5 Tips to Stay Competitive and Employed in Job Market


You may not be surprised to learn the best time to find a job is when you already have a job. Recent ERE.net research shows that some employers consider passive candidates—people not actively looking for work because they're employed—one of the best sources of hires.
When you consider that no job is forever, and the fact that the average employee will have between 10 and 15 jobs in a career, it's wise to take action to positively influence your chances to land a new job, even if you don't think you need one right now.

Jonathan Kreindler, founder of FreshTransition.com, a free, web-based career management system that provides guidance from a community of career experts, suggests these tips to help you stay competitive when your next transition may be just around the corner:
1. Broaden your scope. Kreindler notes: "While you likely have a full-plate at work already, consider ways to take on different challenges within your role. When you do, you'll not only become more valuable to your current employer, but you'll learn new skills, enhance your experience, and expand the number of opportunities you'll be suitable for next time you're actively looking."
2. Seize opportunities to try new things. While it is important to have niche expertise, don't let yourself be pigeonholed in one very specific area for years on end. Keep a close eye on where your field is headed and don't keep your head buried in the sand. When you're aware of trends and potential hot areas, you'll be in a better position to advance your career.
3. Don't be passive, but passively search. "Conducting a passive search doesn't necessarily mean you're applying for jobs with the intention of leaving your current role behind. Rather, it's all about exploring your options, understanding your value, and determining what gaps exist between the role you have today and the role you aspire to in the future," explains Kreindler.
Research your competitors by tracking their social media company pages (especially on LinkedIn, where you'll be able to tell when companies hire new people). Follow industry leaders on social media and keep track of the news about your field. One easy way to do this is to find and follow industry thought leaders on Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. Read their updates and you'll keep up-to-date about what is going on in your field with very little effort on your part.
4. Prepare for surprises. Few would question that being prepared is the best way to reduce the impact of a work-related surprise. Kreindler notes: "Knowing what other job options are available to you while you're employed enables you to hit-the-ground running if you find yourself on the receiving-end of a career surprise."
He adds, "Starting a job search from scratch takes time, but turning your passive search into an active search requires only a change in your mind set."
Sign up for job alerts, keep an eye on jobs posted on LinkedIn (which shows you who posted the job and how you're connected to that person), and stay up-to-date on news that affects your industry. If a major competitor just won a huge government contract, for example, you want to make sure you know. Sign up for Google alerts for company names so you will receive emails as soon as Google indexes something about the organization.
5. Explore your interests and recalibrate as you go. "Always make a point to explore interesting careers, learn about the skills you'll need, and network with people who have jobs that you aspire to," Kreindler notes. When you activelyexplore and research, you'll decrease the chances that you'll be caught off guard when it's time to find something new. Additionally, Kreindler says: "You'll build your network, make yourself more employable, and focus on a direction where you want to go with your career."
Manage your own career, whether you're looking for a new job or not. Keep ahead of the competition and make yourself more marketable by planning ahead and keeping abreast of your options. You'll decrease the amount of time you spend between opportunities.
Miriam Salpeter is a job search and social media consultant, career coach, author, speaker, resume writer, and owner of Keppie Careers. She is author of Social Networking for Career Success. Miriam teaches job seekers and entrepreneurs how to incorporate social media tools along with traditional strategies to empower their success.

Tags: LinkedIn, Employment, Twitter, Job hunting, Social media, Google, Kreindler, Google+
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14 Lessons from 475 Days of Unemployment


Having been in the startup ‘ecosystem’ for long now, I meet people who want to startup on a regular basis. Most have a brilliant idea; many talk about selling their companies after 2-3 years and retiring from work at early age. Raising venture capital is today considered success by wannabe entrepreneurs, which is not. 1 out of every 100 startups succeeds; given the number of startups coming up – this will soon be 1 out of 1,000 or even 10,000. I guess there is too much press about startups these days, about getting funded, million dollar exits and the likes.
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All this is attracting many people towards entrepreneurship without realizing how difficult the journey is. I am sharing my entrepreneurship experience here and hope others don’t go through mistakes I made.
1. Control your own Fate.

