Stylish Gifts for the Career Driven Woman     Â

Stylish Gifts for the Career Driven Woman             It is not always easy to find stylish gifts for the career-driven woman in your life, but this list will ensure that this time you will get her something she wants and will use, without having to resort to a gift card. Faux-fur coat Great for networking and to stand out in the crowd, a faux fur is more than just a trend. As fashion becomes increasingly environmentally aware, faux fur is being designed to be either kitsch glam or with a more natural arty look. Otherwise, look for a coat in pale yellow, neon or with a houndstooth pattern to follow other current trends. Check designers online such as Moschino or Stella McCartney for examples across the range and then find the perfect coat for your budget. Earrings and pendant set Add a little sparkle to her day with some jewellery, so that each time she sees it, she thinks of you. Jewelry is always a great Christmas gift for her, with a set of earrings on the day with a pendant to follow on Valentine’s Day next year. Combine roses in your jewelry design for a hidden message of “l love you” with red roses, a pink rose which conveys admiration and joy, or yellow roses that let her know of the joy she brings you and the friendship you share. Micro Wireless Bluetooth Speaker Space is at a premium for most of us, but if your career-driven woman likes to relax and dance to the sounds of good music, a powerful Bluetooth speaker only slightly larger than most smart devices can provide clear high-decibel sound. Choose a speaker that is totally waterproof and has six-hour battery life on a full charge, so she can take it on vacation or to the beach or the pool. Classic bathrobe A luxurious, well-cut bathrobe is perfect for reading in bed after a shower or letting the dogs out first thing in the morning. Soft, warm and cosy, it is worth bearing in mind that if you are buying one for your partner, you may have to buy one for yourself, so you don’t steal hers. A bathrobe is perfect not just for getting out of the tub on cool nights, but for lounging all weekend. Wrap her in a warm cloud of soft pink, white or a range of other colours. Cashmere sweater An oversized v-neck cashmere sweater is also on-trend and comes in a whole range of colours from all designers and high street stores. Rust is a good colour option right now. You can choose a 75 per cent cashmere, 25 per cent silk blend for feminine elegance for a smart-casual look due to it being an oversized fit. Blue Kindle Waterproof Paperwhite Is it time for a new Kindle? If she’s a big reader, a new waterproof kindle was launched in 2019 and could be just what she needs. Choose the thinnest and lightest so she can use it at the beach or even when relaxing in the tub. With a glare-free display, she will still be able to easily see the words on the screen. Leather purse in pink She may have the perfect handbag, but if she needs a new purse to go with it, choose a zipped cardholder which contains four compartments that can hold all her bank and store cards as well as cash. A classic and elegant accessory can be easily slipped inside a jacket or bag for work or leisure without looking two bulky. Choose an eye-catching colour like vermillion or neon.

6 Tips for Every Freelancer - CareerMetis.com

6 Tips for Every Freelancer Source : UnSplash.comSetting your own hours. Creating your ideal work environment. Making money while your dog is curled up next to you.Pursuing a freelance writing careeris appealing in many ways. But being your own boss has its pros and cons, and even the most seasoned of freelancers sometimes have trouble balancing the added demands that freelancing presents.Whether you’re freelancing as a side hustle or pursuing it as a full-time career path, here are six tips to get you going on the right track:1. Master the Art of the PitchevalevalPitching is essential to a freelancer’s success, especially because having a difficult time finding clients is one of the biggest hurdles freelancers have to face.Pitching provides freelancers with a great opportunity. It’s where you get to say, “I’m the best person for the job, and this is why.” But in a world where 53 million Americans freelance, the competition is steep. So how do you catch a potential client’s attention?It’s import ant to do everything you can to stand out from your competitors â€" something that makes you memorable. Pitching starts with a good subject line that identifies you as a real person â€" not a spammer.Next, you’ll want to address the editor or client by name whenever possible. Introduce yourself and let them know why you’re writing. Show them that you’ve spent time exploring their site or business by referencing something specific that you genuinely engaged with.Next, it’s time for you to shine. Tell them why they need your expertise. Highlight your credentials and share relevant links to your website and portfolio.Leave them will a call to action and make it easy for them to get in touch with you. If you can master the art of the pitch, you’ll be well on your way to a successful freelance career.2. Create a Spotless Online PortfolioShowcasing examples of your work is perhaps the most important part of finding success as a freelancer. If you don’t have examples of your gr eat work to show potential clients, it’s unlikely they’ll want to hire you.evalSetting up a writer website is a great way to present a professional appearance and also gather all your clips in one spot. If you’re not ready to set up a website yet, online portfolio services like Contently are fast and easy ways to post your best work.You should be selective about what goes into your portfolio. Only your strongest pieces should be on display. If you have testimonials or client feedback, it’s a good idea to include that as well.Each outstanding piece of work or blurb of positive feedback gives prospective clients another reason to choose you in a sea of eager freelancers.3. Set Hard DeadlinesSource : Unsplash.comYou can be your own worst enemy when it comes to getting things done. And when you have clients waiting on you, completing work in a timely fashion is more important than ever.evalYou’ll need to manage your timewisely if you want clients to keep coming back to you 5. Just. Keep. Pitching.Source : UnSplash.comIt can be tempting to stop or decrease the number of pitches you’re sending to prospective clients once you get a few takers.Getting work as a freelancercan be difficult, and is always exciting when you succeed â€" so much that it’d be easy to say, “I did it! Now I can stop!” This is a common pitfall that leaves many freelancers with unnecessary lulls in their workload.evalYou should always be pitching new clients so you have options to pull out of your pocket when your current workload starts to slow down. Eventually, enough clients will say “yes” that you can be more picky about the projects you pursue, but even then â€" pitching remains a constant.6. Find Your NicheDeveloping a niche can make your life as a freelancer a lot easier. Instead of staring into the deep, dark abyss of potential topics, clients, and projects, finding a niche allows you to focus on one area of expertise and work on building your reputation in that are na.If you’re into technology, dive right in and make that your niche. Target clients in the tech industry and experts in the field. Or maybe you’re more interested in and knowledgeable about food or education or the outdoors. Anything can be a niche. Once you find yours, life will be a lot easier (and more interesting)!By mastering the art of pitching, creating an online portfolio, managing your time well, creating professional invoices, always looking for new clients, and developing a niche for yourself, you’ll have all the building blocks of a successful career as a freelancer. Now get to it!

