5 Common Mistakes Job Seekers Make During an Interview

Congratulations! You've landed an interview for that job that you applied for... but what good is it to get an interview if you're just going to blow it? Listed below are just a couple of common job interview mistakes, blunders, and errors that prospects make.

Talking Too Much

Sure, when you’re in an interview, people want to learn about you, your skills, and your accomplishments. However, that doesn't mean that you should go into a twenty-minute diatribe on your past achievements or drone on about how you solved a simple technical problem. Keep your answers succinct and to the point; if the interviewer wants more, they'll ask. By keeping your answers to the point, your interviewer will be better able to follow your answers, making you appear better prepared.

Dressing Down

First impressions are important, and the first thing your interviewer will notice is how you dress; your physical appearance can speak volumes to someone who is meeting you for the first time. Even if you know that the firm allows employees to dress casually, you should proceed on the conservative side and show up in neat, professional clothing; you won't get penalized for over dressing, but can possibly get dinged by dressing too casually.

Arriving Late

As mentioned above, first impressions count and can have an impact on your job prospects... but did you know it's possible to make a bad first impression before your interviewer even meets with you?

Running late suggests that you don't care about the job that you're interviewing for as well as a lack of respect for your interviewers time. In addition, it shows that you lack basic time management skills, so make sure to take the proper precautions so that you arrive on time, or a few minutes (5 - 10) early (arriving too early also suggestions poor time management skills). By going the extra step to try and get to your interview on time, you'll be able to give yourself a cushion in case something unforeseen comes up.

Not Having Any Questions Prepared 

As well as being prepared for questions you may be asked, also be ready to ask your own questions. Do not be caught off guard when the interviewer inevitably asks, "Do you have any questions for me?" Be prepared with several questions, about the company, the position, or the corporate culture. At an initial interview, do not ask about salary, benefits, or workload. You do not want to appear only interested in money, perks, or having an easy job. You want to show your willingness and ability to do the best job possible, and portray enthusiasm for the position. Not having any questions prepared makes a job candidate seem uninterested, unmotivated, and unprepared.

Asking About Your Salary Too Soon

While it may be one of the determining factors in your decision to work at a company, don't talk money too soon while in the interview. Many interviewers will tell you the salary and benefits that come with the job, though some will ask you what your salary expectations are. Either way, follow the interviewers lead when it comes to discussing salary. You don't want to look like someone who is just in it for the money and doesn't care about the job as it may work against you when compared to other suitable applicants.

Take the time to prepare before your interview, so you don't have to stress out about blunders after it.

Using LinkedIn to Generate More Business

LinkedIn is a fantastic network for those looking to grow their business, boost their visibility, and grow their professional contact list, finding new leads, snagging more business and so much more. Check out the following stats to see why LinkedIn is such a great social network when it comes to growing your business:.

• LinkedIn users are affluent: Over half the users on LinkedIn  earn more than $60K per year and over a third earn more than $100K
• LinkedIn users are educated: Nearly half have a college degree and over a quarter have a graduate degree.
• LinkedIn users love the site: Nearly a quarter of the users are on the site a minimum of 30 times per month.

LinkedIn is definitely something that you should incorporate into your marketing strategy to help grow your business by boosting visibility and reputation while getting more leads and finding new contacts. Here are a few tips to help you on your journey to generating more business with LinkedIn.

Have a Complete, Optimized Profile

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It's important to be found if you want to start using LinkedIn to generate business, and the best way to make sure you are found by prospective clients as well as colleagues and friends is to make sure you complete your profile fully and optimize it.

Make sure that you include your previous job and education history as well as uploading a professional photograph of yourself. You should also start thinking about what keywords your ideal clients would be searching for to find the service or product you're offering. 

Have a Compelling Headline

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It's not enough for you to be found in the search results. You'll show up along with other people in the search, so you need to find a way to distinguish yourself from the other results. The best way to do this is by writing a compelling headline that will get a user to click-through to your profile.

The best way of writing a headline that's effective is to come up with one or two keywords for SEO purposes and use them to create an attention-grabbing statement. For example, if you're offering a service in a local area, then you should think about including that location as your keyword within your headline.

Give People a Reason to Take Action

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With people finding your profile and clicking through, it's now important that your profile compels the user to take action, whatever that may be. The first section that a LinkedIn user will see is your Summary section. (You should make sure your Summary section has relevant keywords dispersed in to increase the number of people who find you).

The summary section should be focused on the client and what you can do for them instead of focusing on yourself and your past achievements. This may seem counterintuitive to what you may think about how to use  LinkedIn, but as a business-building tool (we are not looking at job seekers), people are looking at what you can do for them, which is why you want your summary to be client focused. 

With this in mind, be sure your profile speaks directly to your ideal clients. Begin your Summary section with a paragraph about who you are, share some of your story and position your credibility. The rest must speak to your specific target market, who they are, what their problems are and of course what solutions you provide.

Grow Your Network

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In addition to being found in search, it's important to grow your network, as you'll be found more easily if you are in someone's first, second or third level network or are a member of the same group. One good way of growing your network is by posing and answering questions that are relevant to your field in the LinkedIn Answers Section, which will allow you to make new connections and establish your expertise at the same time. 

