How to Ask for Work Without Looking Desperate

from FreelanceSwitch - The Freelance Blog by FreelanceSwitch.com

A recent thread on a forum I follow centered on how to ask for referrals to new clients. Some posters mentioned that they are reluctant to ask their existing clients for referrals because they don't want their clients to know if they're struggling. And they don't want to ask other freelancers, because they don't want their competition to think they're weak. I admit that I sometimes grapple with these concerns, but existing clients and fellow freelancers can be great resources for referrals.

Here's how to make the ask without making yourself look desperate:

Choose the right time and place.

Several months ago I attended a potluck dinner where one of the other guests mentioned that she designs and sells jewelry. Before I knew it, she'd poured hundreds of little beaded necklaces on the living room floor and asked if anyone was interested in buying. From one creative to another, my heart went out to her, but I didn't come to the dinner to buy jewelry. Several of the other guests felt uncomfortable with her unexpected sales pitch, and she didn't sell anything that night. Perhaps if we'd seen her jewelry on Etsy or gone to a craft fair, things might have worked out differently. Instead of cornering someone at a social gathering and giving them the hard sell, ask for their card and follow-up in a more appropriate time and place.

Be proactive.

Don't just tap into your network when you need new clients. If you see an ad for a fashion blogger and think it might interest one of your freelance pals, send her an email. If you hear that a client you've worked with just got engaged, drop her a line to congratulate her. If you read an interesting article about social media trends, forward it to your friend the web consultant with a short note. No need to mention your needs or availability in every correspondence. Make this about them. You can ask for favors later once you've built some goodwill. In fact, sometimes just reaching out will result in unsolicited leads.

Don't settle.

If you're really hurting for work, you might be tempted to make broad, sweeping statements like, "I'll do anything! I can code or write or even water your plants." Resist this urge. I sometimes update my LinkedIn status to things like "researching socially conscious marketing companies" or "on the lookout for women-owned businesses that need a freelance copywriter." Isn't that simply broadcasting desperation? One forum member asked me. I don't think so, because I'm not begging for any old copywriting project. I'm looking for something specific, and if that resonates with someone in my network, great. If not, no harm done. I also mix up my status with updates on new projects or travel plans, so people in my network know I'm not constantly looking for work.

Give them an out.

You don't want to bog down your request with too many phrases like "hope this isn't too much to ask" or "I know you're really busy," but remember that no one is obligated to help you. They might choose to help you out, but don't make it awkward for a colleague or client if they dodge your request. Maybe they are really busy or can't think of any colleagues who need your services.

Show some gratitude.

Whenever someone offers a lead, even if it doesn't pan out, be sure to thank them. I appreciate creative thank you's when I do a favor for another freelancer, and I'm sure clients appreciate it, too. For instance, one writer sent me a jpeg of a cake as a sign of her gratitude when I helped her break into a new market, another sent an ecard. In addition to thanking the other person, you might offer to return the favor. A willingness to reciprocate ensures that others will want to help you grow your business now and in the future.

8 Tools to Find Someone Online

 

by Thursday Bram via [lifehacker.com]

Finding a way to contact someone has gotten a lot easier: just type their name into Google and follow a few links. For many people, you'll quickly find a profile on Facebook, a blog or even an email address you can use to get in touch. But a Google search doesn't turn up good results for everyone. Maybe the person you're trying to reach has a fairly common name. You may need a tool a little better than a simple Google search to find him.

1. 123people

123people provides a good start when you're looking for someone online. You can type in just a first name and a last name and get pictures, phone numbers, email addresses, Amazon wishlists, websites, documents and more. It turns up a lot of search results for relatively common names — or names that refer to someone famous in addition to the person you're looking for. The only drawback to so much information is that it can take a little while to search through it all and find the specific person you're searching for.

2. Pipl

Pipl is a free search tool, although it brings in results from several other sites which do charge for access to particular records. Between those various sources, Pipl turns up a good number addresses and phone numbers, along with links to public records, online mentions and other useful pieces of information. Particularly helpful is Pipl's ability to search withing a specific city, state or zip code. If you know the geographic location of the person in question, you'll be able to narrow down search results to that area.

3. YoName

If you're confident the person you want to find has a profile on some social networking site, a good search tool is YoName. The site searches across a whole list of different social networking sites, from big names like MySpace to less common options like Webshots. The results can take a little time to look through, but the process is made easier by the fact that they're laid out in a table — you can browse through it quickly.

4. Zoom Info

Zoom Info is particularly useful if you're looking to connect with someone at their job. Search results include job titles and employers, along with locations. The site offers a 'contact this person' button, but requires you to sign up for a free trial in order to use it. After the free trial, using that button and some of the site's other features cost $99 per month. If you're willing to do a little more legwork by calling up the company listed and seeing if you can ask for a direct number or email address, you can generally skip paying that fee.

5. Jobster

Jobster's main focus is searching for jobs, but it also offers a tool to search for individuals. In most cases, it's used for employers and recruiters looking for leads — but it can offer up some contact information that can help your search. A few other job sites offer a similar opportunity, as well.

