Why Apprenticeships and Youth are Important to EY

Why Apprenticeships and Youth are Important to EY One of the Big Four, EY is among the biggest global professional service firms in the world, so recruiting young talent is a must-do in order to maintain a real consistent stream of talent. Jorgen Sundberg sits down with Steve Keith, Marketing and Communications Lead for Apprenticeships at EY,  who  spills the beans on their award-winning approach to attracting school leavers in the UK. Have a listen to the interview below, keep reading for a summary and be sure to subscribe to the  Employer Branding Podcast. In this episode youll learn: About the corporate culture at EY What talent challenges the company faces Why apprenticeships are so important and what the UK government has to do with it How important  employer branding is to recruiting top young talent at EY What EYs EVP is and how it is communicated and activated Why face-to-face interaction is their best source of hire Why a parental advice campaign EY ran is Steves favorite initiative What Steves top 3 tips for employer branding managers are. Connect with Steve on Linkedin.

HOW TO Build a Strong Online Brand in 14.5 Hours per Week - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

HOW TO Build a Strong Online Brand in 14.5 Hours per Week - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career A Wall Street Journal blog post by Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite, last week entitled, “A Resume Is Not Enough: How to Market Yourself Online” makes a really good point in the headline alone: having a positive online presence is more important than ever. And if you’re without a job right now, you should have plenty of time to devote to such an effort. But, because in-person networking is just as important, if not more so, let’s discuss a bare minimum personal branding online marketing plan. Your Website: up to 10 hours (one-time); 30 minutes per week (upkeep) Buy your own domain and hosting, and put up a professional website that serves as a hub of all your other online activity. I always recommend going with WordPress because it’s so easy to useâ€"and because I’m going to recommend later in this post that you have a blog as part of this plan anywayâ€"but there are other services that can help you “cheat” and put up a professional website extremely quickly with extremely little effort. Weebly Wix DoYouBuzz ZooLoo Brand-Yourself Webs Carbonmade Chi.mp Flavors.me Make sure you include your elevator pitch, access to your social networking profiles, and a way to contact you. Social Networking Profiles: up to 5 hours (one-time); 30-60 minutes per day (upkeep) Again, at the minimum, you should have a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, and any niche networking site for your profession. I think a lot of people see social networking as a huge commitment, but it doesn’t have to be. Once you set up your profiles (if you’re new to LinkedIn, definitely check out their New User Guide), you can certainly only spend up to an hour per day updating your status, sending out relevant information to your connections/followers, and engaging in online dialogues. Just make sure you are spending that time each dayâ€"the more updates, the better your search engine rank will be. Blog: up to 5 hours (one-time); 60 minutes per day (upkeep) Blogging, when done properly, can actually eat up most of your bare minimum personal branding online marketing plan. Don’t just blog to blogâ€"you want to be effective, too. (Otherwise, what’s the point?) Since we’re talking minimums, three times per week is typically enough to keep people interested. But, I’m going to recommend you spend 60 minutes per day doing something for your blog: planning posts, promoting your blog, commenting on other people’s posts, actually writing, responding to comments on your blog, etc. In summary… At the bare minimum, you can create a pretty strong online presence in approximately 14.5 hours per week. At first glance, that might sound like a lot, particularly if you do have a full-time job. But, considering there are 168 hours in a week, this plan gives even full-time workers plenty of wiggle room to build their brand online. What else would you suggest? Author: Heather R. Huhman is a career expert and founder president of Come Recommended, an exclusive online community connecting the best internship and entry-level job candidates with the best employers. She is also the author of #ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), national entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.

