Author: Marissa Brassfield

Marissa Brassfield is Ridiculously Efficient®. She’s an operational efficiency specialist with a passion for supercharging small, entrepreneurial teams working on projects with global impact.

Study Reveals Majority of Workers Feel Trapped in Their Jobs

A large majority of North American workers say they feel trapped in their current jobs. Right Management, which specializes in talent and career management solutions, conducted a survey of almost 400 employees throughout the U.S. and Canada and found that job satisfaction is exceedingly low and many don’t feel that they can...

Use the Reverse Calendar Method to Get Things Done On Time

The Reverse Calendar technique is a way for people who just can’t get things done on time or are always late arriving to meetings to finally tackle their procrastinating ways. Nancy F. Clark, CEO of WomensMedia, designed this method as a means of beating her own procrastination and finally arriving to appointments...

5 Tips for Negotiating Your New Job Salary

A lot of times, many of us are so happy to have even gotten the job that we’ll take any salary that is offered. What we don’t realize is that we don’t have to accept the first number thrown at us, because we can always negotiate salary and benefits before signing on...

‘All Staff’ Tumblr Account Parodies Ridiculous Companywide Emails

A new Tumblr blog is dedicated to the many annoying and often ridiculous emails that are sent companywide. This one goes beyond getting stuck in a ‘reply all’ chain that doesn’t involve you — these are emails that should really not have been sent at all (but may provide some comedic relief...

Nurse Practitioner vs. Doctor of Nursing Practice [infographic]

If you are looking for a career in nursing, here is everything you need to know about being a nurse practitioner versus a doctor of nursing practice. Maryville University put together the below infographic to help you figure out which career path is best for you. Becoming a nurse practitioner requires a...

11 Leadership Lessons From NBA Coach Phil Jackson

Phil Jackson is a legendary former NBA coach and with 11 titles under his belt, he definitely knows a thing or two about leadership. Jackson recently published his memoir, “Eleven Rings,” where he outlines what really led to his success. Below are the 11 principles that made him so successful. Be genuine....

Mistakes To Avoid When Starting Your Own Business

If you’ve ever thought of starting your own business, you’ve probably considered all of the risk factors involved. What if you could learn the biggest mistakes you should avoid, before you even make them? First things first: Why are you starting your business? What need or niche can it fill that countless...

Study Proves Money Can’t Buy Happiness

A new study from American Express proves that money can’t buy happiness. Called the “Life Twist Study,” its researchers discovered that money isn’t a big factor when it comes to fulfillment. According to the study, which was released earlier this month, Americans do not define success by the amount of money they...

3 Ways to Downsize Your Workday

Between all the clients you’ve committed to, a few charities you volunteer with, and the countless and endless number of things you have to do, you’re starting to realize you just don’t have enough time. Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, here are three ways you can downsize your workday and...

The Secret to Better Sleep [infographic]

Getting a good night’s sleep is essential to our productivity and overall well being. As important as well all know it is, actually getting that sleep can be difficult, as this Greatist infographic indicates. The average American gets 6.9 hours of sleep per night, far less than the recommended 8. When we...

The 10 Lowest Paying Jobs in America

The U.S. Department of Labor has released a list of the 10 lowest-paying jobs in America, and things are not looking so great for people who work in the restaurant and beauty industries. While hair salon shampooers are paid the lowest at $18,600 a year, it’s food industry workers that seem to...

Why Employers Ask Unusual Interview Questions [infographic]

Do you think of yourself as being intelligent? If so, there are some highly successful companies that want to hire you. You’ll have to make it through the twists and turns of strange interview questions, though. Do you think of yourself as being intelligent? If so, there are some highly successful companies...

What Jobs Bring the Most Happiness?

We all want to be happy in our jobs, but unfortunately, many of us have had jobs in our past or present that make us unhappy. What jobs not only pay financially, but also in the happiness department? CareerBliss used a special methodology to determine the jobs where people feel happiest. “It...

5 Ways to Make Employees Happy Without a Raise

Regular reviews are nerve-wracking, but the good ones come with a shining light at the end of them: an increase in pay that can raise anyone’s spirits. Giving out raises isn’t always possible, though, which can be a huge blow to office morale. There are, however, a few other ways you can...

How to Keep Your Startup Budget in Check

You might have some big ideas, but those tend to cost money and when you’re just starting out, it’s important to keep an eye on your budget and make sure you aren’t overspending in the wrong places. Contrary to popular belief, there are easy ways to cut costs while actually boosting productivity...

How Google Continues to Keep Employees Happy

Working for Google is a dream of many, not just because of what this company has achieved in the last 15 years, but because of its enviable work culture. With 37,000 employees in 40 countries, you might wonder how Google maintains a motivating work experience throughout its entire company. Working for Google...

