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How To Build Stronger Relationships At Work

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Humans are naturally sociable. This is why building strong relationships increases our happiness.

Having strong work relationships helps increase engagement, collaboration, and productivity. It also improves job satisfaction and employee morale.

The stronger your work relationships, the more industry professionals you connect with. This can increase your career opportunities.

Implement These Tips To Build Stronger Relationships At Work.

Display a Positive Attitude

Be positive when interacting with colleagues and coworkers. This encourages them to remain positive as well. It also helps maintain a pleasant work environment.

Stay Present

Focus on others during conversations. This helps you remain mentally present and engaged. Providing your full attention to others helps build stronger relationships at work.

Openly Communicate

Be honest and transparent when communicating with colleagues, managers, and coworkers. This helps build trust and rapport.

Actively listen during conversations. For instance, ask follow-up questions to gather more information. Also, repeat what you hear to check your understanding. Additionally, consider what was said before responding.

Appreciate Others

Let your colleagues and coworkers know specific things you appreciate about them. This may include someone’s positive attitude, their regular check-ins to see how others are doing, or their desire to help when needed. Expressing appreciation encourages others to form strong relationships with you.

Offer to Help

Let your colleagues and coworkers know you are willing to help them when needed. Providing your knowledge and experience to benefit others shows you care about them.

Ask for help when needed. Others should be willing to support you as well.

Be Accountable

Follow through on your commitments. This shows that your colleagues and coworkers can rely on you.

Be realistic when asked to take on a project or participate in an event. Let others know if your schedule does not allow for anything more to be added.

Enhance Your Emotional Intelligence

Continuously improve on identifying and managing your emotions and reacting to others’ emotions. Understanding how emotions shape your thoughts and behaviors increases your control over your actions. This enhances your self-management.

Increasing your emotional intelligence deepens your understanding of who you are. This helps you communicate more clearly and build stronger relationships.

Are You Looking For A New Role?

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3 Ways to Learn About A Company’s Culture Before Accepting A Job Offer

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A company’s culture is defined by its mission, vision, and core values. These characteristics set a foundation for the goals, expectations, and ethics that define employees’ behavior at every level.

Companies can have a variety of cultures. For instance, whereas some companies have a team-based culture, others support individual accomplishments. Also, some companies have hierarchical management, while others are more casual.

Working for a company whose culture aligns with your values is essential for long-term success. This provides motivation to work individually and collaboratively to reach company goals.

Discover three ways to learn about a company’s culture before accepting a job offer

1. Online Research

Use the organization’s website to research the company’s culture. Pay close attention to the mission statement and careers page to help determine the organization’s values and priorities.

Gain insight into what working for the organization is like. Look for details on compensation, benefits, awards, and other relevant information.

Visit the organization’s social media pages to learn about the company’s priorities. Use your findings to determine whether to accept a job offer from the organization.

2. Employee Feedback

Read employer reviews to determine what current and former employees have to say about the company’s culture. Look for positive and negative patterns in employee feedback.

Use LinkedIn to connect with current and former employees. Ask them to share honest feedback about the company’s culture. Use what you learn to determine whether to accept the company’s job offer.

3. Job Interview

Arrive early for your interview to observe the office environment. Focus on the energy and how the employees interact:

  • Do the employees appear happy to work for the organization?
  • Are the employees friendly to you?
  • Would you enjoy working in the environment?

Ask about the company’s culture during your interview. Consider choosing from the following questions:

  • How would you describe the company’s culture?
  • What makes the company’s culture unique?
  • How would you describe the work environment?
  • What do you like best about working here?
  • Which activities do you participate in outside of work hours?

Focus on your experience during the interview process. This provides an indication of what it would be like working for the organization.

Reflect on the following issues:

  • Were you treated professionally?
  • Did you talk with different employees?
  • How comfortable did you feel throughout the interview process?

Do You Need Help with Your IT Job Search?

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7 Reasons to Update Your LinkedIn Profile

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As an IT professional, odds are you regularly update your resume. This ensures you are ready for opportunities as you learn about them.

Similarly, you should regularly update your LinkedIn profile. Keeping your details current and relevant shows hiring managers and recruiters what you have to offer employers.

