Your confidence is badly shaken, the job market is shrinking, and you're at an age where conventional wisdom says you're unemployable. Make you want to give up? Don't!
While you can't do anything about the diminishing number of jobs out there, you can confidently fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Throw out all those boring, conventional ways to go about getting a job. The expression "If you never stick your neck out, they'll never see you above the crowd" was never truer.
So, get your creative juices going and have some fun with these recession-busting job hunting tips:
1. Be Ageless. If you think your age is going to be a problem, I guarantee you it will be. If you can focus on all that you have to offer and be confident in that, you'll be golden.
When I first moved to Boston, I decided an internship was my best entre into local TV. I was in my early forties, and yes, anyone I would be interning with would be at least half my age, but it never occurred to me that my age would be a road block.
Being interviewed by a cocky 20-something male at the new Fox station, I was floored when he asked me if I wasn't "a little long in the tooth" to be going for an internship. I calmly told him that I had sat on his side of the desk, and if I had my choice between a 20-something whose primary concern was who she was going out with on Saturday night, or someone like me who had 20 years of solid business experience to bring to the table, I'd hire me in a heart beat.
On my way out, he told me he'd like me to meet his boss, because I was so "fantastic". I told him, I was going to Channel 5 where they appreciated "age"!
2. Get Rid of the Box. In my 30s, I was living in New York City, running my own marketing and public relations firm, and getting a little bored.
My life-long dream of acting was bubbling to the surface again, so I signed up for some classes, and plunked down $300 for an AFTRA card (in those days, the only requirement for eligibility.) To be eligible for my SAG and Equity cards, I needed three days of extra work or one principle role in an AFTRA production. I figured getting a principle role was a long shot, so I decided to go for extra work on one of the 9 soap operas being produced in the city.
Now, "the" way of doing that was to send your headshot and resume to the casting directors, and then follow that up with a weekly postcard with your head shot for the rest of your life, or a hundred and twelve years, whichever came last.
I figured I had nothing to lose by being totally outrageous. I had custom fortune cookies made that said "For extra work, call Lin at 555-1212." I filled Chinese food cartons with the fortune cookies, placed each box in a brown paper bag, and stapled each bag with a sheet from my local Chinese delivery place, and spent two days hand-delivering them around town.
At the end of the first day, I arrived home to this message from the casting director of All My Children: "Lin, you are totally insane, and I just have to meet you. Call me ASAP." Within two months, I had my SAG and Equity cards.
3. Be Bold. My TV internship led to work at the local ABC affiliate. I really wanted to work at the PBS station, and everyone "knew" that it was impossible to break in.
Once a week, I'd go through their job book. I applied for some Production Assistant jobs, and was convinced after my first interview that it would take years to work my way up to Producer there. I turned down the offer.
Then, one week, there it was -- a producer slot on a national quiz show that had never been done there before. I, however, had done the EXACT job at Channel 5.
I interviewed. I interviewed a second time. After a week when I hadn't heard back, I called to find out that I was still in the running. Instead of sitting back and nervously waiting, I got pro-active.
I bought a mannequin leg and outfitted it with a black and white striped thigh-high sock, tied with a big red bow at the top. I added a card that said: "Let me get my foot in the door. You won't be sorry" and hand-delivered it to the station. The next day, I got the job!
Later, my boss told me she really wanted a producer from New York or Los Angeles. When she received my package, she realized she had someone who could do the job and wanted to be in Boston, and she'd be crazy not to hire me.
Remember, this is the perfect time to create work that you love, work that is aligned with your values, working with people you enjoy. It's possible. You just have to keep your eye on the prize, and step out of your comfort zone!
Copyright (c) 2009 Lin Schreiber
In parts one and two of this five part tutorial, I discussed how to select and analyze the keywords that you should try and rank your page for. In this article I'll discuss how to format your page in such a way that the search engines know it is relevant to your chosen keywords. This process is known as ?on-page optimization?.
