How to Find Out Why You Didn’t Get the Job

You send in a stellar resume. You blow the recruiter away in the phone screen. And you wow everyone you speak with during your in-person interview. And yet, you still don’t get the job. Worst of all, you don’t know why you didn’t get it -- you either didn’t hear back at all, or received feedback so vague that it’s virtually useless (e.g. “We decided to go with another candidate who was a better fit.”) Is there anything worse?

It’s incredibly frustrating when a recruiter or hiring manager doesn’t share a concrete reason why you were passed over, but if it happens to you, don’t worry. Often, there’s still a way to figure out what went wrong -- here’s how.

1. Reach Out to the Decision Maker

If you have the contact info of the hiring manager, it’s best to chat with them rather than a recruiter or HR representative, says Ren Burgett, career coach and owner of 3R Coach.

“An HR manager or recruiter is more likely to give you a programmed HR response such as, ‘We found a candidate that was a better fit for our needs.’ The hiring manager is more likely to give you a candid response,” she explains.

If you haven’t already been in touch with the hiring manager, though, you may want to reach out to someone who can point them in your direction.

“If you don’t have their contact details, you need to get in touch with whoever your point of contact was throughout the recruitment process. Even if they can’t provide feedback themselves, they will be able to pass your query onto someone who can,” says Steve Pritchard, HR Manager at Cuuver.com.

When you haven’t been given the hiring manager’s contact information, it can be tempting to bypass your point of contact and look them up on LinkedIn or Google their email address, but this is a mistake, Pritchard says: “They may not feel too comfortable with you contacting them using a number/email they didn’t provide you with.”

2. Express Gratitude

Nobody wants to engage with a candidate who sounds demanding or presumptuous, so make sure to open your message with a note of thanks.

“Thanking someone for [taking the] time to interview you and provide the opportunity can always start the conversation in a positive manner,” says Shanalee Sharboneau, President and Technical Recruiter at Staffing Science, LLC.

In particular, you should express gratitude for the fact that they are going out of their way to read your note. After all, they don’t have to share feedback with you.

“Show in your request for feedback that you appreciate the recruiter or hiring manager is likely to be busy. This way, you don’t sound too pushy or demanding,” Pritchard adds.

3. Be Positive

You may be upset that you didn’t get the job, but remember: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. It’s okay to acknowledge that you’re disappointed with the outcome, but don’t express resentment or aggression.

Show “that you are understanding of their decision not to hire you, otherwise, you may sound bitter about not getting the job rather than someone looking for honest feedback to help them with their job search,” Pritchard continues.

And instead of taking a self-deprecating approach like “How did I screw up” or “Where did I go wrong”, frame the conversation as a quest for personal growth.

“Don’t make your question about ‘why’ you didn’t get the job, make your question about ‘how’ you can improve. People are more likely to respond to someone that seeks out growth as opposed to someone that just wants answers,” Burgett says.

4. Keep it Short and Specific

When reaching out for feedback, “make your email no more than one paragraph,” Burgett recommends. After all, they are probably plenty busy with their day-to-day tasks, so you want to make sure to honor their time.

You can save them even more time by avoiding general questions like “Why didn’t I get the job?” and instead drilling down into a few precise issues. Burgett recommends including “two to three specific questions [that] you would like feedback on from the interview process.”

One question that Laura Handrick, Career Analyst at FitSmallBusiness.com, recommends asking is “what might you have done, said or provided differently that would have made the company choose YOU instead of the other candidate.”

5. Open the Door for Future Opportunities

Just because you were rejected from a job doesn’t always mean that you can never apply there again -- you may have been a close second. At the end of your message, reiterate your interest in the company (if you are truly interested) and consider adding something like “if anything changes, I’d love to connect regarding future opportunities.”

“That will go far, and many times, new hires fail in the first few months. They’ll remember your graciousness,” Handrick says.

You can also see if they might be willing to refer you to another opportunity.

“Always end the email by asking if they know of anyone else you can reach out to as you continue your job search. If you didn’t get the job, perhaps you can get a lead [for] another job. Use this as an opportunity to network,” Burgett says.

6. Be Patient and Ready to Take No for an Answer

If the person you reach out to fails to respond, don’t ping them every day until they do.

“Giving feedback, particularly constructive feedback, is hard, so allowing time for preparing will likely get you more thoughtful responses,” points out Dr. Dawn Graham, Career Management Director at the Wharton School and host of Career Talk.

Even if they never respond, you shouldn’t pester them, Graham adds.

“Companies tend to avoid giving candidates feedback to avoid opening themselves up to risk,” she explains. “In addition, many hirers have trouble putting their fingers on a clear definition of ‘fit’ or likability, which are two powerful aspects of hiring decisions that can be challenging to put into words. Therefore, they may pass on giving feedback to a rejected job seeker for the sheer reason that even they are unable to verbalize their final decision in a way that will be meaningful to the overlooked applicant.”

Sample Message

Want an example of what exactly you could say to a hiring manager? Burgett recommends the following:

Hi (Hiring Manager),

I wanted to thank you for the amazing opportunity to interview for the position of (job title) with your company. I really enjoyed learning about (company name) and getting to know you and your team during the interview process. I understand you have decided to move forward with another candidate that better fits your current needs.

