I recently got a question from a reader asking for more tips on social media and technology, specifically how technology and social media can be used for professional success. I thought I would share with you The Classy Career Girl’s Toolkit. A Classy Career Girl must know how to use technology to be at her best. There are so many things you can use to make your life easier. Here are some tools and resources that you can use to get ahead in your career and how I use them. If you have any other great resources that you love, please leave a comment so I can add it to the list!
Click below for the links to each resource to make your life easier! Good luck!
Career Direction:
My next move: Find out what you want to do for a living. Search careers with keywords and browse careers by industry to get ideas of the perfect career for you!
Interview:
Interview questions and sample answers: Always rehearse these answers before you go on an interview!
Informational Interview questions: I love these questions to ask during an informational interview!
Informational Interview email request template: Make sure you make a great first impression!
Classy Career Girl’s Interview Checklist: Make sure you check off all these items before you head out to the interview!
Resume:
Classy Career Girl’s Resume Checklist: Make sure you check off all these items before you hit submit!
Resunate: See how your resume ranks in the recruiting world. Resunate is a web based software to build a resume and automatically evaluate & improve it for every job. So much better than blindly hitting submit!
Networking:
Meetup.com: Find a meetup group near you or start one of your own!
Classy Career Girl’s Networking Checklist: Make sure you check all of these off before you head off to your next networking event.
JibberJobber: Your personal relationship manager that helps you organize and manage your job search.
Highrise CRM:Helps you manage your contacts. Save and organize notes and email conversations for up to 30,000 customers and contacts. Keep track of proposals and deals. Share status with your company, department, or team. Never forget to follow-up. Get a text message or email so you never forget to make the call.
Eventbrite: Create an event or go to an event. Sell tickets online and register for events online.
Job Search:
Indeed: Sign up for job email alerts with keywords of the jobs you want. Only apply for jobs that interest you instead of wasting your time searching endless job openings.
Salary.com: Know what to ask for. Search for a job and find out how much it pays with the salary wizard.
JobKatch: Stay organized during your job search. Track your job search tasks. Utilize your network of contacts and track your progress.
Online Reputation:
Brand Yourself Google Grader: Control your Google search results. When people google your name, make sure they find accurate, positive results. Do-it yourself platform that makes it easy to improve your search results.
Online ID calculator: get advice on how to build a stellar online identity. This is the first and leading tool that will help you make sense of your Google results and give you advice on how to build a stellar online identity that’s aligned with your real-world personal brand.
My Web Career: Find out what your online presence tells potential employers about you. Discover, evaluate and monitor your online brand. Get your career score, uncover your online footprint, explore your network and monitor your professional brand.
Google alerts: Sign up to monitor your name or interesting news articles in your industry. Be the first to know!
Organization:
Egg timer: An online countdown calculator. This always helps me focus on an important task. Use it like a countdown timer.
Google reader: Allows you to get all of your news articles and blog posts in RSS feeds so you only have to look at one spot. This helps me be efficient in my reading blog posts.
Dropbox: Save and access your files on any computer or phone. This way you don’t have to worry if your hard drive crashes or if your computer gets stolen. You can also travel anywhere without your computer and get your files from any location on any computer!
Wunderlist: Your free and easy task management tool. Such an easy want to track a to do list, especially if you need to share the to-do list with a group of people. This would be great for a team project.
Evernote: How to remember everything. This is my new favorite tool because you can access your files on your phone and on any computer you choose!
SugarSync: Secure cloud storage of all your files. Access, sync and share your files from any device.
WorkFlowy: Organize your brain. WorkFlowy is an organizational tool that makes life easier. It can help you organize personal to-dos, collaborate on large team projects, take notes, write research papers, keep a journal, plan a wedding, and much more.
Starting your own business:
Bubbl.us: Brainstorm your ideas and mind map online. If I have a big project and need to brainstorm, I use the egg timer (see above) and brainstorm for 20 minutes using this tool. This tool is going to come in handy as I start writing my book!
Survey Monkey: Free online survey and questionnaire tool. Discover the needs of your target market.
Basecamp: The leading online project management collaboration tool. Project management software that keeps all of your projects together.
Jing: Screenshot and Screencast software. So easy to save a screen shot and send the URL to someone who lives far away. I use this all the time with my web designer!
Skype: Talk to anyone on video for free with an internet connection from anywhere in the world!
Expensify: Import expenses right from a credit card or bank account. Your online expense report.
Fashion:
Pinterest: Get inspired and create boards of photos and images that you love! I love putting together work outfit boards and photos of offices that I love!
Shopittome: A free, trusted online personal shopper relied on my millions of men and women. An effortless way to find sales on more than 700 brands. You put in what’s important to you: specific brands, categories of clothing and accessories and your sizes – and they work as your free personal shopper, scouring the web to find the best prices on the items you love!
Polyvore: Put clothing and items together to see what they look like!
Personal Finances:
Mint.com: Mint pulls all your financial accounts into one place. Set a budget, track your goals and do more with your money, for free! I love mint!
Quicken: Quicken makes it easy to manage your business or personal spending, stay on top of day-to-day finances, and stick to a budget.
Social Media:
Twuffer: Schedule your tweets for the week! This is what I use to manage my tweets while I am at my full-time job every day:) OK, now my secret is out!!
Tweetdeck: I love using Tweetdeck. You can use certain keywords and lists in columns so that you can see everything that you need at once. There is no much on Twitter that can waste your time. Use Tweetdeck to make sure that you are efficient with the tweets your read and that you don’t miss a thing!
Tweetchat: This is a super easy way to host or participate in a Twitter Chat so that you only focus on the chat and nothing else!
Mailchimp: Send out free job search and career update emails to your email list. Add your emails for free or create a website to have people sign up on their own. Mailchimp has great templates that you can use to grab attention and look very professional!
Hootsuite: A Web-based social media dashboard. Customize, automate and simplify. Get a better view of your social campaigns with powerful analytics tools and customizable reports that will give you a complete and comprehensive picture of your participation in social spaces.
Aweber: Email signup forms and autoresponder services.
Blackberry Facebook: Perfect for when you need to connect quickly with clients and customers!
