From Osteopathy to Elves

From Osteopathy to Elves Success Story > From: Freelance To: Portfolio career From Osteopathy to Elves “I decided that unless I gave it a go, I would always wonder what would have happened.” * From Osteopathy to Elves Emily Beckloff loved her day job but also had a burning curiosity to see if she could turn one of her otherpassions into a side business. Here’s how she navigated vulnerabilityand choke hazards to make her dreams â€"and those of children all over the worldâ€"a reality. What work were you doing previously? I've been an Osteopath for 12 years and work from my home-based practice. What are you doing now? I'm still an Osteopath, but I now also work for Father Christmas. I launched the International Elf Service two years ago, which, with parental help, delivers 'live' news from the North Pole on the countdown to Christmas to children all over the world: a magical family Advent tradition in the form of personalised letters. Why did you change? I'd been writing notes from 'Elfie' for our children to find throughout December for a few years. They absolutely loved it and I wanted to see if other children would enjoy them too. When was the moment you decided to make the change? When I panicked and thought my older two children, then six and seven years old, might not believe in Father Christmas for that much longer. I really wanted them to have the finished product 'for real'. Are you happy with the change? I can't tell you how much I love both of my jobs. I feel like I have it all! What do you miss and what don't you miss? The only thing I miss is the feeling that I had time. I now work every day and every evening. I love it and wouldn't have it any other way but it would be nice to be able to read a book again! How did you go about making the shift? I wrote the text for the letters and then had a huge stumbling block in finding an illustrator whose work fitted with what I had in my mind. After a few hopeless calls with a couple of web designers, a mum at my children's school pointed me in the direction of another mum who designed websites. She understood what I needed immediately and asked me when I wanted it done by. I told her I was struggling to find the right illustrator. Then she told me she used to be an illustrator for Penguin Books and asked if I would like her to try out a couple of things. I couldn't believe my ears. I told her what I was after and she sent some sketches through. They weren't right, but I emailed her straight back and said her drawing was too good and they needed to be more immature and wonky. She changed a few things, and that was it. I was so excited to have got over this hump. She was local, we worked well together and her being able to do the website too just made it so much easier. Then it was a matter of requesting endless samples for the product materials, badgering all my friends for their opinions on absolutely everything, working out prices, postage costs, logistics and then hitting the big red button to make it all go live. It was all terrifying but very exciting. What didn't go well? What 'wrong turns' did you take? I had what I thought was a brilliant idea â€" to sell little hand-stamped linen bags filled with findings from the Elves' Workshop: a button, some toy stuffing, a length of ribbon, some tiny non-working scissors, a 'rare' gem, a sleigh bell, etc. This was all with the view of parents popping an item in with each letter. The children would of course assume they were from the North Pole. I bought enough to make up 75 bags. Then I suddenly had a thought â€" would these items be choke hazards and did the product need to be assessed before I could sell them? The answer turned out to be yes and due to the number of small parts, it was going to cost me thousands, which I couldn't possibly afford. Aside from wasting the money I'd spent, I was so grateful that thought had popped into my head. Imagine if it hadn't? How did you handle your finances to make your change possible? I've always worked part-time since having our three young children, so I just chipped away at it when I had windows of time, including in the evenings. To pay the start-up costs, I used some savings I'd managed to scrape together and some money my mum left me when she died. What was the most difficult thing about changing? A lack of confidence. Putting myself 'out there' made me feel so vulnerable. I decided that unless I gave it a go, I would always wonder what would have happened if I had. It didn't matter if I failed (though I'd probably weep forever and hide under a rock). What help did you get? Most of my help came from family and friends, Facebook groups and other contacts I'd made through social media. What resources would you recommend to others? Social media is brilliant as there are so many lovely and talented people out there. I've joined various 'business' Facebook groups, which have been an invaluable support. My family and friends have been amazing and have provided ongoing, honest, constructive feedback throughout. What have you learnt in the process? That I'm capable of far more than I had realised, that everyone knows someone who knows someone who can help, and that Father Christmas is actually real. What would you advise others to do in the same situation? Go for it and do it to the best of your ability. Expect 'down days' when you feel you're totally rubbish at it or when things feel hard. Don't rush, don't overspend, and get your learning hat on! What lessons could you take from Emily's story to use in your own career change? Let us know in the comments below.