6. Inmate Search

Unfortunately, you may find yourself in need of Inmate Search — while the site isn't pretty, it includes a list of contact information for each state's system for finding inmates, as well as the federal system. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of options for searching all states at once, but if you know the state the person you're looking for might be incarcerated in, you can speed up the search process.

7. Intelius

To access most of the information available through Intelius, you'll be asked to pay a fee. The site offers everything from phone numbers to complete background checks and actually can have useful information. I have purchased information from Intelius in the past and it did lead me to exactly the person I was looking for. However, I know the price tag (often starting around $40) can be off-putting, especially if you're only casually searching or if you need to find information on a long list of people.

8. Zaba Search

I know many people who swear by Zaba Search when it comes to searching public records for free. I've had minimal luck on it myself, but if you're having some difficulty, it may be worth a try. The reverse phone look on Zaba Search is particularly problematic — the site actually uses Intelius to look up phone numbers, which charges for the information.

Other Options

There are more than a few other options for searching for people out there. These eight are just options I've actually used in the past. There are also a lot of specialized search tools, like if you're trying to find a person's criminal record or you want to look for someone who works for the US government. You can also check social networking sites individually — most search tools that cover social media focus on larger sites, and ignore the smaller ones, along with forums and message boards. Unfortunately, there's still not a particularly good tool for searching such sites — even if you're willing to pay. You're left with essentially searching those sites by hand.

The drawback to the options listed above is that they all primarily focus on the U.S. I've had little luck finding resources for international searches. If you have any suggestions, please share them in the comments.

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Thursday Bram blogs about a variety of topics, from personal finance to small business. She is the author of an upcoming book on the tools and tricks you need to build a career you can take with you during long-term travel. More information about Thursday and her book, Working Your Way Around the World, is available on her personal site, ThursdayBram.com.

How to Tie a Tie

Picture via the artofmanliness.com

Nothing says, I am serious about getting this job than a suit and tie. We've posted articles about getting a suit and getting it tailored. To top off a good suit you need to learn how to tie a tie. Every Man needs to know how to tie a tie. Once you master one or two, take a look at a few others. I prefer solid colored ties and solid suits.

It is not unusual to see me in a black suit with a white shirt and silver tie. ala Steve Carell...

For you long waisted guys (like me), I suggest that you consider the half-windsor knot. Otherwise, you will be searching for extra long ties.

How to ace a telephone interview

by Marci Alboher, Working the New Economy, on Wed May 27, 2009 8:14am PDT

When employers want to narrow a pool of candidates, they frequently use telephone interviews to decide whom to bring in for in-person interviews. Telephone interviews are also becoming more popular as employers continue to tighten their belts. And while phone interviews are a cheap and efficient way to vet a candidate, they can also feel overly casual and detached. So if you know you are going to have one, it's important to give it some thought and not let the medium trip you up.
Here are some tips for making the best impression during a telephone interview:

Be prepared. Since a telephone interview is usually a test to see if you will make it to the next round, be as prepared for a phone interview as you would for one in person. That means, do all your research about the company or organization as well as the people you'll be speaking with during the call. And of course, work on your pitch for why you're the best candidate for the job.

Dress up. Really. There's lots of evidence showing that how we dress affects how we work. So, if you're home and tempted to do the call in your pajamas, take it up a notch.

Find a quiet and private place for the call. Control the environment where you take the call as much as possible. If you're at home, think about crying babies and construction noise. I work at home with my dog, a French bulldog who snores loudly. When I know I have an important call, I always put him in another room or send him to work with my partner that day.

Do not do anything else while on the call. Telephone interviews are not an ideal time to show off yourmultitasking abilities. Close all the windows on your computer, unless there is something on your computer you want to reference -- like your LinkedIn profile or the web site of the organization you're interviewing with. Close your email. And definitely don't eat, drink, chew gum or do anything else that would hamper your speech or create a distraction.

Control the technology. The more advanced we get with telephone technology, the more we seem to hamper the quality of our connections. Avoid using a cell phone since calls can get dropped. Disable call-waiting if you have that service.

Keep notes and documents handy. One advantage to a telephone interview is that you can have any papers you want to look at nearby. Also, have a pen and paper handy to take notes.

Practice. Have a friend call you and see how you sound. Ask whether you sound better standing or sitting. I've taken some classes on public speaking and learned that I sound much more relaxed when standing, or even pacing. So that's what I do when I take an important call.

Find out who will be in the call. If possible, get the names in advance of who will be on the call and know what roles they play. If there are multiple people on the call and you think you might not be able to distinguish their voices, ask them to identify themselves the first few times they speak.

Don't worry about brief silences. In fact, it's better to take a moment to digest the question than jump in and answer before you've thought about what you want to say. Plus, people pay attention to those who know how to listen.

I recently spoke about these issues on television with Asa Aarons from the television station NY1. If you want to see me putting some of these tips into practice (or more accurately, practicing putting some of these into practice), watch the clip.

