Recruiters How to Survive the Holidays

Recruiters How to Survive the Holidays I wanted to offer some advice to you all in what is usually a hectic, stressful, waist-fattening time of year for us all. However, for recruiters, it can be a poisoned  chalice,  cant it? The sound of Christmas songs in the shops and flashy lights on the high street can mean a slow down in activity as candidates and clients alike start to focus their attention on mince pies, cocktail parties and time off with their families. When should a recruiter switch off “selling mode” and instead embrace the festive season? Well, I don’t think we do stop we just change why and how we are doing it. I am not suggesting that you sit up on Christmas eve on LinkedIn posting jobs nor turning up on Boxing Day to the office. Its a great time to speak! This is a great time of year to speak to individuals you haven’t updated with for a while book in a January visit as a minimum to review a clients hiring needs, offer to take a client out to a Christmas or a January lunch as a thank you for all their time spent with you this year. Think about adding that little bit extra value to your clients? A bottle of single malt whiskey, fine chocolates or a selection of ales is perfect if you know thats more their thing its a small price but a huge gesture to your top clients, plus it makes you feel nice too! Make a list for first calls of the new year for those people who you havent managed to speak to before the holiday. Your goal is to have the first fortnight of the year booked up if you do that likelihood is you are ahead of your competition. Dont just speak to your clients speak to your boss! If you want to move up the career ladder make it known! If you feel ready to take the next step, take on a more challenging or strategic role you need to know what you need to do to be able to achieve that, and your boss needs to know your appetite for progression. Vocalise your enthusiasm and interest to your boss diarise time to plan your next career development steps because if your boss isnt on board you may need to rethink your employment and find an alternative route to your goals! It is better to know that going into the new year rather than at the end of it! Think ahead and get organised Take this time to think about what you want to change on Jan 2nd (or whenever you start back in the New Year) plan it NOW so that you can literally start running on that first day back.  There definitely comes a time when things do grind to a halt the time between Christmas and New Year if youre working is likely to be s l o w at best. Use this time for a bit of good housekeeping: sort your desk out there is room for improvement on everyones desk. Update your phone or contact lists with the contact details and the business cards you have collected. Get rid of any piles of filing or notes you have lying around â€" write them up and organise them. Empty your inbox, go through your emails and flag those which need actioning or marking any email that requires urgent attention. Allocate a day or time to have a “one touch policy” if you touch it you deal with it â€" no buts, no leaving it until later, no excuses!  Start the year with an organised work space and it is more likely to be an organised month and year ahead. Make the ground work count NOW. Make sure that December isn’t a wasted month but actually the most productive month of your year leaving you refreshed, motivated and with a clear direction in January 2013. Wishing all of you a happy festive season from me, Lysha Holmes definitely still in recruitment mode…well until mid December anyway before the school nativities kick in!

