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S.W.F. Seeks J.O.B.: Make Your Job Hunt Persistent, Not Pathetic

on May 5, 2011

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S.W.F. Seeks J.O.B. is our monthly career advice column penned by Judy McGuire, a sex and relationships expert who also happens to be hilarious. Judy will help us understand how the rules for dating and job hunting are a lot alike–and how the victories in one part of your life can be applied to the other.

Although I don’t completely buy the adage that we only want what we can’t have, it is a fact that whether you’re wooing employers or a trying to reel in a new special naked friend, holding back a little goes a long way towards drumming up interest in your ass. As that wise sage Madonna once sang, “It’s human nature.”

For example, following up a first date with a next-day call, text or e-mail is showing interest. It tells your date that you had a good time, you’re interested in seeing them again, and you’re not the type of mental midget who bothers living by some arbitrary three-day rule. Conversely, professing your undying love, purchasing bridal magazines, and changing your Facebook status after just one night out (even if you got lucky) reveals that you’re not only pathetic, but a sad sack with stalkerish tendencies as well.    Read More →

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Eliot Glazer and His Celebration of Awesome Moms and Dads

on May 5, 2011

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“Sharpshooters” is a new series of interviews looking at members of The Hired Guns network and the amazing books, websites, and other projects they’re creating. First up is Eliot Glazer, whose (highly Mother’s Day-friendly!) book, My Parents Were Awesome, came out last month.

Eliot GlazerTwesume? (your resume/bio in 144 characters or less.)
Comedian, digital-media genius-head, blogger/author/editor, live event producer, amazing dog owner, and nice Jewish boy.

Hometown?
Long Island

Where did the idea for My Parents Were Awesome come from?
I was working as an editor at Urlesque at the time, and as a professional blogger, it’s so easy to get caught up in the snark of the blogosphere that I decided I wanted to create a warmer, more friendly online destination. And I knew that one thing so many people have in common is a really cool picture of [their] parents or grandparents. And we’re in the age of sharing everything, of course, so all the elements kind of hit at once.    Read More →

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Bullet Points: 2/3 of Workers Want to Leave; Small Biz “Likes” Social Media

on May 4, 2011

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  • The employees are restless. A Deloitte survey of folks working at big companies found that 2/3 of them want a new job. As Forbes reports, “while Baby Boomers (age 48-65) were unhappiest with their employers, members of Generation X (age 32-47) were the most likely to be seriously looking.”
  • What’s the best way to go about getting an assistant? When Jason Fried and his boutique software company 37signals were ready to place an ad, they decided to focus on actions rather than “a boring list of skills.” Instead, the want ad had “a list of 26 things that this person would have done in a week had he or she been working here.” [Inc.]
  • The design blog Demilked turns its eye on some of the funniest and most creative fitness ads.
  • “Don’t Measure Success by Follower Counts” and other tips for small businesses still getting used to social media and what it can and can’t do for them.
  • Although it sounds as if it could be turned into an Onion article itself, it’s true: “content marketers” of all stripes can learn a lot about how the faux news provider creates its stories. Hint: lots of ideas, headlines, and stories get axed.
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How to Fail Upwards: 5 Secrets CEOs Don’t Want You to Know

on May 3, 2011

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You could spend years trying to fail upwards, only to find that all the good promotions have already been claimed by more successful incompetent people. Here’s how to shave a few years off your timeline:

  1. Communicate only with superiors. As long as your boss thinks you’re doing a good job, you are. Contrary to popular opinion, you should pay absolutely no attention to colleagues or subordinates. Their opinions don’t matter, which is why they don’t have “VP” next to their names. As long as your boss keeps failing upward, you’re golden. But you’re probably wondering what happens when your boss gets fired, laid off, or retires. Well, unless you can somehow quickly learn to manage a team and collaborate with others, you’re kinda screwed. But cross that bridge when you come to it.    Read More →
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The Good Guns: Google for Nonprofits

on May 3, 2011

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If you’re a Hired Gun who serves on a nonprofit’s board or works as a volunteer, you’re probably already using your creativity to help the group raise its visibility. Some extra help’s on the way: with the newly retooled Google for Nonprofits program, the number of nonprofit organizations that Google’s philanthropic branch can help each year has greatly increased. If your pet nonprofit qualifies, it could score you some significant tools.

Craig “Craigslist” Newmark recently interviewed Google.org about the program. According to the group’s product manager, Kristen Olsen Cahill, the program could net your group “$10,000 a month in advertising on Google AdWords to reach more donors, free or discounted Google Apps to cut IT costs and operate more efficiently, and premium features for YouTube and our mapping technologies to raise awareness of your cause.”

You might be scratching your head, thinking, “this will all be Greek to the executive directors and fundraisers I’m trying to help–we need to take baby steps.” But Google’s thought of that, too. They are also building resources for nonprofits and have introduced the Google for Nonprofits Marketplace, where groups can tap low-cost or free resources to help get started.

If you’ve been trying to be the catalyst of change for a nonprofit, this is your chance to get them into the 21st century….

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The Haiku Resume: Boiling Down Your Career into One Line

on May 2, 2011

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Think First Then Type, a column by the copywriter par excellence Daryl Lang, comes with tips and techniques to help you use language more effectively at work. After all, even the best and brightest ideas won’t catch on if you can’t get them understood.

Japanese sceneYou’ve spent hours perfecting your resume. It glows with relevant skills and accomplishments, it’s optimized for keyword-crawling job sites, and it’s been PDF’d in perfectly kerned Helvetica.

Great work. But when somebody visits your website, your resume isn’t the “front door.” Your visitors want to see a few words that describe what you do. And if the first words that greet them are a boring biography (“an award-winning whatever with X years of experience”), you’re missing an opportunity.

You are a brand in the marketplace, and the best brands say what they do in a few concise words. You can identify many companies by their taglines alone. “The ultimate driving machine.” “Good to the last drop.” “What’s in your wallet?” You need a compelling tagline too.    Read More →

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Stand Up for Yourself: Succeeding as a Design “Team of One”

on May 2, 2011

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Jeff Gothelf, a user experience designer working for TheLadders.com, blogs for us about project management and UX careers and trends.

Several folks have written recently about how to operate a design team of one. Those posts, like this one by Leah Buley, discuss the tools, methodologies and tips/tricks for successfully pulling off a UX practice with only one practitioner. But once you’ve got the tools in place, you need to make sure your “team of one” also succeeds politically. First, you’ll need to convince the organization to fund your work and provide you with the bare essentials you need to function. Once those are in place, the onus is on you to prove that those funds were well spent. The following tactics will help keep your team funded, appreciated, and (with luck) expanding beyond its single member in the future.

Metrics: your new best friend
The beauty of online work is that it’s measurable. If it’s measurable, it’s controllable. And if it’s controllable, then you are its master. The first thing you should do is set benchmarks. Use the company’s reporting tools or free options like Google Analytics to gain a sense of where things stand now. As you begin to operate, report to the rest of the organization how the metrics are changing based on the work you’re doing. Make sure that as key performance indicators (KPIs) trend up and to the right, the UX work you’re doing gets the proper credit.    Read More →

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In Favor of Doing Favors

on April 29, 2011

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“So shines a good deed in a weary world.”

–Willy Wonka

So true, Mr. Wonka, and I live by those words. Kind of. Strike that and reverse it into graphic-design land. It’s probably not wise to admit this, but I will do a design favor for just about anyone who asks. Yep, free design! I know, what a ho. But a design ho, so it’s harmless. Except to my bank account. It’s not a goodwill thing, believe me. Karma coins do not pay my bills. I do free design for purely selfish reasons.

Click to enlarge!Let’s face it, graphic design is not the most lucrative career choice. But I had delusions of grandeur. Sitting in my black turtleneck, smoking cigarettes, discussing the latest color trends, and laughing at people who use Comic Sans. Years later, reality has set in. I score a job, receive a 63-page PDF of stringent brand guidelines, put my head down, and get to work. Twenty rounds of changes later, my ego is in the toilet and my brain is void of any creative thought.

So when a friend calls and ask me to do an evite for an outdoor BBQ with an actual pig roast? I am so in! Your son’s gay wedding with a superhero theme? Done! Why, you ask?

You, my appreciative friend, feel guilty and let me have creative freedom. I do not have to make ten rounds of changes. I do not have to make a logo bigger. I do not have to adhere to the brand guideline encyclopedia from hell. I get to pick my own color palette. My own fonts! I get a heartfelt “thank you so much.” I get satisfaction. I remember why I love graphic design.

So the next time your neighbor’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s college roommate needs a poster for his short film about daisies, definitely give me a ring. I’ll design the crap out of it–and this one’s on me!*

* bottles of wine graciously accepted

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Be Your Own Boss: What You Need to Know Before Going Freelance

on April 29, 2011

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A new session of Beth Temple‘s popular class on successful freelancing, Be Your Own Boss, will be held at The Hired Guns Academy next Thursday, May 5th. We thought we’d give you a taste by asking Beth to discuss the three most common questions that have popped up in previous sessions.

“How (and how much) should I charge?” Hands down, this is the top question. Of course, if I had an exact answer to the “much” question I would start a side business and add it to my own revenue line! The “how much” question usually refers to an hourly rate, which affects the “how should I charge?” end result. So let’s break it down.

The classic ways to charge are by the hour, by the project, and by a retainer fee. All methods require some knowledge of what an hour costs you in relation to how much a client is willing to pay for that same hour. Start by estimating an hourly rate based on what you were making at your full-time job using this equation: salary / 2000 (hours) + hourly costs of benefits = hourly rate. Then estimate the hours it would take to complete the project, and charge a project fee based on the total hours multiplied by your per-hour rate. (There are a lot of other variables that can come into play, of course, and I go over them in the class.)

Once you start the project, be sure to track your actual hours. At the end compare the number of hours you thought you’d work with what you did work. You will likely come up short that first time–but over time you’ll easily make that up.    Read More →

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Miss Education: Why Does It Take So Long to Leave a Lousy Job?

on April 29, 2011

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Happy Friday! Today brings the debut of “Miss Education,” a public-school teacher in the New York area. Until she finds herself a shiny new career and can leave the blackboard jungle behind, she’ll be posting anonymously. We think her struggle to drastically remodel her work life is something that lots of us can relate to . . . .
Empty SchoolroomAfter four years teaching, I’ve had enough. In fact, I often wonder why I stuck with it for the first four days. In 2007, I graduated with a diploma in one hand, a teaching license in the other, and stars in my eyes. I had just one goal: to change the world through the power of literature and my dynamic, witty personality. I didn’t know which school would hire me, which grade I would teach, or even which city I would work in, but somewhere, my first class of middle-school students was gearing up to have the best English teacher of their lives.

Four years later, after working for the New York City Department of Education, I am also working at a second job on the sly, enhancing my resume with other marketable skills and counting down until the day I can quit teaching middle school forever and shred my license into confetti.

I think that I went into teaching for all of the right reasons. None of the perks–summers off, pensions, health benefits, a workday ending at 3:00 p.m.—meant anything to me when I began my secondary-education program at college. I cared about only two things. I wanted to spend most of my day with eager, energetic young people, and I wanted to talk about books ALL DAY LONG. Was there a better way to make a living?    Read More →

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