Any luck with finding a job?

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As many of you know, I graduated college in May. I was fortunate enough to already have a job lined up before this past Thanksgiving. However, many people that I graduated with were not able to have the same luxury. The job market at the time was on the downs and unemployement rates were continuing to increase. The ability for a college graduate to secure a good (well paying, benefits, vacation, decent hours, etc) and not just some job at the local restuarant flipping burgers. One of the areas that I know some of my friends had trouble finding jobs in was marketing. They may have graduated with a degree in marketing (overall/general marketing studies), sports marketing, or any other special area but were having problems finding a job that was suitable to them. Some looked into hospitality (hotels, resorts, conferences, etc), some looked into sports teams and franchises, and others went for the more normal businesses in the local areas. However, no one was interested in taking a sales job…it was like a sales job was the absolute bottom of the barrel for someone that wanted to be in marketing. From all that I have read, heard, and seen sales jobs are great places to start out. The keyword there is to start out.

If you can find a decent sales job that you can excel at and get experience, then you can continue to look for another job that better fits your criteria. But, at least you are 1) working, 2) making money, 3) not wasting time, and 4) hopefully using your education. I tried to stress these points to some of my friends who were having harder times than others. However, they would not give in to a sales job (even when pretty good offers came their way) and they are STILL looking for a job — 5 MONTHS LATER! Now with the economy being in an even worse condition than before, I will guarentee that they are still unemployed even without talking to them.

One of my fraternity brothers moved to the Chicago area and has been struggling to find a job that fits his needs. He is lucky that he had some money saved up from working throughout college and his parents are able to help support him while he continues to search, send resumes, submit applications, and go on interviews. I recently came across a website called Chicago Sales Jobs. I instantly thought of him and sent him the link.

The site is great - although it is similar to the other job listing websites. Being focused on a specific geographic area allows for a better variety and more opportunity to target the right audience with the website. This website reminds me of the fact that you can not only focus on the larger career/job sites like Monster or Career Builder, but you need to look for more geographically focused or niche/industry focused sites that relate to exactly what you are looking for. Specific job sites usually allow for the companies to post a longer description of the position and may even offer a wider variety.

So, if you are in the Chicago area, check out Chicago Sales jobs, or if you are also still looking for a job and graduated in May, or graduated after summer classes, or are going to be graduating in December keep up the search, expand your horizons for the search methods that you use, and keep your head up! You’ll find something!

Are you guys having any issues like this? More and more students are graduating each semester with college degrees and it is making it more difficult for others to find jobs. Perhaps this is the perfect reason to start a dorm room business while you are in school so you do not have to worry about getting a job when you graduate?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic of the job market and the challenges with finding a job after graduating.

UpDown: where will your stocks go?

Note: this isn’t a paid review or anything like that, I just think it is a pretty cool site

Just a quick post today, to let you know about a site I am starting to use more and more.

The stock market isn’t exactly looking good at the moment. Investing in stocks is a hard and risky task, while some stocks may still pay big, most will see your money go down. But what if you still fancy yourself as a bit of an investor? What if, you think you could survive in these testing times that have brought down many big names that were considered safe just months ago? Well, if you do, then UpDown.com is the site for you! With $1000000 to invest and no risk (you can even make a bit of cash) now is your chance to prove to Wall Street that you are exactly what they need!

This site is actually pretty fun. It feels quite cool when you make a virtual profit or a good decision (you just start to wish it really was real).

Have fun!

Sophie

Keep tabs on your belongings…and children…and solve a murder.

With the evolution of GPS systems, software, and technologies, you can pretty much track anything via satellites and a computer. Want to install a tracking system on your car or truck? Sure. What to track your kids while you are at work? Sure. Want to help solve a murder? Sure. There are many companies out there developing GPS tracking technologies that will allow you to place or put a device on just about anything and track it with Google Earth, pretty cool huh?

