The Business Failed, But Did You?

Written by Tim Knox


Small Business Q&A with Tim Knox

Q: After years of dreaming about starting my own business, I finally tookrepparttar plunge a little over a year ago. To sayrepparttar 104687 least, my dream quickly became a nightmare. The business didn't do nearly as well as I had hoped. I ran out of money within six months and had to take out a second mortgage on my house just to keep things going. I have now closedrepparttar 104688 business and am left with a pile of bills that will probably put me in personal bankruptcy. I don't mean to take it out on you, but instead of telling people how great having your own business is allrepparttar 104689 time you should also warn them that starting a business is not easy and can be devastating when things go wrong. -- Gene K.

A: Gene, I hope that I have never given anyonerepparttar 104690 impression that having your own business is a walk inrepparttar 104691 park. Torepparttar 104692 contrary, I'm likerepparttar 104693 proverbial Chicken Little when it comes to warning readers ofrepparttar 104694 obstacles and pitfalls that await those consideringrepparttar 104695 entrepreneurial plunge.

To quote myself from a column I wrote earlier this year, "If it was easy, my friend, everybody would do it."

Just to make sure we're in agreement, let me reiteraterepparttar 104696 standard warnings once again. Starting a business is incredibly hard work. It takes long hours and deep pockets. It demands unbridled passion and unquestioned commitment. It requires that you give of yourself until you often feel there is nothing left to give. And sometimes, even after you've done all that you can do and given all that you can give,repparttar 104697 business fails.

Period.

Blood, sweat, and tears can only carry you so far inrepparttar 104698 business world. Good intentions and grand ideas won't payrepparttar 104699 office rent. You can not make payroll with Monopoly money.

I certainly don't mean to make light of your situation. In fact, I know exactly how you feel. I failed so miserably my first time in business that I swore I would never think about working for myself again. All I wanted to do was to find a nice, secure 9-to-5 job that provided me with a nice steady paycheck. I yearned forrepparttar 104700 opportunity to grow fat and happy on someone else's payroll for a change.

I never again wanted to have to think about customers or employees or withholding taxes or accounts receivable or anything else even remotely associated with being in business.

I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die because my business had failed, and in my All-American, macho male, "you are what you do" brain that meant that I was a failure, too.

Getting overrepparttar 104701 failure of a business can be extremely difficult, especially if you are one of those entrepreneurs (like I was) who wrongly relatesrepparttar 104702 success or failure of a business torepparttar 104703 success or failure of you as a person.

The best way that I know of to get overrepparttar 104704 failure of a business (andrepparttar 104705 deep feelings of personal failure that go along with it) is to do an autopsy ofrepparttar 104706 business to help find out exactly what went wrong. Only by discovering our weakness can we build on our strengths (Yogi Berra eat your heart out).

How to Hire Faster, with Less Effort & Lower Cost

Written by Naveen Bala


Introduction

The goal of hiring is to getrepparttar best candidate forrepparttar 104686 job. The challenge is finding that best candidate. How do you reach them? Inrepparttar 104687 present economic times each open position brings in 100’s of resumes. How do you handle them? It is also to be expected that 95% of resumes received are not appropriate forrepparttar 104688 particular job. How do you identifyrepparttar 104689 best? Recruiting cost which includes publicity, your time and recruiting commissions for 3rd party search firms add up. How do you reduce them? This article provides answers torepparttar 104690 above questions.

How to Reach Candidates

Traditionally, companies used referrals, networking, advertised in local newspapers or went to a search firm. Referrals and networking are stillrepparttar 104691 lowest cost options. That failing, companies now have numerous options.

Internet job boards are a good place to start. Companies such as Monster (www.monster.com), Hotjobs (www.hotjobs.com) and CareerBuilder (www.careerbuilder.com) spend a lot of money advertising torepparttar 104692 prospective job seeker. In 2003, Monster’s advertising budget was $115 million. This attracts sizable traffic – 1.6 million daily visitors and about 36 million resumes in their database. This is not a pitch for Monster.com but these numbers are indicators ofrepparttar 104693 reach of online job boards. Monster.com, HotJobs.com, CareerBuilder.com and numerous other job boards are a strong source of applicants for any job.

Your website can be a good source of applicants. The problem here is traffic. How many come to your site looking for jobs. Publicizing jobs on your website costs you nothing, so go ahead but you may not be able to generate enough applicant volume from your website alone. To paraphrase Willy Sutton’s famous answer, Why do you go torepparttar 104694 job boards Willy? Cause that’s wererepparttar 104695 jobs are.

The best way to build a sizable applicant volume for sure is to advertise not just in 1 job board but on multiple boards. You can choose 2 big boards and one niche board like your local newspaper (in Atlanta, you can use www.ajcjobs.com ) or specialty boards like emplawyer.com (for lawyers), jobsinthemoney.com (finance), engineerjobs.com (engineers) etc. You should also publicizerepparttar 104696 open position on your website. (Contactrepparttar 104697 author for a free, categorized listing of popular job boards using Alexa Traffic Rank)

How to Handle Resume Volume

Automatically! If you advertise in say 3 job boards and your website, you can expect at least 200 resumes. You do not want them coming to your e-mail box as this would require you to open each mail, saverepparttar 104698 resume etc for each and every one of them. This becomes tedious and time consuming. You want them to be automatically routed to a database or a resume management system.

Your resume management system should be able to processrepparttar 104699 incoming resumes, extract information fromrepparttar 104700 resume, and build a list of applicants with their name, contact information and a summary, so that you can glance atrepparttar 104701 list to see how your publicity is working. Sophisticated resume management systems go a step forward and extract experience, education, summary and objectives fromrepparttar 104702 resume. This is especially useful in identifyingrepparttar 104703 best candidates without actually reading every resume.

A good resume management system would integrate with your web site, allow applicants to easily upload their resume, handle resumes that come by e-mail and process them with zero manual intervention. How to Short Listrepparttar 104704 Best Applicants

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