The truth is – that such opportunities do exist and thousands of men and women across the country take advantage.
 
Businesses that you can run from home, like My Little Wrapper the personalised chocolate wrapping business can be a brilliant ‘half-way’ house, where you earn your own money, on your own terms, in your own time. It’s not going to make you a millionaire, but My Little Wrapper can generate a very handy (and decent sized) second income for almost any household.
 
My Little Wrapper is based on the franchise system – but its not a franchise. Although you get access to all the proven marketing materials, brand, training and products there are no ongoing fees or costs like in a normal franchise, so every penny you earn is yours to keep. The stats show that using a proven ‘franchise-like’ system significantly increases your chances of success in business and its not hard to understand why. Do what someone else has done and you’ll get the same results, right?

Well, there is a bit more to it than that but the advantages of running your own business are significant.

Be your own boss
This is such an important thing for so many people – and with a business like My Little Wrapper you are definitely the one in charge!

Hard work is rewarded
There’s nothing better for the entrepreneurial spirit than being rewarded directly for their effort. That usually isn’t possible in corporate life,
 
Training and Support
Franchisors want franchisees to succeed. In fact, they need franchisees to succeed. That’s why intensive training is usually included in the franchise fee.

Financing
Many business opportunities and farnchises, like My Little Wrapper, have arrangements with the franchise departments of the major banks to assist with funding for new franchisees. This can be a big help – although some businesses, like My Little Wrapper don’t involve such significant outlay.

Peer networking
Don’t underestimate the loneliness of running your own business. Similarly don’t forget the value of having people in the same position as you that you can talk to. This peer networking is of huge value to many franchisees and the network of over 500 My Little Wrapper business owners across the country are very cative in supporting each other.
 
So when looked at objectively there are many solid reasons why pursuing a franchise route to set up and run your own business and take control of your own destiny make perfect sense. But it’s not for everyone – so think it through carefully

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For more information about the My Little Wrapper franchise, check out these links:

• My Little Wrapper
• Get My Little Wrapper
• My Little Wrapper – Company Information
• My Little Wrapper on Facebook
• My Little Wrapper on Linkedin
• Example Franchise Websites:
  • MLW – London
  • MLW – Northern Ireland
  • MLW – Kent

Comments including, “lazy and a trouble stirrer” and “Ex shop steward.  Definite problems.  No go” were sold to employers who paid £3,000 per year and £2.80 per report.

The company has been shut down by the information watchdog who raided their premises, citing a breach of the Data Protection Act.  Action is also being considered against the 40 firms who used the data.

Unions have been critising the firm for essentially blacklisting whistleblowers in an industry where health and safety are paramount and workplaces injuries and even fatalities are commonplace.

When I setup Jobseekers Advice, Steve came along to the forums and spent a lot of his free time giving free CV appraisals to many, many people.  That was 6 years ago.  And since then he has helped thousands of people with their CVs and resumes on our CV advice forums.

What makes Steve special is his attitude towards helping people – an attitude I still to this day have never seen in another individual across my many ventures on the web and in the real world.  He has never once abused his position as moderator of our CV forums to promote his business or try and monetise the information and advice he gives out.  He spent many years as the expert on the Monster.co.uk forums with the same honourable and respectable attitude towards jobseekers.

So the other day, when I was checking out some new posts on the JSA forums, I was pretty damn disgusted to see some cheap, nasty spam by a bunch of Czech web designers, pimping piss poor CV templates on the domain CVspecial.com.  These idiots had the cheak to spam my forums (and many others) under a fake name, pretending to be a jobseeker that had used these spammers’ service.

I’ve seen a lot of crap in my 7 years as an SEO – people injecting porno links into primary school forums just to get higher rankings on Google – people massing spamming blogs and forums for the same reason.  But I honestly can’t say I’ve been more disgusted than seeing these pricks trying to pass of their service under the CV special name.  I kinda feels like someone kicking your good old grandad in the face.

So, the reason for this post.  Stay the hell away from CVspecial.com!  They are nothing but fly-by-night merchants trying to get a quick buck from jobseekers, which in this economic climate is even more shameful.

CVspecial.co.uk – home of Steve Holmes, one of the worlds foremost CV experts is the place for you to go!

And if you really feel like it, come and join us on the JSA forums for a chat!

