Tone/Voice:

• If writing for Beacon Resources or DLC, refer to the brand voice guidelines for tone and voice.
• If content is for a different client, refer to the website to get a feel for the proper tone and voice.

Keywords:

• If keywords are given, use each once.

Format:

• List the company URL at the top of the article
• Use H1 for the title
  • If possible, use a title that clearly represents the content but is intriguing to readers at the same time.
• ALWAYS include H2s
• Use lists and/or bullet points within the article.
• Include a few hyperlinks to reputable sources with additional info, statistics, etc. These pieces are all about credibility!

• Save as “company name – title.”
  • For example, “Beacon Resources – Pros and Cons of Installing Hardwood”
  • Do not include special characters in the file name.
• Put LA SEO – Specialty Blog in the email subject line and send to [email protected].
• Enter the file name on the spreadsheet in Column M, exactly as it was saved.

2017 Staffing Trends: What to Expect

Recruiters and staffing agencies have seen significant changes in recent years and there are new trends in 2017. With a rise in temporary jobs, automation, and diversity hiring, it’s important to anticipate the effects on the labor market. Here is a quick guide to hiring and recruitment trends.

Growth in Temp Jobs

There is a steady demand for temporary jobs and it’s likely to remain just as strong. Both employers and employees value flexibility and it shows in the fact that 51 percent of employers are planning to hire more temporary and contract workers this year, according to an annual job forecast released by CareerBuilder. As the demand for temporary positions continues to grow, recruiters are preparing to capitalize on this and attract more candidates who desire flexible entry-level jobs.

Recruiting Automation

As the roles of technology, analytics, and algorithms continue to expand, big data is going to be crucial to the future of staffing. Applicant tracking systems and readily available data on the Internet allow recruiters to gain helpful information about potential candidates. Data-driven staffing helps recruiters save effort and time in attracting and screening candidates.

Analytics and algorithms help highlight the best candidates with desirable qualities, skillsets, and personality assessments. While human relationships will always remain important in the recruitment process, automation helps streamline the process and minimize bias.

Diversity Hiring

More employers and HR professionals are poised to prioritize diversity in hiring practices. This will continue to impact recruiting strategies. More effort is being put into diversity-based strategies due to the value of fresh ideas, mutual development of cross-cultural awareness, and high productivity. Anonymous hiring is one way that companies are hiring for diversity.

As the demand for a diverse workforce and temporary jobs continues to grow and the role of automation increases, 2017 is going to be yet another transformational year for staffing.

8 Critical Ways To Improve Your Resume

Writing a powerful resumé has never been easy. But in today’s online, mobile and tech-driven employment landscape, it’s especially challenging. That’s why it’s critical to learn how to optimize your resumé for electronic scanning systems and human readers if you want to get hired in 2016.

Fortunately, a new book I just read — Modernize Your Resumé: Get Noticed…Get Hired — by master resumé writers Wendy Enelow and Louise Kursmark, helps take the mystery out of the process. It features strategies to update your resume’s content, format and design and includes more than 80 samples from some of the world’s leading resumé writers.

Here are eight tips, paraphrased from the book, to make sure your resumé stands out in 2016:

1. Write to the future, not the past. A resumé is a marketing document, not a historical record. Your current career goals should always determine which parts of your story to highlight and which to minimize.

The key is to give heavier emphasis to the credentials, experiences and accomplishments that relate to your objective and less to things that don’t. Older job seekers can briefly summarize their earliest work experiences without dates (if you choose this approach, omit your college graduation date). If you hope to make a career shift back to something you did years ago, note that prior experience prominently in a “Related Experience” section that comes before other Professional Experience.

Bottom line: Put the focus where it belongs.

2. Integrate critical keywords. Nearly every company and recruiter uses keywords to identify qualified candidates. If you don’t use the right ones, your resumé will be overlooked by the electronic applicant tracking systems — even if you’re the ideal candidate.

To help identify your most critical and up-to-date keywords, consult online job postings, the jobs and “About Us” areas of company websites, LinkedIn Group conversations and social media sources.

