5 Ways to Use Google to Avoid Layoffs

by Susan P. Joyce


Being uninformed today is a dangerous habit.  Companies go out of business or have layoffs.  Divisions are shut down.  Products or services are discontinued.  Technology shifts business from one company or industry to another.  Manufacturing moves to a different supplier or country.
Most of those events result in the loss of jobs, or, at least, jobs shifting from one employer, industry, or country to another.
If you are employed, stay informed about what is being published on the web about your employer.  Use that information for career management and for financial self defense.  If your employer seems to be having a tough time, start thinking about moving on to another employer.  Read Job-Hunt’s Layoff Self-Defense ebook for suggestions about how to prepare to move on.
If you are unemployed, stay informed about potential employers so you can avoid pursuing employment with an employer who may stop hiring or may offer short-term employment.
Below, find 40 search queries in 5 categories of information that can be strong indicators of pending layoffs.


Business Uncertainty
Millions of business opportunities and threats happen all the time.  For example, consider the recent history of Eastman Kodak, and pity the Kodak employees who were ignoring the news and what was going on around them.
Eastman Kodak -

• 1995: ranked at 43 in the Fortune 500
• 2011: ranked at 327
• 1988: 145,000 employees; in 2009 down to fewer than 20,000 (Forbes magazine)

Obviously, the probability is high that if you were happily employed with Eastman Kodak in 1995, you are not working there today.  On the other hand, while film-based camera businesses like Kodak are shrinking or changing their business models, many other businesses are taking their places and rapidly growing.
Fortunately, it is much easier to be well-informed today than ever, with technology (aka, Google).
Using Google Search
Discover the bad news, or just speculation, about your employer so you can help address the problems, avoid moving into a group that is failing, or move out of a bad situation (the employer as a whole or one part of it).
Most Google searches are automatically “Everything” searches, but you may find the “News” searches to be more helpful.  You may also find that the “Videos” and “Images” searches may be helpful.
Select the type of search you want from the upper left side of the Google search results pages (inside the red box in the image below).

If you don’t see the ”Images,” “Videos,” and “News” options, click on the arrow beside the “More” button to find them.

Read the Google-izing Your Job Search article for useful tips on using Google search syntax, and learn the trick about using dots (periods) between elements of a phrase rather than quotation marks, as in some of the examples below.

Finding the Bad News
Try these Google searches.  Some will work better for you than others, and some may not be appropriate for your situation.  Use the search results you get to refine your search until most of what you get is best for your situation.

Note: In the search strings below, the brackets [ ] are around search terms for you to fill in with what ever is appropriate for you. 

1.  Drop in sales or revenue
Try these searches to find information about sales or revenue going down, which may lead to layoffs to reduce expenses -

• “sales drop” +[company.name] +[current year] 
• “earnings drop” +[company.name] +[current year] 
• “revenue dropping” +[company.name] +[current year]
• “negative revenue” +forecast +[company.name] +[current year]
• “negative outlook” +[company.name] +[current year] 
• “negative sales forecast” +[company.name] +[current year]
• “negative revenue forecast” +[company.name] +[current year] 

2.  Closure of a plant or office


See more search tips and complete article 

Top 10 Traits Of Highly Successful People

We have all read about people who are successful briefly. They win a gold medal, make a fortune, or star in one great movie and then disappear.…These examples do not inspire me!
My focus and fascination is with people who seem to do well in many areas of life, and do it over and over through a lifetime. In entertainment, I think of Paul Newman and Bill Cosby. In business, I think of Ben and Jerry (the ice cream moguls)…As a Naval Officer, husband, businessman, politician and now as a mediator and philanthropist on the world stage, Jimmy Carter has had a remarkable life. We all know examples of people who go from one success to another.
These are the people who inspire me! I’ve studied them, and I’ve noticed they have the following traits in common:


1. Repeatedly successful people respond instantly! When an investment isn’t working out, they sell. When they see an opportunity, they make the call. If an important relationship is cooling down, they take time to renew it. When technology or a new competitor or a change in the economic situation requires an adjustment, they are the first and quickest to respond.

2. They work hard! Yes, they play hard, too! They get up early, they rarely complain, they expect performance from others, but they expect extraordinary performance from themselves. Repeated, high-level success starts with a recognition that hard work pays off.

