How to Blueprint a Company You want to Work at Building Your Future Now

How to Blueprint a Company You want to Work at Building Your Future Now First off, whats blueprinting? Blueprinting is method in building a network at a company you dont work for. It is certainly a time-consuming endeavour and before embarking on this project you have to weigh the pros and cons. Is it worth spending time learning and connecting with employees and key figures in the company? Is it a company you intend in having a career with? Is it a brand; service or product you respect? If many of the questions above are answered with a yes then blueprinting is a great way to lay a foundation for a career with them. Cold Calling Sometimes the best way to find out information quickly is simply by picking up the phone! Call different departments and see if anyone can give you a minute or two of their time to answer your questions. Be sure to state who you are and the reason you are calling. Before you know it, you have several contact points within the company! This is perhaps one of the best Blueprinting methods available. Social Media You can learn a lot about people through their social media even if its a professional profile. LinkedIn is an amazing tool to find company hierarchy and whos who there. Try and reach out using personalized invites when using LinkedIn. However, other social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter are useless to finding more about key people. Some companies share press releases and other information about themselves. Follow these pages and reach out to see who you connect with! Company website Some company websites are brochure/static sites created to hold their information: contact info, history and product/service data and thats it. You can still score a lot of pertinent information like ownership details. Other company websites are a little more robust. There is downloadable documents, social media is easily accessible, and there might be a media room. Gather all the information you can and build a portfolio. Google This is a great tool for blueprinting companies. Search on the company and key people: you will get more people who are connected as well as information from other companies. Another great thing about Google is you can set up alerts so if you can get alerted to any news about the company you are researching on. Image: Raw Pixel

Re-branding Phase 1 Personal Branding 2.0 with a new logo - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Re-branding Phase 1 Personal Branding 2.0 with a new logo - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career All great brands must evolve over time, either graphically, strategically or through change in management. The biggest challenge with re-branding is if you have multiple sites and are the web developer. Personal Branding 1.0 When I first had the idea for my previous logo (on the left), I started to create a concept around the true meaning behind personal branding and match it to my goals and the image I wanted to portray. My objective was to create a logo that was symbolic and made sense. The compass concept, with the black silhouette, means that this is your personal brand, you are empowered and by viewing my blog and my other resources, I can help navigate you to future success (compass). Personal Branding 2.0 This week I collaborated with an experienced graphic designer, in order to craft something creative and eye-catching. Another consideration in the design was my involvement with social media and the impact it has on personal branding. Taking this into account, part of the creative brief was to have the logo look web 2.0ish. The new logo has more of a 3d look, the colors are brighter and easier to view and the black silhouette is now empowered to resemble an individual holding command over his or her career. What do you think? Are you happy with the improvement? Subscribe today!

3 Reasons Emotion Plays a Critical Role in CX Success

3 Reasons Emotion Plays a Critical Role in CX Success It may be difficult for some to understand the importance of emotion in the customer experience (CX), but when you consider that we walk away from almost every interaction with some sort of feeling, the idea makes much more sense. For example, noting a slight irritation in your waiter’s tone at a restaurant might make you feel more negatively about the establishment. You might even decide not to eat there again because you didn’t enjoy your experience. It’s the same with any interaction, customer service or personal alike. And if you are aware of the following reasons emotion plays such a critical role in CX success, you’ll be more likely to steer the experience in a positive direction. Positive emotions create brand loyalty Brand loyalty is all about emotion. It’s what keeps customers coming back and telling their friends about your business. It creates a sense of friendship they may feel with other brands. And in order for your customers to feel loyal to your brand, they need a few key elements. For one thing, they need a sense of familiarity. You can develop familiarity by making your brand or company personal and approachable. Your customers should feel welcomed into your place of business like a good friend or part of the family. And this feeling should resonate across any channel they use to connect, including phone, chat, or in-person visits. Brand loyalty also means showing your customers gratitude. And this usually comes in the form of giving them more than they expect. Free gifts, discounts, extra services, or even birthday cards go a long way toward showing your loyal customers you appreciate them. Most importantly, a sense of belonging helps foster loyalty. If your customers feel they have a stake in what you’re creating, they’re more likely to engage positively. In the same way you breed familiarity, you should consistently make them feel like family by including them in every way you can. Emotions create culture Culture is one of those abstract terms we equate with how a company makes us feel. But what it really encompasses is the behaviors and beliefs that determine how employees relate to each other and their customers. Take Google, for example. Google’s employees work inside a building called the Googleplex. And stepping inside this structure feels more like going to a playground than to work. Their employees enjoy free meals, free haircuts, nap pods, swimming pools, gyms, video games, and on-site medical care. All these perks may seem to only benefit the employees. But imagine how well they can interact with customers when they work for a company they love. Their own brand loyalty is relayed to their customers. And by extension, Google’s customers feel appreciated and respected. Emotions drive profit Many companies have spent valuable resources studying customer behavior. And time and time again, they come up with the same conclusion. “Emotional motivators drive consumer behavior.” For example, customers say they are inspired by a sense of well-being. In other words, they enjoy the feeling that they are achieving their goals without stress or conflict. Customers also say they are motivated by feeling that they stand out in the crowd. If your company’s CX can make them feel special, you’re already a step ahead of your competition. These same customers feel inspired by security. They want to feel that your brand will offer them some form of this. This can be as simple as directing them to the right department each time they call, which can be achieved with a dependable automatic call distributor (acd) system. Emotions are such an important part of CX because they determine how a customer relates to your company. Even one bad experience can turn away not just one customer, but everyone they have contact with. This is why it’s so important to ensure your company offers a personalized and thoughtful experience to each of your customers.

