Careermemos

Being a financial manager is one of those flexible jobs that stay-at-home moms can go into. It allows for time schedules, workloads, and work sites that adjust to the requisites of moms who need to balance their family duties and their need to augment the household income.

What is financial management?

Financial management is a flexible job or service that work-at-home moms can offer to do financial planning for others. Financial management covers planning, investment-making, liquidity managing, and even resource mobilizing or fund sourcing. Focusing on money matters and fiscal affairs, a mom can offer advice to other moms or build up a clientele of her own consisting of not only other moms but other moneyed couples or even business people.

Is there a need for a financial manager?

There is always a need as people begin to seek more and more advice on how they can manage their wealth effectively. The need extends to financial managers that are not your usual bank branch or stock brokerage manager. People who would want to invest their money or seek advice about investment are looking for financial managers with more flexible arrangements who can be there when needed most. Investors would no longer wish to be confined to banks or offices in getting the financial advice they deserve. They are willing to relate with a virtual financial planner who can be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week to attend to the investor’s needs.

The need for responsiveness and customer care makes this flexible job even more attractive for moms who need not go to the office to earn. If you are one such mom, you can stay at home and telecommute so that you are in touch with your clients anytime. As an online or phone-in financial manager, you get to do your investment advisory online and keep up with your client’s time or schedule.

Is the pay okay?

Financial managers generally get paid either by fixed salary or on a fee-based arrangement where they get commissions for earnings made or financial transactions consummated. If you are a stay-at-home mom with a banking or finance degree, or presently getting an online degree at that, a flexible financial management job where you do fee-based or project-based financial consultations can bring in pays of over $80,000 up to $100,000 in a year. Not bad for staying at home and giving online financial advice, huh?

So how do you bring the work home?

The good part is you can really do this at home. Just get online or on the phone and start networking your way to clients who are in need of financial advice. Whether you have a finance or banking degree or not, you can be a financial manager, adviser, planner, as long as you have basic money handling and management skills (for which moms are very famous for). All it takes is a computer and phone or internet connection, a review of your financial skills, and you are off to an exciting and flexible job as a financial manager despite your being a home-bound mom.

Sometimes you feel like you just can’t get up from bed in the morning, not because of any illness but because you just don’t feel like getting to work. There may be days when you just stare at your computer monitor the whole day and get nothing done. There are nights when getting home after a whole day’s work means just collapsing on the sofa with all your clothes and shoes on and not even getting a microwave dinner.

What is wrong may just be you getting burnt out, but it can also be something else about your job. If you have been putting up a face at work but do not have any conviction about the work you are doing, something deep is definitely wrong. You may be ready to quit. But you should know when to say it.

Asking yourself the following may help you decide when to say you quit.

1. Am I still excited about my job?

Excitement means raring to get on with a project like a newly-wed that cannot wait for the first honeymoon night. You are still excited about your job when you smile about the results of a meeting with a colleague or eagerly tell your friends of an upcoming conference. When you begin to cringe at the sight of your office desk, or at the sound of your mobile phone because you are worried it might be your boss or a client, it might be time to say “I quit”.

2. Are my strengths and core competencies still aligned to my work?

You will acquire a lot of experience in doing your job, day in and day out. You will improve your competencies with lots of training either provided by your company or acquired through your own initiatives. If you have all those new skills already and you feel you have outgrown your present job, you naturally aspire for a better and more challenging position. If the company cannot offer that challenge, you might think it’s time to throw in the towel.

3. Is there a future for me in this organization?

If the company does not provide a clear career path, you will be afraid to spend the rest of your professional life behind a desk, watching the clock tick till it is five o’clock, and waiting for a measly paycheck every forth-night. When you think there is no future for you in a company that does not provide you a development perspective, it may be time to fly.

4. Do my personal values and perspectives still match those of the company’s?

You have your personal mission statement. Whether it is to help your self and family or others out there, it has to be aligned with the company’s vision and mission statement for you to have a conviction to do your work. If your personal values do not match your company’s, you will have an identity crisis. Serving one will mean being disloyal to the other.

