Posts tagged ‘name’

Tips to Keep in Mind as Freelance Writing

With luck, pluck, and skin as thick as whale blubber, you can be a freelance writer. If you’re persistent enough and the stars are smiling down on you, seeing your name in print isn’t as inaccessible as you might think. But serendipity and talent will take you only so far. You’ll need to learn freelancing own brand of etiquette and adopt a little business sense to succeed. Here are 10 important points to keep in mind when launching your freelance writing career.

1. Network. Freelancing is lonely work, and it’s easy to lose touch with other writers. Making friends in the biz, however, can be the best career move you can make. Join some associations like the National Writers Union or correspond with members of a writer’s e-mail list to meet people in your area. Besides patting your back when you’ve done well, friends can pass newspaper and magazine leads to you.

2. Know your rights. Publishing rights are one of the most confusing aspects of freelancing, but it’s one of the most important to understand. If a publisher owns the right to your copy, that means you can’t sell it anywhere else – some contracts even bar you from writing again on the same topic or demand that you sign away rights for articles already published. In a writer’s paradise, you’d retain all rights, allowing you to resell an article to as many magazines or newspapers as will buy it.

read more »

Posted in Talent and Career

Selling Yourself on Paper

When it comes to selling yourself on paper, you will find that newspaper editors are tough customers. After all, they put information on paper every day. There are no bonus points for correct spelling, punctuation or grammar. Those are givens. A single error can consign your résumé to the circular file. Edit your work, proofread the final copy and then double-check everything. Twice. Have someone else go over it. Make sure the editor is NOT the first person to see the finished product.

Understand the purpose of a résumé. It is not intended to get you a job. It is meant to tell the prospective employer enough about you so that they’ll look at your work samples or call you in for an interview. Use the interview, tests, tryouts and other activities to land the job. In a business where word economy is valued, one-page résumés are twice as effective as two-page résumés. Even editors with 20 years and several papers behind them limit their résumés to one page. You’re certainly free to go over that, but it’s not very smart — especially when your experience, in comparison to the editor’s — is modest.

read more »

Posted in Talent and Career

How to Get a Promotion

The last thing many workers have been thinking about in this dismal job market is how to ask for a promotion or a raise. The popular mind-set: “You’re lucky you still have a job.”

But now it’s time to shake off those recessionary shackles and start thinking seriously about getting what you deserve at work, especially if your employer  is seeing an uptick in business and looking to hire new workers.

“Companies are starting to worry about defections when the economy gets better,” said Laurence Stybel, executive in residence at Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University in Boston. “Once the drumbeat of hiring starts, that’s when you can go to the boss and say, ‘I haven’t had a raise or promotion in two years.’”

Patrick Sweeney, the president and CEO of ODIN Technologies in Ashburn, Va., said his firm hired no new employees last year and had a few layoffs. But this year he plans to add up to 15 new positions.

He also just promoted two employees.

“Both guys were often the last ones at the office at night and among the first here in the morning,” Sweeney said. “More than a great work ethic, they jumped in wherever it was needed, from figuring out complex engineering problems to sweeping up our lab to calling clients on the weekend when they needed help.”

Getting a promotion in this economy is not a lot different than getting one during an economic boom. You still have to show managers you’re willing to work hard and can produce results.

“If you really want to turn yourself into a loser, think about a salary increase as a reward for past good services,” advised Stybel. “You’re trying to extract money from a cheap company, and companies don’t care about the past – they’re obsessed about the future.”

Saving a company big bucks
That focus on producing results is what got Hubert Rivera two promotions in 2009, one of the toughest economic years in recent U.S. history.

Rivera became a vice president for InCharge, a Orlando, Fla.-based nonprofit credit counseling organization, in October after 10 years with the company. That came after a previous promotion in April.

Despite having to cut costs because of the economy, the goal was to maintain service to the firm’s clients. So he took initiative.

“I spoke to my boss back in May of 2009 about ways we could improve our efforts and help the company grow,” Rivera said. “We have been hit hard by the economy and saw reductions in calls and business.”

read more »

Posted in Talent and Career

The job-search advice

It seems pretty unfair when you think about it. You’ve worked hard in school for some 15 or more years, including 4 or more years in college, all with the plan that once you made it through all that schooling, you would have a good-paying job waiting for you. But now, with the U.S. and global economies mired in the slowdown of a generation and saddled with college debt, you face an uncertain future.

There may be no good-paying job waiting for you. Those who have already graduated and are still searching for a job in your career field know that. And for you seniors graduating in 2009, many fewer good-paying jobs waiting for you. That said, the more prepared you are — and the more you maximize your job-search efforts — the more likely you will be one of the lucky ones who does land a great job.

It’s certainly not the best time to be a recent college graduate or a college senior, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up on finding a good job and retreat back home to your family’s basement (since your mom has already made your bedroom into her workout room). Nor should it mean you give up on a job-search altogether and forge on to grad school, hoping by the time you finish your graduate degree the job market will be better.

No. Instead, if you follow the advice in this article, you can increase the odds that you will indeed be one of the lucky few who find a good-paying job. And yes, by the way, these strategies will work in all economic situations — but they will especially help in times of uncertainty.

read more »

Posted in Talent and Career