Become Your Own Job Creator in 10 Simple Steps

Become Your Own Job Creator in 10 Simple Steps 410 Maybe what you're looking for has been right in front of you all along. This is a guest post by Donna Sweidan. You may have noticed that the job landscape today is very different than the one we were looking at just five years ago. And although there is a lot of talk about jobs returning, the job search market is likely to remain daunting for many people. More and more, companies and individuals are shifting away from full-time salaried jobs to hiring freelance or contract workers. Individuals have to adapt to this ongoing trend. Let’s face it:eval Making a living today is just not how it used to be. Landing a full-time job takes more time and effort, and there is no guarantee that there will be a job with your name on it. So we had better start figuring out how to make a living! Freelancing is no longer reserved for writers or graphic designers. In a world where every job is temporary, micro-jobs may be the new norm for people in many fields. Whether you are an accountant or a teacher, every professional can create their own opportunity.eval Freelancers and small business owners Join 4 million freelancers who use Payoneer’s payment solutions: Lower fees Faster payment Greater flexibility Sign up and get $25* Navigating this new environment is very challenging and intimidating for those of us who are used to the old way of doing things. However, there are 10 simple steps you can take to reboot your career for the new era: 1. Know what you are good at or what you want to do The foundation of career success is knowing what you are good at and what you want to do. Without a specific target, your ability to successfully articulate what you are looking for is diminished. What to do: Conduct a thorough self-assessment, ideally with the help of a career counselor or even a friend (family members are not very objective when it comes to helping you with this). If you have a particular skill or interest that stands out from the rest, this is the place to start. One mom I know had spent so much time learning how to deal with her son’s severe allergies that she is now working on developing a small business helping other parents understand allergies after becoming a certified coach. Children with severe life threatening allergies are becoming more and more common. 2. Look around you and see what people need Start with people in your community. Conduct a survey of your family and friends via Facebook to see where there might be a need. Surveymonkey.com provides a free service for their basic offerings- all you need. If your community has a Yahoo group or something similar, put your questions out there. If you recognize the need, offer your services to a school, church or synagogue auctions. That is a great way to test the waters, while also getting word out to a large group of people about your services. And if you do a decent job, the least you’ll come away with is a testimonial. The most, a new ongoing client and referral source. Where to go: Craigslist.org, TaskRabbit.com, Facebook’s Marketplace APP, Care.com, Surveymonkey.com, Yahoo Groups, Community silent auctions, LinkedIn.com 3. Find the right job boards for you Today, there are an enormous number of websites that are seeking people to complete projects of every size and dollar amount. On a site like Elance.com, you can bid for projects ranging from $100 to create a custom itinerary (which is what one creative professional did out of her passion for exotic travel) to $10,000 for website design. According to their website, Freelancer.com helps professionals in “software, writing, data entry and design right through to engineering and the sciences, sales and marketing, and accounting and legal services.” As the captain of your career, your job is to establish a broad and diverse pipeline of work. Don’t get turned off by the initial low rates. While you may not get paid the rate you want (or need) for your first assignment, clients are getting to know your work and will pay you more the second time around. It’s an investment in future work. You are building your portfolio of work, and you are building up your confidence to ask for more money the next time you prospect a consulting opportunity. You’re also gaining potential testimonials and referrals for more work down the line. Where to go: TaskRabbit.com, Elance.com, Fiverr.com, 99designs.com, 3to30.com, Care.com, Freelancer.com, Solvate.com, icrunchdata.com, sologig.com, Flexibleresources.com, and other freelance marketplaces 4. Give yourself a real title Just because you are not “employed” in the traditional sense doesn’t mean your new title is “unemployed.” Whether you want to call yourself a freelancer or a consultant or an imagination engineer, the bottom line is that you don’t need an old-school job to give yourself a professional identity. You have a wide range of skills, and it’s up to you to determine by what skill set (or sets) you want to be known. Whether your have developed your skills through education or just good old experience, if you give yourself a title and believe in what you do, people will believe in you. 5. Find out what others are willing to pay for your skills Shop around and find out what others are charging for their expertise. People who work for themselves are often more candid about what they charge than employed professionals making a salary. Use freelance sites as a starting point, or check