How to Create a Job Search Schedule Building Your Future Now

How to Create a Job Search Schedule Building Your Future Now Whether you were laid off, fired or simply decided to leave your job you need to create a schedule of what you are going to do and how to accommodate your game plan. Heres how you get the ball rolling Plan your week Some say that finding a job is similar to a full time job and in many respects it is. You need to look at each week as an opportunity to getting closer to achieving your aim of getting a job. Thats why you need to divide the next 7 days into sections of what you are going to do and accomplish. For example, on Monday you might want to dedicate yourself to updating your resume and cover letter. As well as taking some time to looking who is hiring locally. Pick whats important Its easy to get sidetracked with career workshops or even blindly sending out resumes. Write down your goals: like the job you can get immediately that fit your skills and experience. However, if you want to upgrade your skills or perhaps head back to school you have have to consider many other factors like money for tuition and getting a job that can pay the bills now. Finding a balance If you feel a bit overwhelmed the first week dont worry look at it as a building block in your job search. Do the tasks that are important like resume edit and apply to a few places. Create a list of companies you want to do information interviews. The first week is where you can put your feelers out and discover and explore what tasks you see strong results. Keeping organized As your job search progresses it is essential to keep organized. Create spreadsheets with leads you have contacted as well as employment centres in your community with workshops and programs they offer. Keep everything updated on your end! Building a Schedule One excellent way of getting a schedule started is by simply writing one out. Open a fresh calender file on your laptop and start with a simple 9 to 5 work day. Type out what you think you might be doing each hour with those 8 hours Monday to Friday. This will give you a good place to start. You can adjust your schedule accordingly as interviews increase or information interviews are scheduled. Image: Pexels

How To Value Yourself So Others Will, Too - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

How To Value Yourself So Others Will, Too - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Twice each year, I give a personal branding boot camp on campus at UCLA. The single hardest part of camp will be helping each participant appreciate themselves. Appreciating yourself is a weird concept for most people. We are used to talking about our strengths and weaknesses. We are comfortable talking about our hard and soft skills. Yet that simple sense of internal value is fundamental to setting up a sturdy foundation for a personal brand. Irrespective of what you can do. The most valuable part of you is simply who you are. When it comes to that personal intelligence, most people have a very hard time identifying something wonderful about themselves that has always been a quality carried deep inside. Something that will be carried throughout life. Often it’s a knack. Like a knack for giving the perfect gift, which is a connection to the inner needs of others. Or it might be a power. Like the power to light up a room just by entering it, which is positivity. Or it might be a force. Like the force of a calm mind when everyone is in chaos, which is leadership. This quality of yours will appreciate over time. That is, if you recognize it, attend to it, give it space to grow and speak about what it’s done for you and others. There are plenty of reasons why you aren’t regularly celebrating your real value. During many of your so-called formative years, you heard your parents say the word “no” to you; about five times more than you heard them speak your name. And, maybe the recession, which turns out to have been bigger than the 1930s Depression, you had a particularly tough time. Of course, its easy to not see the truth about life, as well as your personal brand. Almost everything about your situation can change, when you change how you think and talk about yourself. So start celebrating. You. Start looking back at the smiles you’ve had, the smiles you’ve won and the way you want to bring more on. Maybe you have to change your scorecard â€" maybe you’ll need to rethink the job title, the salary, the type of company, or where you live. But, before any decisions are made: Celebrate. You.

What Gift to Give to a New Mom

What Gift to Give to a New Mom New baby and Mom are now home and you’ve been itching to visit. You’ve picked up the most adorable pair of little booties and a sweet soft toy for baby but what do you buy Mom? She has done all the hard work after all; with a lot more to come, and so definitely deserves a treat. After all that time spent in the hospital Mom might be feeling like she needs a trip to the spa, but of course she now has a little one to look after. Why not bring the spa to her, with a pretty basket filled with yummy smelling and skin loving body lotions and scrubs? Gift Baskets offer a wide variety of beautiful gift baskets online and there is a design for every occasion and every person thinkable. Something personalised will put a smile on Mom’s face, a silver necklace with the name of the new baby engraved on it will be treasured forever. For the nursery a large frame, featuring cut out letters spelling out the baby’s name, will look great on the wall and as they grow up Mom can add a new photo to each letter, to create a personalised timeline of their little one’s progression. A personalised photo album would also be a beautiful gift as Mom plans to save every precious memory she and her partner share with the new arrival. You can find a huge range of photo albums online, some even include a section for a baby’s first lock of hair, first tooth and even their pacifier to save and share with them when they are a little older. You could go for an edible treat with a big batch of cupcakes, personalised with the names of each person in the new little family (you could even include the dog!) Make them at home for that special touch or have them created at a reputable bakery, so you know they are fresh and, most of all, delicious. Moms can be a little self conscious after having a baby, as they carry some extra weight on their tummy, so a nice idea for a small gift would be a pretty floaty top for her to wear, she will feel stylish but confident when out and about. A big bunch of brightly coloured flowers or a pretty house plant is a simple gift but a lovely one for Mom to place either in the new nursery or main living space, to enjoy whilst nursing and caring for her newborn. Money can be a little tight in the first few months of having a baby, Mom and Dad have had to pay out for cribs and toys and bottles and prams and they themselves have missed out on spending quality time together and enjoying a little treat. Most restaurants allow you to buy gift vouchers to use at a later date, so head to the new parents favourite place to eat and pick up a voucher for a meal out, when they have a spare evening and someone can look after the new baby. Tell them it’s important that they still take some time for themselves, to keep their relationship going strong, and that baby has time with grandparents and other relatives, to form a bond there. Most of all, keep it small and sweet, new Moms and babies will be showered with gifts in the first few weeks so it can all be a little overwhelming. Make sure yours is memorable by giving something personalised, which can be cherished forever and a reflection of your relationship with the new Mom.

