5 General Online Courses to Immediately Help You Upgrade Your Resume (Pt.1) Building Your Future Now

5 General Online Courses to Immediately Help You Upgrade Your Resume (Pt.1) Building Your Future Now Continually upgrading your resume should be a priority. Even if its a basic skill set seeking out and taking courses online can go along way in helping your career. Paying for college courses is a great way to do this, but if you are short on time and lack the budget, there are a multitude of great online course sites that offer amazing courses that are free (and inexpensive pay online sites) like Udemy, Concoursa, and Lynda, are among the most well-known. Try to find courses that offer a certificate, however, even taking ones without one still shows your employer and future employers your desire to constantly learn and better yourself. These 5 general courses are a few that are always in demand. 1. Business consultation Even if you arent an entrepreneur or business savvy taking a certificate course in business consultation is a great resume upgrader. Aside that aspect, having this course in your repertoire gives you the proper tools and skillset to consult with decision-makers in companies. You can also apply these skills to other aspects of your job. If youre good at it you can also definitely either build a side business or even a stand-alone consulting business helping local companies plan and achieve their aims. 2. Business writing Regardless of your role in a company: entry-level or managerial position having a course related to business writing is a boon to you. Some things you will learn in a business writing course include: writing etiquette, emails, writing a proper memo, writing a resume and preparing referral letters. 3. General Marketing Marketing might not be your strong-point, but acquiring a certificate can give you the edge over other candidates. Learning and applying the course principles of marketing can give you a further appreciation of branding, positioning and getting products or services to the right demographics. 4. Social Media Social media is so pervasive these days it is hard to find anyone without a social media account on Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram. By taking a foundations social media online course or intermediate course it will give you a better understanding of unlocking the power of social media. If you work at a small or medium-sized business this course might come in handy because they might not have a social media/marketing department and thats where you come in! Facebook offers an amazing certificate course to learn more about working with their product called Blueprint. 5. Specialized courses Taking the above general courses will add many new skills to your arsenal and help you shape your resume into one that companies will take a second look at. But that doesnt mean you shouldnt persue speciality courses in your career field. In fact, doing this reflects your commitment to continual learning and getting better at your specialty. Image: Lumen Brite

Passive Income Streams Getting Rich On Your Back Pockets

Passive Income Streams Getting Rich On Your Back Pockets Sponsored Post by Suncorp Earning money for retirement can give you a sense of accomplishment every time you look at your accounts, but it does have the drawback of having to work for it. Worse still, the financial environment of today makes retirement less than a sure thing for many people, and many retirees are outliving their savings, forcing them to downgrade their standard of living or return to the workforce. If those options seem unacceptable to you, it may be time to bolster your retirement prospects with passive income streams. photo credit: RambergMediaImages A passive income stream is a source of earnings that requires little to no upkeep once the initial investment is made, such as shared profits or leasing payments collected. The majority of passive income streams require a substantial investment of time, money or both up front, but their consistently profitable nature makes them well worth the investment. For example, a painter has a passive income stream. Once he completes his work, he is able to place it in a gallery where it can later be purchased by a private buyer with the painter receiving much of the proceeds from the sale. However, most painters’ work is sold at prices far below a year’s salary, and so they must produce and sell multiple pieces to maximize the effect of that stream on their finances. The key is to use an existing skill in your spare time to generate income to supplement your paycheck. Investing is an excellent passive income stream. Along with bonds and mutual funds, dividend-bearing stocks are a popular tool of passive income. Dividend-bearing stocks periodically release payments when they perform well, and returns on investment can easily exceed 3 percent yearly if you chose a large and stable corporation. If you are uncomfortable placing your financial fortunes in the hands of a single business, an index fund allows you to invest in multiple companies with the same funding, lowering your risk but also limiting your profit. Another investment option is TIPS, or Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. TIPS are purchased from the government and held for a predetermined maturation period, after which they can be sold at face value adjusted for the interest rate for a guaranteed profit. Some insurance companies offer a product known as an annuity which pays out money every year for the rest of your life in exchange for an upfront fee. The amount of the payment depends on your age at the time of purchase, but it is entirely possible that you will live to appreciate your investment. Another common source of passive income streams is to develop a website that displays advertisements alongside static information about a topic of interest. With a sufficient traffic flow to the page, the ad revenue will begin to slowly roll in, and the static nature of the information means there is almost nothing to update. Your ads will continue to pull in revenue until the Internet is deactivated, and so this is a reliable long-term stream when run properly. Developing multiple passive income streams makes life much easier if one of your sources of income is reduced or eliminated, and can also guarantee you will continue to make money after retirement or even retire early. A passive income stream is a way to profit forever without working the rest of your life away. Sponsored Post by  Suncorp 0

10 Must Have Social Media Tools I Cant Live Without - Classy Career Girl

10 Must Have Social Media Tools I Cant Live Without Last week I shared an awesome social media calendar  that will help you share the real you online. Today, I wanted to dive into the tools behind the scenes that we use at Classy Career Girl. The truth is that not all our social media posts are done in real time. There is a lot of batching that happens. I actually spend every single Wednesday as my social media day where I batch all my posts with these social media tools for the next week on all of my platforms including videos and getting Instagram posts ready to go as well. It takes some planning ahead but it is so nice to sit back for the rest of the week and focus on the real task at hand of running a growing company! Social media is fun but it can also be a huge time waster. Thats why I love these tools because as you know, I am all about being as productive as possible! P.S. I wish I could say I just use one tool and I know many of you are looking for the one with everything, I have yet to find it so I do use a combo of the below. 10 Must Have Social Media Tools I Cant Live Without For Scheduling: 1. Hootsuite Hootsuite  allows you to schedule your social media posts from a variety of different social media sites. You can also monitor and track analytics with Hootsuite as well.The free plan works well for us. What I love most about hootsuite  is that I can schedule posts to our Facebook groups. I run three large Facebook groups (one with over 2,000+ members in the Classy Career Girl network) so I have to schedule posts in advance so that they can go out first thing in the morning for you East Coasters when I am still sleeping here on the West Coast. 2. Post Planner Since I love automation, Post Planner  is what we use for automated posts week after week and month after month.  This is just $7 per month and allows us to pre-schedule our best content over and over again. We have one post going out every single day sharing our free lead magnets and free guides so we don’t have to “remember” to post them every day. This is much more consistent and leads to many more people we can help coming through our doors every single day. 3. ViralTag ViralTag is the current winner for us. Why? PINTEREST SCHEDULING.  The other scheduling systems just havent caught up to the fact that for any business that markets to women, Pinterest is the #1 source of traffic hands down. Yes, I am a little obsessed. You can read about how we use ViralTag here. I love that I can schedule Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Its the closest tool I can get to that provides everything for my weekly social media planning session. For Photo Editing: 4. Picmonkey Picmonkey  is a free, online photo editor and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t use it. This is where I put the text on my photos and create quote images for Instagram. This is also where I crop my images for each social media platform and where I create my Pinterest images as well. Did I mention it’s free! 5. Wordswag Wordswag  is a fun app that allows you to upload a photo from your phone library and put text over it. You can also add your logo to the photo as well so no one copies and steals your content. I love that it also gives you quotes and designs to choose from if you are just stuck with what to post. Lots of fonts and styles to play around with. This is totally free as well. 6. Adobe Spark You know I love a social media tool when I dedicate an entire blog post to it! Adobe Spark  is a new graphics tool created by the well-known brand, Adobe.  We all know Adobe for its products such as Photoshop. Now they have brought to us this amazing web-based tool that will allow you to take away the hard work of creating amazing social media posts and videos. For Video Editing 7. Flipagram Videos on social media platforms are taking over and one of the most popular things for organic reach right now. This means that more people might see your videos than your posts and pictures. If you aren’t posting videos, start now.  Flipagram gives you a ton of options to create videos from your photos and to add your favorite songs to your videos too. It’s all about being creative and fun and that’s why I love this app. 8. iMovie Imovie  is another video app that is a must for us. This is what we use to crop our videos and to make multiple videos out of a longer video clip. We have a ton of 10-20 minute videos and we use iMovie to create small clips that are easily enjoyed and popular on social media. Apple users can use this on your desktop or your phone. For Tracking 9.  Bitly.com Ever post something to social media and then not know how many people even clicked?  Bitly.com is a free link shortening service will help you figure out what links people are really excited to read and you can track which days got the most clicks. 10. Google Analytics Its even more important than how many clicks it got is where people are coming from! Google Analytics is a major must because it will show you a lot of details about WHERE your top social media traffic is coming from. We get way more traffic from Pinterest than Instagram but I never would have known that if I wouldn’t have been paying attention to Google Analytics. That means I need to spend way more time creating Pinterest content than Instagram content to drive my sales and leads. See how crucial that is? Click here to download our free social media calendar and get a copy of our favorite social media tools.

The Interview Question Checklist for Jobs in Communications

The Interview Question Checklist for Jobs in Communications If you love to share, engage, write, promote, or be creative, then a job in communications could be just what you’re looking for. Alternatively, you may already be doing comms, but want a promotion. Either way, the next several years will be offering rich pickings, because communication jobs of all stripes are on the rise: PR, internal comms, social media management, community relations, and marketing are all part of a growing industry. Whether you’re just starting out, an experienced candidate or a recruiter for such jobs?or you’re a recruiter in another industry, but would prefer to move into comms?the church of communications is a broad and expanding one. Alas, along with such jobs comes the prospect of dreaded interviews. But while there are plenty of articles available that help you address your job interview fears, you may find it harder to get a helpful checklist of the top questions you need to prepare answers for, to help you win your next role. Perhaps you’re a newbie and want to know what to expect a company will ask you for such a job? An experienced candidate who just needs a checklist of questions to prepare from? Or a recruiter for non-comms that wants to move into recruiting comms in the future? Then look no further. Based on over 20 years of working in every type of communications role imaginable and across most industries, here’s a comprehensive, mega checklist of over 60 questions. They’re written in such a way that, irrespective of whether you’re a candidate or a recruiter, these are the questions in communications that matter most. Most importantly, you will find the questions work just as well whether you’re applying for a job in social media, marketing, PR or any other type of comms. In fact, you may find they’re helpful to consider for a lot of other outside jobs outside of this profession. To avoid making every question overlong, the type of comms has been left blank. That way you can simply “fill in” the blank for the type you want. Please give me your definition of ____. To help us build the best company reputation, what do you think matters most in ____? What motivated you to get into ____? Tell us briefly about your career to date in ____. Could you tell me about your current role and the range of ____ activities that you do? Do you think anyone can do ____? What are your greatest achievements in ____? Why do you think it matters whether or not a company does ____? Can you imagine a situation in a company where it would be best not to do any ____? When it comes to performance appraisals, what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) do you think are important for this ____ job? What do you think it takes to be a really good ____ person? What excites you about ____? Assume you do well in this job. Where do you see yourself in ____ in five years’ time? What parts of ____ don’t you like doing? Tell me about skills or areas you want to improve upon in your ____ work? What makes for good writing when doing ____? What would you say makes you stand out from all the other candidates for ____? What personal skills or attributes do you think are most important to do ____? If we gave you this job, what would you prioritise doing in ____ in the first weeks and months ahead? Why do you think a company should do ____? Can you give me some examples of what you think is bad about our profile and how ____ could help to improve it? What do you think should be included in an activity report to management for ____? What do you think they would consider the most important? Say you had to write a weekly report to your manager about what you did in ____. What would you consider vital to include? What sort of challenges do you look forward to in ____, and why? Can you give an example or two of dealing with those challenges successfully? How do you see ____ working best with other departments in a business? How do you help protect our reputation and minimise risk to it by doing ____? What makes a good ____ person? Can you give some examples of what you’ve done in ____ that helped to protect or even grow your last employer’s reputation? Can you give me an example of ____ work that you did that you weren’t happy with â€" and why? What most attracts you to this ____ position? You’ve read the job spec for this ____ position. Let’s say there was one thing you’d like to add or delete from the responsibilities. What would it be â€" and why? Tell us about a ____ project you did that you would do different now, if you had a chance? How would you explain “integrated communications” â€" what does it mean to you? How do you think ____ can help, when a company is facing a crisis? Do you think every business should have a ____ policy or set of guidelines? If we asked you to write ____ guidelines for all of employees, what would you include in them? If we looked at all of your social media accounts and everything you’d published publicly, would we find anything that would be embarrassing to you or to our company in the future? What do you look for in a ____ job? What do you think are the elements that go into making a really good ____ campaign? Do you think employees outside of the ____ department should be allowed or encouraged to contribute content for ____? If yes, can you give some examples of how? Could you prepare a budget for a ____? What elements go into planning a budget for a ____ campaign? How do you cope with stress and pressure in ____? Tell us how you use ____ in your own life, if at all? Do you believe in Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in ____? Have you used any monitoring tools or applications for doing ____? (If yes, give us your recommendations for them.) If you do, what do you think should be offered in CPD? We believe good writing skills are essential for any job in ____. Do you agree or not? Can you explain to us why? What companies do you admire most in our industry for their ____ work? Can you give us a few examples to explain why? What do you think the secret of success is when doing ____? What other companies do you admire for the ____ work that they do? How do you measure success in a ____ campaign? Do you think ____ can help us grow our sales? If so, can you give us examples of how? How do you see your job in ____ evolving over time? What ____ skills of yours do you feel are most underused right now and that you’d like to do more of in this job? Tell us about any vocational training you’ve had to improve your skills in ____. How much do you think ____ is about psychology or empathy? Explain why. Can you see yourself being a leader of ____? What do you think it takes to make being a great leader of ____? Imagine you were told by a senior member of management in our company to do something in ____ that you felt would be harmful to our reputation. What would you say to that manager to convince them not to do it? Are there are questions you think should be added to make this the perfect checklist for a comms job? We’d love for you to share your thoughts in the Comments below. Thanks! Author:  Robert White of PR Matters.

Career Help Resume Writing Courses

Career Help Resume Writing CoursesA lot of online colleges and universities are now offering help resume writing courses to students who are eager to improve their skill at job-searching. If you are tired of spending hours looking for jobs, this could be a viable option.Back in the old days, a person would have to research for their job using search engine queries. However, with the advent of advanced technology, more people prefer to go online to perform a job search. They can also use online resume writing programs to make resumes that will help them land on the first page.A person can write a resume online by filling out blank pages with relevant career information and skills. The personal details of a person should be accurate to avoid any dispute during an interview. It is also necessary to include professional qualifications and educational background that a person has.The various career choices available today makes it easy for a person to have different options to choose from . However, the one's choices would be limited when a person has only two or three possible choices to choose from. Resume help writing courses offer suggestions for different career options that a person can select from.Different programs offer career advice based on a person's desired career path. A person should always remember that different programs are offered by different universities. As a result, a person should search for the university that best suits his preferences.When choosing a career program for resume writing course, a person must keep his interest in mind. Career help writing course would be able to provide various options for a person's career. Some of the options that a person may opt for are sales management, computer science, internet marketing, graphic design, public relations, coaching, personal development, advertising, network marketing, and sales management. Each of these fields provides opportunities for people who are interested in a specific job field.O ne of the ways through which a person can learn about resume writing is by taking a career help writing course online. Such courses offer people of all ages an opportunity to learn the skill of writing resumes and cover letters.Writing resumes and cover letters can help a person stand out from the crowd. Hence, it is important for all individuals to have a resume help writing course so that they can add more value to a company and land on the first page of an employer's inbox.

Everyone Has a Personal Brand

Everyone Has a Personal Brand Everyone Has a Personal Brand Everyone Has a Personal Brand March 15, 2010 by Career Coach Sherri Thomas Leave a Comment Everyone has a personal brand. Everyone. And the power, or strength of one’s personal brand is determined by their consumers, fans, clients or employer. LeBron James doesn’t determine the strength of his own brand â€" his fans and customers do. Oprah doesn’t determine the strength of her personal brand â€" her viewers, listeners and magazine subscribers do. Now, think about yourself and your own career. Do you know what value you provide to your clients or company? Do you know how to deliver that value in such a way that it creates an emotional connection with your employer or clients and they feel loyal to you? Do you now the strength of your personal brand? By doing some introspection and self discovery you will be able to answer these questions as well as create a career that give you meaning and personal satisfaction.

Hows the Search Going

Hows the Search Going Are you pleased with the number of phone calls and interviews youve had since your job ended? How many resumes are you sending out? How many new people are you meeting per week? How many recruiters have you met with? How many target companies have you identified? I hope you can specifically answer these questions. All you need to do next to improve your search is increase most of those numbers. Is there a reason you find this difficult to do? What is getting in the way? By identifying your obstacles, youll be better able to overcome them. You can: Ask for support and/or motivation by finding an accountability coach. This is a valued friend who will check in with you. Ask for ideas or advice from a past colleague or manager. Whatever you do, dont depend on family to be these for you. Thats a very difficult spot to put them in. Their as scared and frustrated as you are. It is, however, very important to keep them updated on what you are doing and how your search is going. Dont lie. You can let them know you are frustrated/discouraged/mad and would like their emotional support.Be careful about asking for more than that. If you need professional advice, expect to pay for the good stuff. Remember, you get what you pay for. Ask other people in your profession for recommendations on finding a career coach or other professional help. If you are depressed or experiencing anxiety and it doesnt feel right, you might need to engage in some professional counseling. Dont be afraid or embarrassed to ask. Remember to always take care of YOU. Positive thoughts spawn positive results. Trite but true!