He Said, She Said

On the website, that is. . . .

I’ve found a blog design that I like quite a bit, provided I can figure out how to tweak it to meet our needs.  Do you like it?  : )

Our text still needs a lot of work, and I’m planning on working on that over the next few days.  I’m thinking of doing away with the separate photography/videography pages, and making them into one combined page called services.  What do you think?  (I was thinking of trying to do an iframe with tabs for each.  That would be nice, right??)  

We’ve been joining professional organizations over the last couple of months, both for networking and for the resources they provide, and it occurred to me yesterday that I ought to put some of those logos on the site, so I added them to the About page.  Do you think that’s where they belong, or do they deserve their own page??

Anyway, it’s coming along, albeit slowly. . . .  Stay tuned for more!  : )

It could be a slow process, so please bear with us.  I promise I’ll try to keep you updated on our progress!

For now, the only pages that work are the home page and the blog, so if you click on anything else, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work, or it takes you to a page on our old site….

Thanks for your patience!

Carole  : )

We’re about to hit the ground running, here, and I want to make sure we have the business side of things fully in place before that happens.  Since I’m already losing track of things, even though we don’t have much going on yet, I’ve been looking into studio management software, to help keep us on track.

I realize I’m going to have to spend some money on this, but I’d like to keep it as low as possible without compromising on features that I’ll need. I’d like it to have:

- contact management
- invoicing
- scheduling (including reminders)
- generate a to-do list for me
- other things that I probably don’t know I need until I see them….
- ideally, I’d like to have BOTH a desktop version and an online version
- if there’s a monthly fee, I’d like there to also be an option to pay once or, at the VERY least, pay annually

I realize that I could use programs that I already have, but I know myself, and I know that if I have to jump from program to program, I’ll either forget an important step, or get frustrated and/or distracted, and be in a bad mood because of it.  I don’t like being in a bad mood, so I want it all in one place, to keep things simple. 

Here’s what I’ve found so far.  I have them all open in tabs, to check out: (I’ll update this first post as I try each.)

Full Spectrum
$1095 (purchase)

This one looks pretty good, but they aren’t offering any new licenses right now!  Guess I’ll go check out the others some more….

Studio Plus
$395 - $3695 (purchase)

Initial impression:  I think I’m in love!

Darn, darn, DARN!  There IS a free trial, but they only have a Windows version!  I don’t want to have to install Windows on my Mac in order to run this, so I guess I’ll keep looking.  :cry:  But I think I’m going to use [URL="https://www.studioplussoftware.com/products/index.html#mystudioplus"]their online proofing system[/URL] anyway, so at least something good came from this!

ETA: I keep going back to look at this one, even though it won’t work on my Mac, unless I install Parallels.  I want it badly enough that I’m tempted to do just that!

P.A.T.
$24.95/month - $694.95/One Time Fee

Initial impression:  Looks and feels too much like an online version of an Excel Spreadsheet.  I’m going to keep looking….

SuccessWare
$49/month (lease) - $1495 (purchase)

I downloaded the trial, and went through the set-up, but it isn’t immediately obvious to me how to get started actually USING it.  For the money they’re asking for it, I want them to hold me by the hand and walk me through exactly what to do every step of the way….

PhotoByte
free

I downloaded the trial, and went through the tutorial, and I just can’t make up my mind.  On the one hand, it has a LOT of features that I could use but, on the other, it’s SO ugly that I don’t want to look at it.  (It looks like it was designed for HyperCard, if that tells you anything….)  Also, it doesn’t have an online complement, so it might not work for me anyway….

Tave Studio Manager
$25/month (if there’s an annual or one-time option, I haven’t found it.  I plan to email to find out for sure, and to request one if there isn’t already.)

I just signed up for the free trial, and spent a few minutes looking around.  I might spend more time later, but my initial impression of it is just kind of “eh.”  It looks and feels a LOT like GoogleCalendar, and it has a much more “lightweight” feel to it than StudioCloud.  That, combined with the lack of a desktop component, and monthly payments stretching out into infinity, is making me want to move on to the next trial….

