Q. What can you do instead of saying yes to a work request?

A. “First, express gratitude that you’ve been asked to take on something new, because it means your boss believes in you.”

Tres Roeder, president of Roeder Consulting, notes that “if you think you may already have more work than you can handle, tell your boss that because you’re juggling other time-sensitive projects, you need to examine the details of this new task to determine if there’s some way you can fit it in.” You may find you won’t be able to, but automatically responding “no” without any consideration gives the impression you just don’t want to deal with it.  “And you don’t want to be known as the person who always says no unless they get the perfect assignment.”

If the work needs to be done immediately, tell your boss what you’re already working on and then let him or her do the prioritizing, suggests Evelyn Williams, a professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., who teaches organizational behavior. “Ask what you should do first. Should you stop working on X and Y and finish this new project first?

Q. Is it ever a good idea to try to squeeze in the extra work, even if you’re already feeling stretched?

A. If the project could improve your skills or get you noticed by those who can promote your career, it may be worth losing sleep over, Professor Williams says. “Think about it strategically,” she says. “Will the task or project be a good thing for your career? Will it build your network?”

Q. What can you do in the future to help manage your work commitments?

A. Give your manager short, weekly status updates about your workload, suggests Professor Williams. “Managers can’t see into every employee’s world,” she says. “You have to tell them what’s happening in the trenches so they can make better allocation decisions.”

In his book Your Brain at Work, David Rock offers some useful advice for job seekers.  Rock says it’s crucial to understand what is in your control and what is not. As a job hunter, you know it is tough to find a position in this economy, but you cannot do anything about that. You might have unreasonable expectations at two extremes: an expectation of being hired quickly or an assumption that you will never work again. Neither expectation is helpful, as neither is under your control.

Instead, Rock suggest you take action over things you can control: research the job market thoroughly, make contacts, and apply for positions you qualify for. Gather as much knowledge as you can. Then, form an expectation in the middle: you will find a job at some point.

In a recent column in The New York Times, Alina Tugend interviewed Rock about the best way for job candidates and others to manage expectations.  ”There is no template for managing expectations. It seems as if it is best to have low expectations of things out of our control, realistic expectations of things we can control to some degree and high expectations of ourselves,” writes Tugend. And, perhaps the greatest truth of all is: always expect the unexpected.

But once you know the question, how should you develop your response? Scot Herrick from Cube Rules recommends using a CAR to answer interview questions: Context, Action, Result. I have also heard this called the STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result. So how do you bring a CAR to the interview?

Herrick says include Context: Describe the situation you were in/the problem you encountered. Remember that the hiring manager wasn’t there with you, so you need to fill them in on what was happening, the urgency of it, how you were tasked to make an impact for the organization.

Then, talk about the Action: What did you do to turn the situation around? How did you make a productive decision? Describe the action you took to either show your job skills, show your motivation, or show how you fit in a team.

Lastly, end with Results: What was the consequence of your actions? What problem did you solve? How did it improve the numbers, change the process, and help the company?

What has your experience been? Does taking a CAR to the interview work for you? Let us know! Leave a comment below.

• Skim Reading – If you skim, you’re more likely to answer incorrectly. Instead, read and absorb the content fully.
• Spelling – Check over what you write. It’s easy to make a typo; catch it before the hiring manager does!
• Grammar – Use straightforward, succinct sentences to minimize grammatical errors. And again, proofread!
• Nerves – Find a way to stay calm. Nerves are a natural reaction, but if you can calm down, you’ll think clearer.
• Honesty – Answer what you believe is true, not what you think they want to hear. Don’t over think it.

So is networking a good thing? Definitely. But there are ways to do it properly (and effectively) and ways that are just a waste of your time.

Luckily, the experienced Jeff Haden gives us 5 great networking tips. Here are my 3 favorites:

1. Give before you take. Of course you want something; you want their help. But the trick is: “never ask for what you want.” By giving your expertise and your help, you can establish a real, solid, meaningful relationship. A relationship will make them want to help you, not just an annoying person asking for help.
2. Don’t assume they care about your needs. You’re out of work and you need a job – that’s your problem, not theirs. Haden says “the only way to make connections is to care about the needs of others first.” Show them you care about them, and then maybe they’ll care about you afterall.
3. Network where it’s mutually beneficial. Yeah, having the top executive connect with you would be great, but the way to actually make a helpful connection is to find someone who can benefit from your expertise – and vice versa. So that you can follow up on #1 and #2… make a relationship that goes both ways.

