Posts Tagged ‘coaching’

Four Pointers For A Telephone Interview

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

These days more and more interviews or at least first round interviews are made over the phone. In these days of high unemployment, there are sometimes hundreds of applications for a single job, so employers whittle the numbers down by holding first round telephone interviews.

Therefore, it makes sense to learn how to deal with such an interview. In this piece, we will give four tips on how to become more successful at telephone interviews.

# 1 Smiling: it sounds strange to advocate that smiling can make a difference in a tele-interview, but it can and it does. Smiling produces a transformation of attitude and conveys confidence. This confidence will be experienced by the interviewer. In the same vein, if you normally gesticulate a lot, gesticulate whilst you are on the telephone as well. Just be natural and normal and attempt to be happy. This all boils down to smiling, so attempt to smile in your telephone interview.

#2 Telephone: use a good quality telephone. Why? Because your voice and your intonations will sound more natural. In the days when everyone rented their telephone units from their telephone firms, before it was compulsorily de-regulated by the government, everybody had a decent, if expensive, telephone.

These days, you are able to purchase your own phone and plug it in. However, this often leads to individuals purchasing a cheap phone with poor reproduction qualities or keeping on using a phone long after it ought to have been replaced. Therefore, carry out your interview on a telephone of decent quality so that the interviewer can get an correct sense of who you are.

#3 Research: make sure you have researched the firm you want to join. If you feel as if you know the firm that you have applied to, you will feel much more confident and this confidence will come across in the interview.

Employers like it whenever their (prospective) employees are interested enough in their company that they have conducted some research into it. Having done research will also prepare you for questions like: why do you prefer to work for us? And what value do you believe that you can bring to our firm?

#4 Truth: the fourth tip is to be true to yourself. In other words, be yourself. Do not strive to say what you think the interviewer wants to hear. If you only say what you think they would like to hear, you will come across as sycophantic and if you win the job you might not like it there anyway. Be yourself and find the correct job for you.

You should practice your interview techniques in trials with friends or family playing the role of the interviewer. Do not forget, that the foremost thing in a telephone interview is confidence, so do anything you can to raise your degree of confidence and do everything that you can that permits that confidence to be conveyed.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with looking for old fashioned telephones. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Family Plans For Cell Phones.

Why Should I Try To Stop Smoking?

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

One of the reasons why stopping smoking is so hard is because nicotine, which is a natural constituent of the tobacco leaf, is very addictive on two levels: both psychologically and physically. This is why patches and gums are not effective for most individuals - they do not have any affect on the psychological dependence of smokers.

So, anyone wanting to bust the habit has to attack nicotine addiction on both levels. Take the tablets, chew the gum and put on the patches by all means, but you will need something else to replace or displace the psychological dependence too. One of the most effective ways of doing this is attending a support group.

Peer pressure and peer support are two of the reasons why support classes work, but you might not have to attend a full support group, if you can discover a different way of attaining the same effect.

One example that may work is if a couple both give up together providing support for each other. Husband and wife teams giving up together frequently works as do a couple of colleagues in an office.

The more you smoke, the harder it will get to quit. That is fairly understandable, but do you know whether you are a heavy smoker? Astonishingly, it does not depend on how many cigarettes you smoke, but if you have to have a cigarette within thirty minutes of waking up, you are considered to be a heavy smoker.

Despite the famous fact that smoking causes serious illnesses, smokers continue to puff away and give excuses for themselves. This might be because there are other psychological forces at work. One of these is the fear of failure and another is the dread of putting on weight. The former tends to have an effect on men and the latter women.

Have you heard of the ‘Five A’s of Quitting’? It is a system used by counselors and perhaps you could use it to assess your own predicament:

Ask about the smoker’s habit; Advise about quitting; Assess the smoker’s resolve; Assist to stop; Arrange follow up checks.

It is the case that 80%-90% of all long term quitters just stopped smoking one day and never took it back up. 10% of all temporary quitters tried the same tactic. Other less successful methods are hypnosis and acupuncture. There is evidence that fasting reduces the craving for nicotine, but a lot of individuals might find it equally as difficult to fast as to stop smoking.

It helps individuals who are attempting to give up to avoid smoky places where individuals tend to smoke more anyway. This used to be bars, but you may not smoke there anymore anyway, however the law does not apply to private parties.

