It has been a little while since we were last in touch, thank you for your continual usage and feedback on ConnectCV.

Today we are pleased to announce a new partnership for ConnectCV.
ConnectCV has partnered with Yolpme.com a social recruitment platform that enables you to search for online jobs, refer via social networks and earn cash from employers when your friends or colleagues are employed.

The partnership allows ConnectCV members to directly user their ConnectCV resume when applying for roles in Yolpme.

How do I earn cash?

• Simply register with www.yolpme.com, link in your social networks and PayPal details – don’t forget to sign up for the daily new jobs email.
• Visit the Yolpme Jobs board, and refer the jobs to your friends and colleagues via your social networks
• If your contacts are successful you get the cash referral on offer, this could be $300 or $4000+
• Video – How Yolpme works

How do I apply with my ConnectCV resume?

• For any job that you would like to apply for, simply visit the job on Yolpme and select apply
• Select “Import from ConnectCV Resume” add a Cover Letter and your selected ConnectCV resume will be sent to the employer

Can I do refer and apply for jobs on my iPhone?

• Yes, and it could not be easier. Simply visit Yolpme’s mobile site – m.yolpme.com
• Log in or Register and you can refer and / apply directly from your iPhone
• Please ensure you have the phone set – Settings > Safari > Accept Cookies > From Visited

What is Yolpme?
Yolpme – is a referral based online marketing platform for employers to crowd source, via targeted social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Email and soon to be Google+) for the best talent for their company.

Yolpme was launched in 2012 to take advantage of shifting market trends within the recruitment industry. Research shows 36% of people are now placed through referral, whilst 54% of job seekers use social networks to search for jobs and 89% of companies use social media to recruit.

Yolpme uses cash incentives to merge the power of peer to peer referral with the speed, efficiency and reach of social networks.

Yolpme for everyday users – Yolpme allows everyday users to earn cash rewards through the successful introduction of their friends to jobs posted by participating employers.

Yolpme for employers – Yolpme is a referral based platform for jobs, allowing employers to crowd source, via paid referrals, for the best talent for their company. One of the real strengths is the ability to target the passive candidates as well as reach the active candidates.

Yolpme’s mission is change forever the way employers locate their talent, by using incentivizing everyday people to use the power of their personal relationships, to connect the people they know with real job opportunities.

Put your networks to use with Yolpme

www.yolpme.com – Search. Refer. Earn
Connect with Yolpme – Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn |

The ConnectCV Team

Here are six questions you should ask and answer before earning your first dollar:

1. Do I really need an office? The answer depends on the nature of your business. You’ll need space if you require a storefront or on-site personnel, but if you’re like the majority of virtual businesses today, consider setting up a home office or renting shared office space instead. Starting a business can be extremely expensive, so reducing costs is the best option to improve your bottom line when revenue is small. Look into shared office services like Loosecubes, and check out online collaboration tools like Dropbox or Addie to share files and ideas with colleagues and clients.

2. Can I afford personal healthcare? Expensive healthcare is probably the top reason that many aspiring entrepreneurs refuse to break away from the comfort of their current corporate benefits. However, services like eHealth help you research plans and options that fit your personal needs and budget.  Don’t let personal healthcare costs prevent you from starting your own business, and don’t take unnecessary risks by going without coverage.

3. What is considered a business expense? One major benefit of owning your own business is the ability to write off certain expenses on your taxes. Always seek the advice of a licensed tax professional if you have questions while preparing your returns. A few commonly forgotten business expense deductions include mileage; rent, mortgage, and utilities related to your home office; telecommunications, business meeting meals, and tax preparation fees.

4. How can I save for retirement? Small business owners can contribute to an individual 401(k). Essentially, you use your small business to “match” your personal contributions—a great way to use both company money and earned salary to fund your retirement. There is a maximum total contribution of $50,000 for 2012, which should be plenty for most small business owners.