ETA:  After a couple of days of playing with it, this is becoming my favorite of the ones that are actually available to me.  It has contracts built into it, and it lets me specify my terms when I post a quote for a particular client.  I also LOVE the home page: if a new client calls, I only need to go to the home page, and I can enter all of the important information right there, AND check my availability (for the next 16 MONTHS!) without leaving the home page.  I still wish there was a desktop version….

Studio Cloud
$29.95 - $44.95/month  (they give a 5% discount if you pay for six months, and a 10% if you pay for a year.  They have both on AND offline versions, so I really want to like this one….  They also have online proofing available, so maybe I could kill that bird with this stone as well….)

Just downloaded and installed this one, and I’ve been playing with it for the last half hour.  It’s very clean and intuitive, and so far I’m LOVING it!

I still wish they had a one-time purchase price, and I’m not wild about the online proofing system (’though I may learn to like it more..) but so far, this is my favorite!  : )

ETA:  After a couple of days with this one, I’m less impressed.  It’s slower than Tave, it doesn’t let me specify contract terms when I enter a quote, and it doesn’t have contracts.  I’ll keep exploring it, because the customer service team has been very responsive to my questions, but it’s moving down my list….

Just found another one called ProSelect.

I’m downloading the trial now, and I’ll update once I’ve tried it out.

————————————————————————————

Of course, if you know of anything I’ve missed, PLEASE add it in the comments!

thanks for reading!  : )

I want to flesh out my portfolio, and I want to get some more weddings under my belt, so I’m offering free wedding photography for the month of May.

This offer includes:

- pre-wedding (at wedding location), wedding, and reception coverage (up to 6 hours)

- a cd of web-sized images to share online and via email

- reasonable print prices, including a discount on large prints and albums

To take advantage of this offer, please email me at: weddings@hisandherscreative.com  or call me at: 214-227-7754.

Please note:

I have never done a complete wedding on my own, so if you can afford a photographer and were thinking of accepting this offer just to save some money, you may want to think again. I believe I’ll do a great job, and I don’t anticipate missing any shots or messing up the ones I DO get, but there are no do-overs with your wedding so, if you can afford a pro, please use one!

For the last couple of years our main focus has been on the design side of things.  We both love it, but we’ve decided that we want to switch gears and focus on something that we love even more: for Clint, that would be videography, and for me, photography.

It’s been one of those things where we’ve both really wanted to do these things, but because we enjoy them SO much, it feels more like play than work, so they tend to get shelved while we focus on the “real” work.  I know—silly, right?

We finished up the last of our big projects, and haven’t taken on any new ones that don’t involve photo or video.  You might think that would mean we have lots of free time now, but you would be mistaken.  Every spare moment is dedicated to learning and practicing.  Every.  Spare.  Moment.  And it’s paying off!  : )

When I get a chance, I’m going to be re-vamping our website to reflect this new direction.  This doesn’t mean we won’t be doing ANY design work at all, but it’s going to be only projects that either we’re really excited about, or that just happen to fit perfectly into our new schedule.  The good new is that weddings tend to be planned pretty far in advance, so once we get up to speed we should be able to tell you quickly whether we can accept a project or not.

Until we get our website re-designed, we’ll probably be posting photos and videos here.  You can also see my full photography portfolio on SmugMug.  I would LOVE to know what you think of my photos, so please feel free to leave comments here or on SmugMug.

Part Four—Interview (continuing where http://hisandherscreative.com/blog/?p=132 left off):
Plan on getting to the building 45 minutes before the interview. This does NOT mean go into the building 45 minutes early. They won’t have a clue what to do with you. But you want to be there with plenty of time beforehand. Go past the building and then go get a cup of coffee, or take a walk, or read a book in the parking lot. The last thing you need to do is show up late to the interview, and 45 minutes early is normally enough of a cushion to take care of everything. You should go into the building about 15 minutes before the interview is supposed to start and make it to the front door just 5 or 10 minutes early. What do you do in those 5-10 minutes? Go to the bathroom. It’s your last chance until the end of the interview. Then wash your hands in cold water just before meeting. it keeps your hands from feeling sweaty and takes away any callowness to your hand, making your handshake seem more firm and you feel more comfortable.

