Standing out at a Job Faire can make a difference in your search. Job Fairs are starting to pick up, and a major job search company is running some nice ones, called Targeted Job Fairs. At a SF Bay Area Job Fair in January, 10 companies as showing up, and Dice has 82 job faires scheduled for this year across the States.

How do you rise above the crowd at a Career Fair? The competition can be noteworthy, but you can help yourself stick out from the gang with advance planning. At AA-Careers, we have a simplified step-by-step process to prepare. Planning to go? Here’s how to prepare:

First, investigate the companies that are going and pick your objectives. Use the internet to research the companies that are there ahead of time. Go to their internet sites and see if they have their job openings posted. Pick a sane number to target, and get ready to spend an hour researching each one. It’s hard to do more than 8 in a day, and four or five is a much more reasonable target. For each hiring company, you want to know: key product lines, recent news, and executive names. Try to see if you know anyone at the target companies. You will end up with with a page or two of research for each company/job.

Second, if there are job openings on the web, read them to see what the hiring manager is looking for. Create a mapping of your achievements and skills to the prerequisites of the job. Make the nomenclature match. If the hiring company calls customers "clients", your resume should do the same thing. The accomplishments should be written in the style of the hiring organization.

Third, create a ‘thumbnail sales pitch’ for each likely organization/job combination. Write down a 60 second ‘thumbnail’ that you can repeat out loud describing why you are a special prospect for that job. You’ll use this in your resume and when you meet the team from the company at the job kiosk.

Fourth, modify your resume for each position. The objective on your resume should exactly match the job you’re want. The executive summary should be a written form of your “mini sales pitch” for the job. Then choose the accomplishments and skills that most clearly match the job description. Especially at a Job Fair, the purpose of your resume is a sales tool for you – to get you on-site job interviews. It should be simple to see that you’re a match based on your resume.

Fifth, practice your ‘mini-sales-pitch’. Collect your research and the resume for each spot - bring a couple of copies for each – and put each in a intelligibly tagged folder. Keep them in a lightweight briefcase or folio.

Finally, dress and prepare as if you’re doing on-site interviews. Dress well and be fittingly groomed. Avoid strong cologne or perfume…use any eau de cologne or fragrance meagerly, if at all.

Remember to smile, and good hunting!

In essence affliliate marketing is very much like a consignment shop. Your web site promotes merchandise in return, every last lead gets you commission. It isn’t as much work, fewer overheads, it works while you sleep, and even better, it’s relatively simple to learn.

The very first step you must take is to make up your mind precisely what area most suits your interests. To get this out of the way, you need to find out solutions to issues a certain market segment is looking for, and then find out a solution. One of the better ways to determine this is to search for unique long tail keywords; by and large customers look for these less often, even so more of these convert. These important keywords can be discovered by using Micro Niche Finder. Data gathered from this program or other programs and services produces associated keywords in a comprehensive list allowing you to have a high placing in the search engines and bring in an increased number of hits. Additional data is supplied by Micro Niche Finder, for example the number of searches each one gets, exactly how many other sites who exploit those keywords, and how good that competitor is. Ultimately, the info produced should help in loacting the right domain, aid you in putting together your site, and draw attention to desirable products for you to sell. The next step is to put together a web site; yet there are still important tasks to complete. Search engine optimization is absolutely fundamental. Products such as SEO Elite can make this simple. This application automatically examines the websites of your rivals and advises you exactly what you can do to receive a good rating in the search engine listings. With programs such as SEO Elite, data provided by the program advises you on links, what words to concentrate on, and even information on how to submit articles. Briefly, Seo Elite information is the same kind of information you might get when you confer with an experienced SEO professional. Once you decide on your niche, have your product ads, and your web site is finished, it’s time to get your site up in the search results. Your profits will roll in regularly and question why you did not try affiliate marketing before!

