The LuxMob Info Tags

Humans are so dependant on other people’s opinions. Having been assessed positively we feel powerful, successful, intelligent and beautiful. We judge ourselves according to others’ comments on our actions. When being criticized or laughed at, we feel bad, depressed and nothing seems to make us happy anymore. This happens only because our ways are not accepted in the society. “Ego” cries for positivism, but none appears for you base your facts on the opinions of others. The truth is that you will never be in favor of everyone surrounding you. There will always be a group of people that will not positively assess everything you do. One thing that will help against criticism is self-confidence that one should grow within him/herself.

A student may be a perfect example. Since childhood people are likely to overestimate own possibilities and paint the picture of the future in pink colours. When working out a plan for future, we do not consider the majority of possible failures that might occur on the way to success. Perfectionism is a bad feature that is worth getting rid of. Nevertheless it is present in the back corner of a young student’s “ego”. Can you imagine a devastative consequence of a failure? The tutor praises the skills and intelligence. He feels like he is on top of the world and can do anything. You get used to good things easily. When the genius is recognized you start to think of yourself only as of a genius. And after everything goes smooth and bright there is a point when someone, even your beloved tutor, comes to criticize you and your work. Instead of an expected “A” you get an “F”. The perfect world falls apart because this error doesn’t fit into your plan. At this point you build a characteristic of your actions from the way your tutors, colleagues give you. This is the main error in your system of values and priorities. You tend to overlook the world from the point of view of other people. What one should do is to build up his or her own system of values and of course taking into consideration some of social priorities. But every final decision you take should be based on your decision. A failure should only stimulate to move forward and to overcome.

Interference of the society is unavoidable. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to close yourself in a world full of illusions. Hardships make a person more experienced, wiser, stronger. The more you hide and close into depression, the more time you loose to improve the situation. The reality is harsh but it is impossible to live beyond it.

Carol Miller is a senior researcher at BestTermPaper.com - Custom Term Paper Writing Service. She has written several articles devoted to the problems of writing different college term papers (e.g. psychology term paper) and offered her own innovative views on the issue.

According to the experts, publishing articles on the web is a good marketing strategy because it increases your credibility, helps you become known and trusted, and proliferates your contact details. But is there more to be achieved than that? I decided to find out.

On 14 OCT 05 I started a test to determine to what extent the number of people who read an article is a determinant of demand.
I asked the question, “Determining Product Demand: Can Articles Help?” In that article I referred to three previously published articles about writing business letters, each of which is a tutorial.

As I write this, a couple of months later (24 DEC 05), here are the statistics for those three “Writing Business Letters” tutorials:

1. Letter Format - 1427 Readers
2. Parts of a Business Letter - 704 Readers
3. Writing a Quality Letter - 484 Readers

Of 35 other articles I have written between 2002 (Updated in 2004) and 2005, the highest number of readers is for “Writing
Business Letters: Tutorial 1 - Letter Format (1427 as shown previously). The average number of readers per article is around 340. So, 1427 shoots right off the ‘normal’ scale, especially given the relatively short time it has been accessible. Even 704 and 484 for the related two topics are solid readership statistics.

Not only do my article statistics give me some idea of interest, they also indicate where the interest is highest ie, Letter Format. For some reason, people are interested to know about letter formatting.

When I launch my “Secrets of Successful Letter Formatting and Writing” ebook in early 2006, I feel confident that there will be at least a warm market response. (Note that the title includes the most popular keywords, “Letter Formatting”.)

Although I wouldn’t rely only on readers’ responses to my articles to gauge demand for a product or service, the additional data available from my articles is helpful in making an overall decision about where to invest my time and effort. In this case, I think I can answer my own question; “Yes, writing articles can help determine product demand, but don’t use it as a sole indicator”.

Copyright 2005 Robin Henry | First published Dec 05

Robin Henry is a human resources specialist, educator and Internet marketer who has a specific interest in business
communication, methods and processes. He operates an online business from his home at Alice Springs in Central Australia that helps people improve performance through smart processes and procedures. At the time of publishing this article is working in the United Arab Emirates.

More information can be found at http://www.dwave.com.au

Tired of proofreading for hours? Moving from first draft to perfect manuscript can be a slow and tedious exercise even for the most experienced writers. But you can create a perfect manuscript with just four simple steps.
The secret is to focus on only one area each time you edit. Start with the tone and flow of the overall piece. Then whittle down your word count. Check your grammar and spelling, and finally, read through the piece one last time.

STEP #1 - EDIT FOR TONE AND FLOW

After you have eliminated words, read through the manuscript checking the tone and flow. Is your tone appropriate for your audience? Are you lively and entertaining, or stiff and businesslike? Do you use contractions or perfect English?

