Stop puffing up your profession. What do you do, really?

by K B , updated on November 8, 2020

I was listening to James Valentine this week on abc radio and almost choked I laughed so much.  He had a segment about the one or two key phrases that can sum up any job. He asked his audience: after years of honing your expertise, and earning multiple degrees, what do you actually spend most of your time doing or saying? It’s a funny question. One of my clients, a super smart Trademark Attorney, once told me she just wrote slightly threatening letters to people all day. Me, I help people find jobs. Here’s what James’ listeners said:

Antique Dealer

Furniture removalist (usually interstate)

Concreter

“We dig holes and fill them back up again.”

Plant Propagator

“We root them and shoot them.”

Customer Service – telecommunications

“We’re working on it.”

IT Support

“Have you turned it off and on again?”

Emergency Nurse

“Take your clothes off.”

Pathology Collector

“I stab people all day.”

Flight Attendant

“Would you like to buy something from the menu?”

Hotel Manager

“What flavor would you like?”

“Sorry we can’t serve you anymore.”

“You’re not the first person to call me that.”

HR Manager

Staff member: “Can I do x with employee y?”

HR Manager: “It depends.”

Lawyer

When unsure of the law in a particular scenario: “I need to take further instructions from my client.”

Psychologist

“Well, how do you feel about that?”

Me

“Can you give me a specific example of when you’ve done that?”

“No, I mean a person, time, place or thing.”

{ 10 comments }

5 Top Career Articles on the Web for Graduates

by K B , updated on November 8, 2020

5 Top Career Articles on the Web for Graduates

The professional world can be a confusing and scary place for new graduates. Luckily, the web is full of great advice for those who are fresh out of college or university and looking to embark on their new careers. Here, we have compiled some of the best articles for new graduates to help make the transition from the academic world to the professional world much smoother.

1. How to Stay Positive During a Long Job Search

A long and seemingly endless job search can dampen your spirits and it can be difficult to stay positive as you go from interview to interview without results. However, you can effectively keep your chin up if you remember to not wallow in self-pity by heeding the advice given in this blog article. After all, feeling sorry for yourself will not change your current situation. Instead, change your job-seeking strategy – go door-to-door handing out your resume if you were previously just applying for jobs through e-mail. Also remember all of the great traits that you have to offer and give yourself a confidence boost now and then. Finally, patience is one of the most valuable things to retain as you continue the long job hunt.

Many new graduates will unfortunately face long periods of unemployment due to the downturn of the global economy and the fact that many employers are hiring fewer people. However, with patience and a positive attitude, all graduates can eventually find a rewarding career. This article highlights ways that new graduates can keep their chins up in the job search, which is undoubtedly an important thing to know.

2 How to Write a Resume with No Job Experience

While it would be ideal for new graduates to have plenty of professional work experience from internships and fellowships, the truth is that many students simply could not find time during their studies to pursue these activities. As a result, many students graduate from college with a great educational results and a hard-earned degree, but with nearly no professional working experience. This can be a problem because work experience is important to employers. After all, it proves that the graduate knows how to handle working in the field. However, even those with no work experience can sell their resumes by listing and elaborating on their education, related course work, volunteering activities, and even past part-time jobs, as long as all of these things are tailored to explain how they are relevant to the job for which they are applying.

Finding a job soon after college is essential, but it can be challenging for students with no work experience to smoothly make the transition from the academic world to the professional world. This article explains how a graduate’s resume, the first thing many hiring managers see, can be made appealing even if there is no work experience listed on it.

3 5 Tips for Acing Your Phone Interview

The post author is an unofficial expert in phone interviews, having been a part of many successful interviews over the phone. The points she touches on in ensuring that phone interviews go as smoothly as possible include preparing for the interview by practicing answers to possible interview questions, picking a quiet place to sit for the interview, keeping a computer full of reference materials nearby, dressing up for the interview despite it being over the phone, and recording oneself doing a mock interview before doing the real thing. All of these tips ensure that the graduate is as prepared for the interview as possible, and that when the phone interview actually happens, that the process will go well and allow the interviewee to fully concentrate.

