Business Corner

Holiday job hunting is one aspect of the job search that is often overlooked. Very few people realize that job hunting during this time of year could be the stepping stone into their desired career. Indeed, there are many reasons why one should continue looking for a job during the holidays.
Firstly, many employers are more receptive to job applicants during this time of year. This is because there is sometimes less pressure on employers to find candidates, which allows them to take more time listening to applicants. Many senior persons also take time off work. Although this might mean that decisions will be delayed until they return, it also means that applicants will communicate with lower level officers who they can easier befriend and get useful tips from.
Holiday job hunting is also important because many businesses do not close down or, if they do, they only close down for a short period. During the December season, businesses want to clear stock or meet certain targets before the end of the year. So they may want to take on extra staff precisely for this purpose. In addition, businesses want to regularize the staff count before the beginning of the next financial year. Departments, too, want to utilize their head count allocation for the year and so may aim to hire as many staffers as they require before their approval lapses.
It is also during the holiday season that several workers in an organization need someone to temporarily relieve them of their duties. The company will, therefore, need to hire more people than usual to fill-in until the regular workers return. Even though such positions are usually temporary, many times these positions end up being a stepping stone to a permanent job with the same organization. This is also a good way to network. As you interact with other workers at the organization, they will inform you of job opportunities within the firm and even in competing organizations.
The other important factor to consider is that far fewer people search actively for jobs during the holidays. This gives you a good opportunity to compete with fewer qualified applicants for desirable jobs. Combined with the search for qualified personnel during the holidays, you will be better positioned to land a good job more than at any other time of the year. Remember that many job seekers also see this as the time to relax; hence, you should take advantage of this widespread laxity to move forward in your career.
But even with the opportunities available, always remember that starting early is always best. For example, do not wait until Christmas Eve to start sending out applications and making phone calls. Leaving it to too late will only work to your disadvantage. The earlier you start, the better your chances will be of catching any opportunities that arise.
Candace Davies, Owner of A+ Resumes for Teachers is a Global Career Management Professional dedicated to assisting educators worldwide leverage their strengths, accomplishments, and unique selling points to capture their dream career. Her team has successfully assisted 3500+ education professionals by transforming their talents into concise documents that secure numerous interviews.

If you think creating a successful business may just be the most challenging goal you’ve ever taken on, you are probably correct. Building a successful business is not a walk in the park, but it is certainly a realizable and achievable goal.
It doesn’t always require a lot of money (although that would clearly be an asset) and frankly, it doesn’t even require that you have more talent than the “average Joe.” However, building a successful business does require a strategic business owner who follows the principles of success to build a castle where there was once only sand. Below are the Top 5 Success Principles that will teach you how to create a successful business in realistic and achievable steps.
Success Principle #1: Don’t waste your time on unnecessary tasks that won’t help you build success. Tasks like watching TV, reading a magazine or talking on the phone with friends should all be done after you’re done with your goals for the day, not during your workday. Taking part in these activities throughout your workday is called procrastination and it’s a nasty self-sabotaging habit that will only keep you from being successful. You only have a limited amount of hours to work each day, make sure that these hours go toward activities that will build success for your business. Focus on your highest pay-off activities that put you in the highest probability position to achieve your goals and apply effective time management principles for even greater success.
Success Principle #2: Put your money into your business. When you’re first starting out, it’s exciting to turn a substantial profit and you may be tempted to blow the money on non-business related items or events. The money is better served going right back into your business. Your business will never grow if you take most of the profits and use them for personal gain. In order to grow your business, you must constantly invest in it. That’s a principle of success, period.
Success Principle #3: Get outside your own limited mindset. Negative Nancy’s never build success; do you know why? Because they’re too busy focusing on the negative to take action on valuable opportunities. That doesn’t mean that you must remain Happy Holly 24/7, but do not let the negative keep you down. If something doesn’t go your way, allow yourself just a brief moment to replay the situation and think about what you could have done differently. Once that minute is up – let it go. Learn from it and stay positive. It’s important to expand your mindset and train yourself to look for viable and profitable business opportunities in the midst of all the failure. You need to believe that your business can succeed and believe in your own abilities as a skilled professional, even when no one else is willing to.
Success Principle #4: Remember your passion. After the novelty of opening a new business wears off, you’ll have to find a way to keep the passion for your work alive. Reconnect with why you started your business in the first place. Keep those triggering thoughts close to your heart and exploit them to propel you into working, smarter and build success for your business. Keep the fire that compelled you start your business in the first place burning bright.
Success Principle #5: Take action, constantly. Many unsuccessful business owners share common traits: they complain, feel sorry for themselves and ultimately give in to failure. While all successful business owners have gotten to where they are today because they kept going – no matter what happened. Every step they took was step closer to achieving their goals and eventually, they experienced success. Don’t let anything derail you from your goals. Keep working on improving your business and overcoming failure. Regardless if you’re trying to take home $75,000+ profit or want to net $1,000,000 in sales within the next three years, it’s attainable; you just have to be diligent and believe in your business. Focus on what you can control – you and your actions and activities.
You can build a successful business by following these five success principles. Many business owners tend to make a situation more complicated than it needs to be; they think achieving success is only attainable for the rich and famous or for those who have been dealt a lucky hand. However, it’s been proven many times over that an “average Joe” can transform into a wealthy business owner if they are dedicated to success and learn how to think strategically for the sake of their business.
The most important factor when achieving success is having a game plan. Without it you are merely going to be “winging it,” and that will make the journey more complicated that it needs to be.
Step #1.
Start with where you want to be. Write out a list of goals that addresses long-term, big picture kind of goals.
Step #2.
Next, determine where you are. Is your current life completely different from your long-term vision or is it on the right path, just not quite there yet? This can be a difficult question, as most cannot “see” where they really are in relation to their goals. Get a life coach and you will have a much better idea of where you are and which direction to head in.
Step #3.
Now it’s decision time. There is a BIG difference between wanting a specific goal and actually committing to doing whatever it takes to accomplish it. Decide right now how much your goals mean to you and if you can stand to continue living life as you currently know it. If your answer is no, the only other option is to commit to making it happen – no matter what.

