Posts from — March 2009

In some recent articles, I have broken down the job finding process into its logical components and detailed them individually. With this article I intend on building on those articles by offering tips which will speed up the process for you, looking at job hunting as an entire process.

1. Don’t wait till you start looking for a job, before you start looking.

Be up to date with your industry and the conditions of your employment environment all the time. Make this part of your job description in every job you hold. It could save you weeks when it comes time to find a job.

2. Ensure Your Resume Is Always Ready

Sometimes you just need to be ready to pounce for that dream job. If your resume is always up to date and you are always familiar with its contents, you will be ready. Update it at least twice a year with new skills and experience. You’ll then be ready for those unexpected offers which occasionally present themselves.

3. Recognise Networking Opportunities Every Day

Your network is your key to the inner workings of your industry. Try to remember everyone you meet professionally. Try to remember what they do and who they work for. When you catch up with them, get them talking about their jobs and businesses. This is a great way to maintain intimacy with your industry and goes a long way to helping with point 1 above.

4. Always Go To That Interview – Even When You Aren’t Interested.

Successful interviewing requires touch and it takes mistakes to get that touch. It is a skill you can only learn through practise. You don’t want to learn these skills when you are being interviewed for your perfect job, you want to make your mistakes with jobs you don’t really care for. So go to every interview you are offered, for no reason other than the practise. If you get offered a job you do not really want, have the courage to decline it.

5. Keep a diary of your experiences.

Job hunting is an evolutionary process. You need to modify your approach to every unique job and as your skills improve. A great tool to help you with this is to diarise your experiences, noting where you did well and where you think you could have done better. Really make an effort to learn from your experiences so each job you go for is a better effort than the last.

6. If You Are Unemployed, Make The Job Search Your Full Time Job

You should apply the same discipline, diligence and professionalism to job hunting as you would to work. It will keep you sharp and this will shine during your job interviews. Do not fall into the habit of sleeping in and taking unemployment as a holiday. Your full time job now is job hunting.

7. Maintain Your Focus

You know what type of job you are looking for, don’t be distracted by other offers or ideas. Keep your eyes firmly set on the task at hand and the job you are seeking.

Finding a new job is never fun. Keep the faith though and good luck with your hunt

Research in advertising is done in order to produce better advertisements that are more efficient in motivating customers to buy a product or a service. The research can be based on a particular advertising campaign or can be more generalized and based on how advertisements create an effect on people’s mind. Lots of approaches are involved to go about conducting an advertising research like economical, psychological, demographical and sociological.

When designing an advertisement for a particular product many things should be researched like where it should be displayed, whether the advertisement can be printed in newspapers or magazines or broadcasted on television or broadcasting or published on the Internet. Many methods are undertaken to collect relevant information. The research itself is of two kinds, syndicated and customized. Syndicated research is a single research done by the company that is acquirable to other companies as well. Customized research is research based on certain criteria and is done for a particular company and its results are acquirable to only that company.

Pre-testing or copy testing is a type of customized research that determines the in-market efficiency of an advertisement before it is released or before the final production. The more the pre-testing is done the more likely that it will be a successful advertisement and each pre-testing should be applied number of times. This can done by studying the level of attention the customers have, motivation, brand linkage, communication and entertainment. Flow of emotions and flow of attention are broken down and studied individually. The results are applied on the advertisement that is still being developed to recognize the weak points and replace them. A reliable feedback loop can guide the researchers, client and the agency to work in harmony. Tests should be applied during the storyboard stage of ad making. This is an early stage and the results are highly predictive. During this process images are selected and used as integrated campaign print ad.

Post-testing or ad tracking studies are either syndicated or customized. Studies are done over a period of time or continuously. The in-market research is done to understand a brands linkage, performance, awareness, and preference along with product attitudes and usage. They are done by, conducting interviews either on phone or Internet. Testing the finished advertisement provides the confidence and gives an idea whether it is following the strategy.