Is Having It All Realistic New Movie Aims to Find Out

Is Having It All Realistic New Movie Aims to Find Out by Jennifer Parris, career writer for FlexJobs When you start off in your career, you might want to climb the corporate ladder as quickly as possible. But then you get married (or remarried) and kids come into play, which leaves you facing the conundrum that all working womenâ€"and in particular, working momsâ€"have to contend with at one time or another: is having it all realistic? New documentary follows three working mothers as they balance career and family. There’s a new documentary that is hoping to answer, or at least enlighten, what it’s really like to balance family and work obligations simultaneously. Having It All, a documentary from filmmaker Vlada Knowlton, follows three career-oriented women for two years as they enter the world of the working parent. The film tackles their ideas of how they think having children will affect their careers, the stressors of trying to juggle both, and what needs to happen in order for working mothers (and really, working parents) to be able to have it all. What does it mean  to have it all? It makes sense, then, to determine what it means to “have it all.” Many experts have weighed in on this topic, including Jennifer Owens, editorial director at Working Mother Media  and the founding director of the Working Mother Research Institute. In an interview with FlexJobs, Owens stated that having it all is really a lot of hype. “Having it all is an absurd frame of discussion, especially since 70 percent of mothers with children under 18 work,” says Owens. “It puts too much pressure on women, who are already doing so much!” Kelly Wallace, a digital correspondent for CNN, definitely agrees. “I fall into the ‘you can’t have it all at once’ camp,” admits Wallace, who has two daughters, ages 8 and 9 ½. “A friend of mine once described the balancing act and the concept of ‘having it all’ this way: Think about being on a sailboat. Sometimes you need to tack more toward your family, but you are still moving forward on the boat. Sometimes you need to tack more toward career, but again, you are still moving forward.” Determine what is important to you. Ultimately, it’s up to each person to determine what having it all means to them. And you might find that having it all varies at different points in your life. At one time, keeping up with your 70-hour-a-week job and still being able to bake gluten-free cupcakes for your child’s class party was the epitome of having it all. Other times, having it all might look (and feel) a lot less harried. The point is that you should take the time to figure out what having it all truly means to you, and more importantly, if that’s what you really want. After all, having it all comes with a lot of sacrifices, and you have to know which ones you need to make, either for the benefit of your career or for your familyâ€"and which consequences you can live with. Watch the Having It All  online film premiere. FlexJobs is thrilled to host the online premiere of the film  Having It All on Thursday, March 3rd, 2016. After the film, there will be an online panel discussion from 4:00-5:00 p.m. ET with some of today’s leading experts in work-life balance, such as Sara Sutton Fell, founder/CEO of FlexJobs and 1 Million for Work Flexibility; director of Having It All, Vlada Knowlton; Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother Media and founding director of the Working Mother Research Institute; and Kelly Wallace, digital correspondent and editor-at-large on Family/Career/Life for CNN. These four experts will discuss the film and the issues that arise from achieving, sometimes failing, but always striving, to have it all. Jennifer Parris is a career writer for FlexJobs, an award-winning service that helps job-seekers find professional opportunities that offer work flexibility, such as telecommuting, freelance, part-time or alternative schedule jobs.

Top Tips for Marketing to Women

Top Tips for Marketing to Women When it comes to the biggest purchases in life, such as cars, homes, financial packages, and technology, the marketing focus has traditionally been on men. This is absurd when we all know that women are just as likely to purchase these things as well. Sure, in the past, these purchases would have been made almost exclusively by men, but times have definitely changed.   Targeting marketing to women is essential for business success. Part of the issue seems to be that many businesses simply don’t know what to do when it comes to marketing to women. Businesses, both big and small, are waking up to the need to develop specific strategies for reaching a wider female audience, but many of them are still struggling to do it effectively. The following tips will help you to develop an effective strategy for targeting women with your marketing. You Don’t Need to Rebrand One of the most common mistakes businesses make when they are developing a marketing strategy for women is that they feel the need to spin off their offerings to their female customers into an entirely different brand. You don’t need to do anything nearly so dramatic in order to effectively reach women with your products. Instead, you should focus on marketing your existing brands properly. One of the biggest issues with rebranding for women, is that these brands tend to be more ‘accessible’, a term which often means an inferior, but simpler, product. Part of their worry is often that they will alienate their core male audience if they ‘feminise’ their main brands. But these worries are largely unfounded. For one thing, there is no need to alter the product in any way, you only need to adjust the way that you market it. Instead of spending time and effort spinning off a new brand, focus instead on formulating a marketing strategy that sells your product to women without the need to dumb it, or your message, down. One of the companies that is most consistently highly rated amongst women is Apple. Apple’s products emphasise style, design, and ease-of-use, all of which are regularly cited by women as being important in consumer surveys. Emphasise the Product’s Value In order to illustrate this point, we look to Volvo. The company has made a point of doing something that many other businesses overlook entirely, they ask their female customers for input. Just by asking women what they think, and more importantly, what they want, Volvo has put female input at the heart of its development process. There have been numerous positive results from this approach. A whole host of features, including colour coded fluid lids, rear seats that are easier to fold, and boots that are designed to be easier to load with heavy items have been implemented as a consequence. However, the company never made their marketing a simple list of features. Instead, they have focused on marketing messages which appeal to women. The slogan ‘Volvo for Life’, for example, emphasises two things, security and dependability, both of which are important for women. Be Consistent Women tend to be more discerning than men when it comes to marketing. For one thing, women are much better at spotting inconsistencies, such as those that might exist when a business’s product and message do not line up. If they think that you aren’t being consistent in your message, you will lose their trust. In addition, you should make an effort to ensure that you aren’t overloading your customers with communications they don’t want. Consumers today care a great deal about their privacy.   So if they feel that you aren’t taking theirs seriously, then you could lose their business. The more personal the communication method, the more careful you need to be in ensuring you have the customer’s permission. For example, SMS marketing is more personal than email marketing and it has been found that more women than men prefer texting as a means of communication. Be Respectful Around the year 2002, McDonalds was experiencing an unprecedented sales slump with no immediately obvious cause. The company quickly realised what the problem was. Their marketing was still viewing women as a conduit to their kids. This marketing ignored the women as customers themselves. As a result, they were abandoning McDonalds in favour of rival businesses. Ultimately, McDonalds refocused their efforts and introduced more healthy options to their menu. They also undertook revamps of many stores, supplementing play areas with more comfortable seating and Wi-Fi access. The company also began to ensure that it made an effort to solicit the opinions of women, and to take their views into consideration. Marketing to women is essential for any modern business. After all, turning your back on women means turning your back on half of the market! Many businesses still get it wrong when it comes to marketing to women and taking their views into consideration.   But this is a situation that any business can fix with ease.