Resume Writing Service For It Professionals

Resume Writing Service For It ProfessionalsIf you are in need of a great resume, it is important to find the best resume writing service for it professionals. There are many things to consider when it comes to selecting a resume service. While some people can spend hours upon hours of their time coming up with a great resume, it may not be worth it to them to do this. This article will give you some great tips on how to find the best service.The first thing you should do when you are looking for a resume service is to make sure they are legit. This does not mean that you should hire a resume service that is a complete scam, but you should make sure that they are legally allowed to do what they do. Legally, resume writers who are part of a business can be allowed to use paid resources and use their talents to create work for people. However, if they are just selling a resume to make money, they are not legally allowed to do this.When you are trying to get a resume written by an expert , you should get recommendations from those who have had previous resumes created by the writer. This is because the best professional writers are usually well-known. You want to be able to ask around and have people tell you how the writer does what they do and if it was the service they promised.There are many good resume writers out there. The most popular service out there is obviously Elance. Many websites hire professional writers and then post the work on Elance. These writers, though not all of them are of the same quality, still deliver a quality resume writing service.Once you have decided on the writer that you want to hire, the next step is to determine what type of resume you want. Most people would like to have the resume and cover letter done by an experienced professional. Since you do not want to take a chance on something going wrong, you should find a service that can produce one for you, with all the necessary information.It is important to give the writer a deta iled idea of what you want your cover letter and resume to look like. Also, you want to know the services that you are paying for. Some services only offer one type of resume or cover letter, while others will offer all of the services that you need. Make sure that you are sure what services you are getting before you hire anyone.Remember, you will be hiring them to do a job. They will be your boss. You want to make sure that you are not hiring someone to make money from you and take advantage of you. Not only will they have to deliver the results you expect, but they are also going to have to give you the time that you deserve for your application.By following these tips, you should be able to find the best resume writing service for it professionals out there. Now, if you are thinking that you will just sit back and let someone else do all the work, you are wrong. Make sure that you have hired the best person for the job.

Feminism fails because women lie to each other about work. Oh, and go Cubs!

