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Personal Branding As an Effective Tool for a Job Search

Are you presently at loss as to how to use personal branding as an effective tool for your job search? Are you as a business owner presently agonizing on what personal branding will do to your business? Or you are looking for ways of shortening the period of your search for work and do not know how? Those with the knowledge about branding having observed the agonies of most job seekers have come to realize the benefits personal branding plays in effectively positioning job seekers and in particular executives in their quest to land their dream jobs or for winning jobs for their business. For a start, it helps optimize your strengths thereby enhancing your self-awareness. Secondly, it helps in clarifying what you want and how to set your goals and reach it. Thirdly, once you have identified your strengths, you can use it to create visibility to those who will assist you in reaching your goals. Finally, it helps you in differentiating yourself from the crowd. This article is therefore basically about why branding is a tool to effectively position you in making a success of your job hunting.

The world thinks of Christopher Colombus as a discoverer. One who started the voyage of discovery through his transatlantic voyage. What people did not know however is that he was a salesman and leader too. He had to sell his dream of transatlantic voyage in order to execute it. Let us consider the odds against his vision:

i. There was no market for transatlantic voyage.
ii. Although he had made voyages as a passenger but not as a captain.
iii. He was a foreigner (Italian) living in a foreign land, Portugal and then Spain.
iv. He did not have enough money to fund the expedition.
v. His price for the expedition was not cheap (a) He wanted 10% commission on all the trades between the discovered territories and the mother country.(b) He wanted the title of Admiral of the Fleet. (c) He wanted a permanent position of Governor of all the territories discovered. (d) He wanted all the honors and rights passed on to his heirs.

Despite the odds stacked against him, Colombus was able to sell the expedition at his own price. How did he achieve this? He did this through personal branding and marketing of course. He got the wealthy and influential citizens in both Spain and Portugal to invest in his dream and vision. He had to market his vision before he could sail. People had to buy into him (his brand) before they bought into his vision. Was he convincing? Could he pull what he was marketing off? He branded himself as a voyager and a voyager before he actually became one. This was salesmanship at its finest. It was personal branding at its best.

What is Personal Branding?

Megguiseppi defined personal branding as "Defining, differentiating and communicating ROI (return on investment) value you offer your target employers over others competing for the same job." From this definition, one should note that personal branding indicates the chance to "stand out" among the crowd of job seekers. In this world of increased competition and globalization regardless of age, position or business, it is necessary to understand the importance of branding. Successful organizations like Nike, Microsoft, Apple, Dell Computers etc are known for their branding. Like these successful organizations, to continue to be relevant in business today, job hunters and business owners need to make personal branding their most important job. To these successful organizations, their brand is their Unique Selling Points (USP). To the job seeker, personal branding is his Unique Selling Attributes, that is those attributes he could use to market himself to prospective employers.

Tom Peters in his own contribution on the importance of personal branding said "Regardless of age, regardless of the position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of personal branding. We are the CEO's of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be the head marketer for the brand called You". Branding is all about identifying what makes you unique and relevant and communicating it to targeted audience or potential employers so that you could reach your career/business goals faster. Once you identify your strengths, passions, skills, interests and values, you can therefore use the same information to separate yourself from your competitors. Branding therefore sends a clear message about you and what you have to offer. Consequently, it makes you more unique and more successful in your job hunting.

From the foregoing, the importance of personal branding to job search could therefore not be over emphasized. Branding creates wealth. This is because strong brands charge a premium for their services since people know their value. Further, strong brands are usually successful despite challenges and downturn in the economy because of their uniqueness. Consequently branding makes job hunting more successful in whatever capacity but most especially as an executive or business owner. To learn more about ways of using personal branding as a tool to further enhance your job search, click here!!!

Adekunle Agbaje is a technically competent human resource person and talent acquisition expert and writer on various topics. He owns the website http://www.visionoppservices.com/allaboutjobs. You can learn about how you can enhance your personal brand to make a success of your job search by visiting his website where he airs educative opinions on job search strategies on a regular basis.


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Become A Licensed Electrician - OK Electrical Accreditation Prerequisites

In order to become a professional journeyman electrician in Oklahoma, you will need to satisfy the following OK electrician certification criteria:

1. Possess not less than 8,000 hrs of verifiable practical experience in the electrical industry as a registered apprentice under the supervision of a licensed journeyman or contractor
2. Submit an Application for Electrical Licensure to the Construction Industries Board
3. Sit for and successfully pass the OK electrical certificate assessment

It is important to note that four thousand hours of your work experience needs to have been in commercial or industrial projects for it to be taken into consideration. Having said that, you will be able to receive as many as two thousand hours of credit for board-approved electrical experience or verified military services electrical assembly experience. In the event that you wish to obtain credit for any educational qualifications that you may have, you must present transcripts, school hours accumulated, marks and certificates of recognized training programs in your application.

Doing The Oklahoma Electrical License Test

If you intend to sit for the OK electrician permit assessment, you'll have to fill out an Electrical Licensure Application and send it in to the Construction Industries Board (CIB). Obtaining certification will cost you 75 dollars and the charge is made up of both the admin cost and the permit fee. The application form must include a check for the amount to be processed, and the admin payment is non-refundable.

To be able to satisfy the practical experience requirement, you will have to attach a thorough employment history along with your application form. In the event that you have worked with multiple companies, you're going to need to request all of them to complete the work background affidavit for you. Every one of the experience affidavits has to be autographed by your employer before a notary public to be accepted.

As soon as the application has been reviewed and approved by the CIB, you are going to be able to plan your electrician examination with PSI, the exam company. The examination charge is one hundred dollars and is due to PSI directly. The OK electrician certification examination is open book and is in line with the 2008 National Electrical Code. The examination is made up of 100 problems and is two hundred and forty minutes long, and you're going to be required to achieve a mark of seventy five percent to pass.

After you have successfully passed the test, you'll have to inform the CIB to receive your certificate. Renewing the license costs 50 dollars a year and you will also be required to undertake six hrs of ongoing electrician instruction within a year immediately after Oklahoma adopts the new version of the National Electrical Code (NEC).

Find out everything you need to know about the electrical license requirements in your state, especially with the latest changes in the Oregon electrician license requirements that have come into effect recently, at ElectricianTrainingPro.com. It's the most complete resource for everything electrician training, licensing and exam related online.


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Reasons Why You Should Try Medical Transcription Jobs

If you are considering the idea of starting a profession as a medical transcriber, then it's an excellent choice. The medical transcription business is a great line of profession, working in the medical related industry, you will discern that the assistance you execute as a medical transcriptionist will transform and develop our lives and most significantly, you'll be able to support yourself and your family monetarily with the profits you will earn if you are working in this health care related industry.

Here are some advantageous reasons why you should try a career in medical transcription:

1. Medical transcription is an associated with health related assistance.

Medical transcription is a division directly tied-up with the health care business and is a helpful district in health care. The medical transcribers are in charge for creating text based health reports from the audio recordings finished by medical doctors and medical experts. It's a significant component of health related services for the reason that it deals with appropriate information encoding and distribution.

2. The medical transcribing industry is rising

Studies in the United States signify that the medical transcribing business is continuously developing these days. As the demand for medical services is rising, medical transcription job opportunities are furthermore increasing globally.

This is because more individuals needs more health related assistance, the additional health related information is generated, furthermore the information needs to be structured and presented as appropriate medical records.

3. Medical transcriptionists are in demand

As years passed by, the world is aging and for that reason the needs for added health care services is furthermore increasing. Along with the demand for the genuine health care, the requirement to manage the records and other medical related information made throughout the procedure of executing the health care assistance furthermore increases.

And in view of the fact that the professional transcribers are accountable on handling these health related records, there is presently an escalating demand for medical transcribers in this division of health care industry.

There are a lot of medical transcriptions organizations existing worldwide wherein most of the clients are from the international hospitals. They also have sufficient support team to manage enormous loads of work related tasks without facing several work related difficulties.

The major dynamic that determines additional work to a medical associated organization is about the excellence of the service that is provided by the medical transcription outsourcing to the existing clients.


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An Online Job Hunt Is Much More Effective When It's Well Planned

People searching for jobs online need to develop a plan involving logical steps to make it work efficiently. Job search websites are helpful in locating jobs available in your local area or another preferred city. You should open a separate email account exclusively for your job search. It is certainly possible to exploit online networking for personal benefits. Here are some tricks that go a long way in making your job search successful.

For making your job search effective prepare a resources sheet. This is primarily a fact sheet that contains all your personal data like name, address, telephone, email address and any other contact information. Note down the names of your employers for whom you worked during the last ten years indicating the date of your employment with them along with their contact details. All this can be saved in a text file like: notepad, MS word document or Google document. Locate them at such a point from where you can easily copy the needed part and paste the same on online application. Such a resource sheet proves to be of great help while searching jobs.

Next, prepare your resume in text format for being used online. Make sure that your resume contains key words that are relevant to your field. Resume that you intend using online should be devoid of any graphics, bold or italic text and should be prepared in fonts that are convenient to read. You should understand that the keywords used by you are picked up by software employed by recruiting agencies. It is imperative to have a cover letter while sending your resume through email or otherwise.

You can use popular job search engines of the kind of Monster, Craigslist and indeed.com for posting your online resume. Websites like Monster provide you lists of job openings and allow you to choose how frequently you would like to be updated on jobs available in your field of interest and preferred locations. Another website that gives you helpful information on resume writing and interviewing is about.com. Social sites like LinkedIn can be used for online networking. This is among the most popular online networking websites for professionals.

The benefit of having an email account exclusively for your job search is that your inbox doesn't get cluttered with personal mail and spam. Surely, you would hate somebody hacking this account and sending absurd replies. Ensure to keep the user name of this account free of vulgar or swear words. You can find many companies like Google, Yahoo and Hotmail offering email accounts without any charge.

It may be worth reminding you that the Internet is an excellent way of researching companies. You may visit websites of various companies of your interest and get their addresses, phone numbers and the names of contact persons. You can transfer all this information to the resource sheet already prepared by you. The website of the company gives you the information about its range of products and the services it offers. You will find all this of great help when you are called for an interview by the company. Companies announce job openings available at their end on their websites.

Accurate planning of your job search certainly helps any jobseeker. Keeping your resource sheet maintained enables you to prepare your online application quickly. You also benefit by keeping an exclusive email account for your job searches. Getting registered with various job search engine enables likely employers to check your resume, while informing you about the jobs available with different companies.

Visit our job board to discover a rich database of Ottawa Ontario jobs! Job postings can be found for all the different cities in the Ontario province.


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Minnesota's Unemployment Rate Was 5.8% In September

The State of Minnesota's September 2012 unemployment rate was 5.8%. This is a small drop (0.1%) from the August 2012 number and is the first monthly rate reduction in Minnesota since April. For the month, there were approximately 173,000 unemployed workers in Minnesota, a decline of approximately 2,300. It was additionally reported that there were approximately 2.8 million employed people in September, which was an increase over August of roughly 5,500. The total civilian workforce also improved in September by nearly 3,200. Taken collectively, these results lowered Minnesota's overall unemployment rate by 0.1% for the month.

Looking back a year to September 2011 the current 5.8% rate is 0.5% lower than Minnesota's unemployment rate in 2011. There are nearly 14,000 fewer unemployed in MN compared to a year ago when there were an estimated 187,000 unemployed workers. Additionally, during that same timeframe there are around 7,000 more employed people in the state in 2012 in comparison with 2011. The total workforce, however, dropped in the past year by approximately 6,800 people. Collectively these statistics produced the 0.5% drop in Minnesota's rate during the last year.

Minnesota also continues to have a much lower unemployment rate than the nation as a whole. Minnesota's 5.8% September rate is 2 full percentage points lower than the national average of 7.8%. Both Minnesota's and the nationwide rate went down in September 2012.

Several of Minnesota's business types experienced employment gains in September 2012. Construction, Financial Activities, Professional & Business Services, Leisure & Hospitality, Trade Transportation & Utilities, and Professional & Business Services were all up in September. Minnesota major business sectors that were down in September included Mining & Logging, Manufacturing, Information, and a sizable drop in Government.

Construction was the Minnesota major business sector with the biggest employment gains (by percentage) during the past 12 months (up 4.8%). The biggest 12 month drop was in Leisure & Hospitality (down 1.7%). Trade, Transportation & Utilities had the most employed in MN in September with an estimated 495,200 workers. This was followed by Education & Health Services, Government, and Professional & Business Services as the largest industries (by employment) in Minnesota.

Minnesota's 5.8% rate continues to also be one of the lowest in the area. Neighboring Wisconsin's September 2012 rate was 7.3% (down 0.2%). The State of Michigan's rate also went down in September by 0.1% to 9.3%. Also lower for the month were Illinois (down 0.3% to 8.8%) and Indiana (down 0.1% to 8.2%). The State of Iowa continues to have a very low rate of 5.2%, also lower in September 2012 by 0.3%.

When Minnesota's' October 2012 employment numbers are available in approximately a month, we'll take another look at the state's results. As usual, please remember that previously published employment statistics do change and are often times modified in the future.

If you're unemployed in Minnesota and looking for information please visit the MN Unemployment Headquarters.


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Using the Social Media Sites to Enhance Your Job Search

A recent study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies shows that 60% of Facebook fans and 79% of Twitter followers are more likely to buy brands that they follow through social media. You can assume that many recruiters also are more likely to follow, and most importantly contact you if they find your details on one of the social media sites.

As a job seeker you will find that many of the job boards will alert you by email to new jobs that match your search criteria, but you can now also sign up to Twitter alerts and industry news. For example try the Monster site and sign up for Twitter news and advice. But why not use Twitter as part of your job search? If you are an expert in your particular field or you have something to say about your industry or profession then start Tweeting. It's no surprise that Headhunters also search Twitter for interesting Tweets from individuals who might be suitable candidates for a job they are trying to fill. The same goes for Facebook. Of course, you can continue to have your Facebook social pages, but why not also have a Facebook professional page which highlights your professional life and perhaps mentions some of your most successful projects at work? It might also mention conferences you have attended or testimonials from your customers. Have a look at the Career Advantage Facebook page for an example of what can be done using Facebook and think how it might enhance your job search.

Another important opportunity to enhance your on-line profile would be to start your own blog. The easiest and quickest way to do this is via either WordPress or using Blogger.com which is Google's free application to help you get blogging. Set up is very simple and takes less than ten minutes. From your blog you can start uploading posts on any topic you wish including posts that relate to your professional expertise. If you are a Programme Director then start posting your advice and comments on different aspects of programme management. If you are an expert in Islamic Financing then start blogging on the topic. You will be surprised at how many followers you attract. Also don't forget that in the context of your job search this blog will enable headhunters to find you on the internet. Again, remember to populate your blog with the right key words that match the words and phrases that headhunters are likely to use to search for someone with your skills. Apart from the job boards, Facebook and Twitter, headhunters will also be using search engines like Google to undertake key word searches.

Use the right key words and recruiters will find you.


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Teach Overseas Programs: Four Great Reasons To Love Them

If you long to travel the world, make a difference in others' lives, and love to meet new people from other cultures, teach overseas programs are a wonderful way to do it all. Teaching in another part of the world is a rewarding but challenging job. Some people look back on their teaching jobs in foreign countries as one of the highlights of their years in the classroom, while others decide it isn't for them. While there can be difficulties working in foreign countries, including homesickness, most people will say that the perks far outweigh them. Here are four great reasons to love teach overseas programs.

Immersion In A Foreign Culture

Vacations just don't do most other countries justice. Unless you actually live in a country for several months, you don't truly get the chance to experience all facets of a location's culture. Teaching jobs in foreign countries give you the opportunity to learn from other teachers, local parents and even your students. You'll get local residents' take on the best food, the most popular activities and much more. You'll be able to see and do things that aren't on a tourist's itinerary. By the end of their teaching jobs, most foreign teachers feel like locals.

New Friends Become Like Family

You'll overcome cultural boundaries as you interact with your students and their families. In many situations, you will be invited into their homes and be treated as a part of their families. Students are always open to learning more about your culture as they introduce you to theirs. You'll also get to know other teachers who are also part of teach overseas programs. Experienced individuals will take you under their wings and help you adjust to your new home.

It Gives You More Travel Opportunities

Traveling to the country where you'll be working is only the beginning. Teaching jobs in the Middle East give you the chance to travel to other, nearby countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India for much less money than if you travel there from the United States or Canada. Because most European countries are relatively small, you can get inexpensive airline tickets to visit most of them over school holidays or long weekends. Imagine flying to Paris for a long weekend or visiting the pyramids without breaking your budget! It's easy to do when you're a teacher in a neighboring country.

Overseas Teaching Jobs Look Great On Your Resume

Participants in teach overseas programs impress employers. Skills like adapting to a new culture, successfully organizing and leading a classroom when you have to overcome language and cultural barriers, and the initiative and confidence it takes to educate students in a foreign country are all highly prized by employers. Just a year or two living and working in a foreign country will make you an extremely promising hire.

The experience of educating others in countries you've only read about is unforgettable. It will change you as much as you change the life of your students. And perhaps that is the greatest reason of all to consider teaching jobs in other parts of the world.

AIDC is the placement leader if you want to teach overseas. Programs include European and Middle Eastern opportunities. For rewarding foreign teaching jobs, including teaching in Abu Dhabi, visit their website.


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