with the freelance association for your industry. Remember, you may charge a lower rate to get your business going, but as you get your name out there and your confidence and freelance experience grows, you will gradually be able to increase your rate. 6. Become social media savvy Social media is the launch pad to establishing your visibility and credibility. No matter where you are in your career today, everyone needs to jump on this bandwagon. Successful job search strategy relies more on self-promotion than on a passive search approach. Whether it’s The Gap or Coach, every product and business needs to market itself; the same goes for us as individuals. Establish our own personal brand and market it, boldly. Where to go: The most popular contenders are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, WordPress. 7. Cultivate new skills No matter what field you are in, expanding your skill set can only enhance your services and ability to increase your income. Do the research first. Study job descriptions for your ideal job, and see what are the skill sets that you don’t possess yet. Social media may be one of those skills, or maybe it’s HTML. Identify which services are in demand on the various freelancing sites mentioned above. Retooling and keeping up with technological advances is critical if you want to be of value in the marketplace. 8. Learn the art of shameless self-promotion When you are looking for a job, many people ask their friends to see if there are positions at their companies. While this is great, and I highly encourage you to reach out to everyone you know, it is also somewhat limiting in the case that there are no jobs available immediately. After you have put the word out there about looking for a traditional job, you can then follow up and let everyone you know that while you are looking for full-time opportunities, you are also setting up shop as a consultant and you are available to provide XYZ services. Use good ol’ email, Facebook, and LinkedIn to market your services, initially, to your family and friends. Add in the websites mentioned earlier and you will soon start to cultivate a clientele. 9. Create your own business card You don’t have to be “employed” by a company to have a business card. You are the business, and you should get in the mood to market yourself! Figure out your value proposition: what are the key skills you offer? Voila! You have the content for creating your own business card. Don’t forget to create a strong LinkedIn profile and add that to your card. I recommend that you create a business profile on LinkedIn too, but you need to have a business URL for that. Trade in your Gmail account for an inexpensive domain name (www.YourName.com) at sites like namecheap.com. If you have set up a business page on Facebook (free), add that too, in addition to any other social media links that people can use to learn about you and your work. Where to go: Design your own cards at sites such as Vistaprint.com and Moo.com. 10. Build your confidence with a group At the core of a successful job search, whether it’s for traditional employment or for contract freelance work, is a confident and thoughtful person. No doubt, marketing yourself can result in lots of rejection, but what is a job search, after all? This approach of marketing yourself does indeed require a thick skin, but, hey, what have you got to lose? Find a group of cheerleaders who can support you when you’re feeling down. Better yet, create your own support group to get your new consulting or freelancing business off the ground. This is called a “Business Mastermind” group, and it’s the brainchild of Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich. Not only are there a lot of people in the same place as you who could benefit from mutual support, but by pulling together you will gain ideas and a network of a small group of people as well as a group to be accountable to. The group can help you stay focused and confident as you work toward your goal. They say “luck favors the prepared,” so give some of these steps a try and prepare yourself to be hired. You just never know who might need your skills. But if they don’t know you exist, they can’t hire you. About the Author Donna Sweidan, founder of Careerfolk, offers a unique blend of psychological counseling and concrete coaching that takes her clients on a journey from soul search to social media. She is passionate about helping people find their path, and navigate tough career transitions. Donna is an advocate for teaching the new rules for career management and how to create income security in the new economy. She speaks and trains on topics such as career change, how to become your own boss, and social media for job search and career management. Join her on Facebook.com/careerfolk and twitter.com/careerfolk. This article is part of the Over $6000 in Prizes: It’s The 6th Annual JobMob Guest Blogging Contest, which was made possible thanks in large part to our sponsors: WebHostingBuzz is a reliable web hosting company with the servers hosted at multiple US and Europe locations and over 30,000 happy customers worldwide. Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg is a keynote marketing speaker, marketing strategist, and the secret weapon for many successful entrepreneurs. If you want Donna Sweidan to win, share this article with your friends. If you liked this article, you'll also enjoy Why You Must Freelance Between Jobs (and How To Get Started).

