2011 December

Bullet Points: Happy 2012!

The Hired Guns on December 29, 2011

Michael Wolf believes that 2012 will be the year of artist-entrepreneurs, who can cut out the middleman through spunk, digital knowledge, and much easier ways of getting goods to consumers.
It’s too late to use this advice for Christmas, but it’s not too late to use it to make your resume more winning: “What Clever Advertising Can Teach Us About Buying Gifts.” As Jordan Weissmann writes, “The trick for a good gift-giver, or good marketer, is to think like the person they’re trying to connect with. In one of the experiments, subjects told to think about the big picture when putting together a resume abandoned the more is more approach, and instead focused on a few appealing accomplishments. It worked.”
New York’s American Museum of Natural History has begun a fully paid Master of Arts in Teaching program for aspiring science teachers. An open house for the program will be held on Saturday, 7 January.
If there was one previously admired work habit that took a beating in 2011, it was the energy-sapping habit of multitasking. But even if you’ve already stopped trying to do a dozen things at a time, there’s always room for improvement in other areas: “7 Things Highly Productive People Do“. [Inc.]

And from The Hired Guns blog:

New Year, Old You: Resisting Change, Innovation, and Self-Improvement

Todd Tarpley on December 28, 2011

For many people, the new year is a time to reflect. That’s because they still cling to the quaint belief that they can become happier and more productive. Enlightened managers like you know that self-reflection is like 10,000-mile maintenance: if the wheels haven’t come off yet, just keep driving.

Here are five ways to avoid thinking too much about the future, so that you can concentrate on repeating the same mistakes year after year:

1. Don’t make a plan for what you’d like to be doing in one, five, and ten years. Those things are so embarrassing to look at later on, when you’ve failed miserably. Better to not even think about it. Then, ten years from now when you’re selling batteries at Radio Shack, you can claim success and say, “Yeah, I planned it this way.” Read More →

“Job Creation” in 2012: What You Can Do

Allison Hemming on December 22, 2011

Dearest Guns,

Here at The Hired Guns, I love ending the year with an offer letter going out to a deserving Gun — that just happened about five minutes ago.

This candidate did what seemed impossible: against all odds, she got hired in December. She did it by being extremely patient and a smart negotiator. She’s getting to go on her holiday break with a deal in hand and a great new job for January. And as her agents, we had her back.

I don’t know about you, but I find it deeply distressing that these days hardly anyone seems to have the back of the American worker. Congress was supposed to extend the payroll tax cut that would put a few extra greenbacks in our wallets and extend the number of weeks of benefits to our unemployed brethren. That didn’t happen. Read More →

Freelancers: Just Where Did the Year Go? And What Are You Planning for 2012?

Beth Temple on December 21, 2011

If you are like me, a solopreneuer, you get to the end of the year and wonder where where it all went. Hopefully you’ve been busy doing great work and enjoying making and keeping in touch with new connections, but you probably haven’t been thinking about how to wrap up the year. You’re not alone!

Here are four things you can do now to end the year on a high note:

Taxes: This is the time of the year you really need to start planning for your 2011 taxes. It’s best if you do it year-round, but we’re busy and often don’t keep up. Be sure you have all your receipts in order and you’ve got all your billings tallied. If you work with an accountant, be sure to schedule a December checkup to do some taxes preplanning. For instance, it may make sense to pay your state taxes for 2011 before January 15 in order to relieve some tax burden come April. Read More →

Get Your Blog On: Janice Croze, Cofounder of “5 Minutes for Mom,” on Success and Getting Noticed by Being Genuine

Bill Brazell on December 20, 2011

Janice Croze and Susan Carraretto, identical twins, launched 5 Minutes for Mom in early 2006 as a site to help promote small businesses (“mom and pop shops”) and the online parent community in general. Back then, web directories and blogrolls were the main method for growing traffic and creating community; social media hadn’t yet managed to make much of a splash. Pageviews came quickly, but not without a lot of hard work. Read More →

Bullet Points: Keeping Morale High w/o Raises; Office Party Drinking, Chartified

The Hired Guns on December 16, 2011

“Don’t show ‘em the money (even if you have it).” How to boost work morale, even if a raise isn’t in the cards. [Inc.]
“How to Make the Case for Higher Pay” [NYT]
Revolution made #Egypt one of the top Twitter hashtags of 2011, and Charlie Sheen did the same for #tigerblood, which seems to still be winning. [BBC]
Sarcasm can be hard to convey in tweets, IMs, and emails. Enter the Sarcastic font, which leans left, the opposite of italic, like this:

[via The Next Web]

Grub Street asks and answers the classic question: “How Drunk Can You Get at Your Office Christmas Party?” See also our advice on Making a Lasting Impression at Your Holiday Party.
Arcade Fire’s latest video, for its song “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” uses Flash to let you make the creepy masked dancers be your puppets. The most fun option requires you to crank up your computer’s webcam and make increasingly frantic and embarrassing gestures, though, so maybe save it for lunch, or a really dull point at that party. [via Slate]

4 Things You Need To Know About HTML5

Lisa Schneider on December 15, 2011

Lisa Schneider writes for The Hired Guns blog about the technological changes that everyone in digital organizations needs to know about, whether it affects their own job directly or not. Questions about technology or making the transition to a primarily digital career? You can either put them in the comments or ask them via Twitter.

Recently, a colleague left a dinner where there was lots of talk about HTML5. “What does this mean for our website?!” was the fairly panicked email I received.

Gone are the days (if they ever existed) when people outside the digital or IT teams could ignore the technology behind websites and applications. And while not everyone needs to know how to code, workers in management, editorial, marketing, and other areas all definitely need to know enough about the technology to understand its implications.

HTML5 is simply the next iteration of HTML. But what’s different, and why are people excited? Read More →

The Rule of PLUMB: The Future of Product Management

Matt Smith on December 14, 2011

Here’s an obvious statement: the web (internet, computers, mobile, all of it) is changing. Here’s maybe a less obvious statement, but still nothing groundbreaking: the rules for how you build, maintain, and grow business on the web are also changing. This means that you need to adapt, to be prepared to change how you operate, and to be different from what you are today. What works today is almost certainly not going to work tomorrow. Read More →

Helping Friends Find Work During the Holidays

The Hired Guns on December 13, 2011

Ornate bicycle rickshaws and iPads and other fancy presents are all well and good, but for lots of people right now, what they really want is a job. Lenroy Jones of the Lexington Herald-Leader has some ideas on gifts to help job hunters stay inspired during the holidays, which can be a rough time if you’re out of work or just at the wrong place in the career.

As our own Allison Hemming puts it in the article, “even the smallest rejection or setback can knock the long- and even short-term unemployed off their game.”

Some of the ideas: gift cards for the salon or the all-important coffee shop, volunteering your time to help them fine-tune interview techniques or even helping pay for coaching to help your friends get their work life back on track.

[Photo: Gabriela Pinto/Flickr]

Job Hunting But Feel Like Sloughing Off? Use the Holidays to Your Advantage.

The Hired Guns on December 12, 2011

With all the other distractions at this time of year, it can be hard to keep going strong on a job search. But the consultant Lynn Taylor has some compelling reasons why this time of year can actually benefit those gunning for a new job, especially if they’re willing to be a little clever in how they go about their hunt.

Just like that hard-to-take lull in mid-summer, the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s requires a little more patience and persistence when it comes to waiting for people to return calls, take meetings, and make decisions.

And even if you don’t end up with a new job to celebrate exactly when January 1 rolls around, this period is still a great time to revise your resume, dust off your website or Twitter account, and get some good plotting in before 2012 rolls in.

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Bullet Points: Happy 2012!

New Year, Old You: Resisting Change, Innovation, and Self-Improvement

“Job Creation” in 2012: What You Can Do

Freelancers: Just Where Did the Year Go? And What Are You Planning for 2012?

Get Your Blog On: Janice Croze, Cofounder of “5 Minutes for Mom,” on Success and Getting Noticed by Being Genuine

Bullet Points: Keeping Morale High w/o Raises; Office Party Drinking, Chartified

4 Things You Need To Know About HTML5

The Rule of PLUMB: The Future of Product Management

Helping Friends Find Work During the Holidays

Job Hunting But Feel Like Sloughing Off? Use the Holidays to Your Advantage.

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Bullet Points: Freelance Success
by The Hired Guns

Show Me the Money: How to Price Your Work (and Get Paid for It)
by Beth Temple

Flextime: How to Bend (Not Break!) in Today’s Turbulent Workplace
by Beth Temple

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