It may be back-to-school season for kids and their parents, but for a lot of people it has been find-a-good-job season, especially for recent college graduates who have spent the summer interning or preparing for the work force all summer.
In order to score the interview for that job you saw that you swear was made for you, you’re going to need a resume and because you have a lot of competition, being one person in a big crowd of people who all firmly believe that job was made for you, you’re going to need a resume that accurately sings the praises you know you deserve. So here are some simple things you can do to improve upon that resume you’ve been pouring over.
- Keep It Up-to-Date
If you’re still sending out the resume you wrote three, six, or even twelve months ago, make sure to take a few minutes and think back over the course of where you have been and what you have done since you first wrote your resume. Have you acquired any new skills or become more proficient in something you didn’t feel confident including in your first draft? Be sure to add them before you change anything else. Potential employers want to know who the person applying for the job they are offering is now, not who they were a few months ago.
- Organization is Key
If you Google how to write a resume, you’re going to find a ton of results that look super fancy, have embellished language and design and frankly, a lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be there. To pull off a distinctly professional and clear resume, all you need to know is how to use headers to announce distinct sections of your resume and bullet points to separate your thoughts and experience.
- Don’t Marry Your Words–Self-Editing is Your Friend
Speaking of embellished language… a resume is a list of your skills and accomplishments and it is meant to be a quick way for your potential employer to see if you possess the skills and knowledge in order to get the job done. While correct spelling and grammar are a must, you do not need to include your life story in your resume, nor do you need to write more than what is necessary. Keep your resume condensed and easy for someone to read quickly.
- Use Keywords
Managers who are constantly receive a high volume of resumes are beginning to rely on search systems that filter through someone’s resume and places them in an automated search based on whose skills match those of the job description. Use keywords when and where they make sense, but be sure to include the keywords that you saw in the job description for the job you’re applying for without copying and pasting the full job description language.
- Include Your Name in the File Name
Instead of just naming your resume ‘resume’ on your computer and sending it to your potential employer, be sure to get noticed and stay noticed by including your full name in the file name of your resume. For example, your file name could be “Jane Doe Resume” or you can also include the date along with your name to refresh the employer’s memory of who you are and when you first showed interest in the job.
Everyone has different reasons for deciding to work from home, but when you decide to work from home as a freelancer, getting started could end up being what makes you decide to retreat to the formal workforce again.
When I first started working from home, I know that I would not have been able to stay afloat for more than two months, never mind four years, without the help of some truly amazing friends. I was lucky, but a lot of women aren’t so lucky when it comes to getting up and started as a home-based entrepreneur.
So where do you go to get your first opportunities? When you finish your first job, what’s next, where do you go from there and where do you get more freelance gigs?
5 Minutes for Mom, a tremendously popular community for moms, recently added a job board to the website. The job board pulls in project listings from all of the top job board and websites for freelancers to find opportunities to help moms find real work at home opportunities. The opportunities the job board pulls up are from sites including Elance, Freelancer.com, ScriptLance.com, among others.
After looking through the job board I found that most of the opportunities look legitimate and could very well end up being worthwhile opportunities to keep your work day full and exciting. There are a few of them that look more than a little suspicious, but not too many and I think they’re pretty easy to spot so you won’t be wasting your time. What I really like about this site is that instead of going to all of the freelance sites you can find individually and searching through countless categories, this job board pulls in all of the relevant job opportunities and makes them easy to find in one place.
If you’re looking for legitimate work at home opportunities, you should definitely check out the 5 Minutes for Mom Job Board.
I have always been a night owl. I don’t think it’s necessarily a choice that I have always just happened to stay up all night and find my time to sleep during some mornings and most afternoons. It just comes naturally to me and it always has.
For a little over a month now I have been making a conscious effort to be up during the day and to sleep during the night. You know, attempting to keep the same schedule as all of you normal people out there who work real jobs and keep real schedules. It has been difficult. You would think that if I just slept during the night then obviously I would be up during the day and able to work and get everything that I set out to do every day accomplished. I thought the same thing and I was wrong.