Engaging with hiring managers and recruiters opens you up to new opportunities. These opportunities can advance your career.

Discover seven reasons to update your LinkedIn profile.

1. An Annual LinkedIn Update Is Essential

Conducting an annual review of the knowledge, skills, and accomplishments you gained in the last 12 months lets you add the details to your LinkedIn profile. You also can delete the information that is no longer relevant to your career path. These actions help hiring managers and recruiters focus on the details that can lead to your next opportunity.

2. Industry Professionals View Your LinkedIn Profile

Hiring managers, recruiters, and other professionals in your industry use your LinkedIn profile to determine your qualifications for roles. As a result, they might reach out about potential career opportunities. Sharing current information facilitates this process.

3. A Recession Is Coming

Entering a recession means economic instability. As a result, you should be prepared for anything to happen within your company and industry.

Having a complete, current, and engaging LinkedIn profile helps you pursue relevant roles if the need arises. It also makes you an attractive passive candidate for opportunities that fit your knowledge, skills, and experience.

4. Position Yourself for Opportunities

Updating your LinkedIn profile ensures it aligns with your career goals. This shows your authentic interest in professional growth. It also demonstrates you are equipped to take on the role you desire.

You also can connect with other professionals, hiring managers, and recruiters in your industry. These individuals might help you land your next role.

5. Gain the Latest LinkedIn Updates

Check your LinkedIn feed when you update your profile. Accept the relevant connection requests you received. Also, respond to the messages in your inbox. Additionally, read articles to find out what is new in your industry. These activities help you prepare for your next career opportunity.

6. Show Relevance in Your Industry

Activate Creator Mode to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. You can publish content and share your area of expertise.

Creator Mode lets you identify the top five hashtags you want to be associated with. These hashtags sit below your headline to let viewers know more about you when they click on your profile.

7. Stand Out from Your Peers

Updating your LinkedIn profile increases your visibility and credibility with industry professionals, hiring managers, and recruiters. This helps increase your network and professional opportunities.

Include images and videos to provide greater insight into your brand. This helps others connect with you on a more personal level.

Are You Ready for Your Next Opportunity?

Work with RightStone to find your next IT career opportunity. Visit our job board today.

Building a Strong Personal Brand: How to Stand Out in a Competitive Job Market

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Building a strong personal brand helps you stand out in a competitive job market. Differentiating yourself shows what you have to offer an employer that others do not.

Creating a strong personal brand positions you as a thought leader in your field. This shows other IT professionals, hiring managers, and recruiters the value you can provide to an organization.

Having a strong personal brand helps form a lasting impression on hiring managers and recruiters. As a result, they likely will contact you about the jobs you apply for or opportunities that fit your skills and experience. These activities can help secure your next position.

Learn how to build a strong personal brand and stand out in a competitive job market.

Create Your Foundation

Build an authentic foundation that shows who you truly are. Purposefully and strategically showcase the value you provide for others.

  • Ensure your brand reflects your values, beliefs, and passions. Include your interests, skills, and credentials.
  • Focus your brand vision on what you want to be known for. Develop it according to your purpose and what you want to accomplish.
  • Create a brand message that you want to communicate to your audience. Ensure it reflects your personal characteristics and traits.

Determine Your Target Audience

Consider the industry professionals you want your personal brand to appeal to. This should include IT professionals, hiring managers, HR professionals, company leaders, and recruiters.

Your personal brand is designed to attract people in your target audience. This means your brand resonates with these individuals and attracts them to you.

Develop an Irresistible Offer

Determine what you want to sell to your target audience. This may solve a certain problem or attain a certain result.

Focus on the value you provide others, such as employers, in exchange for something, such as a desirable job with competitive income, benefits, and perks and an attractive work environment.

Set Your Content Strategy

Create and share content that helps your target audience. This builds trust and positions you as an authority in the IT industry.

  • List topics that would be helpful to your target audience. You can use an online tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner to conduct keyword research and uncover popular topics.
  • Decide which type of content to create and where to publish it. Types of content include blog posts, videos, and infographics. Publication sites include LinkedIn, YouTube, and Quora.
  • Focus on quality and consistency when publishing your content. You might want to start by creating two content types, such as blog posts and videos, and publish them on two platforms, such as LinkedIn and YouTube, and add more later.