Feminism fails because women lie to each other about work. Oh, and go Cubs! Im in the Houston airport waiting to fly home and I am sad that Im not with my kids. It doesnt feel fun to fly around the country making deals when you have a home life that depends on you. Which is why most women who have control over their lives dont travel for work. But look, if you have a career where you earn more than $100K, you either routinely work late, or you travel for work. Which is why a huge majority of mothers  want to work from home, or work part-time. Its just that once you decide you are working from home or working part-time, you are not going to build a career with any achievements  big enough to brag about.  So many  women tell me they want to work part-time but they want to do work thats fulfilling, that matters, that blah blah blah. But people who commit  to something part-time end up mattering part-time. Which is to say not at all. Sorry. There is no war between working moms  and  stay-at-home moms. There is a war  between women who construct their lives as lies and women who believe them. The women waging war are the the  ones who talk about how they magically give nothing up. They spend their lives propping themselves up as a goddess of work-life balance while inadvertently putting down all other women in the process. The big famous spotlight seeking liars? Ive already called    those women out as full of shit.  Now  Im going to start calling out do-gooders; the women who look the most sweet, the most humble, the most pulled-together are also spewing lies about their work. In the airport I was  remembering going to Cubs  games as a kid and then I started  googling Theo Epstein.  Hes the boy-wonder of baseball  who  became the youngest general manager at age 28. He won the World Series twice with the beleaguered Boston Red Sox, and now hes in Chicago trying to do the same thing. I couldnt help also googling his wife. Its my nature. I like to know how women manage their lives. Her name is Marie Whitney and she went to Harvard for graduate school in public health and she worked with disadvantaged kids, and blah blah blah, shes a do-gooder with a great smile and a hot body. No surprise there. But what is a surprise is that she has her own business, Two Penny Blue. I clicked the About section. And I am SO INCREDIBLY BLOWN AWAY BY THE CRAP  SHE DISHES OUT ON HER SITE THAT IM PRINTING IT ALL HERE. RIGHT NOW. NO. WAIT. IM GOING TO ANNOTATE IT. Two Penny Blue began in 2010 AFTER MY HUSBAND WON TWO WORLD SERIES AND WAS THE MOST VALUABLE MAN IN BASEBALL in a humble 810 office in the attic of an old home on the outskirts of Boston, MA. ONE OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE HOUSING MARKETS IN THE US. I would work whenever I could steal a few moments away usually while my baby son napped. At first the task creating a incredible line of jackets and blazers with a social mission of educating girls around the world with no formal fashion training BECAUSE YOU DONT NEED ANY TRAINING IF YOURE RICH and a tiny budget seemed.. well, impossible. EXCEPT THAT BECAUSE TINY BUDGET IS RELATIVE THE FEAT WAS ACTUALLY NOT AT ALL IMPOSSIBLE. It was exciting, scary, exhilarating, and by most accounts, simply crazy. The order was a tall one and the standards of excellence for the collection were exceedingly high and uncompromising BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE UNLIMITED FUNDS  YOU CAN LINGER  FOR TWO YEARS OVER THE DETAILS the fit needed to be perfect, the fabrics th e finest in the world, the craftsmanship the best Id ever seen BECAUSE I COULD AFFORD TO HIRE ONLY  THE BEST, and the jackets modern classics. But hour by hour, day by day, sleepless night by sleepless night, the passion for the company only grew stronger and the dream of Two Penny Blue became a reality. In July, 2012 I launched our first collection of blazers on our website. The response was overwhelming BECAUSE BOSTON WAS  OBSESSED WITH EVERY SINGLE THING MARIE AND THEO DO and I packed orders up to the ceiling in the attic until 2am thinking wow , we might just have something here. And we do. My baby boy is now 7 years and that tiny, dusty attic in the office has grown into an eclectic design studio in a great shopping district in Chicago. NEXT TO WRIGLEY FIELD BECAUSE MY HUSBAND IS WITH THE CUBS NOW The passion, the mission, the fear, the excitement, and crazy determination are stronger than ever. Our story is just beginning. If I had not accidentally done research, and then annotated this story you would have thought you could launch a fashion business, too. You would have said you want to have kids and open a business on the side. Like that would ever be possible. Why does Marie have to tell this story? Because she wants people to feel like she  did something that is bigger than quitting work to raise a family. She doesnt want people to think she went to Harvard to save disadvantaged children and then just married  well. Because its really hard for anyone to get a great education and feel like they can do anything and then realize you can pretty much do nothing once you have kids. Unless you have TONS and TONS of money. Or you have a career that is very very well established before the kids arrive.  The New York Times has told us that women who launch  successful businesses  with young kids have husbands with money. But we tune that out. We dont want it to be true. Instead we want to listen to people like Marie Whitney Epstein who tell us tall tales about small business struggles. I also want to point you to the incredibly small amount of press this company has received since inception. In fact, every single mention in the press begins with the Cubs. This is because Marie doesnt do press. She doesnt need to. She will never find herself having to leave her kids at home so she can go to some odd-ball city for a press junkets. That, I guess, is why Im so angry. Im angry that when I write about how hard things are for me that having a startup and raising two kids  is totally unmanageable people offer me suggestions. Like, oh, Ive seen lots of women do this, surely you just need a new strategy. But no. Really. If you dont have a lot of money you cannot build a company after you have kids without destroying your whole life. Not even small, tiny, just-for-charity company. When we talk about women trying to work while they take care of kids, theres a lot of finger pointing: maternity leave laws should change, companies should provide flexible jobs, men should do more emotional labor. But what we really need is for women to stop lying about their choices, achievements and struggles. A key step toward institutional reform is for women to be honest about what they are able to do and the resources that have to do it with.

