It is often said about online education that it gives you the opportunity to “study anywhere”. But for effective education and your personal productivity this “study anywhere” must be a comfortable place.
Here are some important steps to help you create the perfect place to study at home.
Even though you study from home, there should be clear study-home boundaries. Sitting on the couch with your laptop is not a good idea. You need to switch from household chores and set yourself up to learn, so having a separate office or space is a must.
Even if you don’t have an extra room for this purpose, set aside a separate area. You can put a partition, organize a workspace on the balcony or just visually separate the desk from the rest of the room, for example, by the color of the wall.
A comfortable desk and chair are considered the key to good posture. It is recommended to use an office chair or a rigid chair with a straight high back.
Choose a desk of a size that allows you to put the most necessary things on it. It is important that there should be a minimum of things on the work surface, but everything should be easy to take.
If you have a table without additional drawers, hang a shelf next to it. It is recommended to use an arm’s length distance. This will make it easier to get papers, pens, and other materials you need for studying.
Full lighting of the study space reduces eye strain and ensures better productivity. Ideally, diffuse lighting throughout the space is combined with direct light sources above the workstation.
Depending on the course, this can be from 15 minutes to several hours a day, a week. During this time, no one should disturb you. Some courses, webinars are held at a certain time, which should be released in your schedule. If there is no time limit, the training hours should be assigned independently, taking into account your individual activity (some people absorb new information better in the first half, others — in the second half).
A place to study should be where you will not be disturbed by other family members, children, pets, neighbors. It is ideal to have a personal computer or laptop for this purpose. If you do not use a smartphone in training, it is better to put it aside so that you are not distracted by messages, various notifications. You should also remove all distracting objects from the table, turn off the TV running in the background.
If all the files on your computer are chaotically scattered or just piled into your “Downloads” folder, you will have a hard time quickly finding the file you need. Organize your study files into separate folders, grouping them by topic or purpose (lectures, additional files, homework). Add all online materials to separate folders in your browser bookmarks.
Job interview success is not limited to the technical skills of a candidate. Her personality is of no less importance. We have several videos addressing different aspects of interviewing. All of the videos are developed first and foremost for Portnov Computer School graduates preparing for internship interviews.
We hope that other job seekers might find that information helpful as well.
“Why should we hire you?” is one of the so called Tough Interview questions. Hundreds of career books are answering the “Why should we hire you?” question. Thousands of web site are trying to answer the “Why should we hire you?” question. And still there is no one-size-fits-all answer.
“What is your greatest weakness?” is another very common interview question, which belongs to the same group Tough Interview questions. What is behind the question? Do they really expect us to come up with something real bad about us? Something, which will really disqualify us for the job? Definitely nobody is expecting that even though it happens time to time.
40% of people sincerely believe they have no weaknesses. That is the trap #1 to avoid. People who put themselves into that category have big time problem getting a good job.
Trap #2 is a failure to come up with a fair answer. Lots of people would demonstrate certain sleaziness, they prefer to play games rather than to provide straightforward honest answer.
The “Tell me about yourself?” question is one of the so called “Tough Interview Questions” because to many people it is not clear what exactly should be covered in the answer. Obviously it is NOT about your private life such as family, hobbies, girl friend/boy friend, or health problems. Running into that domain is one of the common mistakes in answering that question. The question should be answered 100% relative to the position you are applying for. Which gives you an opportunity to prove that you are someone to be seriously considered for the job.
Many of us would rather answer the “What makes you a good fit for the position?” question, which is not exactly the one really asked. That is the second common mistake.
Remember: most likely that question comes at the very beginning of the interview. Good answer sets the stage for success in getting the job. Not answering the question turns the interview into the wrong direction from the very beginning.
Silicon Valley’s IT job market is booming as we speak. Outside of the Silicon Valley the demand/supply ratio is even more favourable to the job seekers. Yes, we have lots of jobs here, but the supply in SF Bay Area is also very noticeable.
To track the overall IT job market performance we suggest to keep an eye on the IT Employment Index.
Down below we are posting the Job Market Booms In Silicon Valley article published by TheHuffingtonPost.com on 7/8/2011. Enjoy:
As the bleak June jobs report released Friday continues to settle, a ray of sunlight is peeking out from sunny California. Thanks to a flood of venture capital and angel investor dollars, employment rates in certain sectors of Silicon Valley have seen a dramatic increase in recent months, creating a booming job market for tech wizards.
“It’s surreal in the Valley, compared to the rest of the country,” said Harj Taggar, a partner at startup incubator Y Combinator. “It’s so hard to hire people here — and salaries for engineers are going through the roof.”
The market for software engineering talent in particular is very strong, according to Anand Sanwal, CEO and co-founder of CB Insights, a venture capital database.
“That’s where you see that demand — it’s for very specific programming expertise. That could be folks who can do hard-core algorithms or front-end development or web design. Those will be the primary areas where demand outstrips the supply.”
By way of an explanation, Sanwal pointed to a recent report that detailed a considerable increase in both deals and dollars in the first quarter of this year: Venture capital companies made 738 deals and spent $7.5 billion from January to March of 2011, a $1.6 billion increase from the same quarter last year.
Of those deals, the report showed that 46 percent were for seed and series A rounds of funding, stages during which companies are likely to build out their teams and hire developers.
Russell Hancock, the CEO of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, an industry coalition, spoke to the broad decrease in unemployment in the Valley.
“The area’s overall unemployment rate is now at roughly 8.5 percent — a drop from 11 percent 18 months ago,” Hancock said, citing his own research. The valley is “up to roughly 48,000 jobs in internet companies — and that number now exceeds what it was during the dot com boom,” Hancock added.
The hottest jobs, he said, are those in “cloud computing servers, mobile devices, standard IT and new social media — companies that are providing websites as a tool for commerce. ”
Hancock noted that jobs in the “professional and business services” category — a tech-heavy sector — grew considerably in the first three months of the year, adding 1,100 jobs in a single quarter.
As a barometer of just how much the sector has grown, according to data from StartupHire, an online job board for startup companies across the U.S. that has over 13,000 listings, the number of current open positions in Silicon Valley is 79 percent higher than it was this time last year. Silicon Valley currently has 48 percent of all the board’s open jobs listings in California.
Steve Roberson, a StartupHire co-founder, said finding “an engineer that has some experience in web or mobile is more challenging than ever.”
“From our perspective, companies can’t enough of them.”
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