Is creativity something people are just born with? For many of us, creative thinking isn’t purely intuitive—it’s also plain hard work. As writer Iris Shoor explains, coming up with fresh ideas isn’t always a natural gift—it’s a skill that can be learned.

A few days ago I was telling someone about my startup company. “How did you come up with the idea?” he asked, and added very nicely, “you must be very creative.” This line always makes me smile, as I believe being creative is not a natural gift. Every day I try not to think outside the box, but rather work hard on trying to live outside of it. I believe that creativity can be taught, and I know for a fact that I’ve become more creative over time. It’s not about finding the ‘one’ idea, but rather about using creativity to achieve everyday personal and professional goals. I use creative thinking to sell my product and ideas to people, design better, and even to overcome personal obstacles, going outside my comfort zone.

Here are some methodologies I use to come up with fresh ideas.

Read the rest on lifehacker.com!

There’s no doubt resumes can be boring—the standard black-text-on-white-paper format is nothing new to most employers or job seekers. Many professionals want to stand out from the crowd of job applicants, but they feel forced into the standard resume templates that don’t adequately display their personalities or eye for creativity.

Your resume is a powerful tool for marketing and branding yourself, and there’s no reason you need to stick to a bland template if you don’t feel it’s an effective representation of who you are as a professional. But crafting a compelling creative resume is a fine line to walk—you don’t want to come across as desperate or overdo it. Keep these three tips in mind when utilizing a creative resume for your job search:

1. Ensure It Stays Relevant.

If you’re not applying for jobs in design or other creative fields, try to avoid going too over-the-top. Remember, employers are mainly interested in your skills and experience, so remember to keep it readable and focused on what makes you employable. Though you don’t have to rule out colors altogether, colored text is often a bad idea, as it can be difficult to read. Your creative resume should be tasteful and clean, not distracting.

Read the rest on glassdoor.com!

An expert shares the mindfulness techniques that can help employees thrive.

Can you be a success in the world of business and still be mindful? What exactly does it mean to be “mindful” anyway? According to Mirabai Bush, one of the creators of a mindfulness course developed for Google employees called “Search Inside Yourself,” you will be more productive and motivated if you use respect, compassion and generosity in the workplace.

“Mindfulness has to do with paying attention to what’s happening in the moment without judgment,” said Bush. “Sometimes people think being mindful means being slow — it’s not about being slow, it’s about being slow enough that you can pay attention to things. It requires a certain intelligence to be able to focus on many things at the same time.”

Bush, who is the co-founder of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, has helped several companies benefit from mindfulness techniques, but admits it can be challenging to try to convince those in the business world to embrace things like meditation and compassion.

Read the rest on chicagotribune.com!

The ability to motivate employees is one of the greatest skills an entrepreneur can possess. Two years ago, I realized I didn’t have this skill. So I hired a CEO who did.

Josh had 12 years in the corporate world, which included running a major department at Comcast. I knew he was seasoned, but I was still skeptical at first. We were going through some tough growing pains, and I thought that a lack of cash would make it extremely difficult to improve the company morale.

I was wrong.

With his help and the help of the great team leaders he put in place, Josh not only rebuilt the culture, but also created a passionate, hard-working team that is as committed to growing and improving the company as I am.

Read the rest on inc.com!

A recent study published in an American Psychological Association journal, Emotion, suggests that early birds are generally happier than night owls.

More than 700 respondents, ranging from ages 17 to 79, were surveyed and asked about their emotional state, health, and preferred time of day.

Self-professed “morning people” reported feeling happier and healthier than night owls. Researchers hypothesize that one of the reasons could be because society caters to a morning person’s schedule.

Happy Friday! Interested in the world of data visualization and infographics? Then check out this great infographic created by a team of designers and researchers about Amazon’s size and growth!

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Say what you will about London’s Olympic logo–and many people have said, and are still saying, many, many things–it is nothing if not memorable. International branding consultancy Wolff Olins was no stranger to Olympic identities, having created the mark for the 2004 games in Athens. In 2006, the firm won the London logo and branding bid with their power-to-the-people style pitch, which focused on social and cultural aspects of the games and beyond in an attempt to broaden the event’s reach and appeal. When the famously staccato symbol was unveiled almost six years ago, however, the response was resoundingly critical.

