To look for jobs or to have jobs look for us!

How to find a good job

To look for jobs or to have jobs look for us!

Here I am sitting at starbucks reading my book. I look around me from time to time to give my eyes a bit of rest. I notice the table beside me are two men sitting and talking. It is a job interview. One person wearing formal and the other casual outfit. The person in casual outfit asking questions from his phone that is in front of him and the other person talking and trying to convince he is a great fit for this job. The interviewer look blankly at him as he has no idea what he is talking about and just takes notes.

Looks like after all he is not the decision maker; he is just there to pass him on the first level of the interview, share his notes with the higher levels to see if he qualifies to talk to them for the next level. How do I know these? Well, we all have applied to jobs and have don interviews and know all the body gestures, looks, words, and …

While looking at them it comes to my mind that what era are we living in? I know it used to be this way that people go to school, and if they are lucky they’ll learn things they would apply at work and then look for jobs to go to and get hired and make their boss happy every day so they can keep the job. But does it have to be like this today too?

Technology has brought so many jobs and titles with it. Soft skills are more important than ever. Kids know how to make money online. I mean with all these skills and with this great opportunity that is available to almost everyone to show themselves online and be present in front of many people is there a need to feel we need to be hired and prove ourselves so hard to people that don’t even have one tenth of our skills?

I believe it is time that jobs look for people. They wear formal, get prepared for weeks to be able to answer questions and make sure the pay they want to offer would be satisfying enough to get yes from the professional skilled person in front of them.

If you are a skilled person and if you feel you have something to say, you think different and your time worth a lot, then be present. Web has given this opportunity to everyone to talk every day, to show their talents, to be present and share their knowledge. Use this opportunity.

And businesses should look online to find talents. Not through resumes and job postings. That time has gone. Why are you posting jobs and collecting resumes when you have the chance and opportunity to find people who are posting their thoughts, their culture, and their talent online. You can see work samples, you can see their videos and learn a lot about them.

World is changing. And it is out of our control. And adapting to change is not easy. But if you are looking to have talented professionals in your team you should look online to find them instead of going through 100s of resumes that most of them don’t even match the job title.

And if you are looking for a place to know your worth you should become professionally present.

 

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How to do almost anything with ADKAR

ADKAR - project management

The hardest things to achieve are tasks that require us to change. The only reason we are not doing those tasks is because it is hard to change. We might try for a week to adopt the new habits but then again next week we are where we have been before.

 

Change is hard and it is hard for everyone. You are not alone. Change can be on a personal level, or in an organization.

 

If we learn the secret that can help us make the change permanent, then we can easily do things that require the change.

 

There are some achievements that require us to repeat certain things on a daily basis. If you are an Artist you know that in order to be able to draw well you have to draw every day. Muscle memory shapes when you repeat things over and over. And in order to improve we need to do things over and over again to the point that you don’t think any more and you just do it.

 

Have you ever decided to lose weight? Well, I have. When I started losing weight I had no idea there is a technique we can use to change and make the change permanent. There was a great passion in me that pushed me every day. And that passion showed me the way. And now that I look at the ADKAR technique I see that I did the same things that is suggested in this technique.

 

Passion and willingness is the number one thing you can have in anything you do to guide and help you move in the right direction and learn from your mistakes. I highly recommend if you want to do something find the reason you want to achieve it and then make that your passion.

 

What is ADKAR?

 

ADKAR is created by Prosci founder Jeff Hiatt. It is a goal-oriented change management model to guide individual and organizational change.

 

The acronym is the five essential steps that we must take to make a successful change in our habits. These five steps are: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement

 

Awareness: Awareness is about your goal. Why you want to make that change? What is your goal/outcome of the change? Answering this question helps you a lot in staying motivated throughout the process. There will come times that you just want to give up and go back to what you used to do. But repeating your goal gives you the motivation to go forward with the new changes.

 

For me, I had pictured myself in the clothes I have always wanted to wear. I pictured myself in the body I wanted to have and reminded myself of my goal almost every day.

 

If the change you want to make is in a company and for employees, you definitely need to let every employee know the goal and the reason you want to make the changes. It is very important to have a clear reason behind every change.

