Boxwood Technology Launches Virtual Career Fair Solution

Boxwood Technology Launches Virtual Career Fair Solution Boxwood Technology, a provider of career center and career-related services to the association community, has announced the launch of Virtual Career Fair, a cost-effective way of bringing employers and job-seekers together in a confidential setting. Employers gain the benefit of screening high quality candidates while associations benefit by delivering another valuable member service, with no staff involvement or additional costs. With ur Virtual Career Fair product, job seekers are able to explore employers, view and apply for positions even chat with recruiters in one convenient location, Christine Smith, President, Boxwood Technology, said. This nicely complements our current Career Fair solution that helps associations better manage their onsite career fairs. Boxwood is now a one-stop shop for all of an associations onsite and online c areer fair needs.The Boxwood Virtual Career Fair solution includes all of the marketing and sales to employers and job-seekers, billing and collections for the job postings, and registration fee management for the employers to attend the event.Boxwood helps the association every step of the way. And, the Virtual Career Fair comes integrated with our Career Center product enabling associations to cross-promote each service increasing site traffic and revenue opportunities at the same time. Lastly, Virtual Career Fairs can be a great complement to existing onsite career fairs in addition to being valuable standalone events for associations, too, continued Smith.

When to Quit Your Job to Start a Business

When to Quit Your Job to Start a BusinessWhen to Quit Your Job to Start a BusinessWe live in an interesting time in the United States. mora than 50 million Americans work as freelancers and the average person changes jobs ten to fifteen times during a career. Knowing when to quit your job to abflug a business, like so many others already, is important. Quitting your job to departure a business is not easy and there are many things to consider.When you are financially stableLets be frank. Starting a business with no finances makes succeeding much harder. The time to quit your job and start your own company is NOT when you have no means of support.A means of support can be anything from a spouse, family member, or an investor. They help you foot the financial (and mental) bill for your new business unless you have the money to start the business on your own.True, quitting your job to start a business with little or no money isa possibility. Anyone can technically start a company, but t he ability to support your business until it profits is another story. The chances of your business succeeding depend largely on how you prepare ahead of time.When you have a plan for the day-to-dayKnowing when to quit your job to start a business means knowing what you will be doing on day one at your own company. It is nearly impossible to go into business without a plan.Yes, those plans may change over and over again as you work to optimize your business model. Before quitting your job to start a business, you have to know what your work regimen will be.Starting your own company means having a new found freedom to do as one wishes. This freedom can often lead people to become lazy thinkers or fall too much in love with all the new free time. Make sure you at least have a schedule for what you will be working on during that first day and the weeks to follow.When you have done the researchMost companies exist by offering a solution to a problem that people are willing to pay for. U sing Find My Profession as an example, we knew from the start that applying for jobs online is a hassle no one seems to have time for (problem), so we offered a solution.Research showed no other companies existed like this and networking efforts proved it was a service that was in high demand. The research showed Find My Profession made sense to job seekers.Now, if you do not do the research you will never truly know when to quit your job and start your own business. You will be doing something risky Taking a guess that it is time to quit your job.When you are fed up with working for someone elseThis is perhaps the most powerful way to know when it is time to quit your job to start a business. The reality is todays business world offers tools to help people be more independent in their careers.Ultimately, if you know you can do it yourself and the thought of others telling you what to do really bothers you, it may be time to quit your job and start a business. If for some reason you r efforts fail, and they often will, you will either go back to work and save money or keep starting new businesses. Either way, you will feel liberated knowing you are calling your own shots in your own company.Knowing when to quit your job to start a business is also about discovering yourself. You discover that you were meant to lead or do things your own way. And you also discover the time to quit your job was a very long time ago