Phone interviews are increasingly commonplace, especially for telecommuting and relocation jobs, so it is imperative that graduates understand how to best ace a phone interview. In fact, many employers also are now in the habit of conducting all of their initial interviews over the phone and only bringing in those who impress in these interviews to interview face-to-face. On the phone, graduates do not have the luxury of seeing the interviewer’s reactions, so they must rely on presenting the best versions of themselves to interviewers with only the spoken word. This article gives great advice on how anyone can sell their personality over the phone.

4. 5 Tips for Negotiating a Higher Starting Salary

Some job offers are appealing in every way except for the starting salary. Graduates who find themselves uncomfortable with the starting salary offered by a company may benefit from this article, which delves into the best ways to negotiate a higher starting salary. Once an employer has indicated interest in a graduate, the graduate can carefully and tactfully discuss the salary. Beforehand, however, graduates must do their homework and be aware of what the typical salary for a particular position is, as well as the typical salary for others in similar positions within the company. Then, graduates must evaluate why they should be granted a higher salary, whether it is due to education or previous work experience. Other benefits, such as regular raises and bonuses, should also be kept in mind when determining a plausible higher salary. The key is to make the salary increase a mutually beneficial thing for both the employer and employee.

Many graduates will not be satisfied with jobs that pay minimum wage or relatively low starting salaries because they likely have various expenses that need covering, such as student loans and rent. However, it can also be difficult to find employment opportunities at all. Therefore, when a student finds a job they are excited to begin, but are deterred by the low starting salary, they should consider negotiating a higher starting salary. This article provides some great tips on how to go about doing this, as it can be a tricky thing for new graduates to navigate.

5. Top 5 Networking Tips to Get You Started

It has often been said that it is not what one knows, but who one knows that affects how far one will get in life. Networking helps for new graduates to get to know as many potentially beneficial people as possible. Graduates can network with a number of different people, from their old college professors to new friends to potential employers. All of these contacts can prove invaluable when it comes to finding lucrative employment opportunities. To make the most out of networking opportunities, this article provides several excellent tips, such as remembering the names of the people graduates meet and finding the best way to keep in touch with people, whether it is through Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, or the phone.

Networking is more important than ever now that job opportunities are scarce. It can allow graduates to find non-advertised job openings and even provide them with a good word prior to contacting the hiring manager, as the graduate can mention that he or she was recommended by a certain person for the position. To ensure that networking opportunities always go well, graduates can read over this article and learn how to make and maintain new worthwhile connections in the professional field.

This guest post is contributed by Kate Willson, who writes on the topics of top online colleges.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: katewillson2@gmail.com, or below.

{ 3 comments }

How to become a successful freelance writer – online

by K B , updated on November 8, 2020

A Writer’s Life

In making money online as a freelance writer, my career has changed over the years due to the changes in my skills and changes in the Internet.

Earning Money

Although I can now make a living full time from writing, I use diversified marketing techniques to get enough work.

I have five main marketing techniques that I use to find work:

  • Visit forums where marketers hang out and advertise my writing services in a signature file.
  • Visit content mills like Demand Studio and pick up work from an open order pool.
  • Visit job sites like Rentacoder, Elance, Guru, etc.
  • Get clients by handing out my business card at business conventions.
  • Create mini websites and write reviews about the latest merchant release. Here I get paid a commission when people buy the product.

I use the following marketing techniques.

  • A blog that serves as a branding vehicle for my services.
  • Social media followers on Facebook and Twitter.
  • Video marketing. Putting free videos on high traffic websites like YouTube.
  • Article marketing. Putting free articles on popular article directories.

The money I earn will vary considerably. On one end of the scale, if I were to write a 500 word article for a content mill, I would earn $7.00. On the other end of the scale, if I were to write a 500 word review for my own affiliate I earn an average of $300.