When talking with anyone, including the receptionist, ask for their name and be friendly. Don’t worry about engaging in small talk while you’re conducting the business interview, but people watch how you interact with the other members of the team to see if you’d be a good fit for the personality of the company. Equally important, you want to see if you can get a feel for how much people like working there, and you can’t easily do that if you only talk with the management.

When you meet anyone new, you should always stand and close the space between you and the person you are greeting. Don’t get so close you’re invading their personal space, but do meet them halfway across the table or toward the door. This says, in effect, that we are equals. Also greet with a head shake, hand shake, and genuine smile if you can muster one… but not a fake smile. A serious expression is better than a fake smile. And when shaking hands, keep your palms straight and only apply the same amount of pressure as the other person.

During the interview itself eye contact is really important. There have been a lot of studies done of people who are dishonest or tell lies they often look to one side or another. So when you’re answering a question, look at the other person’s eyes while they’re asking the question. Look to the corners of the room rather than to the side while you formulate a response, and then look at their eyes while you answer.

Also while sitting, keep your body open and subtly mirror your interviewer. Your neutral position should have your hands resting comfortably on your knees or on the table in front of you. Crossed arms make you look sullen and defensive. Using your knees or your ankle and knee on a crossed leg is a good cue to making sure that you have an open stance.

If offered a drink, (water, coffee, or soda) take one but only actually drink from it if the other person is doing so, or if your mouth is dry and you feel like you are smacking your lips while talking. People want to see you are comfortable, but also want to think that you are like them. That sense of “like me” also comes from mirroring a person’s body language. It shouldn’t be a game where you are literally trying to do every thing they do, but if they lean in you should do the same. When they are leaned back to the side and their legs are kicked up, you should sit with your shoulder toward them.

Oh, and practice that when you’re not interviewing. You should make that almost subconscious. It helps in all kinds of ways to make people feel at ease.

The other thing to do is to figure out how to make yourself really stand out. They are looking to fill a need, but often in today’s business world you need to fill several positions. While you’re interviewing, you should ask if you would have the opportunity to fill other roles as well. I personally ask about business analysis and some software implementation, explaining that I just don’t believe that anyone can architect a good solution if they don’t get to keep up to date on technology, and if they aren’t at least partially driving the business process analysis. So what I end up interviewing for is a position where I get to fill several roles, which makes me more valuable. Almost anyone can think of things they can do that are similar to what you have experience with that would let you take on more responsibility and gain more visibility at work while you still stay in your comfort zone. The more different roles you fill, the fewer people the company has to hire. Thus you are more valuable to them, more likely to get hired, and more likely to get paid well when being hired. Plus when the day is done, you are more likely to keep your job as long as you want it.

Phone Screens:
A lot of places will do initial phone screens. Those are really useful for everyone involved. They’re easier to schedule, to stack up, and to give a good assessment before the face to face meeting. A few things to note.

1) This is a real part of the interview. You should be dressed in a way that makes you comfortable, but still somewhat business minded.
2) Stand while you’re talking on the phone. It gives more weight to your voice and will generally slow your talking down and make you more understandable.
3) Smile when you are answering questions on the phone. It’s weird, but you can hear the difference in someone’s voice when they smile. You want to seem friendly, especially if you don’t understand a question (or don’t know the answer) so that you can get the other person to help you out a bit or weight the question less heavily.
4) Turn off your email, crackberry, radio, etc. while you’re on the screen. Close the door while you’re doing the screen as well. This is the most important thing you are doing while you’re on the phone interview. Make sure you treat it appropriately.

Previously:

Part One: Finding Jobs

Part Two: Cover Letters and Resumes

Part Three: Pre-Interview

Coming Soon:
Part Five: Salary Negotiations.

Patrick Gary is a Dallas based technical consultant and multifaceted musician who refuses to let any single realm of life or group of interests completely define or encapsulate him.
You can read more about him at Troupatour.com

Part Three—Pre-Interview (continuing where part two left off):
So you’ve now gotten a real email address. Assuming that you’re not going through a firm or a headhunter then you still have to do some work. Just because you may be the perfect person for a job, and your resume is in the system, that doesn’t mean it will ever be read.

