Budget on an Irregular Income [Budgeting]

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

In this economy, many of us are looking for a little extra cash wherever we can get it, which means your income may vary greatly from one month to the next. So how do you budget accordingly?

Personal finance weblog Get Rich Slowly tackles the sometimes complicated subject of budgeting for an irregular income. The post is written from the perspective of a professional blogger, but it applies just as well to most anyone who's self-employed or does freelance work. In a nutshell, the author suggests projecting your cash flow as best you can and then building your budget with a couple of different bank accounts.

• The first is your "business" account (without quotes for those of you who actually own businesses), which is where you deposit all of your income. My business account is a high-yield savings account with ING Direct. (You might use FNBO Direct or some other bank. Just choose something with a high interest rate.)
• The second is your personal account, and it's from this that you'll pay your ongoing expenses. There's no need to open a new account if you already have one that will work. I just use my existing credit union checking account.

From this money, pay yourself as if you were an employee. Your monthly salary is whatever you calculated as your monthly budget, your minimum monthly income from the past twelve months.

Head over to the full post for a thorough rundown and several useful tips on the finer points of budgeting with your irregular income, then let us know how you've handled your budgeting in similar situations in the comments.

How to Budget for an Irregular Income [Get Rich Slowly]

Indeed Now Gets The Most Pageviews For Job Searches In The U.S.

Indeed Now Gets The Most Pageviews For Job Searches In The U.S.: "

With the unemployment rate still above 9 percent, a lot of people are hitting the job boards. One set of companies that are growing under these conditions, at least in terms of Website traffic, are the job search engines. But the one that seems to be growing the fastest is Indeed. In July, Monster’s job search engine was up 33 percent in U.S. pageviews, CareerBuilders’ was up 56 percent, and Indeed’s was up 90 percent (comScore).

Not only is Indeed the fastest growing job search engine it is also now the largest in terms of pageviews. In July, it passed CareerBuilder, with 171 million pageviews in the U.S. versus 159 million for CareerBuilder. Yahoo’s HotJobs had 96 million (which Yahoo is reportedly abandoning), Monster had 73 million, and SimplyHired trailed far behind with 26 million.

In terms of unique visitors, CareerBuilder is still larger with 10.1 million in July versus 8.7 million for Indeed, which is No. 2. But Indeed is growing faster in that metric as well (up 76 percent versus 19 percent for CareerBuilder).

All of these numbers are for the core job search at each site, and do not include other parts of their sites such as resumes, advice, or career tools.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Real World Example: The Logic Recruiters Use To Find Candidates

Real World Example: The Logic Recruiters Use To Find Candidates: "

Knowing how recruiters reason can help improve your chances of being chosen as a candidate.

This is a guest post by executive recruiter Todd Porter.

The following is a unique micro-perspective on the recruiting process as it applies to one specific search I’m currently working on (August 2009).

The classic recruitment problem

Hiring managers and job seekers often feel like they are being shortchanged in the recruiting process.

• Hiring Managers see too many candidates that don’t fit what they are looking for, whereas…
• Job seekers often feel that they are perfect and don’t understand why they aren’t being considered.

Have realistic expectations

Here is an e-mail I sent to one of our Israeli customers in Houston.  It explains why I had not been successful in filling a controller position.

This exercise had these goals as objectives:

1. Explain the points we thought were important in the search
2. Make sure the compensation range was right
3. Explain our main problem
4. Explain what type of candidates we are seeing
5. Let our customer know we are NOT giving up

From the information provided, the customer can adjust the search criteria or they can decide they will try another method to fill the position.

The e-mail said:

Avi,

I’ve been trying to analyze why the search for your Controller has been so difficult and why we haven’t been successful, “YET”.

I really don’t think the issue is compensation.  I think candidates with the skills you are looking for should fit into that (US) $70k to $85k base range, where you have asked us to search.

The trouble has been there are a lot of people that do not fit the profile.

If I condensed our interpretation of what you need/want in a Controller, I came up with these items:

• Nuts and Bolts accounting (preferably with a CPA)
• Small company as opposed to large
• Main Finance person at that company
• Must be a similar environment that relates to a your company (i.e. Manufacturing and Inventory)

I understand the environment of a ’smaller company’ that you want the individual to come out of.  I think the main problem is your COO’s point of reference is Israel, where there are 3,000 to 4,000 businesses.  Most of these companies are in the size (if not necessarily the industry) where an individual has to perform the type of position you are trying to hire.

I think the make-up of most (or a very high percentage) of the companies in the U.S. and Houston don’t fit this profile.  They are much smaller or very large.  On top of that, the vast majority of finance people don’t come close to the exact scenario you and the COO want.

First, most CPAs are probably going to have the wrong background with most just being Tax and Audit people.

Most large company Finance people or even Division Controllers aren’t going to have the breadth of Finance to do the GAAP, FASB…. type of accounting you need/want.