Groups are another great way to grow your network by connecting with like-minded people. Instead of joining every group that's related to your niche or expertise, you should find groups that have members who are active and engaged. Make sure to join conversations, adding your own viewpoint or expertise when appropriate or create your own conversation as a way to help others. 

Follow Up with New Connections

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Make sure that you take the time to follow up with any new connections who have taken the effort to reach out to you as well as the the ones you’ve reached out to and requested to connect with.

Send a welcome message after someone accepts your connection request or sends you a connection request. Thank them for connecting with you and if you can, offer them something of value, to help lay down a solid foundation which will allow you to generate additional business.

Stay connected to your network, reach out to them regularly, add value for them and move the relationship forward. This means whenever possible, move the relationship offline and have a telephone call or an email. You’d be surprised at how much business still happens the old-fashioned way!

The power of LinkedIn is in the network. Therefore, the more involved your contacts are in LinkedIn, the more powerful a tool it becomes.

Iconic Mind is an IT consulting firm, based in Maryland, that works with clients so that they can make the best use of technology while focusing on data security and network accessibility. Connect with Iconic Mind on LinkedIn or on Twitter.

Related Articles:

• The 5 Best Ways to Expand your LinkedIn Network
• How To Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out
• 3 Easy Ways to Strengthen Your LinkedIn Network

Using Twitter to Grow Your Business

If you already have a Twitter account for your business, you likely use it to post news updates, create brand awareness, build a wider audience and promote everything from store openings to new deals to help with increasing your businesses reach and revenue. Here are a few tips that will help to make sure that you are leveraging Twitter to its fullest extent.

Use Hashtags. The hashtag (#) is a way of marking specific keywords or topics within a Tweet. As there are established hashtags being used on a daily basis, as well as news ones that trend daily, hashtags can be a great way of extending your reach on Twitter, increasing the chances that your message gets shown within a Twitter search, thereby helping your business reach a new audience who can find your tweets and follow your brand. They also allow you to connect with your audience in a more meaningful way. You can use tools like WhatTheTrend, Twubs or Hashtags to find tags that are currently trending.

However, it's important that you are careful with how you use hashtags, as they've become a way for people and businesses to spam. You should only use hashtags that they are consistent with your brand and the tweet that you're sending out. Also, you should never stuff your tweets with tags, so avoid using more than two.

Help people and engage customers. Twitter is more than just sharing links and photos. Twitter is a social network and as such, you should participate in the community by helping people out. 

Search for tweets related to your niche and answer any questions people have. By assisting people you are building goodwill for both your organization as well as for yourself.

Promote It. Get your Twitter handle know by showing it prominently on your website as well as in all your marketing materials that way you can make it easier for clients and prospective customers to connect with you on Twitter and build your following.

Have additional tips? Leave a comment below!

Check Iconic Mind on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Why Most Marketing Campaigns Fail

Typically the reason a business, from start-ups to fortune 500 companies, hire an outside marketing consultant is because their internal marketing campaigns are failing. And if the best-laid marketing plans have the ability to go awry, imagine just how bad it is with poorly planned marketing campaigns. Here are some mistakes to avoid/things to consider when coming up with your next campaign that will hopefully increase your chances of success.

Ending a Campaign Too Soon

Too many times company's pull the plug on a campaign before giving it a chance to perform. Things like SEO and SMM aren't things that can be turned on and off. You must continually focus on them, investing time and money, even when you are losing out in the short term in hopes of recuperating your losses and making a profit in the long run.

That's why it's so important to budget correctly. The amount of money that you have available to spend will greatly impact your strategies. With the exception of a few situations (like running a PPC campaign), you should plan your budget on a yearly basis and not quarterly. 

With proper budget management, you should be able to keep campaigns going that need time to flourish before producing a positive ROI. This leads to the next point.

Not Getting Your Marketing Campaigns to Fund Themselves

While it may not be an easy task to create a positive ROI in the short run, it is possible. The best way of doing this is by splitting your efforts into two buckets.The first being campaigns that will provide a ROI within a few months and the second being those that will provide a ROI in the long run.

Campaigns like pay-per-per click advertising or pay-per-call marketing can provide a return in the short term while SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing are campaigns that typically need a longer time period to run before being able to provide a positive ROI.

It's important to maximize profits on these shorter-term campaigns so that you can take the money and invest in long-term campaigns. This will prevent you from burning through your budget too quickly since your marketing campaigns can help to fund themselves.

Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket

Many businesses that run a marketing campaign make the mistake of spending their entire budget on one specific marketing area which is a big mistake. Spreading your marketing and advertising efforts (SEO, SMM, PPC and other methods) will help with keeping your ROI balanced.

You Didn't Follow Up with Customers

The sales team should be at the center of your marketing campaign. It's important for your sales team to maintain open communication with potential customers. It is a common marketing mistake to allow customers to fall through the cracks. Once a potential customer makes contact, it is a good business practice to stay in touch with them. If the sales team is not following up with potential customers, the marketing campaign efforts won’t matter. 