See, you have to remember that the HR people are not your friends yet, even though they tend to be very friendly people. Their job is also not to find the best person on the planet for a particular position. Their job is to find 3-5 good fits that could fill a position and put those people in front of the decision makers.

Because, think about this. A decision maker has to make decisions about a lot of things. They’re busy people. So they don’t want to interview 40 people when they could find a good fit after just a few.

So your goal is to be on the top of the pile. Aside from nepotism there are a couple of ways to accomplish this.

If you know someone in the company, get them to do an internal submission for you. Those are normally put higher on the queue, and you can get your friend to go to the HR person directly to find out if they’ve gotten the resume, and where they are in the hiring process. It also helps because your friend can be assumed to be someone that knows the culture fit, so you’re already partially pre-screened.

If you don’t know anyone then you might need to be a bit duplicitous. This is a bit sneaky and underhanded, but I’ve seen it work at law firms, schools for educational positions, when applying for office manager positions, and in my own computer industry. You send your resume in before noon. Then around 1 o’clock either call (if you can get a number) or email and say something like “I sent you a resume this morning, and I just found out that some of the attachments I was sending out were getting corrupted. Could you do me a huge favor and just open the attachment real quickly? I just want to make sure it got to you ok.”

There are a lot of reasons that this works.
1) HR people tend to want to help others in general, so they normally don’t mind doing something small to help you out
2) Once they’ve got your resume open, they will often look at it. Especially if they aren’t currently in process doing anything else.
3) It’s the same day, so it’s a plausible amount of time for you to be having an “oh s#!t” moment where you want to fix a problem before it becomes a problem.
4) This doesn’t hold true for everyone, but many HR people will do meetings in the morning and paperwork in the afternoon. So the time of day they’d be reviewing resumes is in the afternoon, and now yours is already open. So there’s at least a decent chance that they will go ahead and review it.
5) It also shows you have real interest in the company and aren’t just collecting another name and company for your unemployment benefits.

At this point it’s out of your hands until they call you back to schedule a phone screen or an interview. When that happens you should grab your list of companies and have just a sentence or two to remind you of what the company does so you can sound like this is really high on your list. You should also, if you get a shot, ask about the general business environment. The real goal here is to figure out how to dress on the interview. You should try and dress as well as the best dressed person you’ll meet with, or 1 step above. (That’s a general rule of consulting.)

I know the rules well for guys - ladies, you’ll have to fill in your own equivalents here. But if the environment is described as client-facing or fairly conservative or formal you should expect to be wearing a nice suit to the interview. If it’s “dynamic and fast paced” then slacks and a sport coat or a nice shirt and slacks without a tie might be more appropriate. You should never go as casual as jeans or a polo shirt for an interview, but the coat and tie is a variance. The color of the shirt can also be a factor - bright colors exude confidence and energy, but they also can convey a sense of independence that very conservative companies may not like. When going into tech companies I normally will wear a suit, but with a bright colored shirt and matching tie. I’ve had some success going without a tie as well, but that was for “casual” environments.

The goal here is to show that you fit into their culture, and clothing is a good indicator of personality in a lot of peoples’ minds. (I tend to disagree with that assessment, but I’m not beyond playing on peoples’ preconceptions either.)

The final thing is how to schedule the interview. If you’re working with a headhunter you can just tell them your real schedule, but if you are dealing with the company directly then you should give them 2 or 3 options if they ask for your schedule. “I’m free all day Tuesday, and before lunch on Thursday and Friday” makes it sound like you have other interviews, but are giving them enough options to find something to work with. You want to be open enough to give them some good time, but not so open that it looks like you aren’t finding other opportunities. In short, you want to look valuable and make them want to compete for you, but you also want to be attainable and flexible. If they say that none of the times you told them work,ask them what time they have and then say you can call back in a few minutes to confirm that time after you’re given a moment to move things around. That is, of course, unless you really do have a conflicting interview. You shouldn’t ever move anything around if you can help it. The truth is that businesses are a lot less flexible than you are when it comes to schedule, so once something is on the calendar, you should leave it there.