If you are not sure about the audience, lean toward a more formal manuscript.

Check the flow of the manuscript by jotting down a quick flow diagram. Each paragraph should have a main topic. List it. Then connect the topics with arrows. Next to each arrow, note how you connect one idea to another. Or use arrows to connect subtopics to the main topic. Make sure all the subtopics support main topics, and main topics support the theme of your manuscript.

To improve the flow of the manuscript, vary the length of your sentences and paragraphs. The change in lengths gives your writing interest.

STEP #2 - PLAY “HOW FEW WORDS?”

Have you ever played the “How few words” game? Go through your manuscript to see how many words you can eliminate and still keep the original meaning.

Here’s an example:

Long version - To properly edit and proofread a manuscript or other piece of writing by an author, other writers should read the manuscript and then eliminate as many words as possible from the prose. [32 words]

Shorter version - To shorten a manuscript, ask someone to remove words. [9 words]

This game is usually much easier on someone else’s writing. We writers often get attached to our words. Ask a friend to eliminate words for you.

STEP #3 - PROOF FOR GRAMMAR AND SPELLING

In the next read-through, check for grammar and spelling errors. Some of the most common grammar errors include misused tenses, misplaced commas, and subjects, verbs and pronouns that do not agree.

Use the search function in your word processor to check for commonly misspelled words like effect/affect, to/two/too, there/their, its/it’s and hear/here. You can find a list of common errors at http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/.

STEP #4 - FINAL READ-THROUGH

Let your manuscript marinate for at least 24 hours. Then, read through it one last time. You’ll be amazed at the problems you missed (of course, if you make any major changes, you should start over with step one!).

Want to learn more? Visit http://www.organizedwriter.com. Julie Hood is the author of “The Organized Writer: 30 Days to More Time, More Money and Less Frustration,” an ebook with a roadmap for combining a writing career with the rest of your life. She manages the OrganizedWriter.com web site and writes Writer-Reminders, a weekly newsletter for writers. Newsletter subscribers receive a free ebook, The Sidetracked Writer’s Planner. When she isn’t writing, she sneaks in cleaning house around a busy household with two children, her husband, and two avid golfers.

Copyright 2004 Julie Hood, Finally Organized LLC. All Rights Reserved.

You may have heard advice from Internet marketing gurus that ezine ads are one of the best forms of advertising. You may also have heard that Google AdWords and other pay per click search engines are one of the best advertising methods. But when it comes to marketing your web site, article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords anytime.

The advantage of article submission is trust. Suppose you subscribe to an ezine in the form of an email newsletter. You’ve just sat down at your PC, coffee in hand, to read your email. There in your inbox is a copy of one of your favorite ezines, the one you read every time.

Clicking on the newsletter, you see that this edition starts with a sponsor ad and then has a couple of great sounding articles and a couple more ezine ads. Sipping your coffee, one of the articles catches your attention. You read the article, and you were right. It’s a great article.

At the bottom of the article, there is a link to the author’s web site and a short biography. You notice the author has a link to pick up a free report with more information about the article’s topic. Then you notice that right below that there’s a sponsor’s link in an ezine ad. The sponsor’s link is for a different web site, but it also offers a free report about the same topic.

Now you might click both links. But if you could only click one, which would you choose: the one by the author of the great article you just read or the one in the ezine ad?

If you would click on the one from the author of the article you just read, you’re not alone. Most people would, wouldn’t they?

Now suppose you’re surfing around on the web. You do a Google search on a topic you’re interested in, and you follow a link to a great article with some excellent advice on the topic. Again, there is a link to the author’s web site and a link to a free report with more information on the topic. Right beside it are five Google AdWords ads on the same topic. As luck would have it, they are also each offering a free report on the same topic.

You would still be most likely to click on the author’s link at the bottom of the article, though, wouldn’t you?

Article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords because you establish a relationship and build trust with your reader. You are obviously the expert. After all, you wrote the article. And the webmaster or ezine publisher wouldn’t have published the article if they didn’t think you knew what you were talking about, right?

Years ago, I used to do direct sales in people’s homes. I learned that one of the first things you need to do is the “warm up.” You’ve just entered someone’s home, they don’t know who you are as a person, and they know you’re going to be trying to get money from them before you leave.

If you don’t establish rapport quickly, it’s difficult to overcome people’s natural sales resistance. In direct sales in the home, you do that by talking a little with people before you begin your sales presentation. They get to know you as a person, and their resistance is lowered.

Most people can’t do sales because they remain the “enemy,” the horrible sales person who wants to sell them something. Let’s face it, people hate sales people!