All the above studies should assist the client’s advertisement development make the end product easier to achieve. The study should contain rational information having not only surface knowledge but also wage deep in-sight that will open window to a customer’s mind. The customer, too, should wage precise information based on facts and not based on imaginary thinking and self-delusion. He should be healthy to explain the role of advertisement in the whole marketing plan. Working in vacuum doesn’t get the desired result.

The basis is to provide in-depth understanding about the consumers for improving on the advertisement techniques and other marketing decisions.

The rapidly changing likes and needs of the customers are difficult to track, but should be studied in order to increase the quality of advertisement.

The sharing of gifts is a great concept which has been around for centuries. It allows for an opportunity to show one’s appreciation for another’s support or contributions. Gifts tend to be shared by people on predetermined occasions such as birthdays, anniversary of nuptuals, Valentine’s Day, and other such celebrations.

Nowadays, it is a common fashion for corporations to give gifts to its employees on various occasions such as holidays, superior job performance, promotions, company anniversaries or when the company meets its business objectives. Giving Seafood accessories as corporate gifts is an excellent and innovative idea and – compared to traditional corporate gift ideas – this is something different.

Nowadays, Seafood corporate gifts are becoming the vogue in the corporate world around the globe. Seafood accessories such as Lobster set, Oyster knife, Seafood forks, Fishing gear set, Fish grill, etc are the sought after gift ideas among major companies. These items are very useful and can be part of any household kitchen. They also make outdoor sporting activities like Fishing, very fun and enjoyable experience.

In general an employee appreciates when their employer acknowledges their hard work in some way. Showing appreciation to an employee help them to feel more like an integral part of the company and they are likely to be more loyal. To show their apprieciation, companies can be creative, and give some wonderful seafood accessories.

One such idea is to emboss the gifts with the company logo and a citation stating the individual’s name and his/her contribution to companies well being. This provides a nice conversation piece that loooks great either on the desk or hanging on the wall. When people see it, they will want to know more about what was involved with winning such a nice corporate seafood gift.

When you choose gifts, it is very important to keep in mind, the special tastes of the receiver. However it is not practical for an organization to know the special tastes and interests of all of its employees. To overcome this problem, one can think of giving Seafood gift certificates, which is a very good alternative to giving the actual Seafood accessories as gifts. These gift certificates are available in various denominations for a variety of situations.

Seafood gift certificates for your employees can accomplish plenty for a tad bit of money. They can increase team spirit as well as a strong and lasting bonding experience. Having a company fish fry, to having a seafood dinner for your family and friends. Seafood gift certificates can go along way in making your employees feel valued, appreciated and respected for a job well done.

A seafood corporate gift is something that top employees will definitely cherish. This is definitely a situation where being the top dog pays! Stories will be told all around the office about how the top member of the salesteam won a 13 pound jumbo lobster. Presenting the award at a company function is the best way to maximize the positive effect.

Winning a company achievement award is no simple feat. The kind of person who wins these awards generally dedicates hours upon hours of their time to make sure they are doing the absolute best possible job for their company. There is a big difference between the person who just shows up every day and the person who dedicates themselves to the position that they hold.

YOU’RE REACHING TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE

It seems like the following advice is only for real estate people, but the idea applies in a lot of places. There are two kinds of people looking for your business:

1. A person who lives in your area-your city, your state-who types in “real estate,” “dentist,” “churches,” or “restaurant” and expects that the results he sees will be area-only. You’ll be there when he comes looking for you.

2. A person that may not be in your area at all (or else Google’s system cannot detect where he is), but is still asking for your particular area’s services. He goes to Google and searches by typing in “movers in Ft Lauderdale,” or “Ft Lauderdale real estate,” or “hotels Ft Lauderdale,” hoping to get Ft-Lauderdale-only results. He may be traveling on a particular holiday or planning a move or he may be an investor.

He may in fact be from Palo Alto. But he could be down in San Diego. Or way out in Orlando. Or in Montreal. Or Sydney, or Tokyo. But he’s still searching on Google for you, and he identifies Palo Alto by name.

Either way, you want to be there, ready to open the door when he comes knocking.