That should get you all the way up to the interview.

Previously:

Part One: Finding Jobs

Part Two: Cover Letters and Resumes

Coming Soon:

Part Four: The Interview
Part Five: Salary Negotiations.

Patrick Gary is a Dallas based technical consultant and multifaceted musician who refuses to let any single realm of life or group of interests completely define or encapsulate him.
You can read more about him at Troupatour.com

Continuing where part one left off:

I’m no kind of expert in cover letter. I know that in many industries the cover letter is the main means of selling yourself. If you are looking for a job where you will be writing for much of your livelihood, you need to do whatever it is with your cover letter that sells you to those employers. I suggest having a boilerplate cover letter that you modify for every submission if you’re in that type of career, but I’m neither in one of those professions nor a job-hunt consultant in any real way.

The other half of this is the resume. I also understand that if you are in one of those “cover letter centric” professions you will normally only have 1 or 2 versions of your resume and it will need to be very short. The cover letter sells you and the resume is supporting documentation. For the rest of us the cover letter is there to act as a paper towel if the HR guy spills his coffee. I’ve had several people in hiring tell me that they never read cover letters. But the resume is key for us.

It should start with a 2 or 3 sentence statement about what you’re looking for, that mirrors your job hunt business card’s job title. It should also say if you are looking for contract, contract-to-hire, or full-time work, or any combination of those hiring scenarios.

You then need to have a skills summary where you list everything that you are selling yourself on. That will be altered for every job you submit if you have a job post listing. You want to put your skills in the same order as their posting so the HR person can just check everything off. And, by the way, list everything on the main version of your resume if you can. I’ve literally had people ignore my resume in the past because I didn’t list HTML as a programming language, even though 1) it technically isn’t (it’s a markup language) and 2) I have other languages on my resume that are HTML dependent like PHP, xhtml, and ASP classic. Non technical people may not know that, and so you just write for the lowest common denominator. Then you can edit for each job submission.

For those of us in the resume-centric fields, the job listings should be a defense of your skills, showing when you acquired said skills, what you did with them, and how you have been successful throughout your career. There are a lot of other things on resume writing, and they cover this well, so I’ll let you find some of those on your own.

The final things though should be an “other interests” section with 2-3 bullet points that give your hobbies if your hobbies can start conversations during interviews and your references. I’ve been told by some HR people that “available upon request” is ok, but others will prioritize resumes with references listed. So if you have 3 trusted references that don’t mind being contacted whenever, go ahead and list them.

You’ll note that both documents suggest that you tweak them with every resume submission. I mean it. If you have too many skills listed then your relevant information gets lost on the resume, and that’s no good. If you need to add something to your resume, you should do it for your job history section as well. You should have a master document that you add everything to and then remove things for focused resumes or cover letters, but you really should have focused documents for your submissions.

That’s why I suggest doing your job hunt in the evenings. You can get your job submissions bundled up and make your resumes and cover letters in order, then send everything out all at once in the morning. You don’t want to be killing time during the business day with this type of work unless you’re sending a resume out to someone who wants it TODAY. You likely will need to be flexible to take phone calls during the day too, and it’s just easier if you aren’t focused on sending out a resume to the next place while you’re talking to someone about a different job.

————————————————————————————————–

Previously:

Part One: Finding Jobs

Coming Soon:
Part Three: Pre-Interview
Part Four: The Interview
Part Five: Salary Negotiations.

Patrick Gary is a Dallas based technical consultant and multifaceted musician who refuses to let any single realm of life or group of interests completely define or encapsulate him.
You can read more about him at Troupatour.com

A friend of ours has been in-between jobs for a couple of weeks now and, while he was looking for work for himself, he decided to put together this guide for others. He has graciously agreed to let me post it here, in case any of our readers might benefit from what he has learned.

