Five Ways to Choose Your Career

Five Ways to Choose the Best Possible Career for You

1.) The Internet

The internet is a great way to search for a new career. O*Net Online is a great source to utilize. Go to www.onetonline.org/find or www.onetonline.org/search to begin to find information about careers.

2.) Tests

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Take tests or assessments to determine what type of career you are best suited for. Find out what skills you have to offer and what jobs best use those skills.

3.) Using the Flower Exercise

The Flower Exercise can be found in the book, "What Color is Your Parachute?" This exercise allows you to explore who you are and find a dream career.

4.) Changing a Career in Two Steps

There are two parts to a job. Job title and the field you are in. The easiest way to change a career is only by changing one of those parts. This allows you to claim prior experience that is relevant to the new job you are seeking. You can of course try to find a completely different job, but it may be a slightly harder process.

5.) Finding Out What the Job-Market Will Need

If the above options for finding a career don't work, then try to find out what the job-market will need in upcoming years. Do a Google search for "hot jobs" or "job projections". Do a little research on what jobs are becoming more relevant in the job market.

Bolles, Richard N. "Chapter 10 The Five Ways to Choose/Change Careers." What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. 2016 ed. Ten Speed, 2015. 233-244. Print.

Wondering What Employer's Tend to Be Prejudiced About?

Top Employer Prejudices

1. Someone who is out of work for an extended period of time.

Even being out of work for one year can be too long for some employers to consider you for a job position. Not all employers have this prejudice though.

2. Someone's age

The older you are, the harder it is to find a job. Once again, not every employer only hires young and middle aged people. Some will hire older people who can't retire yet.

3. If you are a returning veteran

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Some employers don't hire veterans because they are concerned about the veterans suffering from PTSD. This does not apply to all employers.

4. If you are an ex-offender/ex-convict

A lot of employers don't usually want to hire ex-offenders/ex-convicts. There are books and helpful resources for these people to help them find a job.

5. If you are a former mental or psychiatric patient

Some employers may be concerned about people who have been former patients.

6. Others

Just about everyone faces prejudice of some kind from potential employers.

Bolles, Richard N. "Chapter 9 How to Deal with Any Handicaps You Have." What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. 2016 ed. Ten Speed, 2015. 218-223. Print. 

Five Things to Do When You are Looking for a Job

Five Things You Must Do in Your Job Search

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1. Find out what jobs you would be passionate about.

Find out what skills you possess and like the most, and look for jobs that will use your skills.

2. Try out a few careers before deciding which one suits you best.

Put in some time exploring different careers especially if you are undecided, and see which ones better suit your personality.

3. Find out what organizations have the jobs that would suit you and your personality.

Think about all the different places you could possibly get hired and see if the options are what you are looking for.

4. Find out specific names of the businesses that fit your ideal job.

Do some research and searches online to find businesses that are in your area that have the qualifications and description of job position that you are looking for.

5. Do your research on the businesses you want to apply to before you reach out to them.

Make sure you know everything you can about the company before you decide to apply there. Be informed about the company ahead of time and apply because you feel it will be a good fit for you.

Bolles, Richard N. "Chapter 8 You Get to Choose Where You Work." What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. 2016 ed. Ten Speed, 2015. 191-209. Print. 

Some Inspiration to Get Certified in Google Analytics

Google Analytics Certification 

In 2013 top skills that got people hired included Digital and Online Marketing and Business Intelligence. Both of these skills include web analytics.

Being Google Analytics certified can help you become more knowledgeable and can also help the business you work for. You should include the certification on your resume and your LinkedIn profile.

Before you begin the test to get certified. You should prepare by looking at the qualification for Google Analytics at www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/learn/. 

Be sure to check out videos on YouTube about Google Analytics and the Analytics Academy. 

These sources will be extremely helpful to give you the knowledge you need to learn about analytics and pass the exam.

Being Google Analytics certified will truly help you out in the job market. You will have extra skills that are some of the top skills that got people hired just two years ago. These skills are becoming increasingly important in the business world and especially marketing.

Kelsey, Todd. "Chapter 8: Exploring Google Analytics Certification." Casa Marketing Intro to Google Analytics. RGB, 2015. 161-178. Print.

Image is a screenshot of my Google Partners Page.

