Employers check references because they need a second opinion on their potential hire. Everyone should have references. But how do you get a great references that will outshine the others? Here is a simple 10 Step tutorial to get consistent and presentable references from your previous colleagues.

1. Find a suitable referee. They are generally people whom have work with you in a professional capacity. Examples can include direct manager, peers or clients.
2. Arrange for a meeting or phone conversation with your referee. Review questions that may be asked
3. Tell your referee about the kind of job you are seeking. Ask if he is comfortable recommending you for such a position. Give hi a copy of your resume, clarify your accomplishments and answer questions he may have
4. Suggest to our referee that you would appreciate strong recommendations in the key areas and traits mentioned above
5. Ask the referee what he thinks about your weaknesses or developmental areas, for example:” May I ask you what you think my developmental needs are, so that you and I are consistent?”
6. With former bosses, clarify reasons for leaving. Tell them what you are saying and ask if they are comfortable saying that as wel. You are not asking your referee to lie. You merely need a congruent story as reasons for leaving may be vague at times
7. Write a summary so your referee can refer to it. The summary should consist of key points raised during your conversation and the traits and strengths, developmental needs and reasons for leaving
8. Tell your referee who will be getting in touch with him so he is not surpired when the call comes. Even better, schedule the call yourself if possible
9. Gain your referee’s commitment to call you if anyone contacts him
10. Keep your referee posted on your job search.

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10 Ways to Improve your Marketing Presentation

A market plan usually has the following components below
1. Value Proposition
2. Market Size
3. Environmental Analysis
4. Differentiation matrix
5. Growth Path
6. Product Positioning
7. SWOT Analysis
8. Expansion Plan
9. Revenue Model
10. Phased Development

Marketing presentations are meant to impress. Here I am going to show you how to translate boring text describing the above into colorful eye catching graphics using new inbuilt features of PowerPoint 2007 has. They are called smart art and they are every easy to use. You can also find the smart art feature in Word 2007 which means you can use the skill you learn today over there too. To insert a smart art, Click on insert, then smart art (It looks like a green arrow)

1. Value Proposition- The Benefits of your product

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Cycle->Radial Cycle

The Product at the center and the benefits of your product are the surrounding circles. The audience gets an instant feel of what benefits your product brings. You can also replace the words with pictures if you have professional created art. Do note that transparent gifs are better if you intend to insert pictures. Pictures with white background ruins the smart art color.

2. Market Size & Segment

Where to find this: This is NOT a smart art. Instead it is a 3D pie chart. Click on Insert->Chart->Pie Chart.

You can choose either the 2^nd or 5^th pie chart for this effect. Clicking on chart will open MS Excel. You have to edit the data of the chart from Excel. Also remember to change the headings so that word also gets your new headings.

Pie charts are simple to understand and usually used to show market segments in part of a larger market.

3. Environmental Analysis- The Trends

Environmental Analysis shows the background of why the time and place is right for your product.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Hierarchy->Table Hierarchy

The tops shows the heading “Environment”. The second level shows the areas that make up the environment. The third layer shows what trends are happening in that environment. If you like animations during your presentation, you can use the show 1 level at 1 time option. This slowly shows 1 box at a time giving your audience time to read and digest your information.

4. Differentiation matrix

Differentiation matrix is used to set your product away from competing products based on feature set.

Where to find this Table(After clicking on Insert, click Table)

This is just a simple Table. But PPT 2007 has made it easy to make the rows and columns banded. To do this,

a. your table

b. Click on Design under Table tools

There will be a list of checkboxes (Header Row, First Column Etc). Check those that apply to your current table. Meaning if your first row is different from the rest(i.e. it is a row where Titles are in) check that box. Every time you check a box, PPT will make that row/column look different.

Also change the color of the column that your product is in. This will visually enhance and set apart your product from that of your competitors. I like to increase the font of my column too.

5. Growth Path

There are 2 components in this slide.

The first is the heading “12.7% market share…”

a. To do this, click on Insert, WordArt.

b. Choose a nice looking font you like

c. Type the words you want.

The second is the Growth Curve

a. Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Upward Arrow

b. For each phase, type in the text title.

The upward arrow should inspire confidence in the growth of your market while the eye catching word art will highlight the size of your market.

6. Product Positioning

Product Positioning usually is used to show that your product is occupying a position that is superior to your competitors.

Where to find this Smart Art (After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Matrix->Grid Matrix

Enter the Text you want. Usually your product should be on the top right hand corner. Right-Click on the rectangle that is there and select “Change Shape”. Choose a star as it is eye catching and delivers an impression.

7. SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis should show the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats of your organization.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Matrix->Basic Matrix

Enter the text you want. This Slide should be pretty texty as it is basically a descriptive slide. I haven’t really thought of a way to make it easy to understand without reading.

You might want to manually change the colour layout(i.e: Threats = Red, Strength= Green)

8. Expansion Plan

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Gear

Basically, you can enter text or you can paste a picture of the country flag you are entering into.

I chose gears as it is symbolic of a movement to greater things and having more effects. The upward arrow chosen in Growth Path will do too, but I will try to avoid using the same Smart Art in one Document.

9. Revenue Model-Revenue Model shows how money is coming into and going out of our organization.

Where to find this Smart Art(After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Relationship->Converging Radial

Simple, Just add in text. You can adjust the size of the arrow to match the proportion of the money flow. I had some trouble with this smart art though. The arrows do not behave well. You need to flip the arrow around manually as it is meant to all point in ward.

