I Want To Be A Freelance Writer How Do I Get Started

“I Want To Be A Freelance Writer How Do I Get Started” Help from our Community “I Want To Be A Freelance Writer: How Do I Get Started?” * After years in the publishing industry, Josh has had enough. He's interested in becoming a freelance writer, but he's worried about taking the leap from a secure job. Can you help him? What's your career history and current job? I've always loved writing, reading, film and the arts. I've worked in the publishing industry for most of my career, and right now I'm a marketing manager for a successful academic publishing company. How do you feel about your work? It pays well, and I like the people and general environment. I dislike the long commute, the open plan office, and I'm tired of being told what to do. I don't hate my work and I do see the value in it, but I just want more from life. What would you like to be doing instead? I'm currently doing a six-month writing course while I work full time, which I absolutely love. I really enjoy being creative and spending time with other writers. In an ideal world I would find a way to make writing my career, but I'm realistic and happy to juggle other jobs too. What's the biggest obstacle in your way? Fear is my biggest obstacle. Fear that I won't earn as much money as I do currently from any career change and the impact that would have on my family. I feel selfish â€" I have what looks like a great job on paper and I'm still not happy! Can you help Josh? Have you moved from marketing into something more personally rewarding, or do you know someone who has? Do you know about the world of freelance writing? How can Josh get past his fear of taking a financial hit by going freelance? Share your thoughts in the comments below and click the thumbs-up button to show your support. Give Josh a cheer of encouragement by hitting the thumbs-up button here:

5 Questions You Should NOT Ask in an Interview

5 Questions You Should NOT Ask in an Interview When it comes to conducting interviews, there are a handful of questions you simply shouldn’t ask the candidates in front of you.   Whether it’s because your words could be misconstrued or cause offense, sometimes you need to look for a way around a certain question if you want to get to know your interviewee without putting them on the defensive. Here are just five questions you really shouldn’t ask in an interview, with a few alternative ways of finding out the information you need… 1. Do you have kids? It’s a given you should never ask if someone is expecting or already has children.   It probably wouldn’t even cross your mind to ask the ‘family question’ of a man, so don’t ask it of the woman sitting in front of you either. You could try, instead, to ask whether they see any problem with the working hours if they have other commitments outside the office.   That gives your interviewee a chance to let you know if they have little ones who will need picking up and dropping off at school or other relatives they need to care for. 2. When did you graduate? Asking when someone left university could be a tricky one, as it’s almost as good as asking their age.   Rather than run the risk of being accused of age discrimination, try to find a slightly more tactful way of asking about their degree and subsequent experience. You might try asking about what and where they studied and hope they raise the graduation year of their own accord.   Failing that, asking about where they see their career going or what they are looking for in a new job can get them to open up and talk about past achievements. 3. Where do you live? Commuting can really take it out of you, so most recruiters want to know their candidate isn’t going to be making a grueling hundred-mile round trip to get to and from work each day.   Asking where someone lives could, however, be misconstrued as prying or finding grounds for discrimination. You might try highlighting any commuting benefits your company offers, such as travel discounts or car sharing schemes.   Alternatively, try asking if they are happy with the location of the office and give them a chance to talk about how close or far it is from home. 4. How many sick days did you take in your last job? Asking about sick days is tantamount to asking about a person’s health, and that’s a definite no-no.   If someone has a condition they feel they need to tell you about, then they will tell you in their own way and at the time of their choosing. Never pressure someone to reveal any medical details.   Instead, you could try asking if they see any barriers which might make it tricky for them to carry out their work, giving them the space to talk about their health if they feel the need to. 5. Why should we give you the job? It’s still a staple question in many interviews, but most candidates will be put on the defensive if you demand to know why you should hire them.   It can come across as confrontational, and you won’t get the most out of the candidate if they feel you’re putting too much pressure on them. There are much friendlier ways of posing the same question, so you might want to ask them to highlight the key skills and experience they have which make them suited to the position. Some questions have to be completely off the cards, so never ask anything which could be seen to be prying into ethnicity, religion or a candidate’s health and wellbeing.   Most interviewees will volunteer the information you’re after if you leave your questions fairly open-ended, so phrase things creatively and let your candidates speak freely if you want to get the most out of your interviews. About the author: Lizzie Exton writes for Inspiring Interns, which specializes in sourcing candidates for internships. To browse our  graduate jobs London listings, visit our website.