5. How should I structure my company? There are several different business structures available, each with their own legal and financial implications, so do your homework to choose the right structure. Limited liability companies (LLCs) are becoming increasingly popular for small businesses due to low filing fees, ease of incorporation, relaxed tax implications, and liability protection for owners. If you need to incorporate to share ownership or shares but want to report profit and loss on your personal tax return, then an S corporation may be right for your business. If you choose to incorporate as opposed to setting up a sole proprietorship or LLC, you will need to elect a board, sign a shareholder agreement, and facilitate annual meetings to comply with government regulations.

6. Is there an industry association for my business? Very few companies create an entire industry on their own, which means there should be an industry or trade association available to you right now. Join one to connect with peers, ask questions, share best practices, and stay informed on news and events that may impact your business. Many companies within the same industry join a group together for great mutual benefits, such as cutting shared costs with suppliers, vendors and service providers, and pooling resources to attract larger partners, investors, or advertisers.

Taking an idea and turning it into a successful business can be the most rewarding life event for any entrepreneur. But to increase your chances of success, you may want to answer these crucial questions first.

Let’s start with some of the advantages of working for a smaller company:

1. Connectivity. There is something to be said for the anti-corporate feel of a company where the owner/president has an office adjacent to yours. If you have an idea or a problem, this arrangement lends itself to immediate results that are nearly unheard of at larger companies where management may impede any type of resolve.

A smaller office can have more of a “team” feel as well. This means that everyone feels a sense of being a part of any accomplishments the company makes, and that they are much more willing to help each other in achieving shared goals. As an example, the comptroller demonstrates a willingness to answer phones because the receptionist is out buying materials needed to finish a project.

2. Security. Smaller companies are often niche-type businesses. Because of this, whatever “niche” they are filling most likely was developed by someone who is still very involved with the company, either as the owner or another high-ranking officer. That being said, this person will have much to say about the direction the company takes in terms of expanding, and will have plans to keep a loyal workforce. So, the outsourcing that has become so common with huge corporations is almost nonexistent. This in turn helps to foster a sense of security that your position is unlikely to be eliminated.

3. Loyalty. Since almost everyone from the CEO to the maintenance person calls one another by their first name, there is a little more consideration where raises, vacation days, and even disciplinary actions are concerned. Again, these situations aren’t handled by some unknown entity as they typically are in larger companies; in many cases, this means these events are dealt with in a more even-handed manner.

But there are some things to be aware of when applying for asmall business job. For example:

1. Familiarity. You’ve probably heard the old axiom, “familiarity breeds contempt.” It’s an unfortunate fact that small companies without strong leadership can be the breeding grounds for contemptuous attitudes. While I would never paint all small companies with the same broad brush where this is concerned, it may be something to consider, especially if you are taking a position that has been vacated numerous times in a short period. If this is the case, it could be a red flag that you need to study a little harder.

2. Compensation. Salary and benefits packages are sometimes lower at a company where the bottom line is being scrutinized. Since small companies usually don’t have access to the seemingly bottomless financial reserves of megacorporations, they do tend to pay conservatively.

3. Staffing. By definition, a smaller company has fewer staff persons. This means it’s much more reliant on the staff it does have, so being absent for any reason creates a hardship that’s hardly felt at a larger company. In some cases you might be the entire department, which means that taking time off can be met with resistance, especially if no one else in the office is qualified to do your job.

This is by no means an all-inclusive list of considerations, but hopefully it does give you some things to ponder when making the choice to leave the raging oceans of the corporate giants for what may seem to be the calm waters of the small business cove.

Since most people are accustomed to casually communicating via Twitter and text, it’s easy to underestimate the importance of email interactions. Keep these pointers in mind to make sure email helps you win a job.

1. Use an appropriate email. Maybe you have been emailing using a handle such as johnsmommy@yahoo.com for so long that you haven’t thought about how other people react to your moniker. If you keep an eye on recruiter forums, you will see that they regularly share (and mock) the surprising candidate email names they see when hiring. (You don’t want to be remembered for being hotmama55@aol.com.) Choose yourname@gmail.com or (even better), set up an email from your own domain, such as YOU@yourname.com.

2. Take advantage of job alerts. If you’re incorporating job sites or job boards, you can sign-up for email job alerts that allow you to save a search and have the site send you notices of jobs appropriate for you. (Check your favorite job boards to take advantage of this option.) Before you sign-up, be sure to evaluate the job sites. Consider reviewing Job-Hunt.org’s list of criteria to evaluate job boards to be sure you protect your privacy.