Get a Better Idea of Who You Are

Understanding Yourself Makes It Easier to Find a Job

There are seven ways that prove that this works well.

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1. If you find out what you like you can learn to describe yourself in new ways, and you can find the skills that you have that will work for different job-markets.

2. When you look into who you are and what skills you have you can then give a detailed description of what you are looking for. This includes what type of job you want and what work setting you want to work in.

3. Once you have a detailed idea of what you want to do, you will be more enthusiastic and the job search won't seem like a job.

4. You won't have to wait till companies have job openings. You can approach them because you know you have the skills they want.

5. Among other job applicants for the same position, you will stand out because you can more accurately describe your skills.

6. After gaining a better understanding of yourself, you will be able to better see what career will fit you especially if you are considering a completely different career.

7. Being unemployed is an opportunity to take the free time you have to explore who you are and understand your skills better.

Bolles, Richard N. "Chapter 7 You Need to Understand More Fully Who You Are." What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. 2016 ed. Ten Speed, 2015. 111-114. Print. 

Learning Analytics Easily with Gumroad- a Free Tool

eCommerce Analytics with Gumroad

Gumroad is a free platform that allows you to easily link Google Analytics to an eCommerce site. It's important to be able to directly see the conversion tracking so that you can see how effective your ad was or how effective keywords you selected were.

This can all be very useful in a business where they are tracking conversions to see how they can increase traffic to their website and increase ROI.

When you use Gumroad, this tool can help you see how many visitors your site had and how many visitors actually purchased your product. When you use this tool, you can see how effective your campaign is and you can improve aspects of it over time.

Create a Free Gumroad Account

In order to use Gumroad, you will need to create a free account by going to gumroad.com. You'll create a name for your store, and choose a username that will then become part of the link.

Then you can connect Google Analytics.

You'll use the link for gumroad, and you'll need to create a new property in Google Analytics. Once you have that set up, you will paste the link to your gumroad account into Google Analytics.

Then select "Get Tracking ID" and copy the ID and paste it into Gumroad under Advanced Settings. Once all this is set up, you will ad your product.

Review the Analytics

In order to review analytics in Gumroad, you do need to have had some traffic and at least one purchase. But once you have this traffic, you can begin to track the analytics and get a conversion rate.

Kelsey, Todd. "Chapter 7: Fun with ECommerce Analytics - Gumroad." Casa Marketing Intro to Google Analytics. RGB, 2015. 133-160. Print.

Image is a screenshot of gumroad.com.

The Importance of Adwords

Adwords and eCommerce

Google Adwords is used to advertise sites and track the conversion of the site. This means that when you combine Adwords with an eCommerce site, you can track everything from how they saw your ad to the purchases consumers make.

This blog post assumes that you have previously created the Shopify account, and that you will be using that site and combining it with Adwords.

The first step is to create an Adwords account. You can easily do this by going to http://www.google.com/adwords.

Then go to Tools > Conversions and click on "Conversions". You will have to enter a conversion name. If you click "The value of the conversion may vary", you will be able to set different prices. Set the conversion category to Purchase/Sale. Be sure that the markup language is HTML.

You can choose if you want to make changes to the code or not. This code is basically instructions to connect Shopify and Adwords.

How to Connect Adwords to Shopify

In your Shopify account, go to settings and click "Checkout". Paste the code from Adwords into the spot where it says, "Additional content and scripts". 

Then Make an Adwords Campaign

This is how you will create an ad that you can track conversions for. 

The first step is to login to your Adwords account and click "Campaign". Then you'll want to select "Search Network" only and you'll name your campaign. You'll then be able to set a budget, and this can be as little or as much as you want. 

Once you complete those steps, enter your landing page. This is the page of your site that you would like people to go to after they click on your ad.

Copy the Shopify link into Adwords, and you can then come up with keywords that you think people will search that are relevant to your product that you are advertising.

Review Your Campaign

You'll want to check the time frame of your campaign to make sure there is an end date so you won't continuously be charged anytime anyone clicks on your ad.

You should now be able to track conversions from your Shopify account with Adwords in place.

Kelsey, Todd. "Chapter 6: Fun with ECommerce Analytics Part II: Adwords." Casa Marketing Intro to Google Analytics. RGB, 2015. 105-132. Print.

Pictures are screenshots of Google Adwords.