I’m having  a mini meltdown. The list of stuff to do seems to be getting longer and longer and to make things even more stressful – it’s just me and Immy during the week. The bridegroom to be is working away from home, and this week is in stressville himself – taking some exams (good luck darling).

My attempt at detoxing so far is just that, an attempt. I’ve managed to stay clear of caffeine and alcohol but today – with two deadlines to meet, a caterer to organise, bills to pay and bridesmaids dresses to sort ( on top of making sure my three year is fed watered and happy) I resorted to chocolate.

I wouldn’t call myself a chocoholic, but today somehow, no other foodstuff would do. I’m not worried about putting on weight, my dress isn’t exactly clinging to me. No I’m vainer than that, I’m worried that my skin will breakout and I’ll just look rubbish.

I’ve also got a list of articles for Ella Mag that have all been researched and somehow need to be written. So for the moment I’m just going to get my head down, keep calm and carry on… over and out

Companies, hey? Who’d work for one. Well most of us are employed by companies, of varying sizes but companies nonetheless. Even freelancers like myself can’t get away from corporate entities, working as part of a team within an organisation is a fact of life for most of us.

Before I started university age 18 I’d already worked for four employers, and during my studies I worked for three more.

Although I’ve been a journalist since the age of 16, I’ve worked for at least 12 different companies since. Some were good, some were okay and some were bad. It’s testament to one company that I’ve been working for them in various department and with varying responsibilities since I was 19, when I did a work experience placement. In fact when I joined them as a staff reporter age 24, after spending two years at a well-respected but badly managed local newspaper,  I remember being amazed that they had a dedicated human resources person.

Since then I’ve worked for several large companies but it was my experience of working for internet-based media companies that taught me the most about employers and where I learned how and how not to do things.

Mainly because many of these companies were so new, and everything so untried and untested, no one was really sure what they were doing. But that wasn’t the problem ,the difference between the bad and the good bosses was that the good ones quickly learned and moved on. For example one internet company employed a bunch of journalists including myself and within six months realised their business model had changed. Rather than sack us they offered us the choice of retraining or a generous severance package. Another got rid of a team of journalists following a take over, and even gave the freelancers two months salary.

Another thing I’ve learned is never ever join a company because you feel sorry for them and think you can sort them out – I was headhunted for one role and took the job on that basis. I thought the boss was a nice guy and seemed like the ideal inspirational boss, but he was ruthless like most bosses and to him business was business. So when I didn’t achieve what they wanted I was the one left crying, literally.

I’m still amazed that some employers get away with so much – so long as they get rid of you within 2 years of they can do almost anything (bar descriminate against you on a sexual, disability or age-related basis) which is why you need to make sure that any company you join is right for you. Even in a recession good staff are like gold, whatever companies may say.

So if you are thinking of changing job here are some things I reckon you should watch out for.

Training opportunities, a good employer should make sure their staff are at the top of their game, or at the very least  let you continue with any other studies.

Generous severance packages – I’ve come across what I call ‘vampire employers’ who will actively recruit dynamic staff simply to drain their ideas and contacts then sack them less than a two years into their contract. As I’ve noted above good companies reward staff from beginning to end.

Questions to ask:

Find out what happened to your predecessor (before you join the company). In one of my last staff jobs my predecessor – the previous editor – had left the company in less than great circumstances but I didn’t find this out until I joined the company. The woman in question was regularly referred to in colourful adjectives that would have made for decent industrial tribunal case. Needless to say most of the employees were men.

Ask your future manager for a reference. Dynamic managers – managers who are confident in their own skin are prepared to delegate tasks and get on with the job of moving the company or the department forward. The best way to find out if your new manager is dynamic is look at their track record, and what people say about them.

Find out what the job involves and ask for a job description. That way you will know what is expected of you.

It’s also worth checking your contract before you join the company. I wrote this article about how debts can lose you a job for the Guardian late last year.

What tips would you suggest to anyone looking for a new job or wanting to change careers?

Every now and then a self-help book will make the bestseller lists. Even if you haven’t read them you’ll no doubt have heard of Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus or How to Make Friends and Influence People.

Ekhart Tolle’s The Power of Now is one of those books. The author appeared on Oprah Winfrey and sales soared.

Ekhart wrote that he had a moment when he just simply couldn’t live with himself any more, and that realisation led him to a point where he found that only by living in the present could he accept himself and by doing so he was a happier, more contented human being.

