MOA Finance

Archive for June, 2009

The financial sector in the United Kingdom has increasingly become a place where technology is valued as being complementary to customer service. Customer service representatives have access to any client’s account information with a few clicks on the keyboard. Advisors and financial consultants working with corporate clients have immediate access to information, such as the latest interest rates available on business loans. Another highly valuable technological development in this sector is in online recruitment. Young professionals interested in finding great finance jobs in the UK need to be aware of the plethora of online resources available to them.

The best resource online for finance jobs in the United Kingdom is the general job website. General job sites have become increasingly popular for young finance professionals who are trying to apply ‘en-masse’ to a wide variety of positions. The reason why job websites are a great resource for job hunters is that they are updated regularly with an extensive variety of finance positions. Entry-level customer service representatives and high-level managers alike are able to find a new jobs on these sites. Also, there are usually ways of saving application materials or CVs in personal accounts in order to facilitate a simple application process every time.

However, a savvy professional should not end their finance job hunt at the general job site. Finance workers should go directly to the source in order to find a new professional opportunity. Banks, financial services firms, and other bodies involved in the finance industry, offer extensive career pages to entice talented professionals to consider working with them. An interested applicant can usually fill out an online form, submit a CV, and use contact information in order to stay updated on the progress of their application. While going directly to the hiring company seems obvious, it is often overlooked by eager professionals.

There are numerous other online resources that should be consulted as part of an effective finance job hunt. Financial professionals with knowledge of specific jobs and a willingness to abdicate part of their job hunt to recruiters can use specialist job agencies. Workers who receive publications or e-mails from industry organisations can gain an edge on their colleagues by learning about trainee programs or open positions. Finally, a financial job applicant can review financial news services to discover major projects that are being undertaken by industry-leading firms. A clever professional will often take this type of news as a potential job opportunity where their talents may be appreciated.

At times it seems that Google releases more new products and services than we can keep track of. From Google Calendar and Google Video, to Google Base, Google Finance, and Google Trends, it can be overwhelming just to remember what each one does. One of the oft overlooked hidden gems in Google’s enormous offering is Google Alerts. Within minutes, one can be signed up for email alerts that can give them and their business a leg up on the competition. Alerts can be used to spy on competitors, keep track of what people are saying about your business, or follow an important news story.

How Does It Work

Google Alerts sends you an email each time a new page for your chosen term makes it in the top twenty results on Google’s web search. You can also have the alert check Google News and/or Google Groups. To sign up for a Google Alert, all that you need to do is visit the Google Alerts homepage (http://www.google.com/alerts), enter the search term, type of alert (search Google News, Google Groups, or the web), frequency of emails (daily, as it happens, or weekly), and your email address. You can set up alerts for as many terms as you like using a Google Account. So why would you want an unlimited amount of alerts? Because as a business owner, you have a lot to keep track of and very limited time to do it.

Spy on Your Competitors

Every business has a competitor. More likely, you have several direct competitors and several more indirect competitors. While regularly checking out their websites is an important part of the process, it doesn’t paint the whole picture. A competitor’s website is very much crafted to the image that they want to portray to their customers. This is great if you want to know what their latest sale is or how much their new product costs, but it isn’t likely to feature a negative review in last Sunday’s newspaper.

That’s where Google Alerts comes in. By simply setting up a News, Groups, and search alert for each of your competitors, you will know what other people are saying about your competition – both the media and consumers, both good and bad.

Keep Up To Date on Your Industry

Equally as important as what people are saying about your competition is what people are saying about your industry in general. If there’s a negative PR swing against violent video games, and you just happen to run a video game store, you will probably be affected. By receiving alerts on important key words related to your industry, you can be on top of any sudden changes and react accordingly. By the time your competition realizes what’s happening they will be scrambling to catch up to you.

Track Yourself and Your Business

It goes without saying, if it’s important to know what people are saying about your competitors and about your industry, it would stand to reason that it’s important to know what people are saying about you. I have Google Alerts on both my name and my businesses name. I know that they go hand in hand – if one is getting slandered you better bet it will hurt the other. By receiving alerts, you can be on top of anything negative relating to you or your business, and hopefully nip any problem in the bud before it grows too large. On the flip side, there’s nothing better than receiving an alert where someone praises your business. Those are the types of things that you want to make sure are on the PR page of your businesses website.