Why was the world, design and otherwise, so worked up? Chairman Brian Boylan and Ije Nwokorie, managing director at Wolff Olins London, talked with Co.Design about embracing the inherent dissonance of the host city, and the strategy behind their effort.

Read the rest on fastcodesign.com!

It’s a slow news day, so seeing this is a huge thrill…

A financial industry tipster was kind enough to oblige by sending us this e-mail from an aspiring trader.

If you read from the bottom up, you’ll note that Carl asks prospective trader Matthew why he wants to be a trader — could he add a little color about what he’s passionate about, he asks.

Matthew obliges, and we’re pretty sure “please explain your rationale for the rainbow” is an instant classic.

See below (remember, read from the bottom):

1. You can learn something useful from anyone.

Whenever we find ourselves ignoring someone because we’ve already determined that they aren’t “smart” enough to say something meaningful, we’ve made a big mistake. Besides being presumptuous and arrogant, this mindset blocks out every useful thing the other person might pass along. Instead of just listening and mining the conversation for nuggets of wisdom, we allow our pre-existing bias to brand everything as “not smart enough for me.” Incredibly bad idea. I’ve yet to meet someone who couldn’t teach me something.

2. If quality slips, it really doesn’t matter how good your ideas were.

This one I learned from a couple of my uncles who worked as quality control specialists on assembly lines. The most ingenious design plans, no matter how many brains contributed to them, can fatally falter in the execution phase if quality slips. This is equally true for intangible plans. Imparting greatness requires a continuum of effort and attention, not just an initial brain-fueled flurry to get exemplary ideas on paper.

Read the rest on forbes.com!

People often wonder why they never hear anything back after they hit ‘send’ on the email with a resume attached or on the on-line job application. If you’re very lucky, you might have a preliminary email exchange with a recruiter and then never hear from them again.

It’s a depressing experience, and one which also casts a shadow on the hiring company’s reputation. So why does it happen? Is it you, is it them, or is it just something every candidate must prepare for in the hiring process?

There’s no question job seekers face an uphill climb. High unemployment nationally means more competition for every position; according to a January 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks “… attracted 7.6 million job applicants over the past 12 months for about 65,000 corporate and retail job openings…”

Read more on glassdoor.com!

Interviewing job candidates is tough, especially because some candidates are a lot better at interviewing than they are at working.

To get the core info you need about the candidates you interview, here’s a simple but incredibly effective interview technique I learned from John Younger, the CEO of Accolo, a cloud recruiting solutions provider. (If you think you’ve conducted a lot of interviews, think again: Younger has interviewed thousands of people.)

Here’s how it works. Just start from the beginning of the candidate’s work history and work your way through each subsequent job. Move quickly, and don’t ask for detail. And don’t ask follow-up questions, at least not yet.

Read the rest on inc.com!

Like so many other job-hunters, writer Eric K. Auld used Craigslist as a resource. Curious to know what he was up against and to gain a better understanding of the employment landscape, Eric posted a false job listing. In a day, he’d received more than 650 responses.

I am a 26-year-old with a Master’s degree in English. I am currently looking for a full-time job, preferably in a major city, since that’s where a vast multitude of jobs exist. Unfortunately, so do an even vaster multitude of job-seekers.

Why would I ever want a full-time job, you may ask? Because I am currently an Adjunct Lecturer in English, which means part-time employment, which means a limited amount of classes per semester, which means no steady work during summer or winter breaks, which means no health benefits and barely enough money to pay rent, utilities, car insurance, student loans, etc.

Read the rest on lifehacker.com!

How would you like to get paid extra to go on vacation?

That’s what one company in Denver is doing for its employees. As CEO of FullContact Bart Lorang announced in a blog post: All employees get $7,500 per year to go on vacation, and that’s on top of paid vacation.

Lorang said there are three rules for employees to participate:

Read the rest on huffingtonpost.com!