If you think any of these circumstances make work unbearable for you, leave while you can and say “I quit”.

Is your love hate-able? Do you get goose bumps and cringe at the sight of your office every day? Can’t you wait for the final bell in the afternoon when you can finally leave for home? If so, you probably hate your job. But do you know it is still possible to love a hate-able job?

First and foremost, establish for yourself what aspects of the job are there for you to hate. It may not be the whole job; it may just be some aspects of it that make you hate it. It may be your co-workers; it may be your boss. It may be the routine being imposed on you or the complete lack of any structure in doing the job. Whatever it is, finding out what it is and accepting your ability or inability to address the hated aspect will make you more able to love it.

After finding the hate-able aspects, veer away from them and focus on the positive aspects of the job. Doing your work with a positive disposition helps you start the day right, go through the day and finish it right.

Take charge and ownership of the work no matter how difficult or hate-able it is. Only by being responsible for the job can you be more in control and able to avoid the hate-able aspects from totally destroying your day.

Find excitement in the positive aspects of your job. What keeps you excited now may not be the same excitement tomorrow. It all depends on how you look at things and what makes you excited. If it is something new that keeps you excited, change your routine so that you don’t get bored. Try something different: a new office stationery, a new computer application to set up databases, a different room to meet, a new book to read in the morning instead of the newspaper. That something new might spark up the passion and spice.

Request for feedback about how you perform, if not from your boss, then your peers. Even if the job is hate-able, getting positive feedback on results you deliver enable you to know that you can rise above the hate and negativity, work productively and deliver positive results.

Be a gracious worker and establish friendships at work. Your co-workers need not remain just that. They can be your friends who will make every minute of a drive-you-crazy job more bearable. They can help you smile and laugh about the difficulties of the job. They can offer a helping hand. They console you when the job moves you to tears.

Even if it is the routine that makes your job boring or hate-able, stick to your plans, objectives, and commitments. The boredom is only compounded by the lack of delivery of results when you begin to deviate from set plans and timetables, making you unproductive and unable to meet your commitments.

When all these come to naught and you are left with no more choice, try and network and find other jobs even while still on this job. Knowing you are still marketable in the job market might move you to smile and not to tears.

Look at things objectively and try to put yourself in the shoes of the difficult co-worker. What is it in his or her life that is driving him or her to be inconsistent, inconsiderate, improper, difficult? Maybe a family problem is the culprit, or a financial worry. Care enough to ask what the problem is and care enough to proffer solutions. Be clear that you are not prying but are only trying to help and when you do offer to help, be sure that you really exert the effort to do so, lest your empty promise leaves room for more difficulties later.

The answer is yes. There is actually no formal educational requirement if you want to be a medical transcriptionist. You may have self-studied for the medical transcription skill, acquired your skill through online courses, gone through night schools, or had actual experience or on-the-job apprenticeship and training as a documentor or transcriber in a hospital or clinic. For whatever reason that you have acquired the transcription skill, you can get a transcription job.

There is another way and that is the formal education way. Formal medical transcription education and training are available in colleges and universities offering either a diploma or certificate course. There are also distance-learning programs for medical transcriptionists. The advantage of having a formal medical transcription education is the potential for greater job opportunities as the field is becoming a highly competitive one and most clients of medical transcriptionists are looking at not only skilled but aptly and formally educated transcriptionists.

Medical transcription at present does not require any certification. There are skilled medical transcriptionists who did not get any formal high school or college education on medical transcription but are doing it. They simply had the nerve to brush up on their computer skills, their typing, their transcribing, and went researching and studying medical phrases and terminologies commonly used in doctor-patient consultations, prescriptions, treatment, and discharge.

Offhand, anyone wanting to do medical transcription will need a high school diploma at the minimum, and at least a year if not up to 3 years experience in an allied or related medical field (maybe as a nursing aide or assistant in a clinic). At the onset while learning on the job, the transcriptionist may not have much knowledge of medical terminologies but the experience will help in at least having an idea of what those terms are. What are requisites are the listening and typing skills, the oral and written communication skills, the writing aptitude for grammar, spelling and punctuation, and the ability to sort data and organize them for record-keeping or data-basing purposes.

