Go hi-tech. More and more mystery shopping companies are requiring shoppers to have access to Internet, email and a fax machine. Some shops even require use of a digital camera to capture product placement, signage, cleanliness or other focus points.

Complete all assignments on time. If you absolutely cannot complete an assignment, contact mystery shopping company immediately so they can reschedule assignment. Dependable shoppers get best assignments!

Assignments can be as basic as sitting in parking lot of a fast food restaurant for 20 minutes to document drive-thru service times to taking an all-expense-paid trip to a resort for 2 weeks to document your daily service experiences.

Now that you understand mystery shopping industry a little more clearly, next step is to locate a few top mystery shopping providers and register, remembering that even if a firm doesn’t have a client in your area today, they may next month. Once registered with a company, it would not hurt to call or send an email to express your willingness to shop and to confirm your professionalism and attention to detail. Just make sure that you do not send an email full of typos and grammatical errors – definitely not type of first impression that you want to leave.

Another method for finding potential shopping opportunities and to gather further industry knowledge is by monitoring online mystery shopping message boards and forums. To locate a few, type words like “mystery shopping message board” or “mystery shopping forum” into your favorite browser.

Mystery shopping may not become your next career, but it will provide you with some extra income, free goods, and maybe even a few adventures along way!

- Consider your company's culture in handling failure. Is it a "cover your ass" organization where people try to distract attention from their own failures by trying to focus attention on their coworkers failures? Has company reprimanded workers who took initiative and failed in past?

A company that punishes failure will stifle initiative and innovation. Workers won't want to do anything new for fear failure. If a company wants to increase initiative and innovation, they have to reward effort and embrace failure.

Despite these dangers, rewards of taking initiative are great:

- You'll gain skills and knowledge about your company and market it serves, making you a more valuable employee. When economy recedes and company needs to layoff workers, who do you think they'll keep? The individual who is more versatile in different functions of organization.

- You'll achieve more independence when you demonstrate that you have organizations interests in mind and that they can trust your judgment in solving problems.

- You'll gain skills and market knowledge that will make you a more valuable commodity in labor market. Workers who only do their own little job are not aware of opportunities outside their company.

There are dangers in taking initiative at work, but in an organization with a healthy culture, the rewards of taking initiative are great.

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