As I continue my job search, I would love to get your feedback on how I can improve as a candidate. When you have a minute, could you provide insight into what I can improve upon to help me stand out and progress in my career? Specifically, I would appreciate feedback on the following:

1. What is the one skill I can improve upon to help advance my career that may be holding me back?

2. If I had the opportunity to redo my interview, what is the one thing I should have done differently?

I appreciate any candid feedback you can offer as it will help me understand the areas I need to improve. Additionally, if you know of any companies that may be hiring for similar positions or anyone else I should reach out to as I continue my job search, please let me know.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to interview for the position. I wish you and your team continued success.

Sincerely,

Your Name

There’s no doubt that getting rejected from a job you were interested in is upsetting, and it can be doubly so if you don’t hear actionable feedback from the hiring team. But odds are, it’s nothing personal, so try not to take it that way. And remember -- the right job is out there. It’s only a matter of time until you find it.

This article originally appeared on Glassdoor and was re-published with permission.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/find-out-why-you-didnt-get-the-job

Here's What Playing With a VR Headset Is Actually Like

Virtual reality (VR) is one of those technologies, it seems, that will be eternally "emerging."

Don't get me wrong -- it's certainly becoming more of a household topic. Twenty years ago, one might only come across VR in museums, science fairs, and laboratories. Now, they're available for purchase by anyone who has an internet connection ... and the budget to pay for one.

Several major tech players are trying to make VR a mainstream technology. Maybe the hardware needs to be less clunky and a wireless, lightweight headset is the answer.

Or maybe the obstacle is price point -- to which Facebook's answer (to both issues) was the wireless, $199 "affordable" Oculus Go.

Truthfully, I've always been a bit skeptical of VR. I remember being quite fascinated with it at a west coast science museum at the age of 13, and since then, my only real exposure to it has been by way of any VR-related news I've covered, or different demos I've tried at industry events. Even after receiving a complimentary Oculus Go as a token of thank-you swag for attending F8 in May, the headset sat on my desk, neglected an unopened for over a month.

I'm in the small percentage of people who talk about technology on a near-daily basis -- and yet, I was less than enamored with the idea of giving my very own Oculus Go for a spin.

But then -- I did. And everything changed.

Because I'm a nerd, I've always wondered what prevents VR from becoming a mainstream technology as quickly as some of the businesses behind it wish it would. People have paid more for less practical tech tools -- things like the first edition of any new iPhone, for instance, for which masses are willing to pay the initial price.

So, at the end of the day, maybe VR isn't as practical -- but it is plain cool. You can watch documentaries in an immersive, 360-degree way. You can play sports. You can visit other countries.

Maybe -- just maybe -- what's standing in the way of VR's market permeation is the small percentage of people who actually get to experience it.

To test this hypothesis, I passed around my Oculus Go to several members of my team. After spending a day engaging in various VR experiences -- and accomplishing little else -- here's what we learned.

(P.S. Here's a sneak preview of a short film I like to call, "Amanda Tries a VR Roller Coaster.")

Here's What Playing With a VR Headset Is Actually Like

On VR's Market Permeability

Before we took the headset for a spin, I asked Paul Mealy, author of Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies, for his thoughts on VR's potential -- if any -- to go mainstream. But that's not easy, he said, considering that "mainstream" is often a subjective concept.

If "mainstream" means "millions of devices purchased," Mealy explains, "then VR is already mainstream" -- though that figure still falls short of Facebook (which owns Oculus) CEO Mark Zuckerberg's ultimate goal of one billion people using VR ... eventually.

But what will the composition of those one billion users look like? Will they be using VR for fun, business, or both?

"If the definition of mainstream is, 'Will I find myself going to the office and donning a VR headset for all my work, and going home and putting on my VR headset for all my entertainment,'" says Mealy, "then we still have a ways to go."

Arguably, the "fun" use cases for VR are growing more rapidly than the B2B ones -- though the latter is slowly making progress. Take the example of Tobii Pro, a tech company that pairs VR with eye-tracking technology to help retailers learn where a shopper pays the most visual attention and plan store layout accordingly. I took it for a spin at SXSW in March:

"Very similar to an in-store shop-along or in-depth interview research, this is another tool that can be added on top of that," said Amanda Bentley, Tobii Pro's Director Of Commercial Sales (whose voice can be heard in the background of the video above). "You can get another layer of understanding not only how shoppers feel ... but also, what information do they actually process? What are they attending to as they're making the decision to purchase products?"

But, it's early, Mealy says -- and it's not a question of "if" VR will go mainstream, but "when."

"It is important that we take a step back and look at the full picture for VR. Most VR hardware is still in the first generation of devices," he explains. "And these first generation devices are serving as the canary in the coal mine to manufacturers, helping them refine what consumers actually want in order to become a mass-consumable device."

So, when will VR finally win over the masses?

"Three to five years out seems like an appropriate time to truly evaluate where VR is landing in the grand scheme of things," Mealy says. "If, by then, manufacturers have still been unable to solve the price and experience points ... that is the time to question VR's future. But, as of now, consider me bullish on the future of VR."

Our Team's Experience

Now, for the fun part: our team taking VR for a spin.

For most of us, this experiment was the first instance of using VR -- which made for low expectations as to how realistic, engaging, or nauseating the experience would be. (In full disclosure, I experience motion sickness with VR, and apparently, I'm not alone.)