If you can follow a dictation, transcribe the dictation into legible text-formatted report, keep the electronic files properly for future reference, and follow specific recording and data-basing instructions, you may apply for a medical transcription job. However, you should keep a lookout for the competition who in all probability will come more equipped with degrees and certifications more than you.

Career medical transcriptionists looking at the job in the long-term look forward to several certification, degree, and training programs that will get them credentials that definitely give them an edge over other medical transcription wannabes. Among these credentials are the titles of Certified Medical Transcriptionist and Registered Medical Transcriptionist which are earned after one passes examinations of national medical associations that have jurisdiction over medical transcriptionists.

Notwithstanding the relative flexibility and ease with which to join the medical transcription industry, it will still be to a medical transcriptionist’s advantage to acquire further and more advanced studies on the field, if only to keep ahead of the competition and guarantee a secure place in the sector.

So you have done all you could, from the planning to the motivating to managing your people’s performance as best as you would. Sorry, but the team is still not producing as you would want them to. Is there still a way to get over this? Check out the following to see if they fit any pattern as to why your team is not producing and what you can do in such case.

Is your team stressed out?

Lack of planning, disorganization, lack of clarity as to responsibilities, disowned goals and objectives, procrastination – these are some things that may stress out your team. Organizing things will negate the stress of all these problems piling up. Allow them to manage their time and resources as early on in the performance process as possible.

Or maybe you are contributing to their stress? Evaluate your own work and leadership styles. You yourself might be a bit disorganized and need to put your own system in order. You can’t keep throwing extra work at your team when things become urgent because you failed to organize and plan before. The team can’t afford changes in schedules and loads just because you as the boss need some help on your own skeds and loads. While contingency plans may be in place, it is not often that a disorganized boss is the subject of the contingency planning.

Is burn-out a possibility?

Continued stressful situations lead to burnout. Look for telltale signs of burnout like complacency, laggardly work pacing, a come-what-may defeatist attitude, emotional outbursts, and even abandonment of work. How do you address the burn-out then? Try and maintain balance. Give your team a break, the opportunity to step back and survey their situations from a distance. Take them on an out-of-town trip away from the confines of the office. Do teambuilding. Get emotional and spiritual coaching. Let them bring their families on this trip.

Stop what you’re doing and leave it at the office. Take the time away from the work as a way to rebuild bonds and ties with your team, ties that may have been severed by all the pressures of the job.

Is there a need to re-focus?

Revisit your previous successes and challenges. Ask the team for suggestions as to doing things the old reliable way compared to the new innovations. Be creative and open to their suggestions. Take into account personal and individual preferences that can be aligned later on to team preferences.

Look at the big picture from afar. Getting too close to the job may get you burned. Be objective and try to look at things from your team’s perspective. Their vantage point may be different from yours and you need to bridge that gap. All of you in the team should see things in the same light in order to be united once more. Re-focus. When you’ve reached a new level of clarity, you may be ready to start afresh with the team ready to be productive again.

Re-focus, reunite, rejuvenate, and re-energize: simple tips to address stress and burnout that brings down productivity.

Don’t engage your terrible boss in a fistfight or a shouting match. Get even, with more style.

1. If your boss likes to grab credit, do things your own way but let it be known every step of the way that you are the author of that way of doing things. Make a distinct job identity for you. Copy furnish other officers, even H.R. or higher management of your memos or reports, so that everything is in writing.

2. Brush up on your skills. If the company offers training programs, take advantage of them. You can’t get even with a terrible boss without you getting better first. Take courses for self-improvement; study online if you don’t have the time.

3. Know the terrible boss’ weaknesses and strengthen yourself in those aspects. If he is a terrible speech-writer, make great speeches and deliver those in meetings or parties. Let him see and feel your strength where he is weak. Then offer to help him in areas of his job where you know HE is weakest. Then accomplish the job with all your competence and professionalism. Let it be clear to him that you can do what he cannot.