10. Phased Development

Where to find this Smart Art (After clicking on Insert Smart Art): Process->Chervon List

This slide shows what steps you are taking in each phase. In my case, it is the promotion methods we are using in each phase. It is like a very pretty Gantt chart.

This one is pretty complicated, but here goes.

a. Once you have inserted the Smart Art, enter a space in all Level 2 Text

b.Level 1 Text corresponds to the first column text.

c.Level 1’s 2^nd level text is the top row text.

d. Fill in the top row (Phase1, Phase2, etc) and the first column(magazine, TV etc) with the appropriate titles.

e. Create as many rows as you want. For every row that you create, also create an equal number of columns.

f. Now click on the column you would like to be on. Click on Smart Art Tools->Format. (Smart Art Tools is at Top Row of PPT)

g. Change the look of the chevron by choosing a colored template.

h. You can select multiple chevrons by holding down shift and clicking on all the chevrons you want. After selecting all the chevrons you want, you can then choose a color and all of the selected chevrons will share the same new color.

Ending note

After you finish your PowerPoint slide, choose a theme that you like. Use Themes to make everything consistent. Most of the smart art will change color. If you do not like these colors, you can click on the color tab under design. The colors are color coded for you so you do not end up with conflicting colors that are horrible to look at.

You will also notice that your smart art do not look as nice as they are not 3D and have no gloss over them. It is actually every simple to enhance them. Select your Smart art (your diagram), click on Design(it should be on the right hand side of the highest bar of PowerPoint). Now you should see an array of 3D perspectives and gloss you can choose from. Click on one and your diagram will instantly get a facelift.

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Copyright : TodaysTen.com

1. Researchers found that the majority of the subjects they studied were not able to identify anything they had done recently to try to increase their happiness or life satisfaction.

Happiness can be increased by planning to be happy. Have you identified what makes you happy? This list helps you do so!

2. Researchers who studied peoples level of interest in and attention to strangers found that people who were sad spent 35 percent more time focusing on strangers who looked unhappy than on strangers who looked happy.

If you are unhappy, you tend to notice people who are unhappy too. Looking at happy people might you feel happier.

3. People become about 1 percent more likely to hold a positive image of their bodies with each year of age after forty.

As you get older, you grow more confident or more accepting of your less than perfect body. Thus removing a major source of unhappiness. It also help that your friends are going through the same phase and physical appearance becomes less of a competition point.

4. Those who strongly identified with their current age became 2 percent less satisfied with their lives with every passing year, while those who infrequently thought in terms of their age showed no such negative trend.

Caring less about age brings more happiness?

5. Those over fifty who showed a high degree of resistance to change were 26 percent less likely to feel optimistic about their futures.

You need to get a change in direction if you are to feel that your life is going somewhere.

6. People in their sixties and beyond who had a long-term plan to accomplish something were 31 percent more likely to report that they enjoyed their lives.

With goal setting, you get a sense of satisfaction and a feeling that you are actually using your life effectively as there is a benchmark of your progress.

7. Those who considered themselves a success were 25 percent less likely to feel anxious about their lives, 14 percent less likely to be selfish, and 45 percent more likely to say they enjoyed their lives.

Everyone’s definition of success is different. What is yours?

8. Recent retirees were 15 percent more likely to be happy than those of a similar age who continued working full-time, but within six months retirees happiness fell behind that of those of a similar age who were working if the retirees did not have an active lifestyle.

Again, everyone needs something to do to feel their self worth. Without work, how do you ascertain your self work? Volunteering or part time jobs certainly help. Having an active online lifestyle do help too.

9. Those who said they regularly took notice of something beautiful were 12 percent more likely to say they were satisfied with their lives.

I really like this one. Why not start today. Change your desktop wallpaper to something is looks beautiful. Scenery usually helps.

10. Studies have shown that each additional enjoyable activity that people over fifty engage in per month increases their likelihood of life satisfaction by 2 percent.

Active body=active mind= happiness. Its that simple. Happiness comes through action.

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Copyright : TodaysTen.com

As a Manager, we have the responsibility to manage emotions in the workplace. Anger at the workplace can cause unpleasant and uncomfortable emotions to many. Here we present the Top Ten causes of anger in the workplace. Anger in the workplace is quite common and research by Bensimon showed that most employees were annoyed at least 10 times daily. The frequency of the causes may vary according to your position in your organization. The results were from a survey from Monster(A online recruitment agency) and various journal papers. The list will help you avoid commonly made mistakes in organization.

1. Bad Management
->a. Employee was told to do something he felt was wrong or incorrect.
->b. Continuously changing expectations
->c. Supervisor was a micromanager and criticized employee frequently.
->d. Employee felt better qualified and skilled than his supervisor.

2. Unjust Treatment
->a. Another employee doing the same job made more money.
->b. Lack of punishment for other non-performing employees

3. Lack of career opportunity
->a. Employee was promised a raise, promotion or important project, and it did not happen.

4. Not being appreciated
->a. Managers whom do not have rewards systems for good work results

5. Excess Workload
->a. Employee could not live up to a supervisor’s expectations, because the expectations were too high

6. Computer Irritations
->a. Slow, Inefficient Computer Systems
->b. Lack of Training

7. Dishonest Colleagues
->a. Office Politics that play a large part in propagating the unjust treatment felt by employees

8. Incompetence of subordinates
->a. Bosses are often angered by subordinates who are unable to fulfill the bosses’s work expectations.

9. Interpersonal Incivility
->a. Rude colleagues whom are rude and lack interpersonal skills

10. Asserting Power
->a. Managers use anger to asset control over subordinates

Stay tune for our next issue anger management techniques that can be used on yourself and others.

Copyright : TodaysTen.com