Questões de Inglês

Skillset vs. Mindset: Which Will Get You the Job?

By Heather Huhman

There’s a debate going on among career
experts about which is more important: skillset or
mindset. While skills are certainly desirable for many
positions, does having the right ones guarantee
you’ll get the job?

What if you have the mindset to get the work
accomplished, but currently lack certain skills
requested by the employer? Jennifer Fremont-Smith,
CEO of Smarterer, and Paul G. Stoltz, PhD, coauthor
of Put Your Mindset to Work: The One Asset
You Really Need to Win and Keep the Job You Love,
recently sat down with U.S. Newsto sound off on this
issue.

Heather: What is more important to today’s
employers: skillset or mindset? Why?

Jennifer: For many jobs, skillset needs to come
first. The employer absolutely must find people who
have the hard skills to do whatever it is they are being
hired to do. Programmers have to know how to program.
Data analysts need to know how to crunch numbers in
Excel. Marketers must know their marketing tools and
software. Social media managers must know the tools
of their trade like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and
have writing and communication skills.
After the employers have identified candidates
with these hard skills, they can shift their focus to their
candidates’ mindsets - attitude, integrity, work ethic,
personality, etc.

Paul: Mindset utterly trumps skillset.
Heather: Do you have any data or statistics to
back up your argument?
Jennifer: Despite record high unemployment,
many jobs sit empty because employers can’t find
candidates with the right skills. In a recent survey
cited in the Wall Street Journal, over 50 percent of
companies reported difficulty finding applicants with
the right skills. Companies are running lean and mean
in this economy – they don’t have the time to train for
those key skills.
Paul: [Co-author James Reed and I] asked
tens of thousands of top employers worldwide this
question: If you were hiring someone today, which
would you pick, a ) the person with the perfect skills
and qualifications, but lacking the desired mindset, or
B) the person with the desired mindset, but lacking
the rest? Ninety-eight percent pick A. Add to this that
97 percent said it is more likely that a person with the
right mindset will develop the right skillset, rather than
the other way around.
Heather: How do you define skillset?

Jennifer: At Smarterer, we define skillset as the
set of digital, social, and technical tools professionals
use to be effective in the workforce. Professionals
are rapidly accumulating these skills, and the tools
themselves are proliferating and evolving – we’re giving
people a simple, smart way for people to validate their
skillset and articulate it to the world.

Heather: How do you define mindset?

Paul: We define mindset as “the lens through
which you see and navigate life.” It undergirds and
affects all that you think, see, believe, say, and do.

Heather: How can job seekers show they have
the skillset employers are seeking throughout the
entire hiring process?
Jennifer: At the beginning of the process, seekers
can showcase the skills they have by incorporating
them, such as their Smarterer scores, throughout
their professional and personal brand materials. They
should be articulating their skills in their resume, cover
letter, LinkedIn profile, blog, website - everywhere
they express their professional identity.

Heather: How can job seekers show they have
the mindset employers are seeking throughout
the entire hiring process?
Paul: One of the most head-spinning studies
we did, which was conducted by an independent
statistician showed that, out of 30,000 CVs/resumes,
when you look at who gets the job and who does not:

A. The conventional wisdom fails (at best). None
of the classic, accepted advice, like using action verbs
or including hobbies/interests actually made any
difference.

B. The only factor that made the difference was
that those who had one of the 72 mindset qualities
from our master model, articulated in their CV/resume,
in a specific way, were three times as likely to get the
job. Furthermore, those who had two or more of these
statements, were seven times more likely to get the
job, often over other more qualified candidates.
Available at: .Retrieved on: 17 Sept. 2011. Adapted.




According to Jennifer Fremont-Smith,

a) today"s employers intend to invest large sums of money training new employees.
b) most employees nowadays are indifferent to the use of digital, social and technical tools in the workplace.
c) candidates should be able to display and present their skills in different formats that will be seen by prospective employers.
d) many employers consider it unnecessary to learn about the job seekers" attitudes, integrity and personality.
e) no company nowadays can find employees with the hard skills required by the job market.

A resposta correta é:

TEXT II


China: is it a big bubble about to burst?

Patrick Collinson, guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 April 2012

Diana Choyleva is the bear in the China shop. The analyst from Lombard Street Research says last week"s China GDP
figures – which revealed growth slowing to a three-year low – are an early warning signal of the hard landing to come.

Dig deep into the data, she says, and you"ll find that Chinese exports are falling. All that is propping up the economy is
gargantuan investment in infrastructure financed by state- directed banks that look more and more like Western banks just
before the collapse of 2008. Except they are bigger and badder.