But for the most part, the technology was well-received ... and, perhaps, even more fun to watch than to actually experience.

Caroline Forsey, Staff Writer, HubSpot Marketing Blog

The experience:

Bear Island

The video:

The summary:

"VR is different than watching something on a screen, because it’s all around you ... and behind you, and in your peripheral vision. Despite how 'logically' smart I am at understanding what VR is, I still think it can trick my brain into somewhat believing I’ in a different place. For instance, when the bear came towards me I couldn’t help but flinch. It’s bizarre but impressive that a piece of technology can influence your physiological reactions."

Clifford Chi, Junior Staff Writer, HubSpot Marketing Blog

The experience:

Cloudlands: VR Minigolf

The video:

The summary:

"VR mini golf was better than real mini golf. That was my first VR experience, and I felt like I was in a different world. After my first putt, I tried to walk toward the ball. I ended up running into a pillar in the office. And when I looked down at my feet and saw that the golf course was on a cliff, I thought I was going to fall for a split second. The Oculus and VR are super realistic and impressive. I definitely want to try it again."

Braden Becker, Senior Staff Writer, HubSpot Marketing Blog

The experience:

Epic Roller Coasters

The video:

The summary:

"I was really surprised how easily VR takes over your peripheral vision. The experience literally surrounds you, to the point where I actually felt like I was on a roller coaster. I'm also not the biggest fan of heights, and that particular Oculus Go game definitely played right into my senses."

Karla Cook, Section Editor, HubSpot Marketing Blog

The experience:

Cloudlands: VR Minigolf

The video:

 

The summary:

"The environment was clearly not realistic, but it still felt like I was there. The whole experience was surprisingly disorienting. I was playing mini-golf on a platform floating in the clouds, and I dangled my leg off the platform, and freaked out. The process of using the remote to interact with the environment didn’t feel intuitive to me. It’s worth trying out for the novelty factor, but I definitely wouldn’t buy it."

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-vr-headset-is-actually-like

The Need For ICT Support Services In Schools

Information and communications technology is basically an extension for information technology (IT). The ICT as a whole gives emphasis on unified communications and integration of computers, telecommunications, enterprise software, audio-visual systems. Most e-commerce companies require ICT Consulting Services so as to help the users to store, access, transmit, and manipulate information.

Managed ICT support for schools is therefore crucial to the smooth operation of network and computer equipment. In larger schools or colleges, such managed support can be quite internal, and that’s great, but what can smaller schools achieve with fewer resources for their ICT support? This is why they need to learn about ICT services for schools for the benefit of our students.

Daily ICT support includes monitoring the critical signs of life of your servers, such as Memory usage, disk space, backup, antivirus, and a host of other checks to make sure your server is performing at its best. Other requirements include repairing network connections, replacing printer parts, returning defective devices that are still under warranty, repairing faulty devices, installing software, uninstalling software, maintaining or installing a wireless device Networking, managing a new ICT Suite design, installing a new switch, monitoring software licenses, purchasing new equipment, and so on.

If you’re an ICT coordinator, such lists of tasks as above can seem pretty daunting, especially if you do not have other colleagues to help, and you probably also need to teach! What is the alternative?As ICT grow and become more complex in education, schools today are more dependent on the need for their systems, network and equipment to function optimally throughout the school day. The use of advanced technological tools in the workplace is becoming ubiquitous and it demands technological literacy which ICT can provide from an early stage in educational institutions.

For a long time, there were dedicated ICT companies providing technical and technical support contracts to households and businesses, and many of these companies will now also offer specialized ICT support to schools and colleges. So excellent, get yourself an expert for all your jobs! Well, yes, but there is a cost associated with such services, of course, to ensure that you receive the best value is very important.

ICT means convergence of telephone and audio-visual networks with computer networks. This is done through a single link system. Merging the telephone network with the computer network system provides many economic incentives in terms of cost savings, as a result of which there is increasing importance on the need for ICT Consultants.

Experts in England Software Development Services who are into providing consultancy are of opinion that is constantly evolving in its concept, method, and application and hence there cannot be a universal definition of ICT. ICT as a whole covers any product that can store information or can retrieve, transmit, manipulate or receive information. This can be done digitally by using computers, laptops, television, email, robots etc.

Importance of ICT in education

With the increased use of the Internet, computer and mobile devices, there is the need for computers in modern classrooms. Schools can opt for ICT outsourcing, whereby the students can be given access to education and learning while the teachers can be given access to quality training on teaching, including professional development and more efficient management, governance and administration of education through ICT.

Importance of this in present day e-commerce

In modern society, knowledge of ICT is very essential. With many people having access to the Internet, there is the need for proper education on ICT. Every internet users are making use of smartphones and extracting information or purchasing online through Mobile App Development systems. E-commerce Consultants are of opinion that without knowledge on ICT, most work and routing tasks of buying and selling become dysfunctional in an e-commerce market.

e-commerce industry

In the e-commerce domain, ICT and e-commerce are inseparable. The e-commerce industry is dependent on this for a great extent for its operations. ICT in business and commerce is the other name for e-commerce. ICT Consulting Services make use of computers and networks to communicate, store and manage the necessary information of the users which is very essential in an e-commerce market. To provide effective e-commerce solutions, it is very necessary and the lack of ICT infrastructure prohibits the rate of the growth of the business. The growth of e-commerce is basically dependent upon the use of ICT infrastructure in a proper way.

from London SEO Services http://londonseoservices.me.uk/the-need-for-ict-support-services-in-schools/

What Do SEOs Do When Google Removes Organic Search Traffic? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

We rely pretty heavily on Google, but some of their decisions of late have made doing SEO more difficult than it used to be. Which organic opportunities have been taken away, and what are some potential solutions? Rand covers a rather unsettling trend for SEO in this week's Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're talking about something kind of unnerving. What do we, as SEOs, do as Google is removing organic search traffic?

