Posted inA mix Careers Coach Blog How to look for a job Work and career tips and advice

How to act during a job interview

Congratulations – your CV has done the talking for you, and you have been asked to attend a job interview. Now you get your chance to prove that you’re the best person for the job.

how to act during a job interviewThere are many things that you can do that can take some of the pressure off during an interview. The way that you behave is one of the most important. It’s not all in the words that come out of your mouth, but often has a lot to do with your body language.

Interviewers are not just wondering if you are skilled enough for the job, they are often wondering if you would fit in nicely with you the rest of the team. Your personality is a big part of your interview and can make all the difference in you getting the job or not.

Here are some of the things that you should pay attention to during an interview:

Can you keep a home spotless with children in the house?
Posted inA mix

Can you keep a home spotless with children in the house?

Beyond the usual eight to 10 hours when the children are firmly tucked away in bed, and you’ve slogged for a couple of hours to tidy up toys and scrub of strange things from surfaces, walls and tables that you can’t imagine the ingredients of, it is possible to keep your home clean with the kids around…if you have a plan!

20120416-162752.jpgHere are some tips to keep on top of the mess and stay sane:

1. Slog alone and tidy alone for life!

Mess in the home is not created by you alone, so it takes a joint effort to get things clean again.Get everyone involved in the housework from day one and you’ll start to cultivate a culture of cleanliness.

Everything from tidying up toys to sprucing up rugs with carpet cleaning shampoo can be done by children if you teach them. But if you want to play the martyr, you’ll be slogging for life, so start while they’re young and it will make cleaning seem effortless.

Posted inWork from home how-tos

Why accounting is flexible enough for mums at work and in business

There are some careers that just have flexibility written all over it, and at motherswhowork.co.uk, we love the flexibility that accountancy can give to mothers.

accounting careersWhether you work for an employer flexibly, or establish your own business , accountancy can give you the flexibility you need to raise a family, and you can choose just how high you choose to climb the ladder corporately or commercially.

If you have a head for numbers, are organised and can time manage with your eyes closed, you have the natural skills that any good accountant should have. There are many opportunities to work in different areas of accountancy, which are open to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Are sales sluggish on your site? Here are two tips to help boost sales overnight
Posted inHow to sell online Starting and running your business

Are sales sluggish on your site? Here are two tips to help boost sales overnight

On the back of the success of our sister set, www.babyonboardbadge.co.uk, we know that selling online is a lucrative way for anyone to make money. And for mums, it can give the earning potential and flexibility that many crave.

make an online saleIs this your dream, too? Or maybe you already have an online store but aren’t making the money you know you can and should be making…

Once you’re successful enough to establish your own business online, you should move on to coming up with ways on how to increase your sales overnight. Here are two quick and effective tips to help you seeing a change in your fortunes:

Posted inCareers Coach Blog Work and career tips and advice

“Take your job and shove it!” Is that really the best way to resign?

The answer in short is no! Quitting a job is a choice that successful people often have to make. This article gives some helpful tips on how to leave a job without leaving a bad impression. Don’t burn a bridge when you are building your career.

quit your job, resign from jobWe’ve all dreamt about it at some point in our lives – being able to tell a boss we hate to stick their job where the sun doesn’t shine. If you haven’t felt like that before, or dreamt it, then you are blessed!

But seriously, when it comes to resigning from a job, you have to do it the right way. Many industries are incestuous, and someone always know someone else so the last thing you want to do is commit career suicide with unnecessary rudeness that gives someone enough ammunition to scupper any chance you have of getting another job!

Sometimes it’s an easy choice to leave a company. However, one of the most important choices that you can make in your career is to leave your current employer in the right way. Like any other relationship, there are faults and virtues with every company. At the end of a relationship, people tend to focus on the faults.

Looking for a new job: top mistakes to avoid!
Posted inHow to look for a job Work and career tips and advice

Looking for a new job: top mistakes to avoid!

