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January 2, 2018 0 Comments

3 Ways to Secure Work From Home Jobs

Working from home is a noble goal for many moms, parents and people who are seeking more flexibility in their lives.

Between long commutes, wasted time in an office, and the lack of freedom to attend important things, it’s no wonder that more and more people are looking for a job that gives them something more.  As a work from home job site, we have some tips and advice to secure a work from home job that will work for you and your family.

Tune into the application process

You can’t get a job if you’re never applying! Just like applying for a traditional office job, you have to apply often, thoroughly, and carefully.

Businesses seeking home based employees are no longer just scammy companies who will take anyone; they’re seeking highly qualified, experienced, and professional workers.

Do your best to apply to as many jobs as possible that truly fit your skill set.  Don’t waste your time with the rest! It’s not ideal to apply for positions just to work from home.  Eventually, this will not be fulfilling.  Find the good ones and go to town with making those applications the absolute best you can.

Use the right sites

As you’ve probably noticed, there are tons of job search sites out there.  Some of these traditional sites will even feature work from home jobs once in a while, and you can find a job there!

While this is true, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.  Even if you see work from home jobs, they’re often scams, sales-only jobs, or other questionable positions that aren’t legitimate for home based work.

Sites like HireMyMom.com are created for the sole purpose of work from home jobs.  Utilize these sites as your first points of searching, and you’ll have far more luck.  It’s as if everyone rounded up the “legitimate” jobs from those other sites and put them into one place!  Use the right resources, and the right job will likely come to you.

Watch your presence

Make sure your materials and online presence are top notch. Resumes are just as important online as offline!  Between your online resume, cover letter, and other application materials, make sure that these are in good shape online.  We often submit these materials to several application sites, which can sometimes be searched via Google.

Additionally, it’s important to watch your social media presence.  This is true for every job, but especially work from home jobs.  You employers are likely to be a bit more tech savvy, and it’s easy for them to check you out.  These days, many employers even ask for your social media URLs in the job application itself!

Do your best to keep things professional, and present yourself as if your employer is watching.

Working from home is a great way to do more in life while still earning an income.  It’s not as simple as logging into a basic job search site and pressing a few buttons, but with the right tools, sites, and attitude, you can find a job that fits you and your family’s lifestyle.

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December 26, 2017 0 Comments

5 Tips for Goal Setting in the New Year

We’re coming up on the new year, which means we’re likely being inundated with ways to achieve our resolutions.  This is a perfect time to reflect on how we’re living our lives – personally and professionally – and make any necessary changes.

We all talk about setting goals, but how do we actually achieve them and keep the momentum going well into the new year?

Read along for some best tips and advice for achieving your goals.

Choose a reason

It helps to keep your motivation high when you know why you’re doing something.  If your goal is to make more money, is there a specific item you’re looking to purchase that you can envision?  If you want to make more time in your schedule, will you fill it with more fun with your kids or friends?

Find something inspiring to use to visualize your goals, which will make follow through much easier!

Make it realistic

It will only lower your confidence if your goal is completely unlikely to happen. You can always start small and build from there.

If you’re looking to achieve a certain position in your organization, and you’re quite a few positions away from this, make small goals to keep achieving the next position up.  It’s much more fulfilling to meet and achieve your goals, versus spending a long time without the satisfaction of meeting them.

When your goals are realistic, they also push you to do real things, versus picking a very “out there” goal that you won’t even attempt to truly achieve.

Stretch yourself

While setting realistic goals is very important, you should also stretch yourself a bit.  If your goals are much too easy, you’re really not achieving anything beyond the norm.

Pick a goal that is realistically achievable – but also scares you a bit. A little bit of apprehension can be a great kick start towards action.

Change the timing

Often times, people set goals that can only be achieved in many months or even years.  Pick a few goals and set time limits to keep you going.  You can even break your goals into categories of short term and long term, or by days, weeks, months, and years.

By setting goal dates and setting them incrementally, you stay in the mindset of thinking about them on a regular basis.  Plug these into your calendar for more accountability, reminder, and visual aid.

Create a plan

A famous quote says that “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”  A plan is a very crucial component of a goal!

Start by writing out what you want, then proceed to determining your “why” for your goals, as explained in our first tip.  From here, create your timing – short or long term goals, or by days, weeks, months and years.  Then, you’ll want to put these goals into your calendar and/or schedule.  To really take things up a notch, you can include visualization and meditation practices to truly solidify your process.

