career

Once you've snagged a job interview, the inevitable nerves that follow can make it difficult to focus on preparation. With a little bit of planning, though, you can bring your best business-ready self to the table. Follow these tips leading up to your big moment.

Several hours earlier:

1. It's important to have a healthy, substantial breakfast, of course, but it's just as important to eat well the night before so that you feel your best in the morning. Choose nutritious foods that fill and satisfy, and remember to limit caffeine to one or two servings. Chances are you'll already be feeling jittery, so put a cap on your coffee consumption.

2. Check the hourly forecast and grab any extra items that you may need: an umbrella, a raincoat, gloves, or suitable footwear, for instance.

3. Shoes are important: make sure your pair is both weather-appropriate and easy to walk in, because the last thing you want to do is trip your way through the office. The night before your interview, wear the selected shoes with socks for a couple hours to guarantee that they're broken in and comfortable.

Continue reading for more essential tips.

We've always known that Steve Jobs was a visionary and have heard of his legendary business acumen, but we have never really seen him in action.

However, we caught a glimpse of his negotiation skills in email correspondence between Jobs and media mogul Rupert Murdoch's son, which was released by the US government in relation to its price-fixing lawsuit against Apple. In the emails, we see Jobs successfully convincing James Murdoch to get HarperCollins, a News Corp. subsidiary, to sign a deal to sell its ebooks in iTunes. Quartz has the email exchange in most of its entirety, but let's take a look and dissect one of the emails Jobs wrote.

Read on to see the email.

Jessica Alba isn't slowing down one bit as her eco-friendly baby and household cleaning product company, The Honest Company, enters its sophomore year of operation. The mom of two — Honor, 4, and Haven, 1 — has spent the past few months introducing new products for the company and promoting her bestselling guide to healthy and chic living, The Honest Life: Living Naturally and True to You. On the final day of her publicity tour, she headed up to Greenwich, CT, to receive the Champion For Children Award from the Mount Sinai Hospital Children's Environmental Health Center.

It was there that Jessica and the company's cofounder, Christopher Gavigan, spilled the beans to POPSUGAR about the next area they'll enter: the health and wellness arena. At the end of the month, Honest will introduce organic toothpaste and organic vitamins (both prenatal and children's versions), two products that grew out of their own children's needs. Jessica explained, "I was given prescription prenatals from my OB, and not only were they crazy expensive, no matter how many samples he gave me, every one of them made me nauseous." Her new vitamins are free of artificial colors, scents, and flavors (they're flavored with real fruits) and kid-tested (and approved).

Here are some more highlights from the conversation.

Jessica on why she focuses on Honest diapers' design: "I think cute-factor is so important when you're looking at the little booger all day long!"

Jessica on how involved she is with the diapers' designs: "I'm really nitpicky. . . . That's where I was like, 'I'm obsessed with Alexander McQueen, he made skulls beautiful, we have to put skulls on a diaper.' And my partners were like, 'You're crazy; nobody's going to buy that!' And I'm like, 'Are you kidding me? Just try it!' It ended up being like our No. 1 diaper!"

Jessica on her favorite diaper design: "I'm really into the strawberries right now. I always loved Strawberry Shortcake, and [Haven's] a little ginger, so the strawberries look really cute on her."

Keep reading for more of Jessica's thoughts on her business and the power of the Internet.

Although your résumé is definitely important, the cover letter can also be a make-or-break factor. Before you even get an interview, your application will have to impress the recruiter or hiring manager, so perfecting your cover letter is key to earning a face-to-face meet. Here are some tips for the perfect cover letter that will catch any recruiter's eye:

• Tweak your tone for every company. Don't send generic cover letters that can be used for any job application. You want to make sure that the tone of your letter fits the type of firm you're applying to. Is the company looking for someone with sass or someone more serious? Figure that out on your own, and tailor your letter to what suits the company.
• Make a case. You won't be able to get to this on your résumé, so be sure to make the case for why you're the right person for the job on your cover letter and why you want to work for them. A good way to sell yourself is to connect your experiences with the job description. List your skills and experiences that match the type of candidate they are looking to hire.
• Be different. Don't repeat everything on your résumé in your cover letter. The letter is your chance to shine and show a bit of your personality. Repeating what's already been said just takes up valuable space.

Read on for more.