But imagine if you could warm up to people easily - and not just one or two people, but thousands of people. Imagine if instead of selling them something, you could educate them about something that will solve a problem and be of great benefit to them. That’s entirely different, isn’t it?

Article submission allows you to do exactly this, and on a massive scale. If you submit many articles to article submission sites and article directories, many will be published on web sites and in ezines around the Internet. People will read your articles and warm up to you. Solve their problems and they’ll want more.

It’s hard to accomplish that with Google AdWords. You only have three lines and a few words to build interest and trust and to get the click. It’s also hard to achieve that with ezine ads. Even with solo ezine ads, everyone knows they are advertisements.

Article submission is the secret. Writing and submitting articles is relatively easy. Just write very helpful articles on your topic and link to your web site. Through article submission you will build your reputation. Through article submission you will gain trust. And through article submission you will get visitors to your web site that already like you, value your advice, and want to know more about what you can do to help them.

That’s already an incredible benefit, but it gets even better. Article submission is usually free, or low cost if you use an article submission service. Ezine ads and Google AdWords can be very expensive, and it is unlikely you could ever get traffic coming to your site as open to listening to you and trusting you as they will be from an article submission.

This is why article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords.

So let’s begin crunching down these 300 images using Adobe
Photoshop from start to finish. When I say ‘crunching’, to some
300 images may seem like allot, but it’s not. I have done jobs
for clients that have 100,000 plus images. When you have that
many images to produce there are other programs I use that are
designed for this. We’ll cover that another day.

To this point we have ensured that our images are web ready,
cropping, retouching, watermarking, etc. So let’s get at it. I
will assume that we are all using Adobe Photoshop version 6 or
greater.

First we will go to the ‘file’ menu and select ‘Automate” shown
here
http://weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo_menu.htm
. Now you are ready to create the theme of your photo album by
filling in the required textfields. Remember to be as brief and
descriptive as possible, as this information gets published on
all html pages generated by Photoshop. This is where Photoshop
is seems to offer more that Dreamweaver. You will notice the
first pull down menu ’styles’. There are many different
horizontal and vertical styles available. The second menu allows
you to enter an email address that you may want to be available
to your visitors. However, I advise against it. Remember that
thing called SPAM.

Then next pull down menu allows you to specify .htm or .html
extensions. Now we’ll click the ‘browse’ button and locate your
image source folder. Click the ‘destination’ folder. This folder
should be located somewhere in you website folder. If you don’t
have one, make one. ‘Options’ is, again an area that Adobe seems
far more thorough that Dreamweaver. The ‘options’ menu let’s you
specify every aspect of your photo album…size of small
thumbnails, size of large thumbnails, add custom colors to
better tie into your corporate scheme. Remember to complete the
’site name’, ‘photographer’, textfields tactfully; this is what
tells the search engine what your subject matter deals with.

Are you ready now? Go ahead click OK. Like magic your photo
album manufacturing itself. This is a great tool that can be
used commercially or just for fun. Create commercial product
pages for your clients or create an online photo album for
family and friends in minutes.

Robert

Educating yourself before ordering your office printing can save
you serious dollars

“I went to see a printer today to get my company’s stationery
printed. They ask too many questions, I can’t answer!” How many
times have you felt this way? It’s kind off like going to the
auto garage for a tune up and being told you need a new 02
sensor, your sincro mesh gear has a tooth missing and so on. You
know you have to get it done but who can you trust to give you
the best quality, value and service. There is a reason why I
include all three ‘quality, value and service’ In the 80’s and
early 90’s it used to be ‘quality, value and service’…pick 2.
These days, with the internet as a resource, buyers and sellers
alike can really benefit from forming bonding relationships with
their printer of choice. Location is no longer an issue. In
fact, I will bet money you can always find what appears, to be
better than what you are getting. It can be overwhelming, too
much information.

Here are a few tips on what you should figure out before you
talk to your printer:

1)Decide how many ink colors you are going to print in. Here are
a few links that will help you understand this: Pantone color
chart in RGB and html;
http://www.weprintcolor.com/pantone_RGB_convert.htm Convert from
RGB color to CMYK color;
http://www.weprintcolor.com/rgb_CMYK.htm Explain CMYK, RGB and
Pantone Color;
http://www.weprintcolor.com/pop_ups/Templ_modificatons_full.htm
2)Have a pretty good idea of the paper and texture of the paper
you would like to use. Learn some ‘buzz words’ in your
conversions with the printers you speak to. Here is a list of
printing terms commonly used by people in the printing industry;
http://www.reprotechprint.com/printing_terms.htm 3)Have a
general idea of the quantities you would like to purchase. If
you’re not sure don’t be afraid to ask your printer to provide a
quotation on several different quantities. In printing, the more
you order the cheaper the per unit cost is. Here are a couple of
online price calculators demonstrating this: Business Cards;
http://www.weprintcolor.com/businesscardscolour.htm Postcards;
http://www.weprintcolor.com/postcard_index_4×6.htm 4)Will you
provide a ‘print ready’ digital file? When I say ‘print ready’,
it is important that you understand this. Many printers will
attempt to print from a ‘none print ready’ file. This will
sometimes lead to undesirable results. Here is a couple of links
to help you with this: Free digital file inspection;
http://www.weprintcolor.com/upload.htm Specifications for
sending files; http://www.weprintcolor.com/SendingFiles.htm

