Contributed Post | Mike McRitchie | Resume and LinkedIn Profile Writer | Telecom Marketing Content Writer

Creating a Clever Career Path for Yourself, From Interviews to Insights

November 12, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

From a young age you have always been an ambitious and career driven person, who wants to create a successful future for yourself. You are focused, hardworking and driven, so nothing is going to stand in the way of you getting to where you want to be. You are hoping to make your fortune one day, no matter what your career path may be. It’s time to pave out a clever career path so that you can make the most out of your skills. This includes doing a lot of research into potential companies you might want to work for as well as practising your interview techniques. Take the following ideas on board and you will soon be creating the best career path for yourself.

Do Your Research

It is never too early to start researching where you might like to work one day. If you just spend a day doing a few simple Google searches, you will be able to find out a lot about an array of different businesses. You can find out how much you could earn if you worked at a law firm such as Tully Rinckey, as well as what the current employees think about the working environment. Online searches open up a whole load of information that is invaluable to you as a prospective employee, so explore all of your options and you will soon discover where your passions lie.

Career Path

Practise Your Interviewing Techniques

Once you know where you want to work, you need to start preparing yourself for any upcoming interviews you might land. Finding your dream job is just one part of the battle; actually landing the job is much harder work. You need to make sure you can talk about all of your previous experience and how you work under pressure. You will need to display excellent communication skills, organisation and the ability to prioritise your hectic workload. Make sure you are always true to yourself under interview conditions as you want to give an accurate representation as to who you actually are and how you would fit into the company.

Gain People’s Opinions

Talk to people who you trust and they will be able to tell you which direction you should be going in. You might have your sights set on a particular pathway, but it might not be quite right for your skills or personality. The people who know you the best will be able to envision you in a certain career, so take their advice on board because they might just be right.

Stay Passionate

You need to make sure you are passionate about the industry you are going into otherwise you are never going to get to where you want to be. Stay focused and motivated at all times and your passions will shine through. Employers want to know that they are hiring a dedicated member of staff, so do everything you can to prove this to them during your interview.

Use these ideas to create a clever career path for yourself and you will never have to worry about landing your dream role.

You’d Be Mad Not to Include These Web Design Trends on Your Biz Site

November 11, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Business websites are evolving all the time. Just take a look back at old images of Amazon.com from the 1990s if you want to see how much things have progressed. In 2018 a number of new trends came along, again changing how businesses should present themselves in digital format. Designs change like the wind, so it can be advantageous to stay on top of them. The following are some of the stand-out design innovations from the last few months. Use them to your advantage.

Maximalism

For years, digital marketers implored businesses to cut back on on-screen clutter and embrace minimalism. The theory was that having less stuff on the screen would make it easier for customers to find what they were looking for. But with so many sites now adopting the minimalist theme, many companies realised that it was doing them more harm than good. They just didn’t look any different from their competitors.

Enter maximalism, the new web design philosophy making waves in the industry. Maximalism is the opposite of minimalism – it’s the idea that more onscreen action is better, at least for some businesses. But like minimalism, it has rules. Just as minimalism needs plenty of well-proportioned white space and complementary fonts, maximalism also relies on a kind of symmetry. In some respects, it’s actually a lot harder to get maximalism to work because it’s so bold and daring.

Maximalism doesn’t have to be brutalist, but it can be. We’re talking full-screen graphics, large fonts, computerised typesets, and brash colors. It’s not a style that tries not to be offensive.

Floating Menus

With PC and phone screens growing every year, website designers are now experimenting with the idea of floating menus. The basic idea is to get rid of clumsy, fixed-menu systems and replace them with something more elegant, streamlined and user-friendly. Whether the trend will genuinely catch on remains to be seen, but businesses hope that always having navigation nearby will cut down on scrolling time and make it easier for customers to begin the route to purchasing a product.

Floating menus don’t have to be intrusive, especially if they fit in with the rest of the website theme, but designers have to be careful.

Video Elements

According to Full Funnel Digital Marketing, the purpose of a website is to generate more sales for the business. But many firms now have such complex products that simple static pictures don’t adequately convey information.

Video elements provide a potential solution. Unlike regular video, which is still difficult to seamlessly integrate, video elements offer a kind of hybrid between still and motion, like a GIF. Companies will hard-to-understand menus, or product designs can use these video elements to improve the user experience. Specific details can be looped so that visitors can watch them over and over until they understand.

Motion Fonts

Typography is the backbone of modern web design, providing businesses with a plethora of beautiful fonts for exciting their customers. Today, it seems like there’s a typeface for every business theme, from restaurants to banks. But what comes next?

