Source: Workforce Management

Around one in five employers in a British survey cite gaps in technical skills and communications skills as reasons they aren’t employing new graduates in tech and communications jobs. Not Ready for Work: With all their exposure to new technologies, it would appear that young people entering the workforce from college would be uniquely equipped to step into good jobs in information technology and communications. This, however, is a myth, according to research compiled by the Sector Skills Council for IT & Telecom, a nonprofit organization in Great Britain.

Around one in five employers cite gaps in technical skills and communications skills as reasons they aren’t employing new graduates in these jobs, with nearly 40 percent of companies are dissatisfied with the “level of business, non-technical and interpersonal skills” of new recruits.

 Source: Donald Trump Blog 

Negotiating is an art. There are nuances and finely honed techniques and rules to be aware of. Here are a few of them: Know what you’re doing. Sounds simple, but I’ve seen a lot of instances where I couldn’t believe how much the other side didn’t know. I immediately knew I could have a grand slam and fast, just based on their apparent lack of preparation. My father used to tell me, “Know everything you can about what you’re doing.” He was absolutely right, and I’m giving you the same advice. Follow it.

Remember, it takes a lot of smarts to play dumb. This is a good way to see how much your negotiating partners don’t know. It’s also a good way to see if they are bulldozing you.

Keep them a bit off balance. What they don’t know won’t hurt you, and that may help you down the line. Knowledge is power, so keep as much of it to yourself as possible.

Trust your instincts. There are a lot of situations that will not be black and white in negotiating, so go with your gut. Combine this with your homework and you’ll be ahead of the game.

Don’t be confined by expectations. There are no exact rules, and sometimes I’ve changed course in the middle of negotiations when something new has occurred to me. Remain flexible and open to new ideas, even when you think you know exactly what you want. This attitude has provided me with opportunities that I would not have thought about before.

Know when to say no. This has become instinct for me by now, but I think we all know when that buzzer goes off inside. Pay attention to that signal.

Be patient. I’ve waited for some deals for decades, and it was worth the wait. But make sure what you’re waiting for is worth it to begin with. 

To speed up negotiations, be indifferent. That way you’ll find out if the other side is eager to proceed.

Remember that in the best negotiations, everyone wins. This is the ideal situation to strive for. You will also be laying the ground work for future business deals with people who know what integrity is.

In summing up, I can say that negotiation is an art. All the arts require discipline, technique, and a dose of imagination to take them beyond the realm of the ordinary. Don’t be an ordinary negotiator when you can be an extraordinary one. Devote time to this art and it can bring you enormous rewards.

Donald J. Trump is Chairman of Trump University.

If you’ve sat through any Sales or Finance presentations, a slew of charts and diagrams would have been thrown at your senses. Most of the time, the information contained therein lost to millions of numbers, bars and pies feeling your senses.

The problem is, charts and diagrams are meant to simplify information in a digestable and oftwn impactful manner - but sometimes we get side tracked and forget this. Sometimes, we get tempted to use the 3D options, never mind that it can’r all quite squeeze on the slide. 

So resist the temptation to add fancy extras like pictures and 3-D effects if they make the chart look busy. If a chart is too detailed or cluttered, customers won’t invest the effort required to figure it out.

Both Steve Jobs and Al Gore use charts to convey their message. In Al Gore’s compelling film An Inconvenient Truth, his use of charts were clean and simple and thus told a much more powerful story.

When using charts, follow these tips:-

• Pick the appropriate chart for the data
• Limit it to only one representation of information
• Don’t clutter the chart with other pictures or data
• Use soft colours for the axis, and strong colours for the data lines

Source: Associated Press

Most of us know the importance of manners when we’re on a date — whine about the food or show up late and you’ll spend the next Saturday night alone.

The same rules often apply to business, says Judith Bowman, author of Don’t Take the Last Donut: New Rules of Business Etiquette. Whether you’re discussing charts over scrambled eggs or selling your research between bites of salmon, follow a few rules.

Order food that is easy to eat. Nothing leaves a bad impression like gnawing on a rib bone or fumbling with a lobster claw.

If your food isn’t prepared to your taste, eat it anyway, or at least nibble, Bowman said.

Don’t order plain tap water if your company orders an alcoholic drink but you’d rather refrain. Try sparkling water or a beverage with a splash of juice.

Be prepared. As the host, some extra time allows you to select a table, instruct the wait staff about where to seat your guest, and other nuances than can make or break a meeting.

First-time managers often encounter problems in a range of their duties. often because in their previous role, they never had to do it. They were promoted based on their strengths, and now find themselves dealing with budgets, reports, employees and so on. So a team perspective, they have to go froma selfish to a selfless act of looking after their people, developing them and at the same time making them succeed.

In a recent article appearing Business Intelligence, it wrote this about new managers.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, your managers can cause you enormous problems–especially when it involves the law. To remind you of those perils, HR Specialist unveiled its list of the 12 most common mistakes made by managers that can result in litigation. To keep you on your toes, here are some to remember:

• Sloppy documentation. Managers should speak and write (even in e-mail) as if a jury will examine their comments some day.
 

• Not knowing their company’s policies and procedures. When managers admit ignorance in court, juries typically view that as purposeful, not forgetful.

• Giving inflated appraisals during performance reviews. If a manager later cites “poor performance” for an employee’s termination, overly positive appraisals can create a credibility gap.

• “Papering” an employee’s file. Courts will see through a rush of disciplinary actions cited in the days before a termination.
 

• Interview errors (e.g., questions about age, race, religion, political affiliation). Hiring managers should stay away from any question that doesn’t relate to gauging how well the person would perform the job.
 

• Being rude or mean-spirited. No matter how great your legal defense, you’ll face an uphill battle in court if your manager comes across as rude or insensitive.

Think for a moment, do you have an idea about what sort of image you are projecting?

Like it or not, when we perceive others based, we tend to do based on what we see and hear. Call it gut feeling or intuition, we all used these senses to form an impression of someone.

·         “I don’t know if I can trust this person” or

·         “I feel a lot safer in this person’s presence” or

·         “It seems as though we have know each other for a long time” or

·         “I just don’t feel comfortable when she is around” or

·         “This person is just too good to be true.”

The image you project to the outside world is not just about what you wear, your makeup and hairstyle. Image is all about a set of qualities and characteristics that represent perceptions of your competence and character as judged by people around you. 

Give some thoughts to the overall image you want to project. Work out what you need to do to communicate more effectively and what you want people to think about you.