So youve missed out on a graduate scheme what next University of Manchester Careers Blog

So youve missed out on a graduate scheme what next University of Manchester Careers Blog Guest post by Humanities Careers Consultant, Delia Goodwin. First things first- this is not the end of the world as you know it! After all the time you spent thinking about applying, deciding who to apply to, slaving over the application forms and possibly getting as far as interviews or assessment centres, it can be a big disappointment if you think you had your heart set on a particular company or scheme and you’ve not made it. This can be a real knock to your confidence, especially if you have friends and fellow students who have got through. However frustrating (and annoying) this is, try to see it as another challenge to overcome rather than being tempted to lick your wounds for too long. I’ve met countless graduates over the years who haven’t got onto the graduate schemes of their choice but have gone on to do other things they’ve really enjoyed. Some decided to travel for a while (remember that after graduation is a great time to do this- you may never get the chance again!), some have gone onto further study and others found great graduate jobs that just aren’t badged as a “scheme”. Recently I’ve been at a few events where graduates have spoken very openly and positively about the fact that they were in fact glad that the path they’d taken was a different one to the one they had originally hoped for. Ever seen the film “Sliding Doors”?! So what can you do to re-group and bounce back? What might be helpful is to think about the feedback you received, good and bad, and think about this for next time you have an interview (which you inevitably will at some point). Maybe you didn’t have quite enough experience, work or other, which you could draw on in the assessment process. In which case, go and get some more! Or maybe it was the reflective part of the questioning that threw you off course- it can be hard to articulate your thoughts in a pressurised situation, but the more interviews you go to, the better your chances of improving with practice, and above all convincing the recruiter of your suitability. You might be stuck for ideas about what you can do instead, but fear not. Graduate schemes actually represent quite a small percentage of the options that graduates go into (approximately 10-12% depending on what data you look at), so the majority of graduates in reality don’t go into a graduate scheme. Look at the figures for Manchester: 93.2% go straight into employment or further study, and again, those on graduate schemes form just a small proportion of that. So hopefully this will give you some reassurance that there are lots of other options out there. Plus- you don’t have to rule yourself out completely of your dream scheme- some graduates re-apply the following year and are more successful second time round. Still, if you decide that a graduate scheme isn’t for you, then at the Careers Service we can give you some advice about your next steps and where you can look, so don’t hesitate to call in and see us for a chat or book an appointment with a careers consultant. And remember this in the words of the poet Robert Frost: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and Iâ€" I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference..” All Positive thinking

Find the Best LinkedIn Profile and Executive Resume Writer For You, Part 1 - Executive Career Brandâ„¢

Find the Best Profile and Executive Resume Writer For You, Part 1

50 (countem) book reviews - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

50 (countem) book reviews - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Im now up to 50 (countem) book reviews on the site. I promised myself Id make it before my holiday and I have. I even saved my favourite book (Cryptonomicon) for review number 50. See ya in september! Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

Donating Used Stationery For Resume Writing

Donating Used Stationery For Resume WritingNot many people think about donating unused stationery to charities when they collect their scrap. While it may seem a little strange to donate an entire box of mail, a lot of companies have a large collection of plastic mailboxes that would be perfect for charity. Why not check out a charitable organization and see if they will accept your plastic mailboxes and also help you get your business back on track. There are many charities that require nothing from you except a donation in order to be accepted, but the cost for the materials is minimal compared to how much time you can save by giving money to a charity instead of paying for stationery for resume writing.In today's economy, more job opportunities are being eliminated and many people are being laid off. This means that your resume writing should reflect this. Since so many people are having a difficult time finding employment, people who write resumes for positions are quickly becomi ng obsolete. With a minimum of job searches, the ability to build a resume is difficult because there are no jobs available. Your resume is never going to be seen by a company because there are no positions for you to apply for.Instead of wasting time applying for hundreds of jobs, why not give your resume writing a chance by focusing on your work experience instead? When you donate your unused stationery for resume writing, you are actually giving a good opportunity to someone else that needs a resume but doesn't know where to start. Since there is a very limited supply of recycled paper, why not donate your stationery to charities and offer them a helping hand.If you haven't written a resume for quite some time, you may want to consider taking an online course that will help you start to build your work experience. In fact, many universities now offer these courses so that students who need some assistance getting back on track can find one that can help them. Many companies are n ow offering job placement and help to those who need it, but many of the older people do not know where to go for help.If you have never written a resume before, then you might not even know where to begin. If you have the space in your house, you can write your resume on it, but you can also send them an email and explain what you need. For some companies, you can even set up an appointment with them and let them know that you are interested in getting some help. By donating your unused stationery for resume writing, you are allowing those that need your stationery to get the help that they need but don't necessarily have the time or money to do.If you are just looking for an alternative for scrap materials, then you may want to consider donating your stationery to charity. There are a variety of charities that use stationery to get people back on track, but the money that you could save by donating to these charities could actually make a difference in your life. There are thousan ds of people that need help and just don't know where to turn for help, so donating your old paper can be a great way to help others.People can help with both sales and free use. Many charities have limited supplies, so if you donate, you could actually help them have more supplies. You can also use the materials for job search help with resumes. Not only will you be able to offer the stationery to charity, but you will also be able to use it to provide benefit to those in need.A new school year means new students and people are always in need of help finding jobs. While you can spend countless hours on your resume, don't forget about the other people that are having a difficult time finding a job. Donating your used stationery for resume writing could be just the thing to help someone.