Business Corner

The news on job creation continues to be dim. The latest unemployment report shows that 9.1% of Americans are still without work. This number doesn’t capture the unemployed who have become discouraged and have stopped looking for employment. Like most Professionals reading this article you have prepared your resume and submitted it to many job postings. And just like most Professionals you are waiting for a response to your resume submission. This is where I want to share with you four steps that will improve your job search efforts.
1. Target your search: This is a plug and play economy. That means hiring managers are looking for people to take care of very specific problems. So target your search to hiring managers who need what you love to do. If you are a candidate who has a passion for Non- Profit work consider targeting your search to companies and facilities that serve the Elderly, Youth Organizations and the Arts. What is your expertise or passion? This is the time to pursue it.
2. Social Media/Networking: Professionals should be registered with Linkedin™. You should strive to have a minimum of 250 Connections in order to optimize your use of this site. Start working this list. Be specific in your requests. Example: if you want to work in HR for a company in the Telecommunication Industry – ask your Connections about contacts and their experience in connecting with Professionals in this area. You’ll be surprised by who your Connections know; unless you ask.
3. Prepare a Value Proposition Statement – those who know me will tell you that I believe every resume should contain a value proposition statement. What will you bring to the company that will solve problems of interest for the Hiring Manager? In other words why should he hire you?
4. Volunteering – What better way to keep your marketable skills sharp than to volunteer. This is also a great way to avoid employment gaps on your resume. If you are a candidate who is talented in Project Management you may want to consider checking with the local school systems to volunteer. Volunteering with your School System will allow you to do something that you are already extremely knowledgeable of. Let them know what you’re passionate about and how you want to make a living.
Getting a job in the plug and play economy is all about leverage. Use what you have to get what you want while providing something of value to others. I find a lot of unemployed Professionals stuck in their search unable to answer the most basic of questions because they haven’t done their homework. Understand that your job search is a full time job. There are many qualified candidates with skills and qualifications equal to or more impressive than yours. How you go about your job search is the differentiator. Yes you will face rejection from time to time; but continue to be persistent in your search and you will land that satisfying new job.

As competition is getting fierce, business owners can no longer afford to ignore the global market, there arises a need to communicate with the target audience. As the business expands to different countries, translating our message in the language they understand becomes very important. This is why language translation services are getting more and more attention today.
Translation is an act rendering the meaning of one language into another. In other words, translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Translation services are performed by a translator or a translation team.
Website translation services are now a crucial part of most growing businesses. It is one of the most cost-effective methods to expand your market globally. Translating your web content ensures that your messages resonate with your potential customers. The net-translators provide quality and ease because of which your site can effectively extend your reach to many different countries and cultures.
Studies say that over 100 million people access the Internet in a language other than English. 50% of web users speak a native language other than English. Web users are four times more likely to purchase from a site that communicates in the customer’s language. Visitors stay for twice as long on native language content sites. In order to attract maximum customers outside your own country, you should communicate with them in their native language. This brings the prospects close to the company. Thus helping in converting the prospects into loyal customers. To help you in doing so there are a number of translation agencies.
A translation agency provides translation services and manage translation projects for clients. Some of these agencies may also provide interpreters, multilingual desktop publishing (DTP) and other language related services such as website translation and software translation.
A great translation isn’t just a simple technical skill; it requires depth of understanding and personal sensitivity that you are unlikely to find at a very crowded translation agency. You should be very careful while selecting a translation agency. Expect a fair price from whoever you hire for your translation work. Many people choose to work with either small translation agencies or individual translators. It’s a good idea to develop a relationship with the translator that you choose to work with, and the smaller the agency you choose to work with, the more accuracy will be maintained. It is very important to communicate with the translator that you are going to work with and discuss the work that you need to get done by him. Doing so will get you a better translation out of the deal, and enjoy the process that much more.
You also get rid of the perception that a larger translation agency is going to be superior to a smaller translation agency. In fact it is the other way round. Larger agencies tend to provide a lower level of oversight to the process than smaller agencies. Larger translation agencies farm a vast majority of their work to individuals who aren’t supervised or held particularly accountable for their work. On the other hand smaller agencies make closer relationships with their translators and provide more checks and reviews to ensure the accuracy of their work.

