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Tricks to Get Promoted With Ease in Your Present Job

So you love positions of responsibility, cherish the feeling of being valued by peers/seniors and a high pay check never did you any harm! Well, these are some significant reasons that make us push our limits in our respective jobs and thereby get promoted. You think you know it all! Never mind, some more knowledge regarding keys to success will help you even further.

Once an employee consolidates his/her position in a certain department and gains enough experience, prestige and recognition for his/her work, it becomes natural for him/her to expect a justified economic reward for having done well. So, when it is time for you to expect that well-deserved raise, follow these tips and the much-deserved promotion won’t be far away -

1. Be Proactive: You must begin showing visible interest and willingness in taking up new responsibilities. It is recommended that you identify the desired position well in advance and obtain necessary facts and characteristics of that position. Thereafter, you must begin working on your skills to become eligible for the concerned position. For instance, if it is an international role you want, gaining fluency in some international languages might help your cause. If it is a leadership position you’re after, you must exhibit these skills effectively in presence of your superiors.

2. Work on your Qualification: It would be great if you can further your education/qualification simultaneously while performing well in your present profile. The trick is to show a lot of initiative, responsible behavior, perseverance and effectiveness in the present scope of work. Please note, a promotion would involve additional responsibilities and thus additional work load. All this can lead to a significant increase in work pressure. Therefore, you must be prepared to work and perform under stress at all times.

3. Exhibit your skills: Obtaining a promotion not only involves getting acquainted with desired professional skills and qualities, but also exhibiting them in critical business situations from time to time.

4. Be prepared for arguments: If you have done all the hard work and are ready to apply for that dream position in your organization, the first thing that you must do is be prepared with the arguments. A recommended trick is to talk to your boss in a secluded place without much disturbance. Your pitch must be calm and reasonable. It should focus primarily on your past performance and readiness to assume a new role. You should reinforce all your achievements and have ready answers to counter the initial rebuff. Do everything but never bring the personal reasons such as “rising mortgages”, “baby expenses” etc. into the argument.

To put it shortly, you have to sell your professional skills and abilities in a manner that your superiors are clearly able to match your skills with the demands of the vacant position.

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The New Speaker’s Dilemma – Interpreting the Audience’s Signals About Your Presentation

A speaker must constantly make eye contact with his or her audience. How else would the speaker know if he is getting his or her message across? The audience always want the speaker to succeed. But there is only a finite amount of time before the audience switches off if the message is not creating interest in the minds of the audience.

The speaker must observe the signals coming from the body language of the audience that will tell him or her that the audience is no longer interested in what is being said.

There are a number of movements within the audience that are signals. They include the following:

1. Eating or chewing;

2. Tapping a pen; playing with a paper clip…

3. Adjusting hair, clothes…

4. Texting or taking calls;

5. Looking out the window;

6. Blowing his or her nose;

7. Looking at the wall clock or watch;

8. Yawning;

9. Reading.

These are all physical indications that are easily read or seen.

There are some more subtle ways the audience tells the speaker that he/she have lost their audience. They include:

1. Asking questions at a seemingly wrong time. This could mean that the questioner has not understood your point or is maybe trying to get you back on track. It might also mean that what the speaker is saying is common knowledge to the audience or is not what they paid for or expected to hear.

2. Asking questions that seem irrelevant to the speaker’s speech. This could mean the speaker has lost the audience completely or the message has failed to be taken in by the audience.

3. A silent question time. No speaker is so perfect in getting the message across that there will be no questions. Silence most likely means that the audience simply has had enough and wants to leave.

Once the speaker notices more than a couple of these signs, the time is ripe to change how the speaker is delivering his/her message. He/she may need to involve the audience in some way. It might mean asking a question of the audience or having an activity for them to do to open up the topic. It might be time to offer something controversial. Maybe, the speaker might need to summarise what is left to say and just finish the presentation.

Professional speakers will always provide their audience with a feedback sheet. It is important to offer the audience a chance to critique the presentation. There will be committed people in the audience who will give honest feedback and suggestions for improvement. The evaluation sheet should allow them to do it. Importantly, the speaker, in reading the reviews, must not take anything negative personally but use it to improve the next presentation. It is also important to understand where the negativity is coming from and address the reasons for it.

After the event, it is important for the speaker to review the way they performed, what succeeded, what failed, what needs to be deleted and what needs to be added to the presentation. This evaluation should be done as soon as possible after the presentation.

Finally, taking into consideration their own evaluation and the helpful comments from the audience evaluations, the speaker should prepare an upgraded version of his/her speech for the next time it is presented. This must be done while “the iron is hot”.

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Website Designs – Past, Present and Future

The period when website designs had originated does not lie far behind in terms of age, but when we speak of advancement, today’s web designs have left its predecessors far back in terms of complexity, user friendly features and appearance. Today websites have become a major means of communication and marketing of almost all official and non-official organizations and general public.

The past
In 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal about some software and database for a more elaborate, convenient system of managing information which later became the World Wide Web. In 1991, he developed the first web page which contained information about W3. This web page had some hyperlinks which directed to another page with more elaborate information. The web pages were written using HTML markup language in plain text. That was the beginning after which the development procedure has never looked back.

World Wide Web Consortium was formed in 1994 which controls standards for programming and markup languages for websites. Earlier versions of HTML enabled only text formatting and later versions started adding up pictures and then introduced tables. From 1996, till 2000, the web layout devices, Scripting languages and Flash animations were introduced: these applications gradually changed the whole appearance of the websites.

The present
In past, the main purpose for website designs was simply a part of increasing business or mere sharing information. Older appearance and function of websites reflect more emphasis on providing company details which left hardly any scope for viewers to express opinion. Now the designers have realized that the only way of popularizing websites is to make them more interactive. Presently this is a basic aspect for designing websites.

The emergence of latest versions of Adobe Flash player and other advanced multimedia tools have changed the appearance of websites drastically. The Adobe Shockwave, CSS designs and now 3D designing tools are incorporating audio visual effects and advanced graphics to orient the contents in order to increase traffic in websites.

The future
The modern website designs are at the top of those technologies which are under rapid change leading to a future age of internet revolution. The recent trend of making websites more user friendly and interactive has become the driving force for developing tools and techniques to innovate improved features for similar purpose. Latest success stories of YouTube, LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter etc. are sharing the same experience. These websites are expanding everyday by accumulating and updating user delivered contents. The concept of social networking websites which feature options to participate and share views, live interaction among users are showing the path for future development of websites.

Hence viewer generated content will be the key of future software designs. They are expected to appear more user friendly, interactive which will ultimately increase traffic flow and improve trading of the company.

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