Choyleva radiates a pessimism that is almost unique among Hong Kong"s investment professionals. Westerners, she says, are
so awed by the China dream they can"t see the coming China-geddon. The excesses that drove the West into a financial crisis
and, in Europe, an economic depression, are gripping the Chinese economy, too. "It"s just that they have become bigger," she
says. The country"s vast pool of savings is being squandered on dead-end infrastructure projects that make Japan"s roads to
nowhere look like prudent planning.

"China"s miracle growth is over," she proclaims, saying that if Chinese policy makers get it right they might, just, see the
country"s growth halve to 5% or below. Get it wrong, and the consequences could be devastating not just for China but for
the rest of the world, too. "Building those roads to nowhere can go on for a long time, but ultimately financing it will become
unbearable," warns Choyleva.

As long as US and European consumers were accumulating colossal amounts of debt, much of it to pay for goods made in
China, the merry-go-round worked just fine. But as western economies deleverage, the driver for growth has been
extinguished.

"The financial crisis has changed everything," she says. "It can no longer rely on abroad to buy its excess production. The US
will consume less, and produce more. The years of current account surpluses are over, rendering the growth model obsolete."

Meanwhile, the banks that have been the lynchpin of growth are insolvent, and their mountain of bad loans will eventually
lead to a liquidity crisis.

But Choyleva"s is a lone voice. At brokerage CLSA, one of the region"s biggest investment banks, China macro strategist
Andy Rothman, a former US diplomat, says the wall of worry comes from a fundamental misunderstanding.

The first myth to explode, he says, is that it is an export economy. It"s not. It assembles the likes of iPads (they are all made
in China ), but the value remains, mostly, in the US. Even Korean firms make more money from the iPad than China. Over
the last decade, while it has enjoyed GDP growth of 10% per annum, only 1% of that was from exports. What we haven"t
woken up to is that China is a domestic growth story.

It"s not an unbalanced export-only economy – instead, it"s the world"s best domestic consumption story, claims Rothman. It is
being driven by "phenomenal" increases in wages for average workers; incomes are up 173% over the past 11 years. That
also puts the so-called property bubble into perspective. The price per-square-foot of an apartment in a major Chinese city
has leaped by nearly 10% a year, for many years. But as incomes are rising even faster – by around 13% a year – it"s not the
issue it became in the west.

Better still, it"s not on the never-never. Mortgages are still in their infancy in China. One in five first-time buyers purchase
entirely with cash. The average downpayment is 30% – a long way from the 100% loans that became common in the US and
the UK.

"Even if prices fall by a third, almost no one will actually be underwater," says Rothman. Westerners are also obsessed with
startling property price rises in Shanghai and Beijing. But go into the interior and prices are "dramatically lower," he says.
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/apr/27/china-big-bubbles-about-to-burst)


According to Text II, the idea conveyed by the expression "China-geddon" is:

a) Chinese economy is almost a dream.
b) China is the leader among the BRICs.
c) Chinese inhabitants are far away from the Armageddon.
d) China is one of the biggest economies in the world.
e) Chinese economy is about to collapse.

A resposta correta é:

Skillset vs. Mindset: Which Will Get You the Job?

By Heather Huhman

There’s a debate going on among career
experts about which is more important: skillset or
mindset. While skills are certainly desirable for many
positions, does having the right ones guarantee
you’ll get the job?

What if you have the mindset to get the work
accomplished, but currently lack certain skills
requested by the employer? Jennifer Fremont-Smith,
CEO of Smarterer, and Paul G. Stoltz, PhD, coauthor
of Put Your Mindset to Work: The One Asset
You Really Need to Win and Keep the Job You Love,
recently sat down with U.S. Newsto sound off on this
issue.

Heather: What is more important to today’s
employers: skillset or mindset? Why?

Jennifer: For many jobs, skillset needs to come
first. The employer absolutely must find people who
have the hard skills to do whatever it is they are being
hired to do. Programmers have to know how to program.
Data analysts need to know how to crunch numbers in
Excel. Marketers must know their marketing tools and
software. Social media managers must know the tools
of their trade like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and
have writing and communication skills.
After the employers have identified candidates
with these hard skills, they can shift their focus to their
candidates’ mindsets - attitude, integrity, work ethic,
personality, etc.

Paul: Mindset utterly trumps skillset.
Heather: Do you have any data or statistics to
back up your argument?
Jennifer: Despite record high unemployment,
many jobs sit empty because employers can’t find
candidates with the right skills. In a recent survey
cited in the Wall Street Journal, over 50 percent of
companies reported difficulty finding applicants with
the right skills. Companies are running lean and mean
in this economy – they don’t have the time to train for
those key skills.
Paul: [Co-author James Reed and I] asked
tens of thousands of top employers worldwide this
question: If you were hiring someone today, which
would you pick, a ) the person with the perfect skills
and qualifications, but lacking the desired mindset, or
B) the person with the desired mindset, but lacking
the rest? Ninety-eight percent pick A. Add to this that
97 percent said it is more likely that a person with the
right mindset will develop the right skillset, rather than
the other way around.
Heather: How do you define skillset?