Sure, I’m up during the day, but I am not able to work. I end up sitting here all zombie-like, trying to force words to come to my brain and get my fingers to type the words into the computer and then suddenly I’d have some awesome stuff written. And you know what else? All of you people out there whose day job it is to develop Facebook games, I am not happy with you. Well, in a way I’m extremely happy with you, but my productivity is not happy with you. So while I am here during the day, sitting here trying to force the productivity to take place, I don’t manage to get much done and for the most part, I have come to the conclusion that I’m just insane. That has to be it! It is the only logical conclusion I can come to and I’m sure it’s the only logical conclusion that all of you out there reading this can come to. Anything else just doesn’t make sense, right? RIGHT.
When you work from home, as I do and have done for the past five years, it’s important to keep track of trends; especially when you work from home primarily as a blogger and freelance writer. I’m not talking about boyfriend jeans or mom jeans or whatever type of jeans people are making fun of this week. It’s important to keep track of what is being read and most importantly, when. Turns out that everything happens throughout the daylight hours. Imagine that! Emails get sent during the day, people expect replies to emails during the day, people write during the day making all of the important news and information spread like wildfire throughout the day, and even the majority of people read websites throughout the day. Everything happens during the day, so it would make sense to do business during the day.
Except for when your brain doesn’t function during the day, even with copious amounts of coffee. But I do get a great deal of work done, it’s just during the night time hours. Like right now. Right now at around 4am and all of my writerly mojo is flowing and everything is just great. The words come, the fingers type and before you know it, I have over 600 words typed into this little box.
But that right there–this, the entire point of this post, is where the writer and the professional blogger with the professional presence clash. A great deal of people find that they can only truly get great work done when the mood is right. For me, it has always been when everything is dark, quiet, and there is a stillness that cannot be mistaken with anything the daylight has to offer. But when the business world operates during the day and you operate at night, it’s easy to always feel like you are playing catch-up. Not just when it comes to returning emails and phone calls in a timely manner, but even when you’re working with strict deadlines or just deadlines you’ve placed on yourself.
So what do you do? Well, I’ll let you know when I’ve got it figured out. I do know one thing for certain though, and that is that just because you make the conscious effort to accomplish your to-do list every day does not necessarily you can make it happen–especially if your to-do list heavily relies on you being creative in any way whatsoever.
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of USC. All opinions are 100% mine.
Ever since the economic downturn, jobs have been extremely hard to come by. I know of a lot of people in my very small town that have been out of work for over a year and despite their best efforts, they can’t seem to land a stable job. We’re not talking about high-paying, lucrative jobs here, we’re talking about anything and everything from retail to call centers where people are willing to work, yet they remain adamant on not hiring.
While I work from home and am very happy doing so, a great deal of people are taking this downturn in the economy and turning it into an opportunity to completely change the focus of their careers. Those who have been laid off or let go from jobs they have been at for years are finding themselves back in the school environment, taking classes, and getting certified for brand new careers where they are in high demand.
A rewarding career that is always in style is teaching. Educators have the opportunity to inform, influence, and pave the way for future generations of people to change the world. It was because of an English teacher I had in seventh grade that I developed the passion for writing and stuck with it throughout my entire life, and did something with it. Without that teacher, I do not know what I would be doing right now, but it surely wouldn’t be writing because I didn’t give myself that time to realize that writing could be fun, cathartic, and something I really enjoyed doing.
If you are an aspiring teacher or a current educator who wants to expand their horizons and move on to bigger and better experiences where you will be influencing the next generation of movers and shakers, the USC Rossier School of Education’s MAT@USC offers an amazing program to earn your Master of Arts in Teaching degree. Better yet, because we all live with schedules, errands, you may have a family you need to attend to, and you just may not have the time to dedicate to a full-time, in-classroom experience, MAT@USC offers you the ability to study online.
MAT@USC offers their online students a great deal of opportunities and privileges that go above and beyond just the pride felt from becoming part of the elite USC Trojan Family. USC offers a groundbreaking tuition reimbursement program, scholarships to make paying for your education a realistic opportunity, and a chance to learn from distinguished USC faculty who have been recognized for their contributions to modern education.