Why Lying on Your Resume Is a Bad Idea

Why Lying on Your Resume Is a Bad IdeaWhy Lying on Your Resume Is a Bad IdeaWhat should you do when you find a job announcement that looks almost perfect for you? Almost. You have all the required skills except for one. Should you move on or should you apply anyway? If you do decide to go for it, should you ignore the fact that you are missing that skill? Should you lie and say you have it? Choose one of the first two options because lying on your resume is never a good idea. Here are four reasons you should never lie, exaggerate or say anything that isnt true on your resume. One Lie Will Lead to More Lets say you ignore this advice and go ahead and include on your resume this skill you dont have. Youve reasoned that its just one thing, and it may elend even be that important to the employer. Then your resume gets through the initial screening, and you get calledin for a job interview, and- surprise- the interviewer asks you about that one skill. The one that you didnt think woul d be that important. So, you find yourself in a quandary. You cant very well say, Oops. My bad. About that skill you said you require? I song on my resume and I dont really have it. So you dont say anything, which in effect is another lie, but on the interview this time. How far will this go? What happens if you get the job and you have to continue to pretend to have this skill even though you dont? Not only did you lie to a potential babo, but you have also now lied to your current one. You Will Always Worry About Getting Caught Once you tell a lie, there is always a risk that someone will discover the truth. Ask yourself if you are willing to live continually in fear of that happening. Will it be during the job interview? You may not be able to answer questions about the skill in question. Will your references rat you out when the prospective employer contacts them? You cannot and should not ask them to lie for you. If you make it through the application process, will you be unable to perform your job because you dont have all the skills necessary? Is that when everyone will know you lied? Regardless of how or when you get caught, it will be embarrassing.Imagine your boss calling you into his office, looking you in the eye and saying, in a grave voice, I know. Wouldnt you want to be swallowed up by a big hole in the floor? You Will Probably Lose Your Job After your boss finds out you lied on your resume and then continued to lie through the weeks, months or even years of your tenure there, chances are quite good he will fire you. It may not matter if you otherwise did an excellent job. He will have lost trust in you. Even if you had a wonderful working relationship before, this probably destroyed it. Now you will not only have to begin your job search all over again, but you will also have toexplain to prospective employers why your boss fired you. You can always omit the job from your resume, but if you were there for a while, you will have to ex plain the gap in your employment. Theres a financial impact to consider too. You may not be able to collect unemployment insurance since you were fired for violating your employers rules. It Will Damage Your Reputation You will not only have to deal with the financial ramifications of being unemployed and the process of looking for a new job, but you will also have to worry about how much your deception harmed your professional reputation. Could it affect your ability to get hired? It will dependon whether you plan to stay in the same industry. If you work in one where everyone knows everyone (and that is the case in many industries), you could face some rough times ahead. Your bad reputation may follow you around for a while.

Can We Do More to Help New Grads Find Work

Can We Do More to Help New Grads Find Work Can We Do More to Help New Grads Find Work We can partially blame the economy for this, but we can also chalk some of it up to the mistakes that young job seekers make. Some recent grads don’t apply to enough jobs: 44 percent of them only apply to five jobs at a time. Many grads also fail to take advantage of the Web: only 26 percent of them try to find jobs through social media sites. (Stats via  Forbes.) But regardless of where we lay the blame, we need a solution. My question is: can we employers, recruiters, HR professionals, and all the other players in  the hiring apparatus do more to help new graduates find work? The Association of American Colleges Universities (AACU) seems to think so and I agree. How Employers Fail Recent Grads In the Spring of 2013, Debra Humphreys, vice president of the office of communications, policy, and public engagement at AACU, made a bold statement: Employers may need to alter their recruiting and hiring practices in order to discover talent wherever it can be found in colleges and universities. While AACU respects the opinions of the business and nonprofit leaders who have participated in our surveys, we do not presume that their recruiting and hiring practices are fully aligned with what is needed for the long-term success of either their employees or their businesses or organizations. As an example of employers poor hiring practices, Humphreys cites the ATS, calling it a destructive technology  and lamenting the way  it works against the effort to find the best educated and most talented graduates.   Humphreys is not alone in condemning the use of ATSs: these facile systems turn the complex process of recruiting into  a game of superficial buzzwords, and many  in the hiring industry agree with Humphreys. Liz Ryan of the Human Workplace drove the point home when she wrote: Applicant tracking systems don’t inquire about what you learned at a job, what you left in your wake, or what you view as your greatest accomplishment. Our selection mechanism is stuck in 1940, interested only in the tasks and duties and tools you used, as though those things out of context could have any significance to your next boss at all. Aside from ATSs that filter candidates based on insubstantial criteria, the hiring world has another problem: the so-called skills gap. In the past, Ive argued that employers perpetuate the very skills gap they bemoan  by fetishizing passive candidates and failing to  invest in training programs that would help entry-level employees and recent graduates learn necessary,  job-specific skills. I stand by these assertions: very little has changed since the March in which I  made that assessment. Building Partnerships between Educators and Employers Again: I dont want to spend too much time playing the blame game. Regardless of who is at fault, the fact  still  remains: recent grads face a bleak employment situation, and we need to change that for the good of our nation as a whole. Unfortunately, companies can be notoriously selfish, prone to dismiss any call to action that does not serve their bottom line. So lets put the problem of un- and underemployment for recent grads in business-friendly terms: employers can either choose to  sit back and wait for the skills gap to solve itself, or they can take an active role in solving it. To help improve the employment outlook for recent grads   and solve the skills gap, in a way the AACU has started the LEAP Employer-Educator Compact.  This initiative brings together college and university presidents and business and nonprofit leaders for the purpose of working together to provide more opportunities for internships and experiential learning, which better prepare recent grads for the job market.   This is how we solve both the skills gap and the employment crisis for young workers: partnerships between educators and employers, where both parties take active roles in cultivating the future workforce. As Humphreys says, Forward-thinking business and nonprofit leaders know that their future success- and the future success of our nation- depends on whether our colleges and universities graduate liberally educated professionals who are prepared to fuel innovation and effective problem solving in fast-paced global environments. Employers, recruiters, HR pros, and all the rest, I leave you with a question:  would you like to join the forward-thinkers, or would you rather voluntarily cling to the (bleak) past?