In 2018, motion fonts have been growing in popularity. Motion fonts are usually based on a specific typeface, but with varying boldness. For instance, a motion font would appear as a video starting with a thin typeface and growing gradually into a thicker one.

Motion fonts are by no means a fringe project. Some of the biggest names in the tech industry, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, have all gotten on board, hoping to make these new typefaces standard across the web. Whether it will prove to be a fad remains to be seen, but with 64,000 axes of variation, there are plenty of ways designers could experiment.

Systematic Design

Systematic Website Design — Brand experts know how important it is to make sure that designs remain consistent across platforms, be it website, tablet, in-store or in the post. But with so much brand presence now online, there’s a drive to “systematize” the brand.

In essence, this means keeping all motion and visual elements consistent, no matter which channel a customer is using. Having a system in place actually makes the design process much easier for companies. With set rules in place, there’s less guesswork that goes into creating new online and offline content. Master UX tools take a lot of the hassle out the process too, allowing businesses to retain their aesthetic, no matter how they’re trying to spread their message.

The Rise Of Illustrations

So far, most businesses have focused on photography to sell their products. This makes a lot of sense since people want to see what they’re buying. Until something dramatic happens, this state of affairs is likely to remain, especially in retail. But some companies with more complex products are beginning to find utility in illustrations or photo-illustration composite images.

Dropbox, for instance, has begun using illustrated work to advertise its cloud products. It’s hard for the company to really capture people’s attention visually because what it sells is so intangible. But now, with the help of artists, it’s starting to use illustrations as a way to bring its storage services to life.

Fewer Straight Lines

Straight lines are the bread and butter of minimalism. But their days may be numbered if recent website design trends continue. The new direction is to include more rounded and organic shapes for things like click boxes and background images. Far from creating a cluttered impression, the style feels quite natural and certainly more friendly than typical business website design. It’s a bit out-of-the-box, but it seems as if right angles have had their day. Take a look at the payment company Stripe’s website to see this trend in action. Harsh corners are a thing of the past.

Companies are also looking to use color differently to complement the new design language. Soon you’ll be seeing slowly changing and vibrating colour segments which change as you scroll down the page. Again, the idea is to make websites feel more engaging and alive.

5 Tips for Making Your Fortune in Business

November 8, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Making a fortune in business Pretty much everyone would like to be rich, right? It’s the trick in the question “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” Not many people would feel inclined to say “no, not me, I don’t like the idea of having lots of money.”

It’s a simple fact of life, that like it or not, success in business, and in general, is judged to a significant degree by money. It’s also the case that money is required for the everyday act of existing in the world. You need to buy food, pay the bills, put fuel in your car, and so on. And if you aren’t content with a purely practical existence, you’ll need money to participate in many of the uplifting pastimes and pursuit that give life much of its value.

Travelling to new places, taking your kids to Disneyland, even just camping somewhere out of the way and turning your back on civilisation for a while — all of these things will cost some money.

So, whether for the sake of social clout and recognition, or for the ability to reliably keep a roof over your head, and the heads of those you care about, or in order to open doors to interesting experiences; there are plenty of reasons why you might want to make a tidy fortune in life.

But while pretty much everyone, and certainly the majority of those with an entrepreneurial inclination, will want to get rich, it is, of course, easier said than done.

Here are some tips for making your fortune.

Find an industry or career where you can reasonably expect that a high degree of success will be rewarded by high-earnings

You can work excruciatingly hard in life, without ever enjoying a substantial degree of financial success. That’s because income doesn’t correlate directly with hard work, even if hard work is a prerequisite for success in any field.

By way of illustration, you could spend 12-hours a day, seven days a week, breaking rocks in the blazing sun. No one would say you weren’t working hard — working yourself ragged in fact — but you’d never get rich from doing the job, simply because of the nature of the job itself.

That’s an extreme example, but the same basic concept holds true in a broader sense, as well.

If you want to make your fortune, you need to find an industry or career where you can reasonably expect that a high degree of success will be rewarded by high-earnings.

Researching how to start a real estate business, for example, might provide you with the requisite insights to determine that a particular career path in real estate could reliably make you a lot of money.

But if you currently work in a run-of-the-mill office job, and the most senior figure in the building earns only slightly more than you, you’re likely not in the right place, if your ambition is to become wealthy.

