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My name is XXXX, and Im 24 years old. Ever since last year i have been applying for different jobs in the field of fashion, I used to work and still do as a Fashion Stylist, which means I do a lot of shoots for tv and print ads etc. I finished my diploma course in Fashion Design last year and i thought i should leave the world of fashion styling behind because it was very difficult to find shoots on your own if you did not know the right people. But i found some young entrepreneurs like me and although work is slow I do have faith it will happen and also i have been very interested in Fashion design which goes hand in hand with styling. ok so here is my question,
A month back I had gone for an interview for the position of Junior Merchandiser, this has nothing to do with designing or creativity, it just a “cut-copy-paste” kind of job. I was very interested because i was desperate to find something to do. anything. but then i started my own label in the desperation and my clothes actually got a decent response. i.e from my friends i havent yet gone out into the market. so should i take a 9 to 7 job, which will barely pay my bills, cuz what i will make ina month is how much i make on a shoot in one day, but this job is now and i have just started networking, or should i have faith in myself and continue with fashion design and styling. please help. very confused.
Short answer for your specific situation:
You say you’ve gotten a response from your friends (great) but nothing yet from the market. Well, give it a go in the market. If you get a response there, then it might be worth going for your dream.
I always think you should go for your dream when you’re young, cause you have plenty of time later to fix mistakes and make up for lost time in the “real world” of 9 to 7 jobs.
But I also think: what is stopping you from doing both? Why not take this barely-pays-your-bills job now, and work on your dream around the edges? TONS of people take lesser jobs as they work on their dreams. Your lesser job is at least in the same field! You’re not, for example, waiting tables while you wait to “make it” on Broadway.
I have much more on this topic of choosing between job offers here.
And if you need a Fashion Industry resume, you know where to go.
In wondering what kind of recovery it will be, Robert Shiller returns to the mystery of the productivity slowdown in the 1970s and 1980s and asks what role public pessimism might play in causing a sustained economic malaise. Was psychology that important in the 1930s? What role might the proposed Volcker Rule on bank risk-taking, for example, play in a longer-term shift in investor and consumer confidence?
Tech Drives Productivity, Not Psych Notwithstanding the current attacks on Keynesian economics and the role of countercyclical fiscal policy in countering recessions, most economists, regardless of what doctrine they espouse should agree with Keynes that “animal spirits” are a key factor in the operation of the business cycle. If consumers, producers and investors all think that the economy is weak, they will spend, produce and invest less than optimal for the economy. But to argue as Schiller does that these animal spirits affect productivity in the short and long term is to fundamentally misunderstand the sources of productivity growth. Let’s look…
Psychology Not Now the Problem Sentiment, while potentially significant, tends to follow reality. There is no growth mystery regarding the Great Depression. Economic policy was horrible, and I don’t just mean the monetary policy blunders that started the Depression, but also the regulatory and tax policies that deepened and prolonged it. The Volcker Rule has little chance of becoming policy because it is unworkable, incoherent and unwise. It also has nothing to do with the recent financial crisis. The advocacy of this policy is a transparent attempt by the Administration to promote the issue of financial reform in a way that they…
In President Obama’s State of the Union last night, he highlighted our many shared aspirations, chief among which is finding a job that pays the bill and getting a chance to get ahead. We want to help you make this a reality, so today and tomorrow, we’re offering job seekers 50% off the first three months of a LinkedIn Business account. In addition, we want to increase your job opportunities by providing companies a “buy one, get one free” job posting incentive.The past months have been enormously difficult for the global economy. The U.S. job market, in particular, has been hit hard with millions of lost jobs and an unemployment rate closing in on double digits. Economists claim the recession is over, but for many without a job – or sometimes in a job that does not inspire them – this sounds cruelly abstract. Landing a job, and ideally one they’re passionate about, is still a primary concern.
LinkedIn is in a unique position to connect millions of professionals with the best career opportunities from all types of employers – small and medium businesses and larger corporations.
The LinkedIn incentives available during the next two days (Jan 28th and 29th) are designed to:
- help job seekers reach out to hiring managers directly and be better prepared for interviews
- help employers post more of the positions they’re hiring for on LinkedIn
Our Jobs Stimulus site can tell you more.
Forward this offer to both job seekers and hiring managers and help your connections find their dream job, even in this economy.
Posted in In the News, Jobs, small-business 
Ed. note: This belongs to a series of posts on how web sites and services are integrating LinkedIn functionality using the recently launched LinkedIn API. Thanks to Marcy Shinder, Vice President at American Express OPEN, for this week’s post.We created OPEN Forum, American Express OPEN’s online community for business owners, to provide them with a place to connect and exchange insights that could help them build their businesses. We initially designed the site just for our business Cardmembers because we felt this “credentialization” as a business owner could help minimize the clutter that befalls some other networking sites. But, when we learned that LinkedIn was looking to open up its platform, it gave us an opportunity to extend the platform for many more business professionals while still maintaining the standards that our members are accustomed to.
With the LinkedIn API, millions of entrepreneurs and other business professionals on LinkedIn will now be able to actively participate in discussions on OPEN Forum by using their LinkedIn credentials – regardless of whether they are card members or not. Also, via the oAuth login, LinkedIn members can now engage with our industry experts and business owners on the Idea Hub, which features a wide array of videos and articles from business and social media thought-leaders like Guy Kawasaki (Alltop), Henry Blodget (The Business Insider), and Adam Ostrow (Mashable) among others.
Enabling more than 55 million business-minded members of LinkedIn to join the conversation on OPEN Forum provides more opportunities for our members to make those connections that can help them grow their businesses. I’m also excited about the possibilities for LinkedIn members to participate in the exchange of ideas that can help them in their own business endeavors.