One of those companies is LandAirSea Systems Inc. They have been in the business for nearly 15 years and are a leader in the technologies and products being developed in GPS tracking. Their technology utilizies the 24 Department of Defence satellites that are orbiting the earth. The result of using so many satellites is being able to accurately pin point someones position within 2.5 meters of their exact location. You can download the tracking logs from your device onto your computer and see everything in Google Earth through the satellite images, watching ever turn you made and every location you stopped.

To accomplish this tracking, there are a few differen devices that Land Air Sea offer. If you want to stay on the small side and more personal (as in if you want to track your daughters whereabouts while she is out with “friends”) you could us something like the GPS Tracking Key. Which as they say on their website “is like having a personal Private Investigator at a fraction of the price.” The tracking key can tell you route traveled, speed, direction/orientation,time en route, arrival addresses, duration of stop.

They also offer devices that can be attached to your car, some that come with attennas for better tracking and reception.

If you want to keep tabs on someone or know where your car is incase it gets stolen, then think about picking up a gps tracking unit. The tracking key sells for around $200.

Webmaster2 FireFox Extension

Webmaster2 is a simple but pretty effective Webmaster Extension for FireFox. If you are a webmaster or web guru, then taking a look at this extension for your browser is probably worth a couple minutes. Webmaster2 allows you to see the popularity of links on pretty much any website you look at. Icons are displayed before the links that shows the page rank of the page, the quality of the domain, and projected traffic for the domain.

Now if you think about the number of links that some pages have on them, especially within just one post or article, you would think that having these little icons next to each one would be pretty annoying. Luckily the developers of Webmaster2 thought about that as well. Therefore, the addon does not display information for local links, links missing “http://”, links to Google and Yahoo, and any links to an IP address.

Now that will cut down on some of the mess on the page, but it is still a good thing that this can easily be switched on and off. I think if you are serious about your research, then this tool can be helpful to determine what could be a good link as opposed to another and possibly save you some time. It is also good for competition research.

If you are interested in checking out different FireFox extensions to help you expand your research and save you time, then take a look at Webmaster2. The developer also has a neat calculator for FireFox that will calculate PayPal fees based off of any amount.

Online printing services help entrepreneurs save money!

For small business owners and entrepreneurs, getting business cards or letterhead can be a cost that you do not want to incur. However, there are a lot of benefits that come from having your own personalized and professionally printed materials. Besides them looking more professional then printing them on your own inkjet, you can get guaranteed results that look great, support with designing the right look for your business, and add-on services for discounted prices. For example, if you get 500 business cards printed, you may be able to get 20% off of letterhead printing.

With the large amount on internet companies that offer printing services strictly through their website, what used to be a chore to get business cards printed, is all of the sudden a much easier task. Now all you need to do is upload your own graphic, select your quantity, and order. Or you can design your cards through different templates and fonts available for customization. The whole process can be done in 5 - 10 minutes easily. Then a few days later, you have your brand new business cards. For about $20 you can have 200 business cards professionally printed on glossy card stock that would have cost upwards of $50 at any local printing company or office supplies store like Staples.

There are a lot of these online printers who would love to have your business as a young entrepreneur. One company to check out for online printing is PsPrints.com. They have a great array of print services and products that they offer including business cards, brochures, letterhead, flyers, catalogs, CD sleeves, banners, and more. The nice thing about PsPrint is that they do offer so many services on one site. Some of their competition only offers the basic printing services that you would expect like letterhead, envelopes, and business cards.

Online printers are also great for bloggers, website owners, and affiliate marketers who do not wish to spend a bundle on offline branding and just need some small runs of business cards. I personally love using online printers because I can order in such low quantities like 50 or 100 business cards instead of if you went to print shop where the minimum order may be 250 or 500 cards.

There are a lot of options out there for online printers and services, so be sure to check them out. There are also a lot of different features and upgrades that you can have done to your print job like getting rouded corner cards, glossy cards, etc. See what the options are and go with what works best for you!

Leadership: Who wouldn’t like to conquer it?