See How Easily You Can Go Too Far With Social Recruting - CareerAlley

See How Easily You Can Go Too Far With Social Recruting - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Dale Carnegie Biography : This is a guest post fromGenevive Hon, a Community Manager at matchFWD, a social recruiting startup and also Employer Marketing Coordinator at Illico Hodes. She has a bachelors degree in Public Relations from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). She recently collaborates with Montreal Tech Watch to cover some tech events. e-mail : [emailprotected] How To Avoid Crossing The Line In Social Recruiting Savvy hiring managers know that running a slick social recruiting campaign is one of the best ways to land premium candidates. Seasoned recruitment pros also understand that there is a fine line when it comes to employees referrals, and crossing that line will undermine recruiting strategies and damage corporate reputations. Heres how to make a social recruiting campaign both fruitful and professional: Make A Plan: Before hiring managers begin to use social media tools as a way to source candidates, it is important to develop a solid plan of attack. Employees referrals are a valuable tool when is comes to recruiting, but without a plan, you run the risk of appearing sloppy and disorganized. Establish Your Image:Even though social media is often considered to be a tool for casual, friendly interaction between friends and family members it is important that online recruitment remains consistent with your corporate image. Seek to strike a balance between friendly and professional in your social media image (think casual Fridays). Dont Be Creepy: There are many tools available that allow hiring managers (and anyone else, for that matter) to search through social media history and profiles; proceed with caution. These tools can easily be used to cross the line to cyber-stalking, a sure-fire way to bring a complete stop to any employees referrals while quickly earning a big-brother corporate image. Be Interactive: Social media is an interactive tool, so make sure you maximize opportunities to talk with, rather than simply talk at, potential candidates through your social recruiting campaign. Remember that people will be judging your company based on how you treat potential employees, so now is the time to establish a tone of positive, interactive and timely communication. Follow these tips when developing your next social recruiting campaign to ensure your company image is maintained while you source your next great candidate. By focusing on positive, professional recruiting strategies you will encourage employees referrals while promoting your corporate image and culture. This is a Guest post. If you would like to submit a guest post to CareerAlley, please follow these guest post guidelines. Good luck in your search.Visit me on Facebook

Write a resume an employer will appreciate -

Write a resume an employer will appreciate - How can you appeal to an employer? Spoon feed your resume! You would not hand an infant with no teeth a whole apple to eat; he or she wouldn’t know what to do with it. (For the uninitiated, take my word for it here. The baby may just throw it back at you and still be hungry. And crying.) Instead, you would offer applesauce and manipulate the spoon full directly into the infant’s mouth. Similarly, (see where I am going here?), you need to give the employer exactly what he or she needs and understands with regard to what you offer that will help him or her. Just like a baby couldn’t really care less about YOUR needs, your potential employer cares most about his or her own requirements and is not all that interested in what YOU want. To extend the analogy, you better not be serving up green beans if the baby employer wants bananas! To top it off, the bananas need to be peeled, mashed and on the spoon if you want a chance to succeed. So, two lessons from this analogy. #1 â€" The resume is about the employer and how you directly fit what he or she wants. Spending a lot of time including things on your resume that are unrelated to the job at hand is only going to confuse the employer and make him or her wonder why you are interested in THIS job. #2 â€" Don’t expect the employer to spend a lot of time figuring you out. If you aren’t making it easy to “eat” your resume â€" if you are passing crunchy apples when applesauce is preferred, you are not likely to pass the initial screen, no matter how great your underlying skills may be. The fact is, recruiters and hiring managers are too busy to give you the benefit of the doubt. Your job is to break things down for them into easily digestible, bite-sized pieces AND spoon feed it directly to them. When you do make solid connections between what they want and what you offer, you will find that your search goes much better and your chances of landing an interview increase exponentially! If you are ready for a change and could use some help with your search, follow THIS LINK to learn more about me and how we can work together! photo by Joe Shlabotnik