Once you have gathered education with the terms us printers use
you will understand , more clearly, what you are getting for
your money. You will also appear more educated in your future
purchases.

The moral of my story? Buyers need to be more armed with
knowledge to make an educated purchase and sellers need to be
sharp, knowledgeable and willing to share this
knowledge…Everybody wins.

There are a lot of things nowadays that we don’t really want to talk about. These are everyday things that we do and don’t even think about what we are doing exactly. We get so focused on our everyday routine that it never occurs to us how dirty we sometimes play. Society has always been competitive, but today life is perhaps more competitive than in any previous era. Since childhood children are taught how to show that they are the best, the strongest, the smartest the very best. This is where from competition starts. And we continue to compete against each other every hour to prove somebody something that we really don’t have to prove. People are used to think that their lives, possessions, belongings are the best, the biggest the most attractive. That keeps us wanting for more and we never stop thinking that it will be enough for us to be satisfied. But no, we continue to jump higher than our heads and push ourselves to that point when it doesn’t matter how fair you play, you just play to get whatever you need. Why is this happening? We swear that we have overcame that animal instinct in us and are now to call ourselves very civilized and very educated. But never the less we continue to get our teeth into each other’s necks and rip muscles apart. I guess, there is nothing that can be really done to those instincts that we were born with. It’s true if to speak about any person. Race, financial, or social status doesn’t matter. When we are accused of playing dirty, everybody tries to prove the jury wrong even if jury is them. A human being is a unique personality that has never been before and will never again exists. It is a matter of time when he discovers that he also possesses that curse of the humans that and can not be a master of it. Every day one gets up, takes whatever needed and goes out into the open.

No matter what is one occupied with, what is essential for him, he follows his instinct not thinking about what it may turn into. Psychologists get deep into their researched topics and field to find the answer to the question why people are likely to cheat, lie and fight in difficult situations. Human nature will be the answer. Since kinder garden we are taught how to differentiate between good and evil. Loyal teachers read a lot of books and teach how to be a good citizen but, going out of the building start a new line of the day, which is full of that dirt that is considered a taboo for children. At school they make up different essay topics to be sure those children are aware of how to behave properly. The main essay topic is “Love and Peace on Earth”. With some corrections of course but the aim is one and only, to show how we are to behave in society. But when school and essays are over, young generation forgets about the moral aspect of life and plays the same dirty game that their ancestors had played hundreds of years before.

Everybody knows the decipher of the famous “SOS”. Save our souls, it says and that means do everything you have to do but save the mind and body you possess. So that is exactly what we are doing, going up using other people’s heads as the ladder. No one can say why it is so important for us to be on top. Is it the basic instinct of survival, or is it just the desire to satisfy inner ego and let others down by own example. We try to keep to the positive, but it is impossible to do under the constant influence of others pushing you to the middle of nowhere, teaching you the laws of survival that you have to accept, and knowing that you have no choice but to go with it. No one is to blame for the destructive attitude that we possess during doing business. But there is always hope for us to get better and correct mistakes. Human conscience is another curse of ours that makes us rewind all we’ve done during the day and let the bad go. It is quite natural that humans should look for a positive result in everything they do, even if it is created with wrong attitude. We’ll continue to play dirty and be competitive. But now we at least think before playing dirty and every time we hit under the belt, our conscience gives a powerful blow to our brain to remind that there is always a control freak inside that will never drop the smallest fault of yours. And that’s how we live, in an eternal struggle between angels and demons of human soul.

Tyler Benson is a senior writer of BestEssays.com - Term Paper, Custom Essay writing service. He has 17 years of experience as the professor at several universities. Tyler Benson has been providing competent assistance to students in finding proper essay topics during all his remarkable teaching experience. Currently he is working on creating his term paper research and essay topic.