Leadership is the one area that every person wants to excel at and use to make a difference. When you are an entrepreneur, running a small business, or leading a group of employees in another company, you need to be on top of your leadership game. Without having leadership abilities and skills, then you will not be able to effectively lead your team, your business, your family, or whatever else it may be.

There are a lot of different ways to grow your leadership abilities. You can start by practicing being a leader - volunteer for higher positions within an organization or lead an effort for a cause that you care about. Being a volunteer leader gives you the chance to practice and develop yourself. Then as you get more confident within a charity or organization, look for ways to become a project leader at work or other in other areas in your life. With every leadership role that you take, you will learn more, use more, and expand more. Another way to pick up some leadership characteristics or study more leaders is through books and publications on leadership. There are so many good books out there on leadership, that I wanted to touch on a some of them that I have read and think will help you to develop into the type of leader that you want to be.

One of the those great books is The Emerging Leader: Eight Lessons for Life in Leadership by David Lewis. David Lewis is a human resources and career development expert who has helped more than 10,000 people find a new job. He’s only 27 years old and has been on many TV networks including Fox, ABC, CBS and others.

If you are looking for a great book for future business leaders that is short (104 pages), quick to read, and high impact, then you need to check out The Emerging Leader!

Want to start a business? Consider opening a franchise!

In the current economic situation, many people are getting fired, loosing their jobs, and looking towards the opportunity to start their own business. But some of those people do not have any clue what kind of business they want to start, or even how to start one. Enter the opportunity to open a franchise. Franchise opportunities are all around you in your life, all you have to do is look around.

There are tons of different franchise available for you and your needs/interests. Whether it is a low cost franchise opportunityor something extreme and expensive. Every year Entrepreneur Magazine publishes their list of the Top 500 Franchises; this is a great place to look if you are interested in the opportunities out there and also to use as a quick guide about different businesses because it will tell you the market they are in, the start up costs, and more.

Here are the top 10 franchises from Entrepreneur Magazines list:

1. 7-Eleven
2. Subway
3. Dunkin’ Donuts
4. Pizza Hit
5. McDonald’s
6. Sonic Drive In
7. KFC Corp.
8. InterContinential Hotels Group
9. Domino’s Pizza
10. Re/Max

About.com also has some great information on franchises and a list of some of the most popular ones out there. There is another website, which hosts a list of the top 500 franchises and that can be found at the Franchise Buyers Network.

I am sure I do not need to explain the huge list of benefits of starting a franchise and the extra level that you can reach by doing so versus starting from scratch, but here are a few just in case.

1. Proven Business - Although it is still risky starting a franchise and launching a business, the risk is lowered because the the model has been proven successful previously. If it hadn’t, you wouldn’t be able to franchise it right? The corporation should be well aware of how to do business in the industry and market that you will be operating and should be able to help you out a lot when getting started.
2. Established Customer Base - Even if you are launching a franchise in a new territory, just having the brand name of your business known by people all around will be helpful in attracting new customers to your location. Perhaps they go to your franchise in another area whenever they visit or always wanted to see your franchise open in your location, now it is time to take advantage of those people! The brand awareness will provide trust, quality, and security to the customer.
3. Marketing - You as a smaller franchise operation will obviously benefit from any marketing efforts that the larger corporation puts out and does. If they run a marketing campaign for a new hamburger or sandwich, you better be sure to have it on your menu because customers will be wanting it. The franchisor can also help you put together your more local marketing plan and provide helpful guidance.
4. Exclusive Territory - Depending on the business you are going to operate, you may be able to have exclusive territory rights to an area which will mean you won’t have competition from within the franchise by another franchisee moving in down the street. This is harder to reach with restaurants (or the territory may be much smaller) but service businesses such as computer repairs or other home repair companies usually offer a good size territory.

Have you thought about opening a franchise? I know I had before. A few of the ones that I have looked at and investigated include: Cold Stone Cremery, Rita’s Water Ice, Five Guys, and Subway.

