“Tell me a little about yourself.”

That’s a common line in any job interview. It’s something you should know is coming and something for which you should prepare. You should have some idea as to how you are going to answer such a question, so you’re not left stammering or giving a rambling, hard-to-follow answer.

If you are not sure how to answer the question, here are a few tips on how to approach it.
When the interviewer asks a question like this, he or she is trying to determine how good a fit you will be with the company. The hiring manager is trying to get a sense of your personality and attitude. If, for example, you come across as a sober and straitlaced type, and the company or department has a more informal, relaxed atmosphere, that might raise some reservations in the hiring manager’s mind as to whether the company/department is the right place for you.

The irony of the situation is that a hiring manager doesn’t really want to know a lot about you personally.  You can save the biographical information for another time.

What an interviewer is most interested in hearing about is what you’ve achieved in career or job history. And now is a good time to expand on what you have on your résumé, to go beyond the bullet points and talk about what you have done, the contributions you have made, and to do it in a bit more depth. The interviewer wants to know what kind of job you are going to do in his or her company/department and telling him or her what you’ve done in the past will give the hiring manager an idea of how you’ll be able to contribute in the future.

You can also add a little information here about your attitude and personality, how you see yourself, what personality traits define you.

And, while many job applicants are under the mistaken impression that they need to be as brief as possible in their answers, you do need to watch so that you don’t wander off topic. Before you answer, take a little time to collect your thoughts and come up with a general plan as to what you are going to say. And again, it’s perfectly acceptable to talk for a few minutes about your background and experience, but watch that you don’t take any detours from your main point.

Got the job interview jitters? We’ll help calm you and give you some great tips when we send you for an interview with one of our client companies. Call RealStreet Staffing today so that we can help you find temporary and direct-hire positions with some of Washington DC’s top architecture, construction and engineering firms. We look forward to hearing from you!

Looking for a job is an arduous and time-consuming process. It takes a lot of effort. But when that effort begins to pay off, remember the work is not done until you have a definite job offer in hand. That means don’t slack off too soon – follow through with all the details.

You may think your work is done after going through the interview process, but following through after the interview is just as important to increase the odds of your getting the job.

The follow through process actually begins during the interview. Get the business cards of the people you talk to so that you have accurate contact information for your follow up note. Also, during the interview, ask when you can expect to hear from the company about its job search. This puts the ball in the hiring manager’s court, creating the expectation that there will be a response, and creating the opportunity for further communication.

Then follow through with a thank you note as soon as you can, using the contact information you have from the business cards. Today, an e-mail message usually is the most appropriate form to use. In the note, you can re-emphasize any points you feel need to be highlighted, and also add any information you  forgot to mention during the interview.

If you have been working through a staffing agency, get in touch with the recruiter to discuss the interview and how it went and to figure what to do next. The interviewer at the company will expect the recruiter to get in touch, and so if you have met and talked with the recruiter, he or she will be in a good position to sell you to the interviewer and provide any additional information.

One thing to avoid, however, is a follow up phone call, as this may appear to be an unnecessary intrusion into the busy schedule of the interviewer. But, if the interviewer told you that you would be contacted by a certain time, and that has not happened, then a call may be appropriate.

And finally, if you need help punching up your résumé and marketing your skills, many staffing agencies offer career services to help you.

RealStreet Staffing, in fact, will be happy to help you craft a great résumé. Contact us today so that we can get to work on creating a document that sells your skills and experience to employers in the Washington Metro area. We look forward to hearing from you!

For many of those who are looking at staffing services to find work, an important consideration is the kind of benefits they offer. Many staffing firms offer a variety of benefits, including health insurance, as a way to recruit and keep workers.

One international staffing service, for example, offers up to five different healthcare plans for its workers. The company also offers dental and vision insurance, along with short-term disability insurance. Other types of insurance include life insurance and accidental death insurance.

This firm also offers a retirement program — a 401(k) through Wells Fargo. And the company also has a tuition reimbursement program for workers who want to return to school. In addition to these benefits, the staffing service recently began offering legal insurance. If one of the firm’s temporary employees is buying a house or wants to draw up a will, the employee can pay a premium for help from a lawyer.