Learning to live in the now, as in accepting who we are and realising it doesn’t any get any better than this is a skill many of us could do with. I know I could.

It’s tempting, when you are dealing with the boss from hell, a screaming toddler, a demanding parent or partner, to fixate on the future i.e that cup of tea you are going to enjoy, that dress you are going to buy, that glass of wine you are going to have after the children are in bed.

By doing so we are distracting ourselves from our real lives. For example dreaming of what you could do when you win the lottery can actually stop you from realising that you could go about doing some of those things anyway, or creating real wealth rather than dream wealth.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming so long as it doesn’t stop you from smelling the flowers (my mum’s favourite phrase) along the way.

So this weekend, maybe we could all practice being in the now. For me that means making sure I don’t rush, this morning I even made an effort to make sure the duvet cover fitted just right round the duvet and took a deep breath when my daughter started demanding that I blow up the whoopee cushion (when I was trying to call the Financial Services Authority for an article I was writing).

Sometimes a deep breath is all it takes. Concentrate on the present because it’s all you’ll ever have.

How to get out of a rut – network when you can’t network

How to get out of a rut – work

Work can be tough at the best of times, but throw in a bad commute and being up all night with the kids and it can get even harder to stay on top of things.

So we’ve pulled together some of the best online services and tips to help you look like the most organised person in town:

Keep your tasks separate

Calendars that mix to-do lists with appointments are a recipe for disaster. Add appointments to your calendar, but don’t combine them with your to-do list. Keeping your tasks separate will keep your mind clear and a task management tool like RememberTheMilk can help with this.

Declutter

Don’t store random notes in your calendar – you’ll never remember what they are for. Instead, keep your notes in one place; a paper notebook, a specific document or a service such as Evernote that helps you remember things, using your computer, phone, tablet and the web.

Streamline your schedule

Getting people to agree to a meeting time can be a nightmare, so try using an online scheduling tool like Doodle instead of sending emails back and forth. You just select some possible dates and times and let your colleagues specify what one works best for them. With a quick look, you’ll see everyone’s availability and be able to make a final decision that satisfies all.

Travel smart

If you’re travelling a tool like TripIt that keeps all of your travel plans in one place will be a godsend. It turns all your travel emails – flights, hotels etc –and turns into one simple mobile travel itinerary.

Like this. Read this.

If you’ve any must have gadgets or apps to recommend – then please do…

It’s the start of the week.  Here’s a little help to ease you into it.

• Get yourself out of a work rut with our fabulous make-yourself-over tips.

• Dreaming of living abroad (sunshine permitting)? Find out what it’s like to follow your dream with our lady in Italy.

• Feeling a bit overwhelmed, join the club! Our mum in the city has a few tales to tell.

• Has last week’s Budget got you thinking about money? We’ve got pension free pension advice for you.

• In need of online inspiration, here are some other great websites picked by our friends at Peas and Love

• Planning a wedding, join our Bridal boot camp.

By Samantha Downes, Ella Mag ed.

Great news… there have never been so female directors on top company boards.

Bad news… the number of female directors is still far short of a 25 per cent target set by a government review last year.

The Davies report, which I wrote about here last year recommended that companies in the FTSE 100 should have 25% female board membership by 2015.

The Cranfield School of Management has been noting the progress of the report’s proposed target.

But we have come some way to breaking the glass ceiling in 1999 just 6.9% of directors in top companies were women and this time last year it was 12.5%.

Cranfield reckons it could rise to 36.9% by 2020, well above the Davies target.

There are now 141 women holding 163 board seats in FTSE 100 firms, while the number of companies with no women board members has fallen to 11.

Drinks giant Diageo had the biggest percentage of female directors at 44%, said the Cranfield report, adding that the number of women at senior executive level varied “dramatically”.

But and a big, big ‘but’ here, the Davies report only covers the UK’s top companies.

Liz Field, chief executive of the Financial Skills Partnership is one of many to note that while the increase in top board membership is clearly welcome, a lot more work could be done to help adjust the gender balance throughout company hierarchies, in particular at the level immediately below the one currently reported on.

She says recent research indicates that female participation at this level is actually declining rather than rising, a trend that needs to reversed if we are to ensure a continuous pipeline of female talent. Companies would do well to follow in the footsteps of the most progressive amongst them which – besides introducing better diversity monitoring and tailored development and mentoring programmes for women – are also trying to tackle the most deep-seated causes such as unconscious bias.”