So, when we look for the types of companies and environments where these people live (or have lived), we then find them in these flavors:

Imposters

individuals faking it and not performing, willing to move but you won’t want or need

Climbers

just passing through and tough to land because of compensation

Plodders

not motivated to move to another position

Attached

fully happy with what they are doing and nothing could get them to look other places

Unemployed

not working for the wrong reasons.  At best - caught in a situation of either the economy going bad or internal politics or company being bought

Our goal has been to find those Attached individuals where we can motivate and convince them to consider your position. We’re also considering individuals that are unemployed, if for the right reasons.

We’re networking through the financial community and have partners assisting us on the search.

To see if the financial people you are looking for exist, we have skimmed the Internet resume boards looking for the right combination of characteristics.  Few candidates come close to fitting the profile and none of them have hit the bull’s eye of the target.

On top of all this we still need to spread your desire to have an individual with High Energy, Maturity, Right Chemistry to fit the environment…..

I had to go through this analysis in my head (and writing it down here) to better understand why we haven’t found the person and maybe come up with a different approach to solve the problem.

I don’t want you to think this is impossible or that we are giving up.  The number of candidates is just very, very limited. We’re adjusting and looking for new ways of finding the right individual, as well as convincing them to consider your opportunity.

We will touch base early next week.

Todd

Test your expectations

Almost every individual I spoke to about this opportunity thought they could do the job.  Many told me they were perfect.  Some could have probably done the job but few would have satisfied our customer.

The information in the e-mail allowed me to measure individuals on all the points, to know if they hit the target and more importantly, the bull’s eye.

Conclusion

The week after I sent this e-mail, we sourced an individual that hit all the bullet points.  The customer quickly agreed and told me, “…background and experience matches our search criteria.”

The interview is set for next week.

About the author

Todd Porter started H.T. PROF Executive Search in 1997. Located in Atlanta and Boston, the company recruits primarily for Israeli companies hiring anywhere in the U.S.  He can be reached directly at TPJOB [at] HTPROF [dot] COM.

This article is part of the 3rd Annual JobMob Guest Blogging Contest. If you want Todd Porter to win, share this article with your friends.

Subscribe to JobMob via RSS or
email and follow me on Twitter for the best insight from job search professionals around the Web.

-- Jacob Share, Job Search Expert and Professional Blogging Consultant

Indeed Ranks the Most Crowded Job Markets [Job Search]

Indeed Ranks the Most Crowded Job Markets [Job Search]: "

Indeed, a Hive Five winner for best online job search site, posts a ranked list of U.S. cities, showing off the ratio of unemployed folks in a city to the job listings Indeed can find for it.

It's far from scientific, as both Indeed is not the absolute standard for job finding, and not every unemployed person is hunting for jobs in that city. But it is intriguing data porn—and thoroughly disheartening for those living in California or, like certain Lifehacker editors, upstate New York. If you're hunting for a job, this list won't preclude you from landing a great gig in any of these cities, but it might help you prioritize where you spend your energies.

Best and Worst Job Markets [Indeed.com via TechCrunch]

No One Cares About Your Resume, and Why You Should

This post was written by Daniel Bowen and originally appeared on his blog Young And Frugal, a site dedicated to Business and Personal Finance for Generation Y. If you like what you see here, be sure to check out Young And Frugal. Original article here

NEWSFLASH: No one cares about your resume.

What's that you say? You've spent hours perfectly crafting every word in order to make yourself look fantastic on paper? You even read my advice on resume building? That's very kind of you, but I repeat, no one cares, and here are 5 reasons why.

• Resumes are boring. No one wants to read them, not even recruiters. It's a chore that takes time, and realistically the last time you did read one (instead of glance at it) was when you were writing your own.

• People are lying to protect your feelings. When was the last time you or someone you know told a friend you wouldn't forward their resume on because it was crap? When was the last time you asked for resume advice and everyone told you it looked good? Friends think a lot of things, but very few friends will be brutally honest to help you, if no one is giving you constructive criticism try sending it to other people.

• Your resume won't get you a job. Do you really think someone is going to hire you based on a piece of paper?

• You're exaggerating. Everyone does it to a point, but did you really collaborate with the team on the $300 million dollar project, or did you just make copies for them? If by chance someone does read your resume, they are reading it with a skeptical eye and taking it with a grain of salt.

• You are sending it into a black hole. Applying online? Unless you have a persons e-mail address not a generic recruiting address, it will most likely never be seen by  a human eye. Even if you are sending it to a real persons address, remember it's a chore to open it and they probably don't want to.

With all this said, it's true, no one cares about your resume, but you should still care. As much as it kills me to say it, resumes are still very important, and here are 5 reasons why:

• It's not for other people, it's for you. Your resume should be a running tally of every impressive thing you have done, and you should use it as a refresher to remind yourself of these things. It should be up to date whether you are job hunting or not, and when you accomplish something of note, write it down. You can always shorten your resume, it's very hard to lengthen it. Know your resume backwards and forwards and be able to expand on everything on it without fumbling. Even know what doesn't make the final cut, your resume will help you in the interview (but be careful to not only talk about what is on the resume).

• It is currently the most accepted way to showcase yourself. We are fast approaching the days when someone will say "send me your link" instead of "send me your resume," some early adopters have already started this with LinkedIn, however, for the time being the resume is still the most accepted way to showcase yourself.

