This article is part of the Workplace Anthropology series.

Job interviews are awkward experiences regardless of which side of the table you're sitting on.

From the applicant's perspective, you generally have 30 minutes to present a compelling argument for your candidacy.

From the interviewer's side, you have 30 minutes to decide if a person is truly who they claim to be.

Neither of you will be completely honest—the candidate will work to downplay weak skill areas and the interviewer will firmly block problematic areas of the company from public view. Despite these deceptions it’s a pretty formulaic engagement, which makes it possible to predict and potentially affect the outcome of this meeting. 

If you've ever walked away from an interview and felt strongly that the job was within reach or believed that you blew it, your instincts were probably pretty close. Research on dyadic social interaction indicates individuals will reciprocate the behavior that is projected by the other person.

For example, participants will adopt the same posture on video conference calls—a head tilt, resting their chin in their palm, hands on the table—and they do it without consciously thinking about it.

The same is true in physical meetings as well. A colleague of mine recently pointed out that the even though the chairs in our meeting room could swivel, we had turned our bodies physically, instead of turning the chair, following the example of one individual.

And when it comes to use of digital devices, it only takes one person to to pull out a phone during a meeting (if they were put away in the first place) and the rest will follow. In these instances, we reinforce the non-verbal behavioral cues that we witness to confirm our relationships with each other. We are saying, “We are alike. We belong here. We share the same goals."

This type of mimicry is fundamental to how we approach meeting and getting to know people. Non-verbal behavioral cues helps us establish commonalities in the absence of direct social information, which in turn helps us build and grow our networks. By the time a candidate is called into an interview, their skills have already been vetted on paper (or the electronic recruiting system). Workplaces are microcosms for the larger social networks that we exist in.

Whenever possible, we try to find and take jobs that reflect some part of our world view. We form work relationships with people we believe are most like us. Successful teams in the workplace are those where there are minimal personality conflicts. For this reason, while skills matter—and will certainly be a factor in being able to keep the job once you’ve gotten it—the interview is really an exercise in emotional intelligence. 

In an interview setting, we’re very likely to respond to non-verbal behaviors because we’re looking for any sort of insight on the person sitting across from us. If an interviewer appears to be warm and friendly—for example, if this person smiles and nods during the discussion—the candidate will respond in kind, and likely see a boost in confidence that will perpetuate the positive flow of energy between the two people. Ultimately, this builds a connection between the individuals, and connections are the goal in an interview setting. In contrast, if the interviewer is cold and unfriendly—perhaps he frowns often, sighs, or checks the clock—this may not foster an open discussion and in turn decreases opportunities to create a connection and establish shared interests.

In one study, independent judges were asked to rate the interactions between candidates and interviewers.

The grades the judges assigned directly reflected the non-verbal behavior of the interviewers.

For example, the ratings for candidates with low self-esteem were significantly lower when they met with an interviewer who was cold, but they received comparable ratings against candidates with high self esteem when faced with a personable interviewer. We want people to like us.

People with high self-esteem may be inclined to believe they are likable, and they enter the interactions believing that they will connect with others. If they interviewer is cold, highly confident candidates are able to externalize the behavior and not believe that it directly reflects on them. They may feel the absence of a connection, but the impact on their confidence and affability may be minimal. 

For a person with low self-esteem who is inclined to believe that people may not immediately like them, a cold interviewer may be a huge challenge. If the candidate is withdrawn, the interviewer may perceive this as a deficit in skills, and withdraw as well.

And if the candidate falls back on skills in this case and emphasizes competencies, it can actually hurt their candidacy. In another study, candidates who were focused on appearing pleasant and agreeable, who were able to offer compliments to interviewers and maintain small talk, were rated as being a better fit for the prospective job, and were more likely to be hired when compared to candidates who used the interview to focus solely on their credentials.

Organizations have never been more publicly focused on culture. Almost every company career page you visit will talk at length on how the company is focused on building a human-focused culture that celebrates innovative thinking with free snacks, team bonding events, and an office dog. Increasingly, these cultures are built on sameness. Yes, there are many regulations in place to prevent discriminatory practices, and candidates may be hard pressed to learn why it was that they really did not get the job, but ultimately, what determines whether they do is how well they are able to convince the interviewer that they will want to talk to them again.

Interviewers would do well to be aware of this particular bias. And fortunately for candidates, their job fate rarely rests on the decision of a single individual. Increasingly, interview processes include multiple meetings with multiple people so that there are more consensus driven decisions. Hiring is an inherently human process. While we may never fully get away from our instinctual reactions, by approaching these meetings with a greater awareness of ourselves and others, both candidates and interviewers may more critically and fairly evaluate the role at hand the best fit for that position.

SEE ALSO: 11 job interview tricks that are hard to master, but will pay off forever

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Does looking at your mobile email app give you anxiety?

Is your inbox overflowing with unread messages, eCards you haven't responded to, and other incomprehensible requests you haven't had the time to touch?

If yes, your email is out of control. But don't worry. These 5 effortless strategies will get you on top of your email again — and your life.

1. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize

When you have countless emails clogging up your inbox, it's incredibly important that you remember which messages are most important for you to check: those from your boss, your team members, upper management, family members and significant others. Whenever you delve into your inbox, look for emails from those people first. It'll give you peace of mind.

2. Do you what you have to do first. And your email second

Although it's tempting to jump right into your work day by responding to emails, it turns out that beginning by looking at your inbox is one of the least productive things you can do to start your day. Instead, make a list of what you need to get done — like projects, assignments, or other concrete tasks — and set aside time to complete each one before looking at your inbox again.

3. Don't get lost in long chains

If there are a million people copied on a chain and everyone seems to be arguing back and forth before reaching a resolution, it will almost definitely be a waste of time to participate. Resist the urge to join the conversation.You'll just keep losing productivity.

4. Set an example

As both a leader and employee, you can set the tone for your email conversations by using thoughtful language, relevant subject lines, and concise, to-the-point language. Also, as a rule of thumb, try not to copy anyone else that isn't directly related to the message that you're sending. You wouldn't want someone doing the same thing to do.

5. Hit "Reply All" sparingly

When responding to emails, try to remember that your message should go only to the people who will care about your response. Don't hit "reply all" unless you actually need to reply all. It'll make both your life and theirs easier.

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Simon Sinek is the author of four books, including his latest, "Leaders Eat Last." He sat down with Business Insider to discuss the biggest mistake young professionals often make in their first jobs.  Following is a transcript of the video. 

You know, there’s nothing wrong with taking a job to take it when you're straight out of school. I mean, you know, unfortunately, we were all told when we were growing up, “Find a job.” We weren't told, “Find a job you love.”

I would like it that we're a little more discerning from the beginning, but it's okay because what we're gaining is experience. I think one of the challenges that millennials face is impatience, which is after being at a job for a few months if it's not their “dream job,” they bump and find a new one. But the problem is you won't know that in a few months, especially when you’re entry level.

So, if you're going to just take a job at least use it as an education. If it's not the job you love, then learn. Learn from the bad leadership that you're experiencing. Learn from the things that you like and don't like. Not to mention the fact that finding a great job is not like a scavenger hunt. You don't look under a rock a be like, “I found it! Here's a job I love.”

You know? A great career, a fulfilling career is like a great relationship. You don’t find love either. You don't look under a rock and be like “Oh! I found the person I can love.” That's not how it works. You find somebody who really loves you for you and you work hard every single day to stay in love. It's not something you can take for granted. After you fall in love, you still have to keep working at it. It's like going to the gym. You have to work really hard to get into shape, but once you're in shape you actually have to keep going to the gym. You can't stop. It's something you have to keep doing. So it's the same thing.