Have you heard about George Osborne’s budget and the pressure it will have on working families? You only need one working parent in the home who works a decent salary to start feeling the effects of the tax penalties (and he’s even reduced the threshold for the higher rate of tax, so if you were okish before, you may still feel the pinch!).

mistakes to avoid on your CVSo, for many mums, the reality has hit home – it’s time to either start looking for a job, start looks for a job with more hours, or a job that pays a lot more. And that means making sure your CV stands out from the rest.

Yes – it might be tempting to print it on bright red paper or fluorescent paper (remember those days?), but there’s probably a barrage of applicants who are going to do the same, and it looks tacky anyway. Plus, with a lot of empowers recruiting online these days, you might not even have an option to print at all!

Posted inWork from home how-tos

How can a private tutor help your child with their maths work

Your child’s school activity is falling behind and with all the juggling you have to do with work and their hectic school calendar, are you finding it difficult to give them the extra time they need to work through work and get them back on track?

Maths tutor for childrenIf your child needs extra help at school, it’s best to get some help as soon as possible, so that the problem doesn’t grow out of hand. Not having the time, or lacking in the knowledge yourself (this is usually the case where maths is concerned!), are valid reasons for you to get a private tutor for the child.

A private tutor will help your child with difficult homework assignments, will explain the different concepts or ideas in maths, and will teach him how to study efficiently for tests.

Single mums beware: look for work now or lose your benefits…
Posted inWork from home how-tos

Single mums beware: look for work now or lose your benefits…

…that’s the type of letter that the government is sending out to thousands of single mothers.

It’s not that long ago that one parents used to be able to stay on benefits until their children reached 16 years of age, but four years ago the Labour government reduced that age to seven years. Now, the Coalition government want to bring that age down further still, and single parents whose youngest child is five years of age are being told that they should go back to work, or have risk having their benefits removed as “last resort”for two weeks.

Single parents will be receiving a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) telling them that they can no longer stay at home but must be actively looking for work.

Posted inWork from home how-tos

The perfect date: why it’s crucial in keeping customers coming back

Customers are the reason you have a business. Without them, no matter what you do, there isn’t any business.

customer serviceTherefore, you should approach customer service the same way you approached a hot date… Remember how you spent hours getting preened, speaking to your best friend about what to wear, what to say and feeling nervously happy because your date meant so much to you?

Well, if you put that into your business you can’t go far wrong. Nurture it with good habits and relentless care and make each date (customer visit) build on the previous one. Each sale does the same in building customer retention.

So, here are the simple suggestions for “dating” your customers and enhancing your business relationships:

Flyers printed, website is live…now what? How to get paying customers
Posted inWork from home how-tos

Flyers printed, website is live…now what? How to get paying customers

Congrats on taking the first steps to getting your business and it’s promotion on the right track. Now what? This is a question that we get asked a lot on Motherswhowork.co.uk, and the answer remains the same…no customers and no traffic equal no sales and no business!

But many mumpreneurs expect to start seeing money as soon as they launch their new website – just because it’s online…but it takes a little while before you can start to see that kind of traffic, so you have to start generating it in other ways:

Posted inWhat's in the news?

15 minutes of fame: how to become a media bimbo

Bimboism is rampant in today’s media climate – how many times do we see Z listers squandering their 15 minutes of fame with empty words and idiotic antics?

Yet, how much of your time do you waste watching reality TV, listening to their interviews on the radio, and reading more about reality stars in newspapers and magazines? Compare that to how much of your time you spend on current affairs, politics or global news… Unless you have a keen interest in the latter, you probably find yourself drawn into some reality ‘star’ story at some point in your week

Becoming a media bimbo is comparable to what reality TV stars do – they het their 15 minutes of fame and they milk it dry, but at e end of those 15 they are a household name, and have a few endorsement deals under their belt, Max Clifford looking after their media interests and a decent bank balance.

Here are some tips on what you can do when the media come knocking on your door to make sure your 15 minutes is stretched out and leveraged as much as possible.

Posted inWhat's in the news?