Job Search Tips - How Far Back Do You Go With Work History on Your Resume?

Job Search Tips - How Far Back Do You Go With Work History on Your Resume?When writing a resume, it is often common to include everything in chronological order. However, this can be detrimental if you are attempting to cover a lot of ground in the job application.Instead, you may want to think about age bracket first. This means you will know if you are applying for a job as a teenager or young adult. This is important because young workers are much more likely to get jobs than an older worker.Another thing to consider when researching employment background checks is the number of references. For example, if you have a specific reference to a specific employer, do you know if they have asked the reference for their name? This might be an easy way to get a few names you don't know.When writing a resume, when most people think about it, the chronological order of your history will include your education. However, many companies like to see a resume that shows a college degree, an appr enticeship or post-secondary credentials. It is important to keep this information in mind when writing a resume because companies are used to seeing a few years worth of work.If you are not certain if you are applying for a job in a certain department, use your reference names to find out. Many companies require a specified number of references, and these may be more likely to be used if they are a few years past. By using a reference, it will be easier to spot your previous employer.By including your name, age and any previous job, this will help make your reference names stand out. This also shows that you really are trying to get a job and that you did something worthy of getting one. If you have a specific company that you want to work for, keep them in mind when reading your reference names.When researching employment background checks, you need to keep your resume as chronological as possible. You can follow the same process for each career path that you would for a job. Howe ver, keeping this aspect of your history in mind will help keep your resume from being too lengthy.

How to Handle a Name Change at Work

How to Handle a Name Change at Work Just back in the office after getting hitched to an actor in Venice, London-based human-rights attorney Amal Alamuddin is going by a new name: Mrs. Clooney. While the former Ms. Alamuddin, 36, has established a professional reputation under her own moniker, it’s safe to say that being identified as the woman who got the sexiest man alive to settle down won’t damage her career prospects. But what about accomplished women who aren’t boldface names by marriage orâ€"like Kim Kardashian, who announced earlier this summer that henceforth she would be known as Mrs. Westâ€"boldface names in their own right? Suddenly appearing in the workplace as Mrs. So-and-So can cause some confusion among clients and colleagues. As we noted when Kim made it official, the fact that women are marrying later, often after they’ve spent years establishing a career, can make the change to a new name more complicatedâ€"and risky. If you’re considering going by a different handle in the workplace, here are eight steps to ease the transition without hurting your prospects. 1. Hedge your bets. Think about how costly it would be to cut off your connection to the body of work or marketing that’s tied to your maiden name. If that worries you, opt for a more moderate approach. “The easy out is to keep your maiden name at work and in professional contexts, but use your spouse’s last name socially,” says Danielle Tate, founder of MissNowMrs.com, a site that helps women change their legal name. Another compromise is to use both surnames, either by making your maiden name your middle name, using both last names, or creating a hyphenated last name. Kim took this approach initially. Shortly after exchanging vows with Kayne, she changed the name on her social media accounts to Kim Kardashian West. And just as Kim has done, you can use both surnames for a brief transition period to help people get used to your new identity before dropping your maiden name. 2. Get help from your company. If you plan on making a complete switch, reach out for advice. “You don’t have to figure it out all on your own. You’re not the only who has gotten married or changed your name,” says Michelle Friedman, a career coach who specializes in women’s career advancement. A good first move is to check in with your HR department, which may have policies in place outlining exactly what changes you need to make to your beneficiary designations, insurance benefits, company email and directory listing, and tax and Social Security forms. Aside from offering help with name-change paperwork, HR may be able to offer advice about managing contacts, as well as insights into how others in your industry have handled the change successfully (ask co-workers too). 3. Don’t make it a surprise. Give co-workers and clients ample notice about your name change to avoid confusion, especially if contact info such as your email address will be updated. Sandra Green, a U.K.-based executive coach, recommends reaching out a week to ten days before the wedding. One easy way: Put a small note in your email signature in advance, says Julie Cohen, a Philadelphia career and personal coach. It’s an unobtrusive reminder and a good way to get people familiar with the change. Not everyone in your email contact list needs to know. Run through your list of clients and sort them into groups based on the closeness of your working relationship. Some you’ll just need to include in a quick email blast, while others you should talk to directly. “Obviously you don’t want to get on the phone with everyone, but in certain important client relationships this may be good to do,” says Friedman. 4. Stay on top of the technology. After you’ve made the switch, set up forwarding on your previous email account, or write an automatic reply that includes your new contact info. This way you don’t miss any important messages, and people have a longer grace period to update their contact info and adjust to your new name. 5. Go back in history. Give former employers and references a heads-up about this change as well. This way if you’re applying for a new job, your background check will go smoothly, and you won’t run the risk of having people mistakenly deny that you worked for their company. 6. Use this as an excuse to network. Send an email to everyone in your work circle. “Whenever someone changes jobs or retires, they send these emails about good news,” says Cohen. “Do the same with this.” This also gives you a perfect excuse to remind your network what you’re up to. “You always want to remain in contact,” says Friedman. “But sometimes it’s hard to think of a natural reason for reaching out. This gives you a celebratory excuse.” You could even send this blast twice, says Green. First a few days before the wedding and again after you return from your honeymoon, when the change is in place. 7. Make yourself easy to find. Think about how people locate you and your business. Is it through search, a review website, social media, or all of them? Update all your bios. When you add your new name on sites like LinkedIn, keep a vestige of your old name. That can help people find you during the transition period. “Include your maiden name on social,” says Cohen. “If people are finding you by search it will serve you best to keep connected to both names.” If you had a more common name or are making the switch to a more popular surname, adds Tate, having both names online could even help you come up higher in search results. 8. Update your memberships. To further help your new name show up high in search results and build up credibility for your new moniker, Friedman recommends having any professional organizations, alumni associations, company or community boards, or other groups you belong to change your name on their membership roles. If you hold a leadership position or are listed elsewhere on an association website, perhaps for winning an award, request that the name change appear throughout. Ask to have any older content that can easily be altered, such as a post listing you as a guest speaker at a conference, updated too.

