Running late for work?.... It's more common than you think.

There are times when the real world doesn't go along with your plans, like when you miss every light on your way to work, the trains are delayed or the weather makes it impossible to move at a normal speed.
These common occurrences are a mildly frustrating way to start your workday, but as isolated experiences go, they're not too bad.

In a new nationwide CareerBuilder study, more than 3,000 full-time, private sector workers and more than 2,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries and company sizes were asked about coming in late and what's OK, what's not OK and what's downright strange.

Check out how your habits compare to that of workers across the country, whether your boss is more lenient or strict than others, and also read the wildest late excuses managers have heard.

Blame it on traffic

Though it's a regular part of our schedule, workers across the country are occasionally late surprisingly often. Nearly one quarter (23 percent) of employees admit to being tardy at least once a month on average, with 15 percent admitting to arriving late at least once a week.

And what's holding us back from getting to work? Traffic remains the most common reason employees say they're late (39 percent), followed by lack of sleep (19 percent), problems with public transportation (8 percent), bad weather (7 percent) and dropping the kids off at daycare or school (6 percent).

Don't be a repeat offender
Knowing your company policy on when to arrive for work will help clarify your manager's expectations, as well as help you avoid trouble. What's the worst thing that can happen if you're late? It turns out, you could lose your job: 35 percent of employers have fired an employee for tardiness, and
48 percent of employers expect their employees to be on time every day.

If you're running late, it can be courteous to let your boss know. However, you may want to rehearse what you'll say before you actually say it. Whether it's real or not, if an excuse sounds too wild to be true, your boss is probably going to have a hard time being sympathetic.Employers shared some of the most memorable excuses they've received from employees who were running late, including:

• Employee claimed a zebra was running down the highway and held up traffic (turned out to be true)
• Employee woke up on the front lawn of a house two blocks away from his home
• Employee's cat got stuck in the toilet
• Employee couldn't eat breakfast -- he ran out of milk for cereal and had to buy some before getting ready for work
• Employee was late to work because he fell asleep in the car when he got to work
• Employee accidentally put superglue in her eye instead of contact lens solution, and had to go to the emergency room
• Employee thought Halloween was a work holiday
• Employee said a hole in the roof caused rain to fall on the alarm clock and it didn't go off
• Employee was watching something on TV and really wanted to see the end
• Employee forgot that the company had changed locations
• Employee got a hairbrush stuck in her hair
• Employee was scared by a nightmare

Always be sure to give yourself enough time to arrive at work and be preparied to start your day when you get in the building.

Are You Likeable Enough to Succeed?

Success is putting your mind to an ambition and achieving that aim, whether it is to be Prime minister, a good parent, or to score a goal in your Sunday league game.

For most people to be happy they need to work in a pleasant friendly environment get on well with colleagues, to be intellectually stimulated, challenged and rewarded. You should not accept a job with a company if you think that it cannot offer you these things. For your part, you have to have the right stuff, in terms of both skills and personality, these will help you find a job in the first place and will set you in good stead throughout your career regardless of the industry sector.



Making allies in the workplace

It pays to have friends at your place of work, not only can they make tea for you, but if you get on well with your colleagues then the office will have a more pleasant atmosphere and you will not dread coming into work every morning.

We spend a lot of time with our work colleagues, if you work 9-5, 5 days of the week then in the course of a lifetime you probably spend a lot more time with them than you do your loved one. So take the time to be friendly, it helps if you are a positive, outgoing, cheerful, and a likeable person. Having a reputation as the office social outcast will get you nowhere. Arguing everyday will only make you and everyone else unhappy.

To, make it to the top you have to be good with people. Your fellow colleagues will also have promotional aspirations, they could be useful contacts in years to come.


Look out for number one while being a team player

Do not be single-mindedly ambitious, the best personnel are team players. However it does no harm to have a goal and to go out of your way to achieve it. Ambition is a healthy quality and one that is picked up upon from the interview onwards, you have to be proactive in making your wants come true.

We all need self-belief, without it we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. You need to believe that you are capable of being successful, and achieving your ambitions. When you believe it you can set about convincing other people of what you are capable of.

Everyone has the potential to succeed you just need a target to aim for. Making a rough career plan will help you achieve this, ask yourself where you want to be in the five or ten years time. Define your ambition and then to go out and make it happen.