Is It Time to Find a New IT Job?

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Important Skills to Develop as an Engineer

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Working as an IT engineer provides access to in-demand and lucrative jobs. This provides a foundation for long-term career success.

Continuously developing your skill set helps you take on more senior engineering jobs. This provides additional opportunities for career growth.

Develop These Important Skills To Grow As An Engineer

Communication

Team discussion and collaboration are important parts of an engineering job. Open communication helps you understand the client’s needs, create the product or service, and resolve issues.

Sharing ideas, asking questions, and providing input is essential. Actively listening and sharing constructive feedback also are required.

Using the right form of verbal, written, online, or in-person communication helps you effectively share information. Speaking in non-technical terms when interacting with professionals in other departments is important as well.

Creativity

Dealing with novel situations is part of being an engineer. Innovation is required to develop things that previously did not exist.

There will be times when the typical solution cannot be implemented or does not work. This requires using your knowledge, skills, and experience to resolve the issue.

Critical Thinking

Developing a strong sense of reality and trust in your abilities is essential. Drawing on your knowledge and experience helps you accurately evaluate situations and take appropriate action. Digging deeper for more information helps you make educated decisions and respond appropriately.

Problem-Solving

Working as an engineer involves identifying, analyzing, and solving problems. This is especially important in urgent situations.

Ongoing education and experience help you apply relevant theories and formulas to resolve issues. Learning from your mistakes also is beneficial.

Attention to Detail

Following systems to check your engineering work is essential. This may involve keeping a notebook of the mistakes you made, how you fixed them, and what you learned. You can refer to your notebook as needed to improve your performance.

Leadership

Being a self-starting engineer who wants to lead others as you increase your value to an organization is important. The more skills and experience you gain, the better equipped you are to take on management and leadership roles.

Your ability to motivate your colleagues, assess their strengths, and assign roles helps your team efficiently complete projects. Providing guidance, answering questions, and resolving issues help build team cohesion.

Ready To Grow Your Engineering Career?

Make RightStone part of your engineering career. Visit our job board today.

Is Your Performance Monitoring Effective?

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Performance monitoring involves regularly verifying and tracking how consistently and productively your digital platforms are performing. This may involve using dashboards and alert systems to track key performance indicators (KPIs). Action may be taken if significant changes in performance occur.

Implement these tips to determine whether your performance monitoring strategy is effective.

Monitor the Data Collection

Make sure your server monitoring platform is scalable. This is essential as your data collection and reporting needs change over time.

Your data collection must have sufficient detail for each metric at the poll interval level. This requires enough storage to hold the data at the poll intervals.

Develop a Baseline

Create a baseline for each server monitoring metric. This lets you set alerts for unusual server or network performance.

Define the Performance Alerts

Performance alerts typically are breaches of a static threshold and baseline deviation. Both require frequent review, especially in the early stages of performance monitoring. Otherwise, normal changes in workloads may create false positive alerts.

Establishing sufficient historical performance statistics for each metric provides more effective predictions of events that may impact service. This results in fewer false positives.

Establish the Report Creation

The server monitoring tools include visual and printed reports showing the performance statistics required for server monitoring. Additional online and paper reports are typically required to help resolve issues.

The visual monitor must be as close as possible to real-time. Also, the data must be properly stored to accommodate increasing workloads. This may involve archiving the data by period or moving it to a distributed database architecture.

Focus on the Data Analysis

Predict which events will impact service and how to troubleshoot them. Also, look for any bottlenecks or potential configuration changes that could benefit the performance of the infrastructure.

Consider using tools that model infrastructure changes. These models help make informed decisions about whether to fix or replace the infrastructure.

Look at the Result Distribution

Share the results of the server monitoring with your IT team. This helps everyone carry out their functions.

Need Help with Your Performance Monitoring?

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Tips to Improve Your IT Resume with No Experience

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Improving your IT resume when you have no experience helps you establish your career. The information in your resume shows why you are a desirable candidate who should be contacted for an interview.