Apparently in the UK you can rent garage space and parking spots online

I don’t know if there is anything based on a U.S. website like this yet, but there are different websies in the U.K. focused on selling and renting parking spaces and extra garage spots. Talk about an interesting idea.

Obviously there are parking issues in just about every major city, so it makes pretty good sense to open a marketplace where people can buy and sell extra parking spaces at your house, your complex parking garage, or at your companies parking lot.

If you check out the website Parklet.co.uk, which seems to be one of the major leaders in the U.K., you will see how well the idea is working out. Just by searching through different cities you quickly come across tens and hundreds of spots listed for rent. You can rent parking spaces for anywhere between 60-500 euros or $90-$775 per month! Their website says that they currently have more than 3,500 registered users and 5000+ advertised spaces.

The founder of the company is only 28 years old, which is great to hear, and started the compay after being tired of paying high parking costs when going to work and also after having his car dented and dinged many times by people throwing their doors open. So, he decided to searc elsewhere for parking.

“I knocked on some doors and found somebody happy for me to park there and then had the ideas of making a business out of it.”

Are you into World of Warcraft?

I’m not much of an online gamer or a gamer in general but if you know what you are doing, there can be a good amount of money in the industry as a business. There are websites all over the place that sell W.O.W. and other game accounts, accessories, powers, and weapons. If you are looking to buy wow accounts or anything of the sorts you really do not need to do too much searching. Just doing a search on Google will return some results. One such site is BuyMMOAccounts.com. They are a retailer of World of Warcraft accounts. Interesting that you can make money from selling accounts to games isn’t it?

There are some games where people sell extra accessories or add ons for when you are actually playing the games too. Things like weapons, different people/characters, special powers, buildings, and more. The people who buy these types of virtual products will tell you that they are a way to get a leg up on the game and also to help you out if you are really stuck in a certain spot of the game.

I’d tell you it is crazy; but it is also a way to make some money. These types of things are even being sold on eBay! If you are into Second Life, you can even buy property or accessories off of eBay.

BuyMMOAccounts.com appears to be a pretty popular place to purchase your WoW related items. Their website could be a little more attractive and less cluttered, but if you are looking for a Level 70 Draenei Shaman you can pick one up on their website for $399 or maybe a Level 70 Blood Elf Priest for $1149! I sure hope that they are selling some of these things to pay for their costs.

23blogs.com launches new FREE blog roll text link exchange!

Almost every day I get an email from another blogger or website owner asking me if I will add their link to my blog roll, if I like their site and think that the content matches mine, I usually request a link on their site in exchange. That’s a pretty normal operating procedure for bloggers. It can be time consuming, but we all continue to do it pretty regularly. So what’s the problem with this? Simple – unless you keep constant track of the sites that your link is supposed to be on and check them regularly, there is no way to tell if your link stays on their site. Sure you may see the site listed as a traffic source within Google Analytics, but that may only be a couple visitors and then it disappears.

23blogs.com hopes to change that! When you register for their FREE program and add your blog, you will have an html code to add to your blog’s sidebar for their widget. Their widget will then display your referral link and then 10 different links to other blogs – as shown in the image to the right.

Here is the description from their website:

When you register(sign up) and add a blog, you will get a HTML CODE. This code will display 10 other different blogs titles on your blog and you will earn 10x impressions after you put those HTML CODE on your blog. Also , you will get 1:1 click exchange, That’s meaning when your visitors click the ad box on your blog , you will credit 1 click and the system will PAY back 1 click to you.
And now, by using our exchange system, you’ll never worry about the problem again.

23blogs.com offers some different features for their service as well, besides being free. They will give you 1000 impressions when you sign up and add your html code, they currently have more than 10 different styled widgets that you can choose from, you can refer other blogs to earn credits, and you can also get real time statistics.

If you’re looking for a new way to possibly capture some new visitors and manage your link exchanging in a different way, take a look at 23blogs.com and let us know what you think!

23Blogs.com - FREE Blog Roll TEXT Link Exchange.(1:10)