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I fled the cube 15 years ago to work as a freelance writer, and I’m happy to report that I’ve yet to be evicted from my home or wind up on food stamps. As a result, I’m constantly asked to share my top tips for would-be and newbie freelancers. Here are a few of my tried and trues:
Turn down some of the gigs. Don’t automatically accept every project you’re offered. Instead, choose a handful of topics and industries to specialize in. Building a niche or three makes you far more marketable. Besides, some jobs are so downright miserable that you’d be better off eating Ramen for a few days than tying up your schedule with them.
Hit up your ex-boss for work. There’s no better freelance lead than someone who already knows and loves you. (For the sake of argument, I’m assuming you left your day job on good terms.) Managers live to hire freelancers who are already familiar with their SOPs and corporate culture. And we freelancers love knowing in advance who we’re really getting into bed with. Read More
Have you ever thought that if you figured out the search techniques, you would be able to find your dream job?
You click on the advanced-search function, fill in the blanks and hit return. But the matches still aren’t what you’re looking for. Despite improved functionality on many leading job sites, advanced-search functions are overwhelmingly under-used.
In fact, only about five percent of job seekers use advanced search functions, says Jonathan Duarte, founder of online job board GO Jobs.
Duarte attributes the low usage of advanced-search functions to several factors, namely that they involve too many steps and that many job seekers are not trained in Boolean searching, the use of “and” and “or.”
Are you buzzword compliant? Maybe that’s the problem - in the careers field they’re no longer called buzzwords. They’re called keywords, and without them, your résumé will slide into a black hole in cyberspace from which no search engine can find you.
Sounds dire, but getting the right words into your résumé is pretty simple according to Wendy Enelow, executive coach, résumé expert and author of more than 30 careers books including some on keywords and search engine optimization (SEO). “You can be the single most talented integrated-logistics manager but if you don’t have those words in your résumé you will get skipped over,” says the Virginia-based author.
To be clear, no one equates keywords with actual job experience or accomplishments. But in this highly competitive, technological age, the résumés that stand out are the ones that satisfy filtering software. As for keywords, says Enelow, they are no more or less complex than “nouns and noun-phrases that describe what you do every day in your position.”
One of the joys of social networking is reconnecting with people you barely knew 20 years ago but would like to know better now.
Like most people in my age bracket, I have held lots of positions. In my case, in publishing, I survived stints at CMP, Ziff-Davis, IDG and McGraw-Hill.
I’m occasionally invited to real-world reunions for one defunct magazine or another. These are strange gatherings because while there is often a friendly exchange of business cards, what happens down the road is usually nothing whatsoever.
Enter Web 2.0 and social networking. These days you can quickly form or join a social network made up of other former employees. Think of these cyber-gatherings as another form of an alumni network, even if your corporate exit may have been involuntary - without so much as a farewell lunch at T.G.I. Friday’s.
Here’s a profitable way to mine your static social networking connections. Morgan Stanley’s Rainmaker program takes mid-career professionals who travel in upscale social circles and trains them to become financial advisors.
Rainmaker’s stated “goal is to transform you into a successful financial advisor running your own profitable practice in just three years.”
On the other hand, in three years you could become a PhD, an MBA, go to med school or become a master chef at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. But being a stockbroker is kind of cool. If my stockbroker is reachable by phone past market close on the west coast it’s only because there’s an office party that day or he’s required to be there. Otherwise, one assumes, he has a regular 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. tee-time.
Have you ever wandered into an office staffed by 55 employees who are mostly 24-years-old and in their first job out of college? It might be kind of fun, right?
And in this particular office above Union Square in New York City, they throw the occasional staff party billed as the “Thursday Night Hang.” The workers in this firm called Connected Ventures run three pretty cool companies: a site called CollegeHumor.com; a t-shirt company called Busted Tees; and a video community site that predates YouTube called Vimeo.com.
One evening at a company party, they recorded the following video, for fun, on a single take. It wasn’t intended to be a recruitment video; it just turned out that way. Note, it takes about 40 seconds or more to get grooving and some of the words in a song you will hear are mature. Don’t worry, nothing else about the video is mature, it’s all in fun.
When I get a warm and fuzzy feeling about a bank it’s usually because I’m watching a tearjerker TV commercial. Some bank has rebuilt a blighted neighborhood or loaned a struggling mom the dough to build a bakery.
Until recently, I never saw a commercial that made me want to work for a bank. Between the mortgage crisis, the falling dollar, bank consolidations, and layoffs, the financial services field seems just as appealing to me as military service.
Upon learning that Bank of America had acquired Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, for the bargain basement price of $4 billion most people would have called their stock broker or sussed out the situation on Yahoo! Finance. Not me, I checked out B-of-A’s careers site.
So why is this banking giant tugging at our heartstrings? Here’s something you might not have considered in view of its layoffs: the giant bank is talent constrained.
Check out our first list of useful blogs, career tools and social media sites for job seekers and global careerists. With your suggestions, we will add many more resources.