Social Media An Executive Decision

Social Media An Executive Decision Hey look at Greg (fake name). He is having a meltdown in front of his fancy work peeps. I hear him saying, “ F#@K, S$#T, I can’t do this.” Graphite hits the ground. Poor guy turns a fun game of tennis into an ego match with his executive buddies. Greg is a good athlete. MBA from a famous school. What’s the matter? Greg latter confides in me for tennis pointers. Not a pro, but I know a thing or two about the sport. His main concern is how he looks when he plays the game. He wants to look good and beat his executive buddies at the annual company retreat in California. That’s his first problem. Caring how others think. I say to him, “Play like nobody’s watching. Play your own way.” In short, it worked. He made an executive decision. That’s my hook. Famous news media everywhere, Wall Street Journal amongst one of them, are telling us how CEOs and Executives fear SoMe (that means Social Media). They tell us seven in 10 Fortune 500 CEOs have no presence on major social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Those who do, 4% have known Twitter accounts and 8% use Facebook under their own names. I do not care if a CEO or executive chooses TO BE or NOT to be on Twitter or Facebook or whatever SoMe site. I know more exciting people to engage with than a boring business stiff who talks like they have something up their keister. Do you really want to read another article from an MBA schooled executive about strategy? Nope. Even worse when that stiff hires a PR or Marketing firm to engage with me on SoMe. I DO care if a stiff is interested in developing human relationships. I am human. I can say that. I find it cool when I connect and engage with someone online who later becomes a real life person conversation and relationship. Also called networking. Just happened over coffee the other day as it has before with me. That is kinda cool. Oh. Hello Dr. Daniel Crosby. Check out one of his good talks here, Youre Not That Great. So why do they fear it? I dunna know. Maybe because they do not understand it. Makes sense. Nobody really does until they try it. We fear the unknown. Gone are the days of preaching SoMe like a religion. Let it be an executive decision. Continue to lead by example and educate when asked or given the chance. @lruettimann from the Cynical Girl just busted an HR brethren for doing it wrong. Check it out. I get why an executive would not want to be on SoMe. They are not celebrities. Many do enough public appearances and have no time for another spotlight. SoMe is not for everyone. Nobody can tell them how The Twitter will raise their stock price. If a CEO or executive has a purpose for it, then do it. Do not hire someone to do it for your name. And when you do do it like nobody is watching. Do it your own way. The same way I would tell you to play tennis. That is an executive decision. Related: What Social Media Teaches Us About Leadership. Image: Shutterstock

Arm Yourself With Facts Before Making a Decision - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Arm Yourself With Facts Before Making a Decision - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career How many times have you made a serious decision based on your gut feeling? Or played a hunch? Or followed your inner spirit guide? While making a decision based on your gut feeling may seem like a good idea, you need to make sure you have as much pertinent, factual, real-world based information before you make a final decision. Thinking about attending a conference for the first time, or even the 10th time? Its not just a matter of how awesome the people are, or the warm fuzzy feeling you get from seeing all your friends again. Did you get a return on the investment? Did you increase sales, or get any money-making opportunities from it? If you did, then go again. If not, stay home and put the money toward something more useful. Or what about keeping a regular blog? Are you getting sales leads from it? Or selling books? Or increasing web traffic and search engine ranks? Check your Google Analytics score to see if youre getting the kind of traffic you want, and figure out what you need to do if you want to increase it. If youre not getting anything, you either need to put more effort into it, or drop it completely. And how about increasing book sales, white paper downloads, or email newsletter subscriptions from guest blog posts? Worth it or waste of time? Set up a special Bitly link and measure the number of clicks from the Bitly link to your selected pages. While this may not be a completely accurate way of measuring sales (i.e. you dont know if all the Bitly clicks resulted in sales or subscriptions, or if they were from other sources), you can at least get a pretty good idea of what kind of traffic youre getting. No clicks means no traffic, which means you need to optimize better or find a different way to promote yourself. You may even be considering hiring someone into your company. While a good gut feeling is very important in hiring new people â€" because you want to be able to relate to them easily and comfortably â€" you still need to know how well theyll perform. Consider using a personality assessment to see if their personality and style will fit with your organizations. Work with candidates to see how much value they brought to their previous employer â€" did they increase revenue or save money? Do they bring new ideas to the table, or do they prefer to only be told what to do, and cant make a decision on their own? If they produced, and you like them, theyre a good fit. If they didnt produce, it doesnt matter how much you like them, they probably wont produce for you either. Before you embark on a new venture, or try to give up an old one, make sure you make the decision based on cold, hard facts, not gut feelings. While some people believe that gut feelings are nothing more than our intuition based on our subconscious processing of the facts, you know what works better? Conscious processing of the facts. Make sure you have them on hand before you decide anything. Even if you do follow your intuition in making new decisions, make sure you can back those decisions up with logic, statistics, and results. This way, you can be sure youre making the best, most informed decision you can. Author: Erik Deckers is the owner of Professional Blog Service, and the co-author of Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself and No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. His third book, The Owned Media Doctrine, will be available this summer.

