Reza Rad

By: Peter Harris There is no shortage of people who will advise you to be scrupulously honest on your resume and to always tell the truth to employers when you’re looking for a job. But the fact is, those same potential bosses are going to lie to you. Employers commonly tell you as many white lies as necessary to protect themselves or avoid awkwardness. Here are some of the falsehoods you’re almost certain to hear while on the job hunt. [See also: The five times you should lie to employers .] Six lies that employers will tell you: The salary for the position depends on experience (or is non-negotiable). While it is probably true that the hiring manager has been given a budget for a role – salaries are almost always negotiable. And leaving out regulations in unionized environments, salaries aren’t actually based on ‘experience.’ They’re based on how much the employer wants to hire you. If a company thinks that you will be a great asset to their team, and can bring in great value, t...

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1295271/mcdonalds-we-knew-couldnt-market-super-size-me?DCMP=EMC-CONMarketingSundaySupplement&bulletin=e9bd8721-2d63-418c-817a-414b7bf64079

http://creativity-online.com/work/cocacola-happy-beep/35617

by Douglas A. Wilson  The higher up you go in an organization, the harder it is to stay in touch with what’s really happening on the front lines.  And the bad news—if you hear it at all—is presented only in the best possible light.  How do you get the real truth about what’s happening out in the field?  How do you stay connected to all corners of your organization?  I have found that three simple questions, asked with the intent to learn, can help you stay in touch with reality and be a better leader: Get out of your office and ask, “How can I help you?” Doug Conant, while he was CEO of Campbell Soup Company, knew that if he was going to transform the company culture, he had to ask the simple question, “How can I help you?” He asked it continually of his employees, his suppliers, and his customers—and he demanded that each of his managers do the same too. Conant knew that as a leader he needed to show he cared about the employees’ and customers’ agendas if ...

By Bill Gates   on May 16, 2014 Bill Foege is one of my heroes. He’s a giant in the field of global health, having devised the strategy that led to the eradication of smallpox (among many other accomplishments). Melinda and I are very lucky that he has been an adviser to us since the early days of our health work. Bill is not only a great thinker and doer, he is also a great writer. He recently sent Melinda and me a fascinating note about his experience working to save children’s lives with vaccines and medicine in the 1980s and ’90s. The whole thing is too long to post here, but I want to share this excerpt with you. It’s the story of how a coalition came together to fight a debilitating disease called river blindness (or onchocerciasis), which is caused by a parasitic worm and was one of the leading causes of blindness in poor countries. The coalition set out to deliver a drug...

By: Osanda Cooray It is always a good idea to conduct a backlink audit if you suspect that you have been hit by an algorithmic penalty from Google, or you seem to be losing rankings and don’t know why. The data you obtain from a backlink analysis gives you a chance to take a closer look at the links you have and the strategies that have been employed. If you can identify by looking at your profile that a particular strategy is being used to manipulate search engines, there is no question Google is aware of that and will want to penalize you. I will walk you through on how to conduct a backlink profile analysis using backlink exports from Open Site Explorer, Link Detective, and the amazing power of Excel. In this case study, clifton.com's backlink profile was analyzed as Cliftons lost a considerable amount of its organic ranking according to Moz ranking reports. Also, in looking at SEO visibility report of Search Metrics, we noticed a significant drop of organic ranking. The d...

By: Jens Mortensen for The New York Times         In “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury described a futuristic radio that could be worn inside the ear. It would be “a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm nest,” he wrote, and the conduit for “an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk, coming in on the shore of [your] unsleeping mind.” That was more than 50 years ago, but it’s not a bad description of iPod headphones. In-ear listening devices had been around for at least a century. Starting in the early 1850s, doctors inserted the ivory tips of stethoscopes into each ear, and a few decades later, similar “ear tubes” were used to listen to recorded music. Thomas Edison attached stethoscopelike headphones to his phonograph machine, which played sound off wax cylinders. Some machines came with multiple sets of tubes, dangling like streamers on a jellyfish, so that several people could listen at once. Continue reading the...

By: Dave Fecak   Over the course of my career I have scheduled thousands of interviews with hundreds of hiring managers at a wide array of companies and organizations. I have learned that although no two managers look for the exact same set of skills or behaviors, there are recognizable patterns in the feedback I receive when a candidate is not presented with a job offer. Obviously, if you are unable to demonstrate the basic fundamental skills necessary to be successful in the job, anything else that happens during an interview is irrelevant. No amount of preparation or coaching on interview techniques can help if you simply are not qualified. Job seekers should find it helpful to know where others have stumbled in interviews, ...

By: Lauren Marinigh You may think it's a great idea for your business to jump on the Instagram bandwagon but aren't really sure what to be taking pictures of or what to be sharing? It's really dependent on what type of company and/or industry you're in. For some people it's easy to know what to post. If you're an event company, or a sports team it's pretty straight forward the things you can be posting that your followers will want to see, but these are some ideas to help get the wheels turning for your businesses Instagram profile. Show a behind the scenes look into your company. Showcase the things that not everyone gets to see about your company. Things that are happening in the office, cool stuff some of your staff members did, profile your current staff, showcase behind the scenes of events, conferences etc. People love feeling as if they're getting a secret look inside your company. Plus this really puts a face behind your brand. Showcase...

Now that you’ve determined that Twitter is right for your business, it’s time to learn some tweeting basics. Before we jump into mastering the 140-character message, we have to lay some groundwork. Determine Your “Twitter for Business” goals . Most businesses think Twitter is merely a tool to reach customers, but it has the potential to be so much more. Remember your suppliers, competitors, contractors and employees may all be on Twitter. This means you can use Twitter for: Customer service Finding new employees Communicating with current employees Searching out new contractors Promotions Some businesses have multiple Twitter accounts  to address all of these needs. Apple, for example has an account for Spanish users as well as English, another for news and yet another for ideas. Who will do your Tweeting?  Your tweeter should be able to capture your business in 140 characters, which means they need to understand your business well—from its values to its voice. As t...