Jennifer: At Smarterer, we define skillset as the
set of digital, social, and technical tools professionals
use to be effective in the workforce. Professionals
are rapidly accumulating these skills, and the tools
themselves are proliferating and evolving – we’re giving
people a simple, smart way for people to validate their
skillset and articulate it to the world.

Heather: How do you define mindset?

Paul: We define mindset as “the lens through
which you see and navigate life.” It undergirds and
affects all that you think, see, believe, say, and do.

Heather: How can job seekers show they have
the skillset employers are seeking throughout the
entire hiring process?
Jennifer: At the beginning of the process, seekers
can showcase the skills they have by incorporating
them, such as their Smarterer scores, throughout
their professional and personal brand materials. They
should be articulating their skills in their resume, cover
letter, LinkedIn profile, blog, website - everywhere
they express their professional identity.

Heather: How can job seekers show they have
the mindset employers are seeking throughout
the entire hiring process?
Paul: One of the most head-spinning studies
we did, which was conducted by an independent
statistician showed that, out of 30,000 CVs/resumes,
when you look at who gets the job and who does not:

A. The conventional wisdom fails (at best). None
of the classic, accepted advice, like using action verbs
or including hobbies/interests actually made any
difference.

B. The only factor that made the difference was
that those who had one of the 72 mindset qualities
from our master model, articulated in their CV/resume,
in a specific way, were three times as likely to get the
job. Furthermore, those who had two or more of these
statements, were seven times more likely to get the
job, often over other more qualified candidates.
Available at: .Retrieved on: 17 Sept. 2011. Adapted.



According to the fragment in lines 30-39, it is true that

a) workers are not willing to spend time in in-company training programs.
b) unemployment rates are high because workers are looking for higher salaries.
c) many jobs are not taken because employers are becoming excessively critical.
d) companies are not interested in hiring more workers because of the hard economic times.
e) more than 50% of companies have not found candidates with the profile they are looking for.

A resposta correta é:

Has Higgs been really discovered?

by Scientific American

Top physicists have recently reached a frenzy
over the announcement that the Large Hadron
Collider in Geneva is planning to release what is
widely expected to be tantalizing - although not
conclusive - evidence for the existence of the Higgs
boson, the elementary particle hypothesized to be the
origin of the mass of all matter.

Many physicists have already swung into
action, swapping rumors about the contents of the
announcement and proposing grand ideas about what
those rumors would mean, if true. “It’s impossible to
be excited enough,” says Gordon Kane, a theoretical
physicist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

The spokespeople of the collaborations using the
cathedral-size ATLAS and CMS detectors to search
for the Higgs boson and other phenomena at the
27-kilometer-circumference proton accelerator of the
Large Hadron Collider ( LHC ) are scheduled to present
updates based on analyses of the data collected to
date. “There won’t be a discovery announcement, but it
does promise to be interesting, since there are rumors
that scientists have seen hints of the elusive Higgs
boson” says James Gillies, spokesperson for CERN
(European Organization for Nuclear Research), which
hosts the LHC.

Joe Lykken, a theoretical physicist at Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill, and a
member of the CMS collaboration, says: “Whatever
happens eventually with the Higgs, I think we’ll look
back on this meeting and say. ‘This was the beginning
of something.’” (As a CMS member, Lykken says he is
not yet sure himself what results ATLAS would unveil;
he is bound by his collaboration’s rules not to reveal
what CMS has in hand.)

Available at: . Retrieved on: 11 Dec. 2011. Adapted.



In Text, Joe Lykken states that

a) Dr. Higgs is bond by the collaboration"s rules and therefore should keep quiet.
b) even not knowing what will come, he believes science will reach a turning point with the Higgs news.
c) he will be free to talk about the news after ATLAS releases it.
d) he is doubtful about the real importance of the Higgs.
e) the theoretical physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia will look back on the meeting about Dr. Higgs.

A resposta correta é:

TEXT II


China: is it a big bubble about to burst?

Patrick Collinson, guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 April 2012

Diana Choyleva is the bear in the China shop. The analyst from Lombard Street Research says last week"s China GDP
figures – which revealed growth slowing to a three-year low – are an early warning signal of the hard landing to come.

Dig deep into the data, she says, and you"ll find that Chinese exports are falling. All that is propping up the economy is
gargantuan investment in infrastructure financed by state- directed banks that look more and more like Western banks just
before the collapse of 2008. Except they are bigger and badder.