3. They are incredibly curious and eager to learn. They study, ask questions and read—constantly! An interesting point, however: While most of them did well in school, the difference is that they apply or take advantage of what they learn. Repeated success is not about memorizing facts, it’s about being able to take information and create, build, or apply it in new and important ways. Successful people want to learn everything about everything!

4. They network. They know lots of people, and they know lots of different kinds of people. They listen to friends, neighbors, co- workers and bartenders. They don’t have to be “the life of the party,” in fact many are quiet, even shy, but they value people and they value relationships. Successful people have a Rolodex full of people who value their friendship and return their calls.

5. They work on themselves and never quit! While the “over-night wonders” become arrogant and quickly disappear, really successful people work on their personality, their leadership skills, management skills, and every other detail of life. When a relationship or business deal goes sour, they assume they can learn from it and they expect to do better next time. Successful people don’t tolerate flaws; they fix them!

6. They are extraordinarily creative. They go around asking, “Why not?” They see new combinations, new possibilities, new opportunities and challenges where others see problems or limitations. They wake up in the middle of the night yelling, “I’ve got it!” They ask for advice, try things out, consult experts and amateurs, always looking for a better, faster, cheaper solution. Successful people create stuff!

Traits 7 - 10 and complete article

What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast

By Laura Vanderkam


Mornings are a mad-cap time in many households. Everyone’s so focused on getting out the door that you can easily lose track of just how much time is passing. I’ve had hundreds of people keep time logs for me over the past few years (you can see some of mine here and here), and I’m always amazed to see gaps of 90 minutes or more between when people wake up and when they start the commute or school car pool.
That would be fine if the time was used intentionally, but often it isn’t.

The most productive people, however, realize that 90 minutes, 120 minutes or more is a long time to lose track of on a busy weekday. If you feel like you don’t have time for personal priorities later in the day, why not try using your mornings? Streamline breakfast, personal care and kid routines. Then you can use 30-60 minutes to try one of four things:

1. Play, read, or talk with your kids. Mornings can be great quality time, especially if you have little kids who go to bed soon after you get home at night, but wake up at the crack of dawn. Set an alarm on your watch, put away the iPhone, and spend a relaxed half an hour reading stories or doing art projects. If you have older children, aim for a leisurely family breakfast. Everyone talks through their plans for the day and what’s going on in their lives. If family dinners aren’t a regular thing in your house, this is a great substitute.

2. Exercise. You shower in the morning anyway, so why not get sweaty first? Trade off mornings with your partner on who goes out and runs and who stays home with the kids. Or, if your kids are older (or you don’t have any) work out together and make it a very healthy morning date.

3. Indulge your creative side. Lots of people would like to resurrect a creative hobby like painting, photography, scrapbooking, writing, even practicing an instrument. What if you went to bed a little earlier three times a week? Skip that last TV show or those last emails and get up a little earlier the next morning to put in some time at your easel before the day gets away from you.

Tip 4, More Advice, and Complete bnet Article

5 Tips for a Flawless LinkedIn Profile

FACT: If brown is the new black, then LinkedIn is the new resume. It’s not enough just to have a profile, you need to leverage your profile’s design to ensure it sends the right personal branding message. Brand or BE BRANDED! In this session of Brand ME! on CAREEREALISM TV, J.T. shares 5 basic tips anyone can use in less than an hour to make sure their LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and making a good impression on the people viewing it. You’ll learn:

1. Why recruiters are no longer posting jobs and doing proactive LinkedIn searches instead.
2. How your lack of a picture is getting you discriminated against.
3. Why you Summary could be turning off hiring managers.
4. How your Work History could be saying you aren’t a good professional.

And much more! This is a must-view for anyone who wonders if their profile is helping or hurting their career.

See The Video and More

5 Tips To Separate Personal And Professional Life Online

BY Amber Mac


"My life and biz is so intertwined in every way that it's hard to make that clean separation on and offline." That's what Candace Alper (@NameYourTuneCDs) said on Twitter when I asked about the importance of separating your personal and business life on Facebook. As an entrepreneur who runs a made-to-order children's CD company, she is comfortable mixing business with pleasure online. Monica Roddey (@MicaR) agrees. She says "my online persona = my 'real life' persona ... what you see is what you get."
I fall into Alper's and Roddey's camp. When I signed up for Facebook years ago, I opened it up to anyone and everyone. Although I now also maintain a fan page, it's still hard for me to refuse friend invites that make their way into my personal account. However, the majority of the responses I received disagreed with this approach. Matt Hall (@mattwiter) writes that "you simply don't combine the two to begin with ... that is a sure mistake." For Kathy Dabrowska (@_katdee), she says "you can't be ON all the time ... you need a place where marketing yourself is not needed."

