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Can Facebook or MySpace Help You Land a Job? The Internet is quickly becoming the vehicle of choice for people looking for a job and for employers looking for people to hire. There are many job sites on the Internet dedicated to matching up employees and employers, and most people turn to the Internet today when they are hunting for a job instead of turning to the classified ads in the local paper. Job hunting websites may all be well and good when you are looking for a job, but what about social networking sites. Everyone knows how popular sites like Facebook and MySpace are online, but can they help you get a job? If you are in the job market, can these sites be your foot in the door, or a one way ticket to the unemployment line? The answer is that there is no easy answer. To know if you can find a job using Facebook or MySpace, you have to know how employers feel about these sites, and employers have mixed feeling about them. Some companies are actively using social networking sites to track down employees that meet their company?s employee profile and have had great success finding workers via social networking sites. Other companies wouldn?t touch these sites as a hiring tool with a ten-foot poll ? in fact, many companies don?t even want you to access these websites from their company computers. The real answer to this question has more to do with exactly what kind of job you are looking for. Are you looking for an executive position at a company? Then stay off of the social networking sites, at least for job hunting (and maybe all together). No company is going to look for its top brass on a social networking site, and you will be wasting your time. However, if you are looking for entry level or hourly wage work, the social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook may be the answer for you. Many hourly wage employers in particular, like fast food restaurant chains and mall stores, use MySpace and Facebook to look for potential employees in their area. If a potential employer sees your profile and thinks you may be a good fit for their company, they will send you an email or an instant message and get the ball rolling. You should also, however, carefully consider the downsides of using social networking sites as a job tool ? and you should carefully consider how and if you use these sites at all if you are in the market for a new job. Most people wouldn?t want their parents to see their social networking site profile, let alone potential employers. If you have rude and off color material, political or religious material, and inappropriate photos of yourself on your profile, a potential employer will be turned off, and you might lose your chance at that job. Most people give up way too much of their privacy when they use these kinds of sites, and your social networking site profile may offer a window into a side of you an employer might not be overly impressed with. Further, you can open yourself up to danger by using these sites to job hunt. If someone approached you in the street and offered you a job, would you accept? Then why would you accept a face value an approach by someone on social networking site? If you do get approached for an interview, never meet anyone in a private place, and do your homework to make sure the facts check out before you go for the interview. One last reality check ? there are over 60 million users on MySpace alone. How will an employer find you in the crowd? MySpace and Facebook may help you in your job hunt, but don?t count on them as your sole avenue into the job market.

Free Blogging Resources to Save Money and Maximize Net Exposure Blogging is one of the new hot activities on the Internet. What is blogging might cross many peoples mind and to put that mind at ease, here a quick explanation s to what a blog is and what it does. A blog is a part of a web site or a website itself, where most commonly entries are displayed in reverse chronological order. It is a website where either news on certain subjects or personal entries can be made and then displayed and read by others. One important feature of many blogs is for readers to leave comments on the site. Currently there are more than 110 million blogs as per some of the blog tracker engines. Therefore blogs can be used for many different things; one of them might be to save money and to maximize net exposure. Many online web pages offer free web hosting space to people or offer a web blog that can be built into one?s own homepage. Blogs are a great tool to get feedback from friends, customers and anyone who visits the page. Blogs can help with net exposure due to the popularity of some blogs. There are two essential ways a blog can get popular and give one greater exposure. The one is the citation of the blog on certain major homepages visited by many, and the second is through affiliation. Whole blogging communities exist, where people almost chat with each other about certain topics. One can save money by using blogs that are offered for free or by actually boosting one?s own site on some of the popular blogs that allow such content in their text. Some of the blogs are used to post money saving tips on a regular base. These pages will post deals, finds and more in their blog for others to check out. These blogs are created and then added to by many. It is easy to find these blogs using one of the blogospheres. Blogoshperes, blog content search engines can help Internet users to find a blog with a content that they a re looking for. Major financial companies offer blogs for financial tips. This is a way to save money without having to have an own paid financial adviser, but the blog can act like one. Some of these financial blogs also offer help and assistance to people. It is a community of people that have had similar problems and where one can get help if necessary, Of course it is always dangerous to release too much information about oneself on the Internet, but when handled with caution, these blogs can be a great help for personal finances and for saving money. Blogs for saving money offer many categories. Some money saving tips on these blogs is about health care, baby products, student life, buying cars and more. These informative pages can help anyone who takes the time to read them save big bucks or even make money. Help is often given to people with these pages in the form of others that have experienced similar things, experts in the field or just general advice. Blogging is as easy as writing and e-mail and therefore can be done by anyone who has a working PC that is connected to the Internet. Blog generally offer an entry form and an option to read the entry before it is posted. There is also a way to respond to certain post by posting another blog entry. All the entries are generally public and available to anybody and therefore it is important to know that there are consequences and liability when writing blog entries. Even though some are anonymous, many blogs require the posters name.

Working on Your Own Time: It?s What Freelancing is About (freelance jobs) Do you have a busy life? Do you wish that you could schedule your work around the rest of your priorities? You work to make money so that you can live. You have no choice but to pay for housing and food and other life necessities. Because you need the money, work tends to creep up to the top of the priority list. Other things are more important though. Freelance jobs allow you to put work where it belongs on the list of priorities. You can play with your kids when they?re home, enjoy doing the things you enjoy outdoors while it?s daytime and spend your Sunday mornings at church instead of behind a counter. The work still needs to get done, but you can do it when you have time instead of from nine to five, Monday through Friday or worse, whenever you?re put on the schedule. Kinds of Freelance Jobs Do you have the appropriate skills and abilities to work at freelance jobs? There are many, many different kinds available. Those with professional degrees can consult. While the jobs that result from extensive education generally lead to many hours working for a good salary, your education can lead you in another direction. If you can manage to find the clients, you can work by appointment only, guiding those who do not have the experience or education that you have. If you are not a professional, you may still have the appropriate talents that will get you into freelance jobs. Writing is a very popular freelance opportunity. You live in a world that relies on the written word. You do not go through a single day without reading a considerable amount of text. Someone needs to do all of that writing, and much of it is hired out to freelancers. Actually, any skill that you possess may be suited to freelance work. Check out a few job boards and find out who?s hiring. Tips of the Trade Freelance jobs are out there, but so is the competition. To get yourself to the top of the hiring list, there are a few things you can do. First, use any experience you have to your advantage. Even if a previous job was short term or didn?t seem significant to you, you gained experience there. Let the employers know about everything you can do. Another thing you must do as a freelancer is to be very consistent and organized. An employer will be much more likely to rehire you if you turn out a good product. Everything you turn in should be clear and professional. Always meet deadlines. While most of the freelance jobs are extremely flexible, allowing you to work at your convenience, there are still deadlines. The work needs to be finished when the employer asks for it. Most of the qualities that will get you more freelance jobs only require common sense and a good work ethic. Living on Sparse Paychecks One downside of freelance jobs is that they are not necessarily consistent. Especially if you jump from one job to another, working for different companies, you will not have any guarantee about how much you will get paid each month. The flexibility may or may not be worth the uncertainty of freelancing to you. If you can manage to save effectively, the distance between paychecks won?t matter. If you do get frustrated about always wondering where the next paycheck is coming from, just remind yourself that the trade off is getting to enjoy more precious time not tied to a desk. There are definitely pros and cons when it comes to freelancing. You just need to decide how important it is to you to prioritize your life around what really matters to you.