Choyleva radiates a pessimism that is almost unique among Hong Kong"s investment professionals. Westerners, she says, are
so awed by the China dream they can"t see the coming China-geddon. The excesses that drove the West into a financial crisis
and, in Europe, an economic depression, are gripping the Chinese economy, too. "It"s just that they have become bigger," she
says. The country"s vast pool of savings is being squandered on dead-end infrastructure projects that make Japan"s roads to
nowhere look like prudent planning.

"China"s miracle growth is over," she proclaims, saying that if Chinese policy makers get it right they might, just, see the
country"s growth halve to 5% or below. Get it wrong, and the consequences could be devastating not just for China but for
the rest of the world, too. "Building those roads to nowhere can go on for a long time, but ultimately financing it will become
unbearable," warns Choyleva.

As long as US and European consumers were accumulating colossal amounts of debt, much of it to pay for goods made in
China, the merry-go-round worked just fine. But as western economies deleverage, the driver for growth has been
extinguished.

"The financial crisis has changed everything," she says. "It can no longer rely on abroad to buy its excess production. The US
will consume less, and produce more. The years of current account surpluses are over, rendering the growth model obsolete."

Meanwhile, the banks that have been the lynchpin of growth are insolvent, and their mountain of bad loans will eventually
lead to a liquidity crisis.

But Choyleva"s is a lone voice. At brokerage CLSA, one of the region"s biggest investment banks, China macro strategist
Andy Rothman, a former US diplomat, says the wall of worry comes from a fundamental misunderstanding.

The first myth to explode, he says, is that it is an export economy. It"s not. It assembles the likes of iPads (they are all made
in China ), but the value remains, mostly, in the US. Even Korean firms make more money from the iPad than China. Over
the last decade, while it has enjoyed GDP growth of 10% per annum, only 1% of that was from exports. What we haven"t
woken up to is that China is a domestic growth story.

It"s not an unbalanced export-only economy – instead, it"s the world"s best domestic consumption story, claims Rothman. It is
being driven by "phenomenal" increases in wages for average workers; incomes are up 173% over the past 11 years. That
also puts the so-called property bubble into perspective. The price per-square-foot of an apartment in a major Chinese city
has leaped by nearly 10% a year, for many years. But as incomes are rising even faster – by around 13% a year – it"s not the
issue it became in the west.

Better still, it"s not on the never-never. Mortgages are still in their infancy in China. One in five first-time buyers purchase
entirely with cash. The average downpayment is 30% – a long way from the 100% loans that became common in the US and
the UK.

"Even if prices fall by a third, almost no one will actually be underwater," says Rothman. Westerners are also obsessed with
startling property price rises in Shanghai and Beijing. But go into the interior and prices are "dramatically lower," he says.
(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/apr/27/china-big-bubbles-about-to-burst)

According to Text II, in the last ten years, China"s GDP annual growth has been of:

a) 1%.
b) 5%.
c) 10%.
d) 13%.
e) 173%.

A resposta correta é:

TEXT I


Emerging markets: a bubble that has finally burst?

Patrick Collinson, guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 August 2011

One of Britain"s most successful fund managers has warned about an emerging market bubble and told small investors, who
have poured billions of pounds into emerging market funds, that returns could be sorely disappointing over the next few
years.

British investors now hold more than £40bn in emerging market funds – typically invested in China, Brazil and India – and
those who jumped in early have done well. The average fund invested in China has made a 112% gain since 2006 while the
very best fund, run by First State, has notched up a breathtaking 159% gain for its investors. Meanwhile, the average fund
invested in UK shares has limped in with a rise of 18% over the same period.

But last week the head of global emerging market equities at First State, Jonathan Asante, told investors that the good times
may be over. Asante wrote to investors saying that most stocks in emerging markets are "fully valued", which in fund
manager speak means he believes that they are not worth investing in and could be headed for a fall. A formal warning to
investors from their fund manager is extremely rare, as it could prompt investors to bolt for the exit – and shrink the funds
from which they are paid.

Asante takes a longer view than most of his rivals. Profit sharing and bonuses at First State are only paid out on the basis of
three-year numbers rather than quarterly or half-yearly figures. Managers are also required to put most of their personal
wealth into their funds. "It means that managers have to eat their own cooking," he says.

Asante, who used to teach at the London School of Economics before becoming a fund manager, is not forecasting an abrupt
halt to the Chinese economic miracle, or an end to India"s growth. But he says that so much money has flooded into the
shares of emerging market companies that even the best of them may now be overvalued. Many companies command share
price ratings which are a multiple of their equivalents in the west, he says, yet are trading in areas where corruption is rife,
inflation rising, where legal systems are immature and where back-door state control is common.