• Key words help you get a foot in the door. Remember that black hole I wrote about? There is a way out, and that is through key words. More often than not applying to a generic recruiting e-mail address will send your resume into a software program in which it will be looking for key words. If it matches the key words, then someone might look at your resume to see if you fit the bill and invite you in for an interview. So remember to use industry language. (Note: although this is my most hated form of applying for a job, I actually did get my current position this way. It never hurts, but don't get your hopes up.)

• Be true to yourself. A little embellishment is expected but always be true to yourself and NEVER lie on a resume. Lying on a resume is career suicide and it will come back to haunt you. It is better to not get the job by being honest, than to get it by lying. Just ask George O'Leary, former head coach at Notre Dame who was forced to resign because he lied on his resume.

• It won't make you, but it can break you. First impressions are important, and the resume is frequently someones first impression of you. While it may not make you, it can definitely break you, so in the off chance that someone actually looks at your resume, it needs to be easy to read and perfect. One misspelled word and you are through.

As Gen-Y becomes more of a staple in the work place I see a lot of this changing, particularly the accepted resume format. I believe we will transition to websites with professional bios being the standard (non-boring) way to showcase yourself. But in the meantime, I'll continue my love/hate relationship with resumes.

Common mistakes. Easy fixes. (part two)

from getpickd

This post is part two in a series on common mistakes made by job applicants and easy fixes for addressing those mistakes.

Warning: Arriving early to an interview may adversely affect your chances of being hired.



It is important to show up on time for an interview. This is a rule of thumb that won't come as a surprise for most readers of this post. Incorrectly, most job applicants believe it is important to simply not arrive late to an interview. However, it is nearly as important to not show up more than five minutes early either. With many employers, arriving too early for an interview is only a slightly lesser offense than arriving late.

Why is arriving too early a blow to your chances of winning the job? The answer is quite simple. One of the primary goals of the interview process is to determine a prospective candidate's understanding of, and ability to operate within, the norms of a professional environment. One of those norms is an understanding of how your actions impact others around you and your respect for your co-workers schedules and time. Showing up early, or late, for an interview (or for any business meeting) is disruptive to the person you are meeting. To understand this, consider what occurs when you arrive early. The people with whom you are meeting will be notified that you have arrived. From a cultural perspective, most people don't feel comfortable making someone wait for them as it is considered rude—so the person you are meeting now has two options: a) they can interrupt their schedule to meet with you early, or b) wait for the scheduled time and be made to feel anxious about making you wait. In either case, you have made a bad first impression.

As an employer, I understand the motivation to arrive early for an interview. As with any meeting, you want to build in enough time so that you can be reasonably sure that you can find the location, and be prepared if any unexpected transportation delays occur. Building in a buffer for these things is smart, but it means that you will often arrive at your destination earlier than the scheduled start time. If you arrive 10, 20, 30, or more minutes early, find something else to do with your time. Find a coffee shop and read the paper, tour the neighborhood, or check out the local bookstore. Just make sure not to lurk pensively outside the office suite—this just makes people nervous. You should not actually enter the office suite where you are interviewing until five minutes before the scheduled start time.

Following this rule of thumb won't win you massive points with prospective employers, but it will start you off on the right foot.

Christopher Hertz is the CEO of New Signature, a Washington D.C.-based information technology firm.

Common mistakes. Easy fixes. (part one)

Common mistakes. Easy fixes. (part one)

This post is part one in a series on common mistakes made by job applicants and easy fixes for addressing those mistakes.

"What would you describe as your greatest strengths and weaknesses?"

This is one of the more frustrating (and most common) questions that a potential employer might ask you during an interview. It is also a question that most applicants respond to incorrectly.

Let's start with the worst possible (and most common) response to this question:

"My greatest strength is also my greatest weakness." This is generally followed by a discussion about how the applicant tends to work too hard, or that they pay too much attention to detail, or some variation of this. As an employer, I'm not a big fan of this question, but I do ask it, specifically to see if the applicant will respond in this manner. Even if you are being honest, this response will come across as completely phony.

Here's a better way to respond:

First, state your greatest strength. Make sure you backup your strength with a specific example (or even better, a specific accomplishment). For example, if your greatest strength is your ability to effectively multi-task, you might talk about a time when you coordinated multiple projects with a successful outcome.

Second, state a real weakness of yours (you want to be careful here, don't provide a weakness that will jeopardize your chances of getting hired) and most importantly, talk about what you have done and what you are doing to address this weakness. Everyone has weaknesses and employers want to know whether you are aware of those weaknesses and if you're working to address them (basically, if you're a problem solver). For example, if your weakness is that you have trouble being alert at work in the morning, you might want to talk about how you've started going to the gym before work, and how that's helped you show up awake and ready to perform.

As a reminder, we'll be launching our new online resume service on June 23 at getpickd.com, but in the meantime, be sure to follow our blog for updates, resume ideas, and interview tips. You can also follow us on Twitter @getpickd.

Adam Sterling is the founder of getpickd