If you're making these mistakes, don't panic. You can recover from a failed marketing campaign. Just make sure to take the time to review the previous campaign, recognize errors you made, and learn from the mistakes.

Choosing A Competitive Title For Content Marketing

Content is king - by writing good content, not only will it allow you to rank well in search engines, but it'll help with social media sharing and allow you stand out among other your competitors.

However, having good content alone may not be enough. Without having a good title to entire readers to click through to your site, your content may never have the chance of competing against your competitors. Title is the key to get the attention of your targeted readers and it plays an important role to help your content becomes king. Right, content does not become a king unless it has been acknowledged by its readers. So title is the opening door for a content to own a castle. But how do you choose the best appropriate title for your content? Here’s how, from both an SEO point of view as well as one that will lead to increased click-through:

Brainstorm

Think about your target audience and the message you're looking to convey. With that in mind, then come up with a title that's simple but creative and memorable. Try creating a title that opens a knowledge gap, thus violating a user's schema.  

Don't Write Misleading Titles

No matter how sensational and marvelous your blog post titles are, if you want your visitors to continue returning and to increase your conversions, then you better make sure that your content lives up to the hype. Misleading titles lead to high bounce rates and will leave visitors with a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to your brand. Title-content mismatches will only confuse — and alienate — readers.

Picking the Right Keywords and Proper Positioning

If you are looking to rely on traffic from search engines, then you want to have a focus on the right keywords to help you reach your intended targets. You also want to make sure that you position the keywords at the beginning of your title, as this is good from both an SEO perspective as well as a human one. People typically look at the first two or three words to decide whether they want to keep reading or move on to something else. 

Check Title Length (under 64-66 characters)

The number of characters that can be displayed in a search engine depends on the engine, however the typical rule of thumb is that you don't want a title that's greater than 64 characters. 

The Power of Color and its Ability to Impact Conversions

Color has a very powerful psychological affect on the brain, yet how much have you considered the colors you chose for your website, in particular your landing/sales page? When you choose the right visual elements (colors, fonts, design and theme) and get them to work in harmony  you'll be able to boost your conversion rates, however when they clash, you can certainly expect your conversion rates to drop. Take a look at the infographic below from KISSmetrics a revolutions person-based analytics platform for your entire team.

A few takeaways:

• Color Matters for Call to Action Buttons - Performable did a test where all the content in their page was the same except for changing the color of their CTA button. They noticed that the red button outperformed the green button by 21%. Or take this study done by 
  dMix where he also tested both a green and red button on his website. The text (“Get Started Now”) was the same on both buttons. The eye-catching red button contributed to a 34% increase in conversions.
• Product Assessment Takes 90 Seconds - 
  According to research done by the CCICOLOR - Institute for Color Research eveals people make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone.
  
  

• Visual Influence - Secretariat of the Seoul International Color Expo 2004 showed that 92.6% of those surveyed stated they put the most importance on visual factors when purchasing products. Only 5.6% said that the physical feel via the sense of touch was most important. Hearing and smell each drew 0.9%. 

When making any changes to your website, you may want to do some testing first to see which colors work best with your page and your audience. Some generalizations though that you do want to take into account - think about what sections of your webpage should stand out the most and then use contrasting colors. The most important sections of your site should be in high contrast with the background while the lesser important parts should be in colors that don't contrast as much. This will allow you to draw your visitors eyes to the sections that you feel are the most important.

Google Planning On Competing Against Spotify

Google kicked off its annual developers conference Wednesday by launching news about All Access a subscription-based streaming music service to compete with the likes of Rhapsody, Pandora and Spotify. There will be no free version of the service, however Google will be giving a 30 day trial to all new users. The cost thereafter will be $9.99 per month or $7.99 per month for users who sign up before June 30.

Google has been working diligently at developing entertainment features for mobile devices running their Android platform, putting them in direct competition companies like Apple, whose iTunes store is the largest retailer of music in the US. While Android phones as well as tablet remain popular, Google has had limited success with its download store which is why Google is looking to expand into streaming music and tap into what has become the most rapid growth segment in the digital music market.

Aside from just streaming digital music, Google will be looking to guide you to music that you like through recommendations by Google's curators. You'll be able to choose from 1 of 22 music genres and will then be shown key albums that define the genre. While it appears that Google will be putting a new spin on features that are already seen elsewhere, analysts don't believe that these improvements will be revolutionary as compared to Spotify and other streaming services. However, Forrester analyst James McQuivey said it's important for Google to enter the market. "If Google failed to make a play for the music business," he said in an email, "it would later regret it because its customers would remain forever tied to another digital service."



At this state it would seem Google All Access has a chance of taking away a piece of the pie from Spotify and Pandora when it comes to premium/paying customers, however Google may want to consider releasing a free version to pick up steam for their app or look to add additional features that just can't be found on other steaming programs. The one advantage that they do have is that they can tie in their social network and other applications to try and give their All Access a leg up.

Would love to know your thoughts on All Access and whether you plan on purchasing a monthly plan by leaving a comment below.