Overvaluations are perhaps most severe in Latin America, particularly Brazil, he says. Indeed, he was so concerned that last
December he wrote a separate warning note to clients in his Latin American portfolios. It was a good call – the São Paulo
Bovespa index was then around 70,000, and is now around 56,000. He continues to believe that the Brazilian currency, the
real, is the "most ridiculously over-valued currency in the world".

It is telling what First State managers are doing with their own cash tied up in First State funds. They now only have around
60% in equity funds, with 40% in cash (sterling, Hong Kong dollar and Singapore dollar) and gold.

"The world is a very risky place right now. I would have to be sceptical of the China story. The central planners have in some
senses been wonderful at balancing growth, inflation, banking and environmental concerns. I applaud them but wonder if
they can keep this going forever."

However, Asante"s views are not shared by the majority of emerging market fund managers. In contrast, the manager of
another giant emerging markets fund, Michael Konstantinov, of the £870m Allianz RCM Bric Stars fund, this week told
potential investors that valuations are currently "very cheap" (his italics) and that they offer an "outstanding entry point".

"I think it is important to remind ourselves that the Bric [Brazil, Russia, India, China] countries came through the global
economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 quite well. Brazil did not even go into recession in 2009 while India and China continued
to grow very strongly in the range of 8%-9%. Only Russia had a short-term setback, but has recovered well and is, again,
leading the global growth dynamic.

"As the demand side of these economies is mainly driven by domestic demand, not by exports, they are more resilient to a
global crisis."

Fidelity, which took more than £500m from UK investors into a China fund launched by its most high-profile manager,
Anthony Bolton, has struggled to make money for them yet. The trust is currently trading at 96p compared to its launch price
of 100p in April 2010, although Fidelity remains bullish on the region.

Nick Price, manager of Fidelity Emerging Markets fund and the Fidelity EMEA fund, says: "As an emerging market fund
manager you"d expect me to be bullish wouldn"t you? Clearly, many of the markets are facing headwinds right now and these
may last for some months. But having just come back from China where I spent a week visiting 30 companies, I remain
convinced that the China consumer story is as strong as ever.
"On a longer-term basis, emerging market stocks represent a fraction of their potential worth. It"s a strong statement I know,
but look at the facts. Emerging markets represent 90% of the world"s oil reserves, over 80% of the world"s population, over
60% of the world"s forex reserves, 30% of global GDP, but yet are only 13% of global stock market capitalisation. I am
convinced that the longer you look out, the more sure you can be that emerging markets offer great opportunities."

(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/aug/05/emerging-markets-bubble-burst)


In Michael Konstantinov"s view, it is right to understand that:

a) all of the BRICs grew strongly in the last years, mainly China, which reached 8%-9%.
b) Brazil went into a recession, but is now growing powerfully again.
c) valuations are in a good price, so it is an exceptional opportunity to the investors.
d) the BRICs went well through the global crisis, but they will soon decline.
e) BRICs are not very resistant to a new global crisis because they are driven by a domestic demand.

A resposta correta é:

Electronic junk will create pollution problem around world, U.N. study warns


BALI, Indonesia — Sales of household electrical gadgets will boom across the developing world in the next decade, wreaking environmental havoc if there are no new strategies to deal with the discarded TVs, cell phones and computers, a U.N. report said today.
The environmental and health hazards posed by the globe"s mounting electronic waste are particularly urgent in developing countries, which are already dumping grounds for rich nations" high-tech trash, the U.N. Environment Program study said.
Electronic waste is piling up around the world at a rate estimated at 40 million U.S. tons a year, the report said, noting that data remain insufficient.
China produces 2.6 million tons of electronic waste a year, second only to the United States with 3.3 million tons, it said.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said the globe was ill-prepared to deal with the explosion of electronic gadgets over the past decade.
"The world is now confronted with a massive wave of electronic waste that is going to come back and hit us, particularly for least-developed countries, that may become a dumping ground," Steiner told The Associated Press ahead of a UNEP executive meeting in Bali.
He said some Americans and Europeans have sent broken computers to African countries falsely declared as donations. The computers were dumped outside slums as toxic waste and became potential hazards to people, he said.
The report predicts that China"s waste rate from old computers will quadruple from 2007 levels by 2020. Meanwhile, in India, waste from old refrigerators — which contain hazardous chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbon gases — could triple by 2020.
It said the fastest growth in electronic waste in recent years has been in communications devices such as cell phones, pagers and smart phones.
Most of the recycling of electronic waste in developing countries such as China and India is done by inefficient and unregulated backyard operators. The environmentally harmful practice of heating electronic circuit boards over coal-fired grills to leach out gold is widespread in both countries.
The report called for regulations for collecting and managing electronic waste, and urged that technologies be transferred to the industrializing world to cope with such waste.
While electrical products such refrigerators, air conditioners, printers, DVD players and digital music players account for only a small part of the world"s garbage, their components make them particularly hazardous.
Prof. Eric Williams, an Arizona State University expert on industrial ecology who did not participate in the UNEP study, said it was difficult to comment on the credibility of the electronic waste growth forecasts because the report gives little explanation of how they were calculated.
"It is the environmental intensity of e-waste rather than its total mass that is the main concern," Williams told the AP via e-mail.
"If e-waste is recycled informally in the developing world, it causes far worse pollution than the much larger mass of regular waste in landfills," he said.

http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/02/electronic_junk_will_create_po.html (06/06/12)



What do some Americans and Europeans do with broken computers?

a) They recycle every old computers.
b) They give them to children play.
c) They send them to African Countries.
d) They became potential hazards to people.
e) They fix and put them to run.

A resposta correta é:

Electronic junk will create pollution problem around world, U.N. study warns


BALI, Indonesia — Sales of household electrical gadgets will boom across the developing world in the next decade, wreaking environmental havoc if there are no new strategies to deal with the discarded TVs, cell phones and computers, a U.N. report said today.
The environmental and health hazards posed by the globe"s mounting electronic waste are particularly urgent in developing countries, which are already dumping grounds for rich nations" high-tech trash, the U.N. Environment Program study said.
Electronic waste is piling up around the world at a rate estimated at 40 million U.S. tons a year, the report said, noting that data remain insufficient.
China produces 2.6 million tons of electronic waste a year, second only to the United States with 3.3 million tons, it said.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said the globe was ill-prepared to deal with the explosion of electronic gadgets over the past decade.
"The world is now confronted with a massive wave of electronic waste that is going to come back and hit us, particularly for least-developed countries, that may become a dumping ground," Steiner told The Associated Press ahead of a UNEP executive meeting in Bali.
He said some Americans and Europeans have sent broken computers to African countries falsely declared as donations. The computers were dumped outside slums as toxic waste and became potential hazards to people, he said.
The report predicts that China"s waste rate from old computers will quadruple from 2007 levels by 2020. Meanwhile, in India, waste from old refrigerators — which contain hazardous chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbon gases — could triple by 2020.
It said the fastest growth in electronic waste in recent years has been in communications devices such as cell phones, pagers and smart phones.
Most of the recycling of electronic waste in developing countries such as China and India is done by inefficient and unregulated backyard operators. The environmentally harmful practice of heating electronic circuit boards over coal-fired grills to leach out gold is widespread in both countries.
The report called for regulations for collecting and managing electronic waste, and urged that technologies be transferred to the industrializing world to cope with such waste.
While electrical products such refrigerators, air conditioners, printers, DVD players and digital music players account for only a small part of the world"s garbage, their components make them particularly hazardous.
Prof. Eric Williams, an Arizona State University expert on industrial ecology who did not participate in the UNEP study, said it was difficult to comment on the credibility of the electronic waste growth forecasts because the report gives little explanation of how they were calculated.
"It is the environmental intensity of e-waste rather than its total mass that is the main concern," Williams told the AP via e-mail.
"If e-waste is recycled informally in the developing world, it causes far worse pollution than the much larger mass of regular waste in landfills," he said.

http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/02/electronic_junk_will_create_po.html (06/06/12)



China"s waste rate from old computers will

a) get low.
b) increase.
c) be OK.
d) stop.
e) be interesting.

A resposta correta é:

TEXT I

Spain"s property crash casts a long shadow over a place in the sun

Graham Norwood, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April 2011

Spanish homeowners used to have little in common with the wealthy north Europeans snapping up holiday villas and
apartments on the Costas. Now both are united in adversity. Both are suffering in a market preoccupied with falling values,
negative equity, a glut of unsold new property and, in some cases, doubts about the legality of new estates. An estimated
600,000 new homes, and 200,000 part-completed ones remain unsold, a sizeable proportion of which are in holiday areas.
The Bank of Spain says official house prices have fallen 17% since 2007, but many observers believe that the market is
much worse than that, as the bank"s index is based on valuations, not achieved sale prices. Estate agents say prices of homes
have typically fallen 20% to 50% in different parts of the country, with no sector unaffected.