When improving your IT resume with no experience, focus on other experiences that helped develop your skill set. Demonstrating your strengths, accomplishments, and willingness to learn shows you can be trained to fulfill the job duties and responsibilities. This increases your odds of securing an interview.

Implement these tips to improve your IT resume with no experience.

Update Your Experiences Section

Clarify how you are building the IT skills relevant to the job you want. Listing these experiences demonstrates your work ethic and desire to build an IT career.

Your experiences may include extracurricular activities or volunteer work:

  • Join a tech community such as GitHub or Stack Overflow to learn and share information about programming.
  • Participate in hackathons to solve technology problems in teams.
  • Take advantage of free online resources, tutorials, and open-source software to learn programming languages.
  • Learn to code through Coursera or other online courses.
  • Volunteer with a nonprofit organization focused on IT, such as teaching children to code.
  • Enter technology competitions through Cisco or other IT companies.

Highlight the skills you developed through each experience. Emphasize the skills included in the job posting. Include the goals you attained that are relevant to the role you desire.

Emphasize Your Soft Skills

List your soft skills that are relevant to the IT position. Examples include communication, organization, self-motivation, collaboration, and leadership.

Soft skills are harder to develop than hard skills. As a result, demonstrating examples of your soft skills shows the value you can provide the employer.

Include Your Education

Provide details about your education. Your high school diploma or GED and relevant coursework, IT certifications, or college degree demonstrate your commitment to ongoing learning and ability to fulfill commitments.

You might pursue certification in any of the following fields:

  • Data
  • Artificial intelligence (AI)
  • Business applications
  • Google Cloud
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Project management

You could pursue a degree in one of the following fields:

  • Information technology and information systems
  • Computer science
  • Information science
  • Software engineering
  • Computer engineering
  • Cybersecurity

Ready to Begin Your IT Job Search?

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7 Valuable Soft Skills That Can Help Boost Your Career!

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Developing your soft skills helps boost your IT career. Although your hard skills are important, your soft skills have a greater impact on your employability and longevity with a company.

Your soft skills determine how you interact with others. This affects how well you work with colleagues and coworkers to finish projects.

As a result, you should prioritize developing your soft skills along with your hard skills. The following are some of the soft skills to focus on.

Discover seven valuable soft skills that can help boost your IT career.

1. Communication

Communication is required to write, speak, actively listen, and collaborate. These skills are important for writing emails, talking with colleagues and coworkers, and sharing presentations.

2. Productivity

Your ability to strategize, organize, plan, and deliver results impacts your productivity. Showing your teammates, manager, and coworkers they can count on you to have things done by the deadline makes you a valuable team member.

Your productivity skills help you manage your time, maintain focus, and finish your work on time. This also helps you create a plan to reach the goals and requirements of a project within the timeline.

Using your productivity skills helps you balance multiple projects and changing priorities. This also lets you overcome obstacles to get more done in less time.

3. Problem-Solving

Problem-solving skills help you analyze and resolve issues both individually and as a team. Your ability to think critically, ask questions, and make decisions helps you solve problems. You can calmly and objectively discuss an issue, develop potential resolutions, and implement the best one.

4. Creativity

Your ability to think outside the box helps you develop original ideas and perspectives. Your curiosity encourages you to ask questions, learn, and find unique ways to add value to the organization.

Developing your creativity helps you contribute ideas to solve problems and resolve issues. It also helps you remain open-minded while overcoming obstacles.

5. Confidence

Confidence in your ability to complete tasks and reach goals is important. This helps you learn and develop your skills to provide more value to the organization.

Displaying confidence involves finding the resources and support needed to finish your work. This helps you maintain a positive attitude.

Showing confidence means assertively interacting with others. This can help you secure leadership positions.

6. Agility

Your ability to adapt to changing work situations is essential. This helps you complete your work and meet expectations during times of change.

Agility is required to stay curious and navigate through challenging times. It also helps you remain open-minded when talking with others.

Remaining agile lets you make fast decisions when information is limited. It also lets you change between tasks as your priorities change.

7. Self-Awareness

Self-awareness lets you appropriately monitor, manage, and display your emotions in the workplace. This helps you professionally interact with others.