Achieving your goals takes work, but it should also be uplifting, fun and inspiring.  Determine what process works best for you, and do your best to stick with it as you achieve your goals in the new year!

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December 18, 2017 0 Comments

4 Reasons Working From Home Boosts Productivity

We’ve all heard it – working from home results in greater productivity! This is great news, but have you ever stopped to ask why this is?

Sure, you eliminate the commute and probably a few meetings, but there are other reasons that work from home productivity seems to be a common theme.  You would think that being home would make it easier to be distracted! However, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Less distractions

Yes, you’re actually less distracted working from home, as long as you establish a clear schedule and good boundaries from the beginning.  For one, there’s far less workplace chatter! It takes a concentrated effort to speak to your employer and coworkers from home, and those conversations tend to be more task-focused and less random.

Additionally, communicating is quicker.  You don’t have the meetings that take a lot of time to gather everyone up.  Impromptu meetings and chats are also more rare, so you’re more likely to only meet up when it’s really necessary.

Lastly, most work from home jobs require a person with a lot of work independence.  In most cases, no one managing you too much, so you’re responsible for completing your work on your own, and on your own time.  This is great for productivity, as you don’t have the distraction – and slowdown – of being constantly managed.

Less sickness

No need for sick days when you work from home! That’s probably not 100% true, as there might be some sicknesses that really do not allow you to work – at all. Either way, sick days will be greatly reduced.

Whether you’re a little under the weather or need to care for a sick child, you likely won’t need to take a day off to do this.

You can stay

If your child gets sick at school or a need pops up in the family, you can stay and handle it.  You might have to run out briefly, but it doesn’t require leaving work, covering your projects, informing bosses, and so on.

You have the ability to complete mundane and emergency tasks in between your workload, making it much easier to pick back up where you left off.

More time

You simply have more time to get work done when you work from home. First of all, there’s no commute.  Even if you choose to work at a coffee shop or co-working space, it’s not necessary and it’s likely much closer to home than a traditional office would be.

This obviously allows you more time to be actually working, and those 2 hours when everyone else is commuting?  You’re able to get work done!

Lastly, one of the downsides and benefits to working from home is the lack of interruption and lingering breaks.  It requires a schedule to set up a lunch meeting with friends, versus simply running out of the office for a lingering lunch.  This is great for productivity, but be sure to continue to schedule in social activities to stay social.

Working from home truly boosts productivity in so many positive ways.  If you’re a strong, independent worker who likes some flexibility, working from home might be for you.  Just be sure to schedule in social activities to keep yourself out once in a while, and continue to communicate with friends, coworkers and employers as much as possible.

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December 11, 2017 0 Comments

5 Tips for a Successful Blog

Running a successful blog is a very important part of running a business.   How can blogging help you?  It can boost SEO, help you establish yourself as the expert in your field, and provide content for social media posting.

We’ve all heard that blogging is important, but how do we achieve success with our blog?  Read along for some best tips and tricks to make blogging painless and effective!

Post consistently

Consistency is key! If you only blog once or twice per year, you’re not accomplishing any of the goals of blogging.  You need to get on a consistent schedule, whether it’s once per week, 3 times per week, or once per month. Decide what you can commit to and stick with it! It will take some time to see results, but it’s worth sticking it out.

Create a content calendar of topics and blog post ideas and work from there.  Once you lay out your schedule, make it easy on yourself and have everything ready to go. From here, you can simply start writing and let the words flow.

Share it

Once you create blog content, you have to share it! Start by sharing on your business Facebook page – and even your personal page if it’s a widely relevant topic.  From there, you can share to Twitter, LinkedIn, and anywhere else that your business has a presence.  This allows for more eyes on your blog post, which makes the effort even more worth it.

Another thing you can do is add the blog post to your LinkedIn page.  There’s the “Publisher” or “Write an Article” feature at the top of the page, and it’s useful to share your content there as well.

Use the content

Use the content that you worked so hard to create! You can break down your blog post into little tips and advice, which you can then share on social media.

Find a central topic and create an eye-catching graphic around it.  You can simply copy and paste the information into the graphic, making it very shareable and beneficial, since you’re reusing the content for social media content purposes.

