Month: July 2013

Resumes for Recent College Graduates

THE BIRTH OF THE CAREER PLAN

As you are graduating from college, you will be moving into a new phase of your career plan.  In receiving a bachelor’s degree or an advanced degree, you developed tremendous skills.  Those skills and the skills you developed through hobbies, college employment, and volunteer activity, have value to an employer

The courses you studied will often define the direction of your career.  If you majored in marketing analytics, your objective will most logically lead to to getting a job in the marketing department of a company that uses marketing analytics either in-house or as a service to other companies.  If you majored in elementary education, your objective would most likely be to get a job as a teacher.

RESUME FORMAT
Every resume begins with the following information:

Your name
Location
Phone number
Email address

OBJECTIVE
If you state a goal on your resume, be specific in terms of the type of job you are seeking.  A common mistake is to state a general objective that does not help the hiring manager know how there is a fit between your goals and the needs of the employer.  That hiring manager may read no further.

For example, compare the following statements:

Objective:  I am seeking a job that will challenge my skills and talents.

Alternatively

Objective:  I recently graduated with a degree in electrical engineering.  I am applying for a job with Electro Mega Servers International.

EDUCATION
Something to think about on an individual basis is where on your resume you place the education information.  For people with a great deal of experience, the education summary normally goes at the bottom of the resume.  However, recent college graduates might benefit from placing the education experience at top of the resume.  The reason is that a person who has held a half dozen temporary jobs during college may immediately appear unstable to the hiring manager.  The resume may get tossed before the hiring manager realizes that the person had listed a number of college jobs and has only recently launched a career.
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Even after entering industry, any employment during college should go beneath the college experience. Most people stop listing the college jobs once they begin their career after college.

COLLEGE EMPLOYMENT
If you worked while attending college, any employment may add value to your resume for a several reasons. First, the fact that you worked during college, shows that you take initiative and have an interest in working.  Second, even some of the least important jobs you may have had could give a hiring manager the opportunity to make connections between the employer’s needs and your experience. Third, the places where you have worked may act as an icebreaker in conversations with the hiring manager. Fourth, there may be opportunities within a company beyond the opportunity for which you came in to interview, and your college employment may be a door opener for those other opportunities.

As you review your activities at school, socially, and in volunteer programs, you may recognize roles and responsibilities which have real value to a future employer and should be on your resume. For example, if you worked in developing a website for a charitable organization or managed a team of carpenters on the construction of a home for Habitat for Humanity, employers are going to see real value in these experiences.  Even clubs and societies that you joined while in college and in which you never had leadership roles may be helpful for the hiring manager to see value in your experience, perhaps even recognize experiences that the two of you share. Additionally volunteer projects speak to your character in reaching out to become a team player and your willingness to help other people.

Be certain to include all skills you have which may be appropriate for the job for which you are applying:

Foreign Languages
Software applications
Writing skills
Advanced math skills, and so forth.

Be especially aware of whether the skills fit the job requirements or a least lead to a long-term added value you could make to the company.

In conclusion, put your contact information at the top.  Perhaps next state you college experience.  If you state an objective, make it specific to the employer. Include those college jobs and volunteer activities and try to show how they might relate to the needs of the hiring company.

What ideas do you have to make your resume more effective?

Creating Connections on Membership Sites: a Professional Network or a Database?

Creating connections on membership sites helps brand and market your career.

THE TIME TO SET UP AN ONLINE NETWORK IS BEFORE YOU NEED IT.
As your career progresses, one of the choices you may need to make is how to connect effectively with people online.

Many people take an intuitive approach relative to where they are in their career.

However, waiting until you need a network to build it can leave you stranded when you most need support.  From a career perspective, the time to develop your network is to spend a few minutes on a consistent basis reviewing and editing your professional profile and giving consideration to people you may want to add to your connections.

Viewing how you will use your network over the next five years can help you understand what type of network you want to develop.

THE PROFESSIONAL NETWORK
Do you want to limit your connections to people who can directly help your career?  Then you want to create a professional network.  You will want to be selective to target the people who can connect you with other people who can help you become more successful.

Your options may include questions like these questions:

Does the person share your values?
Does the person have connections with people you want for your connections?
Will the association of this person’s career with your career help you?
Is the person someone who can put you in contact with valuable and influential people?
Is the person someone who can mentor or advise you?