Get News Stories for Your Site or Blog

I own a site where I do weekly news updates about what’s going on in the industry. Some weeks, there are tons of news items to choose from, other weeks it’s hard to find anything. In addition to the regular industry news sites that I check to get information, I have Google Alerts set up for each of the key terms. You’d be surprised how frequently a unique story from a local newspaper pops up in Google News. Many times these stories haven’t been seen by my competitors and I am able to “break” the news to the online community. This works well for blogs too – if you have a daily blog about being an entrepreneur, having an alert for the word “entrepreneur” can fetch you several quality stories each day to help inspire fresh posts.

In this increasingly competitive business world, you need each and every leg up on your competition that you can get. Used properly, Google Alerts can be an extremely efficient way to track what’s going on across the web. The alternative would be to search each term every day for new updates. Who has time for that? Spending less time researching enables you to spend more time on the things important to your business.

Buying a house or a car is a huge decision because of the money involved. This is the reason that customer will look into the budget first and check if the salaries of the spouses can pay the monthly amortization before pushing through with the deal.

It is a good thing that most car dealerships and real estate developers offer easy payment financing plans to the customer and all the person has to do is choose whether to pay it in the next 3, 5 7 or 10 years. In business, the same thing takes place for entrepreneurs who do not have sufficient funds. Instead of reaching out to banks, it will be a good idea to talk to a venture capitalist investor.

Should both parties have an agreement, a financing plan can be drawn up from the moment that the startup business opens. What is the first step in starting any business? This will be to come up with an idea and then write a business plan. This document should cover the objective or goal of the business, the amount needed, the projected sales and the return of investment.

Though the timeline for this project is not accurate, it can give the investor a good idea as to how much money is needed and how long will this be recovered. The next thing for the entrepreneur to do is to send this out to as many people as possible hoping that someone will like to invest in it. This may take months and countless meetings with various companies and individuals who in most cases will reject the proposal.

But those who persevere will soon be able to find someone who is willing to take a chance in the hopes that this will work. Where can the entrepreneur find an investor? The person can get this information from business magazines or friends. Those who have worked before and opted for early retirement can even tap the old boss or some former clients.

Venture capitalist investors will not just wait for the money to come back like the creditors. This is because aside from lending the money, these people will also be there taking an active role to make sure everything is all right. Before any important decision is made, these individuals will advice the entrepreneur so that each penny spent goes to the right place than regretting it after a setback has happened.

One of the most important things in order to start a business is a plan. Why? This is because more than 85% of those who invested fail with the inclination that money is all that is needed. Having a good business plan is like building a house using bricks instead of sticks. This will have the vision and objective of the company, how much is needed, the sales projections and the return of investment.

This will serve like a guide to be able to foresee certain problems and have contingencies in place to deal with it. Of course, the entrepreneur will still have to worry about money. But a sound business plan will surely invite a venture capitalist. This individual could either work alone or is a part of a bigger organization.

Maybe the person has no time to do it but sees the entrepreneur thinking in the same direction and will like to see how this turns out. Since most startups are risky with the possibility of failure, this individual will also like to play an active role in the business.

The venture capitalist is usually someone who is familiar with the industry that the entrepreneur wants to engage in. This means that person may know the ins and outs so that mistakes can be avoided and surging the business forward.

Where does the person find the person or the company? The entrepreneur can start by asking some friends or those at work should this by the step towards leaving the regular job and spending more time in this endeavor.

After getting a few references, it is time to write a letter together with the business plan to give the prospective investor what this is all about. A formal meeting will usually take place after that and if everything goes well, then the money will start pouring in.

Venture capitalist companies have helped a lot of starters in the information technology industry. The same thing can happen for the individual regardless of the field one is coming from because there are people out there who have the money and are just waiting for the right opportunity.

Does the individual have what it takes to come up with a business plan and then sell it to someone who has the money? That is going to be the question the entrepreneur has to ask oneself because these the venture capital company will also be reviewing other proposals with the same promise of returns.