Venture Capital Firm New Enterprise Associates Launches Design Mentorship Program

New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm that’s invested some $13 billion in up-and-coming companies, has launched a brand-new design mentorship program to fuel innovation in the design industry. Called NEA Studio, the 12-week program will challenge five designers at a time. Why the focus on design? “When a consumer gets a...

Salary and Career News Round Up: Office Space in the Year 2020, New Job Numbers and Dunkin’ Donuts Goes Green

Every Friday we round up the salary trends, career stories and job news that you may have missed during the past week. It may sound like a long time away, but it will be here before you know it. See what your office space could look like in the Year 2020. The...

The Anatomy of a Great Resume [infographic]

It’s time to look for a job. What do you do now? The first thing you should do — and the most important thing you can do, according to this Top Counseling Schools infographic — is to create the perfect resume. There’s a lot of competition right now in the job market....

Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform Outweigh Costs, Study Says [infographic]

The immigration debate has been an ongoing political and social boiling point. A new study, transformed into the following infographic by The Huffington Post, suggests that there could be an economic benefit that would outweigh the costs of immigration reform. Some states have adopted tougher immigration policies in an effort to curb...

Of These 4 Types of Entrepreneurs, Which One Are You?

Most entrepreneurs have a unique way of thinking, which is what makes them self-making go-getters in the first place. However, there are categories of entrepreneurs that most can fit into. It may not seem important to know exactly where you fit in with the business world, but being able to identify where...

Coursera Offers ACE Credits for ‘Signature Track’ Online Courses

Sites like Coursera and the Khan Academy are revolutionizing online education, but a common criticism of these tools is that they often don’t translate into real-life course credits. Coursera’s brand-new Signature Track aims to change that. Anya Kamenetz recently covered the Signature Track for Fast Company. “Students must pay a fee to...

How to Recover From a Bad Interview

We’ve all been there: That moment when you close an office door and all you want to do is hit your head against a wall because you just know that interview did not go well. You didn’t ask the right questions, you should have used this word instead of that word, you...

How To Get Your Team Emotionally Invested in Their Work

Great team leaders can be hard to come by since many tend to overlook just how important office morale is. One way of boosting morale and ensuring employees have their eyes set on the company's goals is to make them emotionally invested in what the organization is working towards. Ken and Scott...

6 Stellar Interview Questions to Ask Top Candidates

In her latest Inc. column, ServiceMax VP Stacey Epstein shared her six favorite questions to ask top candidates during the interview process. These questions will help you identify interviewees with rockstar potential. What do you need to have in your next job, and what do you want to make sure you don’t...

Dev Bootcamp is a Tech Training Program That Focuses on Employability First

The action-packed Dev Bootcamp turns programming neophytes into strong, entry-level software engineers in a matter of nine weeks. The program’s focus on employability has led to a surprising statistic: 90 percent of its graduates find tech jobs within three months after graduation. The structure at Dev Bootcamp isn’t unlike a real-life work...

Google’s VetNet Entrepreneur Track Helps Veterans Pursue Entrepreneurship

Military veterans have a wealth of services at their disposal aimed at helping them find civilian jobs with military-friendly companies, but Google’s VetNet Entrepreneur Track hopes to help vets dive into entrepreneurship. Will this tool inspire more service members to start their own businesses? The goal of the Entrepreneur Track is to...

Modria Helps Companies Solve Customer Complaints

Modria is a new startup that hopes to help client companies solve disputes and customer complaints with its signature software. It’s co-founded by a pair of former eBay and PayPal employees — Colin Rule and Chittu Nagarajan — and is based on the very system those companies use to handle customer issues....

The Waze App Seeks to Simplify ETAs for Work and Meetings

The Waze app is a social GPS tool that aims to streamline communication between you and your friends and colleagues by enabling you to see ETAs in real time. Could this tool kill the “I’m running late” text message or phone call for good? One of Waze’s brand-new features lets users send...

4 Reasons to Ditch Set Working Hours

The idea of the 9-to-5 workday is one so pervasive in modern business that it’s tough to imagine life without it. In a new article for Inc., Ciplex founder Ilya Pozin writes that it’s time to ditch set working hours for good in favor of a more flexible structure. Read on for...

Management Lessons From the Valve Employee Handbook

In April, the Valve employee handbook leaked online, sparking a brief frenzy as cult fans of the brand tried to decode its success. OnlineMBA took a different route, creating a helpful, information-packed explainer video with some of the key takeaways and management lessons from the handbook. For starters, Valve doesn’t have any...

How Much Should You Save for a Comfortable Retirement?

How much should you save to ensure you have a comfortable retirement? Fidelity Investments’ latest report reveals the figures you need to commit to memory when building up your nest egg. Most retirement savers should save eight times their annual salary, according to Fidelity Investments. To stay on track with that sum,...

