best practice when editing an e-mail before replying

Tips on how to delete an item permanently, useful websites and e-mail etiquette

Windows: to delete an item permanently (eg, file), use Shift + Delete (bypassing the Recycle Bin).
Outlook: when setting the date for the current month, just type in the date and Outlook will automatically do the rest. Eg, to make an appointment for August 20 just type 20 in the date section of the start time and Outlook will set it as Mon 20/08/2007 (or whatever is your preferred format).

Inbox stress

Ten simple steps to remaining calm and in control of your e-mail

Over the past few weeks there have been studies showing how stressed many people have become by the daily barrage of e-mails. Often, as my own study found, this stress is self-inflicted by a tendency towards e-mail addiction.
When our own Dr Thomas Stuttaford succumbed and threw his hand in the air, it prompted me to look again at how you can reduce e-mail stress. As he said in his artcle, How strangers cause us stress: “Stress is reduced when someone is master of their own fate” — something many feel is impossible with e-mail.
But is it? Here are ten ways to control your inbox. The key is to be utterly ruthless about what you send and receive, and prioritise how you spend your time at the inbox.

EMail Horror stories

E-mail can be a very efficient way of distributing information but mistakes can be embarrassing, if not disastrous

As Hallowe’en approaches here are the top five e-mail horror stories we have seen and the ways to avoid them happening to you.
Telling all your resellers and partners who they are competing against
An organisation sent out product information and put everyone’s names in the “Cc” box. The address list took up most of the e-mail but the company also revealed all their partners to each other.
The moral: create a group list or use “Bcc” for the names.
A client who preaches sustainability and efficiency and sent nine attachments amounting to 11MB
There were no instructions about what to do with them and much of the information was available on their website.
The moral: send a link rather than the entire file.

MS Word — Top Ten tips

Useful tips and tricks that will make working with Word documents quicker and easier. Here are the main features of Word that can be used to save time:

1 Inserting the file path name in the footer: go to View/Headers and Footers/Insert AutoText menu, clicking on the down arrow of that box.
2 Use AutoText to enter a frequently used phrase or insert an object, eg, a logo: Insert/AutoText, highlight the text/object, then select AutoText. Type the keyword that you will use for this to appear, and select the “Add”’ button (or type Alt+F3). To insert, go to Insert/AutoText and pick the word from the dropdown list, or choose AutoText and pick from the whole list.
3 Formula — to add to columns in a table. With the cursor in the bottom cell of the columns (or row), click on Table/Formula.

MS PowerPoint — Top Ten tips

Hot tips to ensure that your next visual presentation is slick, dynamic and has real impact

1. Slide design
Find the most appealing template — http://www.freeppttemplates.com
2. Slide Master
Format the whole presentation: View/Master/Slide Master or hold down the shift key as you hover over the mini-icons at the bottom left and click on the Normal view which becomes the slide master view.
3. WordArt
To jazz up the text boxes (eg, straplines).

5. Outline view
To produce a single slide that contains a summary of titles of the key slides, switch to the Slide sorter view (View/Slide sorter) and hold down the Ctrl key and select the key slides. From the Slide Sorter toolbar click Summary Slide.

How to write a CV

Make sure your CV makes a good first impression

YOU know that you're a star but without a knock-out CV no-one else will believe you. Here’s how to impress and write yourself into a better job.
1. The nuts and bolts. The edited highlights of your working life should be no more than two pages long, says Andy Sharman, the head of recruitment for UK and Ireland at Procter & Gamble. “Less than two (full) pages suggests that you don’t have enough experience,” he says. Acceptable cheats include easy-on-the-eye spacing and increasing the font size.
2. Avoid vague statements. “Quite often people start with a profile — a short statement setting out who they are — but we see an awful lot that fall into generic phrases,” says Lorna Froud, the head of careers at Oxford Brookes University. “ ‘I am an excellent team worker’ is meaningless without evidence to back it up.”
3. Be concise. “It’s not War and Peace,” says Steven Kirkpatrick, the managing director of Adecco Staffing. Recruiters who have to plough through hundreds of CVs don’t enjoy flowery prose. Use active verbs and bullet points to ensure that every sentence counts.

How to change career

Most of us gaze in wonder at those bold souls who leap from career to career, but it’s not as difficult as it appears

As the career changers we speak to have invariably found, your dream job can be very different to the one you start out in. Working lives are getting longer, so while being a kung fu instructor might not be your cup of tea, if you’re bored, unhappy or harbouring a secret ambition, read what the experts have to say.
1. Is it just a rut? Put things into perspective, says Catherine Roan, the managing director of Careershifters.org. The right job might be the one you’re in. “People come to a workshop and say, ‘Gosh, I’ve actually got a really good job’. It’s easy to get frustrated with politics or parts you don’t like.” You might need to address aspects of your work and not your whole career.

How to get a promotion

Knowing where you want to go and being flexible about getting there will serve you better than blind ambition

Earning a promotion is a complex affair. Matters such as pay and benefits begin to look easy compared with manoeuvrings your way up (or sideways) through the ranks. Look around you before you jump at a new opportunity – a new job title could be the least important of many considerations, according to our experts. 

1. Put yourself out.
There’s more to a job than a 12-line description, Simon Copeman, the acquisition and alliance manager at 3M UK and Ireland, says. “I’m looking [to promote] someone who does a pretty good job... but also someone who comes up with solutions. Someone who has taken the initiative within their current role [and] has managed new experiences outside the strict job description.” 

How to get a pay rise

If you’re working your socks off and still being paid peanuts it’s time to take the bull by the horns and get negotiating

Colleagues call you ace, you always look busy and the chief executive knows who you are thanks to some smart moves at the office Christmas party. But have you done enough to earn yourself a raise? Not on that evidence. Here’s what it really takes to make the perfect pitch and boost your pay packet:
1. The bottom line.
“You have to know why you think that you are worth that much – however much you’re asking for,” says Professor Binna Kandola, a senior partner at Pearn Kandola, a business psychology firm. Then ask yourself why you are worth that much to your boss. Addressing the issue from his or her perspective will allow you to formulate a more persuasive pitch.
2. Do your homework.
It’s important to understand what the salary norms are for the job role and industry that you are working in, says Jo Causon, director of marketing and corporate affairs at the Chartered Management Institute. This means comparing roles and activities, not job titles within the company, she says. “There’s no reason why you cannot ask your HR department ‘how is my role benchmarked?’ ”