Stuck in a Career Rut 5 Steps to Get Out of It

Stuck in a Career Rut 5 Steps to Get Out of It Do you wake up every morning dreading the commute to work? Do you count the seconds until your lunch break? Are you jealous of friends who are happy with their jobs? Do you ever wonder what life would be like in a parallel universe? Yes? Then the chances are, you’re stuck in a career rut. Years ago at university, I took on a part time job as a shop assistant for a well-known British fashion label. On my first day I was introduced to the team, and learnt that my floor manager was looking for another job. “I’ve been here for 3 years” he said “I only wanted to be here for a summer, I have a degree in Graphic Design”. He was pretty bitter about it. When I left a year later, he was still there and as far as I’m aware, still is. Career ruts are like quicksand, easy to slide into, difficult to get out of. Whether you started a job and subsequently got swept away with the tide, or stagnated in what used to be in your dream position don’t despair, theres a light at the end of the tunnel. Even if you hate your job, the good news is that the fact that you’ve already got one will work to your advantage. It’s a sad fact of life, but recruiters are more attracted to the employed than the unemployed. The bad news is that finding the job you were destined to do is going to involve a bit of legwork. As the saying goes though, hard work pays off and the cliché is no more relevant than it terms of your career. So lets get started. Lesson #1 Figure out why you hate your job: Is it the work or the dress code? The commute or the unreasonable deadlines? The uncomfortable office chair or your manager? Identifying exactly why youre in a career rut will help you find out what you’d be better off doing. A friend of mine, for example, had an awesome job as a city architect. Her bugbear, however, was the fact that she had to travel an hour to get to work every day, from one side of London to the other, and back again. After a year of slogging it, she gave in and found a similar position closer to home. It wasn’t as well paid, but she gained an extra 2 hours a day. Worth it? She thinks so. The issue here wasn’t the work itself, and if that’s your case then a career overhaul probably isn’t the best solution. If you don’t feel challenged enough, ask for more responsibility. If you’re conflicting with a colleague, resolve it with a superior. If you hate your job and everything about, it’s time to look for a new one. Lesson #2 Work out your strengths and weaknesses: I used to see a therapist who had spent the majority of his twenties managing a hotel restaurant. He began to notice that as well as running the place, he spent a lot of time listening to his staff and helping them solve their problems and this rapidly became his favourite part of the job. Eventually he quit the restaurant, went back to university and emerged years later as a trained counsellor. Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone quit their jobs and go back to school to train as something new. The point I’m making is that it’s ok to do something different. Try and pinpoint exactly what it is that you do best, and work out what career would be most suited to your strengths. Lesson #3 Do your research: Unless going to work every day is akin to sticking needles in your eyes, it’s ok to take your time to do some research. I’m not implying that you spend your office hours searching job boards, although that’ll have you out of the door quick enough. Simply assign some spare time each day to browsing what’s out there, and if you’re ready for it, applying for positions. Getting a grasp on the job market will help you assess what’s achievable, and what’s not. You’ll get a better idea of the skills you need for certain jobs, or if you don’t have them, what positions you could apply for to get a foot in the door. For example, you work in HR and your dream is to become an interior designer; you love decorating, trawling for furniture at the flea market and there’s a pile of ELLE Decor on your coffee table. Despite having passion, actually making that leap from office to decorator might prove tricky. However, finding a HR job in an interior design firm could be a realistic step in the right direction. Lesson #4: Be prepared: It’s realistic to say that our job market isn’t exactly thriving and the likelihood is, that it’ll take a while to find your dream position. With this in mind, it’s important to stay positive and have confidence that you will achieve your goal. Which you will if you keep at it. Being prepared mentally is half the challenge; the other part is making sure you have a killer CV and an impressive LinkedIn profile. Don’t underestimate the importance of LinkedIn and your other social networks. The chances are, that the companies you apply to will spend more time researching your online presence than reading your CV. So remove any inappropriate tweets and lock down on your Facebook privacy settings pronto. Lesson #5. Don’t be afraid of rejection: Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney and Elvis Presley are all famous examples of people who were rejected early on in their careers. Elvis’s granddad told him to go back to driving a truck, Steve Jobs was notoriously fired from Apple, before rejoining and later becoming CEO. Did it stop them from striving toward their goals? No. Michael Jordan famously stated I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. Ive failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. The bad news is, you will face rejection. The good news is, it will make you stronger and every step you take will bring you closer to your goal. Whether it takes 5 job applications or 50, it’ll all be worth it when you land your dream job, and finally escape that career rut.