Every storyteller begins a story with a particular issue to deal with: what to reveal, when, and how, to set a story into motion. The trap is that to be obscure is to have a dramatically weak opening; an obscure opening risks failing to offer a reason to enter or stay in a story’s world. Worse, it can communicate the storyteller is unclear about what a story is about, or how to express that in an engaging way. To be too obvious about a story’s purpose also undermines an opening. It can come across as a kind of lecture about the purpose of the story; unfortunately, nothing is set into motion until the lecture is over. The idea is to be dramatically suggestive in a way that draws an audience into a story’s world and continues to offer reasons to say. This often means embedding a story’s dramatic ideas inside action.

An example of what this process looks like when done well is the opening of Chinatown. Jake Gittes is introduced as being detached from a man’s reaction to pictures of his wife having sex in the woods with another man. This introduces the core issue for this story, Jake trying to be moral in an amoral world through detachment. This sets up the outcome of this story’s plot, the tragedy that ensures when Jake tries to maintain his moral code through detachment and someone is killed.

The core story idea of this story is carefully embedded in the action of this opening scene.

To help writers make a distinction between being dramatically suggestive, obvious (also called ‘on the nose’ in screenwriting), and obscure, I have them start an opening scene by plainly stating its dramatic purpose, then how that purpose is suggested in the action of the scene. Then, how they could write the scene in a way that completely obscures what the scene is about. Lastly, how they could take what is obvious and make it dramatically suggestive. Not stated directly, but clearly infusing the action. Embedded in the action.

I’ve found that once writers are guided away from this initial tendency toward obscurity to avoid being obvious, they can put more passion, more feeling, more sense of purpose in opening scenes with the same number of words. It liberates them to write to a point, instead of away from the dramatic point of a scene.

Examples of a deeper story issue being embedded in character actions and plot events in a story’s opening scenes can be found in any well-told film story. One of my personal film favorites, Toto le Hero, begins with an old man being shot, then his voice over that mocks the police investigating the crime. His taunts speak to the issue of identity and reality, and set in motion a powerful story about one man’s quest to gain an identity he felt was taken from him as a child.

The Limey, a great film directed by Steven Soderberg, begins with a black screen and a man speaking urgently, “Tell me, tell me about Jenny.” This sets in motion a father’s journey to discovery the cause of his daughter’s death. Ultimately, he discovers his role in that death. A haunting film that suggests the main character’s mental fragmentation via how the action of scenes are staged. Dialogue from one scene overplays the action of a different scene in a way that heightens the effect of the overall scene. It’s a kind of filmmaking that requires the storyteller understand the different levels of each scene, and how combining elements can create a deeper understanding for the audience about a character.

To help writers understand this process of embedding story ideas in action, I take them on a journey that begins with watching films that are quite transparent.

Sleepless in Seattle begins with a man in grief over the death of his wife, who, when told he’ll meet someone new and fall in love, replies forcefully that he’ll never fall in love again. This sets in motion a story about his recovering from grief and regaining the ability to love again.

One Fine Day begins with a single mother obviously struggling to pay the bills and deal with a young son who wants a father. Beginning the story with one lousy, lousy night sets in motion this story about why she could use one fine day that includes a loving, generous man. But she meets George Clooney instead, and he seems to be anything but what she needs or wants in her life. Ultimately, through sharing an increasingly disasterous day, they find true love together. This is a nicely told story that goes over familiar ground while evoking a journey of feelings for a receptive audience–those who enjoy romantic films.

In the movie Pitch Black, characters crash onto a planet where it seems the sun never sets. They are forced to find water and escape the heat. The very environment of the planet attacks them. Then, when the three suns set and darkness sets it, the dark unleashes ravenous, nightmarish creatures who attack with no mercy. The story puts its characters and its audience into a world where what’s out there in the dark is just as fearsome as we might imagine. This is a story built around a very basic idea, fear of the night, fear of an unending day with no night.

Die Hard is about a man trying to reconcile with the wife he loves, and how defeating the terrorists who threaten her life both shows him how much he truly loves her and helps him find a way to reconcile with her. Through risking his life to save her, she comes to appreciate the depth of his love for her.

Lethal Weapon is about a man who’s died inside who comes back to life. Mel Gibson’s character is introduced with a gun barrel in his mouth as he contemplates suicide because of his loss of his wife, and ends with him at his wife’s graveside, his character ready to let go and move forward in life.

Both Die Hard and Lethal Weapon also have a high quota of explosions, general mayhem, and heroes vanquishing evil bad guys. They also have something deeper embedded in that action. Ideas about grief, loss, and renewal. The most painful scripts I read are action scripts that are just an on-going series of mayhem. Characters die by the dozens and no one in the story cares. Unfortunately, if no one in a script cares about a character’s death, why should I? Or any reader?

This isn’t a suggestion that an action film read like an art film. I teach that action films provides the emotional/physical thrills of a roller coaster ride. An art film asks, why do people enjoy roller coaster rides? Both types of stories are enjoyable when well-told.