So for the last 19 years or 20 years that Google has been around, every month Google has had, at least seasonally adjusted, not just more searches, but they've sent more organic traffic than they did that month last year. So this has been on a steady incline. There's always been more opportunity in Google search until recently, and that is because of a bunch of moves, not that Google is losing market share, not that they're receiving fewer searches, but that they are doing things that makes SEO a lot harder.

Some scary news

Things like...

• Aggressive "answer" boxes. So you search for a question, and Google provides not just necessarily a featured snippet, which can earn you a click-through, but a box that truly answers the searcher's question, that comes directly from Google themselves, or a set of card-style results that provides a list of all the things that the person might be looking for.
• Google is moving into more and more aggressively commercial spaces, like jobs, flights, products, all of these kinds of searches where previously there was opportunity and now there's a lot less. If you're Expedia or you're Travelocity or you're Hotels.com or you're Cheapflights and you see what's going on with flight and hotel searches in particular, Google is essentially saying, "No, no, no. Don't worry about clicking anything else. We've got the answers for you right here."
• We also saw for the first time a seasonally adjusted drop, a drop in total organic clicks sent. That was between August and November of 2017. It was thanks to the Jumpshot dataset. It happened at least here in the United States. We don't know if it's happened in other countries as well. But that's certainly concerning because that is not something we've observed in the past. There were fewer clicks sent than there were previously. That makes us pretty concerned. It didn't go down very much. It went down a couple of percentage points. There's still a lot more clicks being sent in 2018 than there were in 2013. So it's not like we've dipped below something, but concerning.
• New zero-result SERPs. We absolutely saw those for the first time. Google rolled them back after rolling them out. But, for example, if you search for the time in London or a Lagavulin 16, Google was showing no results at all, just a little box with the time and then potentially some AdWords ads. So zero organic results, nothing for an SEO to even optimize for in there.
• Local SERPs that remove almost all need for a website. Then local SERPs, which have been getting more and more aggressively tuned so that you never need to click the website, and, in fact, Google has made it harder and harder to find the website in both mobile and desktop versions of local searches. So if you search for Thai restaurant and you try and find the website of the Thai restaurant you're interested in, as opposed to just information about them in Google's local pack, that's frustratingly difficult. They are making those more and more aggressive and putting them more forward in the results.

Potential solutions for marketers

So, as a result, I think search marketers really need to start thinking about: What do we do as Google is taking away this opportunity? How can we continue to compete and provide value for our clients and our companies? I think there are three big sort of paths — I won't get into the details of the paths — but three big paths that we can pursue.

1. Invest in demand generation for your brand + branded product names to leapfrog declines in unbranded search.

The first one is pretty powerful and pretty awesome, which is investing in demand generation, rather than just demand serving, but demand generation for brand and branded product names. Why does this work? Well, because let's say, for example, I'm searching for SEO tools. What do I get? I get back a list of results from Google with a bunch of mostly articles saying these are the top SEO tools. In fact, Google has now made a little one box, card-style list result up at the top, the carousel that shows different brands of SEO tools. I don't think Moz is actually listed in there because I think they're pulling from the second or the third lists instead of the first one. Whatever the case, frustrating, hard to optimize for. Google could take away demand from it or click-through rate opportunity from it.

But if someone performs a search for Moz, well, guess what? I mean we can nail that sucker. We can definitely rank for that. Google is not going to take away our ability to rank for our own brand name. In fact, Google knows that, in the navigational search sense, they need to provide the website that the person is looking for front and center. So if we can create more demand for Moz than there is for SEO tools, which I think there's something like 5 or 10 times more demand already for Moz than there is tools, according to Google Trends, that's a great way to go. You can do the same thing through your content, through your social media, and through your email marketing. Even through search you can search and create demand for your brand rather than unbranded terms.

2. Optimize for additional platforms.

Second thing, optimizing across additional platforms. So we've looked and YouTube and Google Images account for about half of the overall volume that goes to Google web search. So between these two platforms, you've got a significant amount of additional traffic that you can optimize for. Images has actually gotten less aggressive. Right now they've taken away the "view image directly" link so that more people are visiting websites via Google Images. YouTube, obviously, this is a great place to build brand affinity, to build awareness, to create demand, this kind of demand generation to get your content in front of people. So these two are great platforms for that.

There are also significant amounts of web traffic still on the social web — LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc., etc. The list goes on. Those are places where you can optimize, put your content forward, and earn traffic back to your websites.

3. Optimize the content that Google does show.

Local

So if you're in the local space and you're saying, "Gosh, Google has really taken away the ability for my website to get the clicks that it used to get from Google local searches," going into Google My Business and optimizing to provide information such that people who perform that query will be satisfied by Google's result, yes, they won't get to your website, but they will still come to your business, because you've optimized the content such that Google is showing, through Google My Business, such that those searchers want to engage with you. I think this sometimes gets lost in the SEO battle. We're trying so hard to earn the click to our site that we're forgetting that a lot of search experience ends right at the SERP itself, and we can optimize there too.