Step 3: On-Page Optimization
There are two kinds of search engine optimization: on-page and off-page. On-page optimization is the stuff you do to your actual web page that will help it get ranked. Off-page optimization means stuff that isn't on the page that affects your ranking (namely, in-bound links). Both are important. For Yahoo and MSN, on-page is more important than it is for Google. Google relies more heavily on links than the other big two, though Yahoo and MSN also weight links heavily.
In this case, I wanted to optimize the home page of the feline photos blog for the phrase ?cat pictures?. This is how I normally do this:
1. Make sure the domain name contains the keywords.
2. Make the title of the page my exact keywords I am targeting, capitalized appropriately.
3. Make the very first text on the page the keywords in an H1 (header) tag.
4. Put an introductory paragraph that uses the keywords right after the H1 tag.
5. If I have a lot of text on the page, break it up with H2 tags that contain variations of my keywords.
Unfortunately, catpictures.blogspot.com was not available, so I couldn't do #1. Since competition for ?cat pictures? was somewhat light, I knew that I could get by without worrying about it. But if you are targeting more competitive keywords, make sure that your domain name (or subdomain name) contains the exact phrase you want to rank for. This especially helps for MSN.
Also, I didn't do number five for my feline photos blog, because being a picture gallery there wasn't that much text on the page. But I'll give you more detail on how that works in case your page does have a lot of text.
Let's say that I have an article on pontoon boats that I want to rank for the phrase ?pontoon boats?. This is what I would do for the on-page optimization: Try and get a domain name with the words ?pontoon boats? in it (www.pontoonboats.com would be perfect). If there isn't anything available, then setup a subdomain for it (pontoonboats.mydomain.com).
Make the page title ?Pontoon Boats?, put the H1 tag at the beginning of the text as ?Pontoon Boats?, then break up the article with H2 subheadings like ?Maintaining Pontoon Boats?, ?Pontoon Boats for Fishing?, ?Are Pontoon Boats Fast??, etc. You don't want your subheadings to be exactly your keywords like the main H1 heading and the title, but you want the subheadings to contain your keywords.
That's really all I do with on-page optimization, and as I said before, if the competition is light I don't always do all five of those things.
There are other things that search engine marketers focus on and spend a lot of time with (things like keyword density and image alt tag density, etc.), but since I don't try to rank for fiercely competitive keywords I don't usually bother with all of that. I leave the ranking of really tough keywords to the serious SEO gurus, because to me it's just too much dang work.
To me, ranking for really competitive keywords is like owning a boat: it requires far too much time, money and effort to maintain to be worth the end result (going to the lake three times a year?sorry boat owners!).
No thanks. I'll rank for moderately competitive keywords and only have to do a little bit of maintenance every now and again, and by multiplying that effort I'll earn 10 times the advertising revenue that I would if I focused on one tough set of keywords.
What's Next?
Once you've got your page properly optimized for your chosen keywords, it's time to get to the ?hard? part: getting in-bound links to your site. I quote ?hard? because it's not really difficult, just tedious. However, in the last part of this tutorial I will show you a tool that makes all of the work of gathering in-bound links much, much easier.
Both Lin Schreiber & Jonathan Leger are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Lin Schreiber has sinced written about articles on various topics from Business and Finance, Debts Loans and Aging Problems. Certified Retirement Coach Lin Schreiber, author of the popular ABC's of Revolutionizing Retirement, helps self-reliant women reinvent themselves in the next stage of life, formerly known as "retirement." To claim your free Revolutionize Retirement Starte. Lin Schreiber's top article generates over 74000 views. to your Favourites.
Jonathan Leger has sinced written about articles on various topics from Search Engine Marketing, Internet Marketing and Customer Service. Jonathan Leger is the creator of the first commercial script packages available, which has grown into the widely-popular product set,. Jonathan Leger's top article generates over 4400 views. to your Favourites.