Write about what matters

Write about things that people would want to know most in your industry! When people come to your blog, they want to know more about your expert topic.  Show your skill set! Provide answers to common questions, show the benefits of your business or service, or simply write on a topic that’s also relevant to your specific audience. When people are connected to your blog posts, they’re more likely to keep reading and to share with others.

Search it out

Try the Google Keyword Planner! It’s a great place to test searches and see what people are searching within your industry and knowledge base.  You can test keywords and see how they perform, as well as the competition around certain keywords.  This is a great way to stay above the competition; it’s like you’re reading the minds of your audience!

When you know what people want to see, it’s easier to come up with a content calendar.  Create a content calendar with post topics, titles, and blog graphics at least 4-8+ weeks out, which will make it all the easier for you to blog on a consistent basis.

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December 4, 2017 0 Comments

3 Ways to Update Your Resume

Your resume is one of the first things that a potential employer sees from you. It comes before you meet in person, and is often opened before the cover letter.

Prospective employers want to know what you’re all about – and quickly.  It’s a great time of year to update your resume before the new year and get it in great shape as you revamp your materials. These are some of our best tips to update an already established resume.

The most recent

Are the most recent items on your resume? Sometimes we only update them every few years, so your most recent job positions might need some care and expansion.  Be sure to include everything you’ve done since the last update – and don’t leave any blank time unless you truly weren’t working.

On the other side of the most recent are the old items.  If you’ve been out of high school and/or college for 10+ years with a substantial resume since then, you don’t need to include clubs, memberships, and so on, unless they’re extremely relevant to the job position for which you’re applying.  A simple note of the name, city and state of your high school, along with the name, city, state, grade point average, and major/minor from college is just fine.

Do your best to keep your resume to one page, maximum two pages.  Employers want to see quick, efficient information that will help them move quickly through the application process.  Make this easy on them!

Add some data

In keeping with giving your potential employer a break, include some data that truly stands out easily.  Saying that you “helped with the marketing” is fine, but saying that you “designed and distributed 10,000 flyers” and “helped grow attendance by 35%” is more impressive and quantitative.

Additionally, this makes your accomplishments much more concrete and easily measurable.  If you can’t find hard numbers and figures to present, get more specific about what you did at your jobs and skip the generalities.

Check for errors

Now is a great time to make sure your resume is free from errors! Nothing is worse than spending all your time on your resume materials, sending them in, only to realize that you had an error or two.

This will automatically diminish credibility in the eyes of your potential employer, so do your absolute best to eliminate errors now.  Have friends and family members review your resume for errors too.  Sometimes, all we need is a fresh set of eyes to point out something wrong – or something that can enhance your resume.

 

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November 6, 2017 0 Comments

3 Ways to Adjust to Work From Home Life

Working from home has many wonderful benefits.  From productivity to more time with friends and family, it’s a great way to work with more flexibility.

If you’re new to working from home, you’ll notice it’s a big change from a traditional work environment and schedule.  Read along for our best tips and advice for a seamless transition.

Start slowly

If you have the opportunity, start slowly into your work from home career.  HireMyMom.com offers freelance and part-time jobs as well as full-time, so start small if you feel like it will be a big transition for you and your family.  Many of these positions also often advertise as part-time with the option to go full-time if things work out; this can be a great compromise!

Whether you’ve quit an office job or chose to stay home with your kids, there’s an in-between option for working from home.  You can still create income and contribute with a freelance, project-based, or part-time position.  This way, you get the best of both worlds while doing other things, or while you prepare to go full-time.

Have a plan

As with everything in life, having a plan and schedule is ideal. Since it’s been proven time and again that home based work results in more productivity, you’ll need to get a sense of what you can accomplish during a day.

Whether you’re staying at the same job but moving to a home office, or starting fresh in your home based career, it’s important to map out your days with a plan.  It’s still easy to get distracted at home, so it’s best to work from a to do list and work schedule.

Get everyone on board

Work from home is just that – work! Many people assume that since you’re home, you’re available 24/7.  This could be true, but not if you want to get any work done.

It’s important to set boundaries and expectations with friends and family as much as you need.  Whether that’s setting up specific times for meeting friends, or having your spouse pick up your kids at an inopportune time for you, it’s still important that your schedule is considered.

When your spouse, friends, or family members go to their traditional office job, they are essentially unable to leave for many obligations.  This is great for you to be able to step in, but it’s not always assumed that you will be available either. To take some tasks off of your plate, it can still be helpful to have a few babysitters on call to help you out when your work is also demanding.