Results

In the zero-results sets, Google was still willing to show AdWords, which means if we have customer targets, we can use remarketed lists for search advertising (RLSA), or we can run paid ads and still optimize for those. We could also try and claim some of the data that might show up in zero-result SERPs. We don't yet know what that will be after Google rolls it back out, but we'll find out in the future.

Answers

For answers, the answers that Google is giving, whether that's through voice or visually, those can be curated and crafted through featured snippets, through the card lists, and through the answer boxes. We have the opportunity again to influence, if not control, what Google is showing in those places, even when the search ends at the SERP.

All right, everyone, thanks for watching for this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We'll see you again next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/9594400

Senior hires further strengthen talent at Havas helia

Havas helia in Cirencester announces two new senior hires to their leadership team, as part of their continued growth and expansion.

Havas helia today announces the expansion of its senior management team, as Paul Kitcatt and Lisa Lee join to drive the business forwards and support the marketing agency’s sustained growth, following a series of new business wins.

Both seasoned marketing professionals, Kitcatt and Lee will be joining as Non-Executive Director and Business Strategy Director respectively. Working directly alongside the agency’s Managing Director David Macmillan as he turns up the heat on Havas helia’s ambitions, Kitcatt and Lee’s expertise will help maximise talent and potential at the agency and raise the bar on creative output.

Having started his career in Cirencester at Brann, Kitcatt is best known for co-founding Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw. He brings with him extensive creative agency experience, and has worked with brands including Lexus, Waitrose, AXA, VSO, DogsTrust, HSBC, Sky and the NSPCC. Kitcatt has been informally working with Havas helia for some time but will now be working with the senior management team on a permanent basis. His remit includes driving creative output on clients Gap and Pets at Home.

With over 30 years in the business, Lee brings with her substantial international experience from across the network agency landscape. Originally an award-winning writer and CD before moving into planning, she held roles at Ogilvy, Young & Rubicam, Wunderman and Saatchi & Saatchi before joining Nomads as Global Chief Strategy Officer, where she worked on clients including Emirates, Pampers, Mead Johnson Nutrition, Grolsch and National Geographic. At Havas helia, Lee will be working directly with Diageo, Volvo and Unilever to raise the bar on the strategic and creative thinking.

David Macmillan, Managing Director at Havas helia said: “I am delighted that Paul and Lisa are joining the team at a time of real momentum and dynamism for the agency. Paul will deliver expertise from his distinguished CRM career and Lisa is a strategic visionary who I have long admired. She will be working directly with clients, to give them a level of strategic thinking she’s previously deployed on numerous global brands with resounding success. The agency is in a strong position following a streak of new business wins, awards wins, and 20% year-on-year growth and the pair’s extensive creative experience will undoubtedly have a positive impact.”

Lisa Lee, Business Strategy Director at Havas helia said “I was hugely impressed by the quality of thinking at Havas helia and am very excited to be joining an agency with clients such as Diageo, Volvo, and Royal Mail, particularly as they are winning so many awards. I look forward to working with the Management team here to continue their success.”

The post Senior hires further strengthen talent at Havas helia appeared first on TheMarketingblog.

from TheMarketingblog http://www.themarketingblog.co.uk/2018/06/senior-hires-further-strengthen-talent-at-havas-helia/

Google Doc Resume Templates

Creating a resume from scratch can be a pain, particularly when you have limited design experience and your resume doesn’t extend beyond Times New Roman 1-inch margins in terms of flair.

You want your resume to appear professional, but you also don’t need it to look exactly the same as every other resume in the stack.

Fortunately, you don’t need to attempt any tricks you learned in a Photoshop 101 class to create a sleek and attention-grabbing resume.

Google Docs offers five templates with impressive design elements to help you portray a level of professionalism and originality in your resume. Even if you have the design all set, these templates provide formatting inspiration and fill-in-the-blank sections to ensure you don’t forget critical information, like your address or prior awards.

Take a look at these five Google Doc resume templates to choose one best suited for your desired role, or to get some inspiration before designing your own.

1. Swiss

The Swiss resume template is mostly traditional in style, but the color and bold lines make it appear more modern and impressive. The dark lines above and below each segment organize your sections effectively, and the small lines above each section title add some unique style. The simple color, right below your name, suggests you’re someone who pays attention to detail. This template is a solid option if you need a resume for a conservative role but also want to showcase some personality.

2. Serif

The colors used for each headline, and the two parallel columns with plenty of white space in between, suggest that you're someone who's organized and creative. This resume template is a good option for high school or recent college graduates with less work experience, since the template provides categories to showcase accolades and accomplishments outside the workplace.

3. Coral

The color used in the coral template isn’t overbearing or immature, but still spices up an otherwise basic resume. The formatting, with all the information left-indented in one column, looks clean and straightforward. This option is ideal if you’re applying for a corporate job but still want to seem fresh and unique.

4. Spearmint

With the bold green line at the top of the page, this template conveys someone who’s spirited and artistic. The consistency of the title colors is appealing and polished. Spearmint is a fantastic option for anyone who’s applying for a creative role, such as a web designer or creative director.