3. Reach out with a spectacular cover letter. When you apply for a job via email, use your cover letter for the email’s body and attach your resume. Remember, the reader’s first impression will be based on your email, so take your time to make your correspondence appropriate, targeted, effective, and concise. Think of keeping the text to the length of what likely fits on one screen without scrolling. Keep your most important message (why you’re a good fit) at the top of the message to wow your reader.

4. Follow up so they don’t forget you. In a blog post onkeppiecareers.com, I discuss how it’s so easy to use email to follow up with people you meet. But are you writing notes that inspire readers to advocate for you?

What impresses people most?  Reaching out to networking contacts with information you think will help them do their jobs. Find articles you know will interest them and forward the links, along with a brief note. Where should you look? Do a Google search to find relevant information and use Alltop.com to find and follow blogs about topics affecting your target audience.

Don’t forget to consider sharing resources relevant to your contacts’ personal interests. Be a good listener when you meet people and make a point to learn about their hobbies and passionate interests. Maybe they enjoy gardening? Baseball? Home decorating? Find interesting information to share online. Email a link to your networking contacts, and they’ll be pleasantly surprised you remembered what they told you—even if it has nothing to do with work.

5. Ask friends to help. It’s easy to use social networks, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to keep in touch with friends, but it may not be safe to assume a message passed via those tools will be their top priority—or that it will necessarily even make it to the person. How many times have you missed a Facebook message, or had a private message on Twitter go awry? When you want to reach someone, your best first bet is via email. If you don’t hear back, try reaching out via social media or phone.

6. Write a thank you note. One of the most important and often overlooked aspects of the job search is the thank you note. While a “snail mail” note, printed and sent via a stamp is a nice touch, most people expect to hear from you right away, and email is the best way to immediately reach out after an interview. Your targeted employer wants to hear from you; do not underestimate the importance of following up.

7. Always edit all of your notes. How easy is it to write a quick note and hit the “send” button? Do not fall victim to a quick email with errors; it will hurt more than help. Review your email messages carefully, and you’ll be much more likely to impress the reader—and possibly land an opportunity.

Basically, the same rules apply whether an interview is in-person or online. You should conduct yourself in the same professional manner. But there are a few other things to consider with regards to technology. Use these tips to make sure you appear as approachable through a webcam as you would in-person.

1. Get your technology ready. These days, most computers come with webcams. Make sure to test yours out before your interview, so that you have time to invest in a better camera if yours isn’t up to par, or to adjust the lighting so the interviewer can see you.

Depending on what video platform the employer plans to use, you may need to install additional software, like Skype or ooVoo. After installing it, test it out by calling a friend who also has webcam capabilities. This can help you pinpoint issues with sound or voice quality, and you can take care of them prior to trying to impress the hiring manager.

2. Dress for the camera. Not every type of clothing renders as well on camera as it does in real life. Patterns tend to appear jumbled and may be an eyesore, so stick to plain colors. If the camera washed out your features during your test run, wear colors that complement your skin type, and wear a little extra makeup if you’re a woman. Just don’t go overboard—you want to look natural, and sometimes that requires a little extra effort for the camera.

3. Remove distractions. Make sure that your pets and your children are in a different room when it comes time for your interview. Shooing your cat off your keyboard mid-sentence kills the flow of the conversation. Make plans to have the kids and pets cared for while you are on the interview to avoid all noise distractions and interruptions.

Don’t forget to look for visual distractions behind you on screen. A messy room, the corner of your bed, and busy walls distract the interviewer and appear unprofessional. A neutral-colored, blank wall or a tidy office-like environment work best.

4. Do a dry run. In addition to simply checking that your technology works beforehand, it may be helpful for you to have a mock interview with a friend via webcam. This can help you adjust your volume (or talk speed) to ensure the interviewer can hear and understand you well.

5. Look directly into the camera. We have the tendency to look at our monitor when using the computer, but if you are looking at the monitor while on a webcam, the viewer perceives that you are looking away or at something else. Look directly into the camera during the interview to give a sense of eye contact.