Be wary of the number three. It sounds weird, but the first three hours of quitting are the most difficult; after the first three days, you think that it was not so hard after all; after three weeks, you start to kid yourself that one cigarette with a beer will not hurt, but if you can sidestep smoking for three years you ought to be in the clear and if you hold your guard up, you will probably never smoke again.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on numerous topics, is at present involoved with the reason why to quit smoking. If you are interested in massage, visit our web site now: Health Risks to Smoking

Alarm Clocks And Working Together Online

Monday, July 4th, 2011

Have you ever bought a piece of equipment that you thought would come in really useful only to leave it lying around for months because you could not work out how to set it up? Or not set all the features up, because it would have cost hours to read through the handbook, which looked as if it had been translated by a machine anyway?

Most people have experienced the state of affairs at some time or another. I had an alarm clock some time ago that had dozens of functions like waking me up at diverse times on the weekend to during the week and arbitrarily selecting a radio channel every day to wake me up. It also had a feature with which I could train it to understand some voice commands, but I could not be bothered with all that.

I just wanted it to get me up whenever I set it. Video recorders are similar devices. How many times do you hear of individuals setting their video recorder to record a film only to get a documentary on another channel? It used to happen a lot, didn’t it?

The point that I am getting at here is that the designers of these machines have been told to put as many features as possible into them up to a price in order to be all things to all people. However, in making their machines so complicated, a great deal of people decide not to bother using them at all and will avoid that make in the future, which is the precise opposite of what the manufacturers wanted.

The next time you go out looking for some electrical gadget, you will say to yourself: “Oh, So-And-So, you need a degree to use one by So-And-So. I’m not buying one of theirs”.

So how can this affect you? Well, if you have to organize anything that you expect others to take part in or be animated about, try not to make it excessively complicated. I am not saying ‘dumb-down’, just don’t show off by putting all the bells and whistles on it simply to show that you can do that. People will not be grateful to you for it, they will ignore your undertaking.

This has a lot of implications for on line projects where individuals can be thousands of miles apart but still be working together on a joint development from home. Open source programming is a good example of this type of work. The team leaders should keep everything as simple as possible if they want the utmost co-operation.

One technique that you can use to test to see if your project is being understood is to ask. It sounds obvious and it should be, but a lot of team leaders will not ask because they think that it makes them look weak and unknowledgable. Again, in fact, the opposite is true. A great team leader is not a tyrant; a good team leader is a good organizer and is thoughtful.

If you are interested in finding outmore about team-building, then go over to our website called Team Building to learn more.

The Only Way To Stop Smoking Cigarettes

Thursday, May 12th, 2011

Smoking cigarettes used to be a lot more popular than it is today. Now most smokers are searching for methods of stopping smoking. This is because smokers and the general public at large are more aware of the risks of smoking cigarettes these days.

Just look at films manufactured in the Sixties and before, everyone is smoking. It shows how common smoking was compared with today. This would not be possible now as you may not smoke in public places, on public transport, in restaurants or in bars any more in most Western countries and elsewhere too.

The difficulty with smoking is that not just the smoker suffers, so does everyone around about the smoker. This is called passive smoking and it affects those working or living with smokers - a barmaid or a spouse for example. So, all these individuals are endangering their health so that tobacco firms can become richer.

No matter how long someone has been smoking, it is possible to stop the habit. Anyone who has stopped smoking will tell you that stopping smoking cigarettes is all to do with the mind. You really have to want to stop smoking or you will not do it successfully.

Individuals have different ways of stopping smoking cigarettes. Some say that nicotine patches or nicotine gum help, because you can wean yourself off nicotine slowly without having to inhale the poisonous smoke of cigarettes. Nicotine is highly addictive and most of the chemical withdrawal symptoms have to do with the shortage of nicotine in the body.

Most individuals find that the single effective way of stopping smoking cigarettes is to stop smoking dead - in one go. It is very hard to cut down or to switch to a weaker brand. You are still inhaling poisonous smoke. It is still no good to you or anyone about you.

Cutting down or switching brands does not work, because you will still smoke other smokers’ and you will still be in a smokers’ environment. You will also find yourself smoking tomorrow’s five cigarettes today, promising not to smoke any the next day. That never works. You have to give up smoking dead.

There are a number of situations that can provide the motivation to quit smoking cigarettes. Illness is usually high on the list. A few years ago two friends of mine who smoked heavily stopped smoking cigarettes within weeks of each other.

One was in his sixties and had smoked for almost sixty years: he was told that his lungs were beginning to go, but that if he stopped smoking, the shock might kill him. He stopped smoking one morning and is still alive, but what a dilemma!

The other was in his fifties and drove a great deal as a travelling salesman. The doctor told him that he would probably have to have a leg removed next year, if he did not stop smoking and that the other might go a year or so after that. He stopped smoking immediately and still has both legs.

