From Business Development to Make-up

From Business Development to Make-up Success Story > From: Job To: Solopreneur From Business Development to Make-up “I kept thinking that there must be more to life than this.” * From Business Development to Make-up Writing reports and going to client meetings wasn't doing it for Kristina Gasperas. She needed something more inspiring. Here's how asurprising wedding experiencesparked the start of a new, more excitingcareer. What work were you doing previously? I worked for a very large global IT corporation in a business development role. Basically I looked after clients whilst trying to sell them more stuff. What are you doing now? Now I'm an award-winning make-up artist with a team of twelve. We provide make-up and hairstyling services nationally and internationally to brides and special occasion clients. I have also founded my own beauty academy (the Kristina Gasperas Beauty Academy). Here, my team and I provide intensive, highly focused professional make-up and hairstyling courses to both beginners and seasoned professionals wishing to upgrade their skills. How did you feel in your work before you decided to make a change? I didn't dislike my previous career, it was just not very inspiring. I kept thinking that there must be more to life than this. I was always looking for more fulfilment, more excitement, and less of the 'same old' job and lifestyle that went with it. Why did you change? For the last few years of my corporate career I did a lot of soul-searching and research into what I might be inspired to do for a living. I wanted a fun, fulfilling, exciting career, as I enjoy cramming my day with as many things to look forward to as possible. I simply wasn't getting that working in the office writing up lots of reports and going to client meetings. When was the moment you decided to make the change? On my wedding day. I was actually sitting in the make-up chair, having had the most wonderful bridal makeover by an incredible make-up artist (who later became my tutor and mentor), and felt inspired right there and then. How did you choose your new career? Almost immediately after my wedding I started planning my career change, knowing that I wanted to work in the world of weddings. I'm a hopeless romantic. Having experienced the most incredible bridal makeover I just wanted to share that feeling with as many people as possible. Are you happy with the change? I couldn't be happier! I'm doing what I love every day, with each day being different as I provide so many varied make-up services now. I feel fortunate and very grateful that I do what I do for a living. My life is now in a very fulfilled and happy place. What do you miss and what don't you miss? I don't miss anything about my previous career as what I have now is so enjoyable and satisfying. I wake up and feel grateful to have a job that I love so much. How did you go about making the shift? Literally a few days after my wedding I contacted the same make-up artist who did my bridal makeover. She runs a make-up academy and I asked for a one-to-one intensive course so that I could train fully whilst on maternity leave (I got married halfway through my maternity leave). I knew I had some time on my side to try to make it work and spent two months training at the academy. The training was very detailed and intensive â€" it included colour theory, elaborate corrective and anti-ageing techniques and learning various make-up styles. Once I had completed this I continued with a number of shorter courses and masterclasses to hone my skills further. Alongside my studies I practised a lot, through giving people free makeovers. I did a makeover on pretty much anyone who wanted one! Whilst doing this practice a friend helped design and build my first website. Another friend, a very talented