Affiliate marketing resembles a consignment store. Various good and services are pushed on your site and for all your effort, every last purchase or lead brings in cash. It isn’t nearly as much effort, very few operating costs, it sells whilst you rest, and it is easy to master. Firstly, you must determine which merchandise or area most suits your life. A way of going about this is, find out what a specific group of net users are anticipating, and determine a solution. A simple method of doing this is to look for unique sets of narrow keywords; broadly speaking people search for these less frequently, even so greater proportion of these convert. If you need to look for these important words or phrases, use Micro Niche Finder. The data gathered from this computer program or other computer programs and software produces associated keywords in an extensive list which you can focus on in order to achieve a great listing in the search engines and bring in a lot of of traffic.

Micro Niche Finder will in addition let you know detailed figures on the keywords or phrases, just how many different web sites who use them, and details on the competition as well. Ultimately, Micro Niche Finder information will help you locate the right domain, help you put together your internet site, and even point out desirable items for you to sell. Now it’s time to put together a internet site; however you will obviously need to do a bit more than just that. Having the best ranking on web based search engines requires the optimization of your web site. Programs such as SEO Elite will make this easy. Your rivals’ internet sites are analyzed by Seo Elite information which then provides advice on how to improve search engine rankings.

With SEO Elite the data provided by the application suggests where you should look for appropriate links, what words or phrases to focus on, and even a list of article submission websites to refer to. In short, SEO Elite information is much like to the advice you would get if you confer with a practised SEO professional. Once you know what market segment you’d like to focus on, have your product ads, and your web site has been designed, then you are ready to further advance your search results. You’ll collect regular payments and question why you ever doubted that affiliate marketing could work for you!

Decisions are something human beings cannot evade. It is the nature of intelligent life to weigh options and decide thereafter. While intuition helps, decision making is best when made objectively, with accurate information to back you up.

Information has become not only a luxury in today’s modern age, but a need. While we are bombarded with tons of information we could use, there is difficulty in gaining access to them at the precise moment we need them. Upon this reality, the Bellevue-headquartered Intellius was founded in 2003 by its current CEO and president Naveen Jain.

As an information commerce company, Intellius acts as a broker of critical information people need in making significant decisions. It serves to provide a wide array of information-based tools and services to individuals and businesses by engineering proprietary semantic technology that integrates billions of publicly available information, and making them accessible upon demand to millions of American customers.

Intellius provides all kinds of information that are useful when making employment-related, personal, and family-related decisions, especially those that involve people’s security, success, and peace of mind. The firm can conduct background checks and generate investigation reports in real time at affordable rates.

Persons who have accessed intelius.com have experienced firsthand the speed and accuracy of its services. Employers can obtain information on a prospective employee’s background and decide objectively whether he or she is fit for the job. Individuals and parents can verify identities of target nannies or potential dates online, as well as conduct people searches to find long-lost relatives and friends and reconnect with them. Intellius makes this possible because it has access to district, state, and federal criminal records all over the country. Hence, it can provide much-needed heads-up to people when making hiring or personal-related decisions. Its breakthrough product IDWatch helps people protect themselves from credit card theft and other identity crimes.

Small children don’t give a lot attention on giving particularly on holidays. They would rather receive than give. Purchasing dad a tie or a coffee mug just doesnt mean much to them. However, one thing that kids enjoy doing is to create something. The following are crafts that kids can make for Father’s Day.

Picture Frames ” Using picture frames from discount or dollar shops, kids can use various paints and glitter glue to make it extraordinary and wonderful. Simple yet meaningful words such as “Happy Father’s Day” or “Dad, you’re the GREATEST!” or “My Dad is the Best Dad in the World” can really make it special and a treasured gift.

Hand-print T-Shirts “Using a plain t-shirt, all the children in the family pick a color of textile paint and cast their hand-print on the shirt. Mom or older siblings can write special Fathers Day Gifts messages on the shirt, as well as place the kids names under the marks.

Colorful Coupons ” Try to figure out what Dad really needs and loves doing and then make homemade coupons out of them. You can print them off your computer and have the young children color them. Just remember ” dont make a coupon that the kids couldnt actually do!

Original Neckties ” Why go buy dad a tie with a silly design on it? Just let your kids make one for him! With puffy fabric paints, kids can have a ball making dad his new neckwear.

Crafts for dad are easily seen in books and on the internet. If youd like to find crafts that kids make for Fathers Day, those are good points to start looking.