RealStreet Staffing is not an international service and therefore can’t offer the scope of benefits as mentioned above. We do offer our temporary associates a variety of benefits, including:

For Salaried Employees

• 11 Paid Holiday
• 15 Days Paid Time Off
• 401(k) with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 7 percent
• Health Insurance Coverage – choice of three plans, two of which are company-paid for our employee.
• Vision Coverage
• Prescription Coverage
• Dental Plan
• Life Insurance
• LTD

For Hourly Employees

• 401(k) with dollar-for-dollar matching up to 7 percent
• Health Insurance Coverage – choice of three plans, two of which are company-paid for our employee.
• Vision Coverage
• Prescription Coverage
• Dental Plan
• Life Insurance
• LTD

We offer these benefits as a way to allow our workers to maintain their careers as well as to provide protection for their families. For more information on the Washington Metro-area jobs we offer, as well as our benefits, contact a recruiter at RealStreet Staffing today.

In today’s super competitive business arena, even those who are considered giants of their industry are no longer considered to be in a safe position – and sometimes are even the first to be relieved of duty.

For many senior executives, the time when they will be eased out the door is approaching – and often it will arrive sooner than they would like.  This is really no big surprise.  For many of these people, their job is intimately connected to who they are.  It is tied up with their sense of self-worth and their identity. They will miss the power and prestige and influence they have now.

John Baldoni, a leadership development consultant, argues that those who are beginning their tenure as leaders need to keep this in mind.  Their legacy is formed by the accretion of all their actions over the span of their career.  It’s not something created just during the final episode, the last year or several years in the CEO’s office or executive suite.

But when the time comes to step down, leaders often are at a loss.  They don’t know what to do.  Their job has been their whole life.  Often their personal lives, as well as avocations or hobbies, have been sacrificed to their career, so  when the career ends, they’re left with a gaping void.  So what Baldoni advises is that leaders — and leaders of the future — take the time now to develop their lives outside of work. Don’t wait for that first day of retirement and think that suddenly you can reorient everything.

Baldoni suggests several ways to do this.  One way is to cultivate friendships.  Also, do what you can when you can with your family.  You may not always be able to be there, but when you have the opportunity, you should always take advantage of it.

Another way to build up your life outside the job is to find something you love to do – other than work.  And whatever it may be, make time to do it.

A third way is to contribute to your community through volunteerism.  This is an excellent way to enrich your life and make it much more satisfying.

Make the time to do these things now, Baldoni says – don’t wait until it is too late, and you find yourself retired with no interests outside of your job.

If you’re looking to work your way up the management ladder at companies in the Washington Metro area, contact RealStreet Staffing. Let us help you work your way up in management. We look forward to hearing from you.

We have lots of ways of measuring our physical well being that help us determine when our bodies are healthy and when we are pushing them too much.  But what we don’t have is a good measure of our mental well being, and it’s something we need because we’re pushing ourselves like never before.  We are doing more things, with more speed, being deluged with information, and scattering our attention as never before in history of humankind.

We really have no reliable information on good mental habits.  Business treats workers as if their mental effort were inexhaustible, an automatically replenishing resource. Yet in many organizations, the sense of being overwhelmed is one of the biggest problems workers face.  And if people don’t have reliable information about the mind and the brain and under what conditions they operate best, workers may not be aware how that is affecting their performance and their living.

Two physicians, David Rock and Daniel Siegel, have developed seven activities for mental well being.  By doing these activities every day, you will help improve your mental well being.

The first activity is focusing on a task.  When we do this in a goal-oriented way we make strong connections in the brain.  Another activity is simply taking the time to play, to do something spur of the moment or something creative, which helps make new neural connections in the brain.  Taking time to interact with other people also is important for building connections in the brain. Another way to strengthen the brain is through physical activity, as is simple reflection, turning inward to think about our thoughts and feelings.   We need to take time to relax, to just let our mind wander occasionally to help it recharge.  And we need to get enough sleep, which is crucial to mental health and the best functioning of our brain.

The physicians aren’t recommending that businesses drop everything and radically change in order to allow employees the time to incorporate each activity.  But they are saying that people should be more aware of these activities that help lead to good mental health and should make an effort to engage in some of them as often as possible.

When you’re looking for a position in the engineering, architectural or construction fields, contact a recruiter at RealStreet Staffing, your Washington Metro staffing firm. We look forward to hearing from you.

If you were upset at hearing about air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job, you shouldn’t be, according to Tony Schwartz, a business consultant.  The problem here is basically biological.  We have evolved to be awake during the day and to sleep at night.  The later it gets, the more tired we become.  Some of the worst accidents in history occurred at night – Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez running aground.

