WCIYP (Secrets Of Salary Negotiation)

In my previous blog post, I listed and described the six secrets to salary negotiation. For this particular post, I am going to focus in on one of the most useful secrets, that is, to "Never Discuss Salary Until the End of the Whole Interviewing Process at That Organization, When (and If) They Have Definitely Said They Want You".

The most challenging aspect of this secret is knowing exactly when the interview is coming to an end. Hence, when this time is near, you will likely want to begin discussing salary propositions with an employer. An apparent sign that an interview is going well for you, and that it's time to bring up a negotiable salary, is when an employer subtly asks what kind of salary you would expect from a position similar to the one you're applying for. In order to to gain leverage in the salary negotiation process, be sure to come prepared with various answers to a salary range question. This means that thorough research is required to properly pinpoint an appropriate figure.

Per What Color Is Your Parachute, salary should not be discussed during an interview until the following criteria have been met:

• Ensure the interviewer understands your skills and what value you can bring to the company
• Make sure you would be comfortable working at the place you're interviewing for. Don't take a job to simply have one, it is more fulfilling to find work for something that you're passionate about
• Know exactly what the job entails, including its full job description
• Determine if your skills match those required for the job
• Make sure you have made it to the final interview. You do not want to prematurely mention a salary if others are more likely candidates for a position 
• Decide if you actually want to work where you have applied 
• The employer has expressed interest in your abilities and finds that you will be an excellent match for the available position 
  
  
  
  
  

WCIYP (Secrets Of Salary Negotiation)

According to What Color Is Your Parachute , by Richard Bolles, there are six secrets of salary negotiation that every job-hunter should consider. For this blog post, I will list all six secrets and provide a brief analysis from my point of view as a current job-hunter.

1.) "Never Discuss Salary Until the End of the Whole Interviewing Process at That Organization, When (and If) They Have Definitely Said They Want You"

• It is critical to determine how the interview is going before even mentioning the word salary. In addition, you need to be sure that you would like to work for a company before a salary is ever discussed.
• Below is an image of the best and worst times to negotiate salaries during an interview

2.) "The Purpose of Salary Negotiation Is to Uncover the Most That an Employer Is Willing to Pay to Get You?

• Negotiation is essential in order to find range in which you and a potential employer can agree upon. 
• Ideally, you will walk into an interview with a range that is is in the middle or above an average salary for your industry, in hopes that you can convince an employer that your skill set is worth a salary that is on the larger end of the spectrum. 

3.) "During Salary Discussion , Never Be the First One to Mention a Salary Figure"

• It is best to let an employer ask about salary during an interview, as the person who brings up a salary figure first typically falls on the losing end of negotiations.

4.) "Before You Go to the Interview, Do Some Careful Research on Typical Salaries for Your Field and in That Organization"

• Conducting research about salaries related to a job that you're interested in is a critical step in the job-hunting process.
• Salary research comes in two main forms; online and offline.
• Online Examples: jobstar.org, salary.com, bls.gov, or salaryexpert.com- to name a few.
• Offline Examples: Talk to people for insight, especially individuals who currently have a job in the field that you're interested in.

5.) "Research the Range that the Employer Likely Has in Mind, and Then Define an Interrelated Range for Yourself, Relative to the Employer's Range"

• This can be a rather difficult process, but understand that you want a range to base salary negotiations off of, or else an employer will hold all the power during the end of an interview if they chose to offer you a position.
• If you invest enough time and research, the ultimate goal of this step is to create a range that begins at an employer's highest offer, so that there is less ground to lose during a negotiation.

6.) "Know How to Bring the Salary Negotiation to a Close; Don't Leave it Just Hanging" 

• An ideal way to bring salary negotiations to a close is to discuss employee benefits, such as health plans or holiday time. This will enable you to close a negotiation by summarizing what is important to you. Please note, it is recommended that an employer signs the agreed upon terms, or else it is an unofficial contract. 

Gerbil Liberation Front Activity

Today in class, I found the Gerbil Liberation Front activity to be rather interesting. To begin, I visited the GLF website, which is created off of a Google site. Outside of Wix, Google Sites are easily one of the best options to consider for developing a site for free. After visiting the website, I ventured on to its Facebook page to research more about what the Gerbil Liberation Front had to offer. I discovered that GLF is musical group formed by gerbils, whose genre blends between hip hop and metal.

Soon after visiting the GLF Facebook page, I continued to Zazzle, which is a online retailer that allows users to customize merchandise with unique designs. As a part of its social media marketing efforts, the Gerbil Liberation Front has a Zazzle account and enables its fans to purchase t shirts to support the group. The merchandise looks to be made of high-quality, as you can visualize in the picture below:

Finally, the Gerbil Liberation Front also utilizes mailchimp, which is a resource that can be used as a way to gain subscribers via an emailing list. I found mailchimp to be an ideal alternative to creating a Facebook page for a company, as it can be used as a channel to regularly distribute content to users or fans. Overall, I thought that the GLF class activity was very helpful, as I was able to learn about new social media marketing tools and resources, such as Zazzle and mailchimp.

CASA Marketing (Ecommerce Analytics)

Understanding how to analyze ecommerce analytics is a necessary tool for any social media marketer. By doing so, you will be able to track ROI and utilize conversion tracking to your advantage to decipher the best forms and channels of advertising related to your business. In order to use conversion tracking, it is a requirement to find an ecommerce platform that tracks such data. Unfortunately, there are very few, if any, ecommerce sites that are free. Therefore, in order to conduct real conversion tracking, specific resources will need to be used.