So it seems that the trick to stopping smoking cigarettes successfully is to find your motivation (do you want to live long enough to see the grandchildren married?) and bear that image in front of you at all times. Take nicotine substitutes if you have to and stay away from environments where individuals smoke more, like pubs.Join a sports club instead, something like tennis, table tennis, swimming or even chess.

If you want to start quitting smoking cigarettes, you could do far worse than visit our free website on Quitting Smoking

So, You Want To Stop Smoking?

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

If you are a smoker, then the overwhelming odds are that you have attempted to give up smoking, even if you never told anyone that you were attempting to give up. The old joke among smokers is that they have given up giving up.

That is a real pity and a very sad joke. Most smokers began when they were young and impressionable, but it takes a great deal of willpower to give up for life.

If you are trying to stop smoking, then I hope that some of the tips set out below will be of use to you in your quest to kick the habit. The truth is that it takes most people years to certainly give up smoking, although there are plenty of people who give up one day and never smoke again - ever.

It just depends on the type of person you are really. Individuals can cut down gradually and others know that if they are going to stop, then they need to make a clean break once and for all.

It is simple to judge progress with the person who ceases from one day to the next, but a lot more difficult to do the same with someone who cuts down. For example, how long is someone going to take to cut down from one packet a day to two?

How does a partner know when someone is smoking ten cigarettes an evening, that they have not already smoked thirty during the day? It is very difficult.

In the end, the quitter is on his own and if he or she wants to tell lies about their progress, they can. No-one else will know, but at the end of the day, they are only telling lies and attempting to fool themselves that they are attempting to give up smoking. Having said that, a smoker must reward himself for each step of real progress.

A decent tip is not to rely on just one strategy to give up. For instance, you could wear a patch and reduce your intake by five or ten real cigarettes every week. Try nicotine gum at the same time.

Always tell people that you are giving up and never accept a cigarette off anyone and never give anyone one either. Do not get into ’rounds’ or ‘flashes’ of sharing cigarettes.

If you find that you smoke more while you are in a stressful situation, such as at the time to submit the end of year accounts, hold off trying to quit until after then. One of the times that most smokers have a big problem cutting down is when they are in the pub drinking alcohol with their friends. This is probably the hardest time to conquer the habit.

Numerous people like a cigarette with a drink after finishing work and if you fit into this category, attempt to go home from work for a drink or give up smoking with a friend and take it in turns to go to their house and yours for a drink after you finish work. Once the first three months are up, you could go back to the pub and see how you get on or you just may not want to anymore.

If you are thinking about how to quit smoking cigarettes, please go over to our website now at: Quitting Smoking

Alarm Clocks And Online Collaboration

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

Have you ever bought an item of equipment that you thought would come in very useful only to leave it lying around for months because you could not work out how to set it up? Or not set all the features up, because it would have taken hours to read through the handbook, which looked as if it had been translated by a computer anyway?

Most people have experienced the situation at some time or another. I had an alarm clock once that had dozens of features like waking me up at diverse times on the weekend to during the week and randomly selecting a radio channel every day to wake me up. It also had a feature with which I could train it to understand some voice commands, but I could not be bothered with all that.

I just wanted it to wake me up whenever I set it. Video recorders are similar devices. How many times do you hear of individuals setting their video recorder to record a movie only to get a documentary on another channel? It used to happen a lot, didn’t it?

The aspect that I am getting at here is that the designers of these instruments have been told to put as many features as possible into them up to a price in order to be all things to all people. However, in making their equipment so convoluted, a great deal of people decide not to bother using them at all and will avoid that make in the future, which is the precise opposite of what the manufacturers intended.

The next time you go out looking for some electrical implement, you will say to yourself: “Oh, So-And-So, you need a diploma to use one by So-And-So. I’m not buying one of theirs”.

So how can this concern you? Well, if you have to coordinate anything that you expect others to take part in or be animated about, try not to make it overly complex. I am not saying ‘dumb-down’, just don’t show off by putting all the bells and whistles on it simply to show that you can do that. People will not thank you for it, they will ignore your project.

This has a great deal of implications for on line projects where people can be thousands of miles apart but still be collaborating on a joint development from home. Open source programming is a fine example of this type of work. The team leaders should keep everything as simple as possible if they want the maximum co-operation.

One technique that you can use to check to see if your venture is being understood is to inquire. It sounds obvious and it should be, but a lot of team leaders will not ask because they think that it makes them look weak and unknowledgeable. Again, in fact, the opposite is true. A good team leader is not a despot; a good team leader is a good organizer and is considerate.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now involved with Bose alarm clocks. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Bose Digital Radio.