In order to make good promotional calendars or custom calendars, you need to make them appealing to the eyes in order to get the target audience. Collect vibrant photos to create a calendar all buyers will want to put on their wall for an entire year. Make the custom calendars represent your business or organization and have it commercially printed so you will have professional promotional calendars.

You also need to look at the cost of making promotional calendars in order to be able to minimize costs and maximize profits., Have promotional calendars that will serve the purpose for which they were intended. In order to do this, it is necessary to compare prices and quality at several online vendors, print shops, office-supply stores and warehouse clubs. Look at samples from all vendors you visit, photo reproduction, paper and print quality. Generally, consider the overall appearance of the promotional calendars while considering your options. The more you buy, the greater the discounts some providers will offer.

While making custom calendars, always have your target audience in mind. For instance, if you are targeting Christians, take note of the days that Christians observe, occasions like, Christmas day, Good Friday and Easter Monday. If your target is people from a certain country, make sure to put in the public holidays that the people in that country celebrate. As a result of this, the target audience will feel that you have put their interests and needs into consideration and as a result, will find the promotional calendars useful to them. Not all the days apply to all audiences, but there might be a match or two. Don’t let these days pass by – do some research and find out what applies to one’s business. Some of these days are quite vague, lending themselves to endless possibilities for creative marketing.  Read more... (502 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Many people do not think that they are creative. This is because the creative spark has been smothered underneath the day to day stress of earning a living and not taking any time to explore and develop our passions. You can easily learn creativity to better express yourself. There is creativity in some form within everyone, whether it is a deeply buried urge to use colors or an embedded set of emotions that are stirred by musical notes. Creativity doesn’t just mean painting or creating some kind of art, creativity is letting your mind and your soul free to wander, to express how you feel in any kind of medium.

There are numerous benefits to getting in touch with your creativity. First and foremost learning to be creative and freeing your mind to do so enables you to better explore your feelings and express those feelings more clearly verbally. Creative activity also relieves stress and can help clear your mind of daily stressors making you more relaxed and able to sleep or concentrate better afterwards. Learning creativity means getting in touch with the “you” that may be hidden from the rest of the world.

You may not have any training with artistic expression such as painting, but when you hold a brush to a clean piece of paper you may find that your mind knows what it wants to express and the colors you choose, the strokes you make are all straight from your heart. Don’t ever think that finding your creativity means that you have to take classes or training; unless that is what you want to do. You can always allow yourself a private relaxation and stress relieving creative activity that isn’t for anyone else to see or even know about. Your urge to create comes from deep within, and if you don’t let it out to play once in a while it can affect all sorts of areas in your everyday life. That creative juice is there, but it’s up to you to open the cap and let it out.  Read more... (418 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Over the years, I’ve written a few e-books, and I am also a reader who likes to partake in e-books and load them onto my e-reader. However, there is something that has concerned me over the last year, and that is when I buy an e-book based on its title, I expect a little bit of substance and meat in it. All too often, I end up downloading the e-book only to find out that it isn’t more than about 25 pages, and it is conveniently spaced, and a font which is larger than normal. In fact, if one were to take out the pictures, and all the formatting, it wouldn’t be more than 10 pages.

Now then for all of you e-book writers who produce these ultra-short e-books I have news for you; that’s not an e-book, it’s an essay. Further, even if you’re selling your e-book for only $.99 because you are hoping to go for volume, it still isn’t fair to the reader who expects something of more substance. In a way you are cheating your readers and you are hurting other e-book authors because the consumers who feel cheated may think twice about buying an e-book from a newer author who they are unfamiliar with, as they don’t want to take the risk of being cheated again, and in this way you are doing a disservice to all e-book authors.

Indeed, if this is something you are doing, I sincerely wish that you would stop, but if you aren’t a very good writer or you don’t have very much information to impart to your reader then I have some tips for you. Don’t call your e-book an; e-book. Instead call it an;

Essay
Report
Novella
Mini-Book
Short Story
Ultra-short E-book  Read more... (442 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)