To get stuff done fast, the very next day of quitting job – I outsourced product development to another company. Estimated 60 days task took 180+ days. This arrangement continued for a few more months- burnt loads of cash, I consider that to be my biggest mistake.
Lesson Learned: Our success (or failure) is now in our hands, not in anyone else’s. 

Advice:
1.      If you are an entrepreneur, please check who is deciding/controlling the fate of your startup? If it’s not you, you’re in trouble.
2.    If you’re planning to startup, get your own team in place; don’t startup by outsourcing development.

2. Things will go wrong. Again and again.
This is the 4th time we’re writing our code from scratch. First two attempts were with product iterations for Tyched, next was alpha release of Wishberg. Its initial version was written by the outsourced company, it started crumbling under its own weight as users and data grew, dumped it when we hit roadblocks. Our team is now building the beta version on own custom framework, that will help us ship product fast. Really fast.

Lesson Learned:
·         When users & data starts growing quickly, you should be able to iterate quickly. We lost about 4 months with legacy code. Choose product / tech architecture with tons of flexibility.

3. Stay connected with ecosystem.
I started blogging on beingpractical.com about 3 years back when I had no intention of starting up. I also manage the Internet & Mobile product management groups on LinkedIn through which I connected with product professionals across the world.
Being a product guy – helped, tested other’s alpha & beta products, provided feedback, tips on product management, gave suggestions to scale up products, user acquisition hacks. Thanks to that – it connected me with many founders, product geeks and few people in investment community. Many of them were kind enough to help me back whenever I asked.
Over last 12 months, I have a built a network of about 500 early adopters to help us on Wishberg; another 1000+ are on my list.
Advice:
·         Plug into startup ecosystem well before you start up.
·         Don’t shy away from asking. People in startup community are always willing to help.

4. The flawed assumption about lack of early adopters.
I see more Indians on Quora these days, I recently tweeted - Future Generations may think Quora is an Indian product, like current generation thinks about Bata. India is among the top countries by users for many global products – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so.
Almost everyone who claims about the lack of early adopters in India are from startup ecosystem, many of them have not yet tried out products from other Indian startups. I’m a founder / entrepreneur and have decided to be early adopter. I try out every new product that comes my way. Anyone who has written to me about their product, I’ve signed up – provided feedback / suggestions to the best of my experience & knowledge.
Advice:
·         As founders we can continue to complain about lack of early adopters or decide to be one ourselves.

5. Have a product roadmap. Don’t build your startup on just one idea.
Many product startups that hit dead pool rely only on just one idea. We only know successful pivots like Inmobi, Instagram, Fab, etc – but there are plenty of unsuccessful ones we never heard of. Pivot is not easy, extremely difficult in both ways – managing expectations of stakeholders as well as your own.
Talk to folks before starting up on potential of your idea, its possibilities. Avoid situations where you have build all that you could in 3 months and are clueless on whats to be done next. There is no thumb-rule to this; but at least have a product roadmap that extends into next 12-18 months, talk to users / customers in this while. They will tell you more.
Advice:
·         An idea that can be finished in 3 months might be a hack. It ‘may’ not be a product or company. Build your product around a vision, it may takes years to execute.

6. Don’t divulge what is not shipped yet.
This is a tough one to explain. To put it simply (or wisely) – ‘You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.’ Here the context is different. Everyone is looking for ideas, you don’t give it to them.
We met with one angel investor, had a detailed discussion about our product – how we intend to market / acquire consumers. Few days later, one of his invested startup came up with remarkably similar approach. On another instance, one investor met us twice in a span on 10 days, insisted we share our detailed road map ASAP. A week later his firm announced an investment in an over lapping category; he was leading the deal.
Learning:
·         We could crib or just move on. We moved on to building our product without complaining. I feel the line of differentiation between startups in decreasing. There are too many similar products in investor portfolio, make conscious decisions on which investors you want to talk with, do a small ‘check’ on their investments and portfolio.

