How you communicate can say as much about you as what you communicate.

For example, you may have noticed that people often fall into either one of two contact categories – e-mail or voicemail.  You would do well to find out which one that new client or manager prefers as soon as possible.  Your lines of communication will be that much more secure.

Yet when it comes to e-mail, voicemail, Instant Messaging and even Twitter, there are traps waiting for you.  The way you use these vehicles on a day-to-day basis can be particularly revealing.

Here are some best practices – reminders for some, news for other – to keep in mind.  Don’t worry – they’ve all been field tested:

• You say goodbye and I say hello – It’s a typical scenario: Someone sends you an Instant Message at exactly the wrong time.  Sure, it’s nice to get an unexpected missive from a friend once in a while.  But IM’s can arrive just when you don’t have time to engage with them.  And the sender doesn’t know when to get off.  If the IM conversation needs to go on for more than five or ten minutes, call.  And if someone writes that they’re in the middle of something, let them get to it.

• In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream – Everyone can tell how you really feel when you dash off that e-mail/IM/Tweet response to something (or someone) that really bugs you.  Write the e-mail if you must, but save it as a draft and read it again later.  Better yet, delete it and start anew.  The ancillary to this is the e-mail written so quickly that it becomes the electronic variation of bad handwriting.  No one will know what it means, so it wastes everyone’s time and says “I’m too busy to care.”  Not a good message.  Take your time, use spell check and review before you send.

• It’s all personal – On a subliminal level, hearing your voice say that you can’t come to the phone right now tells me that you will get back to me.  Hearing your assistant or a “standard greeting” tell me you can’t come to the phone says something else entirely.  Seriously, is it that hard to set up a voicemail greeting using your voice?  Set it up once, keep it brief and you’ve demonstrated a personal touch that speaks well of you.

• Can we change the subject, please? – By now we’ve had e-mail long enough to know that in a long e-mail series, the topic will change.  So either stop replying and start anew or change the subject line to reflect your current topic.  Be specific in the subject line (e.g., “Statistics on sales for October”) rather than general (e.g., “Information requested”) to make it easier to scan and identify.  And like the IM conversations mentioned above, if the series threatens to go on for more four rounds, pick up the phone.

• “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” – Alexander Graham Bell had just spilled battery acid on himself when he made that first telephone call.  Not all of your voicemails are quite so urgent.  Don’t mark them as such unless it’s truly vital.  When every voicemail is special, then no voicemail is special.

I could go on but now it’s your turn.  What are your best practices?

Contributed by: Frank McGee
Writer, trainer, coach

We get calls everyday from people who have abruptly found themselves hitting the streets. These people have many years of experience and are not the “rejects”. Some organizations have found themselves with a duplication of efforts internally either through corporate mergers, overstaffing and quite often over projections of budgets. The first thing many executives will do is “trim the fat”.

Unfortunately, the formula for trimming is not something any of us can project. It isn’t always the weakest performers or problem employees. Sometimes it is the most junior of employees who get the ax, while other times it is the most senior level salaries that seem to make the biggest bottomline impact.

My advice to all of you is the same as the Boy Scout motto- ” Be Prepared”. None of us are immune from a company’s reduction in staff. It is imperative to keep yourself job worthy at all times. With the average job tenure today of 2 years, the loyalty factor between Employers and Employees is almost non-existent. You have to make yourself valuable and keep improving your skills. Today’s marketplace is not the same as many of our parents. Back then, you developed a trade and it pretty much was consistent throughout your career. Now roles are changing on a daily basis. If you can’t keep up with the changes, you will be part of the “dead” industries from not so long ago (remember the Typehouse).

Part of all our preparation can be summed up as follows:

1- Know your marketplace (Know your potential industry and the companies who utilize your skills)

2- Stay current with training and technology (By keeping up with the most current releases of software and computer technology, you become the “company guru”. Staying ahead of the game puts you ahead of the competition. It also helps to keep your salary ahead also.

3- Keep your resume and/or portfolio up to date (Don’t let that dust collect. Keep everything current and in presentation format)

4- Keep an eye on job opportunities (Don’t necessarily jump at anything that comes along, but by watching hiring trends and salary ranges you are better prepared should anything happen)

5- Share the Responsibility of Your Performance Assessment with your Supervisor (Don’t wait for someone to come to you and tell you how your are doing. Your assumption may be totally different from their view. Make sure you know how others view your work. Ask for your annual review in writing. Take the initiative to write your own self-assessment. Document your successes for later reference).

6- Keep in contact with your Strong Business references (Protect those relationships. They can be the difference between a yes or no)

While the market today is somewhat unstable, it will get better. Things always go in cycles and those who can dig deep and survive the storm will be that much stronger in the end. Employers are much more likely to hang onto employees who are constantly working to improve their performance and skills. You are making yourself hard to replace.