The government did a study about the effects of napping on the night shift and found that the more time the air traffic controllers had to sleep, the more alert they were.  Other studies of airline pilots showed the same thing.

What all of this points to is the fact that our society does not value rest and recuperation as much as it should.  And this hurts us all.  When we have a lot to do, rest and sleep usually are the first things to go, even if by cutting out sleep we do a poor job.  Businesses tend to judge their employees purely by the number of hours they put in, rather than the value they create.

But rather than get to work early and stay late, it would be better to get to work at little later and leave a little earlier, and take a few more breaks at work.  The fact is, if you do this, you will be more alert and do a better job.  And you will be more productive, because you will get more things done in a smaller amount of time.

You can see for yourself if resting more really does work, according to Schwartz.  For the next few weeks, try getting about 20 to 30 minutes of sleep between 1 and 3 p.m. You shouldn’t sleep for more than 30 minutes, or you will wake up groggy.  Then, at the end of the day, see how productive you were during the time after the nap.  You will be surprised at how much of a difference it makes.  If for some reason you don’t have the opportunity to sleep for a short time, find some other way to get some rest during the work day.  The best time schedule for this is to do it every 90 minutes.

The bottom line, according to Schwartz, is that there is nothing more important to improving your productivity and effectiveness at work than making sure you get enough rest.

RealStreet Staffing helps Washington Metro-area businesses in the construction, engineering and architecture sectors find productive and effective professionals. If you’re a Washington Metro engineering, construction or architecture firm looking for help in sourcing terrific professionals, contact us today!

One of the most vexing things for otherwise talented and ambitious business professionals is when they fail to reach their full capabilities, when they are less productive than they could be.

Often this is because they are reluctant to take on new challenges and new ventures, preoccupied with the worry that their performance in this new area will not measure up to the way they have performed in the past.

Because of their ability, they may not have struggled all that much to acquire the expertise they have, and they are unwilling to risk the reputation they have gained in attempting something new where they feel they  might embarrass themselves.  Even when they do encounter problems, these high-achievers are usually reluctant to ask for help, again out of concern for the way they feel it would reflect on them.

If you are one of these people, there are ways to manage yourself out of these mindsets and into excellence.  You need to do a self-examination and try to identify the things that are preventing you from taking on new challenges, the things that raise your anxiety level.

Also, you cannot let the past interfere.  Often we make comparisons between something we did in the past and something we are doing now, and we tend to assume, if the past event didn’t turn out well, that something similar might happen again, although there usually is no basis for such a belief.

When this happens, it is useful to ask yourself some questions about your assumptions.  In the past negative experience, why did you take on the challenge?  Why do you think you had difficulty with it?  Did you ask for assistance?  Does your viewpoint about what happened match the view of others?  In hindsight, what would you have done differently?  When you are able to see more clearly how the past event differs from the current challenge, it will be easier to tackle the new challenge.

Another thing to do is develop and use a support network.  Those who are outstanding performers generally don’t believe they need any help.  Or, again, they may be afraid to ask for help out of concern for how it may affect their reputation.  But in doing this, you are simply holding yourself back, depriving yourself of valuable advice that may help you.

Also, it is important to look at the big picture, to think long-range.  This helps you put things in perspective.  When you look at the big picture, small mistakes don’t seem so catastrophic.  And so you are more willing to take more risks.

Have you been putting off looking into new opportunities because you’ve heard “it’s tough out there?” If so, let RealStreet Staffing help you find a great position in the architecture, construction or engineering sectors in the Washington Metro area. Contact a recruiter today!

Recent business research has focused not on problem solving skills but on problem finding skills.  Having problem finding skills means finding problems before they become major hindrances to a business.

How does one become a problem finder?  It’s about more than just a set of skills, but a whole different outlook, one that takes curiosity as its starting point, a willingness to ask questions and to learn more both about what you do know and what you don’t know.

Problem finding requires an active mind, one that is never satisfied with conventional answers, one that is always looking at things in a new way.  It is a mind that is always willing to question, no matter what level of expertise a person has attained.  And it is a mind that never just defers to authority.  These are tendencies that go against the psychological grain in many ways.  Research has shown that people are unwilling to part with their existing beliefs.  But in order to have a problem-finding mentality, you must be willing to do just that — to look at things in a new way and always question your beliefs and assumptions.