It’s also a good idea to practice some of the same habits you would for a traditional job interview. Dress professionally, and do your research on the company prior to the interview. Review commonly asked interview questions, as well as those that require a bit of finesse to answer so that you’re never tongue-tied.

When Google+ was introduced, many expected the site to rival Facebook and LinkedIn when it came to its job-hunting potential. But recent data show that the social networking site hasn’t lived up to all the hype. Google+ users only spend mere minutes on the site each month, compared to almost eight hours a month on Facebook, comScore reported last week.

And now, an increasing number of people are using Pinterest, the latest social-networking darling; and some are even posting graphic-intensive resumes in an effort to impress employers. The number of unique visitors to the site jumped 56 percent since December, according to comScore, to nearly 12 million.

All this social media ballyhoo has many wondering which site will help them land the job of their dreams.

Once upon a time, career experts pointed to LinkedIn as the only site workers had to be on, but now that’s changing. “More playful sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Quora, and even Pinterest are turning out to be valuable tools for job-hunters, too,” wrote George Anders, author of “The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else,” in a Harvard Business Review post last week.

If the alphabet soup of social media choices has you wanting to shun them all, think again. Employers are increasingly using social media to connect with applicants. The most recent data show 56 percent of the organizations currently use social networking websites when recruiting for potential jobs, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), which surveyed nearly 550 HR professionals via email last year. That’s up from 34 percent in 2008, the last time the survey was conducted.

Where recruiters are going to find you out in cyber space, however, is a moving target.

Among the employers SHRM polled there are three top choices:

• 95 percent use LinkedIn.
• 58 percent use Facebook.
• 42 percent use Twitter.

But a survey put out last month by The Creative Group, an interactive advertising company, of advertising and marketing executives found that if they had to pick one social networking, 56 percent would choose Facebook, followed by LinkedIn and Google+.

Facebook is beginning to give career stalwart LinkedIn some competition by offering more recruiting tools for hiring managers and job seekers, including apps such as BranchOut and BeKnown.

Both options are luring more recruiters to Facebook as a result, said Curtis Midkiff, SHRM’s director of social strategy and engagement. “It’s catching on but not competing quite yet,” he noted.

In the end, he stressed, your social networking choice should be tied to the type of job you’re looking for. LinkedIn, he said, is the “suit-and-tie network,” and people looking for professional jobs in traditional industries are probably making a good call to be on there.

For positions in healthcare or manufacturing, and generally more blue-collar jobs, Facebook is gaining interest from recruiters as a way to find applicants. The site is also gaining popularity with employers looking to fill seasonal jobs, such as UPS looking for holiday drivers, Midkiff explained.

UPS’s Jobs Facebook page often includes posts about job openings, and the page now has more than 36,000 likes. A post from earlier this year stated: “UPS is hiring Sales professionals!” The post included 70 comments and a company official even answered questions of Facebook users interested in a sales job; a big difference from the black hole so many job seekers face when they apply these days.

Hiring managers may also be looking to sites beyond LinkedIn if they want to connect with younger workers.

E. Chandlee Bryan, a career coach and co-author of “The Twitter Job Search Guide,” sees sites such as Pinterest and Google+ filling a niche for specific professionals. Pinterest, she said, is useful for people looking for jobs in the design and interior decorating fields, while Google+ seems skewed toward tech jobs.

The best rule of thumb is to check out where the companies you want to work for have the most presence and base your social media focus on those sites. Do they have a careers page on Facebook, or networking groups on LinkedIn or Google+? But don’t jump from networking site to networking site just because one job you want is posted there, Midkiff advised.

Don’t just follow the latest media madness. You need a thought-out plan on what site works for your career aspirations.

The servers, it turns out, had signed an employment contract and in the fine print — which so few employees read — it said they were obligated to go to arbitration, a process to resolve disputes outside of court.

In the end, this story worked out for the servers because Hooters didn’t ask to go to arbitration in a timely manner, according to a district court ruling last month. But most employee-employer disputes like this don’t work out this way.