Get Started Investing In Tax Deeds

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

Have you thought about investing in the real estate market, but don’t know where or how to start? Investing in Tax Deeds may be the right option for you. Tax Deeds are sold by the county when property owners fall behind on their taxes. The counties depend on the tax money to function and carry out their programs. If the taxes aren’t paid the county sells the deed to the property to get the money they need.

Some counties give property owners the chance to come current on their taxes and some do not. Either way if owner doesn’t pay the taxes the Tax deed gives the new deed owner the right to purchase the property. In this case you can purchase the property at a fraction of the value and receive a huge return on your investment.

If you purchase the tax deed and decide you want to buy it you have a lot of options with the property. You can flip it, sell it, or live in it. Because you can buy properties for so little you can sell them right out and still make a profit. You can also put a little bit of money into fixing it up and sell it for even more giving you another opportunity for more return on you investment. You may even decide to live in the property and save a lot by buying through the tax deed.

Like any other investment you’ll want to know exactly what you are getting into before you purchase a Tax Deed. You’ll purchase the deed at an auction that is set up by the county, but you can go to the county office before hand and get a list of the properties that will be up for sale there, so you can go look at them and do the research before bidding.

This is a great place for new investor to start because you can choose how much money you want to put in at the beginning and keep putting in more as you are successful. If you make sure you know the properties you are investing in are valuable you be able to make a profit.

Tax Deed investing can be a great new investing opportunity for those who spend a little time at the beginning to learn how to be efficient and talk to experts who have figured out how to get high ROIs from this. You can get into this now and soon be spending only a few hours a week to keep up while your money makes money for you.

Learn more about Tax Deed investing. Stop by No Risk Investor where you can find out all about Tax Lien Foreclosure Properties and how you can profit by them.

Quitting Smoking Benefits

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

Giving up an addiction that you’ve had most of your life can be extremely difficult. Many smokers who want to quit their unhealthy habit hesitate because they feel that it’s too late or it’s too hard for them to stop. Fortunately this is not true. It’s never too late to change any bad habit.

The whole process of giving up smoking takes a fairly long time and requires dedication, determination and courage by the smoker. Although at first it may be painfull to move away from being addicted to nicotine, as a smoker who wants to quit, it is best to focus the mind on the benefits of giving up smoking that will come with time.

It’s a well-known fact that smoking is the cause of many all sorts of cancers and illnesses. Doctors say that each time a person smokes a cigarette, he or she is losing part of their life span, fitness, cash and even respect. We live in a society of many anti-smoking lobbies working to ban smoking that smokers are generally not seen in a favourable light. So why not think about the benefits of stopping smoking and lose your addiction instead of losing everything for the sake of a cigarette?

They say that health is wealth and one of the most important benefits of quitting smoking is good health. It does not matter whether you’ve smoked for a few of years or have been a chain smoker all your life. What matters is that you have decided to quit. Starting from this day, you will be able to live a better life with fewer infections meaning less time in hospital.

The benefits of quitting smoking are not only an improvement in health and an increase in life span, but it can also have a positive effect on social life. When a smoker quits this deadly addiction he or she will have a lower risk of developing cancer and heart disease. It will also mean that the ex-smoker will breathe in fresher air instead of cigarette smoke, which will mean less instances of coughing and breathlessness.

The benefits of quitting smoking are endless. As smoking can have an adverse effect on the sexual health of people, quitting the habit would mean that the fertility rate will be improved. Unlike in the past, you’ll have whiter teeth, fresher breath and have a higher energy level. The people around you can be happy that they can finally have fresh air to breathe. Another benefit is the savings in your purse. Cigarette packs are costly. Quitting smoking would mean that the money that was spent on cigarettes could be used for other causes, such as pampering yourself with luxuries.

The benefits of stopping smoking are certainly many and the plus-points of smoking are yet to be discovered. For sure, it brings in a lot of tax revenue and keeps some people in gainful employment, but then smokers take more sick days and spend more time in hospital than their non-smoking colleagues. Smokers say it calms their nerves, but so would relaxation techniques such as yoga even sitting down. Let’s face it, public opinion has moved against smoking with smokers being vilified and pitied these days. Smokers also look rather silly nipping out of the restaurant or pub for a cigarette every hour or less, don’t they?

If you are thinking about trying how to quit smoking cigarettes, please go over to our website now at: Quitting Smoking

categories: smoking,health,fitness,habits,stress management,office,self help,advice,success,coaching,management,environment,entertainment,other

Paul Bryant and Alabama History

Monday, September 21st, 2009

The Alabama Crimson Tide has been blessed with lots of winners in football throughout the years, and has produced a number of great players that have impacted the NFL greatly, not one of them can compare to one coach who changed the face of college sports forever, and that is Paul “Bear” Bryant.