At the same time, you want the people you are selecting to be people who will see the value in connecting with you. Make each invitation individual and personally written for each connection. Express in the invitation that the person has experiences and successes that are the same as other people in your network.

THE PROFESSIONAL DATABASE
Do you want to be able to have immediate access to as many people as possible and yet control who can see your contacts? If so, then you are developing a professional database.   You create a profile that promotes the idea that you are willing to accept invitations from anyone.  You want to be an open networker and join groups that promote open networking.

An issue for developing an online database is controlling how much other members of the membership site can know about the people you have in your online list of contacts.  As an open networker, you can still protect your database to a fairly large degree.  Just adjust the privacy settings so that you alone can see who is in your network.  Even with tens of thousands of contacts, you can block people from seeing your contacts.

One of the main differences between a professional network and an online database is a difference in property value. Professional networks have real commercial value to the person who has built the network. Said another way, you can sell databases.

SO WHAT’S THE POINT?
The point is that your view and uses of your network may change with the evolution of your career, yet as a professional you should include developing your online profile as part of your total career management system.

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What have you found that works for you in the development of your online network?

Be Extraordinary: 3 Ways to Turn Your Day into a Celebration!

TALK HAPPY

I worked with a great guy who was always fun to see. He is the only man who ever called me “Sunshine.”

This name was not even a man crush kind of thing.  My buddy just greeted all people with a smile and some enthusiastic greeting or another.  For me the greeting was “Good morning, Sunshine.”

My buddy always had fantastic days.  Along the way, he enjoyed tremendous success over equally and even more capable people.  The reason for his success to me was very simple.  Given the option of the people available to join a team, especially a team in a stressful, challenging, long-term project, managers would obviously choose the person with all the skills to do a great job.

In a very simple way, every business day can go better by my greeting people with the most positive yet appropriate greeting possible.

MAKE GRATITUDE LISTS

Happiness is an inside job.

I have seen people develop lifetime habits for the sole purpose of staying mentally healthy.  I know of one mental health professional who, for his own sake, writes down one thing a day for which he is grateful.

At the end of the week, he compiles a list from the seven words.  Once a month, he picks the top five things from his gratitude list and puts these words on another gratitude list for the month.

Once a year, he goes over what is now a list of 60 things for which he is grateful and picks the top five things for which he is happy every year.  He has gone through this process for years.

He treats the human mind the way a physical therapist works with a human limb.

My glass is always full.  It always has been.  I am the one who is responsible for filling my own glass.  I have held that responsibility since I was three years old.  If I do not like the level in my glass, I fill it.

Mentally it is my job to keep my glass full as well.

However, what I am talking about is a celebration.

When I behave like I am happy, I become happy.  Sunshine, exercise, and a healthy diet make me smile. Clapping my hands and dancing energize me.  I do not have to wait until I am at some special event to have a party.  I can have one without disturbing other people nearly any time I want.

EXERCISE WITH JOY

I used to see the happy runner.  He was an interesting, colorful guy.  I am not sure how many hours he ran a day.  I saw him more than once on a street where I did not regularly go, so I conclude he must have been out there running a great deal.

He wore bright shorts, tank tops, shoes, and waved at the motorist.   He was always smiling and having his own party as he ran down the side walk of a local major thoroughfare.

He was happy.  He was like my friend who used to call me “Sunshine.”  He created his own celebration.  He was like so many people, you included, in that he was extraordinary at creating his own celebration.

The Most Important Interview Question You Will Ever Be Asked

The Most Important Interview Question You Will Ever Be Asked

I have read that the most important interview question you will ever be asked is what is your greatest accomplishment.

To me that is akin to someone’s idea of what is Mozart’s greatest work and Babe Ruth’s greatest game. Each person will have his or own idea of greatest anything. The most important part of interview preparation is to check your accomplishments along with a great deal of other material before going into an interview.

Then take a deep breath and be flexible. Interviews are like major league baseball. Who knows what pitch is coming next? Hopefully it is not a wild fast ball going straight to the ear hole in your helmet. Often the pitcher does not know where the next pitch is going until it gets there. So prepare. Take a deep breath. Stay loose. Trust yourself.

Be extraordinary: you will do a great job!

The Benefits of Creating Your Own Career Plan

The Benefits of Creating Your Own Career Plan

A CAREER PLAN CREATES DIRECTION.
In a sense, everyone has a career plan.  Some people just do not know what it is or where that plan leads.