REACH THE FIRST PERSON

Because you’re aiming at these two kinds of people, you can set up two Google campaigns for them, not just one. So here’s how. When you’re first setting up your campaign, select regional targeting.

Then you choose your country, followed by your state/province, and even a city or group of cities.

REACH THE SECOND PERSON

If you were advertising for real estate in California, you’d set up a nationwide campaign, possibly even an international campaign, but with local terms like “Los Angeles real estate” and “Yorba Linda real estate.” After all, there are likely to be people from all over the country, and maybe even outside the country, who are doing searches on these terms.

So you’d grab a map or a listing of cities from a web site and create a keyword set like this:

California real estate LA real estate Healdsburg real estate Villa Real real estate Santa Monica real estate Buy homes California Buy homes San Francisco Buy homes Bakersfield Buy homes Sausalito

To do this the best way, you would combine a large list of general keywords (the same ones you used on the regionally targeted campaign) with a large list of cities and towns, and then use a spreadsheet to mix and match them together.

Either way, you’ll end up with a huge keyword list: 95 percent of them will never get searches, and the other 5 percent may only get a few. However, it doesn’t cost anything to bid on these keywords if nobody clicks, and when people do click, they’ll only be five or ten cents. Not much traffic, but what you do get will be bargain priced. You should still buy generic keywords in your local campaign, but these local keywords in a nationwide campaign will bring very cheap clicks, mostly.

Your real estate Google account would be arranged like this:

Campaign #1: California Targeting Only Group 1: Real estate Group 2: Buy homes

Campaign #2: National Targeting-entire USA Group 1: California real estate Group 2: Buy homes California

Now you have both bases covered, and you’ll be getting as much traffic as possible for your local market. The key is that you’re not leaving out people in other geographic locations who may be seriously looking for what you happen to offer.

You can also use your business’s address or latitude and longitude, and target all searches within a radius that you select. Google even gives you the advanced option of choosing your own customized set of coordinates that you want to target.

HONE YOUR CHOPS ON A LOCAL TEST CAMPAIGN BEFORE YOU GO NATIONAL

One age-old advertising practice is to test ideas in a smaller market before you spend big bucks to try them out in a larger one. Nowadays, the risks of going national instantly if you have a good product may seem small because after all, you’re paying for one click at a time, you can set a daily budget, and you can turn your traffic on and off at will. But that doesn’t undo the value of trying your product in one small geographic area first.

For example, if you sell advice to investors, you might start just with investors in New York State. The advantage? You don’t need to worry nearly as much about your daily budget. If your cash reserves are limited, you can choose this smaller market to start off in, and if in the first few weeks or months it’s not profitable, you’re not forced to shut the entire thing down for fear of quickly going bankrupt. Make the sales process profitable in a smaller market, and then go national.

At that point, you’re able to take on the big boys in the worldwide market because you know that the mechanism works like clockwork in the small market, and every dollar you send out comes back with more dollars attached. Oh, this is also an excellent way to keep competitors from knowing what you’re up to, if they don’t live in the cities you’re targeting.

Although, it’s an age-old method of advertisement, it still receives the same response and is highly successful. Both small and large businesses still choose this method to promote their products and services. Ask them and nearly hundred percent advertisers would select newspapers as their primary advertise medium.

In spite of registered decline in newspaper circulation numbers and advertisements featured in a newspaper, they are read by millions of people at their breakfast table. The rate of increase in price to place advertisements in newspapers is climbing rapidly when compared to radio, television and billboards. The main aim should be to get the desired attention from the advertisement and out do the competitor. Various factors should be considered and measures should be taken to ensure success, while keeping the cost low.

Many advertisers, who advertise through newspapers, design their own advertisements without any prior training. This has lead to the rise of larger number of retailers who think that making an ad by them is the only way to get it right. This approach saves a lot of money and is good for small businesses, only if they reach to correct customers. The one time cost of placing a small advertisement is $150, so the measures should be taken to place them effectively. It isn’t necessary to have a full-page advertisement posted in the newspaper. If smartly designed, even half page advertisement can do wonders; the money saved can be used to advertise concurrently in other mediums like radio, websites, etc.