Advice For Starting A Career In Nursing

Advice For Starting A Career In Nursing A career in nursing is a difficult but very fulfilling role. Many individuals who get into nursing, choose it for a variety of reasons but all of them want to help sick or injured patients to get better. If you’re considering a career in nursing, then there’s some advice you should consider before pursuing this line of work. Be Prepared For A Few Years Of Education Like other industries, nursing requires a few years of studying in order to earn the qualifications to become qualified. There’s plenty of courses and routes of study, so it’s worth doing your research and finding out what’s best for you. It’s useful to get into the mindset of studying as a nursing degree does require a lot of commitment and concentration. You’ll also need to think about funding and what finances you’ll need in order to complete your studying and training.    You can begin alongside your current job, but you should make the arrangements to be able to afford it if you had to give up your job.  It Can Be Quite Competitive It depends on the program you apply to, but nursing schools are quite competitive to get into. Some may prefer a high GPA while others will look at experience and previous courses that the individual has taken. Research is something you should be thinking about in order to work out which school or program, in particular, is best for you in regards to the previous experience or training you’ve had so far. Even if you don’t get in initially, you shouldn’t see it as a negative or that you aren’t good enough. It might just be that you don’t yet have enough experience and often enough, these institutions will give you guidance and advice on how to make your application stronger, the next time around.  Long And Unsociable Hours Are Expected Nursing is a particular career that you should really think about because even though it sounds like something you’d love to do, the lifestyle isn’t for everyone. Often enough the hours will be varied, long and unsociable which works for some people. If you enjoy your sleep and a good social life, then this career might not be exactly what you’re looking for. Not that you can’t have that but if your lifestyle doesn’t match to that of a typical day of nursing then it can be a harsh wake-up call. In this case, it’s worth talking to those that are already in the field because they can give you real advice on what the job is like, warts and all.  Being Responsible When it comes to nursing, you’ll be dealing with individuals directly and in some cases, their life is essentially in your hands. With that in mind, it’s important to know how much responsibility is required of you to take on this type of role. When things go wrong, attorney, David Aden who is a licensed nurse and lawyer will step in for victims of medical negligence. So it’s crucial that you know the risks and responsibilities that come with nursing. You’ll want to carefully think about whether or not you are at the right point in your life where you can take on this amount of authority. Everyone is different, so don’t get upset if you don’t feel quite ready for it. Your time will certainly come in the future.  What Type Of Nursing Do You Want To Do? Like other industries, there are a plethora of nursing roles that you can do and you may find one is more suitable for you than the other. Some examples to look at are as follows: Registered Nursing These are nurses who’ll have a bachelors or associate’s degree. They’ll assist physicians in the hospital for a variety of treatments and illnesses.  Licensed Nursing Licensed nurses have the ability to administer medication and give injections. They’ll normally be supervised by a registered nurse.  Clinical Nurse Specialist By being a specialist, you’ll be able to diagnose within a specified field of medical illnesses. This is ideal if you want to just cover a specific or niche area.  Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse The ICU is a particularly difficult department to work in but most hospitals will give continued training to a registered nurse before working in this department.  Labor and Delivery Registered Nurse This one is certainly a fulfilling role as you’ll be helping to bring life into the world. You’ll be responsible during labor, childbirth and even after birth. So with this advice, hopefully, you’ll want to consider a career in nursing, whether it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, or for a change in career.

