How to Sell Yourself at a Job Interview

How to Sell Yourself at a Job Interview If you are looking to get back in the workforce or feel now is the time to switch jobs, it is important to polish up your interviewing skills in order to put yourself in the best position possible to attain what job you want. When going on your interview, your appearance and means of communication with your interviewer are just as important if not more so as what resides on your resume. It is important for those interviewing for a position to focus in on their non-verbal means of communication so they don’t slip up. Remember, your non-verbal communications can actually kill or deliver the results you want. Be Prepared and Focused: When you first meet and greet your interviewer, do you make good eye contact and deliver a firm handshake? If not, you could lose points right off the bat, leaving you to have to play catch up over the course of the interview. Some other missteps that can doom an interview include not smiling, appearing unusually nervous, demonstrating bad posture, bad wardrobe or grooming and being animated when asked simple questions. Oh, this seems like a no-brainer, but don’t be late to your interview; you’d be amazed what message a little tardiness (non-emergency) can mean to an employer before you even sit down for a one-on-one chat. A good way to avoid many if not all of these mistakes is by doing a practice interview the night before in front of family, friends and/or a mirror. While you don’t want to come across as too rehearsed, a little practice never hurt anyone. This also holds true with getting to your interview on time. It never hurts to do a practice run so you know the exact location of the interview and about how long it will take to get there. Mind Your Body Language: When it comes to actually starting the meeting, be sure to maintain good eye contact with the person interviewing you. By being focused in on your interviewer, you’re engaged in the discussion and interested in what the company may be able to offer you; staring past the interviewer is surely not sending a good signal. While not talking over or continuously interrupting your interviewer, it is to be expected that you will have some questions regarding the company, so prepare them ahead of time. This allows you to come ready to learn about the position you’re applying for, how your role will impact the employer and what the company can do for you. Don’t Put Salary at the Forefront: One question that should not be at the forefront of your list is how much money the job will pay, as nothing looks worse than if you’re only interested in the salary. While it is only natural to want to know what your income will be with your new employer, don’t be overly aggressive in getting to that issue. Finally, the reason you’re on an interview in the first place is that you either lost your last job or are looking to switch jobs. With either being the case, do not talk bad about your former or present employer. Dont Burn any Bridges: The last thing an individual should do is burn bridges with a former or present boss. Doing so can have a negative impact going forward on your career, not to mention come across to a potential employer as negative and one reason not to hire you. When you go on a job interview the bottom line is simple Sell, sell and sell yourself. Related: Useful Interview Instructions from Start to Finish. Author: Dave Thomas, who covers among other items direct mail companies, writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on pay per click purchasing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.

Branding Blah - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Branding Blah - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Recently I read Speak More! produced by the National Speaker’s Association, and it had a chapter titled “Author-Speaker-Coach Snooze.” Upon reading this, I knew it was speaking to me. My business card essentially says, “author, speaker blah, blah, blah”. I’m not the only one. I see speakers, consultants and service business owners all the time whose business cards and websites have some variation of blah, blah, blah. The goal in branding isn’t just to define what you do, but also, using David Newman’s words in his book, Do It! Marketing, it is a “promise of an experience.” Branding statements that simply say what you do, such as “Small Business Accountant” or “Freelance Copywriter” don’t provide enough umph to attract clients. Remember, another part of branding is about differentiation, and you can’t do that with the same ho-hum descriptors that everyone else uses. That includes capital letters following your name and important-sounding but ambiguous words like “peak” and “strategic”, all designed to impress clients, but ultimately, fall short. To create a compelling and results-generating branding statement: 1) Highlight what makes you unique. Uniqueness in business can come in a variety of ways including price, speed, delivery and more. Uniqueness can come from your talents or experience, as well. Do you juggle or spin plates when you deliver your speech on work-life balance? The key is to determine what sets you apart from your competition and highlight it as an additional benefit for your clients. 2) Speak to your market. The most effective and efficient way to lure your clients and customers is by speaking their language and solving their problems. You do this by using the words they use and speaking to the issues you can fix. A single mom will have very different financial needs than a retired couple, so as a result a financial consultant would need to use a different language and speak to different goals for each group. 3) Focus on the end result. Too often, business owners focus on what’s great about them, such as listing all the fancy letters after their name. But clients don’t care about how great you are. They care only about how your greatness can help them. Save all your achievements for another time and instead, use your branding statement to let clients know what they’ll gain. For example, “Bob Smith, Strengths-Focused Sales Trainer inspiring your team to discover and leverage their greatness to increase confidence and sales.” 4) Be you. The challenge in developing stand-out branding materials is to get noticed without being obnoxiously clever or cute. The best way to avoid this is to be true to yourself and genuine in your marketing efforts. As you review your branding statement, the most important factor to consider is whether or not it tells potential clients or customers what they can expect by working with you. Your title and certifications dont deliver your message as well as a market-focused statement that promises results. Author: Leslie Truex  is a career design expert who has been helping people find or create work that fits their lifestyle goals since 1998 through her  website Work-At-Home Success. She is the author of “The Work-At-Home Success Bible” and “Jobs Online: How To Find a Get Hired to a Work-At-Home Job”. She speaks regularly on career-related topics including telecommuting and home business.