Make sure that the career you’re pursuing is something you find meaningful, not just something that you think might make you rich

With all the talk of finding a career where high-earning is a feasible expectation down the line, you could be forgiven for thinking that the correct path is to be purely pragmatic in your career choice, and to think only of the material benefits of a given job.

That would, however, be a bad idea.

To earn your fortune, you don’t just need to be in the right line of work — you also need to be motivated, driven, and focused enough to grind away come rain or shine. While some especially gritty personalities might be able to do that indefinitely for a job they hate, the average person certainly won’t be.

To have the level of commitment, focus, and drive required to make a success of yourself in a demanding career, having a sense of higher meaning in your job is very important. If you feel that you’re contributing to the world in some meaningful way, or at least, that you can take pride in your work and not just view yourself as someone who’s obliged to do distasteful things for a living — you’ll be much better positioned to thrive and prosper down the years.

Adopt a complete-accountability mindset

Success guru Jack Canfield has noted in his writings that one of the key defining features of the most successful people in business, is that they have a mindset of complete accountability. That is, they assume that their actions are responsible, in some way, for essentially everything that happens to them.

On the one hand, this sounds clearly empowering. Enjoyed success in life? Pat yourself on the back and reflect on how your savvy and virtuous actions yielded results.

On the other hand, though, this concept can be extremely daunting for most people, because it also works the other way around. Been falling short of the mark for years? Guess what, you no longer have the luxury of pointing fingers at other people, or external circumstances, even if they were actively working against you. The buck stops with you, which means you have to own your undesirable position in life.

But when you adopt this total-accountability mindset, you also empower yourself, totally, to change your life. You begin to focus less on the things you can’t control, and more on the things you can control. This makes you naturally more proactive, creative, and daring. And all of those things increase your odds of success.

Get organised like you’ve never been before

Making your fortune requires a great amount of attention to detail. Organisation is key to any significant level of success in the business world, and especially if you’ve struggled with being an organised person in the past, you really need to make a point of getting organised like never before.

There are many effective systems out there for identifying sticking points in your routine, and collecting and organising all of your assorted tasks, projects, and daily To-Dos.

David Allen’s world-renowned “Getting Things Done” system is perhaps the most well-known organisation method going, and by all accounts, it’s proved life-changing for a substantial number of high-flying corporate professionals, and ordinary members of society, alike.

Whatever system you choose to use, though, the key thing is that you’re able to get a clear overview of the various tasks you could be doing at any given moment, and from there, can identify and act on the most important tasks.

Identify a clear vision of where you want to be in a few years, and practice affirmations to guide you towards success

They say that “seeing is believing”, and if you listen to some of the most successful people in the world, they’ll tell you that the ability to set a clear intention, visualise a perfect outcome, and continue to reinforce the idea of success in their minds, has been instrumental in terms of their eventual success.

The idea of visualisation and affirmations is kind of New Age on the face of it, and this alone can put some people off. But a variety of success icons ranging from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Richard Branson and Charles Duhigg have apparently used these practices, in one form or another, to secure success in life.

Self-belief is very important when you’re seeking your fortune. Imagine what your perfect life and perfect job look like. Then practice routine visualisation and affirmation exercises in order to keep reinforcing your belief in your eventual success.

If nothing else, this will help to keep you motivated and moving forward during difficult times.

Making the Most of Co-Working

November 8, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

More people than ever before are working from home. Some of these people just work a few days a week at home, instead of in their office, still working for an employer. Others, run their own business out of their house, often working around family commitments. Then, some work as freelancers. They use their skills to make money online or in the real world. They work doing something that they enjoy, providing clients with their abilities, to help them to get a good job done. Freelancers work as writers, photographers, designers, editors and in many other fields. The growth of the internet means that more people are able to make money in this way and it can seem like a dream come true.

Before you get started, working from home can feel like the answer to all of your problems. You’ll be able to work more flexible hours. You’ll be able to work around your family. You’ll be able to sit on the sofa in your sweats, working as and when it suits you.

Then, for many, reality sets in and it’s rather different. Many people that work from home fall into two camps. The first, procrastinate. They are distracted by home life. They find it hard to focus and instead spend their time watching Netflix and eating cake. They gain weight, their work suffers, and they aren’t able to make as much money as they’d like to, because they don’t focus on their work.

The second camp become obsessive workers. They work all day and into the night. They take on extra projects, they never take time off, and they work much more than they ever would as an employee in an office. They spend less time with their family and friends, and much less time outdoors. Work takes over their lives, and they feel constantly stressed out and anxious.