 

Desire: Desire is what makes you want to make the change. It is very important to have desire for the change. You should be motivated; awareness without motivation would not make you successful on this path.

 

Everyone knows it is healthy to do exercises on a daily basis. But how many are motivated enough to devote some time of their day going to the gym?

 

If you are thinking on a company level, you have to make employees part of the change and make them motivated to participate in the change. Awareness can help them become motivated.

 

Knowledge: you definitely need training and coaching. For me and my weight loss, it was reading books and articles in this regard. I read as much as I could. Learning about the process and how things work helps you be motivated along the way. You don’t get disappointed when you don’t see results. You know it is part of the process. It also helps you to only do things that would actually work instead of wasting your time and energy on trial and errors.

 

In a company, employees must be educated and learn as much as possible. They need to be trained so they would feel more comfortable and confident in making the change.

 

Ability: Now that you have learned and gained the required knowledge, can you actually do it? Having the knowledge about something and actually doing it are two different things. You might need to make some adjustment to your daily tasks and commitments to be able to do the new habits.

 

I had to make time for gym. I had to sleep early at nights so I could go to the gym in the morning. I didn’t stay long in parties so I could go home and sleep early. I crossed over all fast foods and had to put time for cooking at home.

 

In a company level, you have to give employees some time and help them to make sure they can actually do what they have learned to do.

 

Reinforcement: You constantly need to monitor and make sure you don’t give up. I had to imagine myself reaching my goal to make myself motivated to do hard exercises every day. I was going on instagram and checked girls who were in the same process as me to get motivated and continue. I also thought of giving myself a reward after completing 16 weeks of workout without cheating.

 

In a company level, you need to monitor employees to make sure they are implementing the new changes. Knowing the reason behind the change, being involved in the process, having the right knowledge and training, and ability to do the new tasks are all great to make someone motivated enough to repeat the change until they become comfortable doing it every day. But until they become comfortable they need monitoring, help, and encouragement (rewards).

 

ADKAR model is an effective way to give you a guideline on how you can make a change in either your personal life or in an organizational level. Going through the steps you can make all the changes necessary to achieve your goals.

 

ADKAR => Awareness – Desire – Knowledge – Ability – Reinforcement

 

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Is a wrong decision, often better than no decision at all?

decision making

According to the HBR magazine yes it is. “High-Preforming CEOs understand that a wrong decision is often better than no decision at all. ” Study of executives show that 6% received low score because they made wrong decisions. And 94% received low scores because they made too little or too late decisions.

Jerry Bowe, CEO of the private-label manufacturer Vi-Jo is an example of a decisive CEO who doesn’t wait for a perfect time to make his decisions. According to the article in HBR he makes his decisions when he has 65% certainty about the answer. When making decisions he asks these two questions from himself: “What is the impact if I get it wrong? And, how much will it hold other things up if I don’t move on this?”

This is a great approach for everyone who is involved in decision making in some sorts. You can also use this approach for making decisions in your life and finally start on tasks that are waiting so long to be done just because you are waiting for a perfect time to make the decision about them.

Of course waiting to receive information that can make your decision making more precise is valuable as well. But you need to know how much you can wait or how harmful making or not making a decision can be according to your situation. But Learning from decisive CEOs once you have some certainty, it is much better to make a decision to make things move on rather than keep everything wait.

There are definitely many decisions in my in my life that I have to make and I am not 100% certain about the answers.  Now that I am thinking, there are decisions that are 5 or 7 years old and I didn’t do anything about them just because I wasn’t 100% sure about what would happen after. I think it is time to move and make the decisions and act like a decisive CEO who prefers to move, make things go, learn from mistakes, and make things happen.

Here are 4 behaviors of successful leaders according t the HBR:

1) Deciding with Speed and Conviction

The highest IQ executives sometimes struggle the most with decisiveness. “While the quality of their decisions is often good, because of their pursuit of the perfect answer, they can make too long to make choices or set clear priorities – and their teams pay a high price. These smart but slow decision makers become bottlenecks”

2) Engage for impact

Successful CEOs know that they should address stakeholders need. They know how to engage people and get team and stakeholders to buy-in.

