Even if interviewer tries to solicit an answer from you regarding your required salary before making a job offer be cautious and be canny.

The best time to discuss salary question is once you have been made an offer.

The following questions will kill your chances of getting job:

QUESTION ONE What is my salary? Do not ask about salary unless you have a job offer or until interviewer has raised subject first and even then adopt a coy approach. This may not happen until second interview or even later when a job offer has been extended. If interviewer pushes for an answer, use your prior research on market rates to give a salary range.

QUESTION TWO How many days holiday/sick leave do I get? Some interviewers may perceive this as a sign of being more concern about yourself than company. Naturally, you want to get this information, but leave it like salary question, until you have an offer on table.

It’s time for that annual ritual of making (and breaking) our New Year’s resolutions. There is something about idea of being able to start over that motivates us to pause (at least briefly) and reflect on our lives as they are, as well as how we would like them to be. Yet how many times have you thought back to last year’s goals and found that many or most of them were abandoned or just forgotten after a few months into year?

Many of us have difficulty following through on our resolutions due to factors such as choosing unrealistic goals, not making them challenging enough and/or lacking necessary motivation to stick with them.

The following tips should help put you on right course and assist you in staying committed to your most important goals for 2003.

1. Start with a life vision

If you don’t know what you want your future to look like, how can you decide what areas of your life need to be worked on? Spend some quiet time TODAY reflecting on (and writing down) what is good, bad or incomplete. Then try to “see” your life if all of these areas were addressed and had become satisfactory to you.

2. Get organized

Clear away clutter. Go through paperwork, files, old bills and receipts, closets, drawers and storage containers. Decide what you need and will use and either throw out or give away all rest. Put aside some time each week for this purpose. Focus on one area (or box) at a time until you are finished. Having available file drawer space, trash bags, file folders and pens handy will speed things along. Try not to handle any thing more than once. Make a decision and act on it immediately. After you have cleaned out you can think about your existing systems for management and storage and see if these need reworking or just some fine-tuning. Make sure you use ONE calendar to record everything. Otherwise you will either overbook, miss appointments and events or just waste a lot of time trying to constantly go back, re-do and sort out your schedule.

3.Expand your horizons and make a commitment to learning something new.

Challenging yourself will infuse you with greater energy and sense of purpose. It will help build your self-esteem to realize you are capable of more than you had previously believed. This new learning can also give you additional resources to assist you in your career, personal or love life.

4. Set challenging but realistic resolutions