From all hiring managers to all potential employees, please make our job easier (said with a little bit of humor).  Here are a few tips on how to make a resume:

1. Make it stand out.  There is a sea of resumes that a hiring manager looks through.  Often times, the ones that get attention are the ones that stand out.  Pay attention to design.  Make it clean and make it stand out.  I’ve seen resumes that looked like infographics, that were colored instead of black and white, and on different weighted paper, etc.  For one job, I actually submitted my resume as a small children’s storybook about my career.  I’m not saying that you have to go over-the-top, but it doesn’t hurt to at least consider how you can make your resume stand out.
2. Sometimes less is more.  An over crowded resume can overwhelm a reader.  I’ve often looked at resumes like copy for an ad.  Say the most with the least, and be sure to say what’s most important.
3. Above all – content is king.  The above are important, but ultimately, a hiring manager is looking to see what you can offer.  Highlight your strengths, your wins, and your skills.  As hard as it can be for some people, your resume should be a bit boastful.  If you don’t have the best of you in your resume, the hiring manager won’t see what you can offer.

I realize that this is not an exclusive list of best practices.  However, it is a couple that I’ve found very helpful as I’ve worked on my own resume and evaluated the resumes of others.  Enjoy and good luck!

Disclaimer: I am participating in a blogger campaign by Bucks2Blog for a resume templates company and was compensated.  However, the views and opinions are my own.

One of the challenges of management is finding ways to motivate employees for optimal performance.  There are many ways in which employees can be motivated.  Almost without fail, employee engagement has proven to be one of the sure ways to motivate individual employees.  Here are a few lessons that I’ve learned about employee engagement:

1. Meaningful engagement drives job satisfaction.  Special assignments, increased responsibility, special projects and the opportunity to contribute thought and insight into important decisions are all great ways to meaningfully engage an employee.  Engagement often shows an employee that they are trusted and that their opinion is valued.
2. Lack of engagement often drives skill attrition.  Skills are like muscles: if you don’t use them, you lose them.  Often times, employees are hired for a specific skill set.  If meaningful engagement does not occur, it is easy for those skills to suffer from atrophy.
3. Feedback and accountability is crucial.  Good employees thrive on feedback and accountability.  Part of the engagement that they crave comes from knowing what they are doing well, what they need to improve and feeling ownership of projects.

I feel grateful to have worked for managers and companies who have engaged with me in meaningful ways.  I feel that my career and skill development can mostly be attributed to the meaningful experiences I have had with managers and other employees.  If not for the employee engagement I experienced, I do not think that my career would have been as enjoyable as it has been.  Much thanks to the great companies and managers that I have been able to work for.

Disclaimer: I am participating in a blogger campaign by Bucks2Blog for an employee engagement company and was compensated.  However, the views and opinions are my own.

I feel really lucky to have grown up on an island.  I had much to learn when I ventured to college…I needed to learn why there seemed to be so many red rocks on the mountain side, but only in the fall.  Despite hearing all their music growing up…I really had no idea that there was a band called “U2″ (which I kind of thought they stole their name from UB40).  I had never heard of this band called, “De Peche Mode”, and boy did I realize that the dog was no longer stink…it was now strictly stinky.  Growing up in the islands gave me a flare for fun, an appreciation of culture and people, and an important perspective on family.  I look forward to seeing family and friends, eating great food and enjoying wonderful scenery.

Have a great holiday season.

This has been a fun year.  There has been a lot of change, a lot of adjustment and a lot of growth (and some loss).  As we enter 2012, there are a couple of things that I want to highlight that I’m grateful for.  The holiday season always makes me nostalgic and I hope you enjoy (even if it is for a brief second) my musings on a few of the great things in my life this year.

Above all, I’m thankful for family.  The older I get, the more I value family.  I’m grateful to have two wonderful sons and an amazing wife.  I am in awe each day at how much my boys can make me laugh and make me want to pull my hair out in the same 60 seconds.  I am forever amazed by the innocence and sweet nature of children.  I often think that if we could all be that way, the world would be a much more pleasant place.  This year was special as we were able to welcome our second child.  What a joy he’s been for us.