Last week’s cover story in Capital Business described how nonprofits are acting more like corporations. Interestingly, there’s a flip side to that trend: corporations that are acting more like nonprofits.

In the parlance of the business world, this is known as corporate social responsibility, or CSR. The practice differs from traditional corporate philanthropy in that it does not merely involve donating money, time or other resources to a worthy cause or causes. Instead, CSR seeks to align a company’s business mission and practices to the larger interests of society.

Any savvy business executive will tell you that CSR is increasingly becoming a contemporary business imperative. Why? Americans are demanding more and more out of the companies they patronize and even work for.

Read the rest here!

Like many tech companies, Valve Corp., a videogame maker in Bellevue, Wash., boasts high-end espresso, free massages and laundry service at its offices.

One thing it doesn’t have: bosses

Valve, whose website says the company has been “boss free” since its founding in 1996, also has no managers or assigned projects. Instead, its 300 employees recruit colleagues to work on projects they think are worthwhile. The company prizes mobility so much that workers’ desks are mounted on wheels, allowing them to scoot around to form work areas as they choose.

Welcome to the bossless company, where the hierarchy is flat, pay is often determined by peers, and the workday is directed by employees themselves.

Read the rest on http://online.wsj.com

Facebook is apparently working on a job postings board that it will launch later this summer, according to a report by the WSJ. “Facebook Jobs” will be an aggregator which pulls in job postings by third party providers and makes them available in one place, and creates a searchable database of jobs for users to browse.

Facebook could also use the tons of social data it has on each user to target relevant jobs across its vast network of users, and it could provide an excellent recruiting solution to corporate clients and placement agencies, which will compete directly with LinkedIn.

Read the rest on forbes.com!

You nailed your first job interview and they’ve asked you to come for another. It’s a great feeling, but at the same time, it also means you have to go through that whole process again. Here’s how to nail that second interview and bring something new to the table.

The second job interview is typically all about getting to know you on both a personal and professional level. When you’re interviewed, your prospective employer wants to know if you can handle the details of the job, and if you’re going to fit in with the company in general. That’s really it. The second interview might be more relaxed and conversational, or more hectic with a full panel of people talking to you. Either way, your preparation and composure are the same.

Read the rest on:

lifehacker.com/5924708/how-to-nail-your-follow-up-interview

Globally, one in three employers struggle to find employees with the skills and experience necessary to meet their needs, and almost one-third cite a lack of experience as a key barrier to filling their open jobs.

Despite the serious shortage of some skills, the disconnect between employers and job seekers is not surprising given how many job descriptions fall victim to the “experience-needed syndrome.” This ailment manifests itself in two ways. In one, job descriptions for entry-level positions ask for experience, which shuts out many young workers. In the other, seasoned workers find the “experience-needed syndrome” becomes the “exact experience needed syndrome.”

As companies struggle to be as productive with fewer workers, they’ve gotten creative about sharing workloads by combining parts of jobs or even whole jobs into one big new job description. This leaves candidates perplexed, trying to decipher what’s needed and determine if they meet the requirements. One job seeker told me that the write-ups are so specific that she would not be surprised to see one read “must have blue hair and hazel eyes”! (Illegal of course, but illustrative.) Those who do have the skills to cover broad, catchall expectations can choose what work they are willing to do (if they can find it). Those who have fewer skills may not be so lucky. A poorly worded posting can cost an employer the best candidates. With job descriptions and skills changing at breakneck speed, here are few ideas for employers and job seekers to understand each other:

Read the full article on blogs.hbr.org!

The performance review of the future will include services like Salesforce.com’s Chatter and its Influencers feature, which measures how much weight you carry among your peers.

Today, your performance review is based on things like sales numbers or number of goals met. Tomorrow, though, it could be based on something that until now has remained ephemeral: organizational influence.

Salesforce.com’s Chatter system released a new feature this spring called Influencer. It purports to measure how influential you are within your company, by tabulating, for example, how your fellow workers respond to the items you post to your corporate social network.

It’s still a work in progress, senior director of Chatter product marketing Dave King tells Fast Company. But already companies are using it to help them run more smoothly.

Read the full article on fastcompany.com!