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Salespeople are often viewed as parasites that take money from hard working consumers. These views of the sales profession have left many would-be sales stars out on a limb. Why does every company need a talented salesperson? Every company needs a talented salesperson to generate revenue for their company by applying principles of persuasion to their targeted markets. Talented salespeople are rare because they make a lot of money in their profession. Recent college students and grads may consider sales to be a bad career choice, but sales pros are affluent individuals.

Make Money In A Slow Economy

Although an economy is slow, certain sales positions remain in demand. These companies are hiring sales superstars to bring their companies to the forefront while the economy is slow. You can build credibility by selling passionately and strategically. The economic conditions will not shatter the opportunity to earn a six figure income within three years of this profession. If you know how to listen, you can find yourself making a reasonable amount of money in sales. Is it all about the money? No, because sales professionals are the veins of companies worldwide.

Myths About Sales Careers

People consider salespeople to be parasites of society because untrained salespeople call their homes or businesses. You can not judge the profession because you have received calls from stuttering salespeople. Recent college students and grads are losing out on a golden opportunity to develop leadership skills. The sales profession is very demanding because it involves creative thinking, strategic planning, and mastery of learning skills no other profession requires. As stated in Jeffrey Zalewski’s article, The Most Important Skills Needed In Any Career at http://www.collegerecruiter.com/employersblog/archives/2006/03/the_most_important_skill_neede.php, sales skills are the most important skills recent grads and students can hone for success. It is true and is almost forgotten by many who flinch at the thought of a sales position.

How You Can Begin Today

Before you begin, write down what products or services interest you; companies selling these products may have openings available. Consider the products you buy or services you use as a starting place then build on that foundation. For instance, who provides your internet connection? Where do you buy clothes, food, necessities? All of these companies need talented salespeople to grow their businesses. Visit job boards such as CollegeRecruiter.com to search for current positions with all of your service providers. With more research, you may find the best place for you to develop important skills to build a successful career in any industry.

Tahjia Chapman is a writer for CollegeRecruiter.com at http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com, the leading job board for college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

Whether your parents are very involved in your life or tend to be more hands-off, moms and dad (and stepmoms and stepdads) can play an important and useful role in your job search and career planning. If you’re comfortable asking your parents for help with your career, there is a lot they can do to support you at any stage. Why not use every resource you’ve got—especially one that loves you? And why not approach your loved ones for help while you’re all eating turkey and feeling grateful? (Just be sure to ask for help before that L-tryptophan kicks in and everyone falls asleep.)

The thing is, there are some areas where it is totally appropriate and encouraged for your parents to help with your career planning and job search. At the same time, there are other situations where it is totally inappropriate for your parents to be involved. So, be careful! When in doubt, ask someone outside of your family (such as a trusted professional friend) whether parental involvement would be Kosher or not.

Here are my personal tips on when to green light Mom and Dad’s help this holiday:

Rehearsing for interviews. Just as our parents can be our biggest supporters, they can also be our biggest critics–because they want the very best for us, of course! Your parents or relatives can help you prepare for any upcoming interviews by running through questions, helping to choose an appropriate interview outfit or videotaping a rehearsal. The more practice you have interviewing, the better.

Reviewing any assessments you’ve taken. When you take any assessments tests—online, with a career coach or in a book (a free assessment is available on my book’s website), your parents can be a great help in reviewing the answers. For instance, they may remind you of activities you loved as a child that you may have forgotten about, but that show up as strong interests on an assessment test.

Proofreading. You can never have too many people checking your resume, cover letters and any other professional correspondence. If your parents have good grammar and spelling abilities, ask them to check some of your career-related writing.

Networking. Your family members count as part of your network. Ask your parents if they’d be willing to brainstorm any of their contacts who might be helpful for you. You’d be amazed at how many people come to mind when they really think about it. And, if you’re like most young people, I’ll bet you haven’t really spent time talking to your parents abour your career goals.

Some people aren’t comfortable asking their parents for help and connections—it’s fine if you feel this way, and of course there are lots of other connections you can access. But if you are comfortable networking with your parents, then I’d make theirs the first Rolodexes on your holiday networking list.