How to Write a Resume For People With Aspergers

How to Write a Resume For People With AspergersIf you are an adult with Aspergers and wish to know how to write a resume then read on. Whether you are a young adult who may have been diagnosed with Aspergers or perhaps you are an adult parent, or even a teacher, Aspergers is a condition that can be a great asset to people who may otherwise be overlooked in the job market.People with Aspergers tend to have trouble with social situations, even in situations where they appear to be well adjusted. Some people with Aspergers develop a difficulty in communicating their feelings, which is an often misunderstood trait in Aspergers.Aspergers and your resume A good resume is one that is written for your specific needs and is tailored to meet your personality and work experience. Some people who have a hard time with people may benefit from the advice of an Aspergers professional to help them develop the skills they need to write a resume that will be appealing to employers. A resume should be able to display your strong points along with examples of your work experience.In order to write a resume for someone with Aspergers, you first need to make a list of areas that need attention. From there you can focus on these areas and what skills or knowledge you wish to highlight. Also, you need to know what areas you can work on improving if you want to know how to write a resume for people with Aspergers.One tip when it comes to how to write a resume for people with Aspergers is to write at a slow and deliberate pace. It is important to begin each section by summarizing your job history and your goals. Next, begin your career summary by listing your highest level of education and then list the highest position you held. If you worked in a field such as business, government, education, the media, or psychology, this is where you begin.The next area to tackle is your goals. You need to list a list of career goals that should relate to the position you are applying for. If you ha ve specific skill sets that you wish to gain, such as being able to add specific medical expertise, then list them in that field as well. Keep your overall career objective in mind throughout your resume and use words such as 'to' instead of 'as.'People with Aspergers also have problems with attention span, so you need to avoid long sentences. Use short sentences and paragraphs to ensure your reader can absorb what you are trying to say. If your text is too long, people with Aspergers will not be able to understand the information presented and will simply move on to the next paragraph.It is important to know how to write a resume for people with Aspergers, and it is equally important to know where to begin in the first place. Using the tips we just outlined, you will be well on your way to creating a well-written resume that will showcase your strengths in the workplace.

Reasons to Use a Recruitment Agency - CareerAlley

Reasons to Use a Recruitment Agency - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. If you are a jobseeker currently looking for his or her next career change, you may find yourself wondering whether you should use a recruitment agency or CV distribution service in a bid to generate more potential leads. At the past, recruitment agencies had a bad name and reputation due to a small minority of them misbehaving, but recruitment agencies these days are very good resources, which you can make good use of when job hunting. Pick and choose your recruiters thoughtfully and carefully. While you want to ensure you are well represented, you dont want to be over-represented (or misrepresented). And while the vast majority of recruiters are professional, there are a handful (like everything in life) that should be avoided. Ask your friends, family, college recruiting office and business associates for a list of respected recruiters. Choosing Headhunters and Recruiters Using a recruitment agency is quick, simple and easy, and they are the perfect solution for somebody who is currently working a full-time job and wants a career change but doesnt necessarily have enough spare time to go out there and search for themselves. TopResume Free Resume Review Price: TopResume writes and analyzes more resumes and LinkedIn profiles than any other service in the world. Let our resume experts provide you with objective feedback and personalized recommendations to improve your resume and land the right job sooner. Get a free, confidential resume review from TopResume Get Your Killer Resume We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Each year, recruitment agencies help millions of people throughout the world make their next move and land their dream jobs, and you could be next. There are several reasons why its usually a good idea to trust a recruitment agency with your CV, and these are some of the best. source #1: Recruitment Agencies Know Your Industry In many cases, they will know the industry you are in better than you do. Many recruitment agencies and recruitment agents are specialists within certain industries and have spent several years working in these industries themselves. Its quite common for recruitment agencies to specialize in a small handful of niche areas such as sales, IT and graduate jobs, and then these areas are broken down further depending on the agency and the recruitment specialists working at the firm. If you are considering using a recruitment agency, its always best to go with one which has proven specialist experience within your industry rather than a generalist agency Recruitment agents know industries like the back of their hand and they are best-placed to help you shine bright amongst the many candidates going for