4. Get the support of the team even if the boss will not support you. Leg-work so they will see the beauty of your idea or action plan. Then get the job done, with the team’s help, even without the boss’ blessing.

5. Do the job as it is required to be done, not according to your boss’ standards. Remember that you do not exist to accomplish your boss’ personal goals. The organization sets goals for itself and the parameters to achieving those goals. Remember those organizational goals and strategic directions and contribute to them, not to your boss’ selfish aims.

6. Stick to the organization’s vision and mission and remind your terrible boss of the vision and mission if he insists on getting his way. You are not working to promote his interests but the interests of the company; making this very clear to your terrible boss may make him think twice about insisting on his selfish strategies.

7. Provide him feedback on how you think he can become a better boss. Copy-furnish the human resource department or even higher management, though, so that what you say is on record.

8. If you are not allowed yet to provide feedback, advocate with human resources for 360-degree feedback. At any rate, a performance management system works both ways, for the staff and for the bosses. This way, you get even formally.

9. If your boss tries to micro-manage you, let him do so, but don’t follow his instructions especially if you know they will not work. Follow instructions objectively. If you think what he suggests will work, don’t be bull-headed as to refuse. Filter the positive and effective from his instructions; otherwise, do as you think is best according to your competence and experience.

10. Lastly, send blind items to the company newsletter editor. Let your boss know and feel that someone knows his innermost secrets and will let it be known to the world.

They say there are two types of employees in the workplace: those who watch things happen and those who make things happen. Which one are you? Are you beginning to get tired watching other co-workers achieve their targets alongside you while they get their promotions and you find yourself in the same position you were in two or three years ago? Would you rather get that promotion or get out?

Your contribution to the organization’s growth

There is such a thing as self-promotion. Of course it is not fair to wait for your boss to see your contribution for the longest time. You can only wait for so long before you decide that you have been overlooked enough to try and contribute elsewhere. But wait, you can still make your contribution known.

You ought to let people in your organization know that you are still interested in making that significant contribution. Remember the time-tested ‘action speaks louder than words’? Let your actions do the impression-making and people will remember you for what you did, not what you said you did.

So start with that plan of self-promoting by making a difference in every little task or project assigned to you. Make sure you do everything that is required, without necessarily relying on everything that the book says. You can be innovative yet contributory. You can be trend-setting without deviating. Accomplish the task at hand even before you whine and people will start noticing you.

Your contribution to your own personal growth

As you begin to embark on that path-creation for yourself, look at some of your organization’s problem areas. Are these mere problem areas? For all you know, these may be opportunity areas for you to shine in. Take stock of your skills, your core competencies, and your experience. Will they be able to contribute to the solution of the problem area?

When you have identified that problem area and taken stock of your available skills to resolve that problem, make it known that you can do something about it. Start out by letting your boss know of your intention to resolve the problem. Outline your skills and competencies that you believe will enable you to come up with the best solution. Highlight specific experiences where you’ve tackled a related challenge before and succeeded. Make sure to make it known also how solving such problem or challenge will contribute to the organizational goals, and not merely your personal goals.

Take a pro-active stand to promote your own abilities to solve problems. Don’t sour-grape. For all you know, you will stand out from the rest and be recognized for what you are able to surpass, not only for what you are able to do or deliver on a day-to-day basis.

Before even considering changing career, look at your present job and try and see if you can get that recognition, if not that promotion, by doing something on your own first. If that doesn’t work, then your boss cannot blame you for looking for that greener pasture elsewhere.

“That’s that.”  That is all she wrote, and you are done with the interview. Are you through for the day, or the days to come, for that matter? Remember that the interview is not the end but just the beginning of a recruiting process for which you need to take a pro-active stand. Following up and following through on a job interview will be up to you.

