I've always thought of obsessing over your email openings and closings as a bit like obsessing over your outfit - not worth it. As long as you don't do something outrageous - say, sign an email to your CEO with "xoxo" or show up to a job interview wearing a clown costume - you'll be fine with whatever you choose. I was wrong. According to a new analysis from Boomerang, an email productivity app, different email sign-offs yield different response rates. And woe to the unappreciative emailers among us: The analysis found that the best way to end an email is with gratitude. Specifically, results showed that the most effective email sign-off is "thanks in advance". For the study, Boomerang looked at closings in over 350,000 email threads from mailing list archives in which, they wrote in a blog post, many emails involved "people asking for help or advice, hoping for a reply". Then they picked out the eight email sign-offs that appeared over 1000 times each and figured out the response…
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You are the sum of your habits. When you allow bad habits to take over, they dramatically impede your path to success. The challenge is bad habits are insidious, creeping up on you slowly until you don’t even notice the damage they’re causing. “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” - Warren Buffett Breaking bad habits requires self-control—and lots of it. Research indicates that it’s worth the effort, as self-control has huge implications for success. University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman conducted a study where they measured college students’ IQ scores and levels of self-control upon entering university. Four years later, they looked at the students’ grade point averages (GPA) and found that self-control was twice as important as IQ in earning a high GPA. The self-control required to develop good habits (and stop bad ones) also serves as the foundation for a strong work ethic and high productivity. Self-control is like…
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Have you ever struggled with a job hunt and asked: “Why can't I get a job?” Sometimes it's just bad luck, but often there is something you're doing wrong in your job search. Reasons exist for why you can't get a job. Employers reject candidates with these behaviors. Here are 10 reasons why the recruiter is rejecting you. You're Underqualified You don't need to have 100 percent of the skills and qualifications listed on a job description, but you do need to have a high percentage. Aim to apply for jobs where you fit at least 90 percent of the qualifications. (That number drops for highly specialized jobs.) If the job description asks for someone with three-five years of experience, your 2.5 years of experience may qualify you for the job if you're strong in all of the other areas. Six months of experience isn't going to cut it. You're Overqualified It can seem illogical that employers would reject you for having too much experience…
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