Lindsey Pollak is the author of “Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World” (HarperCollins, 2007).
Author Website: http://lindseypollak.blogspot.com

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

If you’ve ever asked yourself this question, ask yourself a different question – how hard is it to ride a bike? The answer is simple: If you know what you’re doing, it’s easy.

So, how do I ride into the right job for me? You’re on the internet, and this information superhighway has many paths to the right job. All you need to know is what direction to go.

Before you set off on your journey, you should know something about where you’re headed. The individuals who do the hiring (let’s call them “Hiring Managers”) are people just like you and me. In most cases Hiring Managers have this hiring responsibility only for as long as it takes to fill a position, then they go back to their other work. Yet, once they’ve made a hiring decision their superiors will continue to evaluate them based on the performance of the new employee.

And so they want to find someone who will make them look good, and they want to do it quickly and efficiently so they can get back to their own jobs.

Hiring Managers have many candidate searching tools available to them; the efficiency of the internet pretty much assures it will be used in virtually every search to fill a job. If you want to get to the point where you can make an impression (the interview) you need to understand how Hiring Managers find people to interview.

There are 3 common ways Hiring Managers use the internet:
1. Post Jobs
2. Search for Resumes
3. Network (with people they know)

Of course every Hiring Manager is different, but each will use some combination of these resources. Let’s look at how each is used.

Hiring Managers who Post Jobs.
This means the Hiring Manager reviews resumes as they come to him/her. To handle the volume of resumes received most companies use technology to “rank” resumes based on the skill sets required for the position. As a result, Hiring Managers only need to review the first 30 – 50 resumes.

To give your resume a better chance of review by a person, your resume should highlight your skills. And don’t just list your skills (aka “keyword padding”) – because many of the “ranking engines” evaluate the words around the skills keywords to weight the importance of each. Highlighting your skills means you describe how each enhances your ability to perform the duties of the position. Do this by describing how you have used each of your skill sets in previous positions, or how you expect to apply each in the position for which you are applying. You should also list your proficiency with each.

Hiring Managers who Search for Resumes.
This is the same as addressing Hiring Managers who post jobs, except the specific words used by Hiring Managers when they type in their search may have synonyms. When highlighting your skills you should also include some of the more common variations of the word(s).

For example, if you are a “web developer”, you should also describe yourself in your resume as a “web site programmer” even a “website programmer” (notice the omitted space); or if you are a “truck driver”, you should also describe yourself as a “Class C Driver” or “Certified Driver”. You know your abilities best, and you know how they’ve been described by others – make sure your resume has EVERY variation of each important skill you possess.

Hiring Managers who Network.
The simple truth is this: A Hiring Manager is a person (just like you and I) who needs to fill a position, AND will be evaluated in the future based on this hiring decision.

EVERY Hiring Manager is concerned about your ability to make them look good. This is worth repeating: The individual who hires you WILL be judged by how well you do your job. As humans we make decisions based on our comfort levels. And we’re more comfortable making a decision when others approve of what we are doing.

This means – you need to let everyone you know that you are looking for a job and encourage them to tell their friends. When there are 2 or 3 potential people to hire, and one who is recommended by a friend (or a friend of a friend), the person with the recommendation is given more thought. This is basic human psychology.

Contact all of your friends, get them a copy of your resume, and ask them to let their friends know what you are looking for. And be proactive – ask your friends who they know who is doing a job similar to what you seek, and expand your network by getting in contact with those people. Your friends have friends who have friends (and so on…) who have friends who need to rid themselves of their “Hiring Helmet” and find someone they can trust to do the job right.

In another article we’ll discuss other methods of circulating your resume. With a resume highlighting your accomplishments and skills, you are on the path towards finding the right job for you.

A good job is one that you love. Loving a job means that you like what you are doing, and you like the people you work with on a daily basis. We are all the happiest we can be when we enjoy what we are doing so much that it is no longer “work.”

Interview preparation begins today, right now.
Evaluate yourself by learning what it is that YOU like. Take a few minutes to ask yourself these questions:

• What do I like doing?
• What do I enjoy doing when I’m not working?
• When was the last time I was really having fun? What was I doing then?
• What do I like about my friends; what types of people are my friends, and what qualities do they have that I like?
• In previous jobs, or even when working on previous projects, what stood out about the people I liked?