Perhaps you understand by now that catalogs are still an effective marketing material that will help you sell your business. Despite modern marketing techniques, catalog printing remains a reliable marketing tool. If you want to include catalogs in your marketing program but don’t know how, here are some tips you can consider:

Tip #1: The cover. It is important that you use heavy paper for your catalog. It is the first thing that people will see of your catalog. This makes it important to design the cover creatively so when people see it they will be encouraged to take a look through the pages inside.

With a heavy paper stock, your catalog is likely to last longer. This will give you a professional image and tell people what you are a credible business. Ask your printer the best type of paper to use in your material.

Tip #2: The inside pages should likewise be printed from high quality paper. You can get away with a low grade paper but make sure it wouldn’t affect the impression you convey to your customers and prospects. Remember that the heavy the paper, the more you will spend for printing. If your budget doesn’t allow for heavy paper, look for a more cost effective alternative. But if you have enough money, always go for heavy paper.

Tip #3: It’s important that your catalogs are vibrant and eye-catching. To do this, you need to pick the right colors to use in your materials. The colors you pick should be relevant to the message and the image you want to convey. Both the cover and the inside pages should be printed in full color. If you can’t afford full color printing, you can go for two or four color printing. There are plenty of colors to choose from. It would help understand the meaning of each color first to pick the best for your business.  Read more... (566 words, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)

I recently ran a creative thinking workshop for some business students. At the end of the session one of the students asked me if I could spot a creative thinker. To my mind the question is moot as everyone whether or not they realise it thinks creatively at some point. As I pondered the question however I began to realise there were some characteristics that seemed to be present in just about every person I would categorise as highly creative.

Flexibility – its important to be flexible and to consider the possibility that problems and challenges may have more than one answer or solution. A creative thinker needs the flexibility to realise when something isn’t working and its time to change the approach. Many of the creative thinkers I have met enjoyed the fact that there was more than one possibility, more than one answer. They revelled in the variety and often disliked it when they felt they were being forced into a corner.

Intense curiosity – Creative thinkers tend to ask a lot of questions. They have a deep curiosity about the world around them that is accompanied by an almost childlike excitement. This can be cultivated simply taking a proper look at the world around you and realising how fantastic and bizarre it really is. Many people never really take the time to do this.

Positive attitude – it is extremely hard to think creatively when you are feeling negative. Possibly this is linked to the intense curiosity (its also hard to be curious about things when you feel negative). People who are creative generally have a positive outlook and mindset on life. The common image of a creative who is emotionally unstable and subject to manic depression is stereotypical – they do exist but they tend to have bouts of hyper creativity followed by a depression during which there is very little creativity at all. The type of person I’m about in this article is a lot more emotionally balanced than this.  Read more... (532 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

Have a book you’re dying to share with the world? Sigil is an open source program available for free online that will allow you to quickly and easily convert your book to the.epub format for submission to Kindle ebooks and elsewhere.

Publishing options for ebooks abound, but if you’ve honed in on the opportunity to self-publish your ebook with Amazon – for the Kindle – or elsewhere and need an.epub format file, you probably need some words of encouragement, a pat on the back for writing a worthy and unique book, and a little help converting your book to the proper format for publication. I’m here for ya! I’ll walk you through the wonderful Sigil Program .epub formatting process.

Alright, the first thing you’re going to want to do is open your document in whatever program you’ve created it in and use the ‘Save As’ feature to save the document as HTML. Then go online and grab a free program called Sigil (see program download link in article resource box below) and install it on your computer. Open your .HTML document in Sigil and immediately use the ‘Save As’ feature to save your document with an .epub extension (It’s the only option available in the program.). Now you have a document that is in the correct file type for submission to Amazon’s Kindle ebooks, but don’t stop now; your book still needs to be properly formatted – this is where you’re going to fall in love with Sigil! **

Here are the 6 steps to follow to convert your document using Sigil:

1) Separate Your Book into Sections: Scroll down your document until you find the your first ‘Chapter’ break and use the Sigil squiggle button (fifteenth option from the left on the top panel of screen) to create a break in the document. Repeat this process throughout your document wherever you want a separation in the document. (Save your work.)  Read more... (947 words, estimated 3:47 mins reading time)