Radio Rentals conjures images of mutton-chop sideburns, Ford Escorts and episodes of The Sweeney on knackered tv sets. However, one of its direct descendants BrightHouse is beginning to recapture the place it lost on the high street with the emergence of shops like Currys, Dixons and Comet and the reduction in the price of televisions.

BrightHouse was spun off from Thorn-EMI, the owner of Radio Rentals, by Terra Firma, Guy Hands’s private equity group. It earned infamy for very high APRs and costly mandatory extra cover. Currentlythe chain is on the front foot, trying to clean up both its shops and its name as it embarks on a very significant growth programme. It plans to inaugurate 21 branches next year and estimates that there is room for at least 600.

Just a dozen of BrightHouse one hundred and seventy eight shops are in Greater London, but, as Leo McKee, the straight-talking chief executive of the outlet, enjoys saying the high street turns into a very different place when you leave the borders of London behind.

Its prospects, almost exclusively from the lower socioeconomic segments are having problems to get credit - if they ever could - as lenders cut their risk profiles.

“We are working on areas that [Lloyds] TSB are moving away from,” Mr McKee stated. The prospect of BrightHouse stepping in to offer credit to our poorest communities will not make everyone happy. Nevertheless the Scot insists that this is an invalid perception.

“When I “began my time at Brighthouse [in 2004], we “commissioned “independent “market research to examine “the proposition asking: ‘Is it sufficient?’ and: ‘Does it have longevity?’ he explained.

“The results came back: your name on the high street is garbage; you’re seen as a rip-off merchant; the prices were high, the stores shabby.

“The first decision I made was to change all the prices to match the high street, on the day I found out [the results].”

The previous approach was that as far as customers could afford the weekly installment, they would not be worried about the final price. And this thinking had knock-on effects across the whole business.

That is what Brighthouse are now trying to solve so their image improves amongst the general public.

Two hundred and twenty five thousand square feet of office space is planned to replace current offices at 30, Pall Mall in Liverpool city centre. It’s family owned, Northern Ireland development firm West Bay Capital who have put forward the eighteen storey proposal, the largest of its kind in Liverpool.

If proposals are passed, the first phase of the £50million project will take two years to complete. The two new office blocks will include a covered courtyard, along with cafes, shops, and restaurants on the ground floor. Broadway Malayan, the Architects who designed the development, say the buildings will be up to standards set for a ‘BREAM Excellent Efficiency’ rating. Making it the “greenest” new office space in Liverpool.

Managing Director for West Bay, Ashley Moore, expressed their delight in the proposals, adding they believe the development could be alongside the United Kingdoms other “Premier business destinations”. Liverpool can become one of the UK’s premier business destinations with quality new office and desk for hire schemes.

The company are hoping their plans will go ahead, and are keen to land the Ministry of Justice contract for Liverpool. Government relocation plans mean the department are looking at office space for 2500 staff, and Moore stated theirs was the single possibility for Liverpool.

The West Bay project being the only development currently meeting the government’s requirements. Moore added, if the contract was given, it would be a “fantastic economic boost” for the city. Funding is believed to be in place, although space will need to be pre-let. But Moore remains confident, and is looking forward “to working with the city’s politicians, and its regeneration and investment agencies”. If given the go ahead, work will be starting by the end of the year.

Have you been lured into online business and internet marketing with promises of the gold you will find at the end of the rainbow? And ended up spending much more than you make each month, and wondering how these marketing gurus make money, if at all?

You aren’t alone - there are thousands of people out there who buy various kinds of info products on how to become rich and say goodbye to their day jobs. The irony is that they are still stuck at their day jobs, working even harder to make up for what they have lost month after month in their quest for online profits. Their goal of firing their boss seems a dream more distant now, with their credit cards maxed out with all the online spending they did, searching for the elusive pot of gold.

Actually, it is not the marketing gurus who are at fault. Each one of these products are quite good, and do give some really worthwhile information. The problem really is the fact that there is a mass of information, and you, like others, get confused about which one to follow, and end up making a confused series of efforts.