When entering kindergarten or first grade, children begin to participate in a career plan.  The school system laid out the plan.  The result is that students with no further plans of their own often find themselves dropping out of school or finishing school to take whatever job is available.

The specifics of your career plan are relative to where you are in your career.  If you are entering college, your career plan will include the subjects you need to study to enable you to get a job in a particular field.

If you have business experience, you may have already worked with different types of business plans.  A career plan provides the same value as a business plan.  You will identify who these things:

  1. Who you are as a brand
  2. Your career mission
  3. An understanding of what you need to do to achieve your career goals.
  4. Ways to present your plan to other people so that you will get the meetings you need for success.

Students and professionals who have who have developed and follow their own career plan have a greater likelihood of success, simply because they know which steps to take for success.

A CAREER PLAN GIVES YOU A SENSE OF PURPOSE.
Have you ever found yourself in a meeting, working on a project, or in any situation where the question came to mind, “What am I doing here?” or “Why am I doing this?”

Have you noticed that associated with those questions is an unpleasant feeling that you are wasting your time?

You have no sense of purpose.

Going to work every day with a sense of purpose is a lot more fun than going to work every day and wondering why you are doing what you are doing.

Also, it seems logical that going to work everyday with a sense of purpose increases your likelihood of being more successful.

  1. You will take an interest in your work.
  2. You will be focused on your work.
  3. You will be more willing to invest energy and time in your work.

Having a career plan gives you a greater sense of purpose.

A CAREER PLAN CREATES A CHECK-OFF LIST OF WHAT YOU NEED.
Part of creating a career plan includes writing a check-off list.  Through this check-off list, you will create focus and direction.  Your intuition can emerge to see options that might somehow never have come to you.

You might consider including the following things:

  2. Your education now
  3. Your plan for your on-going education
  4. The job you are in now
  5. The jobs you want to do
  6. People you want to help
  7. People you will need to help you
  8. Things you want to achieve
  9. Places you want to go
  10. People you want to meet
  11. Products you want to create
  12. The amount of money you want to make
  13. Your physical goals and diet and exercise plan.

A CAREER PLAN IS A LIVING DOCUMENT.
As much as possible, allow yourself to be feel confident that you are on a quest to create a vision of your life the way that you would really want to live it.

As you create your first draft, allow yourself to write down whatever ideas come to mind.  Your career plan is a living document that you will refer to and change as you learn and grow as a professional.  Put aside the limitations of writing structure and just write.  Write what you want to be and what you want to do.  This material is not permanent.  Allow your intuition to become a powerful tool that guides you from map view and street view and back to map view as your proceed.  Give your intuition free reign to see solutions to life events you had only seen as obstacles.

Take breaks and relax as you go through the process of creating your first draft of your career plan. Allow yourself time to create this plan.  As your plan emerges and you get stuck, begin to work on other projects and come back to creating your plan.

What you may find is that the process of creating the plan gives you many more ideas and tools you can develop and ways you can begin to reach out to people you want to help or who can help you.

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A CAREER PLAN CREATES THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERFORMANCE
The psychological advantage is that you are making everything easier for your mind to perform for your success.  Knowing the details of where you want to go and knowing the details of the things you plan to do, your mind will have greater spontaneity and confidence.  The spontaneity and confidence will create greater clarity.

What you are doing is the same mental process that takes place in any performance practice.  Through repetition prior to the actual time of performance, you can respond intuitively when the pressure in on and you must perform in front of other people. Athletes, musicians, actors, and other performers who give all of their focus during practice experience greater ease during actual performance.

Give yourself the opportunity to create a larger, happier, more successful view of your life than you have ever had.

As you take advantage of creating a career plan, you will have more mental freedom and feel less stress whether you are working in front of other people or working alone at your desk.  You will have practiced, rehearsed, over and over how to get where you want to go, gathering the tools you need to get there, and how to meet the people who are important to your career.

In summary, you will have the following psychological benefits from your career plan.

  1. Increased creativity and confidence
  2. Clear direction
  3. Less stress through the simplicity of a planned process
  4. Great habits for success
  5. The great feelings of a sense of purpose
  6. Spontaneity in handling the inevitable turns and redirections
  7. Creating a vision for success

Most importantly, you will have enabled your mind to be able to contribute for your success.