5. Modern Writer

You’ll only want to choose the statement-making Modern Writer as your template if you’ve got a good reason for it -- for instance, if you’re applying for a web developer role, the font (which looks a bit like code) makes sense. The bold pink and Source Code Pro font are less ideal for a traditional role, but Modern Writer is a good option if you’re applying for a role that applauds uniqueness.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-docs-resume-template

The Minimum Viable Knowledge You Need to Work with JavaScript & SEO Today

Posted by sergeystefoglo

If your work involves SEO at some level, you’ve most likely been hearing more and more about JavaScript and the implications it has on crawling and indexing. Frankly, Googlebot struggles with it, and many websites utilize modern-day JavaScript to load in crucial content today. Because of this, we need to be equipped to discuss this topic when it comes up in order to be effective.

The goal of this post is to equip you with the minimum viable knowledge required to do so. This post won’t go into the nitty gritty details, describe the history, or give you extreme detail on specifics. There are a lot of incredible write-ups that already do this — I suggest giving them a read if you are interested in diving deeper (I’ll link out to my favorites at the bottom).

In order to be effective consultants when it comes to the topic of JavaScript and SEO, we need to be able to answer three questions:

1. Does the domain/page in question rely on client-side JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links?
2. If yes, is Googlebot seeing the content that’s loaded in via JavaScript properly?
3. If not, what is the ideal solution?

With some quick searching, I was able to find three examples of landing pages that utilize JavaScript to load in crucial content.

• Sitecore’s Symposium page
• Hulu’s landing page for “The Path”
• L'Oréal’s homepage

I’m going to be using Sitecore’s Symposium landing page through each of these talking points to illustrate how to answer the questions above.

We’ll cover the “how do I do this” aspect first, and at the end I’ll expand on a few core concepts and link to further resources.

Question 1: Does the domain in question rely on client-side JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links?

The first step to diagnosing any issues involving JavaScript is to check if the domain uses it to load in crucial content that could impact SEO (on-page content or links). Ideally this will happen anytime you get a new client (during the initial technical audit), or whenever your client redesigns/launches new features of the site.

How do we go about doing this?

Ask the client

Ask, and you shall receive! Seriously though, one of the quickest/easiest things you can do as a consultant is contact your POC (or developers on the account) and ask them. After all, these are the people who work on the website day-in and day-out!

“Hi [client], we’re currently doing a technical sweep on the site. One thing we check is if any crucial content (links, on-page content) gets loaded in via JavaScript. We will do some manual testing, but an easy way to confirm this is to ask! Could you (or the team) answer the following, please?

1. Are we using client-side JavaScript to load in important content?
2. If yes, can we get a bulleted list of where/what content is loaded in via JavaScript?”

Check manually

Even on a large e-commerce website with millions of pages, there are usually only a handful of important page templates. In my experience, it should only take an hour max to check manually. I use the Chrome Web Developers plugin, disable JavaScript from there, and manually check the important templates of the site (homepage, category page, product page, blog post, etc.)

In the example above, once we turn off JavaScript and reload the page, we can see that we are looking at a blank page.

As you make progress, jot down notes about content that isn’t being loaded in, is being loaded in wrong, or any internal linking that isn’t working properly.

At the end of this step we should know if the domain in question relies on JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links. If the answer is yes, we should also know where this happens (homepage, category pages, specific modules, etc.)

Crawl

You could also crawl the site (with a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb) with JavaScript rendering turned off, and then run the same crawl with JavaScript turned on, and compare the differences with internal links and on-page elements.

For example, it could be that when you crawl the site with JavaScript rendering turned off, the title tags don’t appear. In my mind this would trigger an action to crawl the site with JavaScript rendering turned on to see if the title tags do appear (as well as checking manually).

Example

For our example, I went ahead and did a manual check. As we can see from the screenshot below, when we disable JavaScript, the content does not load.

In other words, the answer to our first question for this pages is “yes, JavaScript is being used to load in crucial parts of the site.”

Question 2: If yes, is Googlebot seeing the content that’s loaded in via JavaScript properly?

If your client is relying on JavaScript on certain parts of their website (in our example they are), it is our job to try and replicate how Google is actually seeing the page(s). We want to answer the question, “Is Google seeing the page/site the way we want it to?”

In order to get a more accurate depiction of what Googlebot is seeing, we need to attempt to mimic how it crawls the page.

How do we do that?

Use Google’s new mobile-friendly testing tool

At the moment, the quickest and most accurate way to try and replicate what Googlebot is seeing on a site is by using Google’s new mobile friendliness tool. My colleague Dom recently wrote an in-depth post comparing Search Console Fetch and Render, Googlebot, and the mobile friendliness tool. His findings were that most of the time, Googlebot and the mobile friendliness tool resulted in the same output.

In Google’s mobile friendliness tool, simply input your URL, hit “run test,” and then once the test is complete, click on “source code” on the right side of the window. You can take that code and search for any on-page content (title tags, canonicals, etc.) or links. If they appear here, Google is most likely seeing the content.

Search for visible content in Google

It’s always good to sense-check. Another quick way to check if GoogleBot has indexed content on your page is by simply selecting visible text on your page, and doing a site:search for it in Google with quotations around said text.

In our example there is visible text on the page that reads…

"Whether you are in marketing, business development, or IT, you feel a sense of urgency. Or maybe opportunity?"

