Week 12- What Color is Your Parachute Chapter 10

Job hunting can be a scary situation and a difficult one to stay positive about after numerous attempts. Many times when people get denied a job, they believe that it is something about them that is holding them back or a handicap. These handicaps can be anything from a physical disability, age, race or even personality. They believe that it is because of these issues that they are not going to get a job.

In chapter 10 of the book What Color is Your Parachute, author Richard Bolles discusses the idea of job hunting handicaps and how a job hunter can handle them. The first key that Bolles wants the reader to understand is that everybody can get hired, it just depends on the employer. Some employer somewhere will hire you, it is just on you to find those employers that will.

Another thing that Bolles wants the reader to understand is that everybody has a handicap. This does not mean a physical handicap, but something that a person does not have the ability to do.

As Bolles puts it, “Let’s say there are 4,341 transferable skills in the world...Let’s guess the average person has 1,341 skills...that leaves 3,000 things that the average person can’t do” (Bolles 222). Everyone is handicapped, but it is up to you to figure out what you can and cannot do. By doing this, you will have the best opportunity to find an employer that will hire you regardless of your handicaps because the skills you do have fit so well with the company.

Week 12- Hootsuite Certification

Understanding how to organize and maintain your social media presence is critical to the digital success of your company. Without an organized social media plan, the company would likely think they are wasting money on social media that is not working. Luckily, Hootsuite is designed to help keep businesses organized.

Hootsuite is the online social media service that can connect a multitude of social media pages onto one easy to navigate dashboard. This allows the user to make posts onto multiple social media sites simultaneously, monitor activity on multiple sites at the same time and respond to fans or customers quickly and easily.

Another service that Hootsuite provides is online certification exams. These exams cover different types of social media including Hootsuite Platform Certification, Social Marketing Certification and Advanced Social Advertising among others. Hootsuite also takes you through online courses aimed at helping you to learn the most about the certification you want and how to best work your company’s online operations.

Once the courses are completed, you can take the test and earn your certification. This not only makes you more efficient using the internet for your company, but also makes you feel as if you achieved something. Hootsuite Certifications should definitely be used if you are trying to build the online presence of your company.

Week 11- What Color is Your Parachute Chapter 9

Looking back at the last couple of weeks, I have shared with you a strategy known as the self-inventory strategy or the “flower”. This strategy has been proven to be the most successful for those who have been job-hunting. So, now that you have your flower created what’s next?

The next step is choosing where you are going to work and what you are going to do. According to the author of What Color is Your Parachute Richard Bolles, there are five steps that job hunters and career changers have found the most helpful (these are also in order):

1. Find Out What Careers or Work Your Flower Points To
2. Try On Some of Those Jobs Before You Decide Which Ones to Pursue
3. Find Out What Kinds of Organizations Have Such Jobs
4. Find Names of Particular Places that Interest You
5. Research That Place Thoroughly Before Formally Approaching Them

If you follow these steps in this order, you will find a job that not only fits the desires you have, but also fits the career that you want. The most important part of these steps is not the actions themselves, but rather the research that you are doing.

The more you know about where you want to work, the better you will feel about the fit and the more prepared you will be for working. Be sure to do thorough and strong research because this will make it easier to determine which job and workplace is best for you. Good luck and happy researching!

Week 11- Facebook Ads and CTR

Facebook ads have changed the game for social media marketing, with many companies using them as their first connection to many online consumers. Last week, I discussed how to implement and utilize Facebook ads and ad campaigns. Now it is time to discuss the importance of Facebook ads and their Click-through rate or CTR. CTR is the amount of times an ad has been clicked by users over how many times the ad has been shown. For companies to be successful on their ad campaigns, they want to have the highest rate.

The idea of companies is to optimize their ads so that they are clicked the most often so that the ad will be seen by more consumers. It may sound easy, but with many companies competing in the same way the competition is always fierce. According to an article by Digitalmarkinginstitute.com, there are five different ways to get better results from your Facebook ads:

1. Stick to the News Feed on Desktop

2. Speak to your Target Audience

3. Make your image stand out among the rest

4. Split your large audience into smaller, more focused audiences

5. Test different images for the same campaign then after a while, choose the best

These five strategies will help you optimize your company ads CTR and I would highly recommend reading the article for more information. 

Week 10- What Color is Your Parachute Chapter 8

Last week, I discussed the self-inventory strategy that has been proven to be very successful for job hunters attempting to land that first job. Although the process is time-consuming, it has been proven as one of the most effective (yet most underused) way for people to land a job. In the book, What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles, he describes one of the many strategies of the self-inventory strategy.  

One of the strategies for the self-inventory strategy is known as the flower exercise. The “flower” is you and how you work in the work environment. The flower has seven “petals” or seven sides of how you fit into the workplace that are significant for you to answer.

The seven petals are people, workplace, skills, purpose, knowledge, salary and geography. The petals and their goals are listed below:

People- To avoid past bad experiences at with people at work by finding a better picture of the people you want around you in the workplace.

Workplace- To state the working conditions and surroundings that would make you the happiest through a description of physical surroundings

Skills- To discover what your favorite functional skills are that can be translated to any field of interest, not just those you can do best but the ones you love to do most.

Purpose- To know the moral compass or spiritual values by which you can guide your life through some definition or purpose of your life.

Knowledge- To summarize all that you stored in your brain to find some guidance for which field you would most enjoy working in.

Salary- To gain a realistic picture of how much money you will need to earn, or want to earn at whatever job you find by looking for a range of salary.

Geography- To define in what part of the country or world you’d most like to work and live in by defining a clearer picture about what you hope for in life.

The author is very helpful in letting the reader reaching all of these goals by giving them facts, worksheets and inside information about many industries. It would be very beneficial to all to heed his advice and follow the worksheets, especially for new job hunters. Just remember, it is a lot of work, but it is for you to have a better job that you will hopefully keep for a very long time.

Week 10- Facebook Ads

Many businesses understand the importance of digital marketing and social media for their company’s success. Perhaps the most significant of the social media platforms, Facebook, does a good job attracting the average social media user to a company’s page with their Facebook ads. These ads can be set up by any person who has a Facebook page and a budget, all it takes is a little direction.

The first step in the creation of a Facebook ad is to access the Facebook Business page and clicking the create an Ad button. Once selected it will take you to a page called the “Ad Manager” that will look like this:

Once here, you may select the type of ad campaign you are looking for. For this blog I am going to do engagement since I am hoping to drive up my Facebook page’s following and awareness. When you choose your consideration it will take you to the bottom of the screen where you will name the ad campaign like so:

After naming your campaign it will take you to a page where you will be able to select your audience and budget for your campaign. Since my Facebook page is for college credit and most of the followers attend my school, I will put my audience for the town my school exists in and the demographic for people in college. This is shown below:

When this section is completed, you are able to set a budget. This has a very large range that you may use, but I will show an example of what a college kid may be able to afford. You will also be able to either use a preselected time period or create one for yourself, I am going to create my own time frame.

When you select continue, it will take you to a page where you can either select the page as a whole as an advertisement or make a selected post your ad. Since I want more readership to my blog, I am going to make a post one of my selected ads:

Facebook does a nice job letting you see how your ad will look on all different types of mediums from mobile to desktop. Now all you have to do is confirm your ad and the process is complete! Enjoy your ads and the attention they garner!