You want a great relationship, you have to work hard to form the great relationship and then you have to continue to work at it when you're in it. Careers are the same. You have to work hard to find that you’re like, “Oh my God. I really love it here.” But then the work continues to stay in love. It's not something you find. It's not some miracle thing and if you think it's that way then you’re going to keep going from job, to job, to job, to job, and unfortunately, you’ll never find what you're looking for.

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You'd have to be on a desert island with no internet to have missed the efficiency memo — or misogynist manifesto — penned by James Damore, a senior engineer at Google.

In the memo, which was first circulated within Google and was later published in full by Gizmodo, Damore complained that the company was focusing too much on diversity and that women weren’t cut out to be engineers.

Such thinking “is definitely entrenched in a company the size of Google, but it also happens in small companies, so I wouldn't say anybody is off the hook," said Nicole Sanchez, CEO and founder of  Vaya Consulting, which specializes in diversity.

Sanchez spent three years as a vice president of social impact at GitHub, a code-focused tech company.

"The problem is so difficult to unearth, in part, because mostly people keep quiet. … He cannot be the only person who thinks this, and so usually as a woman in tech, you are navigating nameless, faceless adversaries, which is really difficult. In this case, it was brought to light and we can address it.”

Over the weekend, the company distanced itself from the memo via a letter sent to employees by Google’s diversity chief Danielle Brown, who wrote that the memo was not a viewpoint that the “company endorses, promotes or encourages.” Google later fired Damore, saying that he violated its policies.

“We strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it,” Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a memo to the staff. “However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.’”

Damore, who confirmed his firing to the press, said that he is exploring “all possible legal remedies.” 

Google’s decision to fire Damore could end up making him a hero for other people who agree with his opinions, Sanchez said.

“The risk that they must have know they were taking is martyring this person,” she said. “What they had to have known they did is create a new hero for people who are not on board with diversity and inclusion."

What’s more, his dismissal doesn’t solve Google’s diversity problem.

Earlier this summer, Google released employee demographic data gathered at the beginning year that showed little progress had been made on the diversity front. Overall, women made up just 31 percent of its staff, and just 2 percent of its staff identified as black and 4 percent as Hispanic.

Women made up 20 percent of employees in tech position — a 1 percent increase from the year before, according to Google. Just 1 percent of tech positions went to employees who identified as black and 3 percent to those who identified as Hispanic.

To really tackle its diversity problem, Google should prioritize it in the same way it has prioritized innovation in fields such as artificial intelligence and driverless cars, according to Sanchez.

"Google has decided that it wants to be the company that solves some of the world's biggest challenges, so they've created things like Google X and Google AI. They really want to take on these huge challenges, like going to Mars and creating autonomous vehicles, yet they have not taken the issue of race, gender, class — the isms that plague us — and put them alongside their moonshots,” she said. “Until they are ready to do that, they are going to continue to limp along, and their diversity and inclusion efforts are going to be buried deep inside an HR structure that is to serve [72,000] of people, and that's just not where the problems are going to get solved."

While for some Google employees this week’s scandal been a distraction, for others it was a stark reminder that they aren’t welcome, said Sanchez, who thinks the company will lose a lot of talented engineers over this.

“I've talked to several women in the last few days who've said they've started interviewing elsewhere,” she said.

SEE ALSO: How the CEO of YouTube responded to a question from her daughter about the Google manifesto

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When you're sending an email to a colleague or a client, you might like to keep the tone light to build a friendly relationship.

However, a new study suggests you should be careful how casual you make your emails.

Researchers from BGU, University of Haifa, and Amsterdam University found that including emojis in work emails may make your colleagues think you are less competent, which can make them less likely to share information with you.

The researchers carried out a series of experiments with 549 participants from 29 different countries.

In one experiment participants were asked to read a work-related e-mail from a stranger and evaluate both the competence and warmth of that person.

The participants all received similar messages, but only some included smiley emojis.

"Our findings provide first-time evidence that, contrary to actual smiles, smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence,"said Dr. Ella Glikson, a post-doctorate fellow at BGU's Department of Management. "In formal business e-mails, a smiley is not a smile."

The study also found that when participants were asked to reply to the work emails, less information was shared to the senders of the smileys.

The experiment also demonstrated a degree of sexism in the interpretation of the use of emojis.

When the gender of the sender was unknown, recipients were more likely to assume that the e-mail was sent by a woman if it included a smiley.

"People tend to assume that a smiley is a virtual smile, but the findings of this study show that in the case of the workplace, at least as far as initial 'encounters' are concerned, this is incorrect," Glikson said.

"For now, at least, a smiley can only replace a smile when you already know the other person. In initial interactions, it is better to avoid using smileys, regardless of age or gender."

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• Goldman Sachs has hired a top Silicon Valley executive to help attract tech talent.
• Wall Street firms are digitizing their offerings and are competing with tech giants for engineering talent.

Goldman Sachs is bringing on a Silicon Valley-insider to lure tech talent.

The investment bank has hired Andrew Tout from Square, a San Francisco-based financial technology company, to help fill the bank with top engineering talent, according to Bloomberg. Tout will be joining the bank to fill a new position tasked with leading engineering recruitment. 

Goldman Sachs has been on a hiring spree to become the Google of Wall Street. Specifically, the investment bank is staffing up Marquee, its platform that provides clients access to the bank's analytics, data, content via a browser of an API.

One ad posted in mid-July said the bank is "looking for creative and talented engineers to build out our next generation client facing risk and execution platforms."

In addition to hiring Tout, Goldman has raised the pay for programmers fresh out of college to lure them away from the Valley, according to Bloomberg. 

"Prior to the changes, a beginning engineer in New York could expect to make a base salary of about $83,000, with a bonus of about $12,000," according to Bloomberg. "That would probably climb to more than $100,000, with a larger bonus under the new policy."

Tiffany Galvin, a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman, told Business Insider the firm is focused "on attracting top tech talent."

Attracting talent away from the Valley will not be an easy feat, according to one Silicon Valley veteran. 

Goldman and other top banks have struggled to compete with tech firms, which offer more flexible hours and better perks such as casual dress codes and fridges stocked with beer. 

Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, a software firm, told Business Insider Wall Street's problem won't be easy to overcome. He thinks even if firms like Goldman Sachs try to mimic tech culture, tech firms will have the upper hand in attracting talent. 

"If you are a rock star programmer, you want to come to Silicon Valley and change the world, not use your talents to help bankers make more money," Tzuo said. 

SEE ALSO: Young Wall Streeters were surveyed about their experiences in finance — and their responses were brutal

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• Etsy provides a space for 1.7 million "Hobbypreneurs" to turn a hobby into a profit-making venture.
• We spoke to four successful sellers to find out how they turned their side-hustles into full-time careers.
• Research shows 32% of the UK is considering switching to a more rewarding career, such as turning a hobby into a profit-making venture.

Tired of working the daily nine-to-five slog? If you have a creative hobby, there could be a much more enjoyable way to earn a living. 

A new report, commissioned by investment management firm Investec Click & Invest, showed that 32% of the population is planning to make a major life adjustment in the next five years, such as turning a hobby into a profit-making venture— a group of people the report called "Hobbypreneurs."

The report — based on a survey of 3,652 people across the UK in February 2017, as well as a snap poll survey of 2,000 people in July 2017 — also revealed that 79% of people agreed there was "no age limit on making a big change to your life." Some 79% added that they would rather do something they love than something well paid.

Meanwhile, a new report from Not on the High Street and Oxford Economics showed that over a quarter of the 134,000 creative businesses in the UK are run by women, with 95% citing a greater sense of achievement due to running their own business.

Online marketplace Etsy provides one such platform for creative Hobbypreneurs to turn their side hustle into a full-time career.