To my sons and wife – thank you for being so wunderful.  May 2012 be another great year.

Some other pretty big occurrences this year:

1. I’ve lost about 20 lbs with much more to go.

2. We bought our first home – a cozy little condo that we love calling our own.

3. I received a new position at my job and have loved the new challenges and responsibilities.

4. I’ve managed another year without my wife getting sick of me.

Whatever your plans are this holiday season, enjoy!

Although I don’t get to spend a lot of time doing it, gift shopping is such a fun holiday activity to me, especially now that I’ve got children.  The anticipation of the joy that a gift will bring your child is a great feeling.  As my life has gotten busier and busier, I’ve grown more and more grateful for companies that sell online.  My wife and I just purchased a gift for our newborn and it was as simple as a click.

From a consumer’s point of view, here are a few tips for providing good ECommerce experiences during the holidays:

1. Remind people that you’re there, but don’t be spammy.  I get emails from Dick’s Sporting Goods about holiday gift ideas.  There are a few things that I’m considering and it’s good to be reminded that they’re there.  What I like, is that each email has value and are timed well so that they don’t look spammy.
2. Provide unique specials for people shopping online.  Making people feel like they have something unique and something which gives them advantages over going into a store will motivate purchases online.
3. Make them look professional.  There are good software providers that help you develop and use professional and clean emails to send to your clients.  Use them.

To all ECommerce providers: good luck this holiday season.

Disclaimer: I am participating in a blog campaign for Bucks2Blog for an ecommerce solution company and was compensated.  However, the views and opinions are my own.

Have you ever counted how many advertisements you are exposed to in a day?  While studying advertising, I received an assignment to do so for a week.  It was overwhelming.

I started by counting billboards, TV and radio spots, newspaper/magazine ads and banners.  The more I consciously looked I noticed fliers, handouts, logos at sporting events, branded t-shirts, branded pens, branded note pads, branded magnets and so much more.  My head started to hurt.

After a few days and a tally in the thousands, my professor asked, “Which of those advertisements do you remember?”  My head hurt even more.

I remembered a handful.  They were simple ads that pertained to a void that I needed to fill.  They were messages that resonated with me.

We could spend days talking about the ways that good advertisers find and create messaging that resonates.  If we did so, we would talk about art direction, copy writing, account planning, media and behavioral research, integrated marketing, etc.  For companies that can put out the time and money to do these right, they make sense and can work wonders for the bottom line.  However, most small businesses don’t have the time and resources to do so.

Enter Google and a strong internet marketing strategy:

Answers.  Those resonate with everyone.

c/o yourhowtomakeawebsiteguide.com

I live my life online.  I work online, I buy online and I use online communities for recreation, to stay in contact with friends and stay connected.  I love watching the way that the internet is changing our world.  One of the things that I love about the internet, is that it really evens the playing field.  With the right set up, a normal, run-of-the-mill individual can establish himself/herself as an expert with the right content and voice.  With the right set up, someone can run a legitimate business from their home.

At the center of these types of success is a good website.  If you are able to design your own website, and design it well, you establish credibility.  All though you may not have extensive experience or may be small in numbers, you can establish credibility and seem much bigger that you are.  With a well built website, no one will know that you are “run-of-the-mill” or running your business from the comfort of your own home.

Here are three simple tips for designing a successful website:

1. Make sure that you have a clear purpose.  If you try to be everything, you’ll succeed at being nothing.  There is an extraordinary amount of websites out there.  Define your purpose, stick to it and excel at it.  In time you’ll be recognized and admired for what you are doing.
2. Content is key.  Put out good content, or put out a good product.  If you don’t offer value, people won’t be engaged.
3. Use good tools.  There are many different types of tools online to build and maintain a website.  Research those tools, research widgets, and research systems.  If you are aware of your purpose, you’ll be able to find the tools necessary to help you accomplish what you want to.  Simple tools, like website builders, can help you design and maintain your site and provide great user functionality.  If you can find tools that help to create a great user experience, you can be successful.

A good website can set you up for success online.  Use the right tools and put out the right content and you’ll go far.