3 Tips For Planning Your Next Business Trip

3 Tips For Planning Your Next Business Trip When it comes to going on a business trip, there are some things to remember if you want to help make sure that it is a successful trip. You don’t want to confuse business with pleasure, for one thing. Focus on business and you’ll have a great trip. If your business trip doesn’t have you in meetings all day you will have some spare time, but make sure that you use it wisely. You can have fun when you’re away for business, but you can’t let that fun get in the way of your work. Find The Best Travel Deals If your business is sending a few people on a business trip together they may be able to get some great discounts on group travel. If they are just sending one person there could be ways to find deals as well, as there are plenty of websites out there that compare ticket prices these days when it comes to flights. Maybe you’ll find that flying to your destination isn’t the best, or only, choice, and that something else could save you money. Look into bus, train, or even rental car if the business trip isn’t taking you all that far. Have An Itinerary It always helps to have an itinerary scheduled for business trips, even if you only have one meeting or conference to attend. You may be meeting people for business meals or drinks, or maybe getting together with some colleagues for a night out. Scheduling these things ensure that you time everything out right. You wouldn’t want to miss an important lunch with a possible client on your trip because you decided it was a good time for a nap and you didn’t have a printed itinerary to remind you there was more to this trip than a conference. Don’t Use Free Time For The Wrong Things Even if you have time to shop or go out and party, consider the fact that you are on a business trip. If it’s the final night and you have no business to deal with the next day, by all means, have some fun. However, showing up to breakfast with the boss hungover is probably going to be a bad idea. If you have time to schedule in some sight seeing go ahead. It’s hard to visit someplace you’ve never been and just keep yourself locked up in a hotel room the whole time. Just make sure your plans and the timing work into your itinerary! The best way to survive business trips is to have a good plan set in place. Don’t plan to just wing it or you may forget to show up at an important meeting, which could cost you clients or your job. Images: Airport  whity  Itinerary  Ashley Rehnblom

