Presentation skills tip

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Making a presentation is daunting and stressful.

Here is a tip when your mouth dries up.

Close your mouth and push your tongue up against the back of your teeth hard.

This will have the effect of “wringing your tongue out” and your mouth will not be dry anymore.

(Just make sure you have your mouth closed…)

Go on – try it now…

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Free CV writing webinar

Join us next Thursday night when we go for another first!

In conjunction with Carolyn May of Stillmuchtooffer Ltd.  we will be jointly presenting a free CV webinar.

“Give your CV real impact”

I will tell you more about Carolyn in a moment but the webinar will last for about an hour and is completely free. BUT it is by registration only, which must be done in advance.

The webinar will feature 18 hints and tips to make your CV shine and improve your chances of getting the job you want and deserve. It will help you

• structure your CV
• select what you should include
• understand what employers are really looking for
• highlight the skills that really matter

Carolyn will take you step by step through how to craft your CV to make it highly attractive to employers.

Beat the competition with this structured approach to CV writing. All in 1 hour.

What is a webinar?

A webinar is a video presentation with sound and video. You watch it from the comfort of your own home or where ever you have a decent web connection.

When is the webinar?

Thursday 11^th February 2010 at 7:30pm. It will last for approximately 1 hour.

What if I can’t make this date & time?

We plan to schedule a repeat early the next week.

Who should attend this?

Anyone who is out of work and looking to get back into it; anyone looking for a change of direction; anyone who wants to update an old, tired CV; anyone who wants to write a new CV from scratch.

Who is Carolyn anyway?

Carolyn is Director of Stillmuchtooffer Ltd., a new company designed to help mature jobseekers find work, re-train and develop themselves both personally and professionally.

Carolyn was Professional Development Manager at a Further Education college.  She has had a career in education for over thirty years and is an experienced teacher, trainer and manager.

She has an honours degree in English, a Masters in Education, is teacher trained and recently became qualified in recruitment.

Carolyn has presented at conferences across the UK and USA. She has had articles published in the Times Educational Supplement.

Her thinking is that many jobseekers, especially those who have gone through redundancy, lack both confidence and self-esteem. At such times, it is tough to go it alone, so Stillmuchtooffer was established to give jobseekers the helping hand they need to change direction and transform their lives.

She is active in the North Wales and the Wrexham business community.

Don’t wait!

There are a limited number of spaces on the webinar – so don’t delay in signing up. We will confirm your attendance by return email.

If you found this post useful and interesting, there is tons more in our weekly update. You can take a COMPLETELY FREE online training course just by dropping your name & email in the box below. If you didn't find it useful, please tell us by taking our blog readers survey.

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How to get better sleep

Here is a quick tip to get better sleep.

In this always on, switched on world, sleeping well is essential.

It’s also easier then ever to catch up with email, facebook, twitter with mobile devices and wireless.

To make sure you sleep better, do NOT access your email, facebook, twitter etc at night if you don’t have time to reply.

WHY?

Because you will be subconsciously, (or even consciously) formulating your reply and it will be rattling round in your head when you should be sleeping…

If you found this post useful and interesting, there is tons more in our weekly update. You can take a COMPLETELY FREE online training course just by dropping your name & email in the box below. If you didn't find it useful, please tell us by taking our blog readers survey.

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How to stay safe online

Staying safe online

For many people, the internet is new and exciting. But it can be a very dangerous place.

For increasingly busy people who maybe just pop online quickly to check email it can be very dangerous.

People will tend to get “accustomed” to the type of email they receive – facebook status updates, newsletter updates and ticket confirmations etc.

Thieves are openly trying to capture personal information and they do it like this.

Firstly, they will collect hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of email addresses from forums, blogs and the like. There is even software to “harvest” these addresses.

The object of the thief is to lure the recipient into revealing sensitive information. This may include passwords and credit card information.

No one is going to knowingly reveal that information so the scammers have to be more cunning.

An email is sent which deliberately tries to jolt the recipient into action by making them temporarily losing control of their senses and taking action they wouldn’t normally take.

