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

5 Ways To Improve Your Job Search

June 29, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

There is no denying that the job market is more competitive than it ever has been. If you are to secure the job you have your sights set on, you need to approach your job search in the right manner. It may have been a while since you found yourself needing to look for a job or you may simply be struggling to make it to the interview stage. Either way, the five tips below can help you to improve your job search.

Draw upon relationships you have already made – At this point, it is very likely that you have already made some key relationships in your career that can help you, even if you do not realise it. Refer to your contact book and get in touch with everyone. Explain that you are looking for a fresh challenge in the industry and ask if they know about any opportunities. You would be surprised by how many doors this can open. At worst, you will be able to get a ton of references to assist in your job hunt.

Research well – If you are going to secure your dream job, you need to show your passion for the role. This consists of researching the vacancy effectively. You need to make sure that you display your knowledge of the company, as well as why your personality would be the right fit for the company culture. If you are considering a career in tech companies, it is best to research the background, culture and core values of the company you are eyeing on to help you get noticed by employers.

Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date – Spend some time working on your LinkedIn profile. It needs to be up-to-date and it must be optimised so that you are visible online. LinkedIn offers a great way to connect with potential employers, industry experts, and influential people, but only if you use it correctly.

Consider professional assistance – When looking for professional recruitment advice to aid your job search, don’t merely go for the cheapest or first firm you lay your eyes on. Outplacement support should consist of a firm that really gets to understand you – your skill set, your career goals, your needs – and matches this to the best opportunities so you have a career that flourishes. If you merely get email notifications for any job in close proximity, find another company to assist.

Don’t waste time – Finally, a lot of job seekers go wrong because they waste too much time. You don’t need to apply for every job you come across. Only apply for jobs you are excited about and genuinely interested in.

So there you have it: five important tips that can help you to improve your job search. If you follow the suggestions that have been presented, you should, hopefully, find it a lot easier to find the job that is right for you. Remember, your job search is a two-way thing. It is not just about impressing an employer – it is about finding the right job for you so that you can have a career you are happy with.

Is Your Business Persuasive Enough With Its Selling?

June 29, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

As a business owner, there will be a lot of aspects of your company that you continually need to review and revise. By fine tuning all of these separate parts, you will be able to greatly improve your business’s operations and make it a lot more efficient and profitable. However, even though most company owners know that they regularly need to review certain aspects, there are still some areas of companies that often go unnoticed. Take sales techniques, for instance. Once they have one in place, some entrepreneurs never go back to it again. That can be bad news, though – how are you going to know if your sales techniques continue to be persuasive enough?

Here are a few tweaks you can make to your sales techniques to ensure that they continue to persuade your customers to buy as much as possible.

Use A Suitable Ecommerce Platform

Businesses need to continually come up with new ecommerce solutions to prevent any issues preventing online sales. One problem that you might have is that you choose the wrong ecommerce platform in the first place. There are lots of platforms out there, but only a handful are trusted by customers. For instance, PayPal is widely recognized and regarded as a highly trustworthy platform. If you use one that hasn’t won over the public’s trust just yet, you might find that you fail to win over customers.

Create Clear Descriptions

If your customers don’t really understand what your products or services are, then there is very little chance of them wanting to buy them. So, it’s important that you write up clear and concise descriptions so that there is no confusion. Ideally, these descriptions should also be quite concise as your customers won’t want to spend forever reading through them – they’d rather have a quick overview!

Go Above And Beyond What Is Expected

Generally speaking, it is always a good idea to try and give your customers a little more than what they would expect. We all love getting little bonuses or something extra other than what we have paid for. So, for example, you might want to offer free delivery when your customers order over a certain amount. Alternatively, you might want to offer some free samples to people who purchase your products online.

Make Your Terms And Conditions Clear

If your customers think that there is something fishy going on, there is no way they will want to buy from your company. So, you should make sure all of your terms and conditions are somewhere very clear on your website. Then it looks like you are not hiding anything at all. It’s also important that your privacy policy is also somewhere accessible for all of your customers. These days, the public is very wary of who they give their personal details to. It’s important that you can show that you take their privacy seriously and will correctly store their data.

Once you put these ideas into action, you should find that they help to increase your company’s sales!

What The Healthcare Model Can Teach Us About Business Success

June 29, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Success in business can be a hard thing to achieve, but if your business is concerned with life and death situation and human suffering, it can seem like an impossible task. Of course, this isn’t the case, because there are many thriving healthcare companies out there. Something that means they have some valuable lessons to teach the rest of us regarding how to run a business. Read on to find out what they are.

Healthcare business have a surprising amount to tell us about success.

The customer always comes first.

One thing that the healthcare industry does incredibly well is always to put the customer, or patient in this case first. What this means is that they are always thinking about how the customer experience can be improved.

In fact, as healthcare is often such an emotionally charged environment, many indirect measures are used to help calm and relax patients to make their experience more favorable.

Such measures can include thing such as providing video medical appointments so a patient doesn’t have to leave their own home to seek help, to using things like the print graphics for patient experience that are available. This is because they can assist in calming people waiting for their appointments.

Something that can not only help them to feel better and so report a better experience, but also support the consultation on going more smoothly as well. Another factor that will play into further business success, and it is this concern with the customer that is buying the product and the experience they have that a non-healthcare business can apply to boost their own profits.

Your product can make or break you.

Another thing that the healthcare business model can teach us about success is that your product can make or break you. Our course, in this instance we are calling the medical service, the healthcare business provides as a whole, the product. The reason being that it is this what the patient is paying for.