According to Jennifer Preston in an article for the New York Times, a company called Social Intelligence scrapes the Internet for everything prospective employees may have said or done online in the past seven years.

Then it assembles a dossier with examples of professional honors and charitable work, along with negative information that meets specific criteria: online evidence of racist remarks or violent activity; references to drugs; sexually explicit photos, text messages or videos.

“We are not detectives,” said Max Drucker, chief executive of the company. “All we assemble is what is publicly available on the Internet.”  The service alarms privacy advocates who say it invites employers to look at information that may not be relevant to job performance.

In Preston’s article, Drucker said his goal was to conduct pre-employment screenings that would help companies meet their obligation to conduct fair and consistent hiring practices while protecting the privacy of job candidates.

For example, he said the reports remove references to information protected under federal employment laws, which companies are not supposed to ask about during interviews. Also, job candidates must first consent to the background check, and they are notified of any adverse information found.

Less than a third of the data surfaced by Mr. Drucker’s firm comes from such major social platforms as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. He said much of the negative information about job candidates comes from deep Web searches that find comments on blogs and posts on smaller social sites, like Tumblr, the blogging site, as well as Yahoo user groups, e-commerce sites, bulletin boards and even Craigslist.

Joe Bontke, outreach manager for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s office in Houston, said he regularly reminds employers and human resource managers about the risks of violating federal antidiscrimination employment rules and laws by using online research in hiring decisions. “Things you can’t ask in an interview are the same things you can’t research,” he said, which includes the gamut of information covering a person’s age, gender, religion, disability, national origin and race.  That said, he added that “75 percent of recruiters are required by their companies to do online research of candidates. And 70 percent of recruiters in the United States report they have rejected candidates because of information online.”

“There is zero requirement ever to tell a hiring manager or HR person that your previous employer let you go,” she writes.

Job seekers who know what they bring—who know the business problem they solve, in other words—don’t have to over-explain. Job seekers who have identified a hiring manager’s chief problems and have already come up with ways to link their experience to the manager’s “business pain” don’t have to please anyone in order to get a job offer.

How to Spin It

You don’t owe a prospective employer the details about what happened when you left your last job. But you have to find a way to explain why you left. Ryan offers some possibilities:

Option No. 1: The Learning Was Done

“It was a fantastic learning opportunity for me—I credit those folks with teaching me everything I know about X-Y-Z, for instance, but it was time for me to go, and we agreed on that just as I was getting interested in social marketing.”

The “we agreed on it” is key, Ryan says. “If the “agreement” took place only in your own mind as the security guard escorted you out of the building, that’s fine.”

Option No. 2: My Interests Shifted

“I got to do so many fantastic projects at Acme Explosives, but my focus was shifting into project management, and the opportunities for that were very limited at Acme. I didn’t know what I would do next exactly, but my friend from college was starting a consulting practice, and I decided to collaborate with her on that as I shifted to the next thing.”

Option No. 3: We Went in Different Directions

“When I got to Acme Explosives, the mission had everything to do with building the brand fast, and we had great results on that front. Two years later, I was becoming a zealot for branding and customer evangelism, but Acme was moving more into OEM work, where the branding piece was almost nonexistent. It wasn’t a great fit for me anymore, and we decided to move apart.”

“Whatever you tell a prospective employer,” Ryan says, “focus on that employer’s need and your own tremendous talents in solving similar needs in the past.”

1. “Salary Negotiable”
If you’re wasting a precious line of your resume on this term, it looks as though you’re padding—that you’ve run out of things to talk about, Purdy says.

2.  “References available by request”
See the preceding comment about unnecessary terms.

3.  “Responsible for ______” Reading this term, “the recruiter can almost picture the C-average, uninspired employee mechanically fulfilling his or her job requirements: no more, no less.” Having been responsible for something isn’t something you did—it’s something that happened to you. Turn phrases like “responsible for” into “managed,” “led,” or other decisive, strong verbs.

4. “Experience working in ______”
Again, experience is something that happens to you—not something you achieve. Describe your background in terms of achievements.