Side Hustle Suggestions That Could Help Your Finances

Side Hustle Suggestions That Could Help Your Finances Sometimes in life, plan A doesnt work out quite how we expected. Careers can stall, family responsibilities change, and the job market can get tougher, making our current income unsatisfactory. Luckily, there is a way of improving your finances without getting a second job, and it’s creating a side hustle in addition to your full-time employment to boost your income. Read on to find out more about some suggestions that could help your finances. Watch videos OK so I know it sounds crazy that you could earn money from watching videos but its true you can. There are two ways of doing this. The first is to sign up for online survey sites like Swagbucks that offer payment for amongst other things, watching video playlists that they have put together. Yes, they are going to be mostly adverts or may be on things you wouldnt necessarily choose to watch otherwise. However, it is something that is pretty easy to put on in the background when you are doing the cleaning or even doing the less concentration-heavy tasks on the computer that will earn you some extra income. The second way to make money from watching videos sounds even crazier. It all about signing up to sites like Emotion Miner that pay you to watch videos and click and label whenever you see emotion being expressed. You may ask what possible use could someone have for this? Well, its being put to use for the super high tech purpose of helping artificial intelligence learn to recognize a range of human emotions. Something that means not only are you only getting paid to watch something pretty untaxing, but you are also helping to forward science!   Just remember that you need to go through the induction videos before you can sign up for the long views that will earn you the big bucks. Invest Another way that you can earn some money without having to change your day job is to invest in the stock market.   Taking that little nest egg youve saved and is only earning a pittance and putting it into something returning more can prove a great idea.   Of course, you have heard all the warnings about high-risk and non-guaranteed returns before, and this is something you would do well to be aware of before putting your money out there. However, there are some ways that you can minimize the risk of investing and maximize the income you receive from it. One such strategy is to make sure that you learn the basics of portfolio management before you start making investments. Then you will be better equipped to decide whether to choose a fund manager to control your assets or go it alone with an online investment platform where you are responsible for making all of your own buying and selling decisions. It is also worth remembering   that while you may not see an immediate return, long-term investments are often a more sensible choice. This because they tend to pay back a higher rate of interest than a saving account but have less risk associated with them than something like day trading. Monetize your hobby If you are someone that is lucky enough to have an activity in life that you love to do, you can score a double win by then using that activity to earn extra money. It really can be anything as well, as long as theres someone out there that is willing to pay you to learn what you know, or that will pay for the end product you create. Some of the more common hobbies to monetize include teaching or coaching a sport that you excel at, giving music lessons,  and running art classes. Some less standard and more niche areas that we have seen people successfully monetize include making mods for computer games, creating 3D scenery for animations, and making custom crochet patterns to sell online. Just remember that if you love it, there is probably a significant number of other people that do too. Luckily, the internet can put you in direct contact with these people,  allowing you an easy access route to sell them your products or services. Create a passive income A particularly effective form of side hustle is to create a passive income stream. This is all about coming up with a product once and then being able to sell it over, and over again. The value here is in repeat sales, so you normally will price the product you do make fairly low to encourage this. Potential products that can work very well for this include eBooks and guides, downloadable materials such as planning charts and records sheets, and even video tutorials. Something that you can offer for sale on sites like Craftsy and Udemy, or display on your own website. Just remember that quality here counts, and you can expect a lot of feedback from past users. That means it is worth investing some extra effort and time into the product you are creating, rather than having to deal with complaints and fixes once someone has made their purchase. Freelance during your commute Lastly, if you currently find yourself in the midst of a financial fix, why not consider offering some of your skill on a freelance basis in your spare time? In fact, this can be a fantastic way of earning some additional money and developing skills for your career at the same time. For most people, it is finding the time to do this that can be the biggest problem. For   those that take the bus or train to work, consider using this time to work   each day. Whereas those folks driving, walking, or riding their bike may choose their lunch hour, or set aside an hour or two after work or at the weekend in which to complete their freelance projects. In summary, there are a number of possible side hustles that can be used to get yourself out of a financial fix.   Youre really only limited by your own creativity!  