Etsy has 1.7 million active sellers and 28.6 million active buyers. In return for a 3.5% cut of sales, it allows those with a knack for creating something — from knitwear to perfume, and jewellery to pottery — to set up a shop. And it turns out they're turning a pretty healthy profit, when it's done right.

We spoke to four successful Etsy sellers in the UK to find out how they turned an on-the-side hobby into a money-making venture. Scroll down to read their stories.

This 34-year-old woman doubled her salary by going full-time with Etsy — and works only four days a week.

Name: Louise Verity

Age: 34

Location: Northampton, England

Etsy Store:Bookishly UK: Literary gifts for book lovers.

How did it start?

I started selling on Etsy while I had a full time job in HR administration. I had recently been made redundant from Virgin Megastores. I went into some admin roles and went to night school to train in HR. At the same time I started this hobby making these little prints onto book pages and framing them into block frames that my family's business made. I started putting them on Etsy, and it became fairly successful. After a while, I got pregnant and decided to use a bit of the time I had while on maternity leave to give it a go full-time, and I ended up not going back to my job.

What does your business look like now?

Shortly after the maternity leave period, I got so busy I started taking other people on. Now there's 12 of us. Not everybody is full time — half are part-timers.

We've got three units in a business centre in Northampton — one office and two workshops, one where all the parcels go out from and a framing workshop with machinery and materials.

In our office we have admin, designers, and a full-time marketing graduate. It's made a big difference and increased our volume.

One of the [other] things that’s made a big difference is we’ve brought our framing in-house. We have our own framer, [and we] started offering frames in small wholesale batches to other businesses, which is going quite nicely.

What hours do you work?

I work just in school hours, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I'm massively fortunate to be able to do that, to pick up the kids from school every day and take them to school every day. The whole of Wednesday [I spend] with my pre-schooler and don’t do a huge amount at weekends and evenings any more. When I started it was constant — [put the] kids in bed, [get the] laptop out — but now I’ve got this team who are a bit more established.

How does your income compare to your previous job?

I had a really standard job — full time, commuting 45-50 minutes to an entry level HR admin job Monday to Friday. Now I'm working four short days a week earning more than double that. I'm massively fortunate it’s worked out that way. There’s alot of risk involved in having your own business and I can never guarantee it's always going to be like that, but so far [so good].

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start an Etsy store?

Just completely go for it. You don't have to have everything perfect straight away. The first product I sold, our book page prints, when I first listed them they were £6 each — we now sell them for £25.

I've learned so much since I first started but I don't regret selling them for £6. I improved my listings, photography, everything as I was going along. Don't imagine everything is going to be perfect straight away, just get stuff listed and start the process.

This 44-year-old mother used Etsy to save up for her wedding.

Name: Janice Worsley

Age: 44

Location: Bradford, England

Etsy Store:SwankyCrafts: Handmade jewellery, cards and gifts specialising in bridesmaid bracelets.

Where did the idea for your Etsy store come from?

I’m a mum, [and while] my kids are grown up, throughout their childhood crafts were one of their favourite things to do. I never thought about it as a potential business, it was just for the kids, but we did all enjoy it.

I was a single mum from quite young, so it was more important to have a proper wage. In June 2015, my friend had started a business and I saw a different way of life where you could be your own boss.

My neighbours were getting married, and I had made them a card. In July 2015, I opened my shop and started doing cards and gifty things. It started getting quite popular, [but I was only making] a sale or two a week. I realised doing greeting cards and gifts was never going to be something I could see as a long-term thing. I did a bit of research and thought jewellery could be a good thing. It's known to be a saturated market, but I thought if I could get that business to be popular, I would be able to go full-time one day.

I was only selling one a week at first — it was very slow. Then in December 2015 I got engaged. I suddenly thought, why aren't I marketing this to bridesmaids? Instead of one sale, I'd be getting five or six. That's when the business started taking off.

What does your business look like now?

I still have my full-time job — doing data analysis for a large bank — but from July I dropped a day a week. [As far as] my business situation, I do it on evenings and have a spare room in my house that is my studio. I also have some staff — one official staff member who works 15 hours, makes all the bracelets, does the packaging, and works from home.

How does your Etsy income compare to your full-time job?

I’m currently making three times what I make in my full-time day job in revenue, [and] I expect it to do better as well. [There will be] a lot more going on once rebranding is done.

What's your best advice for someone interested in Etsy?

Absolutely do it. It's free to open an Etsy shop, and even if you pay for your initial listing it's about 14p. That's all you'll lose if you don't make a sale.

But give time to it. You can’t open a shop and expect it to take off. I do hear of it, but thats the exception.

This 34-year-old pays her east London mortgage thanks to her Etsy income.

Name: Lucie Ellen

Age: 34

Location: London, England

Etsy Store:Lucie0ellen: Wooden jewellery and homewares.

How did it start?

I opened my Etsy shop eight years ago, but I've been running my business for about 10 years. I was working in a shop and a cinema and making jewellery on the side. I got a market stall at the Backyard Market on Brick Lane and [sold there] for about five years on Saturday and Sunday. It went from strength to stength, but I needed something extra as my mum wasn't well.

What does the business look like now?

I make a range of wooden jewellery, entirely by hand, in a studio in my garden in Leyton, east London. I have a woodworking shop where I cut all of the pieces, and an office where I do the packing and admin. I sell through Etsy, my own online store, and shops and galleries, alot of which have found me through Etsy.

[My wife also] makes her own products. We were both successful in the beginning at the same time which was nice. We work separately but in the same house.

What does your day look like?

I really like getting up early. I feed the cats, have a cup of tea, go down to the studio, and pack my orders in the morning. I come back up and have my breakfast, then get on with making. I make sure everything is done to do a post run early afternoon, then catch up on my email. I finish around 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. I work 10 hour days.

I have a few favourite jobs that I save to the end of the day which I can do with an audiobook on, [like] varnishing pieces I make. It's a meditative activity.

If I have a market [stall] I have to spend a few hours preparing for that. I'm also doing social media etc throughout the day.

What income can you expect to make from Etsy?

Etsy makes up about a quarter of my income, the rest is from other sources. I own a flat in east London which I bought five years ago with inheritance that I got when my mum died. We had a fairly hefty deposit, [but] our mortgage isn’t as big as other people’s, [so] our overheads aren't as big.

I think if it was [just] me I would maybe need to outsource some more to keep up with the demand. I only have a certain amount of time I can make things, but I think it would be possible, I know people that do it.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start an Etsy store?

Be prepared to work really hard. There’s alot of people out there at the moment doing it, you need to work really hard doing it or it’s quite easy to get lost. It will take time for it to become something that will make you proper money. Don't get too concerned if it's what other people are doing, it can be a dangerous hole to go down comparing yourself [to others]. If you've got an idea that you think is great, then concentrate on that and people will see the passion behind it.

This 28-year-old started an Etsy business from her parents house — and now has eight staff in a four-room office.

Name: Maria Fox

Age: 28

Location: Hove, England

Etsy Store:Maria Allen Boutique: Unique personalised jewellery and gifts

How did it start?

I started off way back when I was at school making and selling handmade cards. Someone said I should sell them because they looked professional, so I started selling them in shops in the lane in Brighton.

From the ages of 14 to 18 I had a handmade card business. When I was 18 I was going into my first year of university in Brighton for graphic design. Around then I couldn't find jewellery I really liked that was right for me, so I tried to make some myself. I taught myself how to take older jewellery apart and put it back together into new things.

I started doing this and wearing these pieces, [then started] getting orders from friends and friends of friends. I opened my Etsy shop when I was 18, in my first year of uni.

I was living in my parent's house — their kitchen was where it started. I did my best to take some photos [and started] selling to different countries all over the world.