For the purposes of ecommerce anlaytics, Google Adwords and Shopify are two reputable tools to use for conversion tracking. Shopify is roughly $30 a month, whereas Google Adwords varies depending on how much you plan to advertise. Adwords can be a very rewarding resource, especially if you're interested in how much revenue is being made off of select advertisements. The beauty of Google Adwords is that it syncs with Google Analytics. Hence, all the valuable metrics available on Google Analytics will automatically analyze content from Adwords for your viewing pleasure. Experimenting with both of Google's aforementioned platforms will provide a sound understanding as to how to properly utilize conversion tracking for a business to measure ROI.

Even more, Shopify is also a superb tool to reference for live ecommerce tracking, particularly where products are concerned, Below I will list some of the many features and benefits available through Shopify, which I suggest you consider since Google is a major proponent of the company.

Shopify Features/Benefits:

• 14 day free trial (Determine if the site is worth your money)
• Ease of payments
• Payment plans
• Customization 
• Product Diversity (Physical, Digital)
• Conversion Tracking with Adwords
• Live ecommerce site

CASA Marketing (Twitter)

In previous blog posts, I have looked at different social media channels, such as Facebook, to determine the likelihood of earning a return on investment. This week, I will focus on Twitter in particular, in order to see if it is a recommended channel for social media marketing.

Similar to Facebook, Twitter is one of the more popular social media channels for a brand to promote itself on. Although users may not have purchase intent while surfing through Twitter, it still stands as a major resource to advertise on. As a company or individual, Twitter allows you to promote ideas or topics, but you can only do so with a 140 character limit. This limitation makes it difficult to implement marketing strategies at times, but it is also advantageous in the sense that less information could appeal to a target audience that is overwhelmed with information overload from other social media sites. It is also important to note that Twitter is used extensively as a customer service outlet for companies, as it allows businesses to directly interact with customers for the general public to see, which can positively impact a company's image.

But how do you use social media marketing techniques on Twitter? That's a fair question, and I have an answer to it. A popular option is to promote a tweet, that is, pay Twitter to make a post appear in the feeds of other users. Sound familiar? It should, since Facebook has a similar business model for boosting content on its platform. Regularly posting on Twitter alone could return a profit on advertising efforts, but to effectively measure ROI it is necessary to analyze how many people actually make a purchase on a website after clicking a link from Twitter. As a result, consistently positing quality content on a social media platform like Twitter is critical to engage users and attempt to earn a return on investment from marketing efforts.

Since I have discussed multiple social media platforms to date through my blog post, I figured it would be relevant to discuss how often you should post to each channel. According to an article on buffersocial, there actually is a recommended amount of content to consider for each and every social media platform. For full details, be sure to read the article I provided a link to above. If you simply wish to see a brief overview of the article, please view the picture below as an insightful resource. As you will see, three posts to Twitter is widely viewed as a safe amount of content to publish on a daily basis, especially from a business perspective.

WCIYP (Tips About Interviewing For A Job)

In Chapter 4 of What Color Is Your Parachute, a comprehensive list of sixteen tips for interviewing for a job are listed and explained. For the purposes of this blog post, I will list each of the sixteen tips below, as I found them to be very informative and beneficial for the job-hunting process.

Here then, are the tips I recommend taking a look at:

1. There is no such thing as "employers"
2. An interview should be prepared for, before you ever go in
3. Honor agreements
4. An interview for a job is a lot like dating
5. Questions to expect from them, then questions you can ask 
6. During the interview, determine to observe "the 50-50 rule"
7. If answering the employer's questions, observe "the twenty-second to two-minute rule"
8. The employer is primarily concerned about risk
9. It's the small things that are the killers, in a job interview
10. Be aware of the skills most employers are looking for, these days, regardless of the position you are seeking
11. Try to think of some way to bring evidence of your skills to the hiring interview
12. Do not bad-mouth your previous employer (s) during the interview, even if they were terrible people
13. Throughout the interview, keep in mind: employers don't really care about your past; they only ask about it, in order to try to predict your future (behavior) with them, if they decide to hire you
14. As the interview proceeds, you want to quietly notice the time frame of the questions the employer is asking
15. Before you leave the (final) interview, there are five questions you should always ask
16.  Thank-you notes must be sent after every interview, by every job-hunter

My personal favorite tip among all sixteen offered from this chapter is surely number 15, as I have found it sometimes difficult to end an interview. Below are the five questions that you should always ask before you leave an interview:

• Can you offer me this job?
• When may I expect to hear from you?
• Might I ask what would be the latest I can expect to hear from you?
• May I contact you after that date, if for any reason you haven't gotten back to me by that time?
• Can you think of anyone else who might be interested in my skills and experience? (Only ask this if the employer responds not to the first question)

WCIYP (Tips About Interviewing For A Job)

I found it rather interesting that there are various forms of interviews in the business world. As discussed in Chapter 4 of What Color Is Your Parachute , there are three main forms of interviewing. First, there are interviews for fun or practice. This type of interview is usually comfortable, as the person you're speaking to is likely passionate about the same field of study and is available for to assist you. Second, there are interviews for information. Typically, interviews for information include conversations with employers, specialists, or experts who are familiar with the industry that you're interested in. Third, and the most important type, is an interview for a job. Here, you should utilize all of the information you have learned from your practice interviews in order to apply that experience into earning a position.

Since I'm on the topic of interviews, the following list represents the ten most common mistakes that are made during job interviews, which is based on a list compiled from WCIYP:

1. Going after large organizations 
2. Hunting all by yourself for places to visit
3. Doing no homework on an organization before going there
4. Allowing the Human Resources department to interview you (This is an easy out)
5. Setting no time limit when you first begin the interview, and then overstaying your welcome
6. Letting your resume be the only agenda discussed during the job-interview
7. Talking primarily about yourself throughout the interview, and what benefit the job will be for you
8. Failing to give examples of the skills you claim to have
9. Approaching the employer as if you were a job-beggar 
10. Not sending a thank-you note right after the interview