Hobbies outside of work are the keys to your professional success

Hobbies outside of work are the keys to your professional successWork-life balance is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, and for good reasonyou dont want to work too hard, but you want to work hard enough to make a good living and gain a sense of fulfillment. When people talk about this ideal balance, the life part usually refers to the health benefits of work-life balance (eating well, sleeping enough, spending time with friends and family). But what about doing something for yourself out of pure enjoyment? googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display(div-gpt-ad-1467144145037-0) ) Your physical and psychological health are every bit as important to your long-term success as the status of your career, and hobbies can be an incredibly valuable part of your developmentoften personally and professionally. Here are a few reasons why its good to find a hobby and devote yourself to it.You get mora out of life.When you devote yourself to an activity that brings you joy, you get mor e creativity, more confidence, and more ways to expand and express your passion. All of the work you do in developing your hobby translates directly (or indirectly) into your work. The bottom line is, as you build these things in one area of your life, they dont just sit there at the craft table or on the ski liftthey infuse the other arenas of your life.You can treat them as solo me time.Taking care of yourself physically and spending time with your family are important, but they can start to feel like chores or stressors of their own. Hobbies, by contrast, are only for you. And they serve as an immediate battery recharge station, a place where you can go to let your hair (and blood pressure) down a bit.Or, you can use them to connect with like-minded people.Most hobbies tend to involve bumping into other enthusiasts of the same activity or project now and then. Or, if its your jam, you can landseek out a group where you all can hobby together. Relish in this new bit of networking and connecting. You never know the connections you might make or the doors that might open to you.Learning makes you sharper in all areas of your life.Its so important in a life and a career to keep learning. A hobby keeps you aware, inquisitive, and on the cutting edge of one more aspect of your life. Exploring a passion in-depth also helps you to gain a better understanding of yourselfhow you function, what you like and dislike, and what is most important to you.You become more interesting.Having a hobbysomething that matters to you beyond the grind of home and workmakes you more interesting to the people you meet. It broadens your identity beyond your home life and your job title. It can help people get a better sense of you, which will help them connect to you more easily.You gain new perspective.When youre flagging or you feel in a rut, sometimes the best thing to do is get out of it. If youre lucky enough to have a hobby you love, you can go to your hobby/happy place, throw yo urself into it, and see if it helps you look at a situation with new eyes. Use your chosen activity to give you the calm and rest to step back and examine and improve all aspects of your life.