3 Ways to Ensure Your Photo Works for Your Personal Brand - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

3 Ways to Ensure Your Photo Works for Your Personal Brand - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career At some point when youre developing your personal brand, youre going to want to have professional photos taken so you will be able to show a great-looking photo on your blog or website. By now, Im sure you know things you need to be aware of when you take your business photos. No revealing clothes, natural-looking make-up, wearing something classy instead of this years latest trend all things that will make the photos as versatile for you as possible. Which makes sensequality photos with a professional photographer arent cheap! So you want to get as much value out of them as possible. Over the years though, Ive seen some of my friends and clients follow all of those common-sense rules and still end up with a photo that isnt as useful as they had hoped. To help you avoid that situation, here are three things you probably havent thought about that will make a huge difference in how well your professional portrait will go with your personal brand. 1. Pay attention to the backdrop A couple years ago, I worked with a woman who wanted to incorporate her professional photo into her website. Since thats exactly what she should be doing, I happily agreed to help her. Until I actually saw her photo! It was a great picture of herbut the electric blue Technicolor background clashed so horribly with her brown website that we couldnt use the photo as it was. She eventually had to pay someone to remove the backdrop from her photo so she could put it online. So when you get your photo taken, take that into consideration. A white background is best because its the most versatile.   It blends in with most websites, is used by the most professionals, and makes it easy to remove the background entirely if you need that. If you absolutely have to have a colored background though, go for something neutral. You dont want your backdrop to be a distraction or for it to ruin the look of your website.   And if you have portraits of different people up on your website, make sure that everyone has the same color backdrop! 2. Wear clothes that compliment your brand Its bad enough to have a background that clashes with your website. Its even worse when your clothing does! Once, I worked with a client who wanted to use a photo of her in a blazing orange shirt on her website. It was so vibrant that it was the only thing people saw when they looked at her photo. Her face was completely an afterthought. Plus, the color was one of those polarizing oranges that people either love or hate.   Not goodand not something that can be edited out. When you choose outfits to wear for your professional photo, you need to pick ones that go with your branding materials. When I was doing my photos, I wanted to wear my favorite lilac-colored button down shirt. Until I realized that a soft purple doesnt go with the colors I picked as my brand for my websites. In both cases, the purple would have thrown-off the color scheme and left viewers with a slight sense that something was wrong. I ended up going with yellow and a soft blue-green shirts. Its not the end of the world if you get your picture taken wearing the wrong colors, but it will make your life a lot easier if you think about the color scheme beforehand. When in doubt, wear a color like navy that goes with almost everything and everyone. 3. Make it crop-able Good photos are expensive, so you will probably want to use yours as much as possible. And when you give photos to other websites to use, they often need different dimensions to match the layout of their page. You cant control that, so you will want to make sure that your photo can be cropped down without making you look bad or out of alignment. So, when youre picking photos from the ones youve taken, make sure that you have at least one that can be altered to fit different requirements. It should at least be able to be used as a square and as a vertical rectangle. If its a full or 3/4s body shot, try not to lean too much in one direction or a cropped version will look off-center. And, keep your hand off your face! When youre leaning on your hand, it will either slightly distort your features, or will make you look unnatural. Plus, it totally ruins your ability to crop the photo. It looks really weird to have a zoomed-in close-up of your face with part of your hand randomly jutting into view. Keeping those three things in mind (as well as the common-sense professional photo tips) will help make sure that you will be able to use your photos in as many ways as possible and feel confident that they represent you well. If you have any other tips for people who are getting their photo taken for professional purposes, please share in the comments! Author: Katie Konrath writes about creativity, innovation and “ideas so fresh… they should be slapped!” at www.getFreshMinds.com.

La (Debt-Free) Dolce Vita

La (Debt-Free) Dolce Vita By, Rachel Hansen After reading Nicole’s Credit Card Confessions, I knew I had to chime in. You see, I’m one of those “frugalistas” Target is always, well, targeting. A coupon-toting, ebay-loving, craigslist-furniture-buying cheapskate. And while “cheap” might not have that enticing, where-do-I-sign-up ring to it, I’m here to convince you otherwise. But before I get ahead of myself, perhaps I should explain: I’m in my twenties, gainfully employed, and really behind this idea of living within your means. Nerd alert, I know, but seriously. Managing money is important to me because it allows me to protect and provide for my family and the things we value. Fund your priorities â€" Not your weaknesses Another thing that is important to me is traveling. I went to one of those cushy liberal arts colleges where they encourage students to study abroad. I’ll hold back the gushy travelogue and just pique your interest (and jealousy) by saying that as an undergrad I traveled to eleven European countries. I know. You’re jealous. So is my husband. He spent time overseas as a kid, but the majesty of Europe has always been at least an ocean away. That’s why (cue drum roll) we’re planning a trip to Italy! And I’m not talking about idly dreaming about a far off trip that will occur at some unforeseen (read: indefinitely postponed) time in the future when we have our lives “together” and when the stars and our schedules magically align. This is legit. We leave on Friday. Many people fantasize about lavish, debt-free vacations, but we’re making it happen! I kid you not, each month we sit down with our computers and checkbooks, not just to pay our bills, but to plan out how to spend/save/invest our money for the next month. It’s not particularly sexy, but this diligent grunt work has enabled us to be successful with our savings goals and intentional about where our paychecks go. I know my penny-pinching, brown-bag-lunch-bringing ways are occasionally off-putting. But the discipline is about to pay off. The money doesn’t just trickle away like it used to. And for the last ten months we’ve been growing our Italy fund. I’m not gloating Well, maybe I am, but it’s for a good cause. This is one career girl who would love to inspire some of her peers to dream big about their financial goals. So I bring up Italy with this in mind: for what worthy goal are you currently delaying gratification? You can live vicariously through me if you want, but why not get on board and start saving for your own dreams?