[I was getting] positive feedback to keep going and developing my designs. All of my spare time while I was studying was spent working on my business. I realised this could be my full-time job — I had always found it quite daunting what I was going to do when I graduated. [So] when I graduted in 2011 I decided to start running my business full-time. I took up every possible space in my parents house, [and] at one point realised it was time to move, so I found a one room studio.

What does the business look like now?

Since then we've grown and moved premises several times. Within less than a year we outgrew [the studio] and moved into two rooms. Then we outgrew those. We now have four rooms in our studio — my office, sales and marketing, a making room with laser cutters and a metal engraver, and a packing/dispatch/customer service room.

We're now a team of eight, but [this can get] up to about 14 at Christmas.

Etsy is part of our business, but it’s not all of it. We do sell through other channels as well but Etsy was the first shop I launched on. We’ve grown our Etsy sales hugely. Our Etsy sales grew 137% year on year to 2016.

The business turned over more than £100,000 during the three years while I was studying at university, [and] we're currently on track to turn over more than £500,000 this year.

Do you think you're earning more with Etsy than you would be in a nine-to-five job?

It's much more about [the fact that] it doesn't feel like work, and the freedom that the business provides me. This is my full-time job — it's about creating a job that I love and jobs for other people as well.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to start an Etsy store?

Start with a really great quality product, something innovative, and get good clear photos of it. Use the Etsy forums. Etsy provide brilliant stats. Always keep looking for ways to improve. Start and don’t wait for the ideal time.

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Ever walked up to a stranger at a party, a networking event, or just a new acquaintance and wanted to make sure they left the conversation with a positive impression? 

Robin Dreeke, a Naval Academy graduate, former Marine, former head of a federal behavioral analysis program, a current FBI agent, and coauthor of "The Code of Trust" shared three strategies with Business Insider to connect with anyone, anywhere. Following is a transcript of the video.

Three ways to build connections with people is by asking questions, active listening, and decoding nonverbal behavior. It's really pretty simple because when you ask questions, the other person's brain's automatically engaging. It's the best thing you do.

Again, when you're asking questions, again, nonjudgmentally or in a challenging way, but from a seeking to understand way, you're demonstrating their value and you're demonstrating an affiliation, and their brain is really rich and rewarded for it.

Did you ever hear the expression, "Hey, you want to plant seeds for someone to think about tomorrow?"

You don't do that by telling someone what to do, or telling them your thoughts and opinions. You do that by asking them questions because their brain will engage those things and they can't stop. So, that's the first one.

Active listening — that is really simple for me because, by just demonstrating that you're listening by following up  on the statements and information they're giving you during an encounter.

Get rid of the things that you think you had to say in any kind of script, and pay attention to what they're saying and follow up with even deeper questions about understanding who they are and their thoughts and opinions.

And finally is the nonverbals. And what we're in nonverbal behavior to demonstrate that we actually do have affiliation and liking going on, is we're looking for the smiling, maybe a little head tilt, exposing a carotid artery, trusting the world not to rip out my jugular. Palms up, ventral displays, eyebrow elevation, all these things are saying and demonstrating we have liking, we have affiliation. As opposed to the eyebrow compression, lip compression. This is saying you're not doing something right, and you need to adjust what you're doing in order to make that connection.

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One way to get your foot in the door at Apple is to know where to look to find secrets hidden on its website. 

For example, if you direct your browser to us-east-1.blobstore.apple.com, you'll find a hidden plain text job listing looking for a distributed systems engineer.

"Hey there! You found us," reads the job listing. "We are looking for a talented engineer to develop a critical infrastructure component that is to be a key part of the Apple ecosystem."

The job sounds pretty great — you get to work on a small team, on important projects, for the most valuable publicly traded company. 

Of course, we are not talented engineers. We first discovered the page through a tweet by ZDNet's Zach Whittaker. 

The phrase "us-east-1" refers to an Amazon Web Services region, and the page shows up even if you swap that string out for "us-west-1". In this context, a "blob" is most likely a piece of data that's stored in a database.

The page is also available at the IP address 17.132.22.30.

Besides that, we're stumped about how someone would find this page. Maybe there are clues included in Apple's Secure Enclave software that recently had its firmware decryption key published. 

If you know more about this page, email the author at kleswing@businessinsider.com. 

SEE ALSO: Apple's $5 billion 'Spaceship' campus looks nearly finished a month before the next iPhone launches

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NOW WATCH: We tried Amazon's $50 tablet — here's what it's like

We've all heard it since kindergarten: treat others the way you wish to be treated. This "golden rule" has long been a mainstay of interpersonal interaction.

Robin Dreeke, a Naval Academy graduate, former Marine, former head of a federal behavioral analysis program, a current FBI agent, and coauthor of "The Code of Trust" reveals why this conventional thinking is actually the wrong way to go about making a connection with another person.

He instead lays out what he calls the "platinum rule": treating others they way they wish to be treated. Following is a transcript of the video.

ROBIN DREEKE: The difference between following the "golden rule" versus the "platinum rule" is really pretty simple. The "golden rule" is about treating people as you want to be treated, but let's take it to the next level, if you want to inspire people to do things and take action, you use the "platinum rule." Which is: treat people how they want to be treated. 

And so, in order to do that, you actually have to start diving deep and understanding what their priorities are. Their needs, wants, dreams, aspirations — personal, professional, long term and short term. You know, when you're doing that, and following the "platinum rule," you're making it all about them.

The best thing to do is: try to figure out whether someone is either people-oriented or task-oriented.

'Cause if someone is people-oriented in their engagement, it's easy to tell. They use a lot more personalization, a lot more use of pronouns, a lot more personal stories and anecdotes. And so, when you want to have a great conversation with, and engage someone like this, use those types of things.

As opposed to someone who's more task-oriented, they're looking more about the process, procedures, and how to do something, rather than who to do it with. And so, when you just use those basic understandings of how people are genuinely trying to interact, and just modify your communication for them.

One of the humbling moments I caused in my early career — I can't remember how long I actually had in, a couple years. I had been doing really well. I'm a people-oriented individual, but you love people so much, one of your favorite topics of people is me, myself.

And what I was doing was — there was an opportunity to talk to a university student in New York that actually was in touch with one of our subjects that we were looking at.

And, when I interacted with this guy, I was doing what I had always done with every other human being before that seemed to work really well. I was being very people-oriented. I was using a lot of anecdotes and stories. I'm talking about going to sporting events, I was looking forward to try to get to a Yankee game or a Rangers game.

I was just trying to be social, and trying to develop this relationship so we could actually move on to the information gathering. But what I failed to do was — I failed to understand that this guy was a Ph.D. candidate and working in a technical area, so in other words, he is very task-oriented, he wanted to know specifically what exactly I wanted, and how not to waste his time. And all I was doing was completely wasting his time because I was communicating the way I wanted to be communicated with, not the way he wanted to be communicated with.

I tried calling him up for a second meeting. Got no answer. I was like, "huh, that's interesting."

Called again. No answer. Email — no answer.

So, I did what any lover feels like when he's jilted. You use a different phone number. So, he didn't have caller ID, so I used a different phone number, and lo and behold he picks up the phone and he proceeds to tell me that nah, I'm just wasting his time and he'd rather not have any communication with me.

I reflected on that one a long time, and still do, because it was a great humbling moment realizing the difference between the "golden rule" and the "platinum rule."

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Hard work, perseverance and diligently practicing the right daily habits are key in getting ahead in business and life. But finding a big idea helps, as well.

Take it from Joel Holland, founder of VideoBlocks, a subscription-based platform for downloading stock footage, video, and looping motion backgrounds. While still in high school he started a TV show and interviewed more than 150 career professionals so as to help kids figure out what to do with their lives.

But, without a budget the production value of the show was lacking. Holland had even interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger but couldn't make the footage look professional because it was cost-prohibitive to purchase b-roll, music, professional graphics or other stock media. His frustration was the seed for a goal to make stock video affordable to everyone, regardless of budget.