A Guide to Recruitment Marketing

A Guide to Recruitment Marketing The key to getting the best talent on board or having a reputation for being the best recruiters in the industry is all down to recruitment marketing and it’s not as complex as it sounds. Thats according to Lisa Jones from Barclay Jones. For Lisa,  the new age of recruitment marketing is about solving problems within businesses using humans.  She wants recruiters to move away from ‘youve got a CV and youre trying to pitch it’ to ‘theres a problem within a business and it needs solving with talent’ and she firmly believes that recruitment marketing is key to that process. You can listen to my interview with her below, or read on for a summary of our conversation. Whats your guide to success in recruitment marketing? We’ve got to look at two elements to this. Theres the brand, which is you know, Im Aardvark ABC business and Ive got to get my brand online so at least there is a home, and then there is a brand to aspire to work with and for. And obviously marketeers, within any given business, should be focusing on that and if you are an employer, please start getting your marketing department to focus on employer brand and not just the brand of the things that you sell. I often work with businesses who say, Well, Im an HRD, or Im a recruitment manager within said business and my marketing department do nothing for me, they just try and flog the product because thats where the money is, and I kind of respect that but at the same time you still need people on the shop floor and thats where the HR and recruitment department come in. When it comes to recruitment agencies thats when, again, weve got the marketeers developing the brand and rightly so, but what often happens again is the sales teams devolve or abdicate marketing back into the marketing department, and thats when you often see very busy brands and very quiet recruiters. So I think from a step-by-step perspective we need to get the brand up and running first because then thats something to aspire to and something to inspire recruiters. We need really effective and practical content plan with themes threaded through that content plan to allow the brands to be known for something which the marketeer drives, but the recruitment consultants also have to have something to do with that. The recruitment agency world are so busy transacting and dare I say sourcing, that theyre not spending enough time getting under the skin of their niche. They claim to be specialists but when I say to them, What events are your automotive candidates and clients likely to be at? Thats when they get blank looks and thats when they look at the marketing team. So for me, marketeers need to set up the brand and get it working extremely hard to get a branding guide and getting really decent content planned. And the recruiters on a daily basis, not just Friday at 5pm when they think thats the best time to post, need to be engaging with that content as well as inspiring marketing to come up with said content. So, My names John, Im an automotive consultant, Ive found five really cool events for automotive candidates. Marketer go away and create me a neat little graphic on that so I can then stick it in my LinkedIn publisher and market that extremely effectively under the brand of my automotiv e company.” And to me, thats where it all clicks in really nicely to produce regular and practical content-driven marketing from both marketeers and recruitment consultants. Give us a pitfall that recruiters must avoid. Recruitment-led content. I call it junk food content and here’s why. So youre out on a Friday night, youve had a few too many drinks and then you get the munchies and you buy yourself a big fat greasy kebab. But if you did that every single day you would not be able to sustain yourself. Youd probably get quite fat and spotty and eventually you would have a problem. I look at junk food content as being the same thing. You can have it every now and again but if you do it too often its not going to make you look good. I prefer going back to the automotive example. I go to a blog that an automotive recruitment company runs thats about me. Im an automotive candidate, these are the challenges that I face, this is what makes me laugh, these are the TV programmes Im likely to watch, these are the things that stress me out, these are things that Id love if they were fixed within 2017 within my industry. These are the top things that have happened in my industry in the last 20 years. This is another candidate just like me thats got into the industry and these are the typical kinds of questions maybe that youre asking me right now. As recruiters, we seem to think its all about us, and that is the biggest pitfall. And Im not convinced that youre going to get a date from your ideal hot date by talking about yourself all day long and I call that junk food because its not self-sustaining. Whats the next big thing in the recruitment marketing space? I think for me, and its not the next big thing per se but I think the next big thing that recruiters need to start doing is getting recruiters more in contact with content. The one thing I think we need to start doing just generally is asking recruiters to blog. Because when I speak to recruitment leaders and they say to me, Yeah, Ive got a blog. And I read it and I go, Yeah, its pants. How long did that take? Oh, it takes a recruiter about three or four hours to write a blog every month. And Im like, How much money could they have made in that time? Seriously, I dont want to be on your side. Can we pull them out of this? Can they please let us know what they want to write about and well get some copywriters in and/or your marketeers should be able to string a sentence together and/or why the hell is it taking three to four hours? Would it take that much time for a recruitment consultant to get that content across verbally to a client? Lets hope not. So Im a big fan of getting recruiters back at their desks, understanding how to market using the phone, understanding how to come up with soundbites really, really quickly and also for marketeers to get really thematic with their content. Lets imagine our next big theme is contract. So how can we work with contract recruiters, to be more effective? Are we going to have a podcast, an infographic, a blog, a video? Making sure weve got content around all of those different platforms and that for me is a big thing for 2017, if that helps at all. So I think often the end doesnt justify the means with me. The goal is never to create content, the goal is to make money, sorry. The goal is to place a candidate within a business and solve a problem. And the content is a tactic, not a strategy and definitely not a goal. So to me, I think recruiters need to create content but it could be a two-minute conversation with a marketeer to inspire that content as opposed to a three hour bleeding over y our keyboard, lack of ROI-led content strategy. And its more, Oh, its part of my KPI so Ive got to do it and youd be surprised how many recruitment consultants think theyve got it nailed but dont ask the question, Whats in it for me? I think thats a real shame and thats what I think needs to change. If they can do it quick and they make the money from it then absolutely we need to bottle that, thats brilliant. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LisaMariJones, read her articles on this site and be sure to subscribe to the Employer Branding Podcast.

Like A Virgin Secrets They Wont Teach You At Business School (Book Review)

Like A Virgin Secrets They Won't Teach You At Business School (Book Review) Richard Bransonis one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. He started his empire by creating and runningStudentmagazineand now he has several billion dollar companies. He is one of my favorite entrepreneurs to follow because he has proven time and time again that he knows what it takes to create a successful business.Photo Credit â€" Amazon.comIn his book,Like A Virgin,he covers so many topics that go into starting a lasting business and making afootprint in the industry.Customer ServiceBranson expresses many times throughout the book how important customer service is for any business. Customer satisfaction is what brings them back and gets them talking about you to other people. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertisement so you’re going to want people to have tons of positive things to say about you and your company.evalGreat customer service starts from the very top of the chain of command in every business and works its way down. Meaning, you have to t reat your people well in order for them to want to represent your company properly.One of the examples Branson uses to illustrate this idea is by introducing yourself by just your name, no matter what position you hold in the company. There’s no need to show superiority in an introduction. Instead of “Hi, I’m Kyle Humiston, CEO,” it should simply be “Hi, I’m Kyle Humiston.”To Be Ceo, Or Not To Be CEOStarting a company is one thing. Running a company is something totally different. Not everyone can do both. Branson writes in the book “recognizing your own weaknesses is essential to your companies future.” What he means is you need to know whether or not you are fit for the job as CEO.How are you at managing people? If you’re unsure then you can use your launch period of the business to see how you operate as a manager/CEO. You can then ask your advisors for feedback on your managerial skills and decide whether or not you need to hire someone else to run the busine ss.Entrepreneurs To The RescueThe middle-class is disappearing and income inequality is on the rise. Jobs are being outsourced and automated. This means entrepreneurs are needed now more than ever. Not only for job creation, but also for their giving capabilities. Branson proclaims that his Virgin brand has positively impacted more than 35,000 young people living in hunger.When you start a company, you should find it within yourself to see how you can give back to the world. Are you able to reduce your carbon emissions? Can you offer jobs to homeless people? Are you able to donate to a charity that supports a cause you believe in? It’s important to have a vision of making the world a little bit better because of you and/or your company.Chasing the dollar will only get you so far, real satisfaction comes from knowing that other people are living better lives because of something you did.Final ThoughtsevalAnybody looking to start a business or get into the world of entrepreneurship in any way would get great value from this book.Branson also writes about the power of green energy, how to pitch your business to VC’s (venture capitalists,) how to find a good mentor and a handful of other topics.

7 Signs Youre In Denial About Your Money Situation - Kathy Caprino

7 Signs Youre In Denial About Your Money Situation In the past year, I’ve spoken and worked directly with hundreds of women entrepreneurs, executives, consultants and small business owners who are, as I was at one time, in complete denial about their money situation.   They know they’re not earning nearly enough or they’re spending too much, and money is slipping through their hands, but that’s as far as their recognition of the problem goes.   In short, their heads are deep in the sand about their money relationship.   They’re working hard to ignore the obvious the inevitable misery that will come unless they change directions, and fast. How can you tell if you’re in denial about your money situation?   Here are 7 glaring signs that you’re in money trouble: 1.        You can’t pay your monthly mortgage or your rent without tapping into savings, retirement, home equity loans or other funds. 2.      You are using your credit cards each month to buy essentials such as food, clothes, and gas. 3.      Your small business, consultancy or private practice is losing money each and every month, and despite your valiant efforts, nothing you do is changing that fact. 4.       All the ways you’ve made money in the past don’t work now. 5.       You don’t have a Plan B in the event your Plan A fails, and you don’t have the necessary benchmarks and signposts to tell you it’s time to change course. 6.      You’re hanging on by a thread to your “Build it and They Will Come” mentality, but they’re not coming. 7.   Someone you love and respect has been telling you over and over that you’re in denial and things must change, but you’ve ignored them or argued against them bitterly Do any of the above sound like your situation?   If so, PLEASE act now. Don’t wait another day.   Your money situation simply will not improve unless you do things very differently, starting today. What should you do differently? I’ve just read a terrific book called Life! by Design (highly recommended) by Tom Ferryâ€" a well-known success coach and motivational leader and he outlines 6 steps to changing your life and “living by design” which I think apply perfectly to changing your money situation.   These are steps I explore with all my clients as well. These six vital steps are: 1.                 Wake up from your coma â€" be aware of the key areas in your life that need attention today 2.               Make the choice to change your life 3.               Create your life by Design 4.               Do the things that bring you power 5.               Practice visualizing yourself already there, in possession of what you want 6.               Create structure and accountability by telling others around you about your plans and goals I know from experience that in order for your money situation to change you must wake up to the severity of it, and commit to changing your situation by taking new empowered actions that will change your course.   To do things differently, you need a new, fresh perspective that includes concrete, practical, and effective support, know-how, and help. And yes, you can do this, despite the negative stories you’ve told yourself that you don’t have what it takes.   I know you do have what it takes to revise your money situation you wouldn’t be reading this information if you didn’t have access to the necessary resources, courage, faith and resolve to make this important life change.   The energy of money is pervasive in our culture â€" there’s no escaping it.   In this lifetime, you’re being called to empower yourself so that money will flow in your life, and support you as you flow with it. The problem of money breakdown in women is so enormous today that I’ve committed myself to be an active part of the solution.   I’m excited to share that I’m launching this Fall a new marketing and communications consultancy branch to my business Ellia Communications, designed to help women entrepreneurs, executives, consultants and private practitioners step up to their highest visions in their work by find the right marketing, communications, and business planning strategies to support their empowered goals.   Stay tuned for more on that! In the meantime, come for a specialized reading about your financial situation as it pertains to your career, small business or practice.   Call me for a Private Career Consultation.   I’ll help you see where you’re blocked around money, and support you to begin taking new steps that will release you from your financial traps.   Also, check out my book Breakdown Breakthrough, Chapter 10: Escaping Financial Traps (or write me at kathy@kathycaprino.com for a free chapter download).   I’d love nothing better than to help you emerge from your financial woes so you can be all you wish to be in this life and in your work. You’re ready for  this new step, and so is your life!

How To Write An Instructional Designer Resume

How To Write An Instructional Designer ResumeAn instructional designer resume is one of the most important documents that you will ever write. It is the first thing a potential employer sees when he or she looks at your application. It should be written very well to get noticed and land you a job offer. It also helps to have good references because the company will want to hear what they had to say about you in the past.It is also good to write an instructional designer resume because it will demonstrate that you have thought about your educational background. You will be hard pressed to find a candidate that doesn't think about their qualifications in the job they are applying for. It shows that you are serious about the position you are applying for and it will show that you are serious about getting the job. In order to do this you will need to prepare a resume for this kind of position.When you first start in school you will develop learning design skills and will learn the ways that employers look at resumes. This information is very valuable and it will be used in the designing of your instructional designer resume. It will include the basic of the education that you have, whether it has been at an elementary school high school or community college.It will also show your educational goals for the program that you are applying for. You will need to show the extent of your involvement in that program and whether you have completed the programs on time or not.The resume that you create will go along with the grades you received for each program. If you were able to complete the course on time and under budget then you will want to include this on your resume.It is always good to have some insight into the areas where you will most likely have interests. You may be interested in pursuing a particular occupation and this information should be included on your resume.These and other facts will help you understand what the company is looking for and it will give you a better idea of how the job that you are applying for will fit into your learning plans. The resume that you create should include these questions that the employer will ask about you. The answer to all of these questions will show that you have thought about your educational and employment history.Writing a good resume is difficult. You must have knowledge about the type of education you have had, how long it has been, whether it was in a public or private institution and any other pertinent information.