photographer, organised lots of beauty photo shoots with me so that my portfolio had some great images right from the start. I didn't have any marketing funds and social media wasn't as prevalent then so I relied on doing my job as best I could to get work through recommendations. What didn't go well? What 'wrong turns' did you take? After completing my training, which was abroad, I decided to also take a make-up course with a beauty school in the UK, as I believed that this would give me more credibility in this country. The course I took didn't really teach me anything new or improve my skills, and on reflection I should have saved my time and money. The lesson in this is to research and choose very carefully where you train, as the quality between make-up academies varies greatly. This is one of the reasons why I have now set up my own academy where I can set and maintain the standards. How did you handle your finances to make your change possible? Firstly, I was on maternity leave from my previous employer so still got paid a small amount whilst training for my new career. However, in the main I guess I was lucky to have a husband who supported me financially. It meant giving a few things up for the first few years but in the longer run it was definitely worth it. When I started getting paying clients I re-invested as much as possible into my business. It was really quite tough at times and there were some tearful moments when I missed having a consistent, steady income, but I got through them and didn't give up when the going got tough. What was the most difficult thing about changing? Probably giving up the steady income and therefore all the things that I took for granted that came with it. I had to start a business from scratch, so a lot of the things I was used to doing and having had to be suspended. That was quite hard for me. What help did you get? My make-up teacher in Lithuania was always very helpful, and is still my mentor to this day. My husband was my biggest helper and advocate of my career change. I also had help from a friend with my first website. Also, there were all the people for whom I did free makeovers, who then went on to recommend me to their friends. What resources would you recommend to others? I'd recommend listening to as many podcasts from entrepreneurs as possible â€" these have really inspired me and still do tremendously. Join relevant Facebook Groups and participate in local industry networking events. It's so helpful to have the support of others who are a little bit more advanced in their journeys and can encourage and share their wisdom. What have you learnt in the process? Success doesn't come along by itself. Building a successful business takes time, a great deal of effort and patience. I've had to be completely focused and build clear, actionable goal lists. These have helped me stay motivated on a daily basis and mapped out what I've needed to do to bring me closer to my dream. I've spent way more than the average 9-5 working on it. Alongside working directly with clients, there's so much behind the scenes that needs to be done. But I've found so much more drive and enthusiasm from doing something that I really enjoy. What would you advise others to do in the same situation? When in the process of choosing a new career, get an insight into how it really feels to do the job by shadowing with a mentor. Ask tons of questions, and really try to get to grips with what it takes to make it in that job or industry. Check out ViewVo for shadowing opportunities. You'll find me there as a registered mentor. To learn more about ViewVo, visit www.viewvo.com. To find out more about Kristina's services, visit www.kristinagasperas.com. What lessons could you take from Kristina's story to use in your own career change? Let us know in the comments below.

