3 Questions You Should Ask Yourself if Youre in a Career Rut - The Muse

3 Questions You Should Ask Yourself if Youre in a Career Rut - The Muse3 Questions You Should Ask Yourself if Youre in a Career RutFrom the outside, it looks like everythings going great. Youre getting your work done, youre reaching your goals, and youre staying on your managers good side. But underneath that neatly checked off to-do list, you might be feeling entirely differently. In fact, what looks like hard work to your co-workers may in fact be you on autopilot, just going through the motions of your job. And sometimes, thats just fine. But if you have big career goals youd like to reach, its important to check in with yourself periodically and make sure that your current job is helping you reach them, and that youre notlage getting stuck in a career rut. How do you know the difference? Start by asking yourself these three questions- you might surprise yourself with the answers. 1. Is There Room for Advancement?Advancement can mean a lot of things, from salary increases and titl e promotions to increased responsibility and exciting new projects or clients. And when you work for a company that gives you the ability to showcase your talents and abilities and reap some of those benefits, you dont just get a few more shiny bullets for your resume, you also feel much more fulfilled and energized. Likewise, when those opportunities arent there, you eventually stop caring- no matter how much you might like your current position. The less you care, the less you work to improve yourself. The less you work to improve yourself, the faster your skills will atrophy. Maybe youre at a company where promotions are hard to come by, or maybe you just have a boss whos playing favorites and giving other people the opportunity. Regardless of your situation, a lack of opportunity can lead to a big time rut. 2. Do You Seek Out New Challenges?So, there are opportunities for growth at your company. But do you ever find yourself saying, Nah, not feeling it when they come up? The fol low-up question to this one is Why dont you feel like challenging yourself? Do you have a lot going on in your personal life and need to coast for a little bit? Are you uninspired by the company mission and no longer motivated to do more to support it? Do you even want to be doing the job youre doing anymore? Only you know the answers to these questions. But if the thought of taking on additional responsibilities, or even adjusting your current ones so that you feel challenged, makes you grimace, then youre probably not feeling the job as much as you once did.3. Does Time Fly By?While Im certainly not recommending you should be working round the clock, we all know how great it is when were excited about what were doing You come into the office, lose track of time, and feel immersed in your work. Sure, there are times when you have to do tasks you dont love, but getting to the end of the workday doesnt feel like an eternity when you love your job and the company youre working for. On the other hand, regularly planning out your day so that you can leave at 5 PM on the dot is a red flag that youre not as engaged in your work as you once were. If you answered all these questions with a Yes- thats awesome Youre working hard in a role and company thats well-suited to your passions and goals. However, if you found yourself saying, no, no, and no, then its probably time to start thinking about your next step. Its OK to be in a rut, and its OK to no longer like where you work (for various reasons). As long as you recognize it and work to fix it, youre on the right path. Photo of woman thinking courtesy of Shutterstock.

GF Education Group Calls for Employer Feedback

GF Education Group Calls for Employer Feedback GF Education Group Calls for Employer Feedback Employers can receive top scoring candidate profiles for free (note Recruiter.com is one of the distribution partners of the CBL Exam). For recruiters, its a way to receive entry-level college graduate resumes for free, while being able to more easily judge their core skills and strengths. For candidates, the test is a way to solve the familiar catch-22 of job seeking you need skills to get a job, but to develop the skills, you need a job. Additionally, test takers that score well on the exam will receive a mentoring session with leading employers in their chosen field of interest.To make the test more precisely useful for recruiters and employers, the GF Education Group has issued a survey for assessment of candidates. The simple survey asks the topproficienciesand skills that you look for when interviewing and assessing a candidate as a potential hire. By surveying major employers and ex perienced recruiters, the GF Education Group will be able to ensure the CBL Exam offers the best assessment available to assist in hiring decisions. They encourage both corporate and agency recruiters to take a few minutes to complete the survey. They also cite an iPad giveaway for people who complete the survey.

Deploying to Guantanamo Bay

Deploying to Guantanamo BayDeploying to Guantanamo BayNAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba This is not your typical deployment location in the war on terror. Troops here get to scuba dive in their off time and have an assortment of restaurants and bars to unwind in at the end of long days spent guarding enemy combatants. The troops who manage the detention facility here belong to Joint Task Force Guantanamo. Theyre deployed for varying tour lengths from all services, both active and reserve components. They come here on deployment, and theyre actually coming to a place that is not as bad as (many) deployments, said Navy Capt. Leslie J. McCoy, commander of the naval base. JTF Guantanamo is a tenant organization on the base. The 2,200 JTF personnel live alongside the roughly 9,000 permanent-party sailors, family members, U.S. government civilians and contractors, and third-country nationals who reside and work here. Sailors assigned to the base typically come for three-year tours and ca n bring their families. Deployment length for troops assigned to JTF Guantanamo depends on their service. Soldiers typically deploy for one year, Marines and sailors for six months, and airmen for four-month stints. Living conditions vary considerably within the JTF. Enlisted servicemembers generally live in prefabricated individual buildings, which they call houses with a touch of cynicism. The shipping-container-like quarters each house four to six servicemembers. The troops typically divide the space as evenly as possible and then partition rooms by hanging blankets and shower curtains. Each building contains a bathroom with a toilet and a sink. And mens and womens community latrines, with showers, sinks and toilet stalls, are located within each group of quarters. Senior enlisted members and officers generally live in converted Navy family housing left over from when the base housed a larger population of permanent- party personnel. For instance, one two-bedroom apartment might be assigned to four junior officers. Troops live and work together here depending on what their jobs are, but irrespective of their service. I think its an important part of how they form as a team to that they can do their mission here in the JTF, said Army Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of JTF Guantanamo. We have members assigned to the JTF that have come from assignments around the world, and so its important that we allow them to live and work together and know each other and build as a team. Living conditions for the servicemembers have improved considerably since the military began sending prisoners here more than three years ago. If you go back and look at early pictures of the JTF, our troopers were all living in tents, eating out of temporary dining facilities, Hood said. And officials continue to seek ways to improve living conditions. Ideally what wed like to do is have them all housed in barracks, so were now looking at plans to do that, McCoy said. Were trying to take a s best care of (the JTF troops) as we can to ensure their quality of life is good. And part of that is to ensure they live in good rooms, good barracks or houses wherever they are. Gitmo also is loaded with morale, welfare and recreation facilities and opportunities. Servicemembers can rent boats and fishing equipment, become certified in scuba diving, or spend their time off snorkeling and watching the vast array of aquatic wildlife that fills the crystal-clear waters of the bay and surrounding Caribbean Sea. Aside from water sports, the base features a golf course troops generally play with hot-pink balls because white balls are too easy to lose in the gray desert landscape a brand-new miniature golf course, several gyms and outdoor sports fields, and two outdoor movie theaters. Considering the year-round warm weather and scant rainfall it rains only about three to five times a year here movies rarely are canceled. They come to a small community. We provide a sense of normalcy for those who are (deployed) here, McCoy said. They can come to our churches they can take part in our college programs (and) the MWR facilities. In turn, the captain explained, the base gets a lot from the JTF members deployed here. Since nearly 70 percent of Joint Task Force Guantanamo is made up of reserve-component members, they bring a lot of civilian-acquired skills with them. We get people here who are teachers, people who have different functions in their towns that they bring to Guantanamo Bay, McCoy said. So actually the synergy that we have with the joint task force works out very well. We help support one another.