As school students, educators had laid out the plan for us to follow to complete certain studies to qualify us for a diploma.

Daily Sessions to a More Powerful You

Work breaks are important to your health and to your work performance.

If you are unemployed and in a career search, keeping yourself healthy while experiencing the added stress of looking for a job is critical to keeping up your self-confidence and maintaining a strong self-image.

Even if you workout before or after work and then work at a desk, you may find that your desk job can reduce the fitness gains from those workouts.

The Department of Labor provides a list of minimum paid rest periods by state for every four hours of work.  Most states require companies to give employees a paid 10-minute break for each four hours of work.

If you are a desk worker, taking 10 minutes every four hours is probably less physical activity than you need to receive the physical benefits your body needs from sitting for several hours.

Here are some ideas that can help you refresh your mind, get a little exercise during the day, and stay within your company guidelines for the time you are allowed to take breaks:

  1. When you are rearranging things on your desktop, stand up.
  2. When you are talking on the phone, stand up.
  3. When you are returning or retrieving things from your desktop to your desk drawers, stand up.
  4. While you are working at your desk, tighten your stomach, leg, chest, shoulder, ankles, feet and neck. Roll your ankles. Arch your back. Stretch your arms.
  5. As you pause from typing or when you are on the phone, roll your neck.
  6. When typing, stand up, keep your back straight, and type standing or do a little squat and type squatting.

Some of these suggestions may seem to you as odd at first.  Yet, if you think about it, cashiers work with keypads while standing.  Retail buyers walk aisles with keypad ordering systems.  Some companies provide motorized desks that workers raise and lower during the day.  Typing while standing is not that unique of an idea.

For those paid breaks away from your desk, leave the screens at your desk.  Give your mind a chance to rest completely.  Take a walk.  Join a co-worker, even if that meeting is a standing session outside the office doors.

What ideas do you use to help yourself become more effective and healthy at work?

“The World’s Most Noble Headhunter”

Your Online Profile for Business and Career

Developing your online profile is as important to your career as developing as your reputation at work or developing your resume for your career change.

The information you post online may also be more in-depth and broader than the information you put in your resume.  On LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, you will find that you are including information that you might not put on your resume.  You might include some of the following information:

  1. Recommendations
  2. Endorsements
  3. Pictures
  4. Group Memberships
  5. Companies you follow
  6. Your clients
  7. People who have viewed your profile (on LinkedIn)
  8. Statements of your interests, likes, and perhaps dislikes
  9. Aspects of your personality

This information provides search engines with keywords that can enable potential clients or hiring companies to find you.

To select the most powerful keywords, go to http://www.google.com/trends.  This website ranks keywords words for search frequency.

Resumes for Managers

Here is a simple resume format.

Your name
Street address, City, State Zip
Home phone, Cell phone
Email address

OBJECTIVE AND SUMMARY
Stating an objective or a giving a summary at the beginning of the resume is common practice.  Stating an objective or providing a summary is optional.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY 

(Most recent job first)
Company Name; company Location, From –to
Most recent title, Location, From – to

Use bullet format.
•        List things you have accomplished.  Do not waste space on your just giving a job description.  List things that showed that you made a difference in the positions you held.
•        Use facts—for example, exceeded assigned sales goal by 30%, reduced costs, promoted people, saved time, increased productivity, etc.
•        Employers and recruiters search their databases for specific words, so list successes with specific industry words or functions.  Include the real name of your product categories, product names, sales accounts, functions (e.g., Profit & Loss, Market Research or Software Names, New Product Development, Market Insights, Innovation), etc.

Next List Previous Titles at this company and again list successes and accomplishments in bullet format.

Then include Previous Companies going back in time from most recent.

EDUCATION
Normally, education goes at the bottom of the resume.  People who have recently received an educational degree or credential that alters their employability might consider putting education at the top of the resume.

Other items that might go at the bottom of the resume are awards, extra skills, volunteer work, or perhaps some relevant college employment.

15 Minutes A Day That Will Enrich Your Life

15 Minutes A Day That Will Enrich Your Life

Remain a student for life.  One of the most enriching parts of my life is continuing to study.  Along with other things, I read textbooks or books on developing skills.  I read magazines and online articles about new things that I am doing.

I am not crazy about sitting down and reading a five-hundred page textbook.  What I do is that I read for 15 minutes or so a day.  Over time, I have learned things and have a lot of fun.

