How to Recover from a Car Crash Job Interview

How to Recover from a Car Crash Job Interview Had a bit of a car crash job interview? At this point you probably wish  the world would swallow you up whole, but dont fret, its happened to the best of us. After all, were only human and unfortunately things dont always go exactly to plan. You may feel like youve blown your chances of landing the job, but this doesnt necessarily have to be the case. It is possible to rectify faults after an interview, but its important for you to weigh up whether the error is notable enough to be acknowledged or if its best to just move on. In the heat of the moment its tempting to do some urgent damage reversal, but dont rush into things in a fluster. Take the time to cool down, identify what went wrong and then make a plan about how you can counteract the mistakes made. Here are a few tips for turning a bad job interview around. 1) Dont overthink things. Reliving every little detail of the interview over and over again in your mind isnt going to change anything, so save yourself the torment! Youll only make yourself panic more and chances are that some of the things youre worrying about werent even picked up by the interviewer. The exception to this is if you missed out some crucial information when answering a question and feel that it will make a significant difference to  your chances of being hired. In this case there may be something you can do about it. 2) Look at the full picture. Sure you may feel that there were isolated moments  of the job interview which could have gone better, but what was the overall tone? If as a whole you feel that it actually went well, then it probably isnt worth confronting any mistakes you made and it may even help you to look at the negatives in a more positive light. Its easy to be self-critical under stress, but the areas you excelled in will probably outweigh your downfalls, so dont beat yourself up. 3) Send a follow up email. Resist the urge to apologise for any mistakes you feel you made in your interview, as this will only flag up errors that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. Its always recommended to send a thank you email after attending a job interview, so why not kill two birds with one stone? If theres anything that you feel strongly about sharing with your interviewer, such as relevant  experience or an overlooked responsibility in a previous role, now is your chance to slip it into conversation. Before acting, its important for you to assess whether the issue is  really worth addressing. Is it a make or break situation? If so, you can bring it up as a bit of an endnote to your thank you email; just keep it short. The best way to spin it is  that it wasnt a mistake and rather an after thought that you felt would be relevant to add after reflecting on your conversation. 4) Learn from your mistakes. Use all of your mistakes as a learning curve. Sometimes these blunders have to occur so that you know what to work on in future, so turn those negatives into positives! If nerves were your downfall, perhaps there are some techniques you can try  to calm yourself down ahead of an interview in the future. Whereas if it was a lack of preparation that caused the problem, make sure you do all the required research ahead of your next one! A friend or family member may even be willing to help you practice. Now theres an idea! 5) Keep calm and carry on. A lot of the time we dont recognise our mistakes until we reflect back at an interview once its over, however if you  notice that youve slipped up while youre still in there, its essential that you dont get yourself in a flap!  Remain poised and focus on answering the next question to the best of your ability. If theres something you forgot to mention, wait until later on to bring it up as you may be able to fit it in with another question being asked. You still have the chance to turn things around, even if you think youve let yourself down earlier on, so dont give up trying. The same goes for your job search in general. Just because this particular interview didnt go as smoothly as hoped, it doesnt mean youre not going to nail the next one! Put it behind you and move on.  The more interviews you go for, the more confident youll become.

Your Networking Etiquette Can Tank Your Brand - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Your Networking Etiquette Can Tank Your Brand - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Building your personal brand has become an important factor in promoting yourself to hiring managers, employers, and potential clients. One facet of building your brand is networking and building your connections. Networking online or offline, following proper etiquette or netiquette can help build upon your reputation and character. Is this really you? As you worked hard to network online and build your online brand, you should work harder to build it offline. Your personality online should be the same away from the computer screen. Introduce yourself with a firm handshake. Perfect your 30-second elevator pitch, and make it creative and memorable. Have business cards with information to tie in both platforms to connect with you online and offline. Met professionals at an event? Re-connect with them online so they won’t forget who you are later on. You wore that? Dress in the appropriate attire for the event. If you are not sure what the dress code is for a networking event, over-dress for the occasion. It would be upsetting to have your personal brand take a dive because all they could remember is what you wore to an event. Two-way relationship Remember, networking goes both ways. Know that it is not always about your overall agenda. Provide assistance to your future connection. Stay in contact with your connections. Send e-mails or call them to chat. Sharing articles and information can help build your reputation as a trustworthy expert or as a person your contacts can go to for information. Be truthful in the information you share. Those you are connecting with will know if your intentions are not for real and end up putting a dent to your personal brand. Remember, what you say and what you do in a room full of professionals or on Twitter can have a lasting affect on your image. How you present yourself to future connections can help or hinder with a future job lead or a new client. How else can networking help or hinder your personal brand? About the Author: Heather R. Huhman is a career expert and founder president of Come Recommended, a career and workplace education and consulting firm specializing in young professionals. She is also the author of #ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), national entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.

