Displaying All Posts by jeff

4 Tips to Successfully Juggle School and Full-Time Work

Being able to devote your time solely to school was so twentieth century.

These days, with ever-rising tuition costs, more people are working to put themselves through school.

Also, it’s becoming increasingly common to continue one’s education to take careers to the next level.

Whatever takes you to higher learning, the idea isn’t just to get a degree but to learn as much as possible.

The demands of studying while working full time might tempt you to take shortcuts or concede that you’re only sort of doing college. Here are some tips to get the most out of earning a degree while still on the job. Click Here to Read Article …

How to Create a Resume When You’re Self-Employed (Part 3/3)

how to write a functional resume

Dear Reader: This is the third in a series of posts on properly showcasing your freelance experience on a resume.

In previous posts, we’ve established first that freelance work can be regarded with suspicion.

We also learned it’s possible to combat this by demonstrating the skills you’ve developed during your freelance career.

Today, we’ll firm up ways to do this, looking, specifically, at the functional resume, and comparing it to the chronological resume. Click Here to Read Article …

Wanna Be a Freelance Writer? Be a Brand Journalist

brand journalism

Companies once reached their audience by saying, “Buy Arco pancake mix. It makes good pancakes.”

And then came television commercials that promoted a lifestyle.

Then there was complex marketing research.

By the time Web 2.0 came along, the marketing intelligentsia on various brands tended to feel that any traditional advertising was a thing of the past and that telling a story was the way to reach people.

That is what brand journalism is all about, and it opens doors for freelance writers. Click Here to Read Article …

How to Create a Resume When You’re Self-Employed (Part 2/3)

resume for self employed

In the first of our series on effectively relating freelance experience on resumes, we looked at some of the red flags employers see in such experience.

One of the ideas we stressed was that you can get around these red flags.

The way to do this is by assuring the employer that you’ve developed the skills he or she is looking for.

Here, in part two, we take a look at how to do just that. Click Here to Read Article …

How to Create a Resume When You’re Self-Employed (Part 1/3)

self employed resume

If you’re a freelancer thinking of crossing over into the world of traditional employment, or if you straddle both worlds, you have to think about presenting self-employment on your resume.

One might be tempted to take an “it-is-what-it-is” approach, just plopping the experience into your resume.

But because working at home or running a business of any kind is different from being part of an organization, employers have their own particular ways of looking at such work on someone’s resume.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll present a series on ways to incorporate your freelance work onto your resume.

Today’s post will focus on some of the potential red flags that employers sometimes perceive. Click Here to Read Article …

Don’t Buy Into the Dual-Monitor Productivity Myth

two screens

Dual-monitor envy is common and understandable.

You’ve seen your buddy sitting there looking like an air-traffic controller — vast fields of spreadsheets that look to contain all the world’s information.

Plus: two monitors. Two is better than one, right?

But it may not be the case that you’ll get better work results with dual monitors, either in terms of quality or quantity.

Here are some issues with dual monitors, as well as a discussion of the differences between dual and single monitors. Click Here to Read Article …

3 Tips for Writing Great Intros

how to write a good introduction

This is the best introduction I’ve ever written.

It’s surprising and unique.

It’s concise.

It doesn’t re-invent the wheel.

And because I’m telling you that these are the traits of a great intro paragraphs, it sets up the discussion.

I’m now ready to flesh out ways to write a great intro for a blog post or other web article. Click Here to Read Article …

5 Reasons Freelancers Should Cook

benefits of cooking

The quick pop of eggplant yielding to the knife; the warmth of steam ghosting from the colander; the joy of turning over a chicken breast to find it richly brown.

What is more authentic and soul-stirring than cooking?

And that’s what this post is all about — the need of a freelancer to do all he or she can to maintain authentic experiences to renew one’s spirit during hard weeks of toil.

Some freelancers — with no 9-to-5 schedule and a work day that may seem to have no end — eat frozen meals from sad paper trays or order takeout or stop by the fast food place. Click Here to Read Article …