To make your “wow” pop off the page, the authors say, position one “big wow” at the top, either above or below the headline that boldly states who you are (“Award-Winning International Sales Manager” or “Trilingual Digital Marketing Executive”).

Also, lead with a powerful “wow statement” when explaining your past jobs. For example, “Increased web traffic by 350% and doubled ad revenue over prior year.” Then, provide a brief write-up of your other responsibilities.

You should also list “wow content” under a separate category, such as an “Honors and Awards” or “Media Mentions” subhead.

To help hone in on your “wow” factor, ask yourself the following questions and then make sure the answers appear in your resumé:

• When have I been first or best?
• What is the No. 1 thing I achieved in each position?
• Which of my achievements have the most impressive numbers?
• What have I been publicly recognized for?

4. Ditch the Objective (and replace it with a Summary). “When you include an Objective, you’re telling employers what you want from them and, frankly, they don’t care,” write Enelow and Kursmark. That’s why the Summary section — a short professional synopsis that highlights your years of experience, job history and major achievements — has largely replaced the Objective in modern resumés.

The one time when an Objective might still be in order, they say, is when your Objective might not be clear from your work experience. In that case, use a clean and clear Objective to clarify things (for example, Objective: Early Childhood Program Coordinator).

5. Write “lean and mean.” Every word must count in a modern resumé. Here are a few tricks to, as the authors say, “leave the muscle, lose the fat:”

Quantify your achievements. Numbers provide a measurable indicator of your performance, so when possible, use figures, dollars and percentages to add credibility to your resumé. Just don’t overdo it: mix numbers and narrative to create a compelling read.

Add context to help employers better understand the magnitude of your accomplishments. So instead of “Increased revenue by 56%,” say: “Increased revenue by 56%, triple the company average.”

Start every paragraph or bullet point with a strong action verb. Not sure which words pack the greatest punch? Here’s a list of 429 action verbs to choose from.

Eliminate filler words and phrases. Terms like “responsible for” or “duties include” don’t say anything and dilute the power of your resumé. Others, like “references upon request,” state the obvious. When possible, ditch little words like “a” “an” and ”the” to make sentences tighter and shorter.

6. Make your contact information pop so busy hiring managers can reach you easily. Include live links to your email address, professional blog and/or relevant social media accounts. Include just one phone number (preferably a cell phone) and one email address. Eliminate your full mailing address — just your city, state, and ZIP code will suffice.

7. Improve your resumé’s skimmability. We all skim more than we read, so to reward that reading style: Write short paragraphs of three or four lines at most. (If you have more to say, create a paragraph plus a bullet list.) Also, add white space between paragraphs to provide “breathing room” and use headings and subheads to segment and introduce information.

8. Punch up the design (cautiously). Color, shading, boxes, charts, tables, images and icons can be valuable additions to your resumé, helping to make it stand out. Just make sure your design matches industry norms for your field — a graphic designer can comfortably display more creativity than an accountant. To see samples of creative resume designs, click here.

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how to diamond stack; diamond band ring; diamond stackable rings

How to Stack Delicate Diamond Rings

Wearing rings is an easy way to express your personal style and taste in precious metals and stones. Despite the freedom of expression, you still may wonder how to pull off certain fashions, such as stacking diamond rings. The rules for how to diamond stack are somewhat different than those for everyday rings. Keep these questions in mind as you create a classy, customized look.

What Are the Purpose and Meaning of Your Rings?

Engagements and weddings aren’t the only occasions for diamond rings. Birthdays, anniversaries, and baby births are other events appropriate for diamonds. What your rings symbolize can determine how many you wear at once, on which fingers, and in what order. Also, consider if you’ll ever want to wear just one or two rings when practical, as it can affect your style choice.

What Is the Overall Look You Want to Create?

You don’t have to follow a traditional or consistent pattern when it comes to diamond stackable rings. In fact, when they are more personalized, they become more meaningful. Consider the following ideas:

• Mixing metals
• Layering wide and narrow bands
• Including various diamond shapes, cuts, and sizes
• Combining different colors, textures, and finishes
• Selecting complementary embellishments
• Choosing a significant theme

If you aren’t the mix-and-match type, then go for a streamlined, timeless arrangement. A happy medium between the two is getting nesting rings that make a complete design when worn together.