In theory I agree that separation is a good thing. With more employers lurking on social profiles and more people oversharing online, it just makes sense to keep some things private. However, the reality is that sometimes the tools make it difficult to split up your networks. Here are five tips to help you get closer.

1. Use different networks for different purposes
Jon Lax (@jonlax) uses LinkedIn for business and Facebook for personal. This seems to be a pretty safe and standard approach for a lot of people. After all, LinkedIn just doesn't lend itself to the more personal information that is expected on Facebook. If you do this, it's important to warn people in your professional life who are expecting to be accepted as a Facebook friend. In other words, let them know gently that LinkedIn is where your like to do business.

2. Create a Facebook personal profile AND brand page
Mike Frey is a fan of separation, so he maintains a private account and a company page. This way it's clear that the latter is for professional networking only. To create a public page simply go to the Pages section on Facebook. You have the option to create a page as a Business, Company, Public Figure, Brand, or Community Cause. One thing to note, until you have 25 fans you cannot get a custom URL for your page (an important part of your overall branding).
3. Push your business contacts to Twitter


Maury Estabrooks (@maurye) thinks using Twitter as a professional networking tool and Facebook for personal relationships is ideal. Since Twitter works best as a public forum, this is a solid approach. The only downside to this option is that your tweeting profile lacks the infrastructure to expand on your business information and history, so it's limited as a professional tool.  

Read Tips 4 - 5 and Complete FAst Company Article

Jobety: A Job Search Tool for Web Developers and Designers

by Steve Gibson


Looking for a job can be nerve racking. I remember graduating college into the height of the dot com boom. Apprehensively I sent out cover letters and resumes, hoping against hope that I might somehow be selected. After a few interviews and rambling on about where I wanted to be in five years I found myself with a couple offers. Little did I know how easy we had it back then.

Nowadays things are much harder. With the slow down in the economy people have been scrambling to find a job. Whereas my initial interviews were more like pulse checks and introductions, now companies scrutinize every candidate. Every ‘i’ must be dotted and ‘t’ crossed to find a job in this economy.

Jobety Home

Job boards have been the haunts of those who find themselves out of work. Most of them include every type of job imaginable. Candidates typically only want one type of job though. We’re either software engineers or sales people, but not both. For the former case, Jobety was founded. It’s a web development job search engine that is built strictly for web designers and developers.

One of the problems with looking for a job is you need to go to all the major sites to check and see what’s available. By navigating to Jobety you can enter the types of skills you have and your location, and it will return results from a variety of sites. It gives you a quick overview of up and coming work in you area.

Jobety’s web design job search engine gives you a few filtering options to make it easier to sift the results. First is filtering based upon the date the job was posted. It allows you to indicate how far back you’d like the search results to go. Next is to adjust the distance you’re willing to travel. One thing about working office jobs that I’m dead set against is commuting. There’s no single way to better evaporate one’s time than sitting in a car going to and from work. Hence, I’ve resolved to always move closer to the office in order to reduce the commute. Now, if you’re riding a motorcycle then that’s a whole different story, but I digress. Once the results are displayed Jobety lets you sort them based upon relevance, date, or distance.

Once you’ve found a few positions that look interesting you simply click on them and it takes you out to the site. Jobety’s job is complete. From there you can follow up through whatever protocol provided by that particular job board. Beyond that you only need be perfect in every way for the next 3-6 weeks to be welcomed into the ranks of the employed.

Read The Complete BusinessWeek Article

8 Tips for Using Social Blogging to Grow Your Business

By Carolyn M. Brown

Social networking. The big corporations have bought into it. Smaller companies, too. Even independent consultants use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to do business. It is a great way to get the word out about your product or service. It boosts brand awareness, it builds loyalty, and it attracts and retains customers.

But more companies are exploring ways get a bigger pay off with social media. The next frontier of social networking and weblogging is social blogging. This ever-changing construct represents a way of communicating for people who like to inform each other about their daily activities and share common points of interest, according to Wikipedia authors Lambert M. Surhone, Mariam T. Tennoe, and Susan F. Henssonow. This is usually done through continual updates that often include text, pictures, audio, or video.