When we do a site:search for this exact phrase, for this exact page, we get nothing. This means Google hasn’t indexed the content.

Crawling with a tool

Most crawling tools have the functionality to crawl JavaScript now. For example, in Screaming Frog you can head to configuration > spider > rendering > then select “JavaScript” from the dropdown and hit save. DeepCrawl and SiteBulb both have this feature as well.

From here you can input your domain/URL and see the rendered page/code once your tool of choice has completed the crawl.

Example:

When attempting to answer this question, my preference is to start by inputting the domain into Google’s mobile friendliness tool, copy the source code, and searching for important on-page elements (think title tag, <h1>, body copy, etc.) It’s also helpful to use a tool like diff checker to compare the rendered HTML with the original HTML (Screaming Frog also has a function where you can do this side by side).

For our example, here is what the output of the mobile friendliness tool shows us.

After a few searches, it becomes clear that important on-page elements are missing here.

We also did the second test and confirmed that Google hasn’t indexed the body content found on this page.

The implication at this point is that Googlebot is not seeing our content the way we want it to, which is a problem.

Let’s jump ahead and see what we can recommend the client.

Question 3: If we’re confident Googlebot isn’t seeing our content properly, what should we recommend?

Now we know that the domain is using JavaScript to load in crucial content and we know that Googlebot is most likely not seeing that content, the final step is to recommend an ideal solution to the client. Key word: recommend, not implement. It’s 100% our job to flag the issue to our client, explain why it’s important (as well as the possible implications), and highlight an ideal solution. It is 100% not our job to try to do the developer’s job of figuring out an ideal solution with their unique stack/resources/etc.

How do we do that?

You want server-side rendering

The main reason why Google is having trouble seeing Sitecore’s landing page right now, is because Sitecore’s landing page is asking the user (us, Googlebot) to do the heavy work of loading the JavaScript on their page. In other words, they’re using client-side JavaScript.

Googlebot is literally landing on the page, trying to execute JavaScript as best as possible, and then needing to leave before it has a chance to see any content.

The fix here is to instead have Sitecore’s landing page load on their server. In other words, we want to take the heavy lifting off of Googlebot, and put it on Sitecore’s servers. This will ensure that when Googlebot comes to the page, it doesn’t have to do any heavy lifting and instead can crawl the rendered HTML.

In this scenario, Googlebot lands on the page and already sees the HTML (and all the content).

There are more specific options (like isomorphic setups)

This is where it gets to be a bit in the weeds, but there are hybrid solutions. The best one at the moment is called isomorphic.

In this model, we're asking the client to load the first request on their server, and then any future requests are made client-side.

So Googlebot comes to the page, the client’s server has already executed the initial JavaScript needed for the page, sends the rendered HTML down to the browser, and anything after that is done on the client-side.

If you’re looking to recommend this as a solution, please read this post from the AirBNB team which covers isomorphic setups in detail.

AJAX crawling = no go

I won’t go into details on this, but just know that Google’s previous AJAX crawling solution for JavaScript has since been discontinued and will eventually not work. We shouldn’t be recommending this method.

(However, I am interested to hear any case studies from anyone who has implemented this solution recently. How has Google responded? Also, here’s a great write-up on this from my colleague Rob.)

Summary

At the risk of severely oversimplifying, here's what you need to do in order to start working with JavaScript and SEO in 2018:

1. Know when/where your client’s domain uses client-side JavaScript to load in on-page content or links.
   1. Ask the developers.
   2. Turn off JavaScript and do some manual testing by page template.
   3. Crawl using a JavaScript crawler.
2. Check to see if GoogleBot is seeing content the way we intend it to.
   1. Google’s mobile friendliness checker.
   2. Doing a site:search for visible content on the page.
   3. Crawl using a JavaScript crawler.
3. Give an ideal recommendation to client.
   1. Server-side rendering.
   2. Hybrid solutions (isomorphic).
   3. Not AJAX crawling.

Further resources

• The Ultimate Guide to JavaScript SEO
• JavaScript and SEO: The Difference Between Crawling and Indexing
• Core Principles of SEO for JavaScript
• How to Audit JavaScript for SEO
• JavaScript SEO Resources
• View Source: Why it Still Matters and How to Quickly Compare it to a Rendered DOM

I’m really interested to hear about any of your experiences with JavaScript and SEO. What are some examples of things that have worked well for you? What about things that haven’t worked so well? If you’ve implemented an isomorphic setup, I’m curious to hear how that’s impacted how Googlebot sees your site.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/9584451

Here's Exactly How We Got 105k+ People Using Our Chatbot

It’s not impossible for humans and even a lot of software to do exactly what chatbots do.

It’s how bots do it that matters.

When we work alongside bots, they make life easier. They help us do things faster and with more efficiency. They give us more time to do “human stuff” — and do it even better.

Bots don’t have to be as ubiquitous as searching the web. That’s not the point.
Bots do have to carve out a space as a different but equal resource that takes humans where they want to go more easily than ever before.

Chatbots can and will change business and marketing as we know it, if given a fighting chance.

But right now, they must win over naysayers crying “trend!” and comparing the budding technology to channels that have had decades to develop.

It’s easy to get wrong. And when we do get it right, it’s all too easy to run it utterly into the ground as we have with many marketing opportunities in the past.
This time around, we’ve pledged to use this powerful element of change for good instead of evil.