5. “Detail-oriented”
So, you pay attention to details. Well, so does everyone else. Don’t you have something unique to tell the hiring manager, asks Purdy, adding that “putting this on your resume only makes that accidental typo in your cover letter or resume all the more comical.”

6. “Hard-working”
Anyone can call himself or herself a hard worker. It’s a lot more convincing if you describe situations in which your hard work benefitted an employer (and use concrete details).

7.  “Team player”
See the preceding comment about showing instead of telling. There are very few jobs that don’t involve working with someone else. If you have relevant success stories about collaboration, put them on your resume. Talk about the kinds of teams you worked on, and how you succeeded.

8. “Proactive”
This is a completely deflated buzzword. Again, says Purdy, “show; don’t tell.”

For similar resume writing tips, check out: How to Make your Resume less Boring, 13 Phrases to Avoid in Your Resume, and How to Write a Powerful Resume.

Annual performance reviews are nerve wracking experiences.

Eilene Zimmerman, writing for The New York Times, answers some common questions about how to handle the meeting:

Q. How should I prepare for this meeting?

A. Start by making a list of your responsibilities at work and writing your own performance review in each of those areas. Thinking through how you’ve done will prevent you from overreacting to feedback because you will know what to expect.

Annual reviews give you the chance to discuss and formulate goals for the next year. Before the meeting, write down the goals you envision for yourself. As you think about your work over the last year, try to anticipate anything negative that may come up in the review. Prepare for it by looking over old notes and e-mails to remember specific situations and your actions and behavior at the time. Good preparation will reduce anxiety.

Q. Okay, let’s say that at the review, I get some very positive feedback. May I use it as a springboard to ask for something I want?

A. Build on those positive feelings by saying you want to go further in 2012. “Talk about your strengths, how you want to use those to help the organization and where you see growth opportunities for yourself at the company,” says Kimberley Bohr, senior vice president at a leadership development firm in Seattle. If you have something specific in mind, like a role on a particular project, this is the time to bring it up, she says.

If you work for a very small company where the owners make decisions about pay raises, your review could be an appropriate time to ask for one, as long as you are a high performer. Bigger companies, however, have a formal budget process and your boss will probably have to get approval from higher-ups to give you an increase. That can take a few months, so bring up the issue to your boss at least two months before your review.

“There should never be surprises during your performance review, because it’s a summary of all the conversations you’ve had prior to it. And that includes one about compensation.

Q. What if the feedback is unexpectedly negative?

A. Even though your manager should have given you some advance warning of the criticism, take a deep breath before you speak, and don’t be defensive. “You never want your performance review to be confrontational, so start by thanking your manager for the valuable feedback,” says Shawn Kent Hayashi, the founder of the Professional Development Group , a consulting group based in Center Valley, Pa.

It’s important to be clear about the specific behavior your manager is criticizing, so ask for examples to help you better understand.

“Then ask your manager what she would recommend to help you improve in that area,” Ms. Hayashi says. “Would she be willing to guide your development to turn that around over the next 30 to 90 days? Suggest checking in each week about it.”

Q. Performance reviews offer a chance for me to plan my career development — and I don’t want to squander that. What should I talk about?

A. Broadly, the discussion should center on your future at the company and your professional aspirations. Show that you are optimistic and excited about both, suggests Patrick Sweeney, president of a management consulting firm in Princeton, N.J.  “Be as specific as you can about what you want moving forward, such as: ‘In three years I’d love to be leading projects. How can I move in that direction this year?’ ” he says.

It’s also important to take some control of your manager’s perception of you.

“So many companies have gone through cutbacks in personnel that those left are doing more than their own jobs,” Mr. Sweeney says. “Your boss knows more is getting done, but here is your chance to let him know exactly what you have been doing and why you can handle other opportunities within the company.”

Many of the high-paying careers listed from the PayScale.com study are positions that require a bachelors degree (or higher?) and very skilled expertise.

So which jobs pay best after three or four years of experience?

• Mechanical Engineer – $73,200
• Software Developer – $82,400
• Electrical Engineer – $84,700
• Web Developer – $60,900
• Financial Advisor – $93,900
• Employment Recruiter – $55,400
• Construction Estimator – $67,400
• Project Engineer, Construction – $69,200
• Manufacturing Engineer – $73,900