Productivity Mistakes That You Should Avoid

Productivity Mistakes That You Should Avoid It is well known today that the worst enemy of productivity is procrastination. Dealing with procrastination is not an easy task, because it is not just postponing things, like many people think.The principle “do it right now” will only work in several cases. It is important to know that procrastination is a complex concept and it has the powerful triggers.They are actually the mistakes you should avoid to stay productive.Multitasking: the fewer things you are doing â€" the more you DO!evalHow lovely it seems to do a lot of different things at the same time! So many people make this mistake.There is a major reason to quit multitasking: it is better to complete one thing first than to start multiple tasks not completing anything. Besides, multitasking is just an excuse to distract from something we don’t want to do.Multitasking has many forms. Working on a different project simultaneously is the most obvious one. If you have a lot of various tasks to complete, use a timer to spe nd a considerable amount of time on the first one. Prioritize. Think of it this way: it will take me an hour to complete it or to proceed and then I can move on.Another form of multitasking is when you are working on something and get an idea concerning other projects, or remember about an urgent email to answer, etc. What you should not do is distracting for a couple of minutes and then continuing your work. It doesn’t work this way! You won’t get as focused once again.Take a piece of paper and write your idea down. You can think about it later. It is also a form of multitasking when the physical activity is combined with a mental one. For example, cleaning and listening to a podcast. This is quite acceptable, because different types of activity boost different processes in your brain. But remember that the most natural state of your brain is ‘wandering’, so it will be much healthier if you let your thoughts go for a while.Perfectionism: nothing to do with perfectionPerfect ionists don’t do everything perfect. Usually, they don’t do anything at all. Perfectionists get entrapped when they decide that it is better to start at the perfect time There are many opinions on where perfectionism comes from. If you believe that it is a part of your personality, it must seem an unbearable task to get rid of it. You really should tell yourself that this is not your last try.Moreover, each try you make will push you a little further to perfection, if you like the concept so much. It is always better to do an imperfect work than not to do anything. No boss will evaluate your perfectionism. This is also quite a common mistake to think so.Another person cannot get into your mind and understand that your primary goal is to do everything the best way possible. Your boss will only see a lazy worker, postponing things.Working late: stressful and overwhelmingSometimes you wish your day to be never ended. And not because it is so great, but because you have so much to d o that 24 hours are simply not enough. So what the majority of people usually does is keep working or studying until they are finished.evalOr more likely, until they have no strengths to continue, because in reality, it is hardly possible to complete everything. Such dedication to a working process is very good, but the means to achieve goals are wrong.Today, we can turn to numerous researches proving that sleeping before midnight is healthier than that after midnight. Some data even say that an hour sleeping in this period of time is equal to two hours sleeping later.You may think that it doesn’t matter if you can sleep as long as you want after the work is done. This is not quite so. First of all, the habit of working late will not come and go when needed. You will not go to bed earlier, even when you have to wake up early, which will eventually lead to a severe sleep deprivation.On the other hand, sleeping late in the morning will cause oversleeping, which is as stressful for y our body and mind as the lack of sleep. Make yourself go to bed two or three hours before midnight.You will do your work better in the morning. If waking up early is hard for you, think of it as a couple of seconds when you will feel terrible. After those seconds are gone, you’ll have several hours of productive work. Never push a snooze button. After it becomes a habit, you will not react to your alarm clock at all.Working hard is the only way to get really successful in the contemporary world. However, if you use our smart tips on what to avoid to be more productive, working hard will get a little easier for you.

