thing about working in nonprofit? Here are a few of my favorite responses â€" ones that I wholeheartedly agree with: - My work has true meaning. - Feeling totally passionate about the cause. - Working in a place that attracts people who care about things beyond financial gain. - Knowing that my work has an impact. - Working with amazing people in this sector that truly want to do good. - Discovering a true passion for helping others. - At the end of the day, no matter how bad of a day youve had, you know that someone somewhere is better off because you came to work that day. And my personal favorite: - You get paid to make a difference in the world. What a dream come true! So go out there and network, reach out to groups you are passionate about, build your support team, and join this incredible world of people who cant wait to meet you. Mona Lipson joined Voss Foundation in 2016 as director of strategic advancement and corporate citizenship to spearhead the organizations fundraising initiatives and corporate citizenship with VOSS Water of Norway.