How to make your landing page a huge success

How to make your landing page a huge success Today, having a website is key. If you dont have a website today, its like your business doesnt even exist. Your website works as the hub of your businesss internet activity and the place where most people will find their way to when looking up your business online. But your website is so much more than just communicating with your current customers. Your website can be a money making machine if used correctly, and today, there are plenty of businesses that have zero physical boutiques or stores, and are solely leveraging the internet and their website for selling their products. As the internet has evolved, it has come to play a central role in most marketers marketing strategies. Today, many businesses almost solely work with marketing efforts online and have stopped using traditional print and display marketing which was the center of attention back in the days. But if youre using online marketing tactics, whether it be SEO, Pay per click or online advertising, you need to create landing pages. If you arent youre missing out. A large portion of brands that are working with online marketing to get people to their website to ultimately get them to convert are completely neglecting landing pages, and doing so also means missing out on a lot of money. What are landing pages? Lets begin by getting some context to the landing page. A landing page is a page on your website that is created for a specific marketing campaign. As per Googles Dictionary, a landing page is defined as a web page which serves as the entry point for a website or a particular section of a website. In other words, a landing page is a page on your website that is focused on a specific topic and for brands most often a specific product. The whole page is then focused on this product, and this is done to make the online advertisement that drew the visitor there get more context and coherence, and get to the thing they are interested in, without actively having to look for it. Essentially, creating a landing page means improving the user experience of your website visitors. The simple answer to why you should use them is that, ultimately, they increase your conversion rates, and isnt that your ultimate goal? Most brands, when running an online marketing campaign focus on driving people to their website in order to get them to buy from them, and where do you think they take the visitors? You guessed it right, to their websites front page. In fact, according to MarketingSherpas Landing Page Handbook, 44% of the visitors to B2B companies are directed to their sites homepage. Why is this a bad idea? Well, when working with online marketing to get people to your website, the vast majority of people will be completely unfamiliar with your business. At the same time, you have created a campaign that is focused on a specific product or topic. This means that the individuals that come to your website have come to your website because they are interested in the thing that you have promised that you have. The problem with taking these people to your websites front page is that theyll feel lost and dont know how to navigate. Lets say that youve run an ad for a t-shirt and then people come to your site because they have been inspired to buy that exact t-shirt. But if they come to your front page, it means that they have to actively look for that shirt, and it might lead to them not finding them. As a result, they will most likely leave your website forever. This translates into not only lost revenue but if youve paid for an advertisement to get them there, it translates into money that you wasted. With all of this in mind, its easy to see why landing pages are crucial for successful marketing campaigns. Its also easy to see how they can have a huge effect on how well your online marketing campaigns perform. Lets look at five ways you can create a landing page and make it a huge success. 1. Leverage signup forms A crucial part of your landing page is the sign-up form or at least a call-to-action button. If you take a look, youll notice that all landing pages have either only a CTA button, or both a sign-up form and a call to action button (as forms and CTA buttons go hand-in-hand). Despite the importance of sign up forms, there are many brands that neglect it. Some people neglect it because they just dont know how to create one, and thats understandable. Creating a signup form is hard. Unless youre using SendPulse, that is. With Sendpulse, you can effortlessly create a signup form within a matter of seconds using the easy-to-use interface and the different elements available. It is completely customizable, and youll have full control over every single element you add or dont add to it. When creating it, make sure your signup form is clear, concise, and gives an offer that resonates with the rest of your landing page and the advertising campaign you ran to get people there. 2. Send triggered emails at different stages of your sales funnel While we all wish it would be so easy to get a conversion to just get people to your landing page and thats it, thats seldom the case. Often times, landing pages arent used to get instant sales, but instead, they are often created to get people to sign up and give their email address in order for the brand to then move the prospect further down their conversion funnel. If this is the way youve used your landing page, it is when people sign up using your signup form that the real job starts, as now, you need to actively work to ultimately get them to convert. The best way to do this through email is to set up triggered emails that are sent out throughout different stages of the conversion funnel. Doing this manually is a lengthy and time-consuming task, to say the least, but using SendPulse, you can automate this complete process, so you can ensure that the right emails are sent to the right people at the right time. With Automation 360, you can have triggered emails sent out at these events, which means stages of the sales funnel: Abandoned Cart Purchase Registration Custom event Most importantly, in this case, is the custom events that gives you complete control over when you want emails to be triggered and sent out to your new prospects. Make sure you create events that are relevant to the recipients and that the message resonates with the stage of the sales funnel that they are in. 3. Matching looks throughout the whole process When designing your landing page, it is crucial that it aligns with the visual appearance of the advertising that first got people there. Further, you also want to make sure that the subscription form aligns with the visual appearance of the rest of your landing page, and lastly, when sending out your marketing emails to get people further down your conversion funnel, it is vital that these emails resonate with the rest of the messaging that youve been feeding your prospects throughout the whole journey. Humans love when things feel familiar as we tend to feel much more at home and comfortable, and this is something you want to put great emphasis on throughout the whole process from finish to start. Fortunately, doing this doesnt have to be complicated, and with SendPulses email template editor, you have full control over how your email looks and how it is structured. Use the email editor to craft emails that feel familiar to the recipients and youll notice a much higher interaction rate and ultimately also conversion rate. This goes in both ways because if you send out an email which leads people to your landing page, theyll instantly know theyre in the right spot if looks the same. 4. Keep forms short Subscription forms that are shorter and ask for less information see a much higher conversion rate than long subscription forms. This is not very surprising as people want things to go fast and pain-free, and if they have to spend a ton of time filling out information, many people will be discouraged to do it. In fact, a study found that forms with three fields have a conversion rate of 25%. And the more fields are added, the more this number decreases. Make it easy to sign up through your form and youll see a higher conversion rate. With SendPulses subscription forms, you can decide exactly how many or how few fields you want to have. 5. Optimize your buttons Call-to-action buttons are incredibly important for your landing page in order to get people to do what you want them to do, but its simply not enough to just throw up a CTA button and then leave it there. In fact, the way your CTA button looks, and the way it resonates (and contrasts) all of your other content on your landing page can actually have a huge effect on your landing page. But the thing with CTA buttons on your landing page is that there are no universal hacks for a well-performing button because it depends on so many variables. Therefore, you need to actively change it and optimize in order to find the best performing button for you. Just know that small changes can result in big improvements your buttons performance. In fact, a brand saw a 26% increase in clicks by simply adding an arrow icon to their CTA buttons. Furthermore, another brand found that just by making their CTAs red lead to a boosted conversion rate of 21%. Using SendPulses subscription form, you have complete power over the CTA buttons that you use on your landing page. Not only do you have full control and power over how it looks, but changing and optimizing it is also incredibly easy. This is ideal as when you work with optimizing your landing pages conversion rate, youre not just going to change things one or two times, and therefore, you want things to run as smoothly as possible.