Despite the appeal of home-working, most truly struggle to find that perfect work-life balance that they are looking for. This is just one of the reasons that co-working spaces are becoming more popular. Working from a shared office can be an excellent solution to all of your problems that offers you the best of both worlds, and it can make a very real difference to your working life, and the success of your work, even if you only use your shared office for a day a week. But only if you make the most of it. Here are some tips to help you to do just that.

Choose Your Office Well

One of the main appeals of using a co-working space is that it gets you out of the house and helps you to avoid cabin fever. It also helps you to get more done and make the most of your time. But, only if you choose your office wisely. If you pay for a co-working space or membership that’s miles away from your home, or too far away from your children’s school or childcare, you won’t ever make the most of it. Even if you do use it, you’ll waste that much time commuting that you won’t get as much done as you should. That’s why location should be your primary consideration when choosing an office.

That said, the location shouldn’t be your only consideration. You’ll also want to be realistic with what you can afford. If your funds allow, a more luxurious coworking space could offer you better facilities, more comfortable space and a better place to hold meetings. It’ll also give you a chance to make more successful contacts.

Co-working offices are in every major city all over the world. Some, you just pay for when you use. Others, offer a membership which allows you to use any of their offices at any time, and others still let you hire a desk for a monthly fee. These can all be great options, but look at cost, location and the facilities on offer before committing to any.

Get to Know People

Another appeal of co-working is that you’ll get to be around people. One of the only downsides of home working or freelancing is the loneliness. Many people find that despite all of the benefits, they miss being around people. They don’t enjoy working alone all of the time, and they find that without people to share ideas with, the ideas stop coming. Even those that enjoy working alone can discover that they feel lonely and they miss the social aspect of working with others.

But, co-working spaces aren’t quite the same as working with colleagues. You’re around other people, but you’re working on different projects, for various companies and even in different fields. It can be easy to sit at your desk, get your head down and get on with your work without ever communicating with those around you.

If you want to make the most of your co-working space, you need to put yourself out there. You need to speak to the people that you are sharing an office with. Chat with them around the coffee machine, ask them what they are working on and get to know them.

Socialize

Getting to know the people that you are working around is great. You can share ideas, let off some steam and learn from them. But, that’s still not the same as making friends at work. To do that, you need to spend time with them away from the office. Go out for lunch together, start a group or just go for a drink once you’ve finished for the day.

You might be working in different fields, but you are all working remotely away from a traditional environment. That’s something that you’ve got in common that could be used to build a friendship.

Collaborate

Collaboration is a great way to learn, to grow and to develop your business. You can use collaboration to attract new clients, to reach a new audience and to advance your business. In a co-working office, you are surrounded by talented professionals. By people that are keen to explore new ideas and work on different projects. Make the most of it by pitching ideas to your new friends. Find ways that you can work together for the good of everyone.

Make the Most of the Facilities

You could just go in, use your desk, chat with the people next to you and get on with your job. But, most co-working spaces have so much more to offer, and you should make the most of it all.

There might be a coffee shop or kitchen facilities. There might be sofas or even a games room and TV. Some offices have meeting and conference rooms that you can hire when you need to meet clients or host networking events.

Change Things Up

Working at the same computer, within the same four walls every day can get boring. This can cause you to procrastinate, to become distracted and to lose focus. Your work and your productivity levels will suffer.

Having a co-working space helps. It takes you out of our usual environment and helps you to feel fresh. But, you can do more. Change things up within the office. Swap desks, work in another area and move around as much as you can.

Organize Your Time

Wherever you are working, a lack of organization can be a terrible thing. You’ll never get as much done when you don’t have a plan. Go into each day with a list of things that you want to get done before you go home. Then, manage your time. Either assign each task a set amount of time or break it down into “before lunch” and “after lunch.” You’ll get much more done by simply taking a little time before you start to organize your day.

Take Regular Breaks

Most of us can only give something our full focus for around 30 minutes. After this, our minds start to wonder, we slow down, and our work suffers. You might be able to keep going for an hour without distraction, but after that, you won’t be working at your best.

So, instead of working for hours before taking a lunch hour, why not take a lunch half an hour and give yourself a few more 5-10 minute breaks throughout the day. Go for a walk, get a coffee and have a chat with someone in the office. You’ll work more productively for it.

Do the Right Work

Some things, are easy to do at home. There are some small, manageable tasks that you can easily do sat on your sofa while the kids are running around or the TV is blaring. Don’t waste your new workspace on these tasks. Instead, use your time in the office to do the work that you’d struggle to focus on at home. The critical or difficult tasks that you need to give your full focus and can’t tackle when surrounded by distractions.