Square to Host Three-Day Code Camp for Female Engineers

Square, a mobile payment startup company based in San Francisco, has announced plans to host a three-day Code Camp exclusively for female engineers. Can this program entice more women to pursue careers in engineering? Square certainly hopes so. “We developed this contest to inspire and encourage female engineering students,” a spokeswoman told...

Should Companies Institute Financial Incentives to Encourage Employee Fitness?

IBM has instituted an innovative wellness program that offers financial incentives to employees who eat healthy diets and exercise. Should more companies follow suit? The patented program asks employees to buy their food through a micro-payment network. The system tracks these purchases and connects to FDA and health insurance company servers to...

Almost 60 Percent of US Workers Want to Change Careers

Despite dismal unemployment numbers, a new survey of U.S. workers reveals that nearly 60 percent would change careers if they could. What are some of the factors driving this dissatisfaction? Part of the problem are jobs that offer no advancement opportunities. “Now we have the McJob that for so many in the...

FounderDating Helps Startup Co-Founders Make Connections

If you’re looking for your next startup co-founder, consider FounderDating. The social network enables entrepreneurs to network with each other with the goal of joining forces to launch a business. Despite its professional focus, FounderDating is different from LinkedIn. “The information we have is different [from LinkedIn],” said Jessica Alter, the co-founder...

The PropsToYou App Gamifies Project Management

The PropsToYou app gamifies project management by encouraging employees to collaborate with each other and crank out tasks for points and prizes. Managers and team leaders can use the tool to recognize workers’ efforts and track their skill development over time. Can this app boost engagement and productivity? Possibly. PropsToYou makes employee...

GetHired Lets Companies Pre-Screen Applicants With Video

GetHired is an innovative hiring platform that enables managers to ask prospective job candidates to complete pre-screening questions via video. Such questions enable companies to instantly identify the best applicants to invite in for phone or face-to-face interviews. Can this hiring solution solve businesses’ recruiting conundrum? Fast Company interviewed GetHired founder Suki...

Pair Programming Cranks Up Computer Programmers’ Productivity

Tech companies like Facebook and Square are increasingly using the pair programming technique to boost programmers‘ productivity. With this method, two programmers share the same computer and desk. As one person writes the code, the other scans it for errors and design quirks. Pair programming was first introduced in “Extreme Programming Explained,”...

4 Tips for Office Policies on Tattoos and Piercings

In some creative industries, visible tattoos and body modifications are a welcomed form of self-expression, but in others, they’re still taboo. How can employers maintain a consistent office dress code without offending employees or sparking a lawsuit? Mikal E. Belicove recently interviewed Tamara Devitt of the Fisher & Phillips labor law firm...

5 Ways to Kill Your Career

Sometimes the best advice comes from learning what not to do; accordingly, Chrissy Scivicque has compiled these five ways to kill your career. The mistakes below are sure to take your professional future nowhere fast. Make impulsive decisions. You may fantasize about the moment you quit, tell your boss off in a...

‘Get to Work’ Show on Sundance Profiles Programs That Help Chronically Unemployed

The brand-new “Get to Work” show on Sundance offers a behind-the-scenes look at the STRIVE program, a sort of career boot camp targeted at chronically unemployed Americans like drug addicts, ex-cons, the working poor, the homeless and the welfare dependent. Sundance describes the program as “an unfiltered, uncompromising look at the work...

For 98 Percent of People, Multitasking Kills Productivity [infographic]

Despite what many might think about the merits of doing several things at once, for 98 percent of us, multitasking kills productivity. This infographic details some of the many reasons why. The biggest driver of productivity losses due to multitasking is distraction. Those who work on computers get distracted once every 10.5...

FBI Goes Paperless, Rolls Out Sentinel Digital Case Management System

The Federal Bureau of Investigations has officially gone paperless, rolling out the Sentinel digital case management system last month. The software’s 20,000 daily users can now perform searches to identify similarities between cases, electronically sign documents, and enter or review data from current suspects and cases, according to Mashable. Sentinel is a...

What Are the Country’s Most Thankless Jobs? [infographic]

We all know that not all jobs are created equal, and this infographic outlines some of the most thankless jobs in the U.S. based on public opinion, salary, stress and work environment. Can you guess what service workers have the worst combination of pay and job conditions? Perhaps unsurprisingly, dentists are the...

Marissa Mayer Rolls Out Google-Inspired Perks at Yahoo

All eyes have been on Marissa Mayer since she was appointed CEO of Yahoo, and in the latest round of news, it seems she’s brought some perks inspired by those at her old Google gig. Can the new additions rev up employee engagement? Kara Swisher at All Things D reports that Mayer...