After that interview, thank the interviewer/s sincerely for their time and attention. Take the opportunity to exchange a few pleasantries and more importantly, contact information if you have not done so during the interview. If you have done your research and know that the company website accepts emails from job seekers, you know that you can send an email anytime but a person-to-person thank you beats that email definitely.

As you leave, thank the receptionist and the other employees who were there to assist you as you came to the interview. Regardless of the outcome of the interview, politeness and professionalism necessitate that you are civil to the very end.

You must follow up the interview with a thank you letter or note to the interviewer. If you went through a panel interview, take pain to send each member of the panel a thank you note. Get contact information about everyone from the receptionist if not from the company website.

When you did your research, and you were fortunate enough to see that there is already an employee you know, an acquaintance or friend even, already working with the company, then follow-ups and follow-throughs will be easier. If they are not involved in the hiring process specially, it will not be unethical to check with them for news about your application. If they are however, you better stick to the receptionist or the recruiting officer.

Following through with a phone call, an email, or even a letter may be good. It shows your sincerity and commitment to work with the company. Just don’t expect for an instant answer, or even complete answers from all the panel interviewers you sent thank you notes to. Be firm for feedback but don’t be pushy. If during the interview, the interviewer let on a few hints that you are being considered for the position, following through in more concrete terms will be easier. Your interviewer might provide you with the dates and times to confirm your hiring, if ever.

At some point in the interview, there may have been questions that you have not answered fully. These can be opportunities for you to follow through with a letter to the interviewer providing more in-depth answers to the questions you missed in the personal interview. You can give more details in this follow through letter.

In following through, don’t make the mistake though of frequently visiting the company just so you get news about your application. You don’t want to be that pushy. Stick to the tested follow through letters and be patient in waiting for the interviewer’s reply and formal offer or turn-down later.

If you sometimes feel like you are treated as prey by a pack of wolves in the office, don’t worry, you’re not alone. There are always packs of wolves in offices out there. What matters more is knowing how to identify them and outsmart them.

How do you know the wolves when you see them? See if any of the following wolverine antics reflect your officemates’ antics.

There are the wise wolves, the leaders of the pack who think they know everything there is to know about the universe. Their arrogance is clearly evident in every issue and concern in the office where they will only consider their point of view. Otherwise, be ready for some fangs showing. Related to these leaders of the pack are their alter-egos, the dictators in the office who will bully you and railroad you into doing anything for them. They will intimidate you every step of the way and will enjoy every minute of it.

The other wolves are the yes-sayers to the pack leaders. They will agree to anything the other wolves say, even to all assignments and tasks given them. But surprisingly, they never deliver and get anything done. Then there are the cubs that have no minds of their own and will only move if pushed or shoved. In the process, they oftentimes bump onto you and drag you down. The other wolves are the back-biters who will smile at you yet drive a dagger down your spine the moment you turn your back to them. These traitors are loyal only to the status quo and will make all your darkest secrets known to management.

Will you remain the sheep for these wolves? You will not last long if you do not think of outsmarting them. Here are a few tips to do so.

Don’t be emotional about their attacks. Biting back will not help. The wolf will be more surprised and will lose the momentum of its attack if you are more rational, objective, and professional in dealing with them. Talk to them and find out how to mend your differences.

If no change or positive reaction is forthcoming, don’t strike back personally. Let the wolves’ actions go through procedures for discipline and conflict-resolution in the office. Let there be rules and let the rules take their course. Don’t be affected by anger; being angry makes you irrational and strike stupidly. The worst thing you can do is get yourself hurt in the process.

Plan your counter-attacks. Make sure that your bases are covered legally and procedurally. If a wolf is plagiarizing your reports, put passwords and restrictions on your files. Plant a bogus report to which the wolf can have access that will burn him later. If a wolf is making you pressured and stressed out, slow down and do things on your own pace, not on the wolves’.

Use their hunting tactics against them. If the wolves like to go for a kill, don’t give them any opportunity to do so. Step back and wait for the moment when you can launch your counter-attacks. Do not be provoked into anger or irrationality. Remember, they are the wolves not you.