I’ve split it up into a five-part series, which I will be posting over the next week or so:

Part One: Finding Jobs
Part Two: Cover Letters and Resumes
Part Three: Pre-Interview
Part Four: The Interview
Part Five: Salary Negotiations

If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below and i’ll pass them along to Patrick.
————————————————————————————————–
Part One—Finding Jobs:

Ok, this is long. For qualifications, I’ve never (even in the worst of times) been jobless for a full month. I’ve normally gotten my first offer within 2 weeks of losing my last one. I’ve passed this info along to other people and their mileage varies, but the plan hasn’t failed anyone yet. Or if it has, nobody’s let ME know. The longest I’ve heard of anyone looking after they started ploughing through like this that I know of was about 2 months…

Now if I say something that you disagree with, or you have something to add, let me know. I’m not a professional job hunter after all, and there are a lot of nuances that change from one industry to another, but this is what I’ve learned. Take it for what it’s worth.

Finding jobs:
If you’re unemployed, finding a job is your full time job. If you have another job then you still will be doing something 3 times a day if you are serious about moving to another job. You’ll just be spending less time doing it, and go slower overall.

But here are the things you need to do daily.
1) Send your resume to 3-5 places before 10 am. (If you’re employed, send 1 a day M-Th)
2) Follow up just after lunch with a note asking if the resumes were received correctly
3) After your follow ups (or after work if you have a job right now) find your next place to send your resume for tomorrow.

From here on in I’m going to assume that you don’t have a job. If you do, most of this still applies, but you probably will need to handle things differently depending on your current situation.

So the above 3 things are your basic framework for your day. Your day should still begin by 9 am. You should wake up, shower, get dressed and cleaned up, etc. every day you are job hunting. Honestly I’ve seen several situations where you can go a week with no hits and then have someone call and say “can you interview today?” So be ready for that. Also it gives you a sense of place while you float.

It’s also important to get as many job leads as possible. So, no matter how embarrassed you are that you lost your job, or your emotional state, tell everyone that you meet that you’re looking. You are STILL whatever you were at your last job, but you just don’t have an employer right now. So when you meet someone at the grocery store or at church or wherever you meet people be sure to let them know that you are looking for a job. Tell all of your friends. Tell them to tell their friends. Use your social network for everything it’s worth.

And don’t let the social network end there. If you don’t have a facebook, plaxo, or linkedin page, you should have one. On all 3 places. And with your facebook page, don’t put pictures of you out at the bar… potential employers really do look at that stuff hese days. Also, don’t use the myspace or facebook blog. Those things are overly accessable for potential employers. You want a page, and you want to make it look like you have friends, and you want to make yourself look like you have personality and are fun, but you shouldn’t look like a frat boy, and don’t want to inadvertently say anything that might be embarassing.

Post your resume on careerbuilder.com and on monster.com and make an update to it every 3-4 days. When you update your resume it goes back to the top of the lists. Also set up automated job hunts for those two boards to email you with new job leads that fit your criteria. But those should not be your primary places for your job hunt. They pretty much take care of themselves; you just need to keep your resume up there for potential employers to find you and have them email you offers.

Instead use www.indeed.com and www.simplyhired.com for your active job searches. They have fewer listings, but they also are aggregators for smaller sites and give you jobs where the employer is looking to move more quickly. In addition there are dozens of job boards for certain professions. I know for myself I can use www.dice.com and www.guru.com if I need some quick cash flow. I can’t help with everyone’s profession, but google can.

The main thing is that you now have your friends looking for you, 2 websites looking passively for you, and 2 more you’re actively searching. The last step is headhunters. If there is a lot of demand for your skill set then the headhunters will call based on your monster and careerbuilder resumes. If you aren’t so specialized then you’ll need to find some headhunters to help you. Regardless, find someone else in your industry, preferably in HR in your industry, and find out who the companies are that have a good reputation and get placements. Then get your resume to those people as well. I tend to hate headhunters generally, but they find job leads and give you information like what you can expect to make in your next job, what your resumes strengths and weaknesses are, and how to present yourself better.

Headhunters like to be in an exclusive position with you, but that doesn’t help you much. You should find 2 or 3 that you want to work with, and keep careful tabs on where they want to submit you. Companies don’t like to get the same resume from different places. It makes their hiring process really messy if they bring you on.