An art film can be action-oriented and expressive. A Room with a View opens with two narrow minded, repressed women fussing about finding themselves in a room without a promised view. They quickly meet two expressive men who have a room with a view, who offer to trade. This sets in motion a story about how everything in life can change depending on the inner view one has of events. It is a quickly-paced, engaging story.

I’ve been told that suggesting someone begin a story with action that speaks to the human condition sounds pretentious. The deeper issue for me is to show the great divide that separates a storyteller from a struggling writer. On one side, the storyteller uses words that are lively, vibrant, that resonate because they DO speak to story ideas that resonate with an audience. On the other side, struggling writers who go in circles trying to find some way to make a passive description of things create the effect of a story.

Because there’s such a premium on an economy of words with screenwriting, understanding how to easily and naturally embed story ideas into action is part of the foundation of writing well-told stories as screenplays.

Bill Johnson is author of A Story is a Promise and a popular workshop leader at writing conferences around the US. He explores principles of storytelling through the reviews of popular books, movies and plays at his web site, http://www.storyispromise.com

The technical communications profession involves a unique mix of technical and communication skills, which is not easy to find. Most managers have had the experience of interviewing and subsequently hiring a candidate who later turns out not to be the right person for the job. This situation begs the question of how to identify which candidate is a good fit for a given position. The answer is that there are five key activities that make the difference between a successful hiring decision and a not-so-successful one. We have all been on both sides of the interview, and this article will attempt to make you, the interviewer, more successful.

This article covers five key activities, including:

1. Writing a detailed job description
2. Making sure the setting/environment is conducive
3. Conducting a programmed interview
4. Using multiple interviewers
5. Considering testing

WRITING A DETAILED JOB DESCRIPTION

Probably the biggest mistake managers make is to be under-prepared, from the moment they write the job description. Because the job description encapsulates requirements for a given position, you must first have a good grasp of what the position entails, from personality traits to knowledge to skills and experience.

You may include any of the following qualifications in a job description:

* Years of experience (for example, three years of technical editing in a DoD environment)
* Degrees, certifications (for example, B.A. in English or Journalism)
* Physical qualifications (for example, a Web-design position might require color vision)
* Personality traits (for example, excellent communication skills or attention to detail)
* Specialized skills or knowledge (for example, ability to write JavaScript)

Ultimately, the job description is the inspiration for any subsequent interview, so defining the position in detail up front will make finding the right person for the job much easier. Plus, it will help the candidate understand whether the job is right for him or her.

MAKING SURE THE SETTING/ENVIRONMENT IS CONDUCIVE

The setting in which an interview takes place is important and can make the difference between a good interview experience and a bad one. The candidate deserves your full attention and you will be better able to make a decision if you are fully engaged without distractions. Make sure that, at a minimum, your setting entails the following:

* Quiet: Set your phone to “Make Busy” and do not take phone calls or allow interruptions. Make sure you are in a quiet place (for example, an office with a closed door or a conference room). If you are sitting behind your desk, move away from your PC and turn its volume to mute.

* Comfort: Show the candidate where the restrooms are and offer coffee or water if appropriate. If you have a drink, make sure you offer one to your candidate. Offer to take the candidate’s coat or identify a coat hook/rack.

* Time: Adhere to your schedule. If you are interviewing more than one candidate and/or have other meetings scheduled around the interview, make sure one appointment does not overlap the next. Neither of you should be forced to rush through the interview.

* Information: Give your business card to the candidate, so he or she does not have to struggle for your name and will have your name/address handy when writing a thank-you note.

* Invitation: Invite the candidate to sit down. Where the person sits will tell you a great deal, and this will make the person feel more comfortable.

The environment can make the difference between a good interview and a bad one. I once interviewed in an office that was once a closet. The four interviewers sat on the edge of the desk, while I sat considerably below them in a chair. It was intimidating to say the least and it taught me a lot about candidate comfort.

CONDUCTING A PROGRAMMED INTERVIEW

A programmed interview involves defining questions up front, along with acceptable answers, which will tell you whether a candidate possesses each of the qualifications for a given job. One important caveat: consult with your personnel department or manager and make sure you understand the EEOC guidelines as well as the kinds of questions you can and cannot legally ask. To conduct a programmed interview:

* Develop a list of standard questions you will ask all candidates.

* Make sure your questions are open-ended, but limited in scope. (For example, “tell me about a time you had conflicting comments in a document review and how you resolved it” or “tell me about a time you had a tight deadline and you were asked to increase the scope of a document.”)