Are Baby Boomers Suffering From Financial Shame - Career Pivot

Are Baby Boomers Suffering From Financial Shame - Career Pivot Financial Shame Do you suffer from financial shame? I ask this question becausefinancial shameis far more common than most of us would like to admit. Everyone talks about how financially successful baby boomers are, but, this is just part of the story. Like every generation, we are struggling after the Great Recession. I was shockedâ€"and I think you will be tooâ€"when I read the article, The Secret Shame of Middle Class Americans â€"Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. I’m one of them, in The Atlantic this last month. Take a moment to read this lengthy article because the author, a successful writer of 5 books, would clearly be considered middle class, but falls into the category of having trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. Federal Reserve Board Survey The Federal Reserve Board runs theSurvey of Consumer Financesevery three years. The latest report had nothing earth-shattering in it, with the exception of one item. It is best stated by the author of The Atlantic article,Neal Gabler: The Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who knew? The author admits publicly he is one who did not have $400 to pay for an emergency. Essentially, he is coming out of the closet of financial shame. Great Recession The great recession wiped out a lot of baby boomer’s meager retirement accounts. They were not large enough, to begin with, and now, retirement looks a lot farther away than we planned. The great recession came at a time when most of us had just recovered from the dot-com bubble. This could be described as a double whammy since the baby boomer generation was getting ready to enter its retirement years. Although the stock market has recovered, most of our generation has not, for a variety of reasons. Listen to the most recent episode Many of our generation lost jobs and became unemployed long-term. Many survived by raiding their retirement funds. Our children graduated from school into the worst economy since the great depression. Many parents continued to support their children and allowed them to boomerang back into their homes. What we hoped would fund our retirementsâ€"selling our homes for a big profitâ€"disappeared overnight. Does anyone really talk about this? NO! Huge numbers of our generation wallow in financial shame. Now is the Time to Act! Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve been watching the crazy US presidential primary campaigns. We are seeing a lot of angry people come out and support a variety of non-mainstream candidates. For the first time, I am hearing from people who likely suffer from financial shame. Many of our generation suffer from financial shame because we do not like to admit that: We spent too much on our homes and lifestyles. We did not save enough for our kids’ college educations. We did not save enough for our own retirements. We did not predict the double whammy of the dot com bubble and the great recession. We will need to either delay retirement or consider unretirement.As my good friend Chris Farrell writes in his book, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life: Welcome to unretirement, a revolution in the making! The promise of unretirement is that it creates the income, the wealth, the entrepreneurial engagement, and the workplace transformation for dealing with our most troubling economic and social issues. Forget gloomy forecasts. Aging workers are in the vanguard of change and hope. Unretirement is an opportunity to seize. Baby boomers redefined society. Now, we will redefine what in means to live in the 2nd half of life. We need to come out of the closet of financial shame and talk about it. We need to work with our public officials and come up with solutions. I have no real plans to retire. I want to do something I love, but work less. This is why I created Career Pivot. Previously, I wrote a post called, Financial Insecurity in the 2nd Half of Life [Survey], where we offered a survey. That survey is now closed.You can review this survey and others on the Career Pivot Survey Results page. Do you suffer from financial shame? Are you ready to open up and talk about it? The post originally appeared on Sixty and Me. Marc Miller Like what you just read? Share it with your friends using the buttons above. Like What You Read? Get Career Pivot Insights! Check out the Repurpose Your Career Podcast Do You Need Help With ...