Also you should make yourself a job-hunting business card. Print it yourself or use www.vistaprint.com but it should look like a “real” card, even if it’s very simple. Make sure it has your name and a business title (John Smith - Professional Cheeseburger Taster), your # years of experience with that title, a few things that you want to highlight (17 years food critic for burgers monthly magazine, 40 years enjoying burgers) any degrees or professional certifications that are relevant, and your cell phone and/or home phone number, a PERSONAL, professional sounding email address (yahoo, hotmail, or gmail if you don’t have one already), a website address where your most recent resume can be downloaded, (www.geocities.com/johnsmithburgertaster) and absolutely nothing else. This is your 2×5 sales pitch. You’re going to give this to everyone you meet and they won’t need to remember what you do or how to find you and it shouldn’t be cluttered with a lot of extra info. You can put any extra information that you want to convey on the simple web page where you can keep multiple versions of your resume, create a general cover letter, etc.

As for the email address, there is absolutely nothing wrong with creating a new email address just for your job hunt. Regardless though, it should be professional sounding. johnsmith2122@yahoo.com is a far preferable email address to bigsexyjohnson@yahoo.com. So if you have any double entendres in your regular personal email address, you should create another one just for the job hunt.

Now you have to keep up with everyone who is looking at your resume. Every time you send a resume out or your headhunter(s) submit you then have a spreadsheet where you list the company, when you were submitted, who actually did the submission, the job title, and a sentence or two about the company. You’ll want that information later when the company calls, or when another headhunter wants to submit you for another position. Large companies would never notice if you were submitted 3 or 4 times so long as you are applying for different jobs in different places. But you need to make sure that you aren’t being double-submitted ever.

The other thing to think about as you go through the job hunt is that your last job should not necessarily be your next job. Many people get into a thought process that looks a lot like “this is what I know how to do and I’m good at it, so I should do it forever.” But while you are looking, you really should start looking at positions that are not exactly what you did before. If you’ve done the same job for 8 or 10 years, maybe you should go into business analysis or business process consulting for that industry. If you’ve spent your career jumping from one field to another, maybe you could look into becoming a headhunter yourself. If you’ve always been a salesperson then maybe marketing or sales management or product development could be a fit. But you should think of the things you were best at in your last job and figure out how to apply that to as many different jobs as you can. Then you can apply to a lot more, and maybe find something that you’ll be excited by because it isn’t EXACTLY what you had before.

As I look around at the job market today, in November 2008, I know that marketing jobs have decreased by 25% in the past 18 months. So my friends in marketing are having a lot of difficulty finding jobs. And I won’t pretend to know what they will need to do to find work, but I would suggest that they start looking to any professional associations they can to find out how they can change and grow themselves.

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Coming Soon:
Part Two: Cover Letters and Resumes
Part Three: Pre-Interview
Part Four: The Interview
Part Five: Salary Negotiations.

Patrick Gary is a Dallas based technical consultant and multifaceted musician who refuses to let any single realm of life or group of interests completely define or encapsulate him.
You can read more about him at Troupatour.com

A blogger I follow was wondering how to capture streaming audio from the internet, and I told him I’d look into it for him.  (Hi Tim!)  I found many options for both Mac and Windows users, and thought I’d pass them along.

I also stumbled across some video-capture programs while I was searching, so I’ll probably be doing a post on those as well.

If you know of a good one that I’ve missed, please feel free to add it in the comments!

In no particular order, here’s what I found:

For both Mac and Windows:

Audacity (free!)

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features.

RecordPad ($55; $38.20 through Nov. 15, 2008)

• Record sound, voice, notes, music or any other audio.
• Save recordings to your hard drive in wav, mp3 or aiff format. (*Pocket PC version does not support saving to mp3 file format)
• Can be set to record only when you are speaking with voice activated recording.
• Recordings can be burnt directly to CD using Express Burn software to create an audio CD.
• System-wide hot keys allow keyboard control over recording while working in other programs.
• Option to automatically send recordings via email or upload to an FTP server.
• MPEG Layer-3 encoding offers content of variable bit rates from 8 to 320kbps with optional crc error checking and joint stereo modes.
• Wave encoding at sample rates between 6000 and 196000Hz in PCM or many other codecs and bits.
• Can be automated and integrated to run from other programs with powerful command line options.
• Fully integrates with WavePad Professional Audio Editing Software to edit recordings and add effects.
• Can be used in conjunction Express Scribe, Player for Typists to assist transcription of voice recordings.
• Designed to be simple and robust for professional and corporate recording applications.