Paul “Bear” Bryant

The first person that you most likely think of when you hear something about Alabama football, it is likely you think of Bear Bryant. At one point, Bear Bryant was the winningest coach in college football ever. This legendary coach served the Crimson for 25 years. In this period of time, Brian was phenomenal with six national championships and 13 SEC conference championships.

As a head football coach, Paul Bryant went through several university head coaching jobs such as the University of Maryland, University of Kentucky, and Texas A&M University before he finally had the break to give back to his alma mater, Alabama. So motivated was Bear Bryant, that he distinctively was quoted as saying, “Mama called. And when Mama calls, you just have to come runnin’.”

It was the year 1958 that Paul Bryant took over the helm of Bama, and started leading it to its past Rose Bowl-style brilliance but accomplished even more. Coaching renowned players like Joe Namath, Pat Trammell, Billy Neighbors, Big John Hannah, snake Stabler,Lee Roy Jordan, Johnny Musso, Bob Baumhower, and many others.

Overall, Bear Bryant was a great motivator and understood how to make his players to do what he wanted them to do. Florida A&M coach, Jake Gaither said of Bear Bryant, “He can take his’n and beat you’n, and he can take your’n and beat his’n.” The motivation wasn’t just on the turf, the motivation passed into real life as well by the nature he instilled in his players like big John Croyle, who founded the faith-based Christian Big Oak Ranch for troubled boys and girls in Springville, Alabama.

The last year that he coached the Crimson Tide, 1982, was a down year for Alabama and Bear couldn’t see himself coaching Alabama into mediocrity. He constantly said that if he quit coaching that he “wouldn’t last a week.” In truth, he didn’t last a lot longer than that, only 37 days. On January 26, 1983, Bryant died of a heart attack at age 69 and many attended his funeral. Officials projected that between a half-million to a million people were lined all along the 53 mile stretch from Tuscaloosa to the graveyard in Birmingham that was mere blocks from Legion Field.

The Legendary Man Changed Alabama and The World

Bear’s legacy lives in the players that are now growing older and the fans that recollect his championship spirit. Not only that… He helped smash segregation in the South’s football universe, and in doing so, turned the state around from bigotry to magnificence. Not only that, he changed the world to a better place. Roll Tide!

About the Author:

How do I Stop Smoking?

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Once somebody decides that it’s time he/she stopped smoking, it is better to start sooner rather than later. However, how do you stop smoking, when you have been smoking for a very long time? Smoking is a very difficult addiction to break as tobacco contains the compound called nicotine which is addictive to both the mind and body.

Studies have shown that every time you smoke a cigarette, it has cost you around 5 to 20 minutes of your life. Besides weakening the body, smoking leaves a person with bad breath, yellow teeth, wrinkles, lower bone density, fertility problems that will eventually affect the sexual health of both men and women and a higher risk of being infected with deadly diseases such as lung cancer. Smoking is costly and can reduce the life span of a person by around 10 years or even more.

Methods to stop smoking can be found in many places and there are also various kinds of medication that can be prescribed. Many smokers are prescribed nicotine replacements such as nicotine gums, nicotine patches, lozenges, inhalers, etc. But the problem with all these is that they deal mostly with the physical aspect of what smoking does to the body. The truth is that more than the body, it is the mind that is addicted to smoking.

The most difficult part of stopping smoking comes when trying to cope with the mind. A smoker’s mind generally becomes convinced that their happiness, enjoyment and leading a stress free life, all depend on smoking. Understanding that this is just not the case is one of the most important issues in quitting smoking.

One of the most important things to keep in mind when attempting to quit smoking, is the cessation of such connections in the mind. Smokers think that they have to smoke a cigarette to help them deal with daily issues. Once you can to conquer this dependency, in time your mind will learn to deal with daily activities without requiring a cigarette.

A tip on how to quit smoking can be to go to counselling classes and get advice from someone who is an ex-smoker, a person who has gone through similar experiences. Talking about your problems about quitting smoking and thereby relieving the doubts you have by attending such sessions can be beneficial for anyone who is trying to stop smoking.

If you have made up your mind that you ought to stop smoking, don’t waste time, grab the bull by the horns and begin stopping now. You will soon start to notice the difference to your health. You will find that exercising will be easier, your fitness level will rise dramatically, food will taste far better and your mouth will be fresher.

About the Author: