General Career Blog

If your drinking habits have begun to wreak havoc on your relationships, career and health then it’s time for a change. Admitting that you have a problem and committing to a change can be the hardest step of quitting. Once you’ve come to terms with your mistakes, failures and shortcomings, you must resolve to quit completely. Follow the steps below and you’ll be on your way to an alcohol-free lifestyle.

1. The thing you should do is speak with your physician before you quit drinking. If you’ve been overdrinking for a long time, you may experience withdrawal symptoms that are potentially harmful.

2. Next change your attitude about quitting. Remember that you are doing it for your health, for your relationships and for your career. It shouldn’t be a sad time for you; it should be an exciting time. Think about all of the things you’ll be able to accomplish without alcohol.

3. Resolve to quit on a specific, significant date. Think of a time in your life when you completely hit rock bottom or maybe a relationship ended as a result of your drinking. This will help to remind you of why you’ve decided to stop drinking.

4. Start a journal and write down all of the reasons for quitting. Be as specific as possible so you can refer to it often when you have self-doubt. Also use this journal to chronicle your daily feelings and thoughts. It will be a great expressive tool for you.

5. Clear out your home completely of everything and anything alcohol-related. Bottles should obviously be thrown out, as well as wine glasses and beer mugs. Do not throw these items in your own garbage can, instead give them to a friend of discard them in an area away from your home.

Now that you’ve resolved to get off that bar stool and quit, it’s time to get sober. Remember the decision to quit is as big or as small as you decide to make it. For more tips on quitting, refer to my Pt. 2.

Since most of us probably have other priorities for our discretionary cash, picking up resume writing tips can be very beneficial. With that in mind, here are some tips that can improve your resume and help get you noticed.

#1. Customize, it is a Best Practice

If you want to hook the attention of a potential employer or recruiter within a couple-of-seconds, you should customize your resume to reflect the job you are seeking. Your objective here is to market your work experience and skills in a way the targeted employer/recruiter can relate to and relate to quickly. Well-presented accomplishments, skills, education and job titles will not only earn you more interview calls, but it could possibility help you in the final offer negotiations.

Noteworthy tips regarding customizing your resume:
- Research the company and industry you are targeting and add relevant terminology
- Google search various profiles/resumes of individuals currently in the position you are targeting to use as a reference and foundation
- Have a minimum of two resumes: a general resume that can be sent to anyone and another that is industry specific

#2 Format does Matter

Always remember that when it comes to short-listing candidates for an interview, recruiters, on first review, usually do not read resumes thoroughly – they literally receive hundreds of inquiries. They just give a glance at the resume and make snap judgments by looking at accomplishments, education, skills, work experience and the overall presentation in the resume. Hard to read or understand resumes are tossed very quickly. Even if you are qualified for the job, if you are unable to convey your qualifications through a quick glance of your resume, the recruiter will assume that you are not qualified and move on. Therefore, it is important that you highlight the most significant parts of the resume: accomplishments, education, skills, and work experience. Also, watch your grammar, spelling and subject-verb agreements; it could cost you a great interview.

Noteworthy tips regarding format:

- Indent major accomplishments or use bullet points to set them apart
- Bold headings that highlight accomplishments, major skills and education
- Provide a summary near the beginning to give the recruiter/employer a good first impression and entice them to read further.

#3 The Resume Must Have Quality Content

Once resumes are short-listed, interviewers go through the content in more detail. Therefore, make sure that you are using content that sells. The number of interview calls and hopefully an eventual offer will depend completely upon the content of your resume.

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Most of the time, candidates just provide the list of the skills that they are well versed in. However, what can really make the difference are descriptions that sell the benefits of those skills to the potential employer by describing how these skills were beneficial in achieving productivity for the companies where you previously worked.

Noteworthy tips regarding content – General vs. Quantified Content:

In our busy world, general statements are likely to be overlooked. On the other hand, when you use quantified statements with numbers, rankings, percentages or savings, you easily win the employers attention.

General Statement: Led market launch of major product
Quantified Statement: Project lead of a team of six responsible for LAX product that reached 16 million in revenue within first quarter after launch, ranked 2nd among 11 revenue products.

Reading the latter statement creates a vivid image in the reader’s mind and leaves a lasting impression; leaving the employer wanting to know more on how you achieved the results and how that experience would add value to their organization. Therefore, it is always better to be as specific with quantified descriptions while describing your achievements and work experience.

Whether you are seeking your first position or next, these three quick resume writing tips should help put you ahead of the pack. All the best as you pursue your career goals.

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Blog entries not only attract new readers but they also keep them coming back. A popular blog is normally judged to be so by the number of subscribers it has and you can thank the content of the site for that. The blog reader is initially attracted to the site because the theme of the content is something that holds an interest for them. The ability to ’spice up’ the content is what brings them back. Therefore no matter how mundane the ‘chore’ of blog posting may seem to you it is important to maintain a certain ‘appeal’ to retain your readers.

The key here will be to engage the blog reader right away in order to encourage them to read through the entire post. Although your ‘opening’ is somewhat critical to keep the readers’ interest there is still no substitute for quality throughout the body of the content.

Let’s review 5 different ‘angles’ you can approach your blog posting with to help immediately captivate or involve your audience.

Direct Questions at Them

By directly asking your reader a question you can immediately ‘involved’ them in what it is you are talking about. This method of ‘talking to them’ as opposed to ‘talking at them’ has a stimulating reaction that further encourages their ‘participation’ in your post. Your delivery is on a more personal level which tends to more readily engage the reader.

Use a Folksy Comparison

The use of a short story or anecdote to help establish your point tends to engage people more fully in what it is you are saying. When used at the beginning of your post this can be very effective at maintaining their attention throughout the balance of your entry.

Paint a Mental Image

Painting an image for your reader helps to draw upon their sense of imagination thereby drawing them deeper the ‘conversation’ of your post. In essence you are flipping a switch to stimulate them thereby increasing their involvement.

Analogies

This approach is widely use and very successful since it has the ability to appeal to many different people on different levels. Analogies are especially effective for making a point that may be otherwise difficult to make. We are creating a ‘common ground’ where it is easier for many to relate to how a particular point may affect them personally.

Shock

Nothing gets someone’s attention better then to shock them with facts, statistics, or deductive assumptions. Here we are using an emotion to capture the attention of the reader. The shock value of our delivery has more impact when the reader can relate to what it is being said to them.

Your blog entries are what fuel the growth, strength, and popularity of your blog. Subscribers are initially attracted to the ‘theme’ of the content but often return because of the way in which it was delivered. A popular blog recognizes the need to deliver its content in a way that can captivate the blog reader. By doing so the reader is further compelled to complete the entire entry. By adopting some of the suggestions we reviewed above you will be able to add a little ’sizzle’ to your blog posting. By doing so you will be keeping your readers informed, entertained and most importantly…loyal!

If you want your blog to do well, you cannot ignore Google. On the Internet, there are 3 major search engines – Yahoo, Bing (used to be MSN Live) and Google. Among the three search engines, Google owns the lion’s share of web traffic. Therefore, if your site is not going well in Google, you may be losing 50% of your visitors. so how do you get your blog to rank well in Google?

1) Unique content.

Don’t republish content that have been published on other sites. Keep the content on your own blog unique. If you publish duplicate content, the web pages may get caught in Google duplicate content filter, and you will never get to rank well in the search results. If your content is unique, you can be assured that your content will be indexed.

Generating unique content takes time, but it’s not really that hard. Just write what comes to your head. If the blog post is still lacking in content, you can always save it as a draft and work on it later. As long as you don’t copy and paste from other web pages, you will do fine.

2) Network with other bloggers.

Many successful bloggers are also social bloggers. In other words, they spend a lot of time networking with others. The more they network, the more back links they acquire. If you are already familiar with SEO, you know that you need back links to succeed.

Participate in other bloggers’ discussions. Leave comments on their blog entries. Alternatively, you can exchange content with other bloggers.

Always approach other bloggers with something to offer. Don’t just ask others to link back to you without having anything to offer. If you already own a popular blog, offer to link to your friends from that blog. The more you can give, the more likely others will respond to you.

3) Pick popular keywords to target.

Always spend some time to do your keyword research. You can spend hours creating unique content but that content is not going to bring you any traffic if you are not using the right keywords. Web visitors type in keywords into Google to search for information. If your web pages contain those keywords, they will surface in the search results.

Once you have your keyword list, you can create content that is based around those keywords. Never try to keyword stuff your articles with too many repeated keywords. Just write naturally, like you are writing for human readers. Trust the search engines to be able to pick up the context of your content. Apparently, the search engines have proven to be very effective at that. So there is no need for you to try to manipulate the search engines into “thinking” that your content deserves a higher ranking.

Quality of content and back links are what matter most. If you keep the above tips in mind, your blog will become more successful than you have ever imagined.