After high school he pooled his savings, purchased some professional video equipment and hit the road for one year, traveling to over 30 U.S. cities shooting video, editing in hotel rooms, and selling clips.

Today VideoBlocks clears more than $25 million in sales, has 85 employees and claims to be the largest distributor of stock video with over 32 million downloads. Clients include professional production studios like NBC, Discovery and MTV as well as colleges, churches and video editing hobbyists. Holland has been named one of the "Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25" by BusinessWeek Magazine, "Young Entrepreneur of the Year" by the United States Small Business Administration, "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst and Young for the Greater Washington D.C. region, and made Inc. Magazine's "30 Under 30" list in 2013. Here are his words on how to find your next big idea.

1. Act like a child.

Do you remember how energizing life was a kid? Everything was exciting and possible. Build a fort? Give me some pillows. Design a spacesuit from scratch? Find mom's scissors and a bed sheet. Never once did you stop to overthink your ideas. You simply imagined, then created. So the first thing I want you to do is find a way to forget everything you accept about the world and how it works. Peel back the stinky onion layers that have been wrapped around the simplicity of childhood. I want you to tap back into that childlike mentality where creativity roams free and fantasy very gently blends with reality. I was fortunate to start my first business when I was 12, because kids lack the self-doubt and fear that plagues us as adults. Succeeding early on gave me a confidence that has helped me succeed through adulthood, and I'm very thankful for that. But even today when I want to find new ideas, I struggle. So the first thing I do when I want to brainstorm is try to reach back to my inner child.

One way I do this is to start the day by reading Calvin and Hobbes, and slipping into Calvin's fantastic world of imagination. Your approach might be different, but do whatever it takes to tap back into your inner child when every whim you had was a great idea, and had to be done immediately.

2. Take a road trip.

You've stepped back into your child-like world of wonder. Now you need to fully disconnect from everyday normal. While all travel is amazing and good for the soul, there is something particularly magical and therapeutic about a road trip. Maybe it is the complete flexibility it gives you in exploring on your schedule. Or maybe it is the hours of alone time behind the wheel with nothing to do but stare off into space and think about life and business. I use these precious hours to take inventory of what is great in my life, and what I think could be better. This leads to "what tools or technology could I employ to make it better?" With 7 billion people in the world, your needs are business opportunities that could help many others.

Three years ago I rented an RV, and it changed my life. I was feeling burned out and overwhelmed by the constant distractions of office life, and needed a way to find creative stimulation. On my first trip, I fell in love with the truly unbridled freedom I experienced. I could literally feel my passion and drive re-awakening. I ended up buying an RV, and have now traveled through all of the lower 48 United States, seeing incredible sights along the way, while coming up with some of the best business ideas I've had in my entire life.

3. Keep an ideas journal for 30 days.

Now that you've put yourself into an elevated state of mind above the noise of the real world, it is time to start brain dumping. Every day, force yourself to write down one business idea that solves a personal problem and could be monetized. At the end of 30 days, you might not have your next big idea in the journal, but you will have programmed your mind to start actively seeking a great idea. The subconscious is powerful tool, and priming it can lead to impressive results. Have you ever noticed how you start noticing cars that you're thinking about buying, or shoes you've been eyeing? It is automatic, your mind notices without you telling it to. Put your subconscious to productive use actively searching for business ideas.

4. Make like Nike and just do it.

The most successful people you know stopped overthinking and started acting on their ideas a long time ago. They didn't delay building their fort or sewing their spacesuit. As they say, the only way to guarantee failure is by failing to try. The one thing I can guarantee is that there is never a better time than right now to try something new.

To summarize: Pick a month where you are willing to dedicate some time to jump starting your creative mind. Start each day by doing an activity that reminds you of childhood. Then find a way to escape from the doldrums of everyday life, whether through a road trip or simply finding a quiet place to meditate. Once your mind is as ease, whip out a journal and do a brain dump of ideas--it doesn't matter if they are good or not, it is the exercise that primes the subconscious. Finally, if one day you hit upon gold, take action. Baby steps are fine, just ask yourself "what is one thing I could do in the next 30 days to put this idea into motion?"

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NOW WATCH: Amazon has an oddly efficient way of storing stuff in its warehouses

Ask a career expert what to talk about in a cover letter and they'll inevitably tell you to make it about the company — not about you.

It doesn't really matter that you desperately need a job; it doesn't matter that this particular gig would look great on your résumé. What are you offering the organization that they don't already have?

Even once you've landed the job, that mantra — make it about them— can come in handy. Specifically, when you're gearing up for a promotion, it's critical to think from your manager's perspective.

That's according to Robin Dreeke, a Naval Academy graduate, a former Marine, the former head of a federal behavioral analysis program, and a current FBI agent. Dreeke also recently co-authored "The Code of Trust" with Cameron Stauth.

"I never think in terms of convincing anyone of anything — I think in terms of inspiring them," Dreeke told us when he visited the Business Insider office in August. "If you want to move into a position of leadership, or you want to move up in the company, the first thing to ask yourself is, 'How can I inspire them to want me?'" Following is a transcript of the video.

ROBIN DREEKE: So, you want to get promoted, and you want to if you want to use the words convince, management that you're the guy for the job, or woman for the job.

The first question I ask myself all the time is I never think in terms of convincing anyone of anything, I think in terms of inspiring them. So, if I want to get a promotion, I want to get a raise, or any of these things, the first thing I ask myself is: "How can I inspire them to want to?"

And so if you want to move into a position of leadership, you want to move up in a company first thing to ask yourself is: "So how can I inspire them to want me?" And the first way you can inspire anyone to take action and want you to do anything is you've got to understand what's important to them.

How do they see prosperity? What can you do to make their job easier? And how can you do it so it's in terms of them and what's important to them.

Someone once asked me, "What do you think about the 30-second elevator pitch?" I said, "30-second elevator pitch is fine as long as you're talking, offering your skills in terms of you're talking, offering your skills in terms of what's important to them, otherwise, it's completely wasted words."

So, any time I'm put in for a position, or anyone's put in a position — demonstrate your skills. Put all those things down, those ego-gratifying moments. But don't do it for self-serving reasons, do it so you can demonstrate how these skills and attributes you have are going to be there for them to be a resource for your bosses to be successful and for the company to be successful, so it's no problem touting your own skills and abilities and demonstrating that, but only if it's in terms of the priorities of others.

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• Former bank compliance officer Michael Corrigan was jailed in 2012 for his part in a £3.4 million fraud case.
• While in prison he helped inmates write their CVs and prepared them for the job market.
• Corrigan has since set up Prosper4 Group, which has placed 300 former prisoners into work, with help from former Goldman Sachs banker Andrew Dixon.

LONDON – Five years ago, former Deloitte executive Michael Corrigan was jailed for his part in a £3.4 million fraud case while he was a senior compliance officer at Nigerian-owned Access Bank. "They decided to chuck the book at somebody, and chucked it at me."

He should, the judge surmised, have been satisfied with his six-figure salary and £50,000 bonus, and acted within the law, rather than signing off false guarantees.

Corrigan pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud, although his defence lawyer stressed he had not personally profited from the scam. He was sentenced to three years and four months, and was duly dispatched to Brixton prison.

"I was the poor, hapless compliance director," says Corrigan. 

But the jail sentence acted as a catalyst.

Corrigan was released in 2013 after 16 months in Brixton and Belmarsh prisons and now runs Prosper4 Group, which aims to get ex-offenders back into work.

Founded in 2014, the company secured £70,000 of start-up funding from an ex-Goldman banker, and works with prisons across the UK to prepare inmates for employment, improve training inside prisons and help find ex-offenders jobs with partnering companies, such as Premier Inn.