Even if you are foreign to the ways of the internet and what studying online would bring to your life, USC offers easy technology that introduces you to the interactivity of the program you will be learning in. This technology is so above and beyond what other online programs have to offer that Rossier and MAT@USC has garnered awards by AACTE for innovative use of technology in education. Their program is highly interactive and also lets you learn through field-based experience in your local area. USC has also been ranked as #22 in United States and #9 among all private universities by US News and World Report, so you know you will be receiving a quality education.
To ensure you reach your goals, MAT@USC offers an accelerated program that you can complete in as little as 12 months, allowing you to begin your career sooner than if you were to attend a local university.
If you have a passion for teaching, be sure to check out the program information for MAT@USC and see how they can make your aspirations a reality.
This is a guest post by Nicole Hayward, Marketing Director at Junction Networks.
If you are a start up or small business owner, odds are you’re going to need a business phone service. (You’re not going to tell prospective clients to call your cell phone much longer…) Here’s a tip that’s going to make your business look bigger, better, and smarter: Use a Hosted VoIP service.
What is Hosted VoIP?
Voice over IP (VoIP) is the growing technology that allows you to make phone calls over your internet connection. You may associate Skype with VoIP, which is an app that allows you to call another Skype user. However, there are phone services that integrate with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), allowing you to make and receive phone calls like you would on a traditional phone.
Because of its relatively new emergence to the market, a VoIP service may seen intimidating. But, I’m here to assure you it’s actually cost efficient, reliable, AND easy to set up!
Why is VoIP Great for Small Businesses?
First and foremost, VoIP is great for small businesses because of its cost efficiency and ease in setting up. Frankly, if you choose a hosted VoIP service, you won’t need to pay a phone company to wire a business phone at your office or home. Instead, you’ll sign up for the service, purchase an IP phone to plug into your internet connection, and you’re set. Also, the actual phone service is cheaper because long distance calls are essentially local calls; voice data travels over the internet until it reaches a local PSTN to transfer to the recipient.
Secondly, VoIP has great features and scalability. You will find, using a hosted VoIP service, that you can choose a package that fits your business needs and budget. “This technology allows for businesses to take advantage of services like auto attendants, conference bridges, voicemail servers, video conferencing, click-to-call website integration, business hours routing, and voicemail-to-email notifications…” says TechCrunch. In addition to these features, you will be able to:
- Add users (extensions) in a matter of a few clicks as your business grows
- Answer your phone from the road using a smart phone app or your laptop in your hotel room
- Transfer calls to your remote employees with extension dialing (available with some services like OnSIP)
- Take your phone system with you when you move to a new office.
How Do You Get Hosted VoIP?
Well, of course I am biased, since I work for a great Business VoIP Service, OnSIP. You can easily sign up and try our service. But, feel free to weigh your options by Googling “Business VoIP”. Remember if you choose Hosted VoIP, all you will need are IP phones (e.g. Cisco or Polycom) and a broadband connection. Or, you can always email me with questions. Good luck in growing your business and communications!
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Nicole Hayward is the Marketing Director at Junction Networks, the creators of OnSIP Business Phone Service. Joining the software development industry after a traditional engineering education, she became passionate about discovering new software tolls for business efficiency and success. Follow Nicole and the rest of her team on Twitter @OnSIP and on the OnSIP blog. Or, you can email her at Nicole [AT] JunctionNetworks [DOT] Com.
When you start a small business or become a home-based entrepreneur with a limited budget, start-up costs can often run you into bankruptcy before you even have the chance to rock the business world. Sure, you have to spend money to make money, but the resources available to get the materials you absolutely need in order to run an effective business are also businesses themselves and they do not always produce the best value for your hard-earned dollar. One of the biggest and most influential necessities you need for your business (and for your business-like image) are printed goods–things like business cards, stationary, flyers and brochures and businesses like Kinkos can really rob you blind as they up-sell you on pretty much everything. What businesses of this sort do is try to squeeze every last cent out of you and you invest the money knowing that there’s no way around it, you need these items and these places are so well-marketed that you really believe that they are the end-all and be-all of businesses who can effectively help you brand your business and and yourself as a professional business contact.