Now, if the patient receives poor service, they are unlikely to become a repeat customer, provide a positive review, or recommend the business to their friends or family, and the same goes for dissatisfied customers in any company.

Therefore it is essential that whatever you are selling does what it promises and is a product of quality, a lesson even business not in the healthcare sector would be wise to learn from.

Payment flexibility can increase your profits.

Lastly, non-healthcare businesses can learn from the way that payment is dealt with in this field. Obviously, treatment is often necessary and can even be essential, something that means when people don’t have the money available to pay; they need another option such as credit.

In line with this may healthcare business run their own lines of credit for their customers, something that those companies outside of the industry can profit from.

After all, if the only thing that is stopping your customer making a purchase is that they don’t have the funds, providing them with a reasonable credit option can easily override this obstacle and create more sales to boost your profit margin.

Yes, Moving An Office Can Be Stress-Free!

June 29, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

For many entrepreneurs, the day when they need to move their company into a larger office is something that they dread. Sure, it is certainly an exciting time for the business as it means that it is growing enough to take on new staff and more projects, but the big move can be extremely stressful. After all, you will probably already know how bad it can be to move house – well just imagine trying to do that along with all your employees and trying to transport sensitive paperwork and a whole computer network!

Office Move

Don’t worry too much, though; the truth is that moving office doesn’t have to be super stressful. At least not when you have these tips!

Do It At The Weekend

It’s up to you when you move, but most entrepreneurs prefer to take care of theirs at the weekend. That way, they don’t need to worry about any midweek downtime that could affect their work. By moving on a Saturday you won’t have anything else to worry about, so can get your head down and focus solely on the move.

Get All Hands On Deck

It’s a good idea to get all of your employees to help you out. Yes, even if you are moving at the weekend! You might want to offer everyone an extra holiday day to make up for having to work a Saturday or Sunday. But having all hands on deck will help get everything done a lot quicker than if it is just you.

Use A Moving Company

Your employees aren’t the only people who you need to get to help you out. You should also hire a firm like Bekins Moving Solution who are specialists in office removals. They can even help you pack if you are short on time for taking care of that yourself. These moving companies have plenty of experience moving businesses from office to office, so can help you move as efficiently as possible.

Moving Company

Get Plenty Of Insurance

Things can go wrong during a move and things can go missing or end up damaged. So, you should find plenty of insurance to cover all of your office’s contents. Even though the moving company will have insurance, it’s a good idea to get some yourself so that you are completely covered.

Consider Your Office Layout Before The Move

You should draw up a plan of your new office before moving day. That way, you can plot out where all the power points are and then plan where you will place all of your furniture. You then know where everything is going to go before it gets to the office. If you don’t plan the layout, then you might end up with desks that are too far away from wall power points, and you could spend quite a bit of time moving heavy furniture around!

Moving an office can take quite some time but as long as you use all of these tips, you should find it goes a lot easier than expected!

Quality: The Devil Is In The Detail

June 29, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Business owners live in a world of details, from data metrics to market fluctuations. They know too well that every minute difference could lead to devastating consequences. Consequently, the evaluation of their business performance occurs at a micro level. Similarly, when it comes to judging the quality of the product the company makes and uses, details are precisely what can make the difference between success and failure. However product details, or more exactly the details that matter about each product or service, vary a lot from an industry sector to another. In other words, while the devil is in the detail when it comes to quality product, it’s fair to say that the devil changes shape and adjust to each industry. Entrepreneurs, keep your eyes open!

Quality

Why all business interactions point toward quality

The most simplistic definition of a business is an entity that generates commercial transactions through strategic interactions with its market. Quality is the underlying rule of each of these interactions.

Addressing the appropriate audience is a decisive step in meeting the expectations of the end users. This along with brand consistency and customer experience define the major factors of business interactions. But all interactions are worthless is the product a business use or sell doesn’t satisfy the quality tests. These quality tests are detail-driven in each business sector.

Testing for product quality in industrial environments

As contradictory as it might sound, entrepreneurs need to go down to a microscopic level to measure the quality of the supersized machinery they rely on. Indeed, damages to the materials that are invisible to the naked eye need to be spotted in a non-invasive manner to allow industrial companies to proceed to the suitable modifications and reparations in due time. Similar to using a microscope, industrial businesses rely on a technology that lets them zoom onto the details, industrial ultrasonic imaging. The advantage of relying on an imaging system is that structural lesions in the material of large machinery can be documented, meaning the business only pays to change parts when it is required.

Testing for product quality in the creative industry

The creative sector is diverse and challenging to qualify. That’s precisely why the British Council has been tasked to create a map of the creative industries, in order to define for each of them the factors of quality. Indeed, as not all creative businesses deliver a quantifiable product, it is necessary to rely on a variety of metrics, such as brand perception, profits made by the creative business and viral potential to measure the quality of each offer.

Testing for product quality in the hospitality industry

The hospitality sector, thankfully, relies on a known and public rating of quality, namely its hygiene rating. For the catering industry, the ratings inform the customers about the way the food is stored, prepared and plated. Hotels also have hygiene standards regarding the cleanliness of the room, which are determining factors in receiving hospitality stars. The hospitality sector, however, receives a public quality rating that needs by law to be shared with customers.

In conclusion, quality comes in a variety of shapes, and the quality controls of your products, whether for industrial use or for public consumption need to focus on different details. Nevertheless, one thing remains constant for all sectors. Quality is only defined as a business micro level.