Start making more money this year
EUGENE, OR -- Job security might be out, but freelance, contract, and temporary work is in, which makes it easier than ever to moonlight as a graphic designer while you spend your days as a public relations rep. Slimmer staffs mean companies often need the extra help, and new websites offer free tools matching potential employers with workers. And earning extra money beyond your steady paycheck, if you're lucky enough to have one, can provide a big boost to your financial security.
Here are seven ways to make more money off the new economy in 2011: Launch a brand; Start a blog; Sell your skills; Sell an innovative product or service; Talk and teach with a speaking gig; Design t-shirts; Sell other people's products through affiliate programs.
Whether your expertise lies in social networking, editing, or web development, several new websites can help you find potential clients willing to pay you for your work. Elance.com, Odesk.com, and Guru.com make it easy to advertise your skills and find work, which you can do from the comfort of your home. To get started, explore the websites to see what might be a good fit. You can also stick with a more traditional approach and use craigslist.org or Flexjobs.com. The bottom line: The new economy offers plenty of creative ways to earn extra money; to find the best fit for you, consider your skills, lifestyle, and ambitions.
How to find freelance & contract jobs safely, easily!
SAN DIEGO, CA -- There's only so much time in the day, as the saying goes. If you are one of the millions of people burning the candle at both ends by trying to earn a living and raise a family, you know it can be hard to find a work-life balance. It's a common challenge because historically it has been very difficult to find jobs that are both legitimate and offer some flexibility.
Thankfully, this is changing, and online job site FlexJobs.com is at the forefront. FlexJobs brings legitimate, flexible, freelance and telecommuting jobs -- as well as the work-life, economic, and environmental benefits they offer -- to the people who want them. Every single job on their website has been hand-screened by their staff as both legitimate AND having some level of telecommuting option.
So if finding a job that allows you to work-at-home or have a flexible schedule sounds good to you, check out FlexJobs ASAP! They provide their service for a low-cost membership fee, which is worth it in our opinion because they remove ALL of the scams, ads, and too-good-to-be-true business opportunities and just show you great, qualified job leads. Oh, and they offer a full money-back-guarantee if you're not satisfied for any reason - which helps too. Find freelance and contract jobs safely, easily and quickly at: FlexJobs today.
Use the side door to enter the tough job market
CHICAGO, IL -- Some hiring managers have gone back to the basics of hiring who they know and who they trust based on network referrals. In today's tough job market, often you need to be seen and heard on the inside of organizations in order to get noticed and to be taken seriously. Since the hidden job market represents up to 90% of positions that are never posted, you can use these strategies to get yourself into organizations and to become recognizable as a valuable hire.
1) The Informational Interview is a tried and true technique that works. By requesting information from a person in an organization, preferably someone with whom you have some common ground, you are non-threatening. By using the informational interview technique you'll have an opportunity to learn about the organization, and to describe your strengths and potential value-add. Treat it as a real interview -- be well prepared and at your professional best. If an opportunity does become available and you made a good impression, your resume will rise to the top of the pile.
2 ) With a job shadow opportunity you can walk proudly into an organization because you have been invited to see the inner workings and experience the firm culture. This can be a follow-up step to the informational interview. A job shadow experience will get you exposure and illustrate that you are a savvy career seeker. 3) Volunteer your way into the company. This is a great way to research career fields you have no experience with. If you are pursuing a career transition, or simply have not landed your dream position, being an unpaid professional can allow you see things from the inside to help you find the right match.
Here's how to easily automate your job search
SAN JOSE, CA -- If you conduct online searches a lot, you should consider automating your process. An automated job search can greatly reduce the time you spend browsing and searching for a relevant job, thus leaving you more time to focus on your core activities. Here are some ways by which you can automate your job search.
Subscribe to emailed Job Alerts from Job Boards: Simply conduct a job search on any given job board, apply your filters, then save it for your email alerts. Subscribe to Google Alerts: Set up a simple Google alert instructing the Google search engine to send you an email every time your "keyword" (ie. Need + Administrative Assistant) is mentioned on the web. You may opt to receive the alerts as soon as they appear, daily or weekly. Subscribe to RSS Feeds: Subscribing to RSS feeds can often be better than email alerts. You get the updates real-time, and all your alerts are conveniently organized in your RSS reader or feed in your web browser.
Use Job Search Aggregators: The trouble with traditional job boards is that you never know which one to use as new ones keep popping up daily. The good news is that there are now search job engines that aggregate job postings from other sites. Just like your typical search engines, these sites compile jobs matching the skills and location that you enter. The results that come up will be pulled from all directions and will be with you in an instant. The main reason for you to use an aggregator is that you will search through ALL jobs in one go. The other reason is that you save lots of time! Instead of hopping through 10 job boards per day, just use your a search aggregator and rest assured that you have all bases covered.