As we all know, the world is not always about what we like. Now ask yourself the same questions from above, but ask yourself what you do NOT like.

These questions (what I like and what I dislike) are the foundation of finding a good job. Your answers to these questions will change from day to day, and over time. Continue to ask yourself these questions, on a daily basis; as you grow older and experience more things, your answers to these questions will change, and so should your career.

What the interviewers know.
It is a natural human instinct to migrate towards other people who enjoy whatever they are doing. When you sit down for an interview, you must recognize that the people who hire you will not only evaluate you, but your job performance will also reflect upon them. If you are a good, contributing employee, it reflects positively on them; if you are not a good employee, it reflects negatively on them.

What you, the job seeker, needs to know is that no one is 100% qualified for any job; the interviewers know this. An interviewers definition of the “best person for the job” obviously takes into account your skills, but more importantly, they are looking at your past performance, and how well you will fit in with their company.

Make every day a GREAT day.
It’s a lot easier than it sounds. An interviewer will see through a fake smile; every job seeker has one. What will set you apart is what you have accomplished (or in interviewer terms “past performance”). A job seeker who is able to speak about things that he/she has accomplished radiates excitement, fun and competence.

And it is also a natural human instinct to feel pride in our accomplishments – it shows that we enjoy what we do, and we’re not just “collecting a paycheck.” Interviewers are looking for a new employee who will contribute to the company and will work well with others.

Creating Accomplishments
Ask yourself this question:
Over the past 3 months, what is one thing that I have done that I feel was an accomplishment – something that made me proud of myself?

Your answer is either business related, or something in your personal life (non-work related). Both answers are acceptable.

Now, preparing for an interview, think of what this job will require of you, and find at least one business and one personal accomplishment that you can relate to this job. How might your accomplishments help you to do this job better than any other candidate for the job?

You may find it necessary to create an accomplishment, and this is easy. Whether you are a fork lift driver, painter, accountant, or doctor, every day there are things that you can do that will help your company, or help others. You do and see things that no one else does. When you wake up in the morning, think about making a difference.

As a fork lift driver you are told where to pick up pallets, and where to put them. You may find that you can travel less distance (saving the company money) if the pallets are first unloaded in a different area of the warehouse. As a painter you may notice that a newspaper advertisement from a competing paint store (to your supplier) is offering your supplies at a lower cost. You can point this out to your manager, who can either purchase from the lower cost supplier, or negotiate lower costs with your current supplier.

Everything your company does, it does for a reason – the reason for doing things may have changed, but the old processes are still being used. Change brings opportunity for you to make a difference.

Desire to make a difference is a sign of success.
Interviewers want to hire people who want to succeed. Demonstrate with your accomplishments that you are someone who wants to exceed. The truth is, the majority of people just want a job, and these are the people who, when hired, reflect negatively on the interviewer.

Desiring to make a difference changes your day for the better.
When we “want” to do something, we are much happier, and ultimately better employees. Complaining about our jobs is the most common topic of conversation with our friends and family, and it’s negative conversation. But discussing ways to improve things is intriguing, and will lead to even newer and better ideas for change.

The first few weeks of a new job are usually our happiest times. After the job becomes “normal” we revert back to “collecting a paycheck.” It doesn’t have to be this way.

If you were, or are, just “collecting a paycheck” – who do you think will want to hire you?

Accomplished people “choose” their jobs.
It’s true. If you desire to make a change, and you continue to create accomplishments for yourself, you are different from the majority of people, and there are HUNDREDS of new and better jobs for you.

Focus on making a difference, and having fun, even if the job you are doing isn’t what you really want to do. As you become more and more accomplished in making a difference, continue to ask yourself what you like to do. This attitude of making a difference will open your eyes to many new possibilities for yourself, and your career. And when jobs in your chosen field are available, YOU will be the one who is hired.

Preparation is when “luck” meets “opportunity.”
Make every day a GREAT DAY by focusing on making a difference.