Some examples could include

You are due a tax refund
You have received funds (from paypal or moneybookers)
Your paypal account has been hijacked

For each example – the user is asked to sign in and confirm their details

Or “questions” from ebay users including

“Is your Sony laptop still for sale?”
“Why have you not sent my goods? I will report you to the police”

Of course they hope the recipient will immediately panic and leave their normal senses aside for a few moments.

Now the scammers are quite clever and they may have either “spoofed” the “from” email to make it look it has come from where it says or formatted the email in the corporate layout of the organisation concerned. (PayPal is blue and black; eBay is yellow, green, red & blue etc etc)

Of course the website where the user is diverted to is a copy of the real one and the scammers may have even registered a similar domain such as

nameofbank-complaints.com

How to spot a fake email and what to do

There are some tell tales signs that the email is not original and these include.

You may not be named in the “to” field of the email. It may just be addressed to customer@bankname.com.

This is an indicator that the email has been sent to hundreds if not thousands of recipients.

The text of the email may be in poor english and may contain spelling mistakes. The scam may have originated in non english speaking countries. The marketing departments of large corporations would not have made such mistakes…

The link where the user will be taken is shown at the bottom of the screen BEFORE the user clicks and it is unlikely to be anything to do with the institution.

If you use an anti virus like Kasperksy, it may pick up that the email content contains a virus or a link within it goes to a known fraudulent website.

What to do

The best thing to do with these emails is to just delete them. Replying or clicking any “unsubscribe” link will just confirm that the email address is “live.”

You can forward them to the relevant complaints department at paypal/ebay etc but it is most likely that someone else will have already done it…

In the next few weeks, we will be looking to relaunch our “safe use of the web & email course” – But in the mean time – stay safe online.

If you found this post useful and interesting, there is tons more in our weekly update. You can take a COMPLETELY FREE online training course just by dropping your name & email in the box below. If you didn't find it useful, please tell us by taking our blog readers survey.

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Get your website going!

Ok so Sharp End Training is not an IT training company – so this is something of a departure for us.

We are about to offer something slightly different.

If you go into almost any UK business forum or networking site, you will see posts like

“This is my first website. My brother in law/friend/next door neighbour did it for the price of a couple of pints. What do you think?”

And to put it bluntly – The site is usually horrible.

Why?

People starting in business usually have no cash.

So they use tools and services that are free. (No harm in that so far).

But, (and this is a massive but) these tools are aimed at hobbyists and people wanting to experiment. Not people wanting to sell goods & services. (I know this because for  long time, I used them myself…)

So why doesn’t everyone just go a web designer and get the job done.

Trouble is web designers are everywhere these days and picking a good one at random is probably a bit easier than winning the lottery.

So what can we offer?

We are proposing to run a series of 3 webinars called

“Get your website going”

What’s a webinar?

I will come to that in a second but at the end of the 3 weeks, the goal is to have a .com website built using free & discount tools for UNDER £20. (It will be under £10 if you have .co.uk domain)

Why should we buy from you ?

Well, as i said before, we aren’t a web design company. We have no interest in stringing you along and making you wait for weeks and weeks. There is no “hidden sell” waiting around the corner. YOU will have access to update the content of YOUR site

Anyway, it’s a webinar so you don’t have to leave your home.

You learn by watching me on your computer screen. I will build a website right before your eyes. Telling you what I am doing and why. You can ask questions as we go along by typing them to me.

Then in the days after the webinar and before the next one – it’s your turn. (Of course you will be able to watch a rerun of the action just in case you missed anything). I will be setting you “homework” and actions to take before we meet again the following week.

The schedule is as follows

Tuesday 2nd February 2010
Tuesday 9th February 2010
Tuesday 16th February 2010

(All webinars 8pm UK time, 3pm Eastern time, 11am Pacific)

* Please note that in exceptional circumstances only, it may be necessary to reschedule any of the webinars. This will be done by group consensus.

OK so what’s included

• How to select a keyword domain name and why it matters
• Using free tools to select a keyword rich domain name
• Registering a keyword domain name (using the 2 registrars I personally use)
• What to look for in a hosting company
• Linking up your domain with your hosting
• Installing the (free) software you need
• Customising the appearance & adding functionallity
• Setting up the pages you need
• Adding relevant content
• Inserting images & flash
• Tips & tricks to get found on google

(The exact content will vary depending on the make up of the delegates. As you as you have paid – you will be asked to complete a short survey about your current web presence). So expect some things to change around.

