Networking: Improve your Linkedin profile

Professional networking site LinkedIn has over 135 million members, and counting. A beginner’s guide to making meaningful connections for career growth.

Students listen up!

While LinkedIn is commonly thought of as a network for professionals, students should take it seriously too. Several employers are looking at LinkedIn profiles while hiring freshers. According to LinkedIn, students are the fastest growing demography on the site.

Expand your network

The world’s largest professional network enables you to connect with a large pool of people from many walks of life. You can exchange knowledge, ideas, and seek out opportunities. Simply put, it is the most successful and vibrant of all professional networking sites, used by members for various reasons – finding a job, promoting products/services, attracting talent, connecting with experts in a chosen field.

Step 1: Build your profile

Once you create an account (it is free of charge), get started on your profile with the summary which should be no longer than two paragraphs at best. It must  highlight your professional accomplishments and strengths. If you have no work experience, then use this section to talk about areas of interest and what is your initial plan to build a career in the chosen field.

Choose a tagline that describes your line of work. It’s best to avoid putting company specific designations as it’s easier to find a ‘Sales Manager’ than an ‘Associate Regional Sales Manager – North India’ when you are running a search. Likewise, it’s easier to find an ‘IT Project Manager’ than a ‘Web 2.0 Platform Lead’. Keep it broad.

Add a pleasant but professional looking photo so that people can put a face to the name. Describe each job assignment and the key achievements in a single paragraph at best. This is not a résumé so avoid the mundane details like the nuances of your job but for students, it’s good to add details of any high impact or interesting projects that you may have done. Add details about your education right at the end followed by your contact details. Remember that LinkedIn is professional networking so don’t use the ‘Updates’ section on the home page for posting personal things, such as which party you attended over the weekend.

Step 2: Add connections

Get a headstart by uploading your Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook or other databases where your contacts’ email addresses are stored. LinkedIn will throw up these contacts, if they are already on the network. Invite them to connect. Search for specific individuals by typing their names on the ‘Find People’ section on the home page and send them an invitation. Start by connecting with colleagues, supervisors, college mates, professors and alumni. When connecting with a person you do not personally know, make sure that you add a short but personal note as it helps the other person understand your reasons for connecting.

Step 3: Join relevant groups

Groups comprise members with similar interests. For instance most corporates have groups, where they post jobs, updates and members would include HR heads and employees. You will find several relevant groups that interest you depending on your line of work or field of study. Start by signing up for these groups and participate in open discussions.

You may not have an expert opinion or a breakthrough idea but you can start appreciating the ideas and discussions you like of others. I usually drop a line ‘Great views, very insightful, appreciate your opinion or just simply – thanks for sharing this’. You will be surprised, how even experts drop by your page to check you out and that gives you an opportunity to connect with them. Remember it’s only human to check out people appreciative of you.

Step 4: Grow your network

Stay in touch with your connections; drop in a line once a month. The last thing you want is for people to jog their memories when you reach out for help.

Participate as much as possible in Q&As, this is how you can know people better and also demonstrate your expertise or understanding of a subject.

Get recommendations from your colleagues, supervisors, clients or professors. Don’t reach out for recommendations from people you don’t know.

Networking works on reciprocation so be prepared and willing to offer help before you reach out to others.

Update your profile frequently. For example if you have achieved something or finished an internship/project, then you should add it and make sure you get recommendations too.

How Your Thoughts Program Your Cells

There are thousands upon thousands of receptors on each cell in our body. Each receptor is specific to one peptide, or protein. When we have feelings of anger, sadness, guilt, excitement, happiness or nervousness, each separate emotion releases its own flurry of neuropeptides. Those peptides surge through the body and connect with those receptors which change the structure of each cell as a whole. Where this gets interesting is when the cells actually divide. If a cell has been exposed to a certain peptide more than others, the new cell that is produced through its division will have more of the receptor that matches with that specific peptide. Likewise, the cell will also have less receptors for peptides that its mother/sister cell was not exposed to as often.

Thus if you have been bombarding your cells with peptides from a negative attitude, you are literally programming your cells to receive more of those peptides in the future. Even worse, you are lessening the number of receptors of positive-attitude peptides, making yourself inclined towards negativity.

This is why it takes more than a few days of positive thinking to make a significant impact on your long-term attitude patterns. Every cell in your body is replaced every 2 months. So if you have a history of negative thinking, depression, pessimism or perpetual frustration, plan on working on yourself for longer than a few days before you see more permanent results. 

Start today. Start reshaping the biological structure of your cells and become inclined to happiness and optimism instead of whatever emotion your are physically addicted to right now.

Moon to become next hot vacation destination?

Golden Spike, a company full of ex-NASA people, announces ambitious plans to launch commercial spaceflights to the moon by 2020.

I feel sorry for all those whoblew $20 million and only got a lousy trip to the International Space Station. If they had held out, they might have had an opportunity to invest many more millions on a trip to the moon. 