"There is a vast amount of money, hundreds of millions of pounds, spent by the prison service on education and training inside," he says. "I think 5% of it is anywhere near valuable."

Smartly dressed in a navy suit, Corrigan is polite, articulate and hugely enthusiastic about reforming what he sees as a faulty system.

"There is a vast amount of money, hundreds of millions of pounds, spent by the prison service on education and training inside," he says. "I think 5% of it is anywhere near valuable."

Although some prisons have "staggeringly good workshops," he says, this is the "cream of the cream," and many are substandard. Inmates in some prisons are still being trained in wet plaster lining as part of construction courses, he says, despite the fact that "no one uses this anymore."

The misdirection of resources does little to improve ex-offender employment and reoffending rates. By Corrigan's estimations, about a quarter of any prison population "really wants to work," and a lot more could be done in terms of productivity and improving people's lives, "if the system got its arse into gear."

Soon after beginning his sentence at Brixton prison, Corrigan was approached to help organise an inmate work programme. His experiences of running businesses and as a partner at Deloitte meant he was well placed to help broker work placements via the ROTL — Release on Temporary Licence — scheme, which allowed certain offenders to do paid work while on day release.

In Brixton, the scheme was in its infancy, with only a dozen people going out to a handful of businesses. "So," says Corrigan, "I wrote, in manuscript, letters to 50 major companies," pitching the idea of filling vacancies with skilled and eager inmate workers.

As the scheme progressed, Corrigan began to realise the scope of its potential, and started developing Prosper4's business plan. "I approached the whole problem from a pure business perspective," he says. "I've never approached this from a white, sappy, liberal, rose-tinted spectacles, sandal wearing guy's [perspective] — you know, do something nice and wear a kaftan."

Instead, he says, it was "pure supply and demand:" many big companies had vacancies they were struggling to fill, and inmates had the skills to do them. But there were significant "knowledge gaps" among the prison population, such as how to get a bank account and write a CV, preventing people moving forward.

So Corrigan — "Uncle Michael," he says — started running a CV workshop, alongside the work he was doing contacting possible employers.

One success story was a man called Smalls, who had been convicted for dealing drugs. Where Smalls shone, says Corrigan, was in management, teamwork and looking after commercial assets — "obvious, when you think about it," says Corrigan.

Coached by Corrigan, Smalls interviewed for a position with a construction company, and was one of two inmates to land a job with a £40,000 salary. (Prisoners undertaking paid work pay a Victim Support levy of up to 40% of their earnings, plus the usual taxable amount.)

It was during this period that ex-Goldman banker Andrew Dixon visited the prison, looking for an outreach project to support. He was so impressed with Corrigan that he gave him his business card and told him to call if he needed help when he got out.

£70,000 of kickstarter funding later, Prosper4 has placed 300 ex-offenders in work and is planning to launch an online jobs board in September, exclusively for ex-offenders and the first of its kind. Corrigan even employs his former prison Governor, Ed Tullett, who joined after retiring from HMP Brixton.

Before being convicted, Corrigan says, he had never been inside a prison.

But he discovered a "whole new world," and is now passionate about improving the system and helping people make more of their lives.

Both prisoners and ex-offenders have huge work potential, he says: what he'd like to see soon is the production of all the parts of a big commercial product — "the next Dyson hand-dryer?" he says — in prison workshops alone.

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NOW WATCH: There are cracks forming under the surface of the stock market

Go ahead and make your stoner jokes. It won’t bother the $7 billion cannabis industry one bit.

Legal weed now employs an estimated 120,000 people; a figure that’s expected to triple in the next few years, according to the research firm New Frontier Data.

For the weed dispensaries, farms, and software companies that will create the bulk of those jobs — and the job seekers who take them — there’s a new interweediery (you’re welcome).

Vangsters, a digital job platform à la Monster.com or Indeed, rolled out this Wednesday with more than 100 open pot-specific positions. 

There are some salaried gigs, mostly in management roles at distribution and manufacturing facilities, but the bulk of the open spots are compensated hourly. Plant harvesters, trimmers, and salespeople (“budtenders," if you will) make up the lion's share.

Karson Humiston, a Denver-based 24-year-old entrepreneur who founded parent company Vangst Talent Network as a college student, has helped cannabis companies fill job openings for the last two years. Since then, her 20-person recruiting team has paired 3,000 people with pot jobs — and aims to fill another 10,000 by 2020.

Until now, Humiston has focused on recruiting top-level jobs like C-suite executives and food chemists for cannabis start-ups. The job board, which is free for users who fill out profiles and $70 a month for companies, caters to a broader array of positions.

“The bulk of the industry, about 75% of the open jobs, are for people in dispensaries, cultivators, brand ambassadors, and other intermediate and entry-level-positions,” she says. "Companies don't necessarily need a recruiter to fill these jobs, but they do need a place to showcase them."

Most cannabis jobs, from entry to top level, have comparable salaries to the industries they poach from, according to Humiston. “Bud-tenders,” workers who sell weed to customers in dispensaries, make about $10 to $15 an hour; slightly higher than the average retail salesperson. Since most cannabis companies are still in the start-up phase, new hires often get equity in the business, too, and specialized knowledge that can easily turn into a career path.

“There’s more growth opportunity,” she says. “I’ve heard of people who started as a trimmer, and five years later are running the facility.”

High paying gigs available include a director of cultivation will make between $100,000 and $130,000 a year, a director of extraction will make $80,000 to $110,000 and a dispensary manager will make between $50,000 and $60,000.

There’s still some stigma attached to the pot industry, Humiston admits. But after the 2016 election, in which eight states voted to legalize marijuana, bringing the total number of states with medical marijuana laws to 28, it's gotten a lot easier to fill open jobs.

“In my office, I have a chalkboard of all the positions we’re filling, and the industries we’re pulling from," she says. "Restaurant managers, retail managers, lab workers, food growers. All kinds of people are willing to make the switch.”

SEE ALSO: 8 resourceful ways Elon Musk made money before he was a billionaire

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NOW WATCH: This is how the legal marijuana industry is affecting Mexican drug cartels

There’s no better time than Labor Day to think about the critical role that work – both our own jobs and the labor of others – plays in all of our lives.

But this role is surprisingly complex: While job loss and unemployment can cause individuals’ own health to suffer, studies have shown that mortality rates go down during a recession.

Understanding this seeming contradiction forces us to think not only about how our own employment affects health, but also about how the labor and working conditions of others can affect us all.

My own research in economics with co-author Jessamyn Schaller shows that in the immediate aftermath of job loss, workers report worse mental and physical health.

Those with preexisting chronic conditions, who may be relatively heavy users of health care services prior to job loss, become less likely to visit the doctor or obtain prescription drugs. But there’s more to the story than this.

Laid-off workers much more likely to die early

The link between work and health can be dramatic. Economists Daniel Sullivan and Til von Wachter have shown that U.S. workers who lose jobs in mass layoffs have death rates in the years just after the layoff that are 50 percent higher than similar workers who did not lose jobs.

The same study showed that, even 20 years later, these displaced workers had elevated death rates. While the mechanisms at work here are not fully understood, reductions in income, income uncertainty and the associated stress are thought to drive these negative health effects.

Both of these studies address the possibility that workers who are already in poor health may be more likely to suffer job loss. If this is the case, poor health could lead to unemployment rather than the reverse. Our work on shorter-term health effects looked only at outcomes that could be measured both before and after job loss to be sure that the health effects appeared only after the job loss.

Research using mass layoffs also guards against reverse causality, the idea that poor health leads to unemployment rather than the reverse. They do this by focusing on major mass layoff events where unhealthy individual workers are unlikely to have been chosen for layoffs. Further, Sullivan and von Wachter showed that firms with a greater ability to select particular workers for layoff did not seem to lay off less healthy employees.