3) Adopting Proactively

CEOs are consistently facing different situations. They have to excel at adopting. In fact those that adopt are 6.7 times more likely to succeed.

4) Delivering Reliably

Successful CEOs consistently follow through on their commitments. “A key practice here is setting realistic expectations up front.”

 

 

 

 

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Go, Make Something Happen

Seth Goding says it right “ Go, Make Something Happen”

Opportunities are endless. You just need to start it. But keep few things in mind. Don’t lose your full time job or whatever you are doing now to cover your financial needs for the sake of this new journey. Start this on the side. One because you don’t want to be financially dependent on it on the first few months. As soon as you see yourself financially dependent on it you may do things that you may not have wanted to do initially and those things might change your path against your favor. Also if you don’t see the result you expected or if you see yourself in debt and in need of money you’ll give it up.

Do the new thing with pure love. This suppose to be what you would enjoy to do your whole life. So make sure you are putting your heart and love in it. Once the grounds are set, shape it. Shape it so that people would see exactly what you are seeing in it. Then inject values in it. You want to pass value to your consumer through your new endeavor. Then get help. Help for business and marketing matters. Because these things matter. Now you are at the stage to expect receiving. Receiving a bit of what you expected to receive. Give it sometime. 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, until you see you are making a bit more than what you are making on consistent bases. Congrats, you just made something happen. Now make sure to continue being awesome, and rock with it.

If you are among those who have made something happen and are now living on that, make sure to leave a comment and tell us how you are feeling, how was your journey and leave a link for us to get to know you and your business a bit more.

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Who Will Win? You or Them?

winner

Who Will Win? You or Them?

Digital world has made it possible to see results right away. You can see what your competitors are doing. Where they post links. What ads they use. How many visits they get. And just compare these data with yours.

You can see and compare what successful businesses are doing different. You can run websites on different SEO tools to get so many data on how they are performing. It is easier than ever to learn about successful corporations and apply what they do to your business. 

SEO and Digital Marketing gives you the chance to see results right away. Not only you get information about your competitors, [in which you can use them to your advantage], you can also get results on your performance and your audience’s reactions to your campaigns and ideas almost right away.

Here are free tools you can use today to learn about your online performance as well as your competitors’. Knowledge is power. Learn as much as you can about your competitors, their performance, and their online actions so you can act more strategically with targeting your audience.

Similar Web: https://www.similarweb.com

You can see number of visits, ranks, bounce rate, visit’s duration, countries most visited, referral links, and many more helpful data.

Quick Sprout: https://www.quicksprout.com/

Moz Local – check if the business is Local: https://moz.com/local/search

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Emotional brand building

“We humans are emotional creatures. We make our purchase decisions based on how products promise to make us feel.” That’s why great brands always try to make emotional connection with their consumers. This has to come even before showing off the features of the products or services.

Basically brands have to answer the “why” question. Why people have to buy my product? Why should it be important to them? And the answer should always be emotionally connected to what the consumer feels.

A great example is Nike’s “Just do it” campaign. It is one great example that shows how emotional connection triumphs over selling products. Through this campaign Nike didn’t talk about it’s products and runnig shoes. It allowed the athletes to talk about their achievements and rewards through their own emotional words without ever mentioning Nike. People could instantly connect with the campaign. They were so inspired by the stories that were sending Nike notes on how this campaign has changed their life’s bad habits. People get “Just Do It” tattoos! Through this campaign Nike could show that the brand is not about selling products. It is about celebrating customers, changing lives, and inspiring people to be at their best.

Another great example of this is Volvo’s ad. The story in the ad is strong and makes the right emotional connection with their audience. The ad is about  Volvo’s safety feature. Throughout the ad you follow story of a girl with a future she is picturing and telling her mom. At the end Volvo’s safety feature is the only reason she survives from a car crash. As a viewer you picture Volvo as a car that gives you your dream future by saving lives.

Stories and storytelling is a great way for brands to make emotional connection with their audience. Emotional connections make long term relationship with consumers and connections that last.

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