7. Do what’s impossible, not what is easy.
If you have a brilliant idea and you think it’s easy to execute, there probably are another 100 startups doing it already. You are operating in a crowded space.
I have often got this advice or being questioned, why am I building another social commerce product, there are already plenty of them. Here’s the answer – we’re not building a social commerce product. We’re attempting a new method of social discovery for product intents. It’s different, will talk of what we intend to build – once we build it (my rule: don’t divulge what is not shipped yet!)
I usually classify start-ups in 3 segments -
1.      One where making money looks real easily. (Enabling transactions, affiliates, advertising, lead generation)
2.    One that solves problems. (Usually loved by VCs)
3.    One that changes user habits. (Paul Graham calls them – The Black Swans)

Suggestion:
·         There is enough competition for me-too ideas or easy/obvious ones. Don’t be a part of that, unless you can completely re-define that vertical. Take up something that can radically change user behavior / habits.

8. Your health is important.
In this period, I’ve suffered from hypertension, blood pressure has shot up multiple times. Twice I went unconscious – had to be checked in at an hospital!
Long working hours, erratic sleeping times is way of startup life. Managing time is myth, work manages your time. For last 15 months I’ve been working for 12-14 hours daily; 3-4 hours of daily commute (I reside the farthest if compared to all my team. Conscious decision – office is conveniently located for all team members. They can put in more time without bothering about commuting in Mumbai).
Advice:
·         Amount of stress first-time founders will go through in start-up journey is unimaginable. I’ve learned to relax and have started paying good attention towards my health.

9. Take breaks from Startup Life at times
Entrepreneurship makes you so passionate about your product/work that you end up talking about your product, vision, things you plan, how you intend to change the world, etc to almost everyone.
You tell folks stories about Facebook, Instagram, and so on. Be grounded to reality – there is life outside your startup too, find some time to be a part of it, unwind and get back. Time is most precious for every startup / founder. And startup life can be a trap., you’ll always end up postponing personal commitments for work very often, in fact all the time.
Advice:
·         Take breaks in a while. Spend time with your family and friends; make sure you live life outside the startup ecosystem as well.

10. Technically, you’re unemployed. Accept that.
Though the respect for startup founders is improving in the startup-ecosystem, to the outside world you are unemployed.
You will be often reminded of that by folks you will never expect – like the customer support staff at credit card department – “Aapke pass to job hi nahi hai. 3 years ka company IT returns aap submit kijiye.” (Translates to – ‘You don’t have a job. You will have to submit 3 years income tax returns of your company to apply for one’). This is a top Indian bank, I’m their premier customer since last 10 years and it doesn’t matter.
This is the reason why the post title says – 475 Days of Unemployment.
Advice:
·         Plan your startup well. Talk to other startup founders before you start – understand what difficulties they went through. Startup life is not for everyone.

