What is Mystery Shopping and Can You Really Get Paid to Shop?

Written by Cathy Stucker


Mystery shoppers visit businesses “disguised as normal customers,” and dorepparttar things other customers do—ask questions, make a purchase, make a return—but with a twist. These undercover customers are there to evaluaterepparttar 137328 businesses and their employees. After a visit,repparttar 137329 mystery shopper completes a report or questionnaire detailing what occurred.

Why Do Businesses Hire Mystery Shoppers? In general, shops are done to find out aboutrepparttar 137330 level of service provided to customers. However, mystery shoppers may also be asked to verify that employees are neatly groomed and in uniform,repparttar 137331 business is clean and merchandise is displayed neatly, staff persons are knowledgeable, etc. As a mystery shopper, you may be asked to verify if employees used a certain phrase (such as, “Thank you for shopping at Mega Mart.”) or if they used suggestive selling techniques (“Would you like fries with that?”). You may even be asked to shop a client's competitor, sorepparttar 137332 client can compare their operations to others’. Mystery shoppers may monitor pricing, or verify thatrepparttar 137333 business is in compliance with professional standards or government regulations.

One common misconception about mystery shoppers is that they are just looking for what is wrong. In fact, a mystery shopper is there to provide an objective view ofrepparttar 137334 business, and they report onrepparttar 137335 good as well asrepparttar 137336 not-so-good.

Mystery shoppers seekrepparttar 137337 answers to questions. Were you greeted when you enteredrepparttar 137338 store? Wererepparttar 137339 shelves properly stocked? Wasrepparttar 137340 store clean? Didrepparttar 137341 rest rooms have soap and tissue? How long did it take to be served? Didrepparttar 137342 salesperson tell you aboutrepparttar 137343 available service contract? Didrepparttar 137344 cashier properly count out your change? Afterward, they fill out a form or write a report describing what they observed.

Mystery shopping is not opinion research. Shoppers are not paid to give their opinions, they are paid to report their observations.

When evaluating businesses, mystery shoppers arerepparttar 137345 eyes and ears ofrepparttar 137346 business owner. Shoppers tell them how customers seerepparttar 137347 business. Most businesses have service standards and rules for safety and security. Mystery shoppers tellrepparttar 137348 business owner whether his employees are living up torepparttar 137349 standards and followingrepparttar 137350 rules.

Businesses userepparttar 137351 information from shopper reports to reward good employees, identify training deficiencies, make stores safer for employees and customers, and much more. Companies may base performance evaluations and bonus pay outs at least in part onrepparttar 137352 results of mystery shops.

Online Resume Formats

Written by Michelle Roebuck


There are several types of online resume formats that can be used when contacting potential employers. When you search for job openings online, some companies will have on their websites which online resume format is acceptable.

If you don’t know which format is acceptable to a certain company, call them and ask. The worst thing you can do is send an online resume inrepparttar wrong format and have it ignored.

PLAIN TEXT RESUME

This format is also referred to as ASCII. Many companies used to accept this type of resume a few years ago when searching for a job onrepparttar 137307 internet was still new. When this format is used,repparttar 137308 resume is written in plain text with no formatting. The resume is sent in an email torepparttar 137309 employer.

Unfortunately, becauserepparttar 137310 resume is unformatted, it looks pretty ugly and is hard to read. Withrepparttar 137311 advancements in word processing and email functions, companies are turning towards more professional looking online resume formats.

PDF RESUME

This type of resume is delivered torepparttar 137312 employer in PDF format (Portable Document Format). You write your resume in Microsoft Word or some other word processing program, format it, convert it to PDF and save it. The file can be sent by email as an attachment. The employer needs to have a PDF viewer or Adobe Acrobat in order to view it.

Sometimes this can pose a problem because of computer viruses. People are wary about opening attachments to emails. Ifrepparttar 137313 employer wants you to submit your resume by this method, go ahead and do it. More than likely, they have software that can detect viruses in attachments.

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