Resume Writing Academy - Building Your Website

Resume Writing Academy - Building Your WebsiteResume & Profile E-Summit is an online program that enables you to learn how to build your own website and easily distribute it in the internet for free. In this program, they have trained more than 2020 people on how to create a unique and effective Internet website that will attract attention of a large number of users.In this process, they provide you with tools such as blogs, forums, RSS feeds, polls, autoresponders, and certain criteria that have been proven to attract an audience. The candidate can post their own message and articles on these platforms. You can use all of these platforms to attract the attention of an audience.This free course is a simple to understand blueprint for making your resume & profile websites successful. Even if you do not want to build your own website, but just want to share your information and speak out to gain an audience, the program will teach you how to use the tools provided in this program to ac hieve this goal. There are many different programs offered by the resume writing academy, but this is the only one that offers you with a free course and tools to promote your website.Resume & Profile E-Summit is a simple tool to use. It does not require any knowledge of HTML or any programming languages. It's also an ideal tool for beginners to use because there are fewer aspects involved in the process that would require them to learn a particular language.The best thing about this program is that you do not need to create a website from scratch. All you need to do is to build a personalized portal to share your knowledge and expertise. After you have completed the first step, the next step would be to create content for your profile.With the benefit of this program, you will not only be able to attract a larger audience to your profile but also gain a bigger audience to promote your business on. This can be done by blogging, creating a blog or forum, and participating in polls. T his will increase your traffic and gain more visibility.Resume & Profile E-Summit is also beneficial to those who need to improve their skills on building a personal website. This program also offers tutorials to help you understand the basic steps in designing a website. Using these tutorials, you will be able to build a successful personal website with just a few clicks.To help you learn how to build a website without spending money, Resume & Profile E-Summit is an ideal tool for all your needs. By using the tutorials and tools provided in this program, you will be able to easily learn how to build a professional-looking website and get your website listed in the top search engines.

Online Degrees Worth it or Not - CareerAlley

Online Degrees Worth it or Not - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. Much like preconceptions about community college education, there is quite a bit of stigma attached to online degrees. Though there may be positive change on the horizon for online degrees, there are still many decrying their woes having spent ample money and time achieving one only to find it is not well received when they are seeking employment. Some employers reject online degrees outright while many others look for at least the stamp of a reputable institution. At the same time, the rate of students enrolling in online courses is significantly higher than the rate increase of those enrolling on campus. Certainly, there is a rising demand for quality education online that is respected by employers and students alike. However, the cost and resulting value in online degrees is still murky water to be treaded carefully. The Bad News The allure of online study needs little explaining. Employment is a necessity. Life also tends to sweep us all into obligations outside our career. For many, on-campus education is not practical. Unfortunately, there are online universities that take advantage of this imposition for their own profit (and online degrees do not often come cheap). As such, the convenience of adapting a curriculum into your schedule is not the main criteria upon which one should judge an online program under their consideration however hard online universities may drive that selling point. When considering an online program, look closely into the following: General Reputation a school may be well known for online degrees, but ones that are also attended at a campus tend to have a better reputation. However, even online schools that have a campus have been rated poorly by students and employers. Make sure to do your research and get a feel for public opinion of the institution. Ideally, contact prospective employers to get their opinion. If you have an idea of what employers you would like to work for, you can get an idea of how your degree will look to them before you plunge into a program. Accreditation according to the Department of Education, accreditation is a priority concern when looking into online education. However, even universities that have touted their regional accreditation in the past have recently come under intense scrutiny with accreditors after creating an abundance of defaulted student loans in the US in recent years. These credentials have to be especially scrutinized by prospective students. Easier or too easy? If students report breezing through their studies to get their degree, the school is probably not providing degrees of much value. Also, if enrollment is an open invitation with money being the only requirement, you may simply be buying yourself a check in the has a degree box. Really, the only thing that should be easier about an online degree is being able to learn and complete course work from wherever you are. Unfortunately, you cant learn everything for most jobs from a book, so a proper online course should implement some kind of involvement in your community in addition to fluid communication with class peers and professors. The Good News The US recession of recent years created a demand for higher education in which for-profit schools reaped heaps of government money while providing education of questionable value with negligible return on investment for students. If anything good has come out of this, it is recognition of a much more positive opportunity to be profitable by providing online education that is as good as (or better than) its on-campus counterpart. According to research conducted by Babson, Over 6.1 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2010 term, an increase of 560,000 students over the previous year. With this, the growth rate of online enrollment was at a steady 10% next to the 2% of overall higher education enrollment and online learning is part of the long term strategy of the majority of higher learning institutions. The benefit of this shifting focus may have yet to become clear, but forward thinking companies are already driving to lead the way. 2U is one such company that has been partnering with quality on-campus schools to develop online education platforms that fully utilize social technology while helping to place students in supplemental learning that requires being physically present. One of the first schools partnered with 2U reported that over 90% of its online students had acquired jobs in their field or were continuing into a graduate degree within nine months of graduation. Mobile and social technologies have been revolutionary in recent years, transforming not only the way we keep in touch with friends and family, but also the way we learn and do business. It stands to reason that higher education will have a more prominent foothold online in the coming years than it has in the past. As online offerings improve in options and quality over the years, we can also hope they will be more moderately priced while still providing the quality education we need. For now, the high cost of online degrees next to slowly changing stigma means that finding the right balance will require sorting through a lot of chaff. Hank Barton is a second generation trucker and writer in pursuit of education in his cab when he is not behind the wheel. He writes for E-Gears, an online CDL Test authority that specializes in a variety of study guides. This is a Guest post. If you would like to submit a guest post to CareerAlley, please follow these guest post guidelines. Visit me on Facebook