Acing Job Interviews By Reducing Nervousness And Stress -

Acing Job Interviews By Reducing Nervousness And Stress - You’re just out of college and you’ve been applying to every job under the sun. Your student loans aren’t going to pay themselves off! Then it happens. Your most-wanted jobs call you back; they want an interview! You are ecstatic. This is your chance to land your dream job! You go to your interview and are sitting in the lobby waiting for your turn. Then the worry steps in. You have to ace this interview if you want to beat the people with more experience in the field. You start to sweat, and your thoughts race. What are you going to do? What are you going to say? Don’t let this happen to you. Stop the worry by being prepared for job interviews. Making A Good First Impression How you dress and your demeanor when you first arrive can make or break their first impressions of you. Dress professionally. It’s always good to dress at least one step up from what you’d be wearing every day on the job you’re interviewing for. Arrive a few minutes early. You will worry either way, that’s often just part of the interview process, but pretend that you are confident and you’ll gain more confidence. Part of this is knowing how to stop sweating when you are nervous. If you are stress sweating, it isn’t going to look good for your interview. Control stress sweat by using good antiperspirants, managing your diet, exercising regularly, and finally relaxing as much as possible. Some of these you’ll be able to do the day of, like wearing a good antiperspirant. Others you can only do if you have a few weeks to prepare, like exercising regularly. So you’ll have to tailor how you are going to combat stress sweat to your time table and maybe pick up some of the long term habits for next time. If you’ve followed all those and are still worried about stress sweat, you can wear strategic clothing to make it less noticeable. Dress in light breathable fabrics with good airflow. This will help you sweat less. Also, avoid colors that show sweat more. These include light blues, grays, and bright colors. Tips To Mentally Prepare The best way to avoid nervousness and the consequences such as nervous or stress sweating is to prepare beforehand. Review common interview questions, and make a list of questions you’d like to ask them. This way your brain won’t go on autopilot and blurt out something that doesn’t show you in a good light. Be early to the interview, and silence your cell phone. There’s nothing that ruins an interview like a loud ringtone! Bring an extra copy of your resume and maybe some other important documents, but leave everything extra at home. It will give you a more professional and organized look. Confidence is key. One good way to fake confidence if it doesn’t come naturally to you is to pretend you already have the job. This takes a lot of the stress of the interview out of it. Another way to look confident is body language. Maintain good eye contact without staring. Be careful not to drum your fingers or fidget. This will make you look nervous and agitated; neither of which you want to have in an interview. Give a good firm handshake. Don’t forget to smile! Remember to always be yourself during interviews. Never lie as it will get you into trouble down the road. If you can’t get the job being yourself, it probably isn’t a good fit for you anyway. You don’t have to pretend to be perfect. In fact, that can actually hurt your chances. If you seem too good to be true, the interviewer may assume you are lying or faking. Be proud of yourself, which will again boost confidence, but don’t portray anything that isn’t you. Be Ready For Anything During An Interview By preparing, you will find yourself confident and ready for anything that comes your way. Don’t be the nervous person who forfeits a good job. While being a little nervous is ok, if it causes lots of sweating or a bad interview, you may want to rethink your pre-interview routine. Get out there, be confident, and showcase yourself to get the job!

How Visual Content Can Improve Readership of Your Brands Emails - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

How Visual Content Can Improve Readership of Your Brands Emails - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career An email marketing strategy is still one of the best ways your personal brand can connect with your audience in a meaningful way. The type of communication is important for increased sales and return customers. You can grab their attention through strong visuals that are easy to read on mobile. There are several ways that the right images and video can work for your brand, which should be well suited for your message and brand image. Visual content can enhance your emails whether you include a photo or video that tells a story, illustrates important points, or urges readers to take action. If you are losing subscribers or have lower open rates then adding a mix to your content could help boost your leads and sales. Here are several ways your email marketing messages can be more appealing: Keep it simple  Use small sizes on your photos and videos with less detail in order to avoid crowding out your text. Keep in mind that your readers may be viewing your messages on mobile devices, and want to get to your email as quickly as possible. Too many visual graphics can slow the loading speed down and cost you in lead generation. Text needs to be the priority Include relevant visuals to accompany your written email. It’s best practice to place your images above the fold in the preview pane. This helps to draw the readers attention to your message and call to action.  Use a branded color scheme Harmonize your templates with the colors you’re already using on your other online platforms. Choose images that stick with the theme you already have in place that your audience can easily recognize. Include alt tags Keep in mind that some recipients’ email services won’t load images immediately if at all. What they will see is the description instead of the picture. For example, use a tag that reads, ‘learn how to master social media now’ rather than one that reads, ‘image of eBook cover.’ Although there’s a trend towards clean, simple email designs, visuals could be a great compliment to help your brand stand out. It’s always important to send out test messages before your real broadcast to make sure the formatting looks good. If the formatting or image is done wrong, this can lead to losing your existing subscribers as well as new ones.