11. Learn to stay calm. You will feel humiliated.
Few people talk / act exactly opposite to what they say. One investor spoke at a conference how he thought Social was the next big thing with some awesome statistics. Kulin (my co-founder) and I caught up with him a week later – he was a different person now, had only one thing to say – ‘Facebook can do this. They can kill you!’
A known investor turned up 35 minutes late for a meeting, did not apologize, later he ordered food and drinks with no courtesy to offer us. During the discussion he was ogling at girls in the restaurant all the time, found someone he knew and told her he will see her in 5 minutes – all this right in front of us. We ended the meeting in next 2 minutes and walked away.
Another day, another prominent investor met us. He disagreed on one of our points, he started off, “Do you know whom you’re talking to? Do you know who I am?” We maintained our cool, thanked him for his time with a smile and promised ourselves never to see him again.
Advice:
1.      Though this offended us like anything, we stayed calm. We live in small world of founders & investors, never want to burn bridges.
2.    Don’t take names. Not online. Not offline. Not anytime.
Maybe those investors will never know, but I have given good amount of feedback and advice on product to founders of startups they have invested in. On other side, there are some extremely professional individuals and investors, they still continue to advice us, given us time whenever we’ve asked and have continued to open connections from time to time.
12. Choose your investors / mentors carefully. 
We had many funny incidents around getting funded, looking for mentors or folks we came across in this journey.
·         One investor extending a term sheet on a condition that we agree to monetize from Day 1 (something I have not believed in).
·         One senior executive at MNC insisted we take him on the board of directors and he will open doors for us. (Since then I have felt being on board of directors is the new Page 3)
·         An incubator claiming they are better than Y-Combinator or 500 Startups. ‘We can give you what they cannot.’
·         A so-called angel investor claiming to have invested in many startups, not ready to name a single since it’s private and confidential. (Rocket Science? Even SpaceX investors were known.)
·         Someone who does not know ‘C’ of Coding telling us we should hire a Chief Technology Officer (he even suggested one with 22 Lac INR salary, who could join us at minimal hike).
·         Feedback on Design: ‘Use bright red color instead of blue. Red means attention, users should pay attention.’
Throughout my startup journey, most of the folks I connected with in India had the common set of questions to ask -
·         Almost everyone asked: “How will you make money?” / “When will you make money?”
·         Very few asked: “How will you acquire users?”
·         Just one person asked: “How will you build this product to match your vision?” He himself is a very well known entrepreneur and angel investor. We hold him in high regards for his advice and support from time to time, even without no formal association.
There is nothing wrong with this question, businesses have to monetize and make money. But few here realize that Social Products need to monetize at scale . The ratio was just reverse when we spoke to folks from the Valley, very few asked the ‘Money’ question.
Kulin and me share this funny thought. Had Instagram pitched to some of these investors, wonder what sort of feedback they would have got. Maybe – ‘Stop coloring photos. Do some serious business.’
Maybe we met wrong people. But yes, there some really great folks available in India too. My general observation is – if you’re doing a B2B start up – there is good advice / mentors / investors available in India who can open connections, get initial customers. For B2C product startups, India has very few people who can advice on Product, Design, Growth Hacking, Technology and User Experience. We eventually started connecting with people from successful startups or individuals with relevant skills from Silicon Valley / US to help us.
Advice:
·         Take money/advice from someone you respect. If you take money from someone you don’t respect – he will kill you with his advice.
·         Spend more time with people who can help you with your product than the ones who can help you raise money. If you have a right product, things will happen to you.

13. Of hiring, people and team.
Till May this year we occupied a shared office (paying per seat and amenities as used). We hired 3 engineers in a month – our costs went up 3X; We decided to quit that place and we were left without office space. During this time, one of our team members offered we operate from his home. And we did the same while our office got ready.
The only thing that matters for any product startup is quality of its team. There is only one rule for hiring at startups – Hire the best engineering team, and pay them well. 1 Good Engineer = 3 Mediocre Engineers.
Have heard of tons of advice on hiring – tell potential hires about startup, culture, fun @ work, ESOPs, etc. This does not work. Don’t try to sell future employees what they have not experienced. Let them join you – create a personal bonding with every team member, nurture your ‘friendship’ with team members, they will be your extended family. They will put in their best. Most of our team members joined us through referrals. Don’t talk with them about passion or commitment, show them yours.
Advice:
·         Genuinely love your team and be concerned of their well being. Create a bond with all your team members.

14. And in the end, it’s not always about the money.
We failed innumerable times in this startup journey. Its fourth time that we are coding our platform from scratch. Multiple mistakes made. And there were plenty of distractions – most of them come to you as lucrative job offers. When I quit my job, the very same week I got a call from the HR Head of a FMCG company to join their Online Marketing team, I was interviewed for that position few months back. I said no, and the next week Kulin confirmed to join me as Co-founder. I’ve passed many other job opportunities that came up in last 18 months, including one in Silicon Valley.
So all those who are considering entrepreneurship for money or funding; the reality is different. Its not money that drives startups, its the passion. There will be tests that will describe your passion – failures & distractions.
Learning:
·         Startup life is difficult, daily struggle to make ends meet. The only thing that keeps you doing is your focus, passion and belief in yourself, your team and your product. Nothing else matters.
The post is shared by Pravin Jadhav and Kulin Shah, Co-Founders at Wishberg