FullContact Ups the Employee Perk Ante With $7,500 Vacation Policy

Denver startup FullContact has an attractive strategy to woo and retain its team members. The company’s vacation policy holds that each worker is entitled to a $7,500 vacation bonus on top of his or her typical salary. The only catch is that employees must fully go off the grid — no checking...

5 Tips on Career-Switching

Career-switching isn’t just for millennials; this week, the blogosphere published a wave of advice on changing jobs that’s appropriate for professionals of any age. Whether you’re looking to travel full-time or just lock down a career in an upwardly moving sector, we’ve got you covered. Consider some form of teaching. Professionals who...

Upper-Echelon Career Women Are Thinner Than Their Less-Successful Counterparts, Study Finds

The good news: Successful women in the fields of business, law and medicine are the only social group that has lost weight over the last 15 years. The bad news: That weight loss is because they feel they must be thin to get ahead. Even worse: a new study confirms that overweight...

Google Maps Coordinate Facilitates Mobile Workforce Management

Google Maps Coordinate, the latest addition to the Maps app, was designed to enable managers to keep track of their mobile workers by visualizing their location on a map. Leaders can use the service to create jobs, while employees can claim new assignments, check in at job sites and update the status...

Salary and Career News Round Up: The New Womb Chair, Preventing Burnout and Reporter Fired for Facebook Post

Every Friday we round up the salary trends, career stories and job news that you may have missed during the past week.

Searching for Documents Costs Companies $3,900 Per Employee Each Year in Productivity Losses [infographic]

Employees each spend about 30 minutes a day searching for documents, a resource drain that costs businesses $3,900 per employee each year in productivity losses. That time isn’t spent thumbing through file cabinets or flipping through books; instead, it’s sifting through emails, clicking through computer folders and navigating the murky waters of...

Terefic Simplifies the Job Reference Process

Job references are a necessary yet hassle-filled part of the application process for both employer and candidate, and Terefic is a new tool that hopes to streamline the process. Terefic enables jobseekers to essentially build a portfolio of confidential job references from friends, coworkers and former colleagues; when it comes time for...

3 Underrated Challenges Women Face in the Workplace

We're all familiar with the major challenges women face in the workplace — the so-called glass ceiling, the "good ol' boys' club," the "second shift" moms report to after their 9-to-5 — but a trio of news items this week unveiled some obstacles you might not have previously considered. A dearth of...

Study Reveals Best States for Working Moms

The National Partnership for Women & Families has just released a report that assesses the best states for working moms according to legislation regarding breastfeeding mothers, parental leave and sick days. The full PDF report outlines all the laws that benefit new parents on a state-by-state basis, but the organization also gave each...

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner Outlines Solution for the Unemployment Crisis

It’s no secret that the U.S. unemployment rate is less than stellar, but according to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, the figure we should be paying the closest attention to is 3.5 million. That’s the number of available U.S. jobs that remain unfilled. Weiner thinks that as a whole, Americans are inadequately prepared...

How Do Employees Waste Time at Work? [infographic]

This infographic commissioned by VoIP company Fonality examines how office workers waste time at work by carrying out inefficient processes. The biggest time-waster in the average employee's eight-hour day is trying to contact customers or colleagues, an activity that Fonality found takes 74 minutes. Another activity that sucks the day away is...

Beauty and Salary: How Does Employee Attractiveness Affect Lifetime Pay? [infographic]

If you want to make as much money as possible in your lifetime, here’s some food for thought: Your chances of doing so are significantly higher if you’re attractive. This infographic shows the relationship between beauty and salary, and the numbers will astound you. Here’s a figure to kick things off: $230,000....

Should You Present a Job Offer When Asking for a Raise?

When asking for a raise, should you tempt your boss into giving you a counteroffer by presenting a job offer from another firm? This hardball tactic is definitely not for the weak of heart, but a Robert Half UAE recruitment study found that 36 percent of respondents, who were all senior human...

Muse Ad Agency Uses Draw Something App to Recruit Interns

We recently wrote about how the Work Club digital agency advertised for its creative director position using a Pinterest board, and now another agency, Muse Amsterdam, is using the Draw Something app to recruit its latest round of interns. The iOS game prompts users to draw various shapes and figures and then...

The Fix Young America Campaign Hopes to Spark a Startup Resurgence

The Fix Young America campaign hopes to fight youth underemployment and unemployment with a startup resurgence — a renaissance of sorts. The Young Entrepreneur Council is behind the initiative, and has partnered with startup accelerators and investors like MassChallenge, Venture for America and Codecademy to incentivize youth to start their own businesses....

Study Shows Successful, Ambitious People Really Do Have It All

We might admiringly say that someone doing well has it all, but new research shows that successful, ambitious people live longer and are happier than their less-driven peers. This research began in 1922, when psychologist Lewis Terman of Stanford began studying over 1,500 high-intelligence children in California. Over the next 70 years,...