Quick Guide to Networking and Job Searching on LinkedIn - FlexJobs

Quick Guide to Networking and Job Searching on LinkedIn - FlexJobs Quick Guide to Networking and Job Searching on LinkedIn 48 has a LinkedIn group and of course, we’d highly recommend you join to help you with job searching on LinkedIn and professional networking! But getting started on LinkedIn can be overwhelming. It’s not like Facebook where you connect with your friends, upload some pictures, and have a fun time. Because its very nature is professional, using LinkedIn requires a bit more time (though still not a lot) and effort to ensure that you put your best professional self forward. Here are six tips for using LinkedIn for your job search. Create a spiffy profile. It’s a job search fact: 91 percent of employers screen job applicants online. And when they Google your name, do you know what the top search result is? If you have a LinkedIn profile, it’s almost certainly that. And for job seekers, that can be MUCH better than some of the other things that might show up about you, like your Facebook page. When you start to build your profile, take time to fill out each category on your profile as succinctly and directly as possible. LinkedIn isn’t a place for long narratives. You want to showcase your experience, skills, interests, awards, and other pertinent information in an easy-to-skim way. Your profile’s motto should be, “Short, sweet, and memorable.” Connect with people you know. The most obvious use for LinkedIn is for professional networking. Much easier than a Rolodex, it helps you keep in touch with all of your professional contacts as they move throughout their careers. College classmates, friends, family, current and past coworkers and managers all of these people are great places to start your LinkedIn connections. Once you get started, it’s almost difficult to stop connecting with people because LinkedIn keeps suggesting more people you might know. The key is that you should REALLY know these people. If you’ve only had a quick interaction with them and it’s been five years since you last spoke, it might not be a great idea to connect with them. LinkedIn actually allows users to flag inappropriate connection requests, so be careful! Join groups. Whether it’s your old college alma mater’s LinkedIn Group, or a job search support group like ’ LinkedIn Group, joining groups helps you connect with people you don’t already know. There are also groups for professional industry associations, chambers of commerce, and even alumni groups for big companies you may have worked for. If you’re not sure what group to join, check out Groups You May Like, where LinkedIn suggests groups based on your profile and other information. Search for companies. LinkedIn is a great way to search for the companies you’re interested in applying to, and then seeing how you might already be connected to those companies. You can search for and find companies, then follow them for updates. When you’re reading a company’s profile, don’t forget to look at informative boxes like “How You’re Connected” to see how your professional network leads you to the company and “Check out insightful statistics about this company’s employees” to gain a better understanding of where you fit with the company in terms of education and experience. You can compare your company search results on LinkedIn with the Guide to the Best Companies for Flexible Jobs to see if the companies offer flexible work options. Give recommendations and ask for them. If you’re connected to people with whom you currently or used to work, reach out and write a nice recommendation for them, then ask if they would do the same for you. Recommendations are a nice way for employers to see why you’re a good employee and coworker. When you’re looking at a connection’s profile, you’ll see the option to “Recommend” them underneath each of their Experience and Education entries. If you’re nervous about asking for recommendations, read Networking and Asking for Online Recommendations for tips. Stay in touch. Set a goal for yourself that every month or week, you’ll send a quick message to 5-10 of your LinkedIn connections just saying hello and wishing them well. In your note, inquire about their careers and lives, and mention that you’d like to stay in touch. The whole point of LinkedIn is to connect people, but what good is it if you don’t maintain those connections? If you do nothing else on this list, you should create a LinkedIn profile for yourself so that employers searching for you online will find something nice to read. And if nothing else, filling out your profile might help you to clarify your career goals and focus your job search for better results. Are you already job searching on  LinkedIn or other social media? Feel free to copy and paste a link to your public LinkedIn profile below for other job seekers and employers to see! Include a line about you and your career with your submission. Want to learn about other ways to use social media for your job search? How to Use Twitter in Your Job Search How to Make Facebook Private During a Job Search 4 Ways to use Social Media in a Job Search 4 Ways to Use Pinterest for Job Search and Work Inspiration