The Role of Women in the Tech Industry Today

The Role of Women in the Tech Industry Today Tech has always been a predominantly male industry, with iconic male entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg gaining the most recognition for their contributions to  the sector. However, women are playing a huge part too and more and more women are entering both regular and high level positions in tech, with the big global firms such as Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. hiring women 238% faster than men. Coupofy have taken a look at some of the  most successful women in the industry and their roles as founders, leaders, and venture capitalists, to produce this infographic on the role that women play in the tech industry today. How many women are working in tech? 20% of all tech start-ups across the world were founded by women. Chicago, Boston and Silicon Valley have the most tech start-ups founded by women. The number of women working for Facebook grew by 84% in 2015, compared to a  16% increase of men and  83% more women joined Microsoft in 2015, compared to 17% of men. The worlds most powerful women in tech In 2014, 17.4% of CIOs in Fortune 500 companies were women and 6 of Fortune 15 companies have female CIOs. Woman represent 7% of the worlds richest tech billionaires. Rebecca Shanahan is CEO of the fastest growing company led by a woman, growing by  $469.4 million in 3 years. Zhou Qunfei, founder of LENS, is the richest female tech billionaire and is worth a huge $7.5 billion. Women in venture capital Only 4.2% of venture capital investors in the US are women. 5 of 100 investors in the Forbes Midas list of the top venture capitalists are women. Why do women leave tech? 30% blame working conditions, such as long hours, a low salary and no opportunity for career progression. 27% put it down to work-life-balance, stating they do not have enough time with their family and there is too much travel involved. Some of the other top reasons were a loss of interest in their job and problems with the company environment. 24% of women who leave a tech role go on to a non-technical role in a different company and 22% become self-employed in a tech field. How to retain women in tech Offer mentoring programs and networking opportunities, can help staff to seek encouragement and assistance from others in the industry. Flexible working hours will ensure staff feel like they meet a good work-life-balance and have time for commitments outside of their jobs. Providing opportunities for personal development is a large factor that people look for in a job and scope for promotion will improve retention rates. [Top Image Credit: Shutterstock]

Use an Agency For Global Resumes-Resume Writing

Use an Agency For Global Resumes-Resume WritingGlobal resumes-resume writing can be a daunting task. You would have to find the perfect opportunities, select the right job and complete the entire job search process in a timely manner. You may have doubts on your ability to do so since you don't have any experience in global resume writing.Global resumes-resume writing can be completed easily. All you need is a computer with a Word processor and basic English skills. The list of jobs available in Canada and its related cities should be reviewed carefully.There are several sites available online where you can learn more about resume writing for Canada. The resumes-resume writing can be completed online and then can be sent to Canada employers that require them.A good resume is the one that will portray your abilities as a skilled writer. You can complete a good resume by completing a full or partial profile of yourself. It is essential to finish this section well. You should not forget to include all your skills, achievements and even the areas in which you have a specialization.A professional resume writing for Canada can be done by hiring a professional agency. There are many agencies available who specialize in the job recruitment process. They usually work with businesses and schools to get the best Canadian employees for their organizations.The resumes-resume writing for Canada can be completed with just the computer and the ability to type quickly. This way, you don't have to hunt for employees or schools as needed. The resumes-resume writing can be made by using either MS Word or software which has a feature for instant file import and export.This will help the schools to get the best candidates and help the regional education department in their jobs. When you choose an agency, they will provide you with a complete evaluation of your resume and give you some advice on how to further polish it. Some of the good agencies are Dreamit Canada, Global Resumes a nd Best Resumes.Resume writing for Canada can be done with the help of an agent who has experience. He will bring in contacts and professionals who will know how to hire qualified candidates and provide all the necessary service to ensure that you find the right jobs fast. Having a copy of your resume handy can be helpful while travelling or taking a train journey.