There are an abundance of resources online to help you with your business branding and printing needs; if you are a start-up company or just a blogger in need of some professional and aesthetically-pleasing business cards for an upcoming bloggers conference where you will undoubtedly encounter other bloggers-turned potential loyal readers and influential companies, it is always wise to do your research and search online for a company that can really produce the product you need at the quality you pay for. Online printing can save you a bundle because regardless of the time of year, there is usually a sale (or multiple sales) going on. Online businesses have a tendency to really appreciate their customers and even create professional relationships with people who do business with them frequently and online printing services tend to have even more products, services, templates and samples to choose from because of the versatility of the internet and the diversity of their clients.
An excellent online printing resource for small, start-up and home-based businesses is PsPrint. They are a leading printing company and have an extensive list of products and services ranging from the practical, like business cards, flyers, booklets and brochures, to the really cool, like greeting cards (the holidays are coming up and now is the perfect time to start planning sending out holiday cards to your customers, clients and partners with your business logo on them!), pocket folders and door hangers. They can also handle bigger business printing needs like full catalogs, menus and sticker printing (something fun to hand out during blogging conferences or when pitching your business to prospective clients.) Their prices are also great for small businesses, their stickers starting at just $40. They also have a slew of great promotions going on to help you save even more money when you do business with them. Their brochures and greeting cards are currently 50% off, business cards and postcards are 40% off and posters are an astounding 60% off! That is some major savings to be had there!
Online printing is most definitely the way to go when you’re looking for high quality printed items for your business at the right price.
The US unemployment rate, as of September 2009, has hit a 26-year low. Since the recession was officially referred to as a recession in December 2007, 14.9 million people are out of work; not since The Great Depression have so many American families been without work and struggling to make ends meet. When finances get eerily low, many families opt to change careers or pick up a supplemental part-time job, yet as we have seen throughout the country, this is not an option for most families due to the lack of work in their areas.
Because of the employment drop off, many people are frantically searching for employment opportunities wherever they can. Many people are going back to school, either opting to take classes at vocational trainings and community colleges. But no matter how bad this recession gets, or if it eventually drops off into a depression, there is one field that is always in great demand for committed employees. Healthcare professionals will always be employed because people never stop getting hurt. Emergency rooms are always packed, regardless of the area you live in because kids fall down and gash their heads and break bones, as well as a myriad of other accidents that happen involving children. People are consistently being diagnosed with diseases and cancers and doctors and nurses are there to help aid patients in any way they can.
While healthcare professionals of all varieties are in demand, one healthcare profession that won’t lodge you in the ER for days at a time and will also give you the opportunity to travel and see the world; that profession is travel nursing.
A travel nurse gets a ton of perks all while performing a job that they are passionate about. The perks they receive are unlike any I have seen in any other professional out there, especially now. Along with excellent pay, from the first day you become a travel nurse, you receive health, deal and life insurance benefits immediately, as well as a 401k plan. You also receive free continuing education units, a prestigious loyalty program and regardless of where you choose to work, you receive free, private, furnished housing with utilities.
Travel Nurse Across America is a company for travel nurses that believe in long-term relationships and treat their nurses with the respect and courtesy they deserve. Nurses are never harassed by a myriad of phone calls and mailers. They offer the very best compensation for travel nurses; they compensation package and support has even been praised as the best in the business.
Travel nursing is by far one of the best employment opportunities I have seen rise up above the rest, especially during a recession, and because so many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and have nowhere to turn, this is the perfect profession for RN’s and other healthcare professionals looking for a great career.
A great education that leads directly into a rewarding and exciting career is hard to find. It’s even harder to find in a crumbling economy and an unforgiving job market. With such widespread layoffs affecting many families across the entire country, it’s proven that with an education directly related to your field of work and excellent work ethic, you are even more likely to keep a job in a time of layoffs and company corner-cutting.
While it may be difficult to find the right fit for you as far as schools go, if you are interested and serious about event and wedding planning, there is no other choice for excellent schooling than Sheffield.