Why We Must Stop Talking About Hiring The Best

Why We Must Stop Talking About Hiring The Best I remember receiving a call from a client that I had worked closely with, building their IT team from a single member to a fully functional team. One of the first developers I had placed with them, an extremely talented guy (we’ll call him Bob for the sake of argument), had handed in his notice and they needed to replace him. I asked them if there were any changes to the job spec we worked from for the developer role at that company. “No”, came the answer, “we are essentially looking for someone exactly like Bob”.  This response is understandable after all, their ongoing business plans required a team with a specific skill set and knowledge base. Therefore, if a member of that team was leaving, it would be ideal to replace them with someone as similar as possible, to minimise any disruption. However, the kicker is that it is impossible. You will never find anyone with precisely the same skills, background, knowledge, approach to problem-solving etc. as someone else. Software development is a knowledge-based role that requires solving unstructured problems i.e., problems where there are no known right answers, and multiple ways to solve them. This is true of any role where there is a reasonably high expectation of discretion in how the employee carries out their activities. For example, a concept designer has a huge amount of input into what designs to exploit, and which to reject, when exploring new designs for future innovations, but factory workers on a production line have very little say in how they perform their duties. Hiring is essentially a planning activity. You are making certain predictions about the future, and what organisational resources you will need in order to be successful in that future. In this case, you are predicting what human resources you will need. You need to know what duties that human resource needs to perform, what skills they need to perform it, and how to motivate them to perform those duties. This involves placing certain bets on likely outcomes of the future. These bets may or may not pay off. For example, HMV’s MD famously bet in 2002 that online retailers and downloadable music were nothing but fads, and so failed to develop either the human or infrastructure resources to exploit this space themselves, until it was too late. However, the problem is that it is very difficult to predict how environmental factors will affect your business over time. Therefore, business owners have to make decisions on what they think will happen, and assume that those future scenarios are highly likely to occur. After all, any business is faced with an almost infinite number of possible futures, but you cannot plan for an almost infinite number of outcomes. In order to achieve anything practical, you have to pick a course, and hope for the best. To bring this back to the company I was discussing, they assumed their ongoing business required someone as similar to Bob as possible. This is understandable, as our predictions about the future are based on our experiences of the past, and these past experiences create an anchoring effect: for example, if a company hires a graduate into a non-graduate role, and the graduate performs well, the company may well only look to hire graduates for that role in the future. This also underpins the foundational concept of the job interview; by asking candidates about their past successes, you assume that past achievements act as a realistic predictor of future achievements. Unfortunately, as many struggling companies have found out when hiring CEOs from successful businesses, only to see little-to-no impact on their fortunes, past success is a poor predictor of future performance, as performance is grounded in specific context. No two companies are precisely alike, and academics who study ch aos theory within organisations assert that the likelihood of the exact same situation happening twice is so unlikely as to be impossible. Two situations may superficially appear similar to one another, but in all likelihood the people involved, the knowledge they have, and the external environment they operate in will all be different. So, most of the work in hiring activities involves creating a set of performance criteria to assess who is ‘best’ for a role. For a sales job, the key metric sales figures is an obvious and intuitive choice. But, there are different ways of achieving high sales. “Cowboy” tactics, which often involve lying to candidates, and hard-selling to clients, might well result in a high sales figure. But is that the kind of person you want working for your company? An almost universal problem for job roles, including software development, is that it is virtually impossible to come up with an objective measure for performance. In software development, there is a mythos of the 10X Engineer (the software developer who is 10 times better than his colleagues). However, as Shanley Kane notes in her superb critical evaluation of the 10X myth, the whole 10X concept was based on a single, highly flawed study of developers conducted in the 1960s. Whilst companies like to talk about hiring 10X E ngineers, this ignores how an individual’s performance is affected by a huge number of variables, and how the very concept of performance itself is left ill-defined. There is no objective way to determine who is the best person to hire, which begs the question, why are companies so obsessed with finding the best? Finding the best depends on your own individual assumptions about the future, and what resources you will need to bring into your organisation in order to effectively exploit the future. However, those assumptions can be massively limiting. The company I was discussing had decided that the ‘best’ person for them would be as similar as possible to Bob, and this meant finding his replacement was highly problematic. A number of talented candidates were rejected because they weren’t Bob. The recruitment for the role stretched out over months, until their desperation to fill the role finally outweighed their need to find Bob 2.0. Hiring requires a balance of flexibility and rigidity, and this requires a shift in thinking from best to good enough. Good enough typically carries negative baggage: ‘oh, you aren’t perfect, but youre good enough’. However, in this case, “good enough is a realistic acknowledgement that performance assessment can only ever be made retroactively; and, without the ability to accurately predict the future, the whole concept of best is meaningless and redundant. An organisation is not stable, nor predictable, nor mechanistic. It is messy, dynamic, nonlinear, and chaotic. So, hiring managers need to understand what their assumptions about the future are, and then use those predictions as guidelines for who to hire, rather than a rigid blueprint. Good enough is the best you are going to get, but the good news is that good enough may prove, over time, to be the best hiring decision you could have made.

How to Survive the First Day at Your New Job [5 TIPS]