* Identify a list of minimum acceptable answers. (For example, acceptable answers to the previous question might be “I would schedule a meeting with both reviewers and try to reach a consensus” or “I would work to gain a better understanding of both comments and identify a solution that would work for all parties.”)

* Ask a negative question so you can see how the person handles stress and conflict (for example, “tell me about a situation where you failed” or “tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss”).

* At the most, you should talk only 25-30% of the time. By mostly listening and observing, you will gain maximum information about each candidate.

* Leave time for the candidate to ask questions. You will see whether the person is prepared and/or took time to research your company. A candidate who does not ask questions probably did not prepare adequately for the interview.

* Observe each candidate. Ask yourself whether each has a business-like presentation and whether they look the part of the job. I also like to see how well they can articulate their role on a given project. It is a bad sign when candidates seem unfamiliar with their own work.

As important as the tangible requirements are for the job, so are the intangible ones. Look for a firm handshake, direct eye contact, professional bearing, and appropriate clothing.

Understanding how to ask questions is very important and there are numerous references on the subject. Years ago, I was asked during an interview whether I planned to have more children. Of course, the question was an illegal one, but a surprising number of people still manage to ask similar questions. Being prepared and informed is the best way to avoid these pitfalls.

USING MULTIPLE INTERVIEWERS

Having more than one person interview a candidate increases your perspective. What you may see and what someone else may see can be quite different. When you are trying to choose between two very good candidates, a second or third opinion will make the decision more clear. You might consider having any of the following participate:

* Technical personnel (perhaps an engineer or programmer who may act as a subject matter expert)

* Other department staff (co-workers can provide excellent feedback as to whether they will feel comfortable with the candidate)

* Personnel staff

Although you may be the person with the ultimate hiring authority, you will find it very useful to be able to talk each candidate over with other people. You may find that they like a candidate you did not or vice-versa. In general, consensus hiring will produce better results than a unilateral hiring decision, so take their feedback seriously.

One manager I interviewed for this article uses a weighted system when considering a candidate: 30% skills, 30% personality, and 40% business-like presentation. In my own experience, the latter two are the greatest predictors of a candidate’s success. When candidates don’t work out, the reason tends to involve how they handle conflict or how well they communicate. You will, of course, need to develop your own system.

CONSIDERING TESTING

Although I have not yet used a test for candidates, I have certainly taken them as part of a job application and I am considering using them in the future. You cannot be sure the candidate shows you work they have actually done, but you will be able to see their work if you give them a test. Many companies develop their own tests. You may consider anything from a personality profile to a writing and/or editing test.

IN CONCLUSION

There is no boilerplate method or template that you can apply directly to your department, group, or company. However, you can use this process as a model to develop your own own process, guidelines, and interview questions. What you look for and what someone else looks for in a candidate are likely to be quite different. But by developing a process, defining the position, and nailing down your questions well in advance before interviewing candidates, you vastly increase the likelihood of a successful hiring decision.

About the Author

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As we look back at another year, and forward to another, there’s time to reflect on how our websites performed in the last year and decide on what improvements need to be made for the New Year ahead. This is the first part of a two-part article that looks at 10 things that a website owner can do to improve their websites for the New Year.

Did your site perform as well as it could have in 2004?

If you own an ecommerce store, did it receive as many orders as you’d have liked during the festive period? Did you get lots of support requests asking for further information? Did your site suffer from a high abandonment rate? We all need our sites to be successful and produce a return on investment on the cost of promotion and advertising. However, it’s easy to be taken in by technology and miss the basics that will help improve the performance of your website, decrease abandonment and increase conversion.

The list below identifies 10 ways in which you can improve your website. All of the improvements can be made without major investment, new technology or the need for additional resources:

• 1. Ensure that you make your USP/benefits clear on every page
• 2. Ensure that provide improved ways in which your visitors can contact you
• 3. Improve the quality of the information on your site such that they can make informed purchasing decisions
• 4. Ensure that your site is accessible to all visitors and search engines
• 5. Add new ways of delivering content to 3rd parties
• 6. Improve conversion through removing unnecessary registration and requests for too much information
• 7. Offer greater customer service through not only meeting ecommerce regulations but surpassing them
• 8. Improve the site such that it offers an improved user-experience
• 9. Stop worrying about page rank and start focusing on customers
• 10. Take time to understand how visitors use your site and learn from that knowledge

1. Ensure that you make your USP/benefits clear on every page

The Internet breaks down many boundaries. Not only has the Internet made it possible for everyone to trade online, but it has also removed geographical barriers making it far easy to purchase products from overseas. However, as an ecommerce site owner, this leads to increased competition. In the high-street, you may have had a handful of competitors. Now, you may have hundreds or thousands. Therefore, it’s necessary to stand out from the crowd and clearly identify your business and websites USPs and benefits. These may be:

• Price
• Product quality
• Service quality
• Product knowledge
• Product uniqueness
• Product availability
• Free delivery

No matter what your USPs are, make sure that they are clearly identified on your website and make sure that these USPs are visitor-focused by asking yourself the question, how does the USP benefit the visitor.