Working mums – this is why you’re tired and your other half isn’t!

Eight out of 10 married women do more housework than their husbands
Tax relief for cleaners and nannies would entrench gender injustice for middle earners

women do more cleaning than menEight out of 10 married women (77%) do more housework than their husbands, according to new analysis from the think tank IPPR.

IPPR analysis shows that just one in 10 married men (10%) do an equal amount of housework as their wives, while just over one in 10 (13%) of women say that their husbands do more housework than they do.

If you’re a working mum, it will explain why you’re always tired and stressed and your other half seems to be unaffected by the busy working week.

Posted inWhat's in the news?

Video tutorial: Online branding, and why it’s important no matter how small your online business is

If a customer find you on a social network with a particular logo and colour background, then goes to your website and sees something completely different, do you think they’d just turn a blind eye and carry on?

online brandingPerhaps, some might, but largely, to many buyers, this may raise confusion, or make them think you’re not professional enough to buy from. This is why online branding is important – well one of the reasons, at least.

Watch this video tutorial to see what your brand says about you, and how you can make sure you establish an online brand without breaking the bank, and so you don’t lose customers.

Posted inWhat's in the news?

Thinking of taking payments online? Three things you should know about choosing a payment gateway

One of the most lucrative ways to make money online is to sell a product or service that people want, need and/or desire.

selling onlineBut to do this, you need to have a good, reliable and secure payment gateway to accept those payments. Without this, you’ll be stuck on the Dark Ages, and will be losing out on potential sales – we all want things as quickly and as fast as we want these days, and if we can’t get it from one place, we will go to the next. Don’t let your customers start going to your competitors because you don’t give them the ease of purchase that they do.

What is a Payment Gateway?
Payment gateways allow websites to accept payments from customers electronically (i.e. card payments or payments from the balance of the customer’s payment account).

A payment gateway is not the same as a merchant account
Many people confuse merchant accounts with payment gateways but they are not the same. Merchant account services act, for the most part, as a liaison between your business bank account and the payment gateway. When a customer orders a product from your website their card is processed via the payment gateway. The money is then moved over to the merchant account service. The merchant account service then moves the money to your business bank account.

How to stay focused and get results in your home business
Posted inWhat's in the news?

How to stay focused and get results in your home business

Working from home takes a lot of self discipline…on your part and on the part of family and friends who think you’re just at home working on a hobby!

Knowing how to stay focused will help you get the message across to everyone else, and help you achieve as much as possible working from home.

how to stay focused when working from homeWhen you don’t have a regular job to go to where your time is in the control of someone else, it can be difficult not to procrastinate. So, make your mind strong and firm to stay focused purely on the work you need to do during the set times you have agreed with yourself to work.

Posted inWhat's in the news?

Three ways mums can make more money from home

The cost of living is increasing – fact. Childcare costs are soaring – fact. And employers, though they like to sound as inclusive as possible, are not always to accommodate the flexibility in work that working mums need. Now, the government is set to put their boot in with benefit cuts that will mean that many working families, particularly single mums, may have no choice but to stop working because they simply can’t afford to work.

benefit cuts are crippling families in the UKIf this sounds like your situation and you’re looking for ways to bring in some money but just can’t see how you can do it, don’t lose hope.

The first goal for your home business should be to find ways to create steady cash flow. You’ll need cash flow to operate and promote your home business, and to secure a lucrative income for yourself. There are many different ways to create a cash stream for your home business. Here are three ideas to get you started.

Posted inWhat's in the news?

Do you need a mentor to be successful in business?

No matter how good you are at your craft, there really is nothing like being able to have a mentor who you can discuss your ideas with, and who will help you save time and money by giving you tips and advice and even contacts to help you get on and stay on the right path.

mentoring for business mumsMost business owners and successful online entrepreneurs will admit that a mentor was a big part of their success. There is a good reason for this – you can spend time trying to figure it all out yourself, and make mistakes along the way, of benefit from an experienced mentor’s experiences and start making a success of your business a lot faster.