How Do You Want to Wear the Rings?

Not all the rings have to be on one finger. You can wear just your engagement or wedding band on your left hand and other milestone rings on your right. You can wear relationship rings on one finger and motherhood rings on another. You can begin with just one diamond band ring and add another every few years so the number and look always change. The options for how to diamond stack are as limited as your imagination.

How to Close More Deals When You’re Not the Cheapest Option

In today’s increasingly competitive business world, employees at companies large and small are expected to do more with less. You’ve probably heard all the budget-related buzzwords when trying to close a sale—more affordable alternative, cost savings, expense reduction, supplier shortlist.

The logical assumption is that the only way to increase sales in an economic environment like this is to discount your product. This isn’t necessarily true, however. The clothing retailer Gap Inc. and some of its struggling subsidiaries recently resorted to deep discounts to lure customers inside stores and move inventory. This hasn’t improved sales as intended; rather, it has had the opposite effect on customers. There is no point in paying full price when a customer knows it will soon be reduced.

Similarly, there is no point in paying more for an inferior product or service. There is a psychology to sales that delves much deeper than price points. This is good news for insurance agents, as policy prices are typically set by carriers and can’t be discounted anyway. The question then becomes: Why should a customer purchase a policy from you rather than your competitor?

Sell Time and Service, Not Products

Doing more with less doesn’t just refer to money. It also extends to the most valuable resource of all: time. A Harvard Business Review article sites examples of time- and service-centered strategies, including some of the sales people at Xerox who offer clients the ability save time by managing document flow better instead of simply pitching a product. Here’s how to implement the same type of strategy in the insurance industry.

1.      Get to know your customers.

When selling specialized insurance products, your target market is already established. You can narrow a broad market down to a smaller, more successful segment, however, by getting to know your customers on a personal level. Learn their processes and what things are most important to them. Weed out the bargain hunters and focus on the value seekers. You’ll get a better return on your own time investment this by doing this, and save valuable marketing dollars too.

2.      Identify problems and present solutions.

Once you have a pinpointed prospective customers and learned more about their internal processes, identify problems and offer long-term solutions. In a small real estate agency, for example, where the broker is managing a sales team, paying the bills, and completing all of the other day-to-day operations, it could be easy to forget when to renew the companies E&O policy. By offering policy reminder emails and/or automatic renewal options, your service saves the broker time and prevents accidental policy lapses that could cost a significant amount of money in fines down the road. Offering an annual coverage review also saves the broker the hassle of doing this himself, and gives him confidence that he will always have the right amount of coverage.

3.      Conduct a time-cost analysis and expand offerings.

When selling time and service, it is important to have concrete facts and figures. Don’t directly compare policy prices with a competitor. Instead, show the benefits of working with you. In a large corporation where all expenditures must be authorized through a purchasing department, include the decision makers in the process as soon as possible and present them with the time-cost analysis. A lead purchaser who has been told by the CFO to only approve the lowest price vendor, for instance, will be much more likely to make an exception if you have documentation showing how much time and money the company will save in potential worker’s compensation lawsuits with your expertise and product knowledge at work for them. Leverage your strengths and customers are willing to pay more for your policy, and possibly even invest in other products.

A simple experiment conducted by Stanford Graduate School of Business professors showed that twice as many people were willing to pay more for a glass of lemonade at a child-operated stand when the sign read “Spend a little time and enjoy C & D’s lemonade” instead of  “Spend a little money and enjoy C & D’s lemonade,” or  a neutral sign that simply read “Enjoy C & D’s lemonade.” The bottom line is that time offers a valuable personal connection with your customers that money does not.

Close With Confidence

When you approach sales using time- and service-centered strategies, customers focus on the benefits of working with you rather than the cost of your product. Evaluate your own sales process, looking for ways to emphasize your customer service. What personal touches do you offer that benefit your customers?

• Do you offer concierge services?
• Does your agency have a 24/7 claims hotline?
• Are there customer testimonials on your website?

Value-added services such as these are a very powerful sales tools that build trust and earn customers for life. Your customers get a better return on their investment, and so do you.