Carmen Watson, managing Director of Pertemps Network Group, agrees.

“We should be encouraged at the steady progress taking place at director level, we need to ensure there is a diverse pipeline of talent to continue to fill these positions in future.

“Women already have the capabilities to break through into the boardroom in larger quantities and need the support of much more progressive working conditions instead of being handed positions through quotas.

“It’s certainly healthy that we’re having the debate about whether quotas are needed to generate more female directors. However, using positive action this way could create tension among executives who have reached their position on merit alone, and this ultimately does a disservice to the many talented women we have in the UK. Businesses are starting to realise that change needs to be brought about but until proven strategies are introduced on a widespread basis, the change will never be significant or sustainable.”

We all know it’s not what you know but who you know. But how do you get to know the people you need to know?

This is something that has long puzzled us. We’re all freelance journalists here and to keep getting work we know that we have to be good at our job otherwise we’d starve basically.

But we’ve wondered why – at points in our careers – we saw seeing others that are less than, or even just as talented as as, get work while we were left literally singing for our suppers.

A lot of journalists get work by networking, which means going out a lot, sending lots of emails, making phone calls and connecting to people via social media websites like Twitter and LinkedIn.

The thing is, we at Ella Mag don’t actually get time to go out, and we don’t have free time. If we do it’s spent doing housework, helping the children with their homework or looking after our parents.

So – as mums returning to work what can we do about making sure that we are on the top of editors’ ‘go-to’ freelance list.

And also what can other mums who like us freelance, do?

Should we forgoe our monthly wax appointment and employ a babysitter instead? Or do we accept that while we get enough work, as mums we are lucky enough to get the crumbs that the other (often single child-frere) freelancers leave behind.

Well we don’t want crumbs, we’d rather have a share of the slice thanks so we asked our favourite psychologist Kim Stephenson what he thought.

Kim is a great role model, he changed career, switching from financial advice to occupational psychology and has never looked back. E  has a career which has involved writing books, appearing on TV, blogging and acting as an consultant for some of Britain’s largest companies.

We came across Kim because we sent out an alert on a financial journalist website service, and he was the only one to reply to our request.

So you could say an element of luck was involved.

Kim is not a fan of dropping everything to go to a drinks ‘do just in case you meet someone.

He says: ‘Would you trust somebody you’d just met, or would you prefer to deal with somebody you had seen a few times, who was reliable, consistent, remembered who you were and what you did and took an interest, but didn’t spend too long talking to you?  I’ll find that if you do it right, you can get business straight away, but I rather doubt it.

Kim says: ‘Networking is a way of marketing, getting your “brand” out there.  With a brand, you’re trying to get people to think of you first: it’s the old “don’t say vinegar, say Sarsons”, “beans means Heinz”, etc.

‘With networking you’re trying to get a lot of people to know you, what you do and when they have a need of what you do, have your name pop into their head by using personal links, rather than using millions of pounds of budget to get all sorts of people you’ve never met to buy your product .’

Step one: find a niche

Kim reckons we should find our niche – his is being an adviser who is also a psychologist.

‘It is beginning to work because peopl say “Kim is unique, the only person who is OP and financial advisor etc.”

So one thing is to try to find a niche, something that is you, that is your brand that you can get people to associate with you.

(For me I guess it would be I’m a financial journalist with news and internet editing plus blogging experience).

Step two: get out there

Kim says: ‘ Get yourself on lists and if someone contacts you try to find out where they got your name and thank the person.

Step three: have a brand

‘For networking, your brand is tricky if it takes more than 10 seconds or so to say, so get an elevator pitch.  Being journalists, you and your friends should be good at that – as you know, I have trouble being concise!’

Step four: be available

Make sure you’re available – LinkedIn etc. are good, but trying to link to everybody and connect with everybody seems to be counter productive, you can have 10,000 “friends” on Facebook, but how many do you actually know anything about, or care about?  So how many of them will know or care what you do and how well you do it?  Networking tends to be more about quality of relationship, rather than just quantity, although you obviously want quantity as well – as long as it isn’t a case of having a collection of 1,000 business cards of people you don’t really remember and who don’t remember you.

Step five: be polite and consistent

Kim says: ‘Make sure you’re contactable and available, and, I think, if you’re going to try networking in a structured way, keep at it  – don’t flit between different groups, tactics, locations etc. because you won’t have time to build many links unless you are exceptionally gifted.’

Kim is the author of Taming the Pound.