Congratulations on being offered an interview! That’s an encouraging step towards securing employment. However, for many candidates it’s an intimidating one too. After all, while some interview questions are more or less expected, other can seem, in the moment, like curveballs designed to catch you off guard.

The perils of workplace stress
Some degree of stress is natural and even beneficial: it keeps us on task, helps us determine what our priorities are, and contributes to a healthy sense of motivation. However, it’s all too easy for stress to get out of hand.

Should you take the job, or should you wait and see if something better comes along? Should you move house now, or maybe next year, when it could be more affordable? Should you spend your holidays in England, Australia, or Japan? Life is full of such conundrums, each of them requiring us to make decisions that will affect the things that are most important to us: our careers, our relationships, our finances, our creative pursuits, and more.

The concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) was popularized in a best-selling book by Daniel Goleman, who defines it as “the ability to identify, assess, and control one's own emotions, the emotions of others, and that of groups”. According to Goleman, emotional intelligence has five components: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Being able to openly communicate with your colleagues will create great working relationships that will be fun and in turn, lead to high productivity.

If there is one bad apple, it can hurt the enthusiasm of the entire office. So what is open communication? In a nutshell, open communication occurs when all parties are able to express ideas to one another, such as in a conversation or debate.

As we approach the end of 2018 many work places will hold their annual Staff Christmas parties. While this is a good time to unwind, socialise and look back on the year just gone it’s also important to remember that even though you might be surrounded by music, good food and a lot of alcohol you are still at work.

The prospects of landing a job in the mining industry can be a tough one - more so, if you are at the entry level or with no prior experience in the sector.

Opportunities in mining tend to favour the experienced more. However, there is no stopping the right candidate, if you are determined and have got the credentials and the attitude to match.

Working at heights poses numerous dangers, and is responsible for many serious and fatal injuries every year. In WA, many workers are exposed to heights every day, whether working from ladders, scaffolds and platforms, on roofs, over tanks and pits, or on vehicles or trailers.

A friend of a friend once told me that he liked to go to job interviews just for the fun of it. He not only likes to talk about himself for an hour to a willing audience, but he enjoys psychoanalysing his work methods, and boasting about his achievements in and out of the workplace.

Everyone has times when they lack their usual focus - and the distractions seem to mount up around them. Fortunately, improving your concentration at work can be made much easier by adopting some or all of the following tips. As the author of Hack Your Brain, Elie Venezky says: the key to improving your concentration at work is to change the way you view it.