The Wrong Way to Solicit a Job via Social Media

The Wrong Way to Solicit a Job via Social Media The Wrong Way to Solicit a Job via Social Media LinkedIn is a great networking tool, but there are right ways and wrong ways to use it. Randy (not his real name) showed how NOT to use LinkedIn to find a job when he sent this message two weeks ago to hundreds of his LinkedIn connections, including me. How many flaws can you find in Randy’s approach? I elected to communicate my immediate need homogenously to anyone who might be the source of my next opportunity. My objective is still a position in which my unique combination of business-building skills plugs in directly and supports those of the CEO of a $5 to $20 million company. My priority, though, is to secure a position in the next two weeks that will enable me to bring my family from Dallas during the second week of June. This overrides the objective! My need is urgent. Please let me know what I can do to make this happen. We can talk on the phone or meet if that will help direct thoughts on which of the people you know could benefit from someone adept in problem solving, dispute resolution and creative solutions. I appreciate your considering this very important request. Flaw Number 1: While I applaud Randy’s effort to let his network know he is looking for a job, this is desperate and thoughtless. No recipient wants to be the source of my next opportunity. They want to be talked to like a person. If I were standing in front of Randy, he might have started with something like, I’m sorry for the impersonal approach, but I could really use your help. As a rule, I dont recommend these broadcasts, and the odds of this one generating a meaningful result are slim to none. Flaw Number 2: Randy’s job search goal is squishy, selfish, and unrealistic. You have to have a great goal statement that you can articulate to anybody, including friends, recruiters and your network. Randy’s goal is missing the single most important ingredient: WHAT FUNCTION? Does Randy want to be a CEO or an executive administrative assistant? Or is he a sales manager or an operations manager? Another flaw in the goal: His use of my unique combination of business-building skills… This is not about you, Randy! His goal should state what he can do for somebody else. And I have no idea what business-building skills are! Finally, supporting the CEO of a $5 to $20 million company. So we, the recipients, dont know what type of function or what industry, but we have a very narrow definition of the size of Randy’s target company. He would be better off saying small- to medium-sized business. Flaw Number 3: The close of Randy’s mission-critical request is very weak. Again, we hear a squishy description of someone adept in problem solving, dispute resolution and creative solutions. Thats not helpful to me. Even worse, the ending has no call to action or next step for the recipient. Please let me know what I can do to make this happen. Make what happen? I get it. Making this type of request is awkward, humbling, and Randy is clearly desperate. However, imagine if Randy ended his blast with: Please reply to this letter with any one of the following so I can get in touch with you: Do you know of any open positions or any hiring managers I should contact now? Do you have any favorite sources of open positions you can send me to? (groups, associations, etc.) Would you like me to contact you to provide any additional information? Millions of employed and unemployed people are networking for their next career move. Dont be Randy. What are some of your job search challenges? Ask them here so we can help you!