For Mac Users:

Audio Hijack Pro ($32; free trial)

Depending on how you configure Audio Hijack Pro, it can record from one application at a time (just the audio from Safari), multiple separate applications into separate file (Safari and DVD Player), or all audio at once.

When you record from one application, Audio Hijack Pro will grab audio from only that application. With Audio Hijack Pro you won’t wind up with system alerts, iChat beeps, or any other audio you don’t want.

You can also set Audio Hijack Pro to grab audio from multiple individual sources at the same time. If you want to record a stream from DVD Player, and another stream from Safari, you can do it. Set up multiple sessions, one for each source, then hit record and you’ll be all set. When the recordings are done, you’ll have one file for each recording - your VCR can’t even do that!

Finally, you can use the System Audio input source to record all audio being played on your machine. If you want to record everything coming out of your speakers, use the System Audio input device and Audio Hijack Pro will save this all to one file.

WireTap ($69; free trial)

Using WireTap Studio, you can record the discrete audio output of any application, as well as all system audio, or record audio input from any microphone, line-in, or audio input hardware.

If you can hear it, WireTap Studio can record it.

Once you have recorded your audio, you can easily organize your recordings in the convenient Recording Library, and edit them with WireTap Studio’s integrated lossless audio editor.

WireTap Studio also boasts full Audio Unit effects support, for adding professional quality effects to your audio.

Sound Studio ($79.99/Mac OS X)

Sound Studio is an audio recording and editing application for the Mac OS. It allows you to take full advantage of your Mac’s built-in sound recording and playback capabilities (It uses Core Audio under Mac OS X). With Sound Studio you can digitize your collection of vinyl and tapes, do live recording of audio, edit new and pre-existing digital audio and save your audio in several file formats to be used in other audio apps.

AudioX ($19.95/Mac OS X)

AudioX was written for people who want an easy way to record sound from any input source under Mac OS X. ie. built-in microphone, USB microphone or even a firewire video camera.
AudioX is great for recording interviews, voice memos, sound FX and even old vinyl records. You can then convert them into MP3 using Apples free iTunes or the software or your choice.

For Windows Users:

Pistonsoft mp3 audio recorder (free)  (The download link is inside the blue box, at the bottom; I’m telling you because it took me half a minute to locate it. . . .)

Free download from Shareware Connection - Captures audio from any source, including line-in, microphone, or sounds that are played back on your computer by other applications, and save the recording into any sound format such as MP3 or OGG without the need to compress and re-compress

Alive WMA MP3 Recorder ($29.95; free trial)

Alive WMA MP3 Recorder records any audio source from your computer into MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, and VOX files. With Alive WMA MP3 Recorder you can record sound from microphone, line-in, streaming audio from the Internet, or music played by WinAMP, Windows Media Player, Quick Time, RealPlayer, Power DVD, VCD, Flash, Games, etc..

Alive WMA MP3 Recorder allows you to record sound without running out of memory as long as there’s enough disk space. Alive WMA MP3 Recorder have simple and intuitive interface. Sound quality of the recordings remains excellent. Alive WMA MP3 Recorder integrates the complete set of record volume control for your convenience.

In addition, Alive WMA MP3 Recorder includes an AudioPlayer, and enables you to play MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, VOX, MPC, AVI, MP1, MP2, MPA, g721, g726, g723 or RAW files.

Free Sound Recorder (free)

Free Sound Recorder is a perfect audio recorder to record your own voice, music or any other sound by working directly with your sound card. It supports the record input/source from a microphone, streaming audio from the Internet, external input devices (e.g. CDs, LP, music cassettes, phone line etc.) as well as other applications like Winamp, Media Player, etc.