5 Steps to an Engaging Personal Brand - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

5 Steps to an Engaging Personal Brand - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Personal branding is more than just a way to market yourself as a talented candidate it’s also a valuable tool for connecting with people within your industry. Instead of creating a personal brand only to advertise your name, build a brand to network with successful people in your industry. Your network is one of the most powerful resources in your career, so its important you engage with those relationships on a regular basis. In order to create an engaging personal brand, follow these five steps to build more relationships and appear on the radar of recruiters and employers: 1. Provide unique content to draw people in. Your personal brand should extend beyond your LinkedIn profile. Not only should your content illustrate who you are as a professional, but it should also provide value for your audience. Make sure to share useful tools and advice in addition to your career story, in order to provide valuable content. You want to draw people into your personal brand with your expertise, so provide something they will enjoy and likely share with the people in their networks. 2. Utilize platforms suited for your brand. Its important to find social media platforms to optimize your personal brand. Social media serves as a microphone for your personal brand, so choose wisely when you develop your strategy. Make sure you select platforms you can navigate and can use on a daily basis. Once you choose the platforms that work best for you, stick with them and update often. Whether its a combination of Twitter and Pinterest or WordPress and LinkedIn, choose platforms to maximize who you are as a professional. 3. Start sharing your content. After creating unique and engaging content for your brand, its time to share! When you share your content, encourage conversation with your audience. Ask your networks to provide input about what they think of your content. If you choose to share advice columns, stir up conversation by sharing photos and asking questions. This will help you spark conversations and begin the steps of building relationships within your network. 4. Develop strong connections. As you continue to follow people in your industry and talk about the latest trends, youll discover there are certain people who pay close attention to your brand. If you notice a particular person sharing your content on a regular basis or engaging in conversation, reach out to them. You’ll discover what you have in common with those people, which can lead to opportunities down the road in your career. 5. Follow up in a timely fashion. Believe it or not, the time you take to follow up with a person can shape the path of your relationship. Its important to respond to emails, blog comments, and Tweets in a timely fashion. Your timeliness will show how much you care about engaging with your network and building strong relationships. Youll find as you continue conversations, people will begin to offer you favors and share valuable information with you to help you advance your career. By following these steps, you will be able to create an engaging personal brand. Remember, your personal brand is how you want people to know and remember you. The relationships you form will take you far in your career, therefore by providing an engaging personal brand, people will continue to stay in touch along the way. What ways have your built an engaging personal brand? Author: Heather R. Huhman  is a career expert, experienced hiring manager, and founder president of  Come Recommended, a content marketing and digital PR consultancy for job search and human resources technologies. She is also the instructor of  Find Me A Job: How To Score A Job Before Your Friends, author of  Lies, Damned Lies Internships  (2011) and  #ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle  (2010), and writes career and recruiting advice for  numerous outlets.