the same job. Recruitment agents know industries like the back of their hand and they are best-placed to help you shine bright amongst the many candidates going for the same job. Tweet This #2: They Can Get Your CV In Front of the Right People Many recruitment agencies and agents have direct relationships and access to important key decision-makers in some of the countrys leading companies. These people can include human resources departments, partners and directors. When you send an online application to a firm vs having it sent through a recruitment agency, it may never reach the right person and youll almost always never get any feedback. When an agency does this, they will be able to make sure it ends up in front of the right person and get you useful feedback should you not be successful. #3: Save Lots of Time By far, especially if you are still working or are otherwise busy, the best part about using a recruitment agency is that it saves tonnes of time. After all, searching for a job is a full-time job in itself, and many people who are still holding down jobs whilst looking for their next role will miss out on opportunities, forget to send in applications, and make silly mistakes. In contrast, a recruitment agents job is to find your next job. Their full-time day-to-day is to do everything for you and you will stand a much better chance of securing an interview by using a recruitment agency if you dont have the free time to dedicate 100% effort to your job search. Personalized interview coaching Price: At TopInterview, each session is tailored to you and your unique goals. Your choice of comprehensive packages make it easy to get the help you need to nail your interviews. TopInterview offers three plans based on your needs Ace your interview We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Also, think about how its a recruitment agencys job to find you a job it is in their best interests to work hard so that they find you a job in the end and generate revenue for themselves. Additionally, agencies rely heavily on referrals and they are much more likely to secure these if they do a good job of helping you. source #4: Receive Good Feedback Recruitment agencies wont leave you in the dark if youre not successful post-interview. They will secure detailed and critical feedback from whoever interviewed you so that you can take this on board and then use it to stand a better chance in the future. Some of the feedback received can sometimes seem harsh, especially when its coming from the mouth of a recruitment agent, but its important to take it in your stride so that you can improve yourself and get ready for future interviews. Sometimes, finding that dream job can be a long process and receiving good feedback can help you make changes you would never have considered otherwise. Finding a job can be a very long, boring, and drawn-out process which requires a lot of time, thought and effort to do. There are hundreds of recruitment agencies located around the country who work full-time to find you your next job. Although many people secure work without them, they are used by millions of people each year who want to tap into specialist industry knowledge, save time, and improve their core competencies and interview technique by receiving feedback after each unsuccessful experience. Jobscan Price: Optimize your resume and Boost Your Interview Chances. Jobscan is a tool that gives job seekers an instant analysis of how well their resume is tailored for a particular job and how it can be even better optimized Boost Your interview chances We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you. What's next? Ready to take action? Choose the right tools to help you build your career. Looking for related topics? Find out how to identify and land your dream job. Subscribe and make meaningful progress on your career. It’s about time you focused on your career. Get Educated Contact Us Advertise Copyright 2020 CareerAlley. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy + Disclosure home popular resources subscribe search

More death to job titles - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

More death to job titles - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog A while back I wrote a post about killing off job titles. I think theyre a waste of time and contribute nothing to our productivity, creativity or happiness at work. In fact, job titles can be the source of a lot of disputes and bickering in the workplace. Matt Cardwell of Quicken Loans (a home loan lender based in the US) read this and liked it so much that he decided to issue a fatwa on job titles in his department. Here he explains why: We never used to have titles on the Marketing Team at Quicken Loans because we always prided ourselves as having a marked anti-corporate and non-hierarchical culture. Actually, we did have titles, but everyone was called a ?Marketing Manager.? So it was kind of a forced equality and no one EVER even talked about titles. But as the team grew from a few dozen people to over fifty, HR decided we needed some ?consistency?, especially for purposes of external salary comping. So against our better judgment we relented and started creating a bunch of silly titles like: Marketing Coordinator, Marketing Program Manager, Project Manager, Jr. Project Manager, Sr. Project Manager, etc. Well, it only took about 12 months for our brilliant decision to come back and bite us in the ass. Needless to say, it created all kinds of unnecessary noise within the team as people started to grumble about why a person who had only been here for 12 months just got promoted to Sr. Project Manager when another person who had been here for three years was still a Project Manager. I