In 1985 Sheffield began as an interior design school and has since expanded. Located in Manhattan between Grand Central Station and the United Nations, Sheffield is in the design capital of the world and is home to the top professionals in the world to offer you an excellent, top notch education in event planning, feng shui, interior design, wedding planning, and much more.
The wedding planning course offered at Sheffield is a comprehensive curriculum that will set you apart in the work force and includes twenty complete lessons with additional supplements, a study guide to lead you step-by-step through your lessons and a personal student advisor, internship projects, and everything you will need to perform your career seamlessly as a wedding planner and bridal consultanti.
Really, with an education from Sheffield you will turn your passion into a career and will undoubtedly have your pick of professional careers in any location you wish to live your life.
This is a guest post by Ksenija of Unusual Business Ideas.
American scientists have finally proved a widespread opinion that nothing effects the productivity of our work more than mood. Nancy Rothbard from Warton University of Pennsylvania and Stephanie Wilk from Fischer College of Business in Ohio investigated the work of call-center employees from different US states. During 3 weeks, Rothbard and Wilk were studying their behavior and changes in mood depending on the situation at workplace. The experiment clearly showed that nothing effects quality of work more then a mood. Employees who were starting their day on an optimistic note were much more attentive to clients and needed less coffee breaks during the working day. On the other hand, employees who come to work in an upset mood have less contacts with clients and are less responsive.
I never even doubted that personal and team mindset had a strong effect: goal-oriented and optimistic people inspire colleagues and show great results. At the same time if you “wake up on the wrong side of the desk,” it’s really hard to set yourself up to work. In this case it’s extremely important to brace up, set right priorities and reach your targets. Otherwise, any deficiency in work, any little problem will let you down and thus form a vicious circle. An employee who gets bored with routine is much more likely to notice each and every drawback in his work and to be completely disappointed in it.
Quite often employees’ mood is in tight connection to manager’s personality, charisma and ability to inspire the team. Mood and will to work do not always depend on material things. If a manager doesn’t use non-material factors to motivate subordinates, then he shouldn’t expect them to work properly even having decent salaries. Success is guaranteed if the manager sets clear, attainable goals and shows sincere gratitude to employees for their positive achievements.
The other side of this question is an inspiration. When you apply for new job you feel simply elated and during first few months this inspiration helps you to overcome all the difficulties that may arise. If you have chosen the right job then this initial inspiration should slowly transform in a much deeper feeling – passion for work. Psychologists say that one has to be honest with himself and start searching for new work as soon as this passion disappears. Unfortunately it’s not always possible due to multiple reasons and sometimes you just have to switch your attention to other positive moments that can be found in any job.
To sum up I would like to repeat that experiments clearly proved that start-of-day mood is a determinant of employee performance. Every manager has to consider it his duty to take special care about team’s mindset that assures good work results.
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Ksenija has a small travel agency in a nice little country in the suburbs of Europe who is interested in receiving high profit with minimal expenses. It is for that reason that she runs her blog, Unusual Business Ideas, where she discovers and shares stories from all over the web.
If you run a small business, there is no reason why you shouldn’t have checked out Microsoft Office Live Small Business. Small businesses thrive on the internet; you have a larger target market and the ability to reach more people, faster than ever. As more and more small businesses continue to thrive online, companies are making it easier to become an internet entrepreneur even if you aren’t very “tech-savvy” and one of those companies making the internet less of a mystery and more of a tool that can be easily used by everyone is Microsoft.
Microsoft Office Live Small Business has rolled out some big changes to make customizing your Small Business website even easier.
There is a new custom color selector, giving you more options as far as color selections go for your website, making it easier to match colors in your business logo or other branding elements you have for your business. There is a new custom page zone resizing tool letting you think outside the box when customizing your existing web page layout template. You can now resize individual zones within a template with a simple mouse click and drag and drop action. There are also new custom backgrounds for your website and finally, the ability to add a new PayPal button, making it easy for you to sell products and/or services via your website without having to bother with a full-blown ecommerce solution.
There are even more improvements in the works for Microsoft Office Live Small Business. Microsoft will continue to improve their service for all small business owners who want the ability to easily manage their businesses online.
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