Beginning your work from home journey is so exciting, but also comes with transitional changes.  Take your time, make a solid plan, and set expectations with others and you’ll do just fine!

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October 30, 2017 0 Comments

HireMyMom Employer Success Story: Zachary Sexton

Tell us a little about your business and how you got started.

I teach digital productivity to business owners. I got started by fixing my own productivity issues. That lead me to working with small business owners who had the similar struggles with focus and organization.

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs and home business owners?

Carve out time every week to think, plan, organize and review your work. Put it on your calendar. Taking 1 to 2 hours a week to do this may seem like a waste of time, but the:
  • planning- will save you from going down unproductive rabbit holes and get you off the hamster wheel of reacting to one emergency after the next
  • organizing – will allow you to work faster during the week and prevent redoing work you’ve already done
  • reviewing- will give you the opportunity to see what type of work that gave you the best results with the least effort. This information will give you a better idea of the types of projects and clients to engage with. It will also let you know what work should be automated or delegated (to a productive mom of course ;-).

When should one consider outsourcing or hiring additional help?

As soon as possible. The more time you can spend working in your zone of genius, the more value you will produce and the better you will feel. The only way to spend time doing the things you are great at is to have people help you with the areas outside of your sweet spot.

What is your top tip for hiring great talent?

Be annoyingly specific about how you want people to reach out to you about the position. If they can’t follow specific written instructions when applying, that’s not likely to change after hiring.

What’s your favorite thing about HireMyMom.com?

The talent! I was blown away by the quality of the candidates I received from my job posting.
.

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October 2, 2017 0 Comments

How to Establish a Work From Home Routine

When you decide to work from home, either from a traditional job or stay at home mom role, there are bound to be some adjustments.

Getting into a new schedule requires a few steps, but it’s worth it to establish a routine that works for you and your family. Read along for tips on establishing a work from home routine that invites productivity and flexibility.

Figure out the differences

It’s important to ask yourself this question: What will need to change since you’re no longer going to the office, or being a stay at home mom?  You might still be parenting from home, but if you’re also working, things will still be a bit different.

If you’re now working from home, things are bound to change in the family schedule.  Maybe you can no longer participate in carpool duties daily, or maybe you’re wanting to free your schedule from 3-4pm to pick up your kids from school.  Additionally, things like meal prep, meetings with friends, and workouts need to be considered. If this fit into your day a certain way before, it might be best to just try to keep it. You might have far more flexibility, but it still requires that you figure out where it all fits into your new workday.

Answer the questions

There are more questions to answer to establish your routine! What will remain consistent? Maybe you’ll still do dinner at the same time and take your kids to soccer in the evening, but you’ll ask your children’s friends to handle carpool.

Also look at and examine: What will be changing based on family schedules, freelance projects starting and ending, time with friends, and so on.  Once you know what will change and what will stay the same, you can begin to create a daily schedule.

Focus on the goal

Whatever your reason for a work from home job, focus on this goal as you begin your new routine.  Are you looking for more flexibility in your life?  Do you dislike commuting very much?  Do you simply want more time with your family?  Or did you just fall into a job that happened to be home based?

Either way, you should work on establishing a goal for your work from home job.  It’s easier to begin – and keep to – a routine that sticks if you’re focused on a goal.  When things are a bit tough schedule-wise in the beginning as you readjust, remember that you get more time to attend your children’s events, or meet a friend for coffee, if those are your goals.

Keep track

Log your progress! Keep track of how you’re sticking to your new routine and schedule.  When you’re able to do something on your list of goals, or you maintain your weekly schedule, take note.

This also allows you to see where you may have over or under booked yourself. Make space for changes! This is an adjustment period, and it will take some time to get into the flow of a home based career.

It’s a big change, whether you worked before or not. Many people believe that working from home is simply easy, and that’s not always the case!  You may actually be juggling more demands now, however sweet it may be to have more flexibility.

Remember why you got into this type of work, praise yourself for staying on track, and make adjustments as you and your family needs to, and you will establish a productive routine in no time!

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September 25, 2017 0 Comments

4 Tips for Keeping Your Computer Organized

When you work from home, your computer is an integral part of your day.  It’s very important to keep it organized and running smoothly.

We all know it’s important to organize our physical files, homes, and schedules, but even with all of that, our computers can look like a disaster!

Get a program

Software programs can really help to keep your computer running smoothly.  An organized computer doesn’t just look good, it functions well.  It’s important to clean out the clutter or “junk” on your comptuer on a consistent basis.

Whether you have a Mac or PC computer, there are several options available.  One is CleanMyPC and another is CleanMyMac.  Both are reasonably priced, and you can run diagnostic and maintenance tests and clean up cycles on your computer.

This will eliminate old, large files, system clutter, and much more.  It’s a sophisticated way to delete several files that are causing your machine to run slowly or inefficiently.

Another method of organization comes in the form of storage.  Sites such as Dropbox allow you to clear a lot of clutter from your desktop and computer and put it elsewhere.  This will free up a ton of space! Just be sure that you’re taking time to organize those files as well, so it doesn’t become a big mess of files.

You can store text documents, spreadsheets, forms, and other types of word processing documents in Google Drive/Google Docs.  It’s a great place to keep things that you want to keep Internet-based.  It’s also easy to share with your team directly.  This is helpful for organization, as it prevents you from having to store individual word documents on your computer.

Make a plan

An organization plan is helpful for everyday life! It should be no different for your computer.  It’s not enough to simply clean off your desktop once or twice; it should become part of your process.

Where do your struggle the most with your computer organization?  It is hundreds of files on your desktop?  A slow-running machine that’s full of unknown junk that’s bogging it down?  Do you have tons of mailboxes with no idea what’s in them?

Have a long session of organization to take stock in where you need to focus your efforts.  Make a plan of action that will get your started in the right direction!

Organize daily

Organization is a habit and you must do it daily.  Take a few minutes at the end of each day to clear your desktop, send files to Dropbox, and put your notes from the day in Google Drive.

Once you’re in the habit of organizing consistently, you’ll see how it frees up your computer and your mind from thinking about it.

Use folders

Folders are a beautiful thing! Whether for your desktop, in your computer or both, it’s important to organize.  In work from home positions, we can typically be working with several clients and/or employers at once.

You can start with big categories, such as one employer, then narrow it down by project or event.  You can keep the most important, often accessed folders on your desktop for easy opening.

Do your best to not have things sitting wildly on your desktop.  It can be visually stressful and overwhelming to see this often, and it makes finding important things very difficult.

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September 18, 2017 0 Comments

4 Top Tips to Be a Successful Work From Home Employee

We’ve talked a lot about being a successful leader and manager, but how do you go about being a successful work from home employee?

Whether you’ve recently come from a traditional office job or you’ve been a home based worker for years, it’s always a good time to reevaluate what you’re bringing to the job.

Track your time

To be a successful worker, it can be helpful to track your time.  Whether this is done at your boss’s request or to see where you’re putting your time, it can help you prioritize.

One of the best ways to be a solid employee is to know how to prioritize and not let things slip through the cracks.  Tracking your time is also incredibly helpful if you’re paid by the hour, as your employer will appreciate the details.

Communicate, communicate, communicate!

The best employees are those who communicate! If you go off the grid, especially in a work from home position, it can spell trouble.

If your employer doesn’t know what you’re doing, they may start to lose trust and begin questioning your employment.  Do your best to communicate with your employer on a consistent basis, and even do check-in calls as needed.

If you do client work for your employer, be sure that any communications are clearly noted there as well.  Since you aren’t in a traditional office environment, staying in contact via email, phone, and text becomes even more crucial!

Make a schedule

Along with tracking your time, a schedule can help you stay on task.  It can be best to make an outline of your work week schedule for the upcoming week.  Start with the items that you do on a daily basis, then add in other items based on due dates.

From here, you can add the “special” projects and unique items as they come in.  Working with a schedule or to do list also helps things to not get missed, as they simply go to the next day’s schedule if they aren’t completed.

Build relationships

Staying connected and being a successful work from home employee begins with communication.  Once that trust has been built and nurtured, you can begin to build relationships with your employers and co-workers.

Since everyone likes to work with those they know, like and trust, establishing strong, trusting relationships with your team is very important.  This will ensure that your value is communicated beyond the professional sphere.

Being a good employee involves personal accountability and responsibility, solid scheduling, and lots of communication! If you take time to do these things on a consistent basis, you will certainly find success as a home based employee.

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