Using colorful font can multiply the cost to many times and is not worth the return. If the budget is low and the matter is confident enough, black font will be fine. Regular readers read the newspapers daily; therefore, there is no sense in placing the same ad in the same paper everyday. The advertisement can be placed in different papers everyday. The frequency can be three times a week for a particular newspaper. But there is an increase in the number of readers on weekends, so more money can be invested on placing advertisement in the weekend edition. Don’t be disappointed if all the advertisement space is sold on weekend. Insert fliers in between the pages of the newspaper.

As many advertisers will be posting their ads on weekends in the local newspaper and the chances of your ad getting lost in the muddle, the conventions can be twisted a little to beat the competition. Place an offer coupon in the mid-week editorial and pay the local station to advertise and talk about the offer on their famous program. Ask them to specifically mention about the coupon placed in the newspaper. Out of the daily readers, only few of them go through the entire newspapers. Most of them view the first and last page. So instead of posting an ad thrice weekly in the middle pages, invest on placing the ad on the first or last page of the newspaper, once a week. Majority of the newspapers don’t give competitive protection, that is, an advertisement of a firm can be placed next to the advertisement of its competitor. Specify about this condition to the sales person and take the guarantee from them.

There is a decrease in the number of local newspapers every year. In United States, only about a thousand newspapers function on a regular basis. Local people are now relying on weekly papers or newspapers with the local section. Sometimes only one publisher controls many of the local newspapers. Newspapers for all the localities are printed at one place with only the front page being changed. When advertising in such publications, care should be taken on recognizing the audience that is being reached. All the effort and money is wasted if the wrong customer is reached and the result can go in loss. Mixing different medias instead one for advertising is a smart approach. One can take care of the shortcomings of the other and work in tandem to make the overall advertising campaign a huge success.

Here’s how an employer with a job to fill chooses the winning candidate. He or she weeds out all those who are wrong for the job until only one is left. The right one. If you want the job, you have to resist being weeded out, and that means you must stubbornly keep from coming across in a way the employer sees as negative.

The boss is working with a logic that makes perfect sense to him or her. He takes a group of, say, ten candidates, finds reasons to weed out nine of them, and hires the last one standing. (Unless, of course, he weeds out all ten, in which case he must find a new group of candidates.)

It’s a process that takes valuable time, and is costly to the company. The employer is often more interested in solving the problem quickly than he/she is in being objective and fair. Show even the smallest evidence of a negative in your background or your character, and you could find yourself disqualified.

When the game is over, there’s one new employee, and nine disappointed candidates.

Generally, the person who gets the job, even if there are only two or three candidates to start with, is the one who steadfastly refuses to give the boss a reason to weed him/her out. Bosses tend to play it safe, reasoning that if a candidate has no negatives, chances are he/she can do the job with little risk. You must convince the employer that you have what it takes to do the job, and no negatives that might stand in your way.

You must find out what the boss wants, then show it what you’re offering. It’s risky trying to sell yourself, in a letter or an interview, on the basis of some personal quality or element in your background, until you’re reasonably certain the employer sees it as an asset. If he or she sees it as a negative, you could be weeded out on the spot.

After all, the employer is searching for reasons to disqualify people. Ten candidates – just one job.

If you say you’re an independent thinker, you may have found trouble. Because in this company, staff is expected to follow through on decisions made at the top..They like team players, not independent thinkers. They see you as a maverick, so you’re out.

Volunteer that you’re a staunch Democrat, and you may be setting yourself up for disqualification. Why? Because you’re talking to a fanatic Republican who believes all Democrats are liberals who spend money needlessly.

Certainly there’s truly nothing negative about being an independent thinker or a liberal Democrat. If they chose you, you could do a first-rate job. The point is, keep extraneous information to yourself until you know something about the company and the interviewer. It has no bearing on your ability to do the job, but it can get you weeded out.

Don’t volunteer extraneous information. Stick to those qualities that relate directly to the requirements of the job. Until you know what they want, don’t say too much.

At this point, your are the source of what they know about you. If you don’t reveal something to them, it simply doesn’t exist.