An unexpected twist

The more surprising part of the relationship between health and unemployment flips the initial pattern of job loss leading to poor health on its head.

A series of studies, many by economist Christopher Ruhm, shows compelling and surprising evidence that “recessions are good for your health.” More specifically, they show that mortality is lower when unemployment is relatively high. While this link may have weakened somewhat in the past decade, it is robust across a number of studies including data from the 1970s through the early 2000s.

How can, or could, this finding coexist with what we know about the harm of individual job loss?

A key point is that, even in the worst years of a recession, most workers remain employed and so are not subject to the negative effects of individual job loss. Which begs a question: What factors could explain the beneficial health effects of a recession?

Possible explanations

We’ve long known that when there is less economic activity (as in a recession) there are fewer cars and commercial vehicles on the road, and so fewer traffic deaths. Motor vehicle accidents, however, are too small a fraction of all deaths to fully explain the pattern of increased mortality during recessions.

Research has also suggested that individuals may engage in more positive health behaviors, including getting more exercise and seeing the doctor more often, when hours of work decline.

Many of us work less during bad economic times because of reduced hours, fewer work assignments or less overtime. Working a bit less would certainly benefit some, but that does not change the fact that having no access to paid work is also quite stressful.

Finally, pollution may decline during times of reduced productive activity like recessions, and less pollution could mean in fewer respiratory-related health problems and deaths.

One limitation of these explanations for the surprising connection between recessions and mortality is that none can adequately explain mortality patterns among the elderly. Because most deaths, of course, occur among the elderly, we need an explanation that applies to older individuals, who account for most of the aggregate mortality rates.

A subtle difference, an important finding

That brings us to a final explanation, one that forces us to think more squarely about the role that others’ work opportunities and choices may have on our own quality of life.

My colleagues and I showed that during times of low unemployment, employment of direct-care health workers, such as nursing aides and other health aides, declines. These are often physically and emotionally demanding, low-paid, high-turnover jobs.

When these workers have other options, in good economic times, they take them.

As a result, in times of low unemployment, nursing homes are far less likely to be fully staffed with front-line patient care workers. In a weak economy, staff may be better trained, and there may be less frequent turnover. Our work connects this to mortality by showing that most of the responsiveness of death rates to unemployment rates occurs among the elderly living in nursing homes. This is precisely where staff vacancies can be acute during good economic times. Hard times may improve the quality of health care and reduce mortality by making it easier to recruit and retain health care workers.

This is a powerful illustration that not only is our own work critical to our well-being, but the work and working conditions of others affect us as well, sometimes in surprising ways.

Labor Day celebrates the contributions of American workers and should remind us that disruptions in the labor market can have powerful effects on individuals’ lives and health. During good times, vacancies in critical occupations, even when driven by better options elsewhere, may be bad news for some.

Ann Huff Stevens is a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis.

SEE ALSO: 11 things unsuccessful people do over long weekends

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Performance expert and coauthor of  "Peak Performance: Elevate your Game, Avoid Burnout and Thrive with the New Science of Success," Brad Stulberg explains how the psychological concept of "flow" can help you get in the zone at work. Following is a transcript of the video.

"Flow" is a term introduced in the early '90s by a psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. And the easiest way to describe "flow" is it's being in the zone.

So, it's when you are completely present with what you're doing, and it's like the outside world disappears. So, your perception of time might change, your perception of space might change, you're just completely latched on to what you're doing. It's a wonderful feeling.

Although there's no recipe for entering a "flow" state, there are a few things that can help elicit this beautiful feeling of being in the zone.

First and foremost is to try to pursue activities that are ever so slightly outside of your comfort level.

So, I like to think of it as if you have a skill set, and then a challenge. And you want the challenge to just be ever so slightly above the skill.

Let's say that you have very high skill. Well, if the challenge is low, you might be bored or apathetic. If you have low skill, but the challenge is high, you're going to be overwhelmed, maybe anxious, you won't be able to do it. But if you have a high amount of skill for something, and the challenge is really high, that is a really important criteria for being able to get into the zone.

I think a second foundational element is just trying to be fully present and focused with what you're doing. And, that helps if the challenge and the skills are both high because you almost have no choice but to be present.

So, to recap, it's activities that put you ever so slightly outside of your comfort zone, but that you're still quite skilled for, and a type of full focus and presence where you really bring your all to that activity.

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• Jolt is a career development startup with employees in San Francisco, New York, and Tel Aviv.
• About a year ago, Jolt started an employment experiment called "chapterships."
• The program offers few perks and the pay isn't as high as at Google or Facebook, but it's designed to teach employees what they need to know for their next jobs.
• The program didn't worked out as originally intended, because Jolt's millennial workforce didn't know what they wanted to do next. 

About a year ago, Jolt, a career development startup with offices in California, New York, and Israel, started an experiment with how it employs its workers. 

Rather than provide snacks or sky-high salaries, Jolt instead offered to help employees prepare for their dream jobs, whatever those would be. Under the program, which it called "chapterships," workers' jobs would end after two years. At that point, they could leave or find a new role at Jolt that was closer to their eventual goal.

Underlying the new arrangement was the belief that millennial tech workers weren't really looking jobs they would stay in for the rest of their lives. Instead, the company believed most millennials were looking for jobs they'd only stay in for a year or two and then move on after learning all they could from them. 

"If we were to renew the employment deal today, what would it look like?"Jolt CEO and cofounder Roei Deutsch told Business Insider in February, describing the thinking behind the new arrangement.

But things didn't worked out exactly the way Deutsch thought they would.

It turns out that millennial workers often don't know where they want to end up, career-wise.  

"People have no idea what they want to do next," Deutsch told Business Insider in a recent interview. "Therefore, it's hard for them to prepare for it."

Jolt hasn't given up on chapterships. But that realization has prompted the company to modify the program to help employees figure out what they want out of life.

The insight also inspired some big changes in Jolt's  business. 

The "chapterships" principle

The "chapterships" name comes from the idea of helping employees "better prepare for [their] next chapter," said Deutsch, who expounded on the principle in a book he wrote. Chaptership has two key tenets:

• Jobs are over after two years, no matter what. At that point, employees can find a new two-year "mission" at the company or leave, with no hard feelings. 
• Jobs don't come with cushy, Google-esque perks, and salaries are typically below market rates. The company takes the money saved on salaries and perks and invests that into employee training, providing workers with the skills they want or need to learn for their next career moves.

Jolt is standing by those tenets, Deutsch said. And the program seems to be attracting employees; the company has grown from 14 people in February to 19 today. But the company has had to make some adjustments along the way.

Originally, Jolt's managers were responsible for making sure that the workers who reported to them were sticking to their career development plans. But the company came to believe that arrangement was unsustainable. The company was essentially asking managers to prepare employees to leave the company for their next jobs at the same time it was requiring them to get the employees to do their current work.

"There's a built-in conflict of interest that makes helping your employees prepare for their next chapter harder," Deutsch said.

And so Jolt has started experimenting with bringing in outside career coaches. Every two weeks, each employee meets with a career coach in a confidential session subsidized by the company.

Jolt also is giving employees more time to figure out their career goals. They now have a year after being hired to put together their personal development plans, up from just three weeks initially.  

"Basically, a huge part of helping millennial employees is actually helping them figure out what they want to be," Deutsch said.

The big lesson

The process of evaluating and adjusting the chaptership program gave Deutsch and his team some important insights into Jolt's business.  

Jolt connects people looking for mentoring or training with experts in particular areas, setting up videoconferences between them. Originally, it sold its service to corporations, which paid a la carte for training sessions for their employees.

The problem with that model was that employees weren't super-excited about attending the sessions. That's because they were designed to help employees get better at the jobs they had, not the jobs they wanted, Deutsche said.