For example, if you are into affiliate marketing, you try to jump in as an affiliate of various products which are unrelated to each other, and start promoting the affiliate programs haphazardly. End result? Lots of spending on various programs without focus, leading to little or no sales, with just the hole in your pocket to show for your efforts. The hole becomes bigger with every program you promote, jumping from one to another in the hope you will see the light at the end of the tunnel, one day.

What then is the right way?

There is a way. But it is not the get rich quick kind of way. We need to be clear on certain concepts first:

a. Whatever affiliate program you choose, choose one program which will also have some backend products which you can sell.

b. Think of your affiliate product as a product serving a niche market. The creator of the product has already researched the demand, judged if people spend money buying products in this niche, and created the product. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel.

c. Create a content based website around this product, and dig into affiliate directories to find other products related to this product. The content of your site will be just promoting affiliate products you find, giving useful content and leading to your visitor clicking your affiliate links.

d. Be sure to go for products which supplement the main product, rather than compete with it. This would enable you to sell more backend products after your first sale.

e. More importantly, there are two classes of people interested in this particular niche. The ones who haven’t bought this product will buy this first. The ones who have already bought this product earlier will get interested in the other supplementary products, and end up buying them. Result? More money streams for you.

It is clear that you really do need a website of your own before you can actually make worthwhile money selling other people’s products as an affiliate. The website enables you to

a. funnel your target audience

b. give them products they are searching for, and want.

c. Capture their mail Ids so that you can continue your selling efforts to the ones who don’t buy the first time.

d. Continue to sell your supplemental products to the ones who did buy, and

e. Makes visitors regard you an expert on the subject

f. Most importantly, gets you free targeted visitors from the search engines.

So, forget about other means of promoting your affiliate product, and focus on building a website around the niche represented by the product. Be sure you sign up as an affiliate only for products which give you a reasonably decent earning per sale, so you make money faster.

Your success in this will depend on how well you create your website, with the content flowing naturally into leading the reader to click through your affiliate link, and of course, the strength of the sales letter in the merchant’s website.

Swaminathan
http://www.bestebooks.org

A few weeks ago we conducted our annual “Customer Experience Study Tour” in London England. This is where we take delegates to visit a number of leading Customer Experience companies for a behind-the-scenes look at how they approach the task of building a great Customer Experience. Companies include Prt-a-manger, Virgin Atlantic, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, Dell Computers, T-Mobile, Lexus Cars, AOL and Microsoft. As we travelled around these companies on the luxury coach, I pondered what the common traits are of companies who provide a great Customer Experience. Undoubtedly one of these traits is “attention to detail”.

So let’s give you an insight to what some of these companies did. Prt-a-Manger told us about the absolute struggle they go through to make sure that all the ingredients in their sandwiches are additive free so as to enhance the taste of the sandwiches. This involves a great deal of searching to determine the best supplier, as well as extensive tasting. The time and money they spend on this activity is phenomenal and costs a great deal. But this is part of their attention to detail.

Liam Lambert, Director of the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel told us of his “attention to detail”. He wanted his doorman to stand out as “beacon’s” to help promote the hotel - as it is on the less busy side of the street. He saw other hotel doormen who were all dressed in “grey” overcoats. This colour made them blend into their hotel buildings and act as great camouflage! Liam decided to dress his doorman in red! Truly a beacon! It worked! More people noticed than ever before.

Liam told us about how he treats his new arrivals. Our group were privileged to attend and witness his “Morning Prayers”. This is where all the managers from all the departments in the hotel get together EVERY MORNING and talk through EACH AND EVERY new guest that is arriving at the hotel that day. They look at who they are. They look at where they are coming from and therefore how likely they are to be tired for instance. They even get on their guests web site and try and find out more about the person coming to stay so that they can serve them better! Finally, if available on the web site, they will print a picture of the individual who is staying with them and place it on the “Guests Wall” so the staff can recognise the person by name! So do you go into that amount of detail with your customers?

When a guest is staying with them they “learn their behaviour”. They take note of the drinks they order, whether they like ice or not, whether they have a cappuccino or a Latte after a meal. This information is then recorded on what is effectively a CRM system and used to enhance the Customer Experience on the next occasion. This is attention to detail!