How To Write A Letter Of Interest For An Informational Interview

How To Write A Letter Of Interest For An Informational Interview Informational interviews have you heard of them?Theyre the best-kept secret that many job seekers and working professionals should be keen to add to their arsenal for the perfectjob searchpreparation. Despite some misconceptions, these arent just for college students who are hoping to score their next internship. Informational interviews are for all levels of professional experience, whether youre a job seeker or not, and are really justanother form of networking.Not only are they a great way to get to know others in your industry, but they can help you meet others at a specific company/industry youre thinking about trying on for size and see what skills are required to do so. Maybe youre interviewing for a job opening and this partie works for your prospective employer, or perhaps youre simply curious about what life as a (fill in the blank) looks like. Either way, making this sort of personal connection certainly can t hurtHow do you land an informational interview?Not sure where to start? Begin with these three steps1. Identify the employers and individuals who you admire professionally.2. Do your homework and research them and/or their company thoroughly.3. Leverage your current network to determine whether any introductions can be made organically. (Your best friends mothers former colleague is now a hire manager at a company youre interested in working for? Great Send a letter to em)What is a letter of interest?Once youve established your very own list of awesome, now its time to reach out and actually land one of these informational interviews. The most common way torequest a meetingis to write aletter of interestvia schmelzglas or a LinkedIn homilie.Just what is in a letter of interest? And is a cover letter the same as a letter of interest? Not exactly. In a general sense, a letter of interest, also known as a statement of interest, is a message that does not respond to a specific job ad but instead expresses your desire to work for the organization in question.Often, these letters can be mora effective than cover letters because youre not competing with other candidates for an advertised position. Even if no position is available at the moment, the employer may keep your information on file and contact you when something arises. Or, of course, you may land an informational interview. If youre asking for an informational interview rather than employment upfront, employers will likely respond positively.How do you write an effective letter of interest or statement of interest?The key is to be concise, to the point, and clear about your intent.Know that your subject line and matter is important in any letter of inquiry your target is likely a busy person who receives a lot of requests such as yours. Before you hit send on that message, be sure that your messagecommunicates your ask clearly, respects their time, and (bonus points) identifies how your meeting will recip rocate value for them taking time out of their busy schedule to meet you.Letter of interest sampleBecause this can be a daunting task, lets break it down and make it easy. Heres a sample to help you write an effective letter of interest and land that first meeting.Subject SampleAspiring PositionWould Love to Ask You a Few QuestionsorAspiring Industry Professional Looking for Advice From the BestORCompletely Agree With Your Thoughts on Topic -choose and tweak which subject best fits your situation.Email templateDear first anthroponym,My name is your name, and Im a job title who works in your industry and location. Im reaching out because insert intent here and feel free to include a little bit of flattery if warranted (but not too much). Id love to learn mora about one to three things youd like to learn from the person - ideally mora than one.Im sure youre very busy, so any time that you can spare would be appreciated. (If you have an example of how this meeting will benefit them, no w is the time to point out how). Thanks again for your time.Sincerely,Your nameShould you include your resume in a letter of interest email?You might also include your resume as an attachment, if applicable to the situation. On the one hand, giving the recipient of your letter a slightly better understanding of your work experience by including your resume is a good idea. On the other, you dont want want to (literally and figuratively) send the wrong message i.e. that you perceive this meeting to be closer to a formal interview than a conversation. Unless your potential informational interviewer is connected with a specific job opening, thats likely to feel a bit confusing.If youre sending this inquiry letter via LinkedIn, the dilemma has been solved for you the recipient can obviously get an idea of your background by looking at your profile. If youre sending it via email, though, perhaps try including a link to your portfolio, if you have one, before sending your resume. (And re gardless, know these people will probably look you up on LinkedIn anyway so dont over-sweat it)Tips for writing a letter of interestBelow are some additional tips from Fairygodboss for writing an effective email. By employing these hacks, youll hopefully up the chances of your letter of inquiry being read1. Earn and protect your email reputation.You know that friend of yours that sends you all kinds of things? The friend that will send emails with chain letter forwards (Just send your favorite recipe and add one more name to the bottom of the list to reisepass it on), the latest viral video or just coupons to events? Well, you might love that friend and you might even read every other email you get from them, but if you want to make sure your emails are read in a work context, you dont actually want tobethat friend.If people know you to send stuff that actually matters and not just entertainment chances are high that they will read what you send them, too. On the other hand, if you develop a reputation for sending trivia, or even junk, your emails might not even get opened. You never know who might be a connection down the line, so always employ good email etiquette.2. Make it personal.Making it personal means a bunch of different things. For starters, you should address the email to an actual person. Hey is never as good as Hey Jack, and Hi Jack is probably even better. Unless you are in constant contact and on very familiar ground with the person receiving your email, its just polite. People appreciate being acknowledged, and their name is just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone appreciates when their work is recognized and likes to receive thanks or gratitude if appropriate.3. Keep it simple.Why write two sentences when one will suffice? Brevity is important. Anyone who has opened an email that looks like its a few paragraphs long can tell you their instinctive reaction is something like This looks like a lot of work. Email is a funny communication mediu m because its contents could be as short as a text message or as long as mini-essay.If you want to make sure your email is read, keep it short and sweet. Anything that needs a longer email probably shouldnt be an email in the first place. Ask yourself whether you could accomplish your goal more effectively with a phone call or in-person meeting as compared to a long email.Of course, for the purpose of a job search, most of your communication is going to be happening via email anyway so your best bet is to keep it brief Three paragraphs max, but two paragraphs (as demonstrated in the sample above) is even better.4. Write it well.Theres nothing that will stop someone from finishing your email faster than something that is painful to read. If your run-on sentences dont make sense, or your grammar and spelling mistakes are so large that they become a distraction, then people arent going to like reading what youre writing. Which means its far more likely theyll simply stop and go on to something else. Writing an email well doesnt mean trying to craft a top-notch essay it just means respecting your readers attention span and time by putting things concisely and communicating efficiently and effectively.5. Follow up.Even the best-written email can be ignored. Through no fault of your own, the fact is that most people are completely swamped with managing their emails and tend to get to non-urgent matters when they can. Sometimes that means your emails will get ignored until a later time (or sometimes just ignored, period).If you cant circle back in some other way thats appropriate, emailing asecond follow-up letterasking the recipient whether they got a chance to think about or read your former email is perfectly acceptable and some might even say, completely necessary. If your follow-up letter doesnt earn a response, though, dont take it too personally. Write a letter to someone else in an equally enticing position you know theyre out there, and that there are plen ty of people whoarewilling to talk to youNext stepsHopefully, these tips will help you send a letter that will result in you getting a specific job, make contact with potential employers, or at the very least, boost your networking skillsTo learn more about the informational interview process and job interviews in general, read Why You Should Always Say Yes to That Informational Interview 13 Informational Interview Questions You Should Always Ask The Ultimate Cover Letter Guide How To Prepare For An Interview In 6 Easy Steps--Karen Schneider works for bareMinerals in Global Packaging + Creative Services and has worked in a variety of industries over the span of her career, including digital media, fashion apparel, and wine spirits. She is currently a contributor to The Muse and Career Contessa and has been featured on Business Insider and Harvard Business Review for her career advice. Shes obsessed with learning, life, and career/self-improvement.