Build Leadership Presence in Business With These 4 Social Skills

Build Leadership Presence in Business With These 4 Social Skills Are you an ambitious professional with high aspirations for your career?Maybe you’re a young professional who is driven to one day reach a leadership position. Or perhaps you’re a mid-level manager who wants to be noticed for the next round of promotions.Regardless of the position you’re currently in or where you aspire to be, if you’re a professional and you have high ambition, you need to develop a unique set of skills that all true leaders possess; and that is social skills for business.evalSocial skills for business, or business etiquette skills, are critical in today’s fiercely competitive job market. They make you stand out from the crowd. They help you interact with coworkers and clients more efficiently and effectively. They also help you communicate your potential and true worth to decision-makers in your company or industry.Teaching social skills to professionals is my job. In this article, I want to share with you four specific social skills that you can immediat ely implement to attract the career and business success you seek.1. Dress for the Job You Want, Not the Job You HaveevalWhen you dress for the job you want, and not the job you have, you move yourself out of the limits of your current position and send the message to others that you’re ready and determined to get a higher position in the company. How do you dress for the job you want? Look at what people in higher positions wear and emulate their style. If they wear formal business suits to work, do the same. If they wear jeans with a blazer, add that outfit to your executive wardrobe.2. Find Similiarities to Create LikeabilityFinding similarities with somebody is one of the most powerful ways to get somebody to “like” you. It stems from the principle that “people like people who are like them”, and it can greatly impact, influence and grow your business relationships. How do you find similarities with others? That’s where you need to start conversations. Ask questions about that person’s background, hobbies and interests. Point out a similarity when you find one. If you don’t have a similarity with that person, maybe somebody you know does. That connection will still play in your favour for creating a strong business relationship.3. Become the Conversation LeaderMany people mistakenly believe that being the conversation leader means you do all the talking. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Being the conversation leader means you ask all the questions and encourage the other person to do all the talking. Why? Because when you ask all the questions, you can steer the conversation to where you want it to go. The next time you’re at a networking event or client meeting, make an effort to ask more questions for greater control of the conversation.4. Establish Your Credibility on LinkedInCredibility is a crucial part of leadership presence. It’s often the reason why people will hire you and promote you. The first place you should estab lish credibility is on your LinkedIn profile. Why? Because this is often the first place people will look to find out more about you. First, you need to make sure your education and experience sections are fully completed, and don’t forget to mention how you added value to that company. Second, ask for recommendations from current and past coworkers and clients. People and businesses are often confronted by the same problems. When you show you’ve successfully helped somebody else with a particular problem, it will boost your credibility and communicate your competence to the world.Anybody can become a leader. However, you need to focus on building a skill set that your peers don’t have. More often than not, the skill set that will set you apart is your level of social skill in business.evalYou can get social skills training by Kara in her new video course, Business Etiquette 101: Social Skills for Professional Success.