When my wife scheduled us for a trip to France a few years ago, I bought a diplomatic series of French lessons with audio tapes and a book.   I would listen to the types when I rode an exercise bike.  I also began to watch French news on the Internet, “France2.”  I would watch for perhaps 15 minutes a day.

In the process of watching the news in French, I learned something about learning.  I could not understand most of what I heard on the French Internet news.  I would just watch the French programs and take in what I saw and heard. The surprising piece from this experience is that I found that I knew how to discuss things that were not in the French lessons I was taking.   Despite my lack of understanding of the Internet broadcasts, I was learning more French.  When I spoke French, I discovered that I have words in my vocabulary that I did not know were there.

Study games.  In the book “A Beautiful Mind,” the author Sylvia Nash writes about Nobel Laureate John Nash, who as a student at Princeton University developed a board game.  Undergraduates at Princeton today still play the board game.  Nash was an economist who studied economic and mathematical theory through what is known as game theory.

There is plenty written on game theory and poker.  When poker became all the rage a few years ago, I took up poker as a hobby.  I also bought copies of books on poker:  Doyle Brunson’s “Super System,” Phil Gordon’s “Little Green Book,” Phil Hellmuth’s “Play Like the Pros.”   Reading the books did not so much make me a better poker player as help me understand the intricacies of poker and made poker more fun for me to play and watch.  I believe that great poker players are 75% intuitive with odds and human behavior and 25% lucky.   I lack the intuition for poker, and I am just too sociable to be serious at a card table.  However, I enjoy the game much more.

Continue to build your professional skills.  About a year ago, I started rebuilding my company website.  I became very ambitious.  I lack the genius to be a great programmer.  Yet I do love languages, and I learned that Internet browsers read languages.

My son gave me a copy of “HTML, XHTML, and CSS” (author Steven M. Schafer) and a copy of “WordPress All-in-One for Dummies” (authors Lisa Sabin-Wilson, Cory Miller, Kevin Palmer, Andrea Rennick, and Michael Torbert).  I have since checked out other books from the library.

I have learned how to create content for web browsers.  What I do not know when I am in the middle of a project, I can not easily find on Internet forums  or from countless Internet tutorials.

Continuing to study makes my life more fun.  If I want to write “Of Course” in French, I write  “Bien sur.”  If I want to write “Of Course” through a web browser, I write “Of course.”

I do not enjoy reading hundreds of textbook pages a day.  Yet I do enjoy studying something that interests me.  So the 15 minutes have begun to add up.  Over time, I have learned more and had a lot of fun.

You are extraordinary! Remain a student for life!

Common Career Correspondence Mistakes and Steps to Avoid Them

The most common correspondence mistakes result from trying to do too much too quickly.  If you are making a career move, you are competing against people who are taking time to review each aspect of each piece of correspondence.  In you are writing for your current job, you want to write so that people will be able to focus on your message.  The information you release must be correct whether the information is on an envelope, a cover letter, an email, or a resume.

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Here is a check-off list to help you double check to see if you have avoided the common errors people make in correspondence:

    1. Spelling of the recipient’s name
    2. Spelling of the company’s name
    3. Use of a polite, cordial tone
    4. Referring to the correct position
    5. Referring to the same position on your cover letter and your resume
    6. Referring to the correct company
    7. Using black type and plain white paper
    8. Using facts (Anecdotes are not facts.)
    9. Using words and pictures for modeling and acting jobs
    10. Using words alone for all other jobs
    11. Using graphs very selectively
    12. Using the spell- and grammar-checking system in your word-processing software and your email application
    13. Proper use of pronouns (first person, not third person–that is, he, she, they)
    14. Signature on your cover letter

Suggestion: Get help from someone who can help you proofread your material.

What are methods you use to avoid correspondence mistakes?

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Career Keywords for Resumes and Online Profiles

What are career keywords?  Career keywords are names of skills, experience, tools, places, and companies.

To find information on the Internet, search engines look up words or keywords.

Hiring managers use keywords to find matches between the words in job specifications and the words in resumes and online profiles.

Here are some examples of names that might help a hiring manager find you and, therefore, you might want to include in your resume and in your online profile.