"There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks," says Enrique Quemada of One to One
Capital Partners, a business consultancy. "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what
they bought them for." Meanwhile, the holiday home market also remains in the doldrums. A three-bedroom bungalow in
Castellon, north of Valencia, has been slashed by its British owner from £109,000 to £79,000, and then to £66,000, but still
has no takers. Taylor Wimpey, a British developer which has been building homes in Spain for more than 50 years, has new
villas on the Costa Blanca for sale at £140,000, down from £235,000. On the Balearic Islands, until recently thought of as
immune from the crash, prices are down as much as 40%.

"There are some real bargains, especially at the top of the market," says a spokeswoman for Savills estate agency, which has
one new luxury villa on Mallorca slashed from £15.4m to a mere £9.5m. Desperate developers are also faced with a slump in
British demand because of the poor euro-sterling exchange rate. As a result, a golfing resort in Catalunya is selling its homes
with a guaranteed rate of €1.25 to the pound on all purchases over the summer; the market rate is €1.14. Most commentators
believe that more price falls are inevitable, but even if Britons choose to buy now, the prospect of getting a Spanish mortgage
is "pretty bleak," according to Melanie Bien of broker Private Finance.

"Spain stands out with a housing market and a lending record that"s far worse than France, Portugal or Italy. If you must buy,
somehow try to remortgage money from your own home back in Britain," she advises. The latest figures to emerge from
Spain show little respite from a downturn that is now in its fourth year. Although there was a small rise in the number of
homes sold early in 2010, this was driven by the desire to beat deadlines for the scrapping of mortgage tax relief and a rise on
VAT on new homes. By the end of last year, sales volumes were again on the slide. Despite the glut of unsold new homes,
another 257,443 were completed in 2010. Even so, there has been a 43% collapse in the value of the Spanish construction
industry, according to EU figures, and a collapse in land prices of about 50%.

Spanish banks – many of which hold thousands of repossessed homes as assets – are legally obliged to start selling these
homes after holding them for two years. As a result, more properties are expected to flood the market for sale this year.
Meanwhile, as if that"s not enough, the scandal of Spain"s "illegal homes" continues. For more than a decade there have been
disputes over some new developments retrospectively declared illegal by councils, controversial compulsory purchase
powers given to developers by some local authorities, and politicians who have been jailed for accepting bungs.

The most recent controversy blew up last month when 12,697 new homes were declared illegal in the Almanzora Valley in
south-east Spain, an area popular with holiday-home buyers. Some 920 have been earmarked for demolition, while the
remainder may be rezoned, thus allowing them to be declared legal and have utilities connected. "How many will be made
homeless, or lose their life savings, if 920 houses are demolished? Who"s going to compensate those who bought in good
faith?" asks Maura Hillen, president of Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No, a local pressure group composed mainly of
British residents. Similar groups of disgruntled UK buyers exist across many of Spain"s tourist areas.

Now the housing crash has become so much a part of the modern Spanish psyche it has been accorded the ultimate tribute –
its own television soap opera. Crematorio has a storyline that includes unhappy foreign buyers, corrupt councilors, lurid
affairs, drugs and violence against a backdrop of the Spanish Costas.

Far-fetched? Not this time. Many believe the fiction is some way behind the fact. Britain and Spain aren"t a million miles
apart when it comes to home ownership aspirations. Both are big on owner-occupation. Spain has one of the highest rates in
the whole EU – a whopping 82% – with the rental market concentrated in a few major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona,
says the Rics European Housing Review 2011, a major annual study of Europe"s property markets. Tax breaks have
encouraged people to invest in housing, though many of these have now been scrapped as part of the recent austerity
measures.

And it"s not just Brits and other northern Europeans who have responded to the siren call of Spain"s sun-kissed beaches. The
Rics study points out that, among Spaniards, "there is also a high propensity to aspire to own a second home in the
countryside or on the coast: over a fifth of households own one. This helps to make crowded urban conditions more tolerable
for those that can afford it".

The latter point is a reference to the fact that Spain"s houses are typically pretty busy, bustling places. Says the report: "This
cramped lifestyle reflects cultural factors, as well as housing shortages, as several generations of families may live together
in dense urban accommodation. The number of rooms per dwelling is quite high by average EU standards, yet they tend to be
small, with the usable floor area towards the bottom of the rankings."

Property prices may have fallen, but last month Spain was named one of the world"s most overvalued housing markets. A
report in The Economist claimed Spanish homes are overvalued by more than 43%, and said this compared with just under
30% for Britain, 20% for Ireland and -12% for Germany (ie, the market in Germany is "undervalued"). It reckons home
prices should reflect the rents that tenants pay, so its index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. Spain was
the fourth most overvalued after Australia, Hong Kong and France.