By: Tom Walker “You can observe a lot just by watching.” – Yogi Berra Like the best catchers, successful entrepreneurs watch and learn from every play. There’s no better way to do this than to build a trusted team of advisors and then watch what they do and listen to what they say. What should an entrepreneur look for in an advisor? When we use the term advisor at TechColumbus, we are referring to individuals who have knowledge and experience relevant to the startup’s business. These individuals could be professors, scientists, researchers or technical experts. They could be entrepreneurs or leaders in companies that are possible strategic partners. They could also be industry consultants, angel investors or folks with regulatory experience. Often the most helpful advisors are potential customers who have the business problems that the startup is trying to solve. An entrepreneur will develop multiple advisory relationships over time. You don’t have to be friends with all your a...

By Guest Blogger Self-help websites will save money on customer support, but only if your site actually supports your customers. Tim Deluca-Smith, vice president of Marketing, WDS, A Xerox Company Increasingly, today’s customers are calling upon online self-service to access the information they need, quickly and conveniently. In the digital era, convenience is king. This is great news for consumer brands as self-service is only a fraction of the cost compared with other channels; in fact brands can shave 98 percent off the cost of a support interaction by enabling customers to self-serve and mitigate the need for them to call in. Despite its advantage, too often self-service fails to deliver on its full potential. What can appear to be a well-furnished website, packed with eye-catching,, media-rich content and tools, can often be little more than window dressing for a site that lacks the content required for effective self-service. Not only does this unnecessarily increase...

By: Laura Shin A year and a week ago, I began contributing to the Forbes personal finance channel. Today, my first book, an eBook published by Forbes , comes out. The topic is career and money secrets for success, which may seem like typical Forbes fodder, but for me writing a book on this topic signifies a personal redemption.   While I’m in a happy place today professionally and financially, I spent a long time from my mid-20s to my mid-30s in professional purgatory and had one disastrous affair with debt. That didn’t stop me from falling into debt a second time, but then, I became so panicked, I changed my money habits for good. It sounds like I should be the last person to relay personal finance advice to the public, but my experience with the risks of not paying attention to one’s money makes it easy for me to explain how to get on track to others. And that’s part of what motivates me—helping people who are in that same dark place I used to be in, and keeping others f...

by Ed Batista  Saying “goodbye” is one of those activities that seems so simple it hardly requires advance thought — and so endings creep up on us and catch us unprepared. We tend to default to our habitual responses whether or not they’ve been effective in the past. As a result we often miss opportunities to enjoy truly meaningful endings — instead they’re rushed and poorly planned — or we skip over them entirely, casting the old aside as we race toward the new. But at certain times of the year, such as the graduation season that’s about to begin, we’re compelled to give more thought than usual to endings. And in our work lives, we’re saying goodbye with increasing frequency as well, as more work is conducted in ad hoc teams that assemble for a single project and then dissolve. As an executive coach I’m constantly in the process of beginning and ending relationships. In my private practice I typically see clients for a period of months, rarely for longer than a year, and in my...

http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks  

Posted by: Ross Simmonds We’ve all seen the studies showing that nearly 70% of Fortune 100 CEOs have no social media presence whatsoever. LeadSift also know that for their businesses to survive and thrive in today’s market, it’s extremely important that their brands have a presence that is well maintained and used. LeadSift wanted to take a closer look at what the top brands were using to connect and share their messages across social media. In LeadSifts most recent study, they investigated some of the most socially active Fortune 100 companies to see what tools they used to communicate with their fans and followers online. LeadSifts findings quickly show that the majority of Fortune 100 brands are using very similar platforms as one another. LeadSift also found that a handful of Fortune 100 brands are using niche services that are created in house or simply a hidden gem that could be on cusp of disruption. The LeadSift research found that 36% of the Fortune 100 companies use Hootsu...

By Dan Rockwell Negative responses to a bad boss hurt you more than it hurts them. The person you consistently complain about brands you. If you let them, bad bosses control your: Speech. Attitude. Behavior. Contribution. Future. Do you really want to give your power to someone you don’t like? Against: Reacting-against makes you look vindictive. You keep talking about: What you don’t like. What you don’t want. What they do wrong. What you won’t do. Best self: I recently had a coaching session with a successful manager who has a lousy boss. Toward the end of our conversation I gave them this feedback. Your best self comes out when you talk about work, projects, and vision. But, when you talk about your bad boss, your worst self comes out. Which self do you want others to see? Solution: Solving a bad boss situation may result in you leaving your company. But, in the process, don’t let a b...

These days the sky speaks instead of small businesses all around the world. It seems corporate businesses in new strategy have chosen using small businesses to handle their own and who knows what the next step is. 

BY Paul B. Brown When you are searching for a great idea for a product or service, one that you can build a business around, it's natural to start with a blank piece of paper--or empty computer screen. Natural? Yes. A good idea? No. To increase your odds of success dramatically, begin by searching for places where you can solve a problem or improve an existing idea. It isn't as strange as it sounds. Because you are smart and creative , there is absolutely no doubt you could come up with endless ideas for new products or services before the sun sets. There would be that zero gravity theme park, make-your-own donut shops, and that portable computer that comes with a built-in printer. Creativity is wonderful. And imagination even better. But if they are not linked to making money--or making the world a better place, if what you want to do is create a nonprofit--then they aren't particularly helpful. They are just thoughts you have to help pass the time. Creativity ...