We've all been there — an amazing idea pops into your head and, without even realizing it, you've interrupted whomever is speaking to share your thought. Talking over others stops the flow of conversation and is also disrespectful to the person speaking. This faux pas is forgivable from time to time, but when it becomes a persistent characteristic, interrupting may cost you your job . . . and even a few friends. Along with learning how to be patient, retraining your brain to change how it responds to instant ideas can curb your interrupting ways. Here are a few tips to take into consideration:

• Write it down: When listening, if a great thought comes to mind, discretely write it down in a notebook while keeping up with the conversation, especially when meeting with senior managers or important clients. Wait for a break in conversation before asserting your opinion or new ideas.
• Ask a question: Instead of busting someone's talking flow, wait until the end of a thought and share your view phrased as a question. Yes, you're still cutting in, but asking a question creates an opportunity to offer new ideas and thoughts while sticking with the direction of the discussion.
• Get help: Enlist an office buddy or good friend to tip you off when you interrupt. Come up with a special hand signal or give your helper the OK to deliver a swift kick under the table to curb your interrupting ways.

Keep reading for more helpful tips.

So, you got laid off. It happens, and it doesn't have to be the end of the world. Sure, it might feel good to lie on the couch for a week and do nothing, but you eventually have to get things into gear! Our friends at LearnVest are here to share all the dos and don'ts of the unemployment world:

Most of us wouldn't think to associate the words "joblessness" and "fun," but unemployment coach Katie DeVito says she wouldn't have it any other way: "The best thing that ever happened to me was getting laid off."

After the loss of her communications position at a nonprofit, DeVito dispatched a tweet to find out how many fellow New Jerseyans were also out of work. With that tweet, she found her calling: the overwhelming response inspired her to found NJ Unemployed, a support group for job-seekers in the Garden State to facilitate the exchange of stories and advice for moving forward professionally after the loss of a job.

Now the site has over 1,000 members, and DeVito says being part of the community helped her not only find a new job, but also put her fate in perspective. That's one way not to let a pink slip get you down.

We also spoke to experts to find out several key unemployment dos and don'ts when you want to get back on the career track. Heed these tips, and you, like DeVito, could wind up even happier than you were before.

Read on for more

It's important to accept the right friend requests, because the strength of your LinkedIn network depends on who your connections are. You want to make sure you're comfortable with your connection having access to your network. Adding and accepting a LinkedIn request is a gesture of trust, and it should be made with careful consideration.

Now that you're more careful about who you add, the next step is to clean up your friends list. You may not have been too picky in the beginning while you were building up your account, but it's time to weed out the connections that you don't want or need. Here's how to go about deleting your contacts:

1. Log in to your account, and hover over "Contacts" on the top bar of your profile. A dropdown menu will appear, and you should click on "Connections."

2. You'll be taken to your address book. Click on the hyperlink "Remove Connections" which you can find in the top right-hand corner of the page.

3. You should be in the "Remove Connections" page. You'll see the address book on the left side, and you'll have to click through each alphabet letter (connections are grouped by last names) to see which connections you'd like to delete. When cleaning up your list, check to see if your contacts meet these qualifications. If they don't, consider deleting them. Check the boxes next to the names you want to delete, then click on the blue "Remove Connections" button to remove them.

Peppering your conversations with "like" can seem like the norm or even cool in high school, but when it comes to the working world, it can discredit your professionalism. You might as well throw in a "whatever" or "as if!" while you're at it. It disrupts the flow of your conversation, and also makes you sound unsure of what you are saying.

However, this doesn't mean that you can't use the word at all. The word "like" is properly used in some instances:

• You're comparing the similarity between two items: This shirt is like the one I have.
• You favor something: I like him
• You're giving an example: A sport like football.

Here are some things you can do to curb the use of the filler:

• Record yourself: Try to record yourself talking on the phone with a friend and watch how often you say the word. This will make you more aware of how much you say "like." You may start automatically noticing your usage when you're talking.
• Make a conscious effort: Make an effort to stop saying "like" in all your conversations. The more you practice, the more second nature it'll become to you.
• Join Toastmasters: Join your local Toastmasters to improve your public speaking skills, which most definitely will include the banning of the use of the word "like."
• Slow down: You may be interjecting the word "like" in your conversation as fillers because you need more time to process your thoughts before you speak. Start slowing down your speech and take pauses when you need them. People often worry about pauses making the conversation uncomfortable, but it actually shows that you're thinking before you speak, which is always a positive trait.