In general, you want to use social media to increase your visibility, improve your search engine results, and drive more traffic to your company's website, which stands a good chance of increasing sales and growing the business. Social blogging is simply another tool to add to your overall social media strategic toolkit.

Business owners whose companies are at all levels of growth, from promising start-ups to established and mature firms, are looking for effective promotional tools that are also cost-effective, says Gail Z. Martin, author of 30 Days To Social Media Success. "Though social media is one of the most exciting new communications tools to emerge in the last twenty years and can provide cost effective marketing, it's one of the most misunderstood mediums," says Martin.

Social media, be it weblogging, microblogging (i.e., Twitter), or posting status updates, is a different kind of marketing. It's not about creating a sales pitch for your product or service. Instead, it's about generating interest and keeping your audience current on news, events, and the latest product developments. A social blog is essentially a form or combination of microblogs (short posts) and status updates. Users post content such as short sentences, images, or video links to large groups of friends, followers, or co-workers. As with traditional weblogging, users can write messages on topics that range from "what am I doing right now" to thematic ones such as "best places to eat sushi." These messages can be transmitted via posting, text messaging, or e-mailing.

Businesses can use the concept of social blogging to provide up-to-the-minute news as they will find the need for quicker, current, and condensed information far more useful to their audiences, say social media gurus. But social blogs and status updates on Twitter and Facebook, for instance, aren't just limited to news content, businesses also can use these as effective forms of communication to reach large groups of consumers and associates instantaneously to learn about their needs and wants.

Starbucks Corporation is a social media giant when it comes to engagement, including incorporating blogs, status updates, tweets, and forums. When the trendy Seattle-based coffeehouse chain realized that its sales were stagnating and that competition was becoming fierce, it had to find ways to solidify and expand its market share. In 2009, Starbucks launched the interactive MyStarbucksIdea website and corporate blog. While some industry analysts doubted whether the site would catch on, well over 100,000 internet users had visited the site by the end of its first week online. The site allows users to submit ideas for new drinks, food items, packages, even store designs. Suggestions are voted on by Starbucks consumers with the most popular ones getting highlighted.

But Starbucks took it a step further, adding an "Ideas in Action" blog that gives updates to users on the status of suggested changes. Starbucks doesn't just communicate news and business developments with its audience, but it also lets them know which of their suggestions the company has really taken to heart. Starbucks also has fully embraced Twitter beyond notifying consumers about bargains; @Starbucks focuses on sharing interesting events and music information or brand- and charity-related topics the company would like to address. It's not a one-way monologue. Followers are not just entertained. They are being engaged in a brand and conversations around it.

Like Starbucks, Zappos embraces microblogging to manage customer relations. Tweets @Zappos are used to highlight interesting facts, and to talk to customers in a way that is friendly, helpful, funny and trustworthy. The Brooklyn Kitchen keeps foodies up to date on events from notices about the new book club in full swing to the next skills knife class kicking off. Amateur chefs Taylor Erkkinen and Harry Rosenblum opened The Brooklyn Kitchen in 2006 after scouring the neighborhood for kitchenware and coming up empty-handed. Today, their homegrown shop is crammed wall to wall with tools for both serious cooks and hobbyists. The duo focuses on providing useful and targeted information in their posts whether it's through their website, weblog, or twitter account. From videos on how to shuck oysters or saber a champagne bottle, Erkkinen and Rosenblum always provide real value for enthusiastic cooking fans.

This type of added-value and engagement translates to increased brand awareness and direct sales. These companies demonstrate the effective use of compelling and condensed content aligned with tangible business objectives. Here are some tips to help you make the most of social blogging:

1. Position yourself as an expert. When people are looking for a product or service, oftentimes they will first look for information about the subject on the Internet. In general, blogging is about having conversations in a public space that position you as a subject matter expert. "The type of discussions you ideally should have ought to be answering questions that people out there on the Internet are searching for," says Adria Richards, Organic Technology Consultant and blogger. "For me, social blogging is a way to have conversations with potential customers and to draw traffic to your site." For instance, you can answer questions from consumers via Twitter, which is a popular thing to do.

Read Tips 2 - 7 and The Rest Of The Inc. Article