Careers

Heading back to school means seeing old friends, having new challenges and spending money on rent, books, necessities and all those unpredictable expenses to get through school.

Students should definitely consider the on campus job board – not just for businesses who are close to campus, but for positions on campus – working for various departments or via on-campus amenities such as the restaurants or multi-use facilities which may need students for security, service or organizational work on a part-time or casual basis.

About 30% of small businesses in Canada fail within five years of starting up, an Industry Canada report shows. It's a scary number, but one that's understandable - there's so many things that can go wrong. The main reason most small businesses fail according to the report is because of mismanagement. About half the failures can be attributed to bad management decisions, not a slow market.

The good news is that 70% of start-ups make it through that first five years. One thing that many of these successful businesses have in common is that they have learned from their mistakes. I came across a couple of successful small businesses in the Financial Post that have shared their mistakes so that others out there can learn from them.

Some mistakes are ones that are widely spoken of, such as trying to do it all yourself, losing touch with your target market and marketing to too broad an audience. But some of the mistakes are worth mentioning here, like that made by Erin L. Schiffman, 31, the chief executive of graphic design company Schiffman Creative in New York City.

It's a tough jobs market right now with a large number of candidates vying for a small number of jobs. As such, it's important to make sure you stand out from the pack and grab the attention of your prospective employer. How you do this though varies significantly depending on the industry you work in. And it's important not to go too far. As one employer put it recently in a Globe and Mail story, "There's a fine line between creative and crazy."

Years ago when I was a young university graduate trying to break into the radio business, a number of announcers mentioned that, when sending my resume to different stations, I should also send a gift -- perhaps a basket of baked goodies or some wine. I didn't like the sound of this -- not only could the job hunting process become expensive, especially for someone without a job to start with, but I believed that the right candidate for the job should be based on skills, not their ability to suck up to their prospective boss.

How often do you smile, shake hands and receive a business card, but secretly think: "sorry buddy, but after the meeting, this is going straight into the trashcan?"

I do it constantly.

What's worse is, if you have a bland business card, you know that you're often on the receiving end, too.

Recently, I found MOO.COM and ordered a stack of life-changing business cards. MOO prints in lush colours on sturdy card stock. Not only that, but you can upload up to 50 different designs for a single order.

Regular prices for business cards are: $21.99 US for 50 cards and $118.98 US for 400. However, MOO just announced a 25% off sale on all their products. Not just business cards, but postcards, mini-cards and holiday / greeting cards.

The sale ends on August 22 at midnight.

Click here to get the discount.

You read that right: kindergarten. A recent study from Harvard University appears to show that the more you learn in kindergarten, the more successful you'll be as an adult.

Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues took a look at the life paths of about 12,000 children who had participated in an experiment on education conducted in the 1980s. The original experiment, Project Star, randomly assigned students to kindergarten classes, attempting to ensure that each class had a similar socioeconomic mix. It then studied how well students performed, and found large differences from class to class. The researchers were able to attribute some of the difference to class size and peer group, but most of the differences seemed to be based on how effective each teacher was. Some were fantastic, others not so much.

What Project Star found to be the outcome of the experiment, however, was quite different than what Mr. Chetty believes. According to the original researchers, any gain cause by kindergarten experience peters out by junior high or high school. This conclusion is based on the fact that by junior high and high school, students who did well earlier on don't perform any better on standardized tests.

Why the Economy is Not Relevant to Investing

When Ed Rempel over at Million Dollar Journey says that the economy is not relevant to investing, your first reaction is likely to be "Whaaaaat?" But take a minute to read his explanation: you can't use the economy to predict the stock market. And investors who try to use it to predict the market tend to buy and sell at exactly the wrong times. Check it out. It's an interesting read.

Never Hire a Real Estate Agent to Rent your Property

I wish I'd read this article over at Landlord Rescue before I hired a real estate agent to find me tenants for my house in Montreal when I moved to Edmonton for two years. It might have saved me more than $4,000 I had to spend on Rental Board applications, bailiffs, and other legal fees to remove the tenants he found for me - who paid one month's rent and never paid another cent. Real estate agents hate handling rental properties, apparently. You should hire a specialist in residential renting, he says, and explains why.

6 Ways to Invest in Gold
If your the market roller coaster has been giving you vertigo, you may have been wondering if it's time to invest in some gold. Million Dollar Journey this week talks about six different ways you can invest in gold.

Thinking of investing in U.S. Real Estate?
Investing in U.S. and other foreign markets has some distinct advantages, particularly when the dollar is at or near par with the U.S. dollar, as we've discussed here on WalletPop. Investing in U.S. real estate has become tempting, as condos in some parts of Florida are now selling for the price of a mid-range car. This week, Landlord Rescue talks about the things you need to know if you're considering investing in real estate south of the border.

LinkedIn is a fantastic networking tool that can be used to stay abreast of industry news, discuss new trends with people in your field, meet people who can help further your career, and intelligently market yourself and your business to people who will want to meet you and use your services.

You should also be using it to help other people reach their career goals, because that's what social media's about - the more people you help, the more who will want to help you. If you're looking to change companies or jobs there's no better place to research how to make contact with people at those companies. LinkedIn will help you find the person in your network who can help introduce you. You can also reach out to people in your groups (if their settings permit it) by sending them a message and asking them to connect with you.

Do any or all of those things intelligently and LinkedIn can become the central hub of your career advancement. Do them wrong, and you can quickly become a pariah.

Ever feel like you want to ditch the day job and take hold of your career?

Although this may be a dream for many of us, a recent survey found that 20 per cent of women would rather stand under a tree during a lightning storm than choose to be self-employed.

The survey further showed that women with university education or higher are more likely to consider self-employment and Alberta leads the way with 70 per cent of women in that province considering self-employment, while 52 per cent of women in Ontario and 48 per cent in British Columbia are thinking to make an employment change to becoming their own boss.

In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, 60 per cent of women believed that being your own boss was the greatest benefit of self-employment.