A case involving a chef at a fancy steak chain, Morton’s, wanted to sue his employer for sexual harassment, and he claimed that “one Morton’s chef would remove asparagus from his genitals and serve it to the restaurant’s paying customers,” according to an MSNBC.com story. The chains owners are now trying to force him into arbitration saying he signed an employment agreement that clearly stated he had to go through arbitration.

More and more workers are unwittingly signing employment agreements that require them to waive their right to a lawsuit and agree to arbitration. The process, according to some legal experts, is skewed in favor of employers who typically hire the arbitrators who handle the disputes.

For many it’s an unfair David-and-Goliath match up, and it can be expensive for workers.

There’s a great op-ed piece in the New York Times today by Amalia D. Kessler, a professor of law and legal history at Stanford University, and she takes aim at the process, calling it unfair to employees and consumers who are ignorant to what they’re actually agreeing to.

She writes:

“If you’re lucky, nothing goes wrong. But a growing number of consumers and job seekers discover, when something does go wrong, that they have unknowingly agreed to waive their right to file a lawsuit. Instead, they must submit to arbitration.”

She pointed out that 93 percent of employment contracts now have such mandatory arbitration clauses.

So what are these clauses exactly? Here’s a good definition of arbitration agreements I found onDefinitions.USLegal.com:

Arbitration agreement is a written agreement between the parties to a dispute to designate a particular arbitrator to resolve their disputes arising out of a particular business relationship. It calls for a mandatory arbitration before an arbitrator. An Arbitration agreement is usually legally binding. Companies often require employees to sign an arbitration agreement which prevents the employee from suing the company in court. Arbitration agreements are unsafe to employees because they often require an employee to pay thousands of dollars to file a claim with an arbitration association where s/he could have paid a few hundred dollars, or in some cases nothing at all to file in court.

This is a tough situation for employees who are desperate to find or keep their jobs. If they refuse to sign away their rights to sue and agree to arbitration there is nothing from keeping an employer from not hiring or firing you.

There is legislation on the table called the “Arbitration Fairness Act” that states: “no predispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable if it requires arbitration of an employment, consumer, or civil rights dispute.”

The NLRB cried foul in this group restriction in a recent case.

An article about the ruling in The National Law Review said:

The NLRB found that the arbitration agreement unlawfully restricted the employees’ substantive rights to engage in concerted action for mutual aid or protection under the NLRA, reasoning that collective and class actions are at the “core” of what Congress intended to protect in the NLRA.

It’s too early to tell how this ruling, or the Arbitration Act, will play out for employees, but for now workers everywhere should be aware of the rights they’re signing away.

This story originally appeared on CareerDiva.net under the headline, “Did you give up your right to sue the boss?”

1. Having to fire somebody who’s been trying hard and failing is the worst job a business owner has. I’d rather do collection calls. But it happens sometimes. If you can’t stand the heat …
2. Because of the recession in 2001 I had to let five people go on the same day. We had to cut costs and we had no choice. They weren’t let go for their own failure, but ours, and they knew it. For the record, that’s much easier than letting one person go because of work or performance reasons.
3. Firing somebody should never be a surprise. It should be because expectations weren’t met, and performance wasn’t as expected, and that person should always know it. If it’s a surprise, management has failed. (Well, if it is a surprise to the person let go, that is; as for co-workers, that’s none of their business.)
4. A good lawyer I worked with for years used to say that the time to let somebody go is the first time you ask yourself whether or not you should; the first moment you even think of it. He’s a smart guy, a good and honest lawyer, and basically compassionate. His underlying though was that it was best for both sides to do it as soon as you start wondering. And I’ve never known anybody to actually work that way. I didn’t. Still, the wisdom here is that it’s better sooner than later. Later does more damage.
5. I’ve had some successes with repositioning a person, rewriting their job description, having them do something entirely different, rather than firing them. However, to be honest, those successes were the exception, not the rule.
6. (Bonus) We live in a litigious world. Talk to your attorney before you do it. There are a lot of things you’d like to say but you shouldn’t. And some very unfair lawsuits happen.

What do you think?

The present study extended previous research on fun in the workplace by examining the influence of workplace fun in the context of applicant attraction.

Specifically, this research examined the impact of workplace fun relative to other key predictors of applicant attraction.