Golden Spike Company announced yesterday a venture to launch commercial voyages to the moon by 2020. Of course, this sort of experience doesn't come cheap. Golden Spike is expecting a trip to cost $1.5 billion per flight. 

At that price, most private clients would be left out in the cold. As awesome  as moon tourism sounds, Golden Spike is mainly focused on offering its  services to governments that would like a lunar lift, much like Russia helped other countries get to the space station. Still, I'm guessing Golden Spike  would think twice about turning down a multi-billionaire with the dough and desire to buy a ride.

For those of us who don't bathe in tubs full of hundred dollar bills, Golden Spike has announced its intention to make moon visits frequent and affordable. The definition of affordable is up for debate.

If you're going to take a chance on a private moon transportation company,you could do worse than Golden Spike. The chairman of the board is Gerry Griffin, Apollo flight director and former director of NASA's Johnson Space Center. The president and CEO is planetary scientist Alan Stern, former head of all NASA science missions. NASA resumes are all over the Golden Spike team listings.

On the front page of its site, Golden Spike says, "Private sector human expeditions to the moon are now feasible and profitable without government funding." That's a bold statement. Let's keep an eye on Golden Spike and see if it can deliver.

We all need a little of a lot of inspiration

We all need to feel inspired so we can continue on our journey to create and do big things. But what is inspiration and what does it really mean? What is that fuel that ignites our creative fire? Its literal definition is a ‘motivating action or influence that results in creative works and productivity of all kinds.'

This “motivating action” can be thin, fat, funny, scary, a figment of imagination, a face, a word, a number or an unidentified sound. It could be found on the street, in a book, a picture or even on a cloud.  It could visit you on the days you least expect it and sometimes you don’t get to meet it even if you desperately search for it. You could go an entire year without coming across it or find different kinds of inspiration every hour of the day.

All you have to do is keep your eyes, ears and heart open. Never discriminate against things that might inspire you because does inspiration discriminate against you? 

Things you might term as strange or unfamiliar could help you transform your inner creativity into external wonders for people to marvel at, scoff at or even laugh at. 

So you could be a writer, an engineer, an actor, a singer or someone new everyday. Your inspiration will help you move in the direction you wish to move in, helping you lead the way for others. Or in other words, become an inspiration yourself.

The Design Diaries

A collection of simple, cool stuff that people do.  

Enjoy!

The every occasion wrapping paper

Happy Drinking!

Let’s “toast” to your money.

World Cup Fever… brilliant!

That IS a gun in your pocket.

Happy camping!

Hanger T-Bags…Teariffic! 

Cuckoo or cool?

To be continued……………………………..

Waiting For World To Change

Let’s stop waiting for the world to change

Most young men and women who move back to the Motherland after studying abroad usually layer each word with venom when they talk about their country.

They  find themselves studying in  a clean, orderly, polite society  and are shocked when the airport gates open to reveal  a grand homecoming made up of gawking eyes, an overwhelming stench, and a sky that isn’t quite a shade of blue.

During their childhood, they didn’t have a problem with the colour of the sky, the dirt and the muck or fanning themselves with rolled up comic books and magazines. But today whether its traffic jams, frequent power cuts or unfriendly neighbors with unhygienic habits, everything seems to attack them. So what changed? Is it because they explored greener and less populated pastures they finally got a rude awakening? Were they fine with corruption and potholes before they saw how a country can run smoothly and how people can work together to sustain what has been given to them? Perhaps.

Maybe when they were growing up the chaos that surrounded them just became a part of who they were. They saw neither reason to want to change things nor any reason to complain. Things were just the way they were, period. But now after four, five or even ten years, they finally seeing their beloved country for what it truly is. While a new, shiny building comes up, there is someone filling his pockets with hoards of cash. While a family of five learn to order in French in a fancy new restaurant, a family of ten haven’t had clean water to drink in days. While there are people who are starving themselves to make a difference, there are people screaming into loudspeakers making false promises. These examples are now clichés and we rarely bat an eyelid when we hear words like corruption, murder, rape. We live in a country where ugly and beauty live side by side but somehow the ugliness always prevails.

But like the ‘foreign return’ students, we can go on listing everything that is wrong but that will never make things right, will it? Instead of sitting on our cushioned behinds and now fanning ourselves with our fancy degrees, hiding behind articles of corruption, filth and horror and periodically shaking our heads in despair, let’s start doing something.  Let’s use our education and our awareness to make that change. Today the world ( like so many ads have aptly used to their product benefit) is truly at our fingertips. We have tools and platforms like social media to help us be heard. We no longer need to stand outside and have huge rallies and walk a thousand miles, we can use the mighty world wide web to ensure that we are heard loud and clear.

So even if you go to London, New York or the moon, don’t wait, point fingers and hide. Even if you feel you can’t do something big, just start with the small things that include donating time and money to charities, feeding hungry animals, voting, dedicating an hour a day to educate a young boy or girl, being helpful, smiling at strangers. Such simple things can make such a big difference and you’ll find that this list too is endless.