But, writing on his Spanish Property Insight website, Mark Stucklin says: "You have to take these figures with a pinch of salt
as far as Spain is concerned." The problem, he says, is they are based on official figures which "significantly understate the
true extent to which prices have fallen. Spanish prices have fallen much further than this index suggests ... If you want to
know what"s going on in the residential property market, a much more revealing figure is the collapse in planning approvals,
down by 90% since 2006".

(source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/02/spain-property-prices-collapse)


The three words in bold in the following sentences - "There is an entire generation of young Spaniards with a millstone round their necks"; "They will have to work their whole lives to pay for houses now worth half what they bought them for" - make an explicit reference to:

a) "an entire generation of young Spaniards"; "they"; "houses".
b) "millstone"; "lives to pay for houses"; "for".
c) "necks"; "whole lives"; "worth half what they bought".
d) "One to One Capital partners"; "have to work"; "bought".
e) "Estate agents"; "different parts of the country"; "home market".

A resposta correta é:

Skillset vs. Mindset: Which Will Get You the Job?

By Heather Huhman

There’s a debate going on among career
experts about which is more important: skillset or
mindset. While skills are certainly desirable for many
positions, does having the right ones guarantee
you’ll get the job?

What if you have the mindset to get the work
accomplished, but currently lack certain skills
requested by the employer? Jennifer Fremont-Smith,
CEO of Smarterer, and Paul G. Stoltz, PhD, coauthor
of Put Your Mindset to Work: The One Asset
You Really Need to Win and Keep the Job You Love,
recently sat down with U.S. Newsto sound off on this
issue.

Heather: What is more important to today’s
employers: skillset or mindset? Why?

Jennifer: For many jobs, skillset needs to come
first. The employer absolutely must find people who
have the hard skills to do whatever it is they are being
hired to do. Programmers have to know how to program.
Data analysts need to know how to crunch numbers in
Excel. Marketers must know their marketing tools and
software. Social media managers must know the tools
of their trade like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, and
have writing and communication skills.
After the employers have identified candidates
with these hard skills, they can shift their focus to their
candidates’ mindsets - attitude, integrity, work ethic,
personality, etc.

Paul: Mindset utterly trumps skillset.
Heather: Do you have any data or statistics to
back up your argument?
Jennifer: Despite record high unemployment,
many jobs sit empty because employers can’t find
candidates with the right skills. In a recent survey
cited in the Wall Street Journal, over 50 percent of
companies reported difficulty finding applicants with
the right skills. Companies are running lean and mean
in this economy – they don’t have the time to train for
those key skills.
Paul: [Co-author James Reed and I] asked
tens of thousands of top employers worldwide this
question: If you were hiring someone today, which
would you pick, a ) the person with the perfect skills
and qualifications, but lacking the desired mindset, or
B) the person with the desired mindset, but lacking
the rest? Ninety-eight percent pick A. Add to this that
97 percent said it is more likely that a person with the
right mindset will develop the right skillset, rather than
the other way around.
Heather: How do you define skillset?

Jennifer: At Smarterer, we define skillset as the
set of digital, social, and technical tools professionals
use to be effective in the workforce. Professionals
are rapidly accumulating these skills, and the tools
themselves are proliferating and evolving – we’re giving
people a simple, smart way for people to validate their
skillset and articulate it to the world.

Heather: How do you define mindset?

Paul: We define mindset as “the lens through
which you see and navigate life.” It undergirds and
affects all that you think, see, believe, say, and do.

Heather: How can job seekers show they have
the skillset employers are seeking throughout the
entire hiring process?
Jennifer: At the beginning of the process, seekers
can showcase the skills they have by incorporating
them, such as their Smarterer scores, throughout
their professional and personal brand materials. They
should be articulating their skills in their resume, cover
letter, LinkedIn profile, blog, website - everywhere
they express their professional identity.

Heather: How can job seekers show they have
the mindset employers are seeking throughout
the entire hiring process?
Paul: One of the most head-spinning studies
we did, which was conducted by an independent
statistician showed that, out of 30,000 CVs/resumes,
when you look at who gets the job and who does not:

A. The conventional wisdom fails (at best). None
of the classic, accepted advice, like using action verbs
or including hobbies/interests actually made any
difference.

B. The only factor that made the difference was
that those who had one of the 72 mindset qualities
from our master model, articulated in their CV/resume,
in a specific way, were three times as likely to get the
job. Furthermore, those who had two or more of these
statements, were seven times more likely to get the
job, often over other more qualified candidates.
Available at: .Retrieved on: 17 Sept. 2011. Adapted.



The pronoun they in "they don"t have time to train for those key skills." (lines 38-39) refers to

a) "employers" (line 33)
b) "candidates" (line 34)
c) "companies" (line 36)
d) "applicants" (line 36)
e) "thousands" (line 41)

A resposta correta é: