Research (of any kind, really): 90% of the job is knowing where to look, and being able to make connections based on very small pieces of information. That’s all there is to it, although of course being able to do those things takes a lot of practice, and “where to look” is different with every research job.
Master Tile and Stone Mechanic, 30 yrs, 4th generation.
Patience. Sometimes I just want to break everything. Instead I take a break.
Confidence. $40,000 of tile (just the tile) in one bathroom. Yeah, I got it, no problem.
Dependability. I am a smart bomb. You pull the trigger and walk away. That’s it.
Adaptability. Two story glass block tower? I never did one before, but I can, sure. (and did)
Ethics. You have a problem? No. I do.
Reputation. Every time I finish a job I am unemployed. Referrals mean everything.
I think knowing the search terms is also important. I would say 45% search terms, 45% knowing where to look, and 10% other.
While it helps to know where to look, the most fearless researcher can research a topic without knowing anything before he starts. I know that some people won’t research a topic because they don’t know where to look. The key is to come up with some logical guesses as to where it might be, and then have faith that you’ll get results.
The first couple of results should allow you to make your research strategy more efficient, because they will let you know the search terms you have to use. After that it’s just a matter of going through all the databases that you know about.
Unless you’re Cecil Adams and get questions that are all over the research spectrum, chances are you’ll figure out your best databases very quickly. After that the only variable from topic to topic is the search terms. If you keep an eye out for all the different terms, and know how to use Boolean logic to search for them all at once, then your research will go a lot quicker.
Cecil probably has one of the most challenging research jobs out there because the databases he has to search through change with each topic (e.g. think of the topics: “Is semen an antidepressant?” and “What’s the deal with Japanese tentacle porn?”)
Printer…you need very good eyes and hawkish attention to detail. I’ve basically ruined my eyes doing it and need glasses now.
I am pondering this thread…not sure if I can add anything with enough specificity to be of any value.
Business leader/executive at a reasonably large company; >1,500 employees.
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**Ability to focus on the fundamentals **- every day new bombs go off and new crises arise; many times the amount of available time I have. The ability to see through the crises and understand which ones could substantively impact our revenues, costs or longer-term priorities is very hard.
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**A Results-first mindset **- the vast majority of people I work with want to tell me why an idea won’t work or why a problem could not be solved. Rare is the person who accepts those barriers but doesn’t take No for an answer and figures out a way to get “it” - whatever it may be - done.
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**Ability to foster problem-solving relationships **- the more I get folks to understand that I am doing my best to help them achieve THEIR goals for THEIR business - and I am bringing up issues NOT to derail their goals, but instead to nip the issues in the bud before they really become problems - then the better off everyone is. If folks are spending time going around “the system” vs. understanding how to work the system to their advantage, then I am failing at my job.
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**Ability to tell a story **- sounds weird, perhaps, but true. Cutting through all the noise to get to what’s important - either on a day-to-day basis or as part of strategic planning - usually requires the ability to distill what is going on around the company into a story that is insightful, compelling and which keeps folks focused on the high-priority stuff. There is a lot of craft around pulling out and polishing a story, but it also requires conceptual thinking. “We are currently at Point X; we are facing these trends and these challenges; in order to move forward, we need to focus on A, B and C” - sounds simple, but is actually the hardest thing I do…
Those are a few - hope this helps.
Okay, I seem to have killed this thread. Sorry 
Please disregard my post above and carry on…
Dammit WordMan!, I was really enjoying this thread too.
Just cause I feel sorry for you guys…
I’m a Land surveyor field hand and draughtsman. I’m not a registered professional or Bsurv graduate so I don’t do business matters, consents or solicitor related stuff.
You Need:
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Good assesment skills- Exactly how accurate does this need to be? You shouldn’t spend hours measuring a feature on the other side of the site from where the deelopment is going to happen. Does this marker need to be placed to the milimeter or is that a waste of time?
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Thorough and careful. Mistakes happen - often. you can’t let em through. The bosses certify my work, so they have to trust me to do it properly. Often have to get things right the first time.
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Expressing clearly, and giving a straight answer. When someone asks 'is it right? ’ you can’t go ‘weeellll…’ that’s for your engineering comrades.
Use 1 and two in combination to get this -
Always being polite to everyone including 2pm drunks and angry neighbors who have been in a dispute for the last 5 years.(who expect you to side with them)
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Persistence - 5 gorse hedges in the way? slasher time! (Use number 1 first) hammering wooden boundary peg into hard packed gravel road? I’m your man!
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For draughting Plans - Neatness, a sense of the big picture combined with an eye for detail.
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Ethical stuff - mostly just common sense, and have mostly clear rules to follow, thankfully.
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An ability to put yourself in the shoes of the guy who did the previous work 30 years ago helps.
Call center/customer service in the insurance industry (auto, work comp, liability, property).
What makes someone good at my job is:
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Be very, very literal. Adhere to the script exactly. Anytime a caller provides information that we didn’t ask for or have room for on a claim file, it should be documented. Do not use your better judgment, ever. At best, you are (intended to be) a monkeybot recording information.
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The manager is always right, but some managers are more right than others (higher up the org chain = more intrinsic rightness). Smile and nod a lot so as not to stand out from the sea of corporate drones they expect to see. I’m not being ironic, I’m being serious.
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Be average or slightly below it (but not too far)–try to stay within a standard deviation up or down. Don’t try to excel. If you’re too good at what you do, you’ll be given extra work to accomplish and higher standards, with no extra compensation. If you’re average or a bit below at what you do, you’ll fit right in. The hardest part of the job will, indeed, be getting hired. After that point, the only thing that can get you fired is not showing up to work. Which leads me to:
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Be at work every day. The hardest part of the job (after being hired) is just showing up. Nobody here ever gets fired for poor performance, they just don’t get raises. But missing more days than the annual allotment is an automatic termination, no matter how much management likes you.
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Learn who the charismatic people are and become friends (or at least acquaintances) with them. You want to be in on gossip (just like high school). Don’t gossip about anyone important, but listen a lot (others will be gossiping about coworkers-don’t let that fool you into thinking you can). Keep your complaining to neutral things like the cleanliness of the bathrooms, the weather, or the intellect of your callers.
I know! It’s never fun to be the one to fart in church
Jaguars! - thanks for your indulgence; do you actually have to get in the middle of disputes between disgruntled parties often? Do you get ordered of folks’ land or other stupid stuff?
It is if you can do it quietly. 
It’s like my Dad always says. He has two piles at work to do - stuff his boss wants him to do and stuff that actually needs to get done.
As a riter, I gots ta rite good.
Unfortunately, being a good writer doesn’t necessarily require the same skills as being a successful writer. To succeed as a freelance nonfiction author, you must have a mix of skills.
[ul]
[li]The mechanics of the language. Sure, you can break the rules, but you have to know them first, and you had better be able to follow style guides if you expect repeat business.[/li][li]Marketing. You must be able to write proposals and query letters. Selling yourself comes before selling your work.[/li][li]Clarity. Your prose must be understandable for people unfamiliar with your subject matter.[/li][li]Research. It makes no difference how well you write if your facts are wrong.[/li][li]Time management. It makes editors unhappy when you miss deadlines. And if your editor ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.[/li][li]Writing. [/li][/ul]
Adding to twickster’s remarks about editors, an editor (at least one who deals with freelancers) also needs humility, tact, and patience, and as you are dealing with writers who generally (1) know the subject better than you do (2) are in the business because they LIKE their prose and (3) have other projects going on at the same time and won’t necessarily drop everything to answer your queries right away.
Having worked as a writer and as an editor, I have two comments:
Hey, writers, sometimes the editor is right!
Hey, editors, sometimes the writer is right!
I think the most important attributes of being a successful and effective administrative law judge are decisiveness and organization.
You could always seek more evidence aiming at a perfect record, and you could always consider it a little longer, but you’ve got 100s of cases in the queue awaiting attention. You will never attain a “perfect” record, and there is no reason to believe your decision tomorrow will be any beter/different today, so make a decision and move on.
Organization makes you more efficient at processing a greater number of cases, providing clearer instructions for your support staff.
It also helps to have a strong bladder so you don’t have to call too many recesses while on the bench. And don’t take anything personally (or at least don’t show any signs of doing so on the record.)
And I find it works best for me to do as much as I can readily, conveniently, and efficiently do myself, rather than simply delegating because I can. The office works best if everyone does just a little bit beyond their stated duties, with the main goal of not holding up the process or making anyone else’s job more difficult than it needs to be.
Not often. I’ve only done a few disputes in five years of work, and the drunk thing has happened twice. more common is the pushy builder who rings up and wants a house done - and the concrete trucks arriving tomorrow… …or the client who knows nothing and says it.
I think disputes would be more common in the old bits of the US like New England or Louisiana where the land titles could be centuries old. Most NZ titles are less than a century old, and you can lay down the boundaries, (With lots of checking) and say with 100% certainty thats where the boundaries are, it doesn’t matter where that 30 year old fence happens to be.
I’m a consultant, specifically I install SAP, which amounts to changing the way my customers work: sometimes the change is mild (just a change in computer programs), sometimes it’s radical (an enormous change in corporate culture).
There are two kinds of consultants: those who believe that “I’ve done good work if, on the day I’m leaving, people don’t miss the old status quo at all” and those who believe in “don’t be part of the solution, be part of making the contract longer so we get paid more.”
To be the second kind, you need to be a selfish leeching bastard, with my apologies to children of unknown parenthood and to the Hirudinea genus.
To be the first kind, you need to see the work in global terms (what is the best solution for everybody in the customer company, not just what does the general manager think he wants), to be able to figure out what people aren’t saying (too many people approach negotiations as an opening of hostilities that makes Blitzkrieg look friendly; others are afraid to ask for what they need because they think that will offend you or that it makes them vulnerable), to be able to get people to realize that what they thought they wanted, what they want and what they need aren’t necessarily the same (often this doesn’t involve “convincing”, but instead a sort of Game of Innocence where you manage to show the second and third options as if it was a “just passing by” kind of thing… if you’d tried to explain things in a forward fashion, they would have felt threatened and refused to listen) and to produce documentation which is actually more valuable than the recycled paper it was printed on. Previous experience in the kind of jobs your customers have is extra useful, and something that I find my coworkers often lack: as an example, right now I’m doing Maintenance, and my closest coworker has a degree in Economics, has not done any roll-up-your-sleeves work around the house, and hadn’t seen the inside of a factory in the 20 years he’s been teaching people how to do Maintenance (he visited one two months ago, yay, next step is getting him to have lunch with a mechanic). He’s got a lot of technical know-how, but tends to choose the snazzier solution and not the one that both a mechanic and his boss will like.