Yom Kippur provides a welcome break from work

Yom Kippur provides a welcome break from work My earliest memory of Yom Kippur is one of my dad writing a note for me to give to my second grade teacher: Please excuse Penelope from school tomorrow. She is Jewish. Maybe if there had been other Jews at my school, the note would have had more context. But my dad was apoplectic about the fact that Christmas was an official school holiday and Yom Kippur was not, and he would explain nothing. So I tried, as best as a seven-year-old-could, to explain to the teacher that Yom Kippur is the most important Jewish holiday. I said: Its so important that we dont even eat. Now that Im in charge of my own fridge, I havent fasted in years. But I still take the day off to go to synagogue, and I still find myself explaining the holiday to the uninformed: Its a time to mourn the dead. Its a time to be thankful for being alive and to try to figure out how to be a better person next year. Even if Jews neglect Judaism in their day-to-day lives, most show up to synagogue for Yom Kippur. Some Christians may relate they may not say the rosary every night, but they never miss Christmas mass. As a kid, I considered Yom Kippur an interruption of my secular life. When other kids asked about my absence, I told them I was at home sick or had a very long dentists appointment so no one would know I was different. As an adult, there are always more Jews in my office than there were in my grade school, but at the office I have found new problems with Yom Kippur. The first year that I didnt live with my parents I felt rebellious: I worked on Yom Kippur. But that day it felt bad. I told myself that it would be okay if I spent time at work thinking about how to be a better person the next year, but I ended up thinking only a few minutes, locked in a stall in the back of the bathroom. By the time my career progressed to management jobs, I knew I would feel bad if I didnt go to synagogue, but sometimes I still skipped Yom Kippur. I worried: What if a meeting was held and since I wasnt there someone delegated all the grunt work to me? I neednt have worried all meetings were postponed out of respect to the number of Jews who were out of the office, except for me, who showed up. I didnt learn my lesson. I worked on Yom Kippur the year I was supposed to give my first presentation to senior management. The printer broke. The presentation was postponed. No one cared. I fasted the rest of the day at my desk. Another year, my reason for ditching synagogue was less career-driven and more water-cooler-driven. The O.J. verdict was going to be announced, and I didnt want to miss the communal fun of hearing the verdict at work. I imagined highly-charged debate, or at least a lot of shouting. So I stayed at work, where reaction to the O.J. verdict hoopla was anticlimactic and short-lived. After that, I usually took a day off with all the other Jews. I came to enjoy the Yom Kippur chatter in the office among Jews because during the rest of the year, Jews are mostly secular and so is the chatter. Yom Kippur would be more convenient if it fell on Christmas (everythings closed, Jews have nothing to do a great day to fast!) but I realized that the Yom Kippur interruption of work would not derail my career, it would only derail my weekly schedule. This last Yom Kippur, which fell on Sep. 27, two and a half weeks after the terrorist attacks, I discovered something new: Yom Kippur gives me a peaceful time that I would not otherwise allow myself at the expense of work. People are still shaking from the World Trade Center attacks and the looming threat of our country at war. We are all expected to get back to work and be productive while a necessary process, it is one that feels abrupt. Yom Kippur gave me a break. So I did in that time what that time is set aside to do. I mourned those who died. I gave thanks that I was alive. I thought of how to be a better person next year. Some will call me on the fact that I only lean on my faith when I need it most. But this tragedy has made many of us revisit, reassess, and most of all, re-appreciate. For years I looked at Yom Kippur as an inconvenience I always felt I would be missing something at work. This year, the timing could not have been better, and I realize I would have missed out on something more had I gone to the office.

5 Behavior-Based Interview Questions You Should Use CareerMetis.com

5 Behavior-Based Interview Questions You Should Use Today’s competitive job market demands a new method of recruiting. Hiring managers have to be able to look beyond a resume and experience-based questions to really gauge a candidate’s character and see whether they truly embody qualities consistent with the company’s culture.By incorporating behavioral-based interview questionsinto your hiring process, you gain a more insightful view of each candidate and are able to make a final decision based off someone’s full range of skills, experience and personality.evalThere are a lot of things to account for when interviewing candidates. First and foremost, people are usually nervous meeting face-to-face. In a hopeful employee’s mind, this is a “make it or break it” deal, and while some people will be putting their absolute best foot forward, others may find themselves tongue-tied and unable to truly demonstrate their value to you.It’s your job to ensure that the company hires someone who isn’t just qualified to perform the job but also enhances office culture. You don’t want someone who will simply show up, work and leave. You need an employee who leaves an impression on their coworkers and truly contributes something unique to the workplace.These 5 behavior-based interview questions lay an excellent framework for discerning a candidate’s strengths, weaknesses and strongest personality traits. Even the most nervous prospect will have the opportunity to showcase their potential by responding to these questions.#1 â€" Can you tell me about an experience at a previous job where you didn’t get along with a coworker? What happened, and what action did you take?evalIt’s not uncommon to ask employees about how they’ve handled conflict in the past, but this question goes a step further by asking the candidate to recount a specific experience and describe specific measures they took to resolve a problem. The first factor you’ll want to consider when evaluating a candidate’s response is how they describe the coworker in-question.Rather than speak in a derogatory tone or insult their past coworker, a good candidate will list the characteristics or actions the coworker took that displeased them. They will focus more on the problem and how they resolved it rather than how someone else caused it.The ideal answer will demonstrate a candidate’s ability to maintain composure and come up with solutions to problems in unfavorable conditions. You will also be able to tell whether this person is more likely to seek out results in any situation rather than cast blame and ignore responsibility.#2 â€" Can you describe a time you struggled to build a relationship with someone? How did you overcome it?Communication is key, especially when you don’t see eye-to-eye with someone you have to work with. Whether it’s a customer, client or coworker, the ability to empathize and adjust social approaches is important in the workplace.evalDuring a behavior-based interview, you should seek to u nderstand how the candidate responds to a variety of social situations and how willing they are to branch out of their comfort zone.If they had to work with a boss who wasn’t very affable, for example, they should explain how they went out of their way to find common ground, always be friendly and start conversations.#3 â€" It can be a challenge to meet everyone’s expectations when you’re working with a high volume of clients. How do you prioritize customers’ needs?This question provides a twofold look at the candidate’s behavior and values. First and foremost, you’ll be able to discern which qualities they find most important when it comes to customer service.Second, you’ll get an idea for how well they multitask. We all know you can’t make everyone happy, and if a candidate is stretched too thin, a good response would demonstrate their willingness to go the extra mile and assist a client as well as ask for help when they’re overbooked.evalA strong candidate will seek to provide optimal customer service independently, but they will also recognize an inability to fully meet a client’s needs and eagerly refer them to the best resource or personnel.#4 â€" Tell me about a time you were under a lot of pressure. How did you adapt, and what did you learn from the experience?This question assesses an ability to adapt. Flexibility is important when it comes to work, especially if you tend to have rotating responsibilities in a position. The candidate may share answers relating to their personal life or stick to their professional experiences. Either route is fine, but make sure they clearly identify a time that they were stressed.Professional vulnerability demonstrates confidence and honesty; if they admit that they cracked under the pressure but can explain how they rebounded and now have a better understanding of their limits, great.You can expect to hear a wide range of answers to this question including adopting personal coping strategies, reac hing out to a trusted coworker or supervisor or even seeing a therapist and learning some new techniques for dealing with stress. The most important takeaway from this question is the candidate’s willingness to learn from tough situations and adjust their thinking and reevaluate their priorities as needed.eval#5 â€" Tell me about an important goal you’ve set for yourself. How did you ensure you achieved it?Time management is important, but so is personal growth. Rather than asking about how a candidate accomplished a work deadline (a situation most applicants have rehearsed), this question aspires to understand some goals that are important to the individual. Maybe they vowed to lose weight and came up with a diet plan and workout routine. They could have decided they wanted to accomplish more during the day and started identifying three main objectives every morning before work.Based on the response to this question, you can learn more about what the client values in their own life and how well they’re able to effectively adjust and manage their time.The Importance of Behavior-Based InterviewsBehavioral interview questions identify a variety of core strengths and values. A good candidate will be able to provide concrete examples of past work and personal experiences to highlight their strengths. The answers will demonstrate both capability and willingness to cooperate and adjust to new situations.If you find that the questions take the client back, don’t be shocked. While behavior-based interview questions are becoming more popular, many applicants are still unfamiliar with them and tend to only practice the staple questions like, “Tell me about yourself” and “What makes you a good candidate for this role?”Using questions like these will help you tailor your interviews to spotlight the specific qualities and values you need in a new hire. You’ll gain valuable insight into a candidate’s real work experience, their motivations and characteri stics you can’t find on a resume.

Are you afraid to ask for support - Margaret Buj - Interview Coach

Are you afraid to ask for support We all need help and support  at one time or another especially when were facing a job interview, whether for an external job or an internal promotion. Yet, most of us hang back, fearful of admitting our weakness or concern to a friend or a professional. Many of us would rather handle the matter on our own. We buck up, stiffen our upper lip, dig in our heels, and go for it. But theres no benefit in going through a challenge without support. Others have travelled the course before us so why not use their road map? You might be surprised at how people want to give you a hand, an encouraging word, or a name or contact you can refer to. Practice Leads to Progress For some people practice makes perfect as the saying goes, but for the majority, practice leads to progress. You learn along the way. Let’s assume youve landed a job interview and you feel worried or anxious about it, talk to someone in the know who has experience in this area. Meet them for lunch and ask questions, take notes, and perhaps ask that individual to do a practice interview with you. If you don’t know anyone like that, find a professional. It can make all the difference between walking into the meeting with the jitters or showing up with confidence and enthusiasm. If you’re applying for a job within a different department, do your research. Find out about the projects you’d be working on, challenges they are facing etc â€" before your interview. The same applies to any other area of your life â€" if you wanted to get very fit for example, you know you could get better and quicker results with a help of a personal trainer. Yet every day I see people who’ve been struggling for months to get a job or get promoted just because they don’t allow themselves to get any support. But I can’t afford it… I’ve spoken to people who’ve been out of work for months, and they won’t get any help because they ‘can’t afford it’.  They won’t spend £200 or so to get help in finding a job soon, yet how many thousands of pounds/dollars are they missing out on by not working for months or staying in the same unfulfilling job for too long? People always have the money for  things they want.  If I’ve waited until I had the money to pay for a coach, I’d have never got the results I had in my business. Personal feedback and advice from someone who’s experienced in the area you need help with is just not something you can get from free materials available on the internet. And the more you pay, the better results you get as the more invested you are. When I paid my previous coach  $300 per hour, I’d made sure I’ve implemented all the actions and advice. I might not have been that committed if I’d only paid, say, $50 per hour… We all need coaches and mentors if we want to succeed. Bill Gates has one in Warren Buffet, Saint Laurent had one in Christian Dior. Aristotle had one in Plato, who had one in Socrates â€" and the list goes on. All the successful business owners I know have coaches. What about you? If you’ve had a mentor/coach, what were the results? If you have not and you are still struggling with whatever problem you have â€" why not? I’d love to hear your comments!

Tips For Writing a Work Experience Resume

Tips For Writing a Work Experience ResumeIf you are looking for resume writing for work experience, you may want to read this article. It will help you learn the basic resume format and find out if a work experience resume is right for you.This is the first step in applying for a job, how to write a work experience section. This section must be included on your resume if you have any work experience. You should make sure that it is listed somewhere where a potential employer can find it. Otherwise, they may ignore it when you apply for a job.There are several things you can include on your resume if you have work experience. This is a good way to show how you can help the company as well as what you have done in the past. However, it is not mandatory to include this section on your resume. Many employers are satisfied with a job description without this section. To get the employer's attention and find out if you would be a good fit for the job, include this information on your resum e.The skills section of your resume must include your work experience if you want to include a work experience section on your resume. This section must clearly indicate what skills you can offer to the company. It must also be comprehensive in showing your skills and accomplishments. You must also provide information about the employer's requirements, if you can provide them. In this way, the employer will know whether you have the skills needed for the job or not.Include a summary of your work experience and indicate the length of time you have been working for the company. You must also state the names of the employers so that the employer can contact you if you are interested in working for them. Include the following information: name, address, phone number, e-mail address, type of work, the location, whether you are self-employed person, and what your pay rate is.If you have any job that you have held as an independent contractor, a freelance writer, a teaching assistant, a nu rsing assistant, or any other type of work experience, write in the 'Other' field to indicate this information. This will enable you to work for other companies. Do not forget to indicate this on your resume if you wish to do that type of work.If you have not had any work experience, write 'No' in the work experience section. It is not necessary to indicate this. If you are self-employed, you may still have some work experience but it must be from another company.Resume writing for work experience is an important part of the job application process. You must include it if you have any work experience. If you have not had any work experience, simply write 'No' to indicate that you do not have any work experience.