How You Can Use The Internet To Help Accelerate Your Business

How You Can Use The Internet To Help Accelerate Your Business In this day and age, if you want to get yourself seen or heard, the internet is the fastest and most convenient way of doing exactly that. The same principal works for your business too, as the internet can take your enterprise from a small time business to a global phenomenon in a matter of hours. That’s why, if you haven’t already, it’s time to take to the world wide web with your business so that you can begin accelerating your growth more than ever. Here are a few tips and tricks to get yourself noticed and expand your company more than you could have ever imagined. Utilise social media With approximately 39 million people now on social media, it’s no wonder that businesses are signing themselves up to grab a piece of the action. As you may already be aware, social media is one of the fastest ways of making something go viral and putting it in the spotlight, so use these techniques on your social media accounts to help accelerate your business: Make sure that you’re signed up to every social media platform. While some are indeed, more popular than others, don’t fool yourself into thinking that the less popular platforms won’t have any effect. Posting regularly on social media is key to getting yourself noticed. Due to the millions of social media posts that are created each day, it’s easy for your one post per day to become lost in the abyss of other uploads. The more often you post, the more you will get yourself noticed. However, it’s important to establish the difference between posting regularly and simply spamming, as this could lead to you losing followers rather than gaining them. Give people a reason to follow you on you social media accounts. Unless you’re a big company like KFC, it’s unlikely that people will follow you just for the sake of it. Running competitions and giveaways using your social media accounts will have people clicking, liking, sharing and more importantly, following. Take time to learn the algorithms of each platform. Some of them have different peak times for posting and different ways of making your content go further. However, one thing that most platforms have in common is the good old hashtag. Use relevant and popular hashtags to ensure that your posts are seen. Taking care of social media accounts is very time consuming, and it’s understandable that you have many other important things to be getting on with. However, you can now amalgamate all of your posts into one handy place and use a social media scheduler to free up your time but also make sure you’re still posting regularly. As your business grows bigger, it might be a good idea to hire a social media manager. Vamp up your marketing knowledge and techniques Using the internet to market your business is another very useful way of promoting your business. However, it’s important to understand that the trends in business are forever changing, and so will the techniques you need to use for marketing. Luckily, there’s a fantastic way of putting yourself ahead of the game, so check out Walsh Universitys MBA in Marketing Online       to see if this kind of training and knowledge could benefit the way you market your business online. A few things to remember with marketing are: You need to stand out from the crowd, so think outside of the box. Bright and colourful is always going to be favoured over dull colours. A jingle really can help sell your business. Don’t be scared to break the boundaries of ‘normal’. Create a useful website Having a website for your business whether you’re going to be using it to sell products or not is essential. Think about when you want to find out more information about a business or product you’re interested in investing in you look for their website right? Not having a website in this day and age could lose you a lot of valuable customers, so check out these tips on how to create a useful website that will reflect on your business: Make sure that on pretty much every page of your website your audience is able to see a way of getting in contact with you. Many businesses make the mistake of not having it displayed clearly enough, and this can lead to a loss of custom. Your website needs to be easy to navigate around. A website that’s hard to find what you came to it for will be clicked off just as quickly as it was found. Speaking of finding websites, make sure that your SEO is on point so that your website has a higher chance of ranking higher in search engine results. Making your website attractive should also be a main priority. It’s a sad but true fact that pretty much everything these days is judged by how aesthetically pleasing it is. Much alike social media posts, you need to make sure that the content you’re uploading is useful to your target audience. So, for example, if you’re a company selling DIY materials, posts and information on DIY will benefit your audience and keep them coming back for more. As you can see, using the internet to accelerate your business isn’t as hard as you might have thought. Pop these tips and tricks into play and you’ll soon notice the growth in your business!

Questions to ask before you take the job -

Questions to ask before you take the job - Job seekers who have been looking for new opportunities for months, or even years, are unlikely to spend a lot of time and effort evaluating a new offer before signing on the dotted line. If youve been searching for for a long time, you may not have the luxury to turn down an offer. But if you can afford to pass up an opportunity to wait for something that could be better, here are seven questions you should answer before you accept a new position: 1. How healthy are the organizations finances? Especially if youve been laid off recently, the last thing that you want to do is jump into a situation where another layoff could be in the near future. Make sure you research the organization and review what the press has to say before you jump to join. 2. Is the location feasible, and may it change? Can you really handle a 90-minute commute in the morning? Is there a possibility that the company may transfer you to a different location in the near future, and how would that affect your work-life balance? 3. Can you function in the organizations structure and culture? If youre a very independent worker and this organization functions as a series of small teams, you could be miserable and ready to look for another job in a few short months. Will you have a private office or be expected to function in an open office plan? Dont underestimate the benefits of working in a company that provides a good fit for your work style. 4. What do you know about your boss? Studies show that people who may otherwise prefer to stay in their jobs plan to leave instead because they cannot continue to work for their bosses. While its not always possible to get an intimate picture of what its like working for your future boss, be sure to do the best job possible getting to know him or her before accepting the position. Hopefully, you took a good look around when interviewing for the position and noticed if people seemed generally happy or miserable at work. Use all the data at your disposal to decide if the position is a good fit. 5. Can you fulfill the companys expectations? Does the company expect you to turn around a failing department in just a few months? Are you expected to wave a non-existent magic wand and solve a decades worth of problems? Make sure you arent overpromising and setting up a situation where you may under-deliver. 6. What can you expect from the company? What benefits do they offer, including vacation, health insurance and other extras, such as flexible hours and on-site child care? When do you become eligible to join pension plans or to take advantage of professional development opportunities? When are you eligible for a raise or a promotion? Some companies have archaic rules that could prevent you from applying for an internal transfer until a certain waiting period, even if you are well qualified. Make sure you fully understand what the organization offers you before you accept the position. 7. How does this role help you advance your career? At some point, its important to think about yourself and your own career goals. Too many people go from job to job without stopping to think about how the roles fit into an overall plan. Are you overqualified for the job? Make a list of the ways this job will contribute to your personal career goals. Will it offer new experiences or give you the chance to add something to your career portfolio? Will it put you in touch with influential people you can impress who may offer you new opportunities you want down the road? Try to avoid taking a job that doesnt give you anything but a paycheck and a place to go each day.