Read our posts about work

12Feb

11 Things to Know About Starting a New Job

The Chartered

career, unemployment, university

Work

Starting a new job is an exciting but testing time when you will face many new challenges. While you may be justifiably proud of yourself for having completed the application process successfully and secured the position you wanted, this is not a time to rest on your laurels. Thinking about how you will approach the first few days and weeks in your new job and planning ahead for any potential issues you will face will help you to: reduce your stress levels become productive more quickly be accepted by new colleagues more quickly prepare for the cultural...
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06Feb

Doctors Dissected: What are Doctors really Thinking?

Camilla Nicholls

books

Work

As I sat down to write about the relationship I have with ‘my GP’ I realised I couldn’t. Last summer I had cause to visit a general practitioner several times, I am asthmatic and although my condition is manageable day-to-day sometimes I need additional care. I saw three different doctors in the space of six weeks. One was a locum covering for holidays the other two were regulars at the surgery.  All were professional, helpful, concerned. But they, like their approaches, were all different and that was just over one short season. Even if we live in the...
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05Feb

How to Embrace Mindfulness at Work

Louise Chunn

mindfulness

Work

Is it possible to synchronise the world of work – all cut-throat competition, profit margins, productivity and cold, hard cash – and the higher principles of mindfulness? You might imagine that combining the two might make for an almighty clash. In fact, mindfulness is one of the hottest ideas in business right now. At the recent World Economic Forum a panel featuring Jon Kabat-Zinn (who virtually invented the modern idea of mindfulness), Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post  and a board member of Goldman Sachs was a sell-out. Not only did it...
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31Jan

9 Ways To Be a Business Romantic

Tim Leberecht

career

Work

Tim Leberecht is author of The Business Romantic: Fall Back In Love with your Work and your Life. The book promotes devotion over data, aiming to reveal that business can transcend mere rationality and self-interest. The following are a condensed version of his Business Romantic action items: 1) Come out as a Business Romantic If you feel that the workplace or a brand does not accommodate your full range of spiritual, emotional and intellectual needs, it is time to come out as a Business Romantic. It is imperative that you don't just "confess". You can...
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26Jan

4 Things I Wish I'd Known When I Started Working

Fergus O'Connell

career, stress

Work

In the UK, work-related stress is deemed the biggest cause of sickness in the country, with over 105 million days lost to stress each year. Thankfully, there are some things you can do to alleviate this stress or even to not get caught up in it in the first place. Projects, presentations, meetings and sales are all common reasons people are feeling stressed at work. But the one which I’d like to address here is bosses. A strained relationship with an employer can be one of the biggest causes of stress at work, so here are four things to bear in mind if you are...
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26Nov

How To Succeed in a Job Interview

Michael Parker

career, university

Work

One way to succeed in a job interview is to treat it like a pitch. Michael Parker, author of It's Not What You Say, It's The Way You Say It!: How to sell yourself when it really matters (Vermilion) shares some tips to help you succeed: The principles are the same for the interview and the pitch in that both call for you to perform under pressure. Your stage may be a platform, or a seat across a table, but the impact of your words on your audience comes mainly from your tone of voice and body language. The common error when faced with the spotlight is that we tend...
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10Nov

Coping with Depression at University

John Servante

depression, student, university

Work

“I can’t be the only thing that makes you happy anymore”. Those were the last words my ex-girlfriend said to me just three weeks in to starting my degree at university. What was she talking about? I wasn’t unhappy. What an odd thing to say. She made it sound like I was hiding from something. I wasn’t hiding from anything… was I? At university, I was formally diagnosed with mental health conditions. You see since about the age of 12, I had battled with depression and anxiety. But I didn’t admit I had any problems: when I was a teenager, I couldn’t handle going...
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29Oct

Finding your University Identity

Terri Apter

identity, self, university

Work

In Beck Varley-Winter’s excellent piece Surviving University, I was struck by what she says about  Freshers Week: “Freshers Week suits extroverts. If you are not one, you will find socialising in massive groups can be stressful”. Many of the students I address each October would find resonance in Becky’s words.  Indeed, some would find the term “stressful” far too moderate a word to describe their experiences of a new environment, glamoured by history, by hope and by parental pride. As young people leave their families, they face a transition period in which...
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17Sep

How to Get Out of a Career Rut and Start Living

Marina Gask

career, psychology, wellbeing

Work

Do you dread going into work in the morning? An incredible half of us in the UK believe our choice of career was a mistake.Given the fact that half of Britons spend their days doing something they describe as "meaningless” and “too stressful”, there's a heck of a lot of misery out there. All too often the dreams we harbour of running a tea shop, changing careers or writing novels, fall by the wayside because the bills won’t pay themselves. What's more, re-training is hard, changing track is risky and sometimes it feels like we’re better with the devil we know. However,...
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10Jul

Don't Judge Me For Not Getting Drunk With Work Mates

Claudine Levy

career, friendship, self, society, university

Work

I realised that binge drinking wasn’t for me during my Fresher’s Week at university. This is the infamous time in every young adult’s life which consists of masochistically getting bladdered repeatedly, in the hope of forming some lasting bonds of friendship with a group of petrified fellow students. All so that we could LOL about our collective hangovers and embarrassing hook-ups of the morning after the night before. Of course the natural antidote to our terror about being alone was to glug as much poison as humanly possible. Away from home, and far from the...
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