Leaving Your Job What Smart Jobseekers Need to Know - Part 5 of 5 Part Series - Sterling Career Concepts

Leaving Your Job What Smart Jobseekers Need to Know - Part 5 of 5 Part Series Leaving Your Job? What Smart Jobseekers Need to Know Part 5 of 5 Part Series When a job seeker turns the page on his or her current position and is seeking new employment, it is rare they think about all the “what ifs.” One of the most commonly overlooked “what if” is: “What if they want me to stay?” Be prepared for a counteroffer from your current employer. When your employer finds out you are leaving, you may be tempted with an offer to stay. However, most research and anecdotal evidence on this subject finds that employees who accept a counteroffer often end up leaving the company anyway, often within a year. I witnessed this first-hand during my time as an executive recruiter. In many cases, your current employer may make a counteroffer out of panic and for their own best interest. If you are instrumental to a current project, for example, your supervisor may be desperate to keep you until the project is complete. Once that happens, however, you may find yourself expendable. Also, employees who accept another job offer â€" even if they ultimately end up staying in their current position â€" may be perceived as “disloyal.” You were seeking a new position for a reason. If your motivation was purely financial, you may receive a counteroffer that meets that need, but it may create dissatisfaction with your co-workers if they learn you stayed with the company and received a raise. If you were seeking a new job for other reasons, staying at the company may not resolve those issues. If you do accept a counteroffer and decide to stay with your current company, make sure you have an open and honest dialogue with your supervisor about any changes that need to be made. Again, look to your reasons for seeking a new position in the first place. Can these be addressed? For example, taking on different assignments, or making changes to the structure of the position (i.e., different hours) can be critical changes. Simply staying in exchange for more money won’t make you any more successful in the same position â€" which will likely lead to your eventual departure from the company anyway. If you handle your departure from the company with grace and tact, you may find the door is open for you to return to the company in the future. New positions don’t always work out, and mergers and acquisitions (especially in smaller industries) are a possibility. Without trying, you may find yourself working for the same supervisor or company in the future. *** Hopefully this five-part series provided relevant tips, strategies, and techniques to utilize in your job search. We are always available to coach you through the stages of negotiating and accepting an offer and resigning from your current position. It’s an exciting?yet nerve-wracking and still very critical?part of the job search process.

Writing Resume Fulltime Vs Contracting

Writing Resume Fulltime Vs ContractingWriting resumes is no longer limited to getting a job in the traditional sense. With an increasing number of people coming into the workforce seeking fulltime positions and finding that they are unable to get such jobs, there has been a growing demand for resume writers.Many of these people are now working fulltime position seeking. Some are looking for contract positions but are not employed by an employer. In either case, they are seeking to get jobs that will allow them to be their own boss.It seems that certain positions such as nursing, child care, teaching, information technology, food preparation, medical assisting, etc. are having the most demand in this context. With the availability of these jobs in demand, it is not surprising that the income needed to make it on your own is going up.There are many different kinds of writing resumes. As more of these new positions become available, it is becoming more difficult to find someone to write one for you. In some cases, there are companies that do offer this service but these are not usually the best option. In the majority of the cases, it is better to work with someone that specializes in this kind of job seeking and resume writing.Fulltime employees are seeking a job with a regular employer. This means that they are either employed by an employer directly or by a company that contracts with them. It is not likely that a full-time employee would have a lot of experience with writing resumes if they were a contractor.Fulltime individuals, particularly women, are also much more open to seeking contract employment. This is due to the fact that they typically cannot gain employment in many companies without having had at least some formal training. The fact that they are socommon today is one of the main reasons that there are so many contract employers that they can hire. A person looking for a job should not have any problem finding a job contract.Fulltime employment is becoming less common as the economy begins to recover. However, there are a lot of jobs that are being offered as contracts. This is true for different kinds of positions such as librarians, material handlers, cooks, and many others. These contracts allow for individuals to stay employed for a longer period of time than would be possible otherwise.In conclusion, those seeking to have a resume written by resume writers who are specialized in the work that they do should consider a contract job writer. A number of contract employers offer services that they would not be able to provide if they had to hire an individual directly.