How to Survive the First Day at Your New Job [5 TIPS] Congratulations! You’ve succeeded in getting your new job, now it’s time to prepare for your first day. This is your chance to show your employer that they made the right decision and to get acquainted with your new co-workers whilst navigating the office. Here are some useful tips to help you make your first day a success: Get there early: It should go without saying, you are expected to turn up to work on time, but there is a lot of benefit in getting there a little early so you can find your bearings and make a good impression. Being one of the last people to leave at the end of the day is also a good way to get a feel for the office culture, whilst coming across as a dedicated worker. Dress appropriately:   Just like your interview, you should always be dressed appropriately for your job, steering on the side of caution on your first day. You will have most likely been informed of the dress code on receiving the job offer, or noticed the general attire on your tour of the building, when you attended your interview. There is no harm in being smarter than necessary in the beginning, you will soon know which clothes to pick out in the morning. Be aware that your appearance will affect people’s initial judgement of you.   Be friendly and sociable:   Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself first and make a note of remembering people’s names and anything they tell you about themselves. A genuine smile goes a long way in any situation, more so when meeting new people. Make the effort to be sociable during breaks and consider accepting any after-work drinks invitations. Take lots of notes: By: StartupStockPhotos You will definitely be given a lot of information on your first day so have a notebook and pen at the ready. It is probably a wise idea to avoid too much outside communication so you can better immerse yourself in your surroundings and take more in. Listen and ask questions:   Being attentive will not only get you on the right footing with people, it will also help you to remember what you are being told. Likewise, don’t hesitate to ask questions about the company, the database, the social culture, or even personal ones to break the ice with people. Don’t forget… Plan your commute carefully the night before, if necessary, as well as what you’re going to wear and any food you want to take in. Having cash is a good idea, just in case the coffee van comes by. Say thank you to anyone who has helped you on your first day and don’t be too hard on yourself- remember, everyone had to start somewhere! Author:  Amechi Peirce-Howe is the director at London-based IT and Business specialist recruitment company, Red10. With over 25 years experience in recruitment, he is always willing to impart his wisdom to those looking for a new job or career change.

The Internet has created a generation of great writers

The Internet has created a generation of great writers The best writers in the history of the world are graduating from college, right now. So everyone can just shut up about how no one can write anymore. Newsflash: No one could write in the Middle Ages, when the good writers wrote in Latin and everyone else spoke colloquial languages like French and English, which priests told them were too lame for real writing. Its the same situation today in that the best way to have a population of good writers is for people to write constantly, in the language that is theirs, so that they are great at expressing themselves. People do good writing every day, in social mediawhen they write a note on someones Facebook wall, when they post a caption to a photo on flickr, or when they post a comment in a group on Brazen Careerist. The people who are complaining that no one can write anymore are the same ones who are stressed about information overload. This is not a coincidence. Information is changing, the flow of ideas is changing, and written communication is changing with it. Information overload is the feeling of not being able to deal with this change. Young people do not feel information overload, which is another sign that they are excellent writers for the new millennium: They can process and communicate new ideas at the new pace. I remember the first time in my life I heard about people who cant write anymore. It was my grandma telling me to read A Little Princess, instead of Are You There God, Its Me, Margaret. The people who tell you who can write and who cant are the people who dont want language to change. They dont want ideas to change. They dont want people to talk in ways that are new to them. And now, for all you doubters, I present the research to end all research. It comes from Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. She has conducted the Stanford Study of Writing, which includes about 15,000 writing samples from students from 2001 2006. The always-interesting Clive Thompson reported her findings in Wired magazine: First, only 38 percent of the writing young people do takes place in the classroom. Prior to the Internet, almost all writing people did was for the classroom. The increased amount of writing that young people do outside the classroom these days is so significant that Lumsford calls it a paradigm shift. Second, the type of writing that students dovia IM, Twitter, Facebook, and so forthis actually great for building communication skills. Thompson writes that, Lunsfords team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos?assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago. Third, the students have an acute sense of what good writing is because they are almost always writing for an audience. Lumsford found that students are writing mostly to debate, organize, or persuade. This is much more demanding writing than most of the writing students do for school. And, in fact, students in the Stanford study were not as enthusiastic about writing for school because they felt that the only purpose was to get a grade. Finally, for those of you who think students dont know how to write in full sentences, you are the people who probably dont understand how to use text as a persuasive medium. Lumsford finds that students are adept at making their point heard across a wide audience. And a study about Twitter, reported in Fast Company, shows that the text most likely to go viralthat is, the most persuasive textdoes not have abbreviations or emoticons, the evidence most cited of a crisis in modern writing skills. Which means that students probably know intuitively to use texting slang only when texting. Which makes me think that the people who are most worried that kids today dont know how to write are the people who are most unable to write for an audience. In the history of western thought, the first thing to happen when there was a paradigm shift was that the writing shifted, (Chaucers stories of common people and Martin Luthers translations of the Bible come to mind). And the first people to complain were those who had a stake in keeping things the same. So ask yourself, do you want to be part of the next period in history, or do you want to be a person representing the futile force in history that tries to hold us back?