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5 Inspiring Idea Sources For Creating Inbound Marketing Content



contentI don’t know what to write about. It’s a problem every writer, professional, amateur or recreational, faces every day. It’s all very well having an idea and putting it down on screen, or on paper. But we all fear the day when you have to write, but don’t know where to start. We all fear that blinking cursor on a blank screen.
This year in particular, Google has begun to place more emphasis on quality content. Each algorithm update this year has been dragging search away from spamable techniques and focusing on content quality. Which places more pressure on your inbound marketing content. Small businesses can no longer get away with producing mediocre content with plenty of the right keywords and some internal links. You need to write quality content that others will want to read, share and link to.
Which brings us back to the empty screen and that damn blinking cursor. The great thing about inbound marketing content is that there are few rules on topics. The only requirement is to produce something that your target reader will enjoy, share and follow back to your website. The actual ideas can come from almost any source. So, on the days that you are battling with the blinking cursor, there are a few great sources that can get the creative juices flowing.
Think back over the last three days, how many references to the Red Bull Stratos jump have you seen? The short answer is probably, a lot. That’s because it was a huge news story worldwide, it provided a topic people were already interested in. When you can weave stories like that into your inbound marketing content, half your job is done for you. People are already reading about it, talking about it, and sharing content that references it. The market is already there; your job is to give them a different angle. An angle that appeals to your target market.
Businesses in niche markets often claim their industry is ‘too boring’ to write entertaining content. The problem there isn’t the industry; it’s the approach. There are many other ways to make a piece of writing entertaining. One of those is to introduce some pop culture. Your favorite movie, TV show or song may be just the thing to add some color to your inbound marketing content. To put it another way, content with pop culture color goes all the way to 11.
Statistics
Statistics can provide great inspiration too. Twitter or Google are great resources for finding a good stat to respond to, reference or build upon. Infographics are a great piece of visual content that people love to share. Even if you don’t produce them yourself, they can provide plenty of inspiration for blog or social mediacontent. You should never reproduce an infographic verbatim but they can help you to choose a topic for debate or piece of learning to share.
Your Business
You are creating inbound marketing content to promote you business, so talk about it. You do this every day, so tell people about it. Offer tips, share insights or discuss the industry. Building trust is one of the key tasks your content should fulfill. What better way to do that than to demonstrate your knowledge of the industry?
You
A lot of the best blog ideas come out of every day life. It could be something a friend said to you, or an amusing incident from your commute. When you put yourself into the story, people are more likely to engage. When you write blogs or post on social media it creates a one to one experience with readers. You should take advantage of that by giving your inbound marketing content a personal touch.
Most of us use these sources already. We form our ideas and opinions through a combination of the sources on this list. You just need to remember them when you’re creating your inbound marketing content. That way you’ll win a lot more often than the blinking cursor.
Tags: Red Bull Stratos, Google, Twitter, Business

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3 SEO Expert Blogs You Should Be Reading Right Now


SEO shouldn’t be mysterious or intimidating. These SEO expert blogs provide terrific — and easy — access points to both detailed and big picture advice.