5 Small Things That Make a Big Difference to Hiring Managers

You apply to your dream job and breeze through the first round of interviews. HR loves you, the fit seems great, and they email you the very next day to come in for another round a week later.

This time, you meet with 3 more managers and spend nearly 5 hours learning about the company. Things go even better than the previous round, and you find out that you are one of the finalists for the position.

A week later you’re sitting at your desk (admittedly, dreaming of the moment when you’ll get to give your notice) when you see a call from the company coming in on your mobile phone. You sprint to a private conference room, breathlessly answer the call, only to have your HR contact tell you "I am SO sorry. You were a really fantastic candidate, it was incredibly close, and this was a really difficult decision. But in the end, unfortunately we’ve decided to make an offer to the other finalist."

Devastating, right?

So in a scenario where there might be 500 resumes, funneled down to 50 and then 10, and then narrowed again to the top 3-5 candidates, everyone is going to be good. You’re all going to have a solid education. You’re all going to have relevant work experience. You’re all going to do pretty well on your interview.

This means the decision on who to hire could come down to something very, very small. So why not make sure you have that edge? Here are some tips.

5. Get a Wardrobe Update
Yes, the suit you bought 4-5 years ago to wear to your buddy’s wedding is "fine." It still fits you pretty well, you washed the dress shirt you usually wear with it, and you’re wearing your lucky tie.

But what if you invested in a brand new suit in the latest style and had it tailored to fit your 2014 body, not your 2009 body? What if you bought a brand new white dress shirt that is so crisp that it makes the new suit look even better? What if your old tie wasn’t really lucky? It was just old.


4. Pay for a Professional Headshot
How about your LinkedIn page, your Gmail account, and your Skype avatar? Do you use a professional headshot photo, or that halfway decent picture someone took from their phone?

3. Create a Stylish Resume
For conservative fields like finance, it could be an interesting font, a shaded box, or a very small splash of color. For more creative fields, it could be as extreme as infographic elements worked into the layout. In an increasingly design-centric world, could this small tweak set you apart?

2. Don't Just Say It, Show It
Truth: Once a hiring team starts going round after round of interviews with multiple candidates over several weeks, they all start to run together. The winning candidate might just be the person who does something memorable and sticks out in the mind of the hiring manager.

1. Control Your Personal Brand
If there’s one thing you can be certain of, it’s this: At some point during the hiring process and before you’re given an offer, the hiring company will Google you.

U.S. boom in oil & natural gas

A U.S. boom in oil and natural gas production is fueling a wide range of potential opportunities for investors. But they may not be the ones you’d expect.

In 2012, the U.S. saw the largest expansion in domestic oil and gas production in the more than 150 years since it began drilling commercial wells. Improved technology that can unleash oil and gas from shale rock formations helped domestic oil output grow last year by a record 853,000 barrels a day, to the highest level in 17 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And for natural gas, whereas the amount extracted from shale represented just 2% of the U.S. natural gas supply in 2000, it was 37% in 2012.

This U.S. energy boom comes largely thanks to the technology of "fracking," or hydraulic fracturing, coupled with horizontal drilling methods that allow for much faster, more efficient extraction of oil and natural gas. Fracking is controversial, with opponents noting that its methods — pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals under high pressure into source rock to crack it open, allowing gas and oil to flow — may result in groundwater pollution and other problems. But energy companies have continued to invest aggressively in this technology. And as processes have improved, natural gas production has become far more predictable.

Another area to look at may be the U.S. petrochemical industry, which has largely switched from oil to natural gas for feedstock used to make chemicals such as ammonia, a vital ingredient of fertilizer. Those cheaper chemicals serve as economical raw materials for everything from auto manufacturing to farming and household goods, and can now be exported at globally competitive prices.

What's Next for Natural Gas?

Today's investing landscape could shift if the U.S. eases restrictions on selling surplus natural gas overseas. A Department of Energy study released last December suggested that increased exports could provide a broad boost to the economy. But it would likely raise U.S. prices for the fuel, and that worries groups such as America's Energy Advantage, a coalition of energy-dependent companies. At the same time, however, issues around the potential environmental damage caused by fracking could intensify and may need to be resolved one way or the other.