Posts Tagged ‘work’

Some people are bored at work to the point of falling asleep at the desk, perpetually understimulated, their talents not put to good use. It does not have to be this way.

Being a good small-talker makes you a more friendly and open person in the eyes of other people. Being approachable is an advantage, yet some people prefer not to talk when they don’t have anything meaningful to say. This, however, is perceived as a lack of confidence and can label a person anything from “shy” to “weird”.

Our brains consist of two parts. One, the conscious part, is what you use when you think. It’s the slower of both, but it allows for logical reasoning and objective judgment. It separates us from most other animals. The other one takes care of all necessary things to keep your body running, it also handles emotions, but most of all: It does all the things that you do “instinctively”. For example if someone throws something at you, you automatically duck and protect your head. It’s extremely fast and you decide things immediately without any pondering, like a high-performance decision-machine.

But creativity is also a much-asked skill in business and employment. If you think about it: All progress stems from some sort of creative act. Thus someone that can produce such acts on a consistent basis is a valuable addition to any undertaking.

I’m not that much interested in the war, but I wondered how much a foreign contractor in the IT field would earn in Iraq, provided he could live with the risk of working in a country at war.

In order to find a suitable comparison I decided to sample three IT jobs in different salary ranges and compare the income. Furthermore I wanted to answer this question: How likely is it to be injured and killed in Iraq? Here’s what I’ve come up with:

But of course he is very interested in what you will be able to do in the future. Thus you should phrase your answers appropriately when being asked about past jobs.

An important aspect of every negotiation is that both sides need to keep face. This is less true in one-time negotiations, for example when you purchase a car. But it is very important when you negotiate with people with whom you want to have a continuous relationship.