On our visit to Virgin Atlantic they told us about the amount of time they have spent working out when the optimum time is to deliver hot towels in Upper Class! Before or after take off! They also have worked out the optimum layout of a service trolley and they have great new lie down beds in Upper class. As someone who spends a lot of time travelling around the world giving conference speeches, I can’t wait to try them!

Dell Computers have set up a number of “Listening Posts” to ensure they capture customer information and convert this into something that is usable by the customer.

So attention to detail in Building Great Customer Experiences is key. The converse is also true. Lack of focus on the Customer Experience will detract from the Customer Experience. The other night I visited my local cinema. The “baby booster chairs” were left in the aisle so that when we entered the cinema, late, we nearly broke our necks falling over them! ……the massive queue to buy a ticket - only two tills were open but there were 3 people standing at the back chatting whilst 50 customers fumed. We have all had similar experiences. It takes thought, it takes time and it takes commitment to build a great Customer Experience. We commend you to pay attention to the detail

Colin Shaw Founding Partner, Beyond Philosophy
© Beyond Philosophy 2004

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Colin Shaw is the Founding Partner of Beyond Philosophy and guru of the Customer Experience Management. He has also produced two most successful books on customer experience which are now available in market. His first book, Building Great Customer Experiences sold out within just eight weeks, is on a third reprint and available in paperback.

Colin’s second book, Revolutionize Your Customer Experience released in September 2004 and considered as Bible in Customer management business world.
Colin has enjoyed over 20 years of experience working in blue chip companies, including Mars Ltd., Rank Xerox and BT. Colin’s final position was Director of Customer Experience for one of the world’s largest global companies. In his career, he has held senior positions in a number of different functional areas including Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Training.

Contact Colin Shaw - Colin.shaw@beyondphilosophy.com

Everybody dreams of being rich! Some of us don’t just want to be rich… We want to be rich beyond our wildest dreams! We want to be able to live like the rich and famous, and we want our riches to continue for the rest of our natural lives.

Anyone who is truly wealthy will tell you that you never get rich working for someone else. To make the kind of money you need to live a wealthy lifestyle you have to be in command of your own destiny, or marry well. Marrying well is okay I suppose, but it carries consequences. Going into business for yourself also carries some risks, but the risks are usually under your control. You’re at the helm and you sink or swim on your own performance.

The current economic climate around the world does nothing to make you confident of ever finding a job that will provide an adequate nest egg to take you through your golden years. But the good news is that there are many virtually untapped opportunities online with good business prospects. It is easy to earn money online if you know what you are doing. The main hurdle of course, is first knowing where to start, then learning how to you can earn and earn BIG online. Affiliate marketing is still one of the easiest ways to start earning online. It is quick to start and you can start an online home business for under $100.

Even with this easy way to earn online some of us create unnecessary hurdles for ourselves. I remember joining the Internet Marketing Company and trying to market Cory Rudl’s products without trying any of them myself. My success was marginal. I balked at paying the sum of money necessary to purchase the product for myself. (Sometimes we can be very dense). When I did get around to purchasing his “Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet” course and implementing his ideas, my business began to take off. It was the some of the best money I have ever spent. You see, it finally dawned on me that the tiny financial outlay that I had made was not an “expense”, but an “investment”! In other words, what I had spent was surpassed by what I received in return. The best way to learn something is to find someone who has done what you desire to do and follow his or her example. It Works!

Selling affiliate products or services is much more effective if you have used the product or service yourself. How can you tell someone how good a particular dish on a restaurant menu is if you’ve never tried it? Enthusiasm comes from having tried a product or service and found it to be superb! The affiliates who become obscenely wealthy are those who know their products and market them with proud enthusiasm.

First find a product category that you can identify with, then choose the product you want to market. Be sure to utilize the product yourself, use it and then sell it with confidence and enthusiasm…The wealth will follow.

Home Business Entrepreneur Janice Sharman has helped lots of ordinary people start profitable Home Businesses. For FREE information on how you can start a successful Home Business email: janice@profits4sure.com and join the thousands of successful Home Business Entrepreneurs.