2. Ensure that provide improved ways in which your visitors can contact you

Visitors are bound to have questions regarding the products/services that you provide as well as about your business. In order to assist visitors make informed decisions, it’s important that you provide the answers to these questions on your site. There are a number of ways of doing this. These include :

• Frequently asked questions – as you receive new questions from visitors, ensure that you add them to your FAQ
• About us information
• Improved product information

However, it’s clearly not always possible to pre-empt the full range of questions a visitor may ask. Therefore, make sure that you make it easy for visitors to contact you if they have questions. Also, ensure that these ways of communicating with you are clearly identified on your website by locating them in the header area of each page. Popular means of allowing visitors to contact you include:

• Email
• Telephone – clearly identify the hours that you can be contacted
• Contact us form – an improvement on email as you can direct visitors to include information to enable you to be able to provide an improved service
• Live Help – only provide live help if you are able to support it full time
• Call me – make it easier by calling visitors back at a mutually convenient time
• VoIP (e.g. Skype or Vonage) – save money by using Internet telephony
• Ticket-based support
• Forums

3. Improve the quality of the information on your site such that they can make informed purchasing decisions

Unless you sell unique products or services, there’s the possibility that you use product information provided by the product manufacturer or supplier. Although this information can be very detailed, in most cases, it isn’t or the information is targeted more at those selling the product rather than those wanting to purchase it.

Due to the ease in which the information can be used on your site, it’s likely to be used on many of your competitor’s sites too.

Stand out from the crowd and provide personalised content about the products and services that you sell. After all, to be able to sell your products and services, you need to be familiar with their use, features and unique selling points. Make sure that the product details you provide include as much information as possible in an easy-to-read and enticing format.

4. Ensure that your site is accessible to all visitors and search engines

Many ecommerce stores remain inaccessible to many visitors and search engines. Given the need to ensure that all websites are accessible to visitors with disabilities, it is very important to ensure that your website meets the WCAG guidelines for website accessibility. For more information about the guidelines, check out the RNIB’s Web Access Centre at http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/code/public_rnib008789.hcsp.

Some of the most important visitors to your website are search engine spiders. These spiders visit the pages on your site and are used to rank the pages within the search engines for particular keywords and phrases. The spiders follow links to your site from other sites, and then follow the links within the site. However, there are certain impediments that may prevent spiders from getting to some or all pages within your website. These include:

• Use of JavaScript menus – some JavaScript menus do not include links to internal pages within the website that search engine can follow. If possible, replace the JavaScript menu with an alternate CSS based menu.
• Use of dynamic URL parameters – search engines are getting more tolerant to having multiple parameters in URLS. However, it is still advised that no more than 3 or 4 parameters are used.
• Use of session IDs – Many ecommerce stores require the use of session information in order to be able to maintain information about visitors as they interact with the store. However, if session IDs are passed as URL parameters, they can prevent search engines from spidering the website.

It is very important that these impediments are removed in order that your site can be completely spidered. For example, an ecommerce site may have many thousands of pages (associated with the products). However, through the use of too many dynamic URL parameters or session IDs, the major search engines many only be able to list a handful. This therefore gives less content available within the search engines associated with your website that could potentially be found by a search engine user.

5. Add new ways of delivering content to 3rd parties

Article and news syndication using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is becoming widespread across the Internet. However, to date, syndication of content for ecommerce stores hasn’t been as popular. This is set to change and ecommerce site owners start to use content syndication to keep their visitors and customers up to date with their:

• Latest news
• Special offers

The use of content syndication can be used to replace the need to publish opt-in newsletters. This saves you time and ensures that your visitors/customers are always up-to-date with the latest developments on your website.

In part 2 of this article, we will provide more detail about the following tips for website success in 2005:

• 6. Improve conversion through removing unnecessary registration and requests for too much information
• 7. Offer greater customer service through not only meeting ecommerce regulations but surpassing them
• 8. Improve the site such that it offers an improved user-experience
• 9. Stop worrying about page rank and start focusing on customers
• 10. Take time to understand how visitors use your site and learn from that knowledge

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Saunders is the Managing Director of Site-Report.com Limited (http://www.site-report.com), a UK internet consultancy offering holistic advice to UK SMEs on all aspects of website development and promotion including usability, accessibility, ecommerce regulations, internet marketing and search engine optimisation.