How to Become a Creative Director

How to Become a Creative Director How to Become a Creative Director It’s considered the pinnacle of a creative person’s career. Whether you start out as a junior copywriter, junior art director, or junior designer, the ultimate pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is the creative director role. But it’s never handed to anyone on a silver platter, and it takes an incredible amount of hard work, time, and dedication to fill those shoes. Heres how you get there. The Early Years When you start our in your advertising career, most likely in the creative department (although some do it from very different avenues), you will be very green. You won’t know the ropes yet, and you’ll rely on almost everyone in the department to help you get the lay of the land. If you’re a junior copywriter, you’ll be mentored by copywriters and associate creative directors with a copywriting background. The same goes for art director and designer roles. And although you may have some contact with the creative director, it will be limited in the beginning. You may get to show your ideas to the creative director, although don’t be surprised if your peers do this for the first few months (or even years). This is not a slight on you, but more a process that saves time. Creative directors in large ad agencies have to oversee work on dozens of accounts and will rely on their direct reports to present overarching campaigns. This lack of contact with the creative director can often lead to a mixture of fear and anxiety when it comes time to present your work. With few exceptions (if youre reading this, you know who you are), creative directors came up through the ranks and remember what it was like to be a junior. They want you to do well, and although they may be blunt, they are always on your side. If you do well, the agency does well.   Moving up the Ladder As the years go by, you will gain more experience and require less supervision. You’ll lose the “junior” title. Whereas once, nine out of ten ideas would go in the trash, you will start getting most of your campaigns through the first few cuts. You’ll need less help with writing and art directing. You’ll attend shoots on your own. And you’ll be empowered to make decisions. As you gain more success, and no doubt move from agency to agency, you will build your confidence and start to develop your own personal creative style. Just as Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy had differing approaches, so too will you. Or you should if you want to carve your own creative path. As you work in different agencies, and on different accounts, you will be given multiple opportunities to hone your skills and your approach to the work. While it’s important to ensure that your own personal style doesn’t overshadow the brand or product, you can bring something of yourself to every job. Just take a look at the work of Tom Carty and Walter Campbell for an example of that. They always made the client shine, but they did it in a way that was very much their own style. Getting Close to the Top After proving yourself for a few more years, you will eventually move into a senior role. It would be senior art director, senior copywriter, or senior designer. The level of experience needed to fill these roles varies vastly from country to country, and state to state. A senior in the Mid-West may only need for or five years under his or her belt. In the big cities, like New York, London or Paris, you may need double that amount of experience under your belt. You will be given people to supervise and will take over whole projects and accounts. It’s not a great leap from this role to that of Associate Creative Director or ACD. You will still specialize in your chosen field, but will now have a whole team of people working under you. The Creative Director will trust you to make major decisions on these accounts, often without his or her approval. You will go to more and more client meetings and will have a fair amount of “non-creative” work to do. It is the point at which many creative people prefer to stay. It gives them the right balance of management duties and creative freedom. But after this point, things get very different. Finally: You’re a Creative Director “The buck stops here” comes with the job title. Now, in your role as creative director, you have to put aside a lot of your time that was spent being creative. It’s your job to direct others, not to push the work out yourself. That vision you have been honing for years will become very important to you. The years of experience dealing with people, interpreting briefs and presenting to clients will take over. You are now steering the ship, and the junior creatives will look up to you as the person they most want to be. It has all come full circle. It’s taken thousands and thousands of hours of hard work and dedication to get to this point. It’s up to you what kind of CD you want to be, but remember where you came from, and be better than the CDs you trained under. It may not seem possible, but if you strive to be better than the best, the industry will thrive.