I look forward to seeing you on OPEN Forum
Posted in api, Applications 
Mac-Daddy?
Not that anybody cares, but it IS my blog, so…
What made the iPhone so great was that you felt like it was busting the world open. You could do things with your phone (a phone!) that you could never do before. Browse the web in a pleasant and productive way? Check. Don’t like the calculator Nokia gave you? We have a better one. Hell, want a calculator that is ONLY for calculating a waiter’s tip? Our apps will give you that. In fact, we’ll give you 10,000 things to do with your phone that you never imagined you could do before.
The thing that made the iPhone something that made people giddy was the sense that you were busting into a whole new world. Breaking down the world of phones into something new.
People forget these years on what freedom it felt to have an iPhone and suddenly be able to do things phones didn’t let you do before. It was that sense of “badness” that sense of breaking things open that made the iPhone great.
Today, Apple could have given us a tiny tablet that we could have done anything with. Imagine a tablet with OSX and, I dunno, an SD card slot and the ability to do things that were only limited by our imagination.
They didn’t.
Instead they gave us a larger screen iPod Touch. Not a bigger iPhone even. An iPod touch with a bigger screen.
And guess what… you can literally do nothing with it that you can’t already do with your touch… just with greater screen real estate.
Imagine if you woke up today and Steve announced what he announced today, but instead of calling it an iPad, he called it the iPod Touch DX. With the same specs you saw today. You’d be like: “Sounds about right.”
That’s what we got. An iPod Touch DX.
There’s no busting open a new world on this.
It’s just… simply… a bigger iPod Touch.
AND… if I had woken up and they had told me: “You subscribe to the New Yorker, Businessweek and Fortune. Guess what. Click this box and we’ll stop sending those to you over snail mail. You’ll get them wirelessly instead.”
That might have made me buy. Where was that?
We got an “improved” nytimes app? So what? Why not tell me if I already have a subscription I can elect to have it delivered to me every morning?
Where was that?
Where was the front facing camera to give me the Skype killer app?
This is not a “third device” between my ALREADY FANTASTIC iPhone and my ALREADY FANTASTIC Macbook Pro.
Sorry, Steve-o. This is nothing.
For years now, as social media has proliferated, we’ve been hearing more and more about how what you do online can be viewed and viewed negatively by your boss… or by a prospective boss.
But what about Facebook? After all, can’t you control who sees what on Facebook?
Well, if you’re doing a job search, you’d certainly better hope so.
According to new research by Microsoft, if HR people can check your Facebook page, then they probably will. And what they find there can have an impact on your chances of getting hired. In other words, Facebook can have an impact on your job search.
(via GigaOM)
“…the top online factors for rejecting a job applicant are unsuitable photos/videos, concerns about a candidate’s lifestyle and inappropriate comments written by the candidate.
(…)
The survey also found that not only are HR staffers search for information about job applicants online, most of their companies have made online screening a formal requirement of the hiring process. Recruiters and HR professionals also said that they believe the use of online-reputation information will significantly increase over the next five years. And while the survey found that most consumers manage their reputation at least to some extent, a significant percentage (between 30 and 35 percent depending on nationality) “don’t feel their online reputation affects either their personal or professional life [and] consequently, they are not taking steps to manage their reputations.”
So, obviously, the key takeaway here is that you should be aware of your privacy controls, and definitely make use of them. This article from last week’s New York Times is invaluable: The 3 Facebook Setting Every User Should Check Now.
Because, the other point to keep in mind is, your online profile can actually help your job search in a lot of ways. As the article says:
“Our research shows that managing your online reputation can be a significant benefit. Everyone should think critically about the image they’re digitally portraying,” Peter Cullen, Microsoft’s chief privacy strategist, said in a statement.
If you’re not using social media as a part of your job search, then you’re not taking advantage of all the modern tools available.
Just make sure those tools are helping you, and not hurting.
And, as I always say at the end, don’t forget the invaluable job search tool of resume writing.
As a company that’s based on the mantra “Relationships Matter”; we want to make it easier than ever for you to find, organize and stay in touch with your business connections. Over the next few weeks, you will start seeing improvements to your LinkedIn address book that will help you be more productive. Feature details after the jump.
Browse and find your connections more easily
The most noticeable update is a new browse panel that allows you to browse your connections by their current companies, locations and industries. In addition, you can search your connections by entering their first name, last name or current company in the search box above the browse panel.
You can also browse your new connections and your connections who may have recently added a new connection by using the Recent Activity filter in the browse panel.
Mini-profiles and up-to-date contact information
View mini-profiles of your connections to see if they have changed their current positions, added any new connections or send them a message through a third column on the right.
You can look up contact information like phone numbers, email addresses and physical mailing addresses. You can also add this information yourself by editing the contact information of connections in your address book.
This new look offers the following additional features:
- Connections automatically tagged with keywords such as “colleagues”, “friends”, “partners” and “group members” based on information you provide when inviting them to connect with you
- Organize your connections into different groups via tags
- Send a message to multiple connections at once based on how you’ve organized them by tags
We look forward to hearing your feedback on these enhancements as we optimize their user experience. Note that these enhancements are currently in beta and you can opt-out of them during the trial period. Check out LinkedIn’s newly redesigned address book here.
Posted in New Features, Product Features, Using LinkedIn 
One unanswered question behind the debate over public debt and long term deficits: At what level does the size of America’s public debt become a significant drag on economic growth? It clearly varies from country to country, and from era to era, but when would that occur for the United States? Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff suggest that the trigger may generally be about 90 percent of gross domestic product, a level that the United States could breach as soon as 2020, according to some analyses. Is this good news?
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