A problem finder is always looking to learn new things in order to get a new perspective on what he or she already knows.  Problem finders are never satisfied with the status quo, but are always looking for new ideas and experiences.  It is this learning new things that keeps the mind sharp, able to see problems develop.  Indeed, research has shown that when the mind encounters new images it becomes more stimulated than by familiar ones.

Problem finders also look at the big picture.  They recognize that any problem is never an isolated event but often part of a larger, systemic condition that gave rise to it.  They look at the more basic organizational situation that may have led to the conditions that allowed such a problem to occur.  Problem finders dig beneath the surface and look at hidden connections and deeper meanings.

And problem finders also have a healthy sense of paranoia.  They realize that in any organization problems exist, and that this is not a problem in itself.  They know that these problems are not always readily apparent, but are there nonetheless.  So, they know they are fallible as well, and know they need to watch themselves and their organizations, to stay alert, and to understand that finding problems is an ongoing activity.

RealStreet Staffing is committed to helping you in your job search within the construction, engineering or architecture sectors in the Washington Metro area. Contact us today!

Keeping a diary is ordinarily not something we associate with a work strategy, but recording daily thoughts and events can actually help in providing focus to what we are doing, in giving us more patience, in providing ideas to help with planning, and in helping with personal growth.

At first, keeping a diary may seem a little awkward, and you may feel that you could be making better use of your time.  But recording thoughts on a daily basis can have valuable results.

By using a diary about work, you can gain a focus to help determine your strengths and to identify the things you do that give you the most satisfaction.  You may learn where you can be the most effective and successful in your workplace.  By sitting down to write each day and writing out your thoughts, you learn patience.

Your journal will become a record of your progress, and an aid in helping you to pinpoint where you might have made errors.  It will help you gain perspective on your career – looking back over time, it may show that what appeared to be huge obstacles were actually only minor disturbances.  It may even become habit forming.

Psychological research has also shown the value of writing about daily experiences.  Writing about traumatic or stressful events helps a person develop a stronger defense system to adversity and actually helps improve overall health and sense of well-being.  It may even lead to some unexpected discoveries.

One of the most important benefits to be gained from keeping a diary is personal development.  Keeping a daily diary will help you to gain a new perspective on yourself and your job and what you need to do to make yourself better.  One person who kept a diary noticed that in reading over his entries, he had a rather pessimistic attitude toward his days’ activities.  He now tries to approach new activities with a more optimistic frame of mind.  Another person said that keeping a diary helped him learn more about how to motivate and get along with the members of his team at work.

If you’re an experienced professional in the architecture, engineering or construction sectors in the Washington, DC area, bring your resume to RealStreet Staffing. We can place you in temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire assignments with some of the DC area’s top employers. We look forward to hearing from you.

In the world of classical music, orchestra musicians are notoriously unhappy – with a job satisfaction lower than that of a prison guard.  While at the same time, the people at the top of the job satisfaction ladder are chamber orchestra musicians.

It is this dichotomy that has important lessons for everyone on how to lead and learn in business and in life, according to Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.  For him, the difference in outlook between the two comes down to leadership.

In the large orchestra, the management is top down.  It is for the most part a very autocratic arrangement, with the conductor having all of the power.  In the chamber orchestra, however, each player is pretty much autonomous, and the players cooperate to perform.

Taking his cue from the chamber orchestra, Zander sees his job as a conductor to help the musicians he is conducting achieve their best performance.  They need to look at possibilities, not limitations.  The same is true for businesses, which are taking note of Zander’s approach.

To look at things in terms of possibilities, we must realize that all of our actions are the result of a choice.  We can do things as we have always done them, or we can make the choice to question the assumptions we have always had.  Zander uses a piece of music as an example.  We can play the music as it has always been played, or, by questioning our assumptions about it, and reinterpreting it, we can change it into something altogether new.

As part of his leadership style, Zander now focuses on what he can offer to society, not just what he can accomplish for himself.  Looking at things this way takes the image of success and failure out of the picture.

When it comes to managing and solving problems, we all have choices, Zander says.  We can take on a problem with a range of different attitudes – fear, anger, boredom.  But we also can see the possibility inherent in each situation.  And looking at the possibilities in each problem will lead us to take a hard look at our assumptions because it is these assumptions which are often obstacles to making real innovation.  In every organization, we all need to look at the assumptions we make and make those assumptions explicit so that we can examine them and adjust as needed.

If you’re looking for a great new position in the engineering, architecture or construction sectors in the Washington, DC area, conduct yourself on over to RealStreet Staffing. We’re waiting to hear from you!