Are you getting paid what youre worth

Are you getting paid what youre worth Are you getting paid what youre worth? Are you getting paid what youre worth? November 24, 2009 by Career Coach Sherri Thomas 4 Comments Let’s face it, your paycheck has a direct impact on your quality of life. Yes, having a good boss, challenging work, and clients who pay on time are critical factors in your overall job satisfaction, but your salary, health benefits, 401k plan, and bonuses can tip your overall job satisfaction scale from being “very satisfied” in your current work situation to “I really got to get a new job RIGHT NOW!!” So how can you know if you’re getting paid what you are worth, and how can you negotiate a better salary? Your salary is determined by three factors. First, the company you work for. There are some companies who are known for paying their employees a beefy salary and benefits package. Fortune Magazine recently compiled a list of top paying companies. If the company you work for is not on the list, don’t worry. You might still be making a healthy salary based on your peers within the company, and even the industry. I recently spoke with Fred Cooper, compensation expert for a Fortune 100 company who gave some great strategies for determining your value in today’s marketplace. So the question is How do you know if you’re on the high end or low end of the market’s going rate? Cooper said that there are two key factors that determine your salary. One is what the market is currently paying for your skills, experience and areas of expertise. The other is the company’s internal salary policies and practices. “Research is key,” says Cooper. “You must determine the value of the job that you currently have or want. There are a number of salary surveys where jobs are priced that can give you a salary range for the work as identified in the job summary or job description. Make sure that when you start your salary survey that you have a good job description and understanding of the job you are comparing. Do not use job titles for comparisons but get in to the duties and responsibilities of the work being performed.” “For example,” Cooper explained, “an ‘accountant’ for one company may be a true accountant while for another, the title may be applied to accounting clerks, financial assistants or others performing ‘accounting support’ work. Combining salary ranges in this instance would not provide a true sense of the market value.” Before you go in to negotiate your salary with your new employer, be sure to schedule a career coaching session with me to help ensure you receive the best salary benefits package possible! It’s a small investment to make compared to what you could be losing out on if you aren’t properly prepared. In my next blog post I will share some of the best tools and web sites to help you with your research.

Should I email my resume as a Word document or a PDF - Sterling Career Concepts

Should I email my resume as a Word document or a PDF Should I email my resume as a Word document or a PDF? A client just emailed me asking, Is it better to send my resumeas aPDF rather thanin Word? Theanswer is probably not. Despite the universal nature of PDFs, most executive recruiters and internal recruitersstill require a Word document to import into their applicant tracking systems.As part of their process, executive recruitersalso often replace your contact infoin the header with their own or otherwise make slight editsbased onparticulars of individual job orders. Its hard to avoid sending your resume as a Word document. To help, here are two suggestions If you’re using Word 2007, I would suggest saving the file as an earlier version of Word (i.e., a .doc filefor withWord 97-2003),not a .docx, to avoid compatibility issues.To do this,go to: File_Save As_click the down arrow to the right of “Save as Type”_ select Word 97-2003. Since weve established recruiters prefer to receive Word documents andthat wehave all seen at one time or another how scary formatting can shift from one system to another,I use and would recommend you use a universally found font such as Garamond, Verdana, Tahoma,Palatino, or (if you must)Arial or Times New Roman.This is your best insurance against a font nightmare. Now, the original questions was PDFvs. Word, but I would also suggestthat you copy and paste a text version of your resume into the body of your email. This allows the recipient to save time and scan down to see your background without opening an attachment. For at least the time being, Microsft Word remains the most commonly accepted form of resumes. Do what you can to facilitate the job search process!