Challenges

The main challenge writing online is that there are a lot of people willing to write for a $1 to $4 an article. Of course, these articles are not very good, with lots of spelling and grammatical mistakes, and the content has usually been scraped from somewhere. However, many marketers and bloggers are not at all interested in quality, so long as the articles have the right keywords and get indexed by a major search engine.

This low pay can be found everywhere: forum, content mills, and even bidding sites. This competition is enough to discourage the most gifted writers. If you write like Hemingway, you will be paid as much as someone who averaged C+ in high school for English.

The way to overcome this challenge is to continue to improve skills and to find more lucrative markets and work with better clients.

Goals

As a writer, I have established 5 goals.

1. Find better paying clients. I want to get clients who are interested in creating quality content that gets traffic from search engine optimization and social media. Some marketers recognize that it’s important to write original and interesting content that adds value to a reader’s life. Over time, this creates more traffic and brands the marketer as someone who produces quality. In the long run, this will create a profitable business.

2. Improve my productivity. By increasing the speed with which I research and write articles, as the faster I am, the more work I can do per hour.

3. Write more for myself. It is much more profitable to write content that earns commission sales than to write for other marketers.

4. Upgrade the type of writing I do, from article writing to copywriting. Copywriting pays much more than article writing and it is the next step in my career growth.

5. Learn more about marketing. The better I understand marketing, the more I can sell my writing services or make money from affiliate commissions.

Louise Baker is a freelance writer and blogger who usually does auto insurance comparisons over at CarinsuranceComparison.Org. She recently wrote about finding cheap car insurance quotes.

{ 1 comment }

Funny little words to avoid on your resume and job hunt!

by K B , updated on November 8, 2020

Here’s my soap box rant on words that have been bugging me lately. These are my pet peeves – and only my pet peeves. Other people may say I’m being a little picky.

“I’d consider”

If someone says “I’d consider a lower level job,” I hear: “I’ll jump ship at the next better offer.”

“Dealing with”

Spoken interviews and used in resumes “dealing with customers, staff, people etc”. Not a nice term. This sounds like my Dad when he’s mad.

“Facilitate”

Sounds a bit passive aggressive – usually used when someone wants to control a meeting and direct a result, but doesn’t want to be obvious about it. Look in their passive aggressive tool kit and you may find enough post-it notes to start a cold war.

“Outcome”

I like using the word “outcome” when I’m not really sure what to say.  I can sound like I’ve achieved something, but I can be vague about what.  Read the full outcome of a rant about outcomes here.

“In relation to”

Stick with about!

“In terms of”

Padding and filler. It either is or it isn’t!

{ 8 comments }

What one recruitment consultant looks for in a leader

by K B , updated on November 8, 2020

Recently I was asked by one of my clients to design and conduct an employee survey for his company. In an industry not known for it’s advanced people practices, this employer is very proactive. He is constantly searching for ways to impress his clients. His philosophy is that this starts by impressing your employees. I learnt a lot from about leadership from this exercise. I’ve also learnt a lot about leadership from my time in the recruitment industry.

I’ve been in recruiting for a number of years. Very early on it became apparent that strong leadership is one of the key elements to retaining employees. I could talk about honesty, integrity and passion, but feel we all know these traits make for good leadership. The key to becoming a true leader is the ability to inspire others. True leaders know their strengths and weaknesses and work hard to surround themselves with great people who provide a balance to their teams. They then mould this team and challenge them to grow both individually and as a team. They make the team aware of what they are trying to achieve and give them all the tools to make it happen.

I know this seems straightforward. So why is that there such a shortage of leaders throughout industry? From my experience in recruitment, from interviewing leaders, then interviewing people who have left leaders, it’s obvious to me that some of the basics are missing.