Personal Branding Interview Wendy Diamond - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Branding Interview Wendy Diamond - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Today, I spoke to Wendy Diamond, who is the founder of Animal Fair, the premier lifestyle magazine and author of It’s a Dog’s World. Wendy is a great example of a someone who has positioned herself as a leading expert in her field. In this interview, Wendy talks about how shes built a successful animal empire, what inspired her, how shes used technology to grow her brand, and much more. Youve been quite successful in building your website and magazine around animals have you always been an animal lover? Where did the inspiration for Animal Fair come from? Most animal lovers are born animal lovers and I fit in that category. Growing up in Chagrin Falls, Ohio I had a German Shepherd named Pepper who taught me to have an unbridled love and appreciation for animals. But my personal brand didn’t begin with pets, it began with people. After living and working abroad for a few years I found myself in New York City with nothing to do and I began to feel shallow, so I got into volunteer work. My career started helping homeless people in New York with the Coalition for the Homeless, an organization I am still supporting today. But I didn’t get into working with animals until after I adopted my Russian Blue, Pasha and Maltese, Lucky from a local shelter in the city, where I witnessed how horrible the shelter system was. It was then that I knew that by putting forth an effort, I could make a huge difference and inspire others to do the same. In 1999, when Animal Fair launched, roughly 12 million animals were euthanized in shelters because the y were unable to find a loving home. Today those numbers are down to 4 million animals euthanized yearly. And today we are the premiere animal lifestyle media company. We produce the premiere lifestyle animal magazine supporting animal rescue. All our projects are cause related and makes work meaningful. Our magazine has featured Beyonce, Brad Pitt, Mickey Rourke, President Obama and family, Renee Zellwegger, Charlize Theron, Matt Leinart, Shania Twain, Regis Philbin, Barrymore, Halle Berry and Tom Hanks. Our website AnimalFair.com has hits from across the world with content syndicated to over two million visitors. We create annual national events to help local charities such as Yappy Hour ® which has raised well over $200,000 for local shelters. I love fashion and so does Lucky (but only the highest fashion) so we created the first ever pet fashion show, Paws for Style, to raise money for animal rescue. Also, we love to travel so we created the Five Dog Bone Award ® winners who are selected based upon their excellence in pet-friendly travel and product services. After writing two best selling books titled How To Understand Men Through Their Dogs and How To Understand Women Through Their Cats, I became the face of Chicken Soup for the Soul â€" What I learned from My Dog and What I learned from My Cat. And now my newest book, It’s a Dog’s World, has been released with Random House. But like I said, my inspiration is simple: doing good for the underdog. Whether that is a person, dog, cat, family member, charity or organization, I’ve held true to that since I started my company. Animal Fair has been around for the last decade how has your business strategy changed with the evolution of the internet and technology? Has it helped to build your audience? Technology moves so fast, and I can’t even begin to believe how we got any work done ten years ago based on how fast I work today. I know I didn’t get 300 plus e-mails a day in 1999. It’s always about keeping up with technology, but with the expansion of the internet and this e-boom, my true goal has never changed. I’ve always wanted to help animals, the underdogs, those who need help the most. Technological advancements have just made that easier. Websites like PetFinder.com can help you locate and adopt any breed, yes ANY breed of dog to rescue (people don’t believe you can rescue any breed), which was a lot harder to do ten years ago. The same goes for tracking a lost dog. Microchips like HomeAgain in your pet may sound like a painful process but it takes no antiseptic, feels like any normal vaccination and the microchip itself is no bigger than a grain of rice. Once a pet is tagged, if they are lost and found elsewhere and scanned, they immediately come up in a national database no matter how far or long they have traveled, which ultimately saves costs at shelters, which needs all the space it can get for needy and abandoned animals. As for building my audience, I enjoy Facebook. It’s a great way to stay connected and it’s a great tool for business. I do feel a bit silly having a “fan page,” but Facebook only allows you to have 5,000 friends, so Lucky and I have a fan page where we can share news about adoptions, cross-country events like our upcoming Yappy Hour ® tour, and photos from our pet travels. As for Twitter, I’m still figuring it out. But keep an eye out for more of my tweets! Youve written a few books with more in the works is writing a natural expression for you? Did you plan on becoming an author from the beginning? I majored in Marketing at Pine Manor, which required a lot of writing, but I never could have imagined I’d become an authoress (let alone the woman who coined the phrase ‘pet lifestyle’). For me, my writing is less of a natural expression and developed more as a vehicle for my philanthropic work. I created my two cookbooks, A Musical Feast and All Star Feast with the help of celebrities like Madonna and Derek Jeter solely to raise money for homeless people and children. Once I got into business of pet lifestyle, the books just starting pouring out. My latest book, It’s a Dog’s World, is my “pet opus” and I’m proud to release it as a culmination of a decade adopting, living, working, traveling, dating, exercising, cooking, cleaning and doing everything with my dog. So in a way, I suppose it is an expression of my ten years of work incorporating my dog Lucky (who can never be alone) into my everyday lifestyle. I wanted pet parents to jump into the 21st century when it comes to dog parenthood. It’s time to get out of the doghouse and into the home! Youve partnered with many celebrities, including Charlize Theron and Drew Barrymore, and appear in major news outlets. How do you think your personal brand has contributed to these successes? Partnering with celebrities is not about my promoting my personal brand, and never has been. Very early in my career I recognized that promoting celebrities with their rescued animals would help bring awareness to adopting shelter animals worldwide and people would realize adopting animals is not only a wonderful and cool thing to do, but it also brings unrequited joy and happiness into one’s life! Whats next for you? Any thoughts of expanding your business or personal brand? What’s next? I’m constantly wondering that myself. Sometimes I wish I was my dog Lucky and someone would just carry me from one thing to the next. For starters, we’ve just re-launched our website, AnimalFair.com. This year I plan to finally finish my documentary, In Search of Puppy Love, which will give hope to the 4 million singles in America. I’m collecting ideas for my new book How to Train Your Boss to Roll Over, developing a line of pet products exclusive for those passionate about animal rescue and I’ve recently joined forces with the United Nations to help raise awareness of endangered species. - Wendy Diamond is the founder of Animal Fair, the premier lifestyle magazine and website for animal lovers in support of fairness to animals and animal rescue. Charlize Theron, Halle Berry, Renee Zellweger, and Drew Barrymore have all graced the cover with their animals. Wendy Diamond and her dog Lucky are frequent pet contributors to the Today Show, Fox News, CNN, Good Morning America and media outlets around the world. Wendy Diamond’s natural humor can be read in her two best selling books How to Understand Men Through Their Dogs and How to Understand Women Through Their Cats! Random House is publishing Diamond’s next entertaining albeit informative book titled It’s a Dog’s World in February 20. She joined Internationally known speakers Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield to represent, co author and be the face of the new Chicken Soup for the Soul What I Learned from My Dog and What I Learned from My Cat books out now in stores.

Why Your Business Needs Good Cyber-Security

Why Your Business Needs Good Cyber-Security In the age of digitalization, we all need to ensure that we stay safe online. Usually, we think about this on a relatively human level, as individuals. This generally extends to privacy settings on Facebook and Twitter accounts. Of course, privacy of the information of what you share online is important, but cyber-security extends beyond that; especially for businesses. In this post, we’ll take a look at why your business needs good cyber-security. What is Cyber-Security? Cyber-security is a 21st century necessity required due to advances in technology. The rise of the internet means that customers have new ways of accessing companies, but so do hackers and criminals. As a result, systems and processes need to be in place to prevent hackers from gaining access to your website, the stock it holds and the information that customers have put into it. We now live in such a rapidly developing world that cyber-security often has to evolve. Criminals are learning more and more about how businesses are operating online, and finding different ways to attack websites. As such, there are no ‘quick fixes’ and the cyber-security of your business always has to be reviewed. Resultantly, the value of the cyber security market could reach $170 billion by 2020. Why Does my Business Need it? So, what type of security does your business need? Well, it’s a tricky one, as it depends on your business type: E-commerce: If you’re an e-commerce business, then you’ll have to store and have access to large volumes of customer information, as they’ll be buying products on your site. This means that, should a hacker access this information, you’ll be in breach of data protection, and your customers could have all of their credit card information stolen. Cyber-security is essential if you’re an e-commerce business, otherwise you could lose your customers and/or be charged millions in fines. Fortunately, penetrative testing can help you identify problems and fix them fast. Project management: If you run a project management based website, you’ll not only need to ensure that all the data within it is secure, but also that processes can run smoothly and concurrently. If there’s a flaw in the system, then you’ll lose all connectivity, and this will cost you time and money. As a result, you’ll have to invest in SOA testing through a company like Sogeti. Databases: if your website is simply run as a database or a holding site for contact information, you shouldn’t need too much security. However, you’ll still have to ensure that it cannot be hacked and taken offline or out of your control, as this could damage your business’s reputation. Again, penetrative testing can help. Take this advice on-board and ensure your business is fit to run in the 21st century. Image Source; Image Source