Demand was tepid: Customers only purchased an average of one session a month.

But Jolt drew on the insight it gained from its own employees and its chaptership program and changed its business. The company is now targeting workers, not employers. And its training sessions and programs are designed to help workers figure out where they want to go with their careers and help them prepare. 

Jolt now offers what Deutsch likens to a gym membership. Customers pay a monthly fee to attend an unlimited number of career development workshops that it offers in different fields.

Although Jolt still provides its training sessions via video conferences, customers can't just tune in at home. The company believes in in-person networking. So it rents out office conference rooms after working hours to host its teleconferenced sessions.

Right now, the company is only offering its service in New York City. In early tests, Jolt is holding 100 to 200 live sessions every month, Deutsch said. Jolt is testing a system that could turn a conference room into a Jolt "microcampus"— teleconferencing system and all — in a matter of minutes.

"It allows people to take a taste of different things and build their own path to success," he said.

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Conventional wisdom may point to smart people having advanced levels of cognition, creativity, or emotional intelligence, but if you ever wondered whether you belong with the brainy bunch, these nine signs may confirm what you already know.

1. You're the first child in the family.

A study of 250,000 Norwegians published in Science magazine revealed that the oldest sibling had an average IQ 2.3 points higher than younger siblings. The reason is due to environment and family dynamics, not genetics. The firstborn gets the benefits of full parental attention. When No. 2 arrives, that older sibling becomes a tutor to the younger sibling, which has high cognitive demands and boosts intelligence for some firstborns.

2. You lack common sense.

Intelligent people (may of them liberals) lack common sense, says evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, co-author of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. The reason for this is because their general intelligence overrides it. "They think in situations where they are supposed to feel,"states Kanazawa. He adds, "In evolutionarily familiar domains such as interpersonal relationships, feeling usually leads to correct solutions whereas thinking does not."

3. You're a lefty.

The New Yorker reported n 2013 that lefties have faster and more accurate spatial skills, greater mental flexibility, and enhanced working memory. They're also "divergent thinkers" -- a specific kind of creativity that gives them the ability to generate novel ideas on a whim.

4. You play an instrument.

There is growing evidence that musicians have structurally and functionally different brains compared with nonmusicians. The research suggests"the areas of the brain used to process music are larger or more active in musicians. Even just starting to learn a musical instrument can change the neurophysiology of the brain. The brain regions involved in music processing are also required for other tasks, such as memory or language skills."

5. You go to bed late.

A study at the University of Madrid says night owls have a higher IQ than the early risers springing out of bed. They also earn more and lead more comfortable lives.

6. You were a breast-fed baby.

One longitudinal study in Brazil that followed 6,000 people from birth to the age of 30 found that breast-fed babies achieved more success and earned more income. In one test, babies who nursed from their mother scored better on intelligence tests as adults.

7. You took (or take) drugs.

As pointed out by Psychology Today, "more intelligent individuals are more likely to consume all types of psychoactive drugs than less intelligent individuals." One study shows that more intelligent children in the United Kingdom are more likely to grow up to consume psychoactive drugs than less intelligent children. The researchers also found that in women, higher IQ scores meant a higher risk of using cannabis, amphetamines, magic mushrooms, and cocaine.

8. You're a curious person.

Harvard Business Reviewreports that people with a higher "curiosity quotient" (CQ) are more inquisitive and generate more original ideas, and this "thinking style" leads to higher levels of knowledge acquisition over time. It may explain why Albert Einstein famously said, "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."

9. You appreciate sick humor.

If you laugh at sick jokes and others' misfortune, chances are you have high intelligence. In a study reported by BPS Digest blog, the group with the highest sick-humor appreciation scored the highest in verbal and nonverbal IQ tests, were better educated, and scored lower for aggression and bad mood.

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Everybody wants a job that they love, but most of the time employees are just in it for the money because, you know, bills.

If this sounds like you, here’s a tip: Don’t pick a job based just on position alone. Industry and location matter too.

According to JobStreet’s latest salary report, job listings placed on its website from 2015 to 2016 showed that salaries varied greatly across industry, and changes according to location.

Jobs in central regions such as Kuala Lumpur tend to command higher pay in most instances, but can be higher in other parts of Malaysia for industries such as engineering.

Consumer finance website iMoney studied the report and found that some industries which offer high entry level salaries may not offer high mid or senior level salaries. This means that a person with one of the highest paid jobs across industries at entry level may not remain highly-paid after getting promoted.

Using data from the report, the website identified the top three highest paying industries in Malaysia as engineering, computer/IT and healthcare. In contrast, the lowest-paying industries were identified were hotels/restaurants, education/training and admin/HR.

In an infographic, iMoney also identified the top three highest paying industries for each job level from entry to senior management.

Here's what they are:

The highest paying entry level jobs belong to engineers in the east coast operations of Malaysia’s construction, building, and engineering sectors.

But while this is so, the sector fails to retain top-three ranking in the junior-executive level. Instead, highest paying jobs in this level tend to be from the computer, information technology, banking, financial services sectors.

Those who work in science related jobs at oil, gas, petroleum industries lead the pack in the senior executive category at RM28,250, more than RM13,000 above salaries in the next highest paying industry.

Interestingly, the highest paying job in the next level – manager – earns lower than that in the previous category. A building, construction manager level job in the oil, gas, petroleum industries commands a salary of just RM15,611.

At the highest level studied, the highest paying jobs are admin/HR senior managers from the construction, building, engineering industries located in East Malaysia.

Those who work in services in the healthcare/medical industry at northern Malaysia, and people who work in engineering for semiconductor and water fabrication industries at east Malaysia tied for second spot.

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There are many things that can stress us out, especially when we want to create our own success stories.

Unfortunately, most of us end up tolerating some of our own bad habits, even though they cause much of the stress we experience.

So what are the stressful habits we need to stop tolerating? Here are the worst:

1. Toxic relationships.

Stop spending time with the wrong people. Life is too short to waste time on people who are toxic. The people in your life should support you, help you and lift you up. If not, they are likely causing you uneasiness that you don't need and shouldn't have to tolerate. To succeed, you need relationships that will make you feel good about yourself.

2. Lying to yourself.

Everyone lies--that's a fact--but lying to yourself can cause unnecessary concerns. If you want to be successful, you have to take chances and risks, and above all you have to be honest with yourself.

3. Not parting with the past.

You'll be less frustrated with yourself if you can let go of the past. You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re- reading the old one.

4. Settling for less.

A surefire way to cause stress in your life is to start putting your needs last and keeping them on the back burner.

5. Believing in perfectionism.

Trying to be prefect only provokes anxiety. The real world doesn't reward perfectionists; it rewards people who get things done and make things happen.

6. Holding on to your fears.

If you're scared of making a mistake, you'll never succeed. Doing something and getting it wrong is 100 times more productive than doing nothing at all, so don't allow your fears to get in the way of who you are meant to be and what you need to accomplish. Every success story has a trail of failures behind it; every mistake can lead to success.

7. Cutting yourself down.

Stop talking down to yourself--trust me, there are enough people who can do that job that you never have to do it yourself. Change your small-minded thoughts to big-picture goals and build yourself up instead of cutting yourself down. Refuse to lower yourself or your standards; instead, constantly raise yourself up.

8. Accepting your own excuses.

Sooner or later you'll realize that excuses don't get you what you want. And if you want success, you're going to have to take into your own hands and make it happen. Excuses cause tension, while power creates determination.

9. Being jealous.

Don't be concerned with who may be more successful than you. Instead, concentrate on beating your own records and surpassing your own goals. Success is a battle between you and yourself, no one else. Make it worth your while; make it about you.

At the end of the day don't have tolerance for the things that stress you and stand between you and your greatness.

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