Disclaimer: I am participating in a blog campaign from Bucks2Blog for an online website builder company and was compensated.  However, the views and opinions are my own.

c/o yumaaz.gov

During my time in school, I participated in a research project for a local chain of car dealerships.  We were asked to do consumer research and focus groups based around point of purchase experience, likes and dislikes of the car buying cycle and ways to improve and better meet consumer needs.  The research revealed many interesting things about what people like and dislike about the car buying experience.  From this project and my experience purchasing cars, I’ve found the following to be important in a good experience with a car dealer:

1. Open and Honest Communication – In my experience purchasing two cars in the last few years, I have appreciated the honesty of our sales representatives.  In our consumer market today, car dealerships are striving to engage their customers beyond purchase.  As a buyer, I realize that I could be creating a lasting relationship with this dealership because of maintenance, oil change incentives, tires for life, etc.  If I have an experience with a dishonest sales representative, I question what my experience will be like long term.
2. Being Generous is Always Appreciated – In my most recent purchase (last week in fact), my wife and I were looking at trading in our older car.  We still owed money on the car and it had some exterior damage.  We had been concerned that the resale/trade-in value would not be sufficient to cover our loan and require us to front additional money for either the repair or to pay out the loan.  Our car dealership offered to cover the entire amount of the loan (despite the money they knew they would pay for repairing the damage themselves).  In fact, they offered about $700 above what was left on our loan.  That generosity was very much appreciated.
3. Being Patient Not Pushy – Our dealership allowed my wife to test drive the car all day.  She ran errands, we went out to dinner and really got to experience the car.  Our sales rep, who we know had gotten in to work that morning at 8:00, stayed around until we brought the car back at 8:00 PM.  After bringing it back, he waited patiently while my wife and I discussed our needs asked questions, made phone calls to friends for advice and reviews, and not once did I feel like we were being pushed.  That patience significantly reduced whatever buyers remorse I would have felt.

Media has done a great job at empowering individuals and evening the playing field for story-telling, expertise and intrigue.  I can think of numerous individuals who have generated fan-ship, created communities, started movements and even raised money for charity through blogs.  That is the beauty of blogging to me.  Anyone with access to the internet can share their opinion, and anyone with the internet can benefit and engage in the writer’s expression.

In my opinion the desire to blog is fueled by passion for a topic and a desire for self-expression.  Most individuals will never have monetary gain from blogging, nor is it their main motivation.  Monetary gain is just a plus.  At the time that I started blogging, I never thought that I could eventually make money blogging.  Thanks to Bucks2Blog, making money blogging has been possible for me.

It’s fun, it’s intriguing and it’s legit.

Disclaimer: I am participating in a blogger campaign by Bucks2Blog and was compensated.  However, the views and opinions are my own.

When shaving, there are two things that I am very particular about: first, when I shave and second the temperature of the razor blades on my skin.  Everything else in my shaving routine revolves around those two needs.

Here are some of my particular shaving needs:

• I need to shave in the morning after a warm shower.  It’s known that your pores open in reaction to warmth and such, however my skin seems to be extra sensitive to the time of the day as well.  I’ve tried shaving at night, and I’ve tried shaving before I shower, and they just don’t work for me.  I feel as though I’ve taken sand paper to my skin and it just burns.  My roommates at college shaved before showering.  I thought they were crazy (sorry to any of you who may do that).
• I need to lather-up with semi-hot water.  The temperature has to be to the point that is just hot enough before it stings.
• I need to run my razor under very hot water (at a temperature that stings to touch) before shaving and after each swipe.  This is actually my favorite part about shaving.  There is something soothing and relaxing about the feeling of the hot metal from the blades pressing against my skin.  I assume that it provides a closer shave as well, but to me that’s actually a secondary benefit.
• When I rinse off my face, it has to be done in temperature similar to my lather-up period.

I don’t worry too much about my ties being straight, clothes being folded perfectly, dishes being put in the dishwasher just right.  However when it comes to shaving, the experience has to be just right.

Disclaimer: I am participating in a blogger campaign by Bucks2blog and was compensated.  However, the views and opinions are my own.