The loss could put in jeporady, some 20,000 jobs worldwide as the group cut back their international operations.  There are fears for thousands of jobs in Edinburgh where HBOS is based.  HBOS was formed from a merger of the Halifax Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland and became Scotland’s largest employer.

The financial crisis that has left the world’s markets in tatters has claimed a multitude of financial service careers so far. 

In related news, Gordon Brown has promised a clean up of the UK banking industry on the back of the recent scandal of pension payouts to the bosses of failed banks (with Sir Fred Goodwin, HBOS cheif, receiving over £750,000 – although there have been calls for him to pay it back).

Personally, I find the drama no more than scapegoating on the part of the UK media.  So a bank boss got paid huge sums of money?  He had one of the most challenging and no doubt stressfull jobs in the country.  It wasn’t his fault the bank failed – the global economy claimed many victims – why should he pay the price with his pension after years of running a pretty profitable company?

What do you think?

The big ol’ UK recruitment agency list:

• thebestof – UK recruitment agencies
  • Also check out the sections for Scotland and Wales.
• Freeindex – UK recruitment agencies
• CV Service  – UK recruitment agencies
• UK recruiter
• BOTW UK – Recruiters
• DMOZ – UK recruiters
• Google – Directoryof recruitment agencies
• Great British Pages – Recruitment Agencies
• UK Small Business Directory – Recruitment Agnencies

More information on the subject of recruitment agencies:

• What exactly does a recruitment agency do?
• Wikipedia page on employment agencies

I’ll be updating this list over time.

This is crap.  This article will look at some of the common misconceptions that people have about their local job centre.

My local job centre won’t have any jobs for me

Not true. 

It may have been the case years ago that job centres had an abundance of certain types of jobs, but more niche, professional or unique job roles weren’t covered (because employees weren’t getting a good selection of candidates from the job centres).

This is no longer the case.  Job centres across the country have a huge selection of jobs in a wide breadth of industries.  What’s more, job centres can substantially help your local job search simply because they offer a great place for local employees to reach local candidates.

Job centre employees don’t care about placing me

Not true.

Look at it this way – people working in job centres do so because they want to help people find jobs – recruitment consultants on the other hand is a very sales orientated job.  Recruitment consultants make more money if they place candidates – they have a financial incentive to do so, which in some cases can lead to inappropraite placements.

Job centre employees on the other hand have no ulterior motive – they place the right candidates with the right jobs.

The job centre will recommend crap jobs

Well, it’s all relative.

The job centre is there to get people working and sometimes that means offering jobs to candidates that may seem like a step back in their careers.  That’s not the fault of the job centre – that’s just life.

I’m not saying you need to take these jobs – I firmly believe people should make their own decisions when choosing the right job for them, but I also fully support the job centre’s process of offering suitable jobs to candidates.

It’s not always about the financial side of things and every job doesn’t need to be a step up in the career ladder – being unemployed takes its toll on your motivation, confidence and at times, your mental health.  Even a low paid job that is a step back from what you were doing before gets you out working regularly – that’s better than sitting on your backside all day feeling sorry for yourself, although it might not seem it at the time.

I don’t think people should necessarily jump at the chance of an entry level position just because they are unemployed – but in certain cases, any job is good for an individual to get them back on the right track.

Good luck!

Keep your head

When interviewing, one of the worst mistakes you can make is to lose your composure – some interview questions can be difficult and even at times uncomfortable, so the best thing you can do is to keep your wits about you. 

Preparing for your interview in advance is a good way to avoid losing control of the situation on the day – but even if you are caught off guard, don’t worry!  Most interviewers will be happy for you to take a minute to compose yourself if you lose track of your thoughts.  Don’t take too long though!

Don’t argue – discuss!

The worst mistake an interviewee can make is to get into an arguement with the interviewers.  Even if you don’t full agree with a point being put across, you should debate it – put forward a logical arguement to the contrary – certainly don’t argue.  Don’t tell the interviewer they are wrong or just end the discussion in a stubborn outrage!

Many interviewers will choose to put forward illogical arguments just to test how you react to them – your test is how you convey your answer, not the answer itself.

Turn off your mobile phone!

If you really didn’t think of this, well…

Be patient!

You may be on your lunch break and need to get back to your current job or you might have an appointment to go to.  Either way, an interviewer doesn’t want to see a candidate who looks like they want to just get out of there.