Search all online jobs from one place - and easily apply!
LOS ANGELES, CA -- With a new job search aggregator service called MyJobHunter, you can search all top career sites at once & apply to all matching jobs with one click. Just enter your search criteria, review the matching jobs and select the ones you want. Then, click a single button and you'll instantly apply to all selected jobs with your resume and cover letter (without having to log into each job site separately).
Click another button and you can 'automate' the whole process! MyJobHunter can remember what you searched for, search for it again each day, and AUTOMATICALLY APPLY FOR YOU to new jobs matching your criteria. Review jobs in advance or put searching & applying on auto-pilot. The choice is yours.
You'll also get an application history report that makes follow-up a breeze! It shows the jobs you were applied to, full job descriptions, employer contact info, and application dates. You can even add personal notes to each job! This service is proven to reduce hours of job searching and resume submitting to just minutes. Simply upload your resume, enter your job search criteria and let MyJobHunter take it from there. Find part-time or full-time work today by visiting MyJobHunter.com.
Job searching for a smarter job hunt
DENVER, CO -- The big job boards are the natural first port of call for many job seekers. They are great for putting your finger on the job market pulse and to get an idea of what is out there. While job search engines save you lots of time and help organize your search efforts, you should also be aware that they will bring some duplicates. If a role is posted on three different sites (company, job board and recruiter), you are likely to get all three results from your search. Simply be aware of this and do not apply for the same job three times as it will not do you any favors.
For obvious reasons, the aggregated sites will render long lists of results from your search terms. You will want to be as specific as possible when searching to narrow down the findings. The key is to enter not only your job skills, but sub-skills. You should also enter your town and actual zip code to begin with to keep results more specific. You may want to consider broadening your search to other areas if your search results are not bringing back many results. Try a few of these job search aggregators and work out which one works best for you.
Save time and search over 2 million jobs nationwide
NEW YORK, NY -- If you've recently been searching online for a job, you may have realized there are literally thousands of different websites listing potentially interesting jobs. Yet finding and searching thousands of different job boards, classified sites and company websites is next to impossible.
TopUSAJobs makes your job search a bit simpler. They post over 2 million jobs nationwide from several different websites so you can easily search for them on one site. This site is a search engine, somewhat comparable to Google, Yahoo or Bing. However, it only displays job listings in the search results.
In seconds you can search through millions of jobs from all the best job sites, classified sites, employer and recruiter websites -- and instantly see all the best jobs for you -- all in one place. Instead of searching on a bunch of different sites, simply use this job search engine to find which job boards, staffing agencies and/or direct companies actually have the jobs you are most interested in applying for. The best part is there's no charge for this service, no signing up required and you can try it right now at TopUSAJobs.com.
Can you be an entrepreneur in your spare time?
NEW YORK, NY -- Five o'clock used to mean happy hour, soccer practice, or a few hours in front of the tube. But for an increasing number of career professionals, powering down the computer at the office now means powering up the laptop at home. With new technologies that make it cheaper to start your own business and a widespread need to earn additional income during the recession, more professionals are taking on paying projects in addition to their day jobs.
Whether you're selling a service or promoting a product or driving traffic to a website, juggling a business on the side is the new nine-to-five. "There is this brand new phenomenon," says Paul Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit organization that focuses on entrepreneurship. "People are being entrepreneurs almost in their spare time, which you could never do before, at least never do in a way that was profitable."
The nation's business-creation rate hit a 15-year peak in 2009-2010. But that increase is made up mostly of "jobless entrepreneurs," or those who launched companies because they faced unemployment during the recession. He categorizes the side-gig entrepreneur differently, calling it a "fractional entrepreneurship" model. These are often people who are highly successful in their own right, with normal jobs who, on the side, are entrepreneurs. Fractional entrepreneurship took off around 2007 and these entrepreneurs are a bright spot in a struggling economy. Unfortunately the U.S. economic data is woeful at capturing their success and adding it into the monthly labor report figures. Kedrosky says, "We capture people losing jobs in an orthodox way, but we don't capture them gaining jobs in an unorthodox way."
Career Tools Highlighted in This Issue:
- FlexJobs.com Find freelance and contract jobs safely, easily and quickly
- MyJobHunter - Job Search Tool Search all job sites at once. Apply to matching jobs with 1-click.
- TopUSAJobs.com Save time and search over 2 million jobs nationwide