Furthermore, this research examined the impact of different sources of workplace fun—fun coworker interactions, fun job responsibilities, and formal fun activities.

With a sample of collegiate job seekers, the results demonstrated that workplace fun was a stronger predictor of applicant attraction than compensation and opportunities for advancement.

Moreover, the results demonstrated that fun coworker interactions and fun job responsibilities were stronger predictors of applicant attraction than formal fun activities.

Source: The Fundamental Role of Workplace Fun in Applicant Attraction” from Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies

“How’s your book launch coming?” Bob asked me.

“Ugh. I don’t want to talk about my book. Can’t we just dive into working on another post about progress?” I said, trying to avoid my towering pre-publication checklist.

“Sure, Whitney. But if you’re going to write about progress, you might want to make some.”

Okay. Bob didn’t actually say that, but he could have. Six months before publication, I found myself skittering off to new ideas rather than attending to the task right in front of me. Why was I procrastinating?, I wondered. Writing a book has been on my bucket list for years. I knew how important it was to have a successful launch, yet here I was doing nothing.

So with Bob’s help, I started to analyze what was happening within the framework of our theoretical Equation of Progress. We would examine my stalled plans in order to better understand how people make progress, and more specifically, what leads us to innovate.

We had hypothesized that progress could only be made if the push of a situation (a frustration or problem to be solved) and the pull of an enticing new idea were greater than the forces holding us back — our allegiance to past behavior (the status quo) and anxiety.

Certainly, I had experienced a “pull” to write the book. Dare, Dream, Do was inspired by my interactions with people who weren’t sure they had a dream, or worse, who didn’t believe it was their privilege to dream. And there was obviously a “push” because I finished writing the book. Deadlines are good that way.

But the prospect of now tackling a lengthy punch list — build a website, create a speaker’s sheet, film a speaker’s reel, record an audio Q&A, finalize/plead for blurbs, finalize copy edits, write an e-book to accompany the book — obscured my vision of a future where readers would hold the book in their hands and be inspired to dream. The eventual payoff of completing these tasks wasn’t immediately enticing enough to overcome my present inertia, i.e. allegiance to the status quo. No wonder I wasn’t making progress.

That all changed when anxiety kicked in about at four months to pub date. I had always thought of procrastination as a bad actor, anxiety even worse. But in analyzing what I thought were merely stall tactics, I’ve come to realize that the anxiety caused by procrastination is actually a critical component to innovation. Research supports this. Anxiety, in the right quantities, can propel us forward.

According to the Journal of Management, NASA scientists and engineers found that performance increases as deadlines shorten, but when the deadlines became too short, performance declined. Dr. Ellen F. Weber, award-winning founder of Mita Brain Center, states: “while frustration or fear can flood the brain with cortisol, if anxiety is managed properly, anticipation can produce that feel-good dopamine that primes the pump of progress, or innovation.” In other words, as the deadline neared, my apprehension around the to-do list actually wasn’t just outweighed by the pull of the commitments I’d made to my editor, publicist, and to myself, the anxiety per se helped increase the pull.

The innovations, or newly introduced ideas and methods, that have emerged from my anxiety around the book launch include:

1) View the book as a product. I realized my anxiety was caused, in part, by the unfamiliar experience of launching a book. By reframing it as being analogous to launching a business, I talked myself down. I’ve never published a book before, but I have incubated businesses. When you’re overwhelmed by a new project, look to your past for similar problems you’ve already solved. Just as a business model is required to maximize the reach of a simplifying technology, so too is a business model required to maximize the reach of a book. Looking at the book as a product has helped me lock into great ideas and energized my efforts.

2) Write my way through the launch. Just as scientists meticulously record daily findings to ensure that each experiment is replicable and accurate conclusions are drawn, I realized I could write about my experience of publishing a book. Dissecting the process and hoping that my experience may be helpful to others has turned out to be powerful motivator (and a source of content for my blog). When you can zoom out and view your experience in the abstract, you create the necessary distance to be objective about your own performance. In essence, you give yourself a general’s panorama of the battlefield rather than the limited view of a foot solider. Vision is essential for innovation.