6 Principles for Reaching Your Ultimate Career Potential (Part 2) - Work It Daily

6 Principles for Reaching Your Ultimate Career Potential (Part 2) - Work It Daily The following article is a continuation of the previous article written on the first three of the six principles to reaching your ultimate career potential. The Bridge Model is a nonlinear model designed to provide you with key concepts required to reach your ultimate career success. Regardless of what type of career growth you are looking for, these principles are the common factors that will distinguish you as someone worthy and capable of reaching your highest career potential. The first three principles were covered in a previous article. They are Build Your Base, Respond Responsibly and Influence Impeccable. The next three principles are as follows: 4. Distinguish Yourself The farther you want to take your career and the higher you want to climb, the tougher the competition gets. What are you doing to stand out from the crowd? By doing things such as performing beyond expectations, ensuring you have a strong team working for you who can do the same, and taking unwanted or tough assignments are the types of things that help differentiate you from others. It is doing things out of the ordinary (for example, being successful in a difficult assignment) which demonstrate you have the ambition and history of high performance required to get ahead. 5. Grow Your Skills Do you know what skills and experiences are needed to advance your career? Hopefully the answer is yes but if not, you should identify these and put an action plan together to ensure you have what it takes as you continue to navigate along your career path. Having a career plan that will guide you along your path is essential. t ensures you keep on track and grow in the appropriate areas. Share your career plan with your leaders or mentors, or key stakeholders to get some input on the areas where you need to develop. As well, it helps keep your stakeholders updated on your aspirations and enables you to enlist their support as you advance. Another key aspect of growing your skills is to develop others. Learn to be a talent developer so you can groom your successor and have a strong viable candidate to replace you when you are ready to move up to the next position. 6. Encourage, Enlighten, Expect As you continue to chart your own course of career growth, you should encourage and enlighten your key stakeholders on what to expect with regards to your performance. You should also encourage your peers, subordinates and superiors to expect only the best from you. By encouraging them to expect the best, you will most certainly want to deliver the best and this propels your career ahead. You should also practice being transparent and sharing as much information as possible to enlighten those around you about important information occurring in your work area. Individuals who advance into higher-level roles are those who are willing to share information because they know information is power. They want others to be empowered with knowledge so they can perform and do well. If you practice this, you will single yourself out as one who is worthy and capable of continued career advancement. The six principles of the Bridge Model should be consistently practiced as you continue to advance along your career path. It is a fluid model designed so you can go back and forth between each principle and continue to practice and master these six areas that enable you to reach your ultimate career success. Read more » articles by this approved expert | Click here » if you’re a career expert Photo credit: Shutterstock Have you joined our career growth club?Join Us Today!