Do New Grads Have a Personal Brand - Executive Career Brandâ„¢

Do New Grads Have a Personal Brand In a departure from my usual focus on c-level executive branding and job search, my most recent article as Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert, cross-p0sted here,  zeroed in on new grads and branding:   I’m a New Grad. Do I Have a Personal Brand? The short answer â€" YES! We all do. Everyone has a reputation they’ve developed over time. Over your work life and personal life, you’ve become known for being a certain kind of person, being driven by certain values and passions, and offering certain skill sets and strengths. More than ever these days, in job search you need to stand out from your competition. That means differentiating your own unique combination of top personal attributes, qualifications, motivating skills (those you excel at AND love doing the most), strengths, values and passions. This set of traits represents your promise of value to your target employers. That’s your brand. It’s not so hard for seasoned professionals to identify these distinguishing characteristics in themselves. They’ve probably had to think about these things, and have most likely received performance reviews from employer(s), confirming what they already knew were their best assets. But what if you’re a recent grad or someone seeking your very first job? Do you even have a brand yet? You bet you do! When I cross-posted my Job-Hunt article, Personal Branding Hype and Myth vs. Reality on my Executive Resume Branding blogsite, I received the following comment: I wonder, is a personal branding statement at all useful to people who don’t have previous work experience? Forgive me if my question sounds a little naive…I am looking for my first job, and it’s been tough going to present an appealing point of difference based on my very general skill set. My response: No matter what your professional level, even without work experience, you have a personal brand. People know you, and rely on you, for certain things. This is why getting feedback from the people who know you best is so important. Ask them what they feel your top strengths and personal attributes are. Look at the feedback for cross-over. Which points stand out? These can help you differentiate your value in the market place over others with similar backgrounds. So, the process of defining your brand is the same for you as a new grad or entry-level job seeker as it is for a senior level executive with 30+ years experience. Begin to determine your unique promise of value by asking people around, who have seen you in action, for feedback. This means tapping your classmates, teachers, professors, mentors, supervisors of internships, people you’ve known for some time, people you’ve worked on projects with, etc. Pay attention to what they say when they introduce you to someone new. Ask them what they think your best qualities are, and what things they know they can always rely on you for. Meantime, sit down and work on identifying your differentiating factors yourself, along with all the components that go into defining your personal brand. My 10-Step Personal Branding Worksheet will guide you through. And remember, as with job seekers at any professional level, building your brand requires first identifying your target career and the target companies you want to pursue, researching their needs right now (through job descriptions, company websites and Google search), and determining how you’ll be a good fit for them. Your brand and all your job search communications (resume, cover letters, online profiles, personal web pages, etc.) will resonate with your target employers, if you align their needs with your qualifications. Also, make sure that your brand and good-fit traits carry over to your online brand communications â€" your professional social networking and social media activities. My Job-Hunt article, The Keys to Online Brand Communications should help you. Although this article focuses on executives, youll find ideas you can use, that can give you an advantage over your job-seeking competitors who arent doing these things. Your takeaway: Professional level, years of experience and age don’t determine whether you have a brand. We all already have a personal brand. Chances are, others know what your brand is all about. It’s up to you to do some work, uncover what makes you unique, and use that information to market yourself to your target employers. Related posts: The True Measure of Your  Brand Get Your Brand Into Your Email Signature 10 Things to Love About Your Brand 00 0