Being self-aware involves reflecting on and learning from your experiences and mistakes. It also includes seeing things from others’ viewpoints.

Displaying self-awareness helps you collaborate with colleagues and coworkers. It also builds trust with others.

Are You Looking to Boost Your IT Career?

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Do You Offer Clear Career Development Methods?

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Offering clear development methods is essential for business success. This emphasizes opportunities to add more value and advance within the company.

As a result, managers must look beyond the skills their employees need to fulfill their current job duties to promote career development. Managers also should focus on the skills their employees developed through previous roles, current interests, and hobbies that support advancement within the organization.

Follow these guidelines to offer clear career development methods within your company.

Prioritize Agility

Use technology to break jobs into projects. Then, let your employees choose which projects to work on. This process distributes employees’ skills and contributions according to need. It also supports career development.

Dividing jobs into projects helps you better understand your talent. Knowing their strengths and capabilities helps your employees adapt to changing business conditions and priorities. This includes evolving customer demands and competitors entering the marketplace.

Developing your employees’ skills reduces the need for hiring. Your employees can take on project-based work as part of the learning process. This provides exposure to new situations, colleagues, and coworkers who can help with upskilling while completing work.

Using an internal talent marketplace promotes equity and inclusion. Managers have a larger pool of workers to draw from to gain the skills and competencies required for a project. This minimizes favoritism in deciding which employees get which roles. It also increases engagement, performance, and productivity.

Inventory Employees’ Skills

Maintain a list of each employee’s current and desired skills. This helps managers understand the talent pool they have to draw from to complete projects. It also lets employees take on new projects to develop their skill sets.

Managers can divide the work into projects, then determine which skills are required to complete the projects. Next, managers can match employees who have or want to develop relevant skills to the appropriate project roles. This promotes career development.

You can use technologies that evaluate resumes, LinkedIn profiles, or your human capital management system to create your skills inventory. Then, you can ask employees to add or modify the skills in their profiles. You can use the information to match the right employee with the right skill level to the right project role.

Develop Adjacent Skills

Implement technology to help employees develop skills related to the ones they have. For instance, a programmer who is fluent in one language could learn to code in another language. This process makes it easier for employees to connect with colleagues and coworkers who can help them upskill. It also provides employees with clear career development methods.

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Daily Remote Work Habits That Make You a Better Employee

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Remote work provides benefits that onsite work does not. Among them is the freedom of having no commute and the flexibility of working where you choose.

However, this freedom and flexibility can lead to issues. They include potentially overworking and experiencing burnout.

As a result, you must establish healthy remote work habits to improve your work-life balance. The following suggestions can help.

Develop these daily remote work habits to be a better employee.

Establish Your Workspace

Determine where you will perform your work. This may be in your home office, a guest room, or a section of your kitchen table.

Let the people you live with know that when you are in this area, you are working. They are not to disturb you unless there is an emergency.

You need uninterrupted time to get in the zone to complete your tasks. This promotes creativity and productivity. It also makes you a better remote employee.

Set Your Work Hours

Determine which work hours best fit your professional and personal needs. Adhere to these hours as much as possible.

You may be tempted to work longer hours because you do not have a commute. However, overworking can lead to mental health concerns and burnout.

As a result, aim to work a reasonable number of hours each day. Be sure you reach your deadlines and still have adequate time for other interests. These actions make you a better remote employee.

Prioritize Your Tasks

Determine which tasks need to be completed and when. Schedule them accordingly.

If you are unsure about your top priorities, talk with your manager. They can go over your objectives and help you plan your day or week.

Take Breaks

Include regular breaks throughout your day. Get up and walk around. Stretch, meditate, read, or listen to music. Come back refreshed and ready to work.

Regularly taking breaks, including an hour for lunch, lets your brain rest. This helps you be more focused and creative when you resume working. It also makes you a better employee.

Communicate with Your Team

Let your manager know what you are working on throughout the day. Include your accomplishments and what still needs to be done.

Share with your teammates relevant information that impacts their work. This is especially important for team projects.

Ask for and offer help when needed. This makes you an effective remote employee.

Looking for a New Job?

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