For too many marketers, SEO is something that other people do — it’s either outsourced or perhaps relegated to an in-house specialist. That’s unfortunate because SEO should really inform your overall marketing strategy in addition to vice versa. The more informed your entire team is, the easier it will be to fully integrate your digital marketing efforts. And in this day and age that’s paramount to success.
What’s the best way to educate your team, encourage their engagement, and put them on an accelerated learning curve? Why to break down their misconceptions about SEO and remove the (largely perceived) barriers to entry, of course. And the best way to do that? Point them to resources that are not only informative, but also accessible. It certainly doesn’t hurt if they have a healthy dose of engaging personality, to boot.
These SEO experts will be the first to tell you SEO doesn’t have to be left up to the likes of them. They come from entrepreneur as well as SEO backgrounds, and they’re no stranger to having to quickly pick up and master competencies outside their areas of expertise. That’s what makes them so effective in writing to a core SEO audience and more general readers, alike.
What I love about each of these three SEO expert bloggers is their ability to get down and dirty with advanced SEO techniques in one post, while pulling back and taking on bigger-picture marketing issues in the next. They’re bloggers who should absolutely be on your must-read list for valuable SEO, marketing, and entrepreneur insight.

Rand Fishkin, Co-founder of SEOmoz and Inbound.org

Blog: Rand’s Blog

SEO expert blogsWhen it comes to SEO advice and news it doesn’t get much better than SEOmoz. The SEO software company serves as a model for building audience engagement, having developed a vibrant online community around its company blog and even more so with the addition of its YouMoz blog, featuring user-generated content (when your users are engaged to the point they’re creating a wellspring of high-quality content for you, you’re doing something right).
It only makes sense to include co-founder and CEO Rand Fishkin on this list then, right? The guy’s a prolific blogger and by this point, practically synonymous with SEO. But the reason his personal blog might be a bit of a stretch is that, most of the time, it’s not really about SEO. In fact, it’s more about what it’s like to start and run a company — topics include funding, scaling, branding, hiring (and sometimes having to fire) team members, and more personal subjects like work/life balance.

Why you should follow:

So, ok, not strictly a SEO blog, but a fantastic resource for founders and anyone who works at a startup/expansion-stage company. Rand’s dedication to transparency results in some invaluable insights into inner business workings and bigger-picture entrepreneur issues, and when SEO does come up, you can rest assured you’re learning from one of the best.

Favorite posts:

Neil Patel, Co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics

Blog: Quick Sprout

SEO expert blogsNeil Patel may not be the most humble (check out his Twitter bio) but he’s also got a fair deal to brag about — he was named one of the top influencers online by the Wall Street Journal and a top entrepreneur by Entrepreneur Magazine. All by the time he was 21. What I love about his blog, QuickSpout.com, though, is his no non-sense approach to breaking down SEO and online marketing topics that have the potential to be extremely complicated, and churning out posts that offer clear and practical tips you can put to use right away.

Why you should follow:

Neil has a great sense of what SEO issues marketers are really grappling with day-to-day, but in addition to the with-you-down-in-the-trenches advice he can also zoom out and speak to bigger-picture issues from the vantage point of an experienced co-founder and entrepreneur.
Every time I visit Quick Sprout I find something worth following up on and implementing. If you haven’t already, check it out to see for yourself. Just don’t try emailing him.

Favorite posts:

Jason Acidre, CEO of Xight Interactive

seo expert blogs

Blog: Kaiser the Sage

Back when I was first becoming involved with OpenView’s SEO efforts, I was searching everywhere for practical SEO advice that was the right mix of approachable and substantial. It was easy for a lot of material to go over my head, but I also wanted to dive deeper than a lot of the basic intro “You should pick and use the right keywords!” type of advice allowed. I started noticing a kind of strange name popping up in my searches and on Twitter, and once I looked into it further it wasn’t long before I was reading Jason Acidre AKA Kaiser the Sage’s blog regularly.

Why you should follow:

For me, as a non-expert looking for quick and dirty tips to help me get up to speed quickly, the Sage was and still is an invaluable resource. The focus of Jason’s blog posts is often on link building, and I can’t recommend the blog enough if you’re looking for detailed info and actionable tips on the subject. But he also zooms out to explore other topics such as user experience and inbound marketing, and does a great job of covering how they overlap and intersect with SEO.

Favorite posts:

There are a ton of great SEO bloggers and resources out there, and this is obviously just a small sampling. Where else should marketers go to pick up accessible, actionable SEO advice? Who else is producing great SEO/online marketing content?
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