Learning to Say No To Your Boss Without Losing Your Job
I suspect that most of us have been in the situation where a boss or an immediate supervisor asks you to take on another assignment. Given the state of the economy and the tenuous nature of most jobs, most employees believe that they have no choice but to accept the assignment despite the fact that it will likely cut into personal time or require overtime work. After all, saying no may be tantamount to a pink slip and collecting unemployment benefits.
In reality, employees who decline or say no to their superiors when asked about taking on additional work are not fired. That said, saying no may have a negative impact on future career trajectory. However, it is important to note that there are different ways of saying no and if saying no is articulated correctly, the effect on one’s career is likely to be negligible.
Not surprisingly, learning to say no the correct way takes some practice! And, in an article entitled “So, You’re The Worker Who Can’t Say No,” Eilene Zimmerman, author of the NY Times Career Couch feature, offers some sage advice on how to say no to a boss without jeopardizing your job.
If you are one of those employees who no longer has a life because you cannot say no the mounds of additional work your boss has piled on, I highly recommend that you read this article!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!
While many of you are happy just because you have a job, there are those individuals (deserving or not) who are going to “bite the bullet” and ask for a raise. This makes sense because over the past few years the cost of health insurance has gone up along with college tuition, gasoline price and a variety of other things while salaries have all but stagnated. Interestingly, only 9 percent of companies have put pay freezes in place over the past 18 months; a rate this is consistent with historical standards. That is down from the nearly two-thirds of companies that imposed pay freezes in January 2010. In other words, now may be a good time to ask for a raise as companies are trying to retain high value employees who presumably were too vital to lay off when companies were downsizing over the past three years. Sadly, merit raises (when they are meted out) have precipitously dropped in recent years from an average of roughly 4-5 percent to a paltry 2 percent on average today.(1).jpg)
TotalJobs
Most aspiring young scientists tell me that they love doing bench work and that they want to do it for their entire career. I am never certain whether they actually feel that way or they are simply telling me what they think I want to hear. Nevertheless, I want to share my own feelings about bench work because I think it may be instructive for jobseekers who may not be entirely certain about their chosen career paths..jpg)
I know it may appear a little odd that I am writing a post about leaving your current job given the state of the US economy and the dismal job market. However, believe it or not, there are folks out there whose skills are in demand who may have grown weary of their current job situations. With this in mind, those of you who may be considering a job change ought to ask a few questions before taking leap. 
Some of you may have noticed that I have not been uploading new posts as frequently as I have in the past. I have been blogging @BioJobBlog for the past five years and quite frankly I need a little break. Traffic at the site is typically lower during the summer months so I decided to ratchet back a bit and think about the future direction of the blog. That said, I will be writing new posts from time to time but will not be back to full time blogging until after Labor Day.
Workplace diversity, whether gender or racial, is critical to the success of any scientific or business venture. Yet, while the number of women entering graduate school in the sciences is now greater than the number of entering male students, tenured male scientists continue to outnumber female scientists at almost every US academic institution. The same is true at most science, technology and engineering companies where the number of male executives and managers far exceeds the number of female ones. Unfortunately, gender inequality in the sciences still exits despite years of concerted efforts to rectify and correct the problem.
Last week, financial analysts and social media enthusiast were all a twitter (sorry I couldn’t resist) about 
From time to time, I get asked by jobseekers about questions that interviewers are permitted to ask during a job interview. While almost everything is fair game, there are certain questions that interviewers are not legally permitted to ask. A post that recently appeared on the “Interns Over 40 blog” pretty much covers them all. .jpg)
"Instead of crying and blaming China for producing goods at a lower cost for the whole world, countries like the US, for example, should realize that outsourcing most of the production is a big mistake"
For the past few years, I have been 
Yahoo jobs pointed me in the direction of an .png)
A positive workplace environment can make or break a company. Companies with low employee morale often suffer from cultures of blame—pointing a finger at a team member (other than you) when things go awry —and not giving credit to deserving employees when credit may be due. 
While I typically don’t subscribe to practice of unbridled self promotion, I could not pass on the opportunity to let my readers know that BioJobBlog made the "Top 50 Blogs About Careers in Science.".jpg)
Times are still tough and unemployment remains high. This means that finding a job is a lot harder and will take a lot longer than in previous times. Because of layoffs and reorganizations many jobseekers may have gaps in their resumes or difficult to explain periods of unemployment. Further, it you have a physical disability, health issues, a criminal record or you are older, finding a job becomes even more challenging. 
There is no question that Facebook is the de facto social network that almost everyone uses. It has become an important source of personal information and is routinely used by professional recruiters and corporate hiring managers to identify right-fit job candidates.
“Unpleasant personality traits are almost required of young entrepreneurs trying to build something lasting. It requires tremendous arrogance to believe that their idea is better than anyone else’s. They need to be immensely selfish, putting their fragile creation ahead of everything else including important relationships. And, they have to be ruthless, tossing overboard friends who were once useful and no longer are.”.jpg)
“My style was fire-and-brimstone but I realized that people respond more favorably to positive motivation.”
It is well established that many scientist are not particularly adept at social interactions and are notoriously poor at networking. Contrary to popular belief these deficiencies are not genetic and likely result from the erroneous notion that scientists don’t need career network to advance their work or careers.
We are now three years into one of the worst economic downturns in the history of the US. While the job market will eventually recover, don’t expect things to be the “way they were” before the recession. In other words, the job market has undergone a paradigm shift and new job seeking rules have replaced the old ones.
There is no question that interviewing is an art and that experienced job candidates may have a leg up on more junior candidates seekers when it comes to face-to-face (F2F) job interviews. That said, there is a commonly held belief among job seekers that hiring managers frequently ask silly, “bonehead” and irrelevant questions during F2F interviews. Examples of these frequently asked questions include “What are your strengths and weaknesses” and “Tell me how you overcame adversity or a difficult situation at work.” 
In this week’s New York Times “Corner Office”, Aaron Levie, the 25 year old CEO of Box.net a Silicon Valley online file storage company had provided these valuable insights and tips about interviewing and hiring new employees. .jpg)
Looking back on my career, I don’t think I would have done many things differently; except one. That is, I wouldn’t have listened as much to the advice of others who I thought knew (better than me) about what I should do with the rest of my life. Don’t get wrong, it is important to listen to what others think and the advice that they offer but—at the end of the day —the career path that you choose must be something that you like or perhaps even love to do! This sentiment was clearly and cleverly expressed in a 
After almost a week advising students about the difference between resumes and curriculum vita (for scientists there is no difference), academic vs. an industrial curricula vitae and cover letters at 
Whenever I do resume critiquing at scientific meetings, someone always asks about how to negotiate a job offer. Most of the people that ask the question aren't even close to receiving a job offer and I do my best to deflect the question. However, at a recent meeting, I spent 30 minutes with a PhD student who had received an offer advising him on how to get a better deal from his prospective new employer. This got me thinking and I invited Joe Tringali, a veteran recruiter with lots of negotiating experience to write a blog post about strategies and things to consider when negotiating a job offer..jpg)
ring people advice and tips on how to hold on to their current jobs. In my opinion, most of these posts didn’t offer any new or insight tips on this topics. Instead most of the suggestions were obvious and rather pedestrian. For example, be pleasant to your boss, show up on time, don’t leave before the official work day ends, volunteer to take on new projects yada, yada, yada.