Use Twitter to Find a Job

How do you find job postings on Twitter. It is pretty easy, the key is hashtags (#). Here is an article briefly outlining the use of Hashtags on Twitter. Basically they create "groupings" on twitter without changing the service. Think of it like visible meta_tags. Curious Apricot has written a nice beginning tutorial on hashtags here.

Just enter #jobs into Twitter search and review the results.

Using the twitter gadget for gmail I created the results below. I use hashtags like search criteria adding a subtracting key words in the search. Give it a try and see what you can find. Let me know your results.

Cook For Good Plans Meals for Less than Two Dollars

from Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy

Cook For Good ostensibly wants to help you use less energy and create less waste in planning your meals. The notable side effect, though, is a meal plan that averages a cost of $1.20 per person, per meal.

That per-meal cost, averaged out across each week, is under the standard version of the "spring menu," which utilizes more fresh produce and seasonal ingredients. Go the "green" route, buying local and organic food, and your cart cost comes to about $1.99 per meal; switch back to the "winter menu," and it gets cheaper. All those prices are, as the site's creator points out, less than the individual food stamp allowance in many states.

The menu, devised by a former IBM engineer, is largely vegetarian, though it contains some surprisingly cheap but appealing items: spring onion and mustard green pizza, green egg scrambles, and noodles in spicy peanut sauce, as examples. Some menu days won't really surprise anyone who's made it through college on the cheap, as it leans on beans, peas, and rice fairly regularly. But the day-by-day planning is so comprehensive, and the options so thorough, that those looking to eat healthier, cheaper, or start out on a flexitarian diet will find Cook for Good's offerings a pretty great free resource.

Head over to the site to check out the winter, spring, and supplemental menus, as well as read more about the project. Update: Looks like Cook For Good's a little overwhelmed this morning; check back later for a better chance at access.

Cook for Good [via Serious Eats]

Gadget Etiquette

May 27th, 2009 written by Elizabeth Harrin for PM4Girls.elizabeth-harrin.com

This month in the Office Goddess series, I want to look at using your gadgets at work.

You love your laptop, right?  It goes where you go and it's oh so handy for meetings.  Well, personally I'm a pen and paper girl but if it's really important and will make things easier I will tote around my laptop and use it in meetings.

Not using it for every meeting makes me acutely aware of some of the bad habits people adopt when they use their gadgets around other people.  Remember, being an office goddess is all about making it look easy, seamless, effortless.  So don't get side-swiped by gadgets: follow these tips for office gadget etiquette.

Laptops

• If you are going to use a laptop in a meeting, set it up beforehand.  Don't waste meeting time (and everyone else's time) while you try to work out how to connect it up and then realise you have left the mains cable at your desk and you only have 16 minutes of battery power left anyway.
• Know how it works.  Sort out your 3G/wifi in advance.  Get the passwords, know how to route round your proxy server when you are out of the office.
• If you are using your laptop to give a presentation, get there early and set it up with the projector.  Know how to switch the display to the projector, and then back to your screen.  During the presentation, switch the display away from the screen if you are fiddling with slides or trying to find things on your laptop – then switch it back.  Don't give everyone the opportunity to see your emails 6ft high on the wall.
• If it's your meeting, get the right size table.  There is nothing worse than trying to squash 6 laptops on a tiny circular table and balance the projector on your knees.
• Think about the room size too:  if it is too small it will soon get hot with all those gadgets.
• Turn the volume off before you get to the meeting room.  Those login chimes or email alert noises are really annoying and are always 100% louder than you were expecting.
• You can't talk and type.  If you need to take minutes of a meeting on the fly, have someone do it for you.  Otherwise you really aren't saving any time, all you are doing is replacing type-it-up-later time with sitting-in-silence-in-the-meeting-room-while-I-type time.

Phones and BlackBerries

• Put your phone on silent.  If there's recording equipment or video conferencing in the room turn it off.  Can't turn it off?  How important are you, really?  If you are so important that you can't turn your phone off for an hour you will have a secretary who can come and get you if the world starts to implode.  Just prep your staff in advance so they know you are unavailable.
• If you are expecting a call, let the meeting attendees know in advance.  It happens.  Then sit by the door and let yourself out quietly when you get the call.  Not all calls.  Just the one you were expecting that is important enough for you to excuse yourself from the meeting.
• Don't let your BlackBerry vibrate on the desk.  You know how much of a racket this makes.  It's much more discrete to have it in your pocket or on the chair next to you.  Besides, you shouldn't be looking at it anyway.
• Let's just repeat that last point: you shouldn't be looking at it anyway.  Texts or emails can wait.  It is so disrespectful to check your messages when someone is giving a presentation – unless you want to send the message that they are overrunning their allocated slot and are giving the dullest presentation ever.
• Typing away when you are on a conference call is noisy for the other attendees.  Don't do it.  Or wear a headset for your phone; it mutes the noise of the keys tapping.

OK, no excuses now.  Set a good example for everyone else!