How To Pass Train Driver Tests - How2Become.com

How To Pass Train Driver Tests - How2Become.com HOW TO PASS TRAIN DRIVER TESTS There is certainly plenty of advice out there on how to pass train driver tests; some of it good, some of it poor. In this article I will provide you with some useful tips on how to pass train driver tests that form part of the trainee train driver selection process. To begin with, let us take a look at the types of test you may be required to undertake during the train driver assessment test: GROUP BOURDON TESTING This test can be relatively hard to pass, simply because it requires an intense period of concentration in conjunction with an ability to work  quickly  yet accurately. The test itself consist of five screens or sheets of paper which contains 25 columns of ‘groups’ of dots (see image below). The dots are clustered together in small groups of 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. It is your task to move across the screen or sheet of paper  identifying  all of the 4 dot clusters on the screen. The difficulty with this test is that after a short period of time it becomes harder to identify the clusters which include just 4 dots, simply because they all look the same: GROUP BOURDON TEST EXAMPLE You can see from the above screen that it is quite difficult to  concentration  on it for a prolonged period of time without the dots all  congealing  into one mass! An important fact to point out at this early stage of the article is that you are not expected to complete the entire sheet or screen. In fact, you only have two minutes on each screen. The key to passing the group bourdon concentration test is to really focus on speed and accuracy. The problem for you, as a potential candidate, is that you will lose marks for incorrect answers. Many people have asked me what the pass mark is; the simple answer is I do not know and I do not know anybody else that knows either! When preparing for the test be sure to practice an online group bourdon testing tool like the one HERE.THE ATAVTThe ATAVT test involves you being presented with a series of imag es that only appear for a short duration.After each image you will be asked to answer a question on what the image contained.An important tip to remember is that you will always hear a tone before the image is about to be shown â€" when you hear this be 100% focused on the screen!Below is a sample question on what the ATAVT may present you. This question is based on a traffic scenario. Make sure you look closely at the image and remember in the actual test it will only appear onscreen for a short period of time.SAMPLE QUESTIONTypically this image will only appear for 1 second.Make sure you look at every detail in the image â€" what vehicles are there? What colour are they? Are there any pedestrians? Etc.Once the image has been shown you will then need to answer a question. This question is multiple choice and can sometimes have more than one correct answer. For example, the below question is based on the image above:Question: How many grey cars were there in the image? Your accuracy and speed are the two most important factors that you must remember in this test. A great practice tip is to look at pictures for 1 second and then cover the picture up with a piece of paper. How much can you remember from the picture? There are, of course, a number of different tests that are used during the selection process but the above two elements are quite difficult to pass. I would recommend preparing for these in the build-up to the assessment. The problem with the train driver tests is that you only have two attempts to pass them. If you fail the test in its entirety twice then you will never be able to apply again. That is why it is so important to concentrate on preparing fully for the tests. For those people who want to obtain a ‘pass’ for the train driver tests before they actually apply to become a train driver, you can do this by paying to sit the tests with an  external  test administrator company. An example of a company that runs the test is called DB Schenke r and you can sit the test for approximately £165.   Finally, good luck with your tests!   Richard McMunn     This entry was posted in Train Driver, Testing. Bookmark the permalink. Richard Firefighter Application Form Help â€" PQAs Sample ResponseLife In The UK Test Questions And Answers

Feel Better Now - Hallie Crawford

Feel Better Now The reason why it’s so important to feel better now, even if you dislike your current job, is this: people in career transition can become so unhappy that being unhappy in itself takes most of their mental focus. They’re so involved in how miserable they are that they can’t see beyond that. They waste precious time and energy thinking about what doesn’t work in their current situation. As a result, they spend no time on what they want instead.             Katherine and I spent at least the first month of her coaching sessions trying to get her to feel better about her current job. She spent the time venting and complaining, but we had to wade through this to help her make small changes so she could then focus on the future. Some of the things I suggested were: Take a walk on your lunch hour; try deep breathing; manage your time differently. Leave on time twice a week. Do the difficult things first every day. Volunteer on projects that would be interesting. Develop hobbies outside work that are fun and that boost your spirits. Taking time to make your current job tolerable means you will be less eager to make a move that isn’t any more a fit than the job you have now. Once you accept your current job and make it palatable, then you can spend your time focusing on the job you want. You will have the mental focus to get where you want to be. Even when the financial reality is that you may need to remain in your current position for a while, I work with clients to identify their ideal career path once we have improved their current situations. This enables them to lay the right foundation for the next steps. Feeling better now is about achieving balance and then finding the time and energy to focus on your dreams. Action step: Come up with two or three action steps that you are now willing to take to help you feel better regardless of your current job situation. Need help with your career? Certified Career Coach and her team of coaches specialize in helping professionals identify their ideal career path, navigate their transition and nurture their career. To schedule a complimentary consultation and find out more about the career coaches at HallieCrawford.com visit our website: https://www.halliecrawford.com.