The Best Live Shot for TV News Reporters

The Best Live Shot for TV News Reporters The Best Live Shot for TV News Reporters All TV news reporters remember their first live shot. Its both thrilling and terrifying to know that what youre saying is being transmitted instantly into thousands of homes. Because there are no do-overs, you need to master the live shot in order to improve your resume tape or DVD and win television media awards. These top 5 live shot tips for TV news reporters will help you deliver quality content, whether youre covering a school board meeting or a natural weather disaster. Plan How You Want to Use Your Live Shot A live shot is a tool for reporting, just like a TV interview, graphics, or other parts of a news package. While you cant control everything the moment you go live, you can decide how going live will improve your story. Many live shots happen outside of buildings, such as city hall. While you wont have the incredible visuals of a fire behind you, you can reinforce the timely aspect of your report by saying, Im live in front of city hall, where inside these doors just moments ago, the city council voted to cut 1,000 employees from the payroll. You are telling the audience you are on the scene, covering the latest developments as they happen. Surprisingly, in breaking news situations, its actually easier to plan your live shot. If youre in a tornado-ravaged neighborhood, you can do a show-and-tell report by pointing out what you see and interviewing those affected by the disaster. Another common live shot scenario is covering a news conference or speech. Youll want to start by introducing the event, then letting it unfold, then delivering a wrap-up. However, these situations can be tricky because you need fill-in material. If your live shot of a 5:00 p.m. news conference doesnt start until 5:10 p.m. youll need to fill ten minutes of air time. Why Talking in an Outline Format Works   Organizing what you want to say is critical in delivering a smooth live shot. Beginners often try to memorize every word, but thats dangerous. If you forget one tiny piece of information youll stumble through your report, or worse, freeze on-air. Its better to talk in an outline format. Think about the bullet points you want to hit, as if you were giving a PowerPoint presentation. You can visualize the bullet points or go a step further and visualize what you want to say in pictures. For the city hall live shot, they would picture the building, the city council sitting at a large table, and then the 1,000 people with pink slips. If you Stumble in Your Live Shot, Keep Going We all stumble occasionally when we talk with friends or family, so its inevitable youll stumble occasionally while talking during a live shot. When this happens, recovery is key. To prepare for the inevitable, think about what you do when you stumble in real life. Youll likely say the word correctly, then continue speaking. No big deal, and more importantly, no one remembers your brief verbal hiccup. The goal is to achieve a natural recovery in your live shot. The more you make your live shot look natural, even when you stumble, the more professional youll appear. When Appropriate, Move Around Youve seen reporters for the broadcast networks deliver countless live shots in front of the White House. They all stand still speaking into their microphone. Its easy to assume thats the model to follow for any live shot because thats how the big shots do it. However, what works in D.C. doesnt necessarily work at a state fair, protest march, or natural disaster. As a reporter, you have the option to move around while reporting live. Remember, viewers want you to show them something, so dont disappoint them. Take viewers somewhere they cant go on their own. Walk around the state fair and point out the attractions. Use the camera at the protest march to show just how many people are there. Demonstrate the depth of a natural disaster by showing a residents home filled with water. Its easier than you think. Once you add movement to your live shot, the words will flow because you will be talking about what youre seeing.   A moving live shot requires practice with your videographer because they need to know you have enough cable for their camera and your microphone. You and your videographer need to rehearse your movements in advance to ensure you stay in focus and in the frame. Failing to communicate with your videographer can result in a disaster thatll be captured on live TV. Wrap up Your Live Shot and Push the Story Forward The perfect live shot shouldnt wither in its final moments. Thats why you must plan ahead of time how youll wrap-up your  You also need to think about where your story goes once the camera is turned off. After all, most stories dont end once you head back to the station. The people whose homes are flooded are now waiting to hear back from their insurance companies to see if their insurance will cover the damage is a good way to wrap up and position yourself for a follow-up report. Understandably, its tough to manage all the live shot components while acting naturally. However, reporters are expected to excel at being live on the scene, and your on-air career likely depends on you nailing it.