If you have time constraints, then let your interviewer know beforehand – if the interview does run over time they should respect that.  If not, then politely bring up your aforementioned arrangement and perhaps offer to schedule a second interview to discuss things in more detail.

This can actually work to your benefit – it shows you are assertive and considerate of possibly competing interviews and it opens the door to further communication at a later date.

Good luck!

Easy to influence:
It may surprise you but many people are easy to influence an unconsciously those who are being influenced by the exterior ideas will eventually end up imitating them, if you don’t think this is possible all you need to think about is that millions upon millions of people who start smoking or consuming drugs just because of social pressures in fact, teenagers are the easiest people to influence which is why there are several TV campaigns which target them in order to keep them from falling in the destructive path of drugs, alcohol and violence.

Those who are easy to influence will end up following career decisions others have made for them in other words, if a popular person decides to study business then all of his or her followers will end up signing up to a business class, it sounds pathetic but it happens. Don’t let yourself become a follower be a leader.

Setting your own goals:
An easy way to avoid being influenced by someone else’s opinion is to set your own goals, take some time to decide where you want to be in line in what will make you happy, don’t take into account what other people are doing, set yourself for success by doing your own research and making a good decision accordingly.

Having a strong will and enduring the path:
After you have decided what you want to do with your life it is now time to take action in order to make things happen, don’t look left or right always focus on what you have in front of you and do everything it takes to overcome the many obstacles that will come your way, cheer yourself up and never consider quitting even if the going gets tough.

Dreams, they are very nice to have however, there is a big difference between the dream world and the real world because the reality of such rewards requires a strong character, determination, human touch, hard work and the ambition of taking on new responsibilities regardless of how difficult they might be or how much pressure they may put on you. Let’s take a look at each and every one of his characteristics and requirements to make it easy for you to decide whether or not you see yourself as a boss.

Strong character:
This is one of the most basic characteristics you should meet if you want to succeed in business or anything in life. A true leader will always stand strong against people who want to sway them to act in a way that goes against the things they stand for, if you want to become a boss or someone who manages a lot of people that you need to be able to let your voice be heard clearly and to deal with clients and business partners who may not follow your code of ethics.

Determination:
A very important characteristic which is found in successful people is their will strength and their determination, without saving yourself clear goals you are very likely to not get very far in life however, something that is just as important is to have the determination to achieve any goal that you set for yourself whether it is big or small, and set at a long-term or short-term, not being easily distracted from your number one goal is something that you must master, if you let yourself be constantly distracted by anything that crosses your path then you will have a real problem achieving business goals.

Human Touch:
It has been said that most of the employees who start to work for someone or for a company in particular will form a concept of the job within the first few weeks, some are even able to form an image of how their lives will be while working for this company/person within the first few days after being hired. Those will decide to quit a job are for the most part quitting their bosses, not the job itself. If you want to become a manager or have a high position on a company that you will have to develop your human relations skills because a loosing workers due to a lack of knowledge of how to treat a human being is something that will hurt your career and your business bottom line.

Hard work is obviously required if you want to advance and get all the benefits that come with the added responsibility however this is something that you must go after by yourself, no one will impose a higher position on you if you don’t want it. Sure, it is very nice to want to have a great car, a beautiful house, a big bank account but you should ask yourself: do you really have what it takes in order to make your dreams come true?

Here are some questions to start off with and some notes on how to answer them…

• Why do you want to work for our company?

This is a common question – try not to kiss too much ass when answering it.  They basically want to know if you’ve done your homework.

• Where do you see youself in 5 years?

This is aimed at finding out how long term an employee you may be.  For low level positions they may ask this if you are over qualified but that can be a good thing – many companies will be happy to recruit qualified staff willing to work their way up.

• What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Fairly straightforward – try and relate your answers to the job you are applying for.

• Why should we recruit you?

A tough question – this is essentially your “elevator pitch” – sell them – tell them why you’d make a good employee.

• Do you prefer working in a team or individually?

Very role specific – judge your answer based on how you are likely to be expected to work within the company.

• Why did you leave your last job?

Check out this article: Reasons for leaving your job.

• What are your salary expectations?

Check out this article:  What are your salary expectations?

• Describe how you feel you can contribute to our company.

Similar to the question about why they should recruit you – sell them!

Good luck!