Look After Yourself

The key to making the most of your time is looking after yourself. Get plenty of sleep, give yourself time off to relax, eat well, exercise and generally take good care of your physical and mental health, as well as your mood, and you’ll be able to work much more productively, wherever your desk is.

5 Sure-Fire Strategies Every Company Should Implement To Find and Hire New Employees

November 8, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Hiring New Employees

Employees are an invaluable asset for businesses. Making sure that you hire top talent is crucial to your success. However, many companies aren’t investing as much time or money into the hiring process as they should be. This can have devastating consequences in some cases. But what strategies can business owners use to ensure they only attract the best employees?

In the modern age, there are even more platforms that can be used in the hiring process. This can make it difficult to know which one is the most suitable. Additionally, there are a number of mistakes businesses can make during the recruitment process. To help you understand how to successfully hire new employees, here are our top 5 advertising strategies for anyone looking to recruit.

Make sure your advert is clear

First and foremost, when you’re advertising a new role in your business, you need to make sure that you advertisement is not only appealing, but is also clear and easy to understand. It should contain all the key information. This includes the job title, location, salary, key responsibilities and required skills or qualifications.

The level of the job should be clearly displayed in the headline. As well as this information, the advert should also contain clear directions for how to move forward. Your applicants need to know how they can apply for the position, what to include in their application and the cut off date, and these all need to be included in your advert.

Choosing your advertising method

The method you choose to use when advertising your position will depend on the industry, the type of role, and who you are looking to attract. Some of the most popular methods of advertising include:

Local newspaper – If you’re looking to hire people locally, then choosing to use a local newspaper is one of the best options. Local papers usually have a classified section for jobs and reach people in the local area who are looking for work.

Outside your business – Another way to attract employees locally is by advertising outside the business itself. For example, you could use an outdoor banner, or set up a job fair or recruitment event. This can attract attention in the area and encourage more applications.

Online job sites – Online job sites are a great way of attracting some of the best talent around. Due to the large audience size on some sites, you can reach an impressive number of people very quickly. One of the only downsides with this is that you can receive too many applications. However, most platforms will allow you to filter the resumes you receive to help you narrow your search; for instance, you can filter by area, experience or qualifications. You can also try using a jobsite that’s designed for your specific industry.

Company website – Another option for advertising new jobs is by using your own website. One of the biggest advantages of using your company’s own website or blog to advertise new job opportunities, is that you will attract potential employees who already have an active interest in your business and are familiar with the industry.

Social media – A growing number of candidates, especially millennials, are using social media as their main tool for job hunting. The use of sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others for professionals is growing rapidly. If you want to attract rising talent, you need to use these sites to connect with potential candidates. This can be done using your own existing network, or by using advanced search tools. LinkedIn in particular is very good for networking. The site has around 467 million users worldwide and allows you to see the candidates work experience, qualifications and any shared connections before you contact them.

Recruitment agencies – Although some companies can be put off by the idea of having to pay commission, for businesses with limited resources, using recruitment agencies can be a smart move. Agencies have specialist skills in searching for candidates, screening resumes and have an effective process. This means that they could help you to find new talent faster than some other methods, which could stop you from missing out on top talent due to a lengthy hiring process.

Target your campaigns

When it comes to choosing the right advertising method for your recruitment campaign, you need to consider your audience. Who are you trying to attract? For example, those in the “baby boomer” generation tend to respond better to face to face interaction. This means direct phone calls, traditional interviews and jobs listings in newspapers or online job sites. On the other hand, millennials usually respond better to new forms of contact like social media campaigns or text messages.

Encourage referrals

If you’re looking to find talent from within your existing network, referrals are a great way to find potential candidates using your existing employees’ contacts. A lot of companies use this method during busy seasons, where they need to hire a lot of employees in a short period of time. To encourage your employees to refer friends of family for positions, you could offer a bonus if they refer a successful applicant.

Work on your employer branding

Your employer branding is the image you put across to potential candidates of your business as a workplace. If you make your business appealing, it will save you a lot of time searching for employees, as they will already see it as a good place to work. Try working on your image by asking for testimonials from current employees, updating your careers page on your website, and responding to any review on sites like Glassdoor and Yelp.

Conclusion

Finding and hiring talented, competent employees has huge benefits. It can improve productivity and make your business run smoothly. By following these advertising strategies, you can hire employees that will drive your business to success.

Michelle Deery is a content writer for Heroic Search. Her work has been featured in publications such as Entrepreneur. She specializes in helping businesses boost their profits