    1. Names of companies where you have worked, especially names of prestigious companies in your field
    2. Names of schools you have attended
    3. Names of academic achievements: cum laude, dean’s list, first in graduating class
    4. Names of clients or key accounts
    5. Names of brands, products, or services you have developed
    6. Names of fields in which you worked
    7. Names of computer software or applications you know: C++, PowerPoint, JavaScript, Java, Google Documents, iOS, Android
    8. Names of certifications:  Certified Public Accountant, Certified Marriage and Family Counselor,  Credentialed Teacher, Licensed Driver of Commercial Vehicles
    9. Names of Hard skills:  Fluent in French, Typing Speed: 120 words per minute, Diesel Mechanic
    10. Names of Soft Skills:  Team Builder, Inter-departmental Facilitator, New-hire Mentor

Google.com/trends ranks words based on how often they appear in Internet search. You can test the effectiveness of keywords you are using in your resume and online profile by entering them into Google Trends.

What keywords have you found helpful?

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“The World’s Most Noble Headhunter”

Creative Ways to Manage Any Process

After going through a lengthy project that may take several days, I find that the project required so much attention and had such a long list of things to get done, that I get away from preparing a schedule for the day’s activities.

This morning was one of those days for me.  What happens on a day without scheduled events is that I am not very productive.  I check my email.  I check my online network accounts for messages.  I click around a couple of groups to see what might be going on to stimulate my thinking for new projects.  By midday I have very little done and reach a point where I have nothing else to do for the day.

The best way to avoid this loss of productivity is to remember that even on the days on which the work seems to come at me much more quickly than I can manage it, I still need to create an agenda for the day.  Busy days are better directed and slow days become more productive when I have a list of projects in front of me.

The agenda needs to have two aspects to it.

First there is the aspect of the things to get done.

Second is the aspect of the goal of each thing I am doing.

For example, I might have items like to the following.

Activity:  Sort email into these folders:  Delete, Read later, Inbox for high priority, Read.
Objective: Focus on opportunities that bring value to my clients and to me.
Activity:  Call people who are on my calendar for business calls.
Objective: Discuss the goal for each call.  For example, get advice for new project, follow-up on deadlines for submitting new material, and ask for the correct contact for a particular project.

There are several benefits to creating an agenda.

  1. The process of creating the agenda stimulates my mind to become more creative
  2. The process awakens my mind to more opportunities.
  3. The process keeps me focused on what I need to do.
  4. The process increases the likelihood that I will become more successful at achieving my goals.

So for me the outline for success is to have a schedule of activities for the day and to use that schedule.  As I complete tasks, I check them as completed and make a record of what I have accomplished for future reference.

What methods do you use for successful management of your schedule?

Beyond LinkedIn

Beyond LinkedIn

Today much focus is on networking through membership sites.  Sometimes the most helpful people in your network are your friends or people you have met locally.

A friend of mine was working part-time in a hardware store while in college.  One of the regular customers was a wealthy commercial property developer, who owned malls and high-rise office buildings.  This developer liked what he saw in my friend and offered to put him into business as the owner of a hardware store in one of the developers new strip centers.

My friend accepted the offer and now owns two hardware stores that are in strip malls, which the developer owns.

A couple of decades later, the developer hired the son of the hardware store owner.   The developer’s son and my friend’s son had become friends and the business relationship has continued to grow.

When you are creating a list of your network, remember to include the people you know locally.

Here are some suggestions just to get your mind working.

  • Elementary, middle, and high school friends
  • College friends
  • Friends of your parents
  • Parents of the friends of your child or your children
  • Friends or acquaintances from clubs, church, or associations
  • People who provide you with services
  • Relatives
  • Volunteer activities
  • Places where you shop

As you fill out the list, begin to organize the contact information on these people into a database or contact management system.

Name
Address
Phone numbers
Email address

You may already be using a contact manager.  For a career move, you might continue to use the same system you have used.  If you have no current personal system or if wish to create a separate system for your career, the free email services (Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail) provide data storage, calendars, and ways to include contact information on your contacts and methods for grouping your contacts based on the ways you would like to sort these.

Take a notepad with you when you get out of the house.  Ideas may come to you as you see people at the athletic center or while doing volunteer work or even shopping.

When you speak with other people, try to remember to engage in discussions about them, their family, and their friends.  Allow your mind to make free associations as you build your list of contacts.

Remember to give people your contact information as well.  Let people know that you are available and to pass your contact information along to people who might want to help you make more connections.

Move beyond LinkedIn.  Build a network of your contacts.

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