Bottom line – I will do all I can to make sure the training is relevant to YOU.

As well as all the above – the following is included.

• Downloadable video of each webinar (Pause & rewind to your hearts content!)
• Access to ask me questions during the week via our dedicated helpdesk.
• Massive zip file of themes to choose from to customise the look and feel of your site.

As I said earlier, we are not webdesigners, but I have learnt the hard way how to do all this stuff. For less than the cost of a typical web designers hourly rate – you can learn.

This webinar series runs for 3 weeks on Tuesday nights and costs only £87.50 (+VAT) for each delegate.

Delegate number are limited to 50 so support can be of high quality.

If you found this post useful and interesting, there is tons more in our weekly update. You can take a COMPLETELY FREE online training course just by dropping your name & email in the box below. If you didn't find it useful, please tell us by taking our blog readers survey.

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Go for that job – But for the right reasons

Quite often, as a manager, I see unhappy workers applying for other jobs.

I look at them and the skills they have. I also look at the job they have applied for. (Office gossip will tell me all I need to know and if they use me for a reference – I get to see the job description too.

I often think that there is a bit of the “grass is always greener” syndrome. Where they think that their lot is so bad that no where else can possibly be worse.

Another job (with maybe a lower salary) is better because they are currently unhappy. They want to “show” their manager.

People who have worked in the same place for any length of time will have developed a “corporate know-how.”

How to get things done, how things work, where to park, where to go for lunch etc etc

So, I say to you – Giving up all this to go for a new (and maybe not significantly better) job is very risky.

If you do go for the job & get it – well done. Unfortunately, no one is indispensable and you will be replaced. But if you do go for the job – make sure you go for the right reasons.

If you found this post useful and interesting, there is tons more in our weekly update. You can take a COMPLETELY FREE online training course just by dropping your name & email in the box below. If you didn't find it useful, please tell us by taking our blog readers survey.

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Are you a social media consutlant?(yes I did spell it wrong..)

The world seems to have gone mad with social media consultants.

It seems to be the 21st Century equivalent of a WEBMASTER.

To be quite honest, I have thought very little of it and tried to tune it out. I am often propositioned by people at networking events and online by people wanting to “manage my twitter campaign”

Huh?

At my age, being propositioned about anything is something of a novelty – but to manage my twitter campaign?

I often wonder if these are the people who really wanted to be adwords consultants a couple of years ago but were either never smart enough or just missed the boat. (And yeah – adwords is REAL money…)

However, just recently I get a facebook friend request from someone who says in her introductory message (sending such a message is a step in the right direction…)

“Hello Jonathan

blah de blah be my friend blah boring blah

And I am also a social media consutlant”

Did you spot the spelling mistake?

Or maybe it was just a typo – who cares – the point is, consultants should really know how to spell the word consultant.

This also, confirms my previous thinking that anyone can be an expert so long as they say they are (and can spell it.)

Enough already, if this post has struck a chord with you, please take our social consultant self diagnostic below. (To all you consultants out there – “diagnostic” means to test something out).

If you found this post useful and interesting, there is tons more in our weekly update. You can take a COMPLETELY FREE online training course just by dropping your name & email in the box below. If you didn't find it useful, please tell us by taking our blog readers survey.

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Spot the words not earning their space

You don’t have to look far to see examples of words that aren’t needed these days – which is strange because most people know that attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.

I particularly like the Capitalisation where it is not needed.

But this masks a common problem.

Most of us have our own writing problems. Problems which, try as we might, we can’t get over.

(For some of people though – they never knew any different in the first place).

The photograph has 3 words which aren’t needed. OK that’s only 3 words but that’s 30% of the words on the sign.

Can you spot which words aren’t pulling their weight?

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If you found this post useful and interesting, there is tons more in our weekly update. You can take a COMPLETELY FREE online training course just by dropping your name & email in the box below. If you didn't find it useful, please tell us by taking our blog readers survey.

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