Too many managers do not take the time to get to know who is in the team and what are their strengths and weaknesses. They expect people to achieve outcomes that are out of their reach and get frustrated by a lack of results. They also fail to keep moulding the team as it evolves and upgrading the results that are expected to be met.

The lesson I find myself learning is that for me to be effective in recruitment I need to identify true leaders and then help them mould their team. I tend to think that it is more important to know what you are getting in a person than chasing the dream of a perfect employee. I’ve seen too many recruiters focus on the positives of a prospective employee and fail to indentify the areas that need improvement. They tend to be under so much pressure to meet targets that they do not want to adversely affect the process by acknowledging a person’s weaknesses. People also tend to over sell themselves at interview which is understandable but will inevitably put them under serious pressure in their future role.

To try and identify true leaders I use a very relaxed style of interview. I have always found that scripted questions return scripted answers. If I’m interviewing you, I want to know the real you.  I find that true leaders seem to have a lack of ego and talk about the other members of their team with pride and recognise their contributions. They have genuine respect for all stakeholders within the business. True leaders tend to be constantly improving themselves and others with training and development both professionally and personally.

I always like to ask people about their key achievements within their current position. I find that high on the list of a true leader is the professional development of those around them and the ability to see the “big picture” of the business. They know where they are today but more importantly where they need to be in the future. A good indicator of an emerging leader is solid tenure to past employers and continued professional growth through external training.

Above all true leaders know that no one is perfect, including themselves.

Scott Black is Director of Black & Co. Recruitment. Read his profile on LinkedIn.

{ 3 comments }

Want to hook up on LinkedIn? You can make it personal

by K B , updated on November 8, 2020

LinkedIn Tips For Your Job Hunt

Most people I know who are not owners of businesses or in some sort of sales, consulting or marketing role, join LinkedIn reluctantly; or because they’ve been invited to connect. I remember about five years ago I started to receive invites and would think: “OK, one day, remind me why I need to again”. Then I joined, and had the world’s worst profile for about a year or so. I’d just hit accept if anyone invited me and leave it at that. Judging by the profiles I’ve seen lately, I’m thinking that makes me pretty similar to most people when they start on LinkedIn.

One of the things that stopped me from making more out of LinkedIn early on, was having to reach out to people, whom I had never met, and invite them to join me as a connection. The “I’d like to add you to my network on LinkedIn” invite, seemed a little cold particularly if I wanted to take the relationship one step further.

Tom Skotidas is Head of Marketing and Business Development at First Rate . He’s also a good connector.  He has to be. It’s part of what he does for a living. Tom is now starting to blog on using social media for B2B lead generation. He’s also running a course on B2B marketing using social media at the Australian Direct Marketing Association. His first one, LinkedIn for Lead Generation, is on December 7.

Here are Tom’s top tips on connecting on LinkedIn.

I’ve just pinched these from his new website, but I’m sure he won’t mind.

First up Tom suggests finding human connection points. So: Tweets, blog articles or other online mentions, whatever you have in common. Say, for example:

  • People you know in common (available on their LinkedIn profile)
  • LinkedIn groups you share
  • Their blog posts or published articles (i.e. the ones you have read and enjoyed so much, as to form an opinion)
  • Schools you both attended

If you are not into building up your numbers just for numbers sake, finding the connection point, goes for hooking up on most social media forums. I’ll give you an example:

On Twitter I don’t tweet too much personal stuff. But I had a strange weekend a few months ago, and tweeted that I’d faced a sticky situation involving a dog, a forklift and a honey factory in Forbes. Two people commented on that when they followed me. I followed them back immediately.

As for your actual LinkedIn invite, Tom suggests: “Be relevant. Make sure to address your invitee by their first name, and to clearly reference your connection points. Throughout your invitation, be genuine and respectful. Tell them how you found them, and why you want to connect. And make sure to pump up your credentials as well, via a strong LinkedIn profile.”

Speaking of which, Tom, I may need to gift you a bullet point. 🙂

{ 6 comments }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →