Top courses to help get you hired March 2019

Top courses to help get you hired March 2019 by Michael Cheary Ready to change your life? We have a course for that. With literally thousands of courses and professional qualifications currently available on reed.co.uk right now, it’s never been easier to learn something new. And they don’t necessarily all mean you have to be confined to the classroom.To help you get your spring off to the best start, here are three of the top courses you could be starting this month â€" that can be taken completely online:Animal CareSo, it looks like spring has finally sprung. And what better way to start it off than by taking a course that helps you care for some of the season’s best animals?There are hundreds of different certifications out there to choose from, covering all kinds of creatures â€" great and small.Looking to become a Veterinary Assistant? No problem. Want to look after snakes, spiders or scorpions? This Exotic Animal Care course has got you covered. More into tabbies than tarantulas? Why not brush up on your Fel ine First Aid, or even learn how to run your own cattery?And don’t even get us started on Dog Grooming.Courses range in price, but some start from as little as £15. So even if you’re not looking to turn Animal Care into a full-time career, you don’t have to break the bank to get a little closer to your furry friends. Or, you know, learn about snakes and stuff.Whoever said you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks?What do I need?  A natural love of animals, and an internet connection.How long will it take?  Anywhere from five hours up to a year.Perfect for:  People who think people are overrated.Animal Care coursesSign Language If you’re looking expand your language skills, this could be the course for you.British Sign Language (BSL) is the official sign language used in the United Kingdom. Hundreds of thousands of people are predominantly communicating with this form of language every single day. But the more fluent speakers there are, the more communication barriers we ca n begin to break down.This British Sign Language Level 1 2 course will teach you all the fundamentals you need to start signing with confidence â€" with key modules covering everything from greetings and introductions through to shopping, eating and drinking, and even the weather.It’s absolutely ideal for beginners or those that have a small amount of experience with sign language. And as it’s all available online, you can get started right away.So whether you have friends or family who are hearing impaired, or you just want to improve your communication skills and add another attribute to your CV, this course has something for everyone.??What do I need?  There are no prerequisites to getting started.How long will it take?  40 hours.Perfect for:  People who want to cut through the noise (and make a real difference).British Sign Language courseDepression in Young PeopleLearning sign language isn’t the only way a course could make a difference.As many as one in four young peopl e in the UK will experience problems with their mental health in any given year. And with pressure from the likes of social media and cyberbullying at an all-time high, it’s a number that doesn’t show any sign of slowing down.But what if it didn’t have to be that way?This Understanding Depression in Young People course will not only help you identify the signs of low mood in teens and adolescents, it’ll also teach CBT an evidence-based treatment which provides practical techniques to help support those in need.It’s been specifically created for parents of young people with depression, as well as teachers and healthcare professionals. But even if you’re just looking to have the right skills should the situation arise, this course will be equally useful.What’s more, i’s also completely FREE. And available to be completed in as little as five weeks.So even if it makes a difference to one young person in need, it’ll be priceless in more ways than one.What do I need?   An open mind, and the passion to help someone turn their life around.How long will it take?  Five weeks.Perfect for:  People who want to be able to change someone’s life.Understanding Depression in Young People courseNot sure which course is right for you?  View all available courses now.Find a job What Where Search JobsSign up for more Career AdviceSign up for moreCareer Advice Please enter a valid email addressmessage hereBy clicking Submit you agree to the Features

The Balancing Act of a Mompreneur

The Balancing Act of a Mompreneur The balancing act of being a wife, new mom and career woman is like walking a tightrope. Sometimes I glance down and am shocked to find there is no safety net below. I start to shake and worry if I can make it; so much to do and so little time and energy. Then, there are times when I look back and wonder how I ever made it across so effortlessly from one side to the other without even trying and never looking down. I am an every way woman and this is my story. I have always wanted to be a successful career woman. Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of wearing the sexy business suit to the office, being busy on the phone and making executive decisions that would further my career. I was raised to be successful and assertive, to never give up. You control your future. Your destiny is what you make of it. Sound familiar? However, ever since I was a little girl, I also wanted to be married and have babies.… at least five or six! I knew I would eventually get married, I just never imagined it would be to the love of my life, my true soul mate. Why is being a mother always butting heads with being a career woman? Why is this a conundrum for most women? Why is it that we seem like we always have to choose one option over the other? To be a seriously successful business woman, you have to give up your hopes of ever having a family. Sure, you drive a 500 S-class Mercedes-Benz, own a fabulous home in Malibu, but no free time since you’re always working overtime because you have no one to come home to after work. What a horrible double-edged sword that is…. On the other hand, to be a loving wife and nurturing mother, you have to give up a successful career. Being at home, raising your children and watching them grow-there is nothing like it. Hands down, raising your babies is the most important journey a new mom will take. You are there from their first smile to their first step, you, the mom, were there. Being a mom is an overwhelming feeling of incredible pride, love, joy, happiness and completeness that is so special. Being a mom is something so wonderful and so unexplainable, words cannot describe the feeling you have every time your little “bundle of joy,” your “miracle” look up at you and smile wholeheartedly. Just knowing that you helped create this little life is truly a blessing. However, what about making money and trying to provide for your “little pumpkin?” How can a mom raise her babies, work, cook, clean and still be sexy for her husband? Is it just me or does this seem so unfair and unjust? On the up side, women are much better at multitasking and on the average tend to outlive their spouses. Wait, but what does that mean? Great, so now we are innately able to juggle more responsibilities until we are in our early to late 80’s and do all this alone. But, that’s the beauty of being a woman. We can and we should try to do and have it all. Sometimes life throws you curve balls and just when you think you can’t do something. Stop, face forward and march on.

The Recruiters Guide to Social Monitoring Tools

The Recruiters Guide to Social Monitoring Tools For a significant amount of money, there’s a raft of social media monitoring/listening tools that are currently available. However, if you are a small brand with a limited budget, what options are available to you?  Outlined below are several free online monitoring tools available in the market. What exactly does social media or brand monitoring entail? Simply put, this involves scouring the internet for any mentions or links regarding your tool, brand or service with the intent of addressing any concerns or questions that your users might have as well as an opportunity to gather valuable insight. To effectively monitor your brand online, you must pick the most relevant keywords applicable to you. This is easy enough if you have called your company or service something quite unique, however you also need to be aware of any dimunitive forms or other keywords that users tend to use online in association with your brand. For example, the Haloid company were the first people to introduce a desktop copier into the market which took off with great success. If they only monitored the keyword “Haloid” they would have missed the fact that most of their consumers actually referred to them as “Xerox”, after their most popular product. (They later changed the company name from Haloid to Xerox.) We at  Clever Biscuit  launched a free recruitment sourcing tool a few months ago called  Recruitin. To monitor the online chatter following our launch, I monitored 4 keywords, “recruitin”, “#recruitin” and “recruitin.net”, as well as our company name “CleverBiscuit”. It’s important to note that for a word like “recruitin” there will be a significant amount of noise as it is often used instead of “recruiting”. Hence, you need to be aware of the different contexts that your keywords will appear in and recognise which ones apply specifically to you. 1) Twitter If your brand has a social media presence, Twitter.com is generally the first place you will look at to find out what people are saying about you. You can monitor keywords using the search function and scan all tweets that contain the keywords you need. Twitter will allow you to save your searches and even embed the stream on a webpage. As you look through your search results, make sure you have selected “All” tweets to see all the results as the default setting will only show the top tweets. 2) Hootsuite Hootsuite is probably the easiest way of monitoring several streams of keywords simultaneously. By connecting your Twitter and Google+ account, you can assign a search term for each stream and monitor the feed accordingly. It’s up to you how you organise your keyword streams but the easiest way would be to create one tab for each social network and then create one stream for each keyword. Hootsuite currently allows upto 10 streams per tab. From your Hootsuit dashboard you can then respond to any status updates that you want by replying to the posters, retweeting them or simply following them. You can also gather insight into which users are influential, judging by how many times their posts are retweeted or shared. 3: LinkedIn Signal Using LinkedIn Signal, you can search all user updates for mentions of your brand or keywords. From the search bar, all you need to do is select “Updates” from the dropdown menu and you’re on your way. As with other sites, LinkedIn will allow you to saved your search for future use as well as applying filters to narrow down your results. In the screenshot below, you will see that the results contain updates that link to Recruitin.net directly as well as a link to any blog posts that mentioned our tool which have been shared on the network. The results will also show you if anyone within an individuals’s network has liked or shared an update about you. This is especially useful information as you can use this to generate leads and establish connections with individuals who have already bought into you brand. Within the results you can also see if people have shared a story about you within a particular LinkedIn group that you may not have known about. In most cases, you can easily access the group and the specific discussion around your brand. Depending on the nature of the group you should try to join it and establish a direct connection with your users who can provide more feedback and insight. 4: Topsy Topsy is a free tool that offers social insight. By searching for your brand keyword or domain, Topsy will show you status updates or tweets that mention you or link to your domain from different online sources. You can then set up an email alert or RSS feed subscribing to the latest search results. Bloggers will typically promote articles they have written using Twitter. Topsy scans those tweets and then leads you to the original blog post talking about your brand. By following the post, you can join the conversation in the comments section or simply add it to your press cuttings for future reference. It is generally difficult to scan Facebook for mentions of your brand in the updates as most people will keep their statuses private or only accessible by their friends. However, there is a significant number of people who cross-post their updates between Facebook and Twitter. Topsy will also lead you to those Facebook pages where possible. Alternatively, you can also use Topsy to monitor how many people are tweeting about your company’s blogposts or domain and group them accordingly for ease of use. From the screenshot below, you can see that the most recent tweet containing http://recruitin.net  was from 2 days ago and that to date, the link has been shared on the network 224 times. Topsy will also highlight individuals who are “influential” within the network. You can also use Topsy to scan Google+ although the tool is still currently in beta mode. 5: Google Alerts Possibly the simplest alert system there is. You can subscribe to Google Alerts  which will send you updates via email from the web, news, blogs, etc. that mention or point to your keywords. You can easily manage the number of sources and frequency of the updates you receive. Alternatively, you can always opt to receive the updates via RSS. 6: Google Analytics For Recruitin, people generally share the link to the tool within their network as opposed to simply mentioning the name in passing. If people are purposely sharing your website, you can simply go into your Google Analytics account and from the list of referring sources, find out where people are sharing your web address. By following the links, you might find new blogs or forums that link directly to your site and consequently support your offsite SEO strategy. 7: Open Site Explorer  by Moz If you don’t have access to your domain’s Google Analytics account you can use Open Site Explorer to check what sites are linking to your company domain. You can search up to 3 domains per day for free and by filtering the results for inbound links to you root domain, you will see how many sites are linking to you. You can then simply follow the links to find out what they are being used for and consequently, what they are saying about you. 8. Google Search Finally, nothing beats a traditional Google search of your brand or company name. It’s a manual and laborious task to search through the dozens of pages that appear in the search results. However, by going through the list of results one by one, you might find a niche forum or site mentioning you which you otherwise would not have known about. This is especially helpful if your product appeals to a spcecific group who are not active on large social networks. This is just a broad overview of tools available to monitor your brand’s online presence. Generally, each social network or forum will allow you to search within the site for occurrences of your keyword or brand name. It’s up to you to decide how relevant this is to your strategy and whether there is any value in following the conversations within smaller networks. Remember that social media monitoring is just that, monitoring online conversations. The primary goal is to gather insight about how people perceive your brand or utilise your services. Unless there is an intrinsic value in joining a conversation that you did not facilitate yourself, it is probably best not to jump in aggressively. Respond according to the nature of the conversation. After all, it only takes one knee-jerk response to an unfavourable comment or an unflattering blogpost to unravel your entire social media strategy and plunge you into a media disaster. By regularly checking in on the onine conversations around your brand, it would make it easier to avoid a media disaster as well as making sure that your brand is truly engaged beyond just maintaining a set of social media profiles.

Write Your Will and Start Your Life - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Write Your Will and Start Your Life - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Great athletes start with the finish line in mind. Lance Armstrong doesn’t hop on his bike and wonder where he’ll end up. Michael Phelps doesn’t jump in the pool and paddle around. Why would you take to the open road of your career or business without a destination in mind and expect to wind up in the ideal place? I know you’ve been told to have an open mind. And, I’m not telling you to close it. I’m just saying: if you had an open wound would you walk around with it uncovered? How soon would it be before bacteria crawled in and changed your status from a person with a cut to a patient in a catastrophe? Clearly, this is a time for you to have a clear outcome in mind for yourself, your career or business. Part of your brand is who you are, but a more present part of it is: who you are becoming? What you don’t do on purpose, you leave to accident In the most volatile times, the person with a clear vision and the plan to achieve it plus the guts to get up every morning and act on it will lead the pack. When you get in your car or take the train, do you take just any route to work or a client call? Serendipity might be a fun strategy on a Sunday if you pack snacks, carry water and wear comfortable shoes, but it’s not the way to make tracks toward a desired destination. Tweeting from your couch might make you feel smart and safe right now, but that’s not a long-term strategy either. Choosing to move in a specific direction, at a rapid pace when you have momentum â€" like opportunity â€" and a slower one when there’s poor visibility, is the only way to know if you’re on the road to success. A wonderful and terrible thought: the end will come At the end of the road, there might be a pot of gold under a rainbow. There might also be a landmine. It would be prudent to prepare for either.   But before you have a plan B, you have to have a plan A â€" and even better, a plan A plus. You may not be able to THINK your way through to the end. You might jumpstart your process by identifying how you’ll want to FEEL when your journey is complete. The point is: do what it takes to set your compass so you travel in the right direction. Want a more literal way to start with the end in mind? Think about writing your will, not to divvy up your possessions now but think about writing a will when you have amassed your life’s bounty. Will you have enjoyed a life of adventure? Security? Creativity? Power? Vitality? Will you have chosen to pursue peacefulness? Friendship? Transformation? Unity? Who will be with you at the end, and at the middle? Who should be with you now so you move toward the life you mean to create? Open a document in your computer, get a notepad or write on a napkin. Identify the milestones along your journey to success. Do you require an advanced degree that you can get a jump on now? Do you need to round out your resume with a skill set you could get by volunteering for a philanthropy or cause? Do you need to know a certain person whom you could reach if you were interviewing experts for your blog or book? All I’m saying is: you are going to move at some pace toward some place no matter what. It would be better to decide what you and your brand will mean, than have the forces of the market â€" including your competition decide it for you. Big questions for starting on purpose: 1.      What is going to be your legacy? 2.      What will you and society be celebrating at your 125th birthday? 3.      What’s the one thing people will say about you now and always? Author: Nance Rosen is the author of Speak Up! Succeed. She speaks to business audiences around the world and is a resource for press, including print, broadcast and online journalists and bloggers covering social media and careers. Read more at NanceRosenBlog. Twitter name: nancerosen.