Solutions for Writing out Your Skills on a Resume

Solutions for Writing out Your Skills on a Resume The New Fuss About Writing out Your Skills on a Resume You wish to sell your skills in a fashion that will garner an interview. When youre done Get rid of all of the skills you simply have a simple grasp of. If you would like to showcase your organization skills, obtaining a tightly structured resume certainly helps. So once youre contemplating how to compose a resume, dont forget that you need to be selling your abilities and accomplishments, not only listing your work history and your old responsibilities. If youre not certain which skills you would like to share, consider your prior experiences. Learn about the three kinds of skills its possible to highlight and the way it is possible to incorporate them into your resume. Job-specific skills vary depending on the position. Listing your skills provides a chance to showcase your abilities and experiences to prime employers for the remainder of your resume. Soft abilities, on the flip side, arent simple to quantify. Hard skills arent skills that are tough to learn. Hard abilities, also called employability skills or technical abilities, can be quantified by your degree of expertise in the topic or years of experience utilizing a specific technique or program. It is possible to find below a list of the greatest skills you may put on your resume based on the sort of job that you are applying for. Your skills are an overview of what you could do for the prospective employer if you were offered the work at the moment. Carefully reread the work description and choose which skills are unquestionably essential for the job. Double-check if youre utilizing the proper abilities and experience keywords. The Number One Question You Must Ask for Writing out Your Skills on a Resume With our new Ultimate Guide to Resumes, youre learn which sort of resume is suitable for you, what things to include in it, how to highlight your abilities and more all in one are a, which means you can create a recruiter-approved resume in virtually no time. If it comes to resumes, befhigung employers are on the watch for exaggerated abilities or results. Resumes may be the very first thing that hiring managers are able to look at in the work application, so its important to produce your resume stand out to hiring managers. They need to be clear and concise. The information that you include in your resume and the layout of your resume will ride on your abilities and experience in connection with your career objective. Therefore, if you come to an interview, the absence of Soft Skills may be one reason you werent chosen for the job. Hard skills can be classified in various ways, based on your job title. Written language skills are an essential part of many positions in virtually every industry. The Dirty Facts About Writing out Your Skills on a Resume Resume writing can be a challenging job, and it can be difficult to know what things to include and what to leave out. Writing and editing is a rather wide category. A superb editing job will take a small longerand some particular tactics intended to catch resume errors. Writing and editing need a lot of interrelated abilities, and its difficult to understand what to include.