got so fed up with the divisiveness of it all that I just decided to banish titles altogether yesterday morning. So I went looking for some inspiration and Googled ?job titles? or something to that effect and found your blog post from December. It was EXACTLY what I was looking for. So I dropped it into an email, added my two cents and started a revolt. Initially it was just within my 20 person eCommerce Marketing team, but it snowballed over the course of the afternoon to include most of the broader marketing team. That is music to my ears and in response to Matts challenge, people got very creative. Here are some of the new titles: Royal Storyteller Propaganda Minister Supreme Challenger of the Status Quo Wicked Web Site Innovator Mastermind of Possibilities, Visual Linguist, and Czar of the High Fiber Revolution Flasher Conceptologist Pixelardo da Vinci You can see more titles in my previous post on this. How did Matt inspire people to do this? Heres the email he sent out: Okay, team, so I want each one of you to take 15 minutes today to really think hard about what YOU DO and what MAKES YOU HAPPY at work and create a title for yourself that expresses who you are and your impact on the business and your team mates. Forget about what Salary.com or some HR person said your title is or should be. Forget about what you get paid, how many years of experience you have, or what other people?s ?titles? are in comparison to you. Tell us WHAT YOU DO and make that your new ?title?. As of this morning, traditional titles on the Website Marketing Team are DEAD. D-E-A-D. Somehow over the past year people have become WAY too caught up in who has what title. So we?re going to end the madness today. If this scares you, makes you feel like we?ve taken something away or makes you wonder how your resume will look without that title-that-really- never-does-justice-to-you-and-your-talents-anyway, ask yourself when was the last time someone called you by your title? When was the last time Todd Lunsford or Bill Emerson or Dan Gilbert called you by your title? Worried about how this might impact future compensation? Don?t. Numbers and money follow, they do not lead. Kick ass at whatever you do, and the wealth will eventually flow to you. I?ve seen it happen again and again in my career ? and especially here. If you are concerned about someone not recognizing how important you are because you no longer have a standard title, then here?s your chance to create a title for yourself that will convey exactly how important you are. And because you are creating it, it will be all yours. No one else will have that title. Think of the conversations your new title will start with complete strangers. Think of the opportunities it can create for you in terms of expressing who you are, not what someone CALLS you. ?But what if I don?t like my description in three months ?? you ask? What if what I do CHANGES? Well, then you can change your description. It?s that simple. No one ever stays the same ? we are all growing ? so let your ?title? do the same when it?s time. Here?s your chance. You have until the end of the day to let us all know who you are. Have fun, be creative, be humorous, but above all, be real and true. Remember, this will be on your e-mail signature, so please be aware of that. I can?t wait to see what all of you come up with. DEATH TO TITLES! Matt Matt Cardwell Idea Salesman, Energy Focuser and People Unleasher eCommerce Marketing Team Quicken Loans My title challenges your title to a duel. I predict a draw. Me I had to know more, so I emailed Matt with a few follow-up questions, and heres an update from him on the fatwa on job titles: You had a couple of questions around the titles Fatwa from your previous e-mail. One question was about whether we had abolished titles company-wide. So far only the Web Marketing Team and the Idea Lab (our creative team ? basically an in-house agency for our advertising production) took up my challenge. Not surprisingly, the team that actually got the title ?promotions? that started this whole thing opted not to join us in our little revolution. I threw the challenge out to them, but I haven?t really seen anyone take up the torch. I do know that our CMO, Todd Lunsford was extremely supportive of the no-title revolution. As I mentioned, we really only started using titles recently for comping purposes. But even there, they are generally not very useful for the more specialized people on my team (usability pros, search engine optimizers, etc), because until very recently, Salary.com didn?t make distinctions between interactive marketers (which are in high demand) and traditional marketers. As an organization, we?ve been pretty ambivalent about titles. Most of our Sr. Leadership Team and many of our team members simply have no title on their email signature, or just identify themselves with their team. For example: Joe Smith, Web Marketing Team So I think this will still spread ? we won a couple battles, but we still have a war going on. It will come. And I?ll keep preaching. This is fantastic! Im adding Quicken Loans to my list of Companies that get it. And Im not alone they recently placed second in Fortune Magazines Best Company to Work list, one behind Google. Your take Whats your take? Is your workplace ready to issue its own fatwa on job titles? Or do you see some value in having a real title on your business card? Please write a comment, Id really like to know. Related posts Top 10 reasons why constant complaining in the workplace is so toxic Top 10 reasons why happiness at work is the ultimate productivity booster Five reasons to forget about money and focus on what makes you happy at work Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related