Email Communication

• Five Tips to Jump Start Your Job Search [YouTern]
• Worst Work Habit: Compulsive Email Checking [CBS news]
• Tips for Reducing Public Speaking Anxiety [Psychology Today]
• Is Working from Home Productive? [Lifehack]
• Style Strategy for Work [Forbes]

How many hours of your typical workday is spent dealing with email? Probably more than you can count. And the worst part is, much of that time is spent dealing with spam or other unimportant messages.

SaneBox is a great tool to help you get your “insane inbox” under control. It creates a hierarchy of email importance and filers out less urgent emails so you can focus on the messages that are really important.

You don’t have to download or install anything, and it works with virtually all of the major email services like Gmail and Outlook.

In today’s business environment, networking plays a big role in career success. Your professional network and business contacts can be a valuable source of information, advice and even job leads. The tricky part, of course, is making the contacts in the first place.

There are a variety of ways to make business contacts. Mixers and networking events are one of the most common ways, of course. But what happens when you’ve identified someone you want to connect with, but you won’t have an opportunity to bump into them in person?  

If you’re like most office professionals these days, you probably spent a good portion of your day sifting through and replying to emails. And it’s very likely that a number of your emails relate to the same few topics, meaning you find yourself typing the same information over and over again.

This is where “canned responses” can be a huge timesaver. Many mail programs allow you to create and save canned responses or saved text in some format. With Gmail, it’s very easy. You simply go into your Settings and then click on the Labs tab, look for Canned Responses and go from there.

• Five Reasons You Hate Your Job [LinkedIn]
• Want to Advance Your Career? Work on Your EQ [Fast Company]
• Why Temporary Work is Worth It [Forbes.com]
• How to Write Email That Gets a Response [CBS News]
• Don’t Get Fooled in a Job Interview [US News]

• Ways to Ensure Your Emails Get Read [Inc.com]
• How to Avoid Workplace Gossip [Glass Door]
• Get Along with a Dreadful Boss [US News]
• Job Interview: Answering the Weakness Question [CBS News]
• How to Save Money to Go Part-Time [Jobacle]

For many of us, trying to keep our email inbox under control can seem like an impossible task. It seems like for every message we delete (or otherwise take care of), ten more messages appear. It can be frustrating and exhausting, and in the end no matter how much time we spend trying, we never seem to get anywhere.

That’s why a tool that can help us tame our inbox easily and quickly can be a real lifesaver.  This is especially true for those who check their email from their phone, when even a small backlog can seem like a huge deal.

• Five Career Change Options for 2013 [Jobacle]
• Are Employers Responsible for Stopping Office Affairs? [Glass Door]
• Top 10 Email Habits Everyone Should Have [Lifehack]
• When Your Job Hurts [Psychology Today]
• Reasons Why You Didn’t Get a Promotion [US News]

A Chicago police officer and his busy after-hours BlackBerry may open up a can of worms for employers everywhere with non-exempt employees. According to this article, the former sergeant in the Bureau of Organized Crime claims that he and many fellow officers were required to check their BlackBerrys while off duty but were never paid overtime for doing so. Now, he has filed a lawsuit to receive the pay he believes he rightfully deserves.