Here’s how we’re making a sales, marketing, and biz-building chatbot that doesn’t suck: GrowthBot.

Apps build a silo, bots fill a niche.

Source

Apple’s “There’s an app for that” has been the rallying cry for the past decade.
As such, it’s left the tech battlefield littered with millions of apps that do everything from letting you solve crime with your favorite celebrity avatar to ordering delivery with an emoji (OK, that one is kind of useful).

There’s more than just an app for that; there’s a name for that. It’s called app fatigue.

In 2016, comScore found almost half of all smartphone users in the U.S. downloaded a whopping average of zero apps per month. Yet in 2017, the Google Play store added more than 1,300 apps every single day.

Credit

Why so many apps? Mostly because it’s what everyone else is doing. Marketers aren’t exactly known for having a lot of chill when it comes to the tech du jour.
That’s not to say apps are dead in the water, but we are starting to see a trend which indicates people are using far fewer apps than are being put on the market daily.
App Annie’s 2017 research shows people use the same nine apps per day and no more than 30 over the course of a month. On average, users only touch as few as one-third of the apps they’ve downloaded.

Millennials especially are using utilities like maps and search engines along with apps for social networking, messaging, entertainment, and retail.

Source

When users do open an app, it’s no surprise it’s rarely that one that lets you drink beer … without the beer.

Bots don’t add to the onslaught of app, decision, or fake beer fatigue. Instead, they live right inside and actually enhance the functionality of some of the most popular messaging apps.

For example, GrowthBot helps users access tons of marketing and sales data using an app they probably already have open all day — Slack.

We have to agree with data scientist and software developer P. Daniel Tyreusin this case:

“I’m willing to speculate that it’s easier to acquire a user if the user doesn’t have to download a new app to use a service. I’m also willing to speculate that users are more likely to continue using a service that’s integrated into an app they already use.”

In the words of Seth Godin: If your target audience isn’t listening, it’s not their fault — it’s yours.

Before we even began building our chatbot, we focused on exactly how it would create value in a way no other tool could for our audience.

We work consistently to grow GrowthBot’s natural language processing (NLP) skills because we know our audience and we know how much easier it makes their lives when they’re able to access and compare tons of data by typing a few quick phrases into Slack.

NLP enables chatbots to understand what a user is looking for. It also allows consumers to enjoy personalized conversation instead of interacting with the same tired “intuitive” menu in a vacuum.

That’s important when your bot functions as a customer service rep, personal shopper, or research partner and conversation is the ideal way to answer a request.
Dennis Thomas, CTO at AI-powered consulting firm NeuraFlash, knows the importance of understanding how users interact with your chatbot.

“Another place where NLP is a big win is when the bot’s objective is focused on helping users with the discovery phase of products or shopping. Finding the right item via conversation helps to drive the user’s goal, as well as the product criteria to match to the company’s inventory.”

By the same token, NLP could actually be a detriment in cases where text-based chatbots can make the process simpler.

“When you have a visual medium and buttons can accomplish the task in a couple clicks (think easy re-order), open-ended natural language is not making the user’s life easier.”

We didn’t throw everything we’ve learned about our audience out the window when developing new bot software. Instead we implemented that knowledge to make GrowthBot just useful enough without being overwhelming.

We believe chatbots should be useful first and useful always.

NLP only accounts for half the conversation — the input part.

Output is just as important in terms of usefulness.

Your bot might have the personality of The Most Interesting Man in the World, but it will still suck if it can’t answer a user’s query.

You don’t need to build an entire search engine from scratch. You don’t even need to build an app. All you have to do is make sure your chatbot has access to enough data to prove useful in the niche you’ve chosen.

If it can’t do that, it’s no better than the aforementioned beer-simulating apps of the world.

GrowthBot has solid conversational skills, but it would be nothing without the marketing and sales data that help it achieve its goal — providing value to people who are growing businesses.

There are already tons of pieces of software and far too many apps for sales and marketing professionals. Useful chatbots don’t mimic, they empower users to find exactly what they’re looking for using a natural instinct: Simply asking.
Not spending hours customizing dashboards and poking through tens of different workflows just to uncover their own data. Simply asking.

Everytime we link a new database to GrowthBot, it gets more valuable for users. Right now it can pull information from dozens of sources; including HubSpot (of course), Google Analytics, MailChimp, social networking sites, and so on.

Bots are first and foremost data scanning machines. They take input, provide relevant feedback, and do so in a way that is easier to manage than any other platform.

“Products, like people, have personalities…”

David Ogilvy famously understood the importance of personality in products. We believe that’s also the case for brands and bots. That’s why we made GrowthBot sound like someone we know and like.

If your brand already has a solid personality, translate that into the voice and tone your bot uses when interacting with people.

If not, there’s no time like building a chatbot to determine whom you want to be in the online world.

Because there are so many tools out there that take the technical aspect out of building a bot, creating a great conversational flow might just be the greatest challenge you’ll face.

The messaging framework you build into your chatbot will influence the way people perceive the value of your brand, so give it some personality.

MailChimp is famous for its distinctly helpful personality that manages to be playful and humble at the same time. If your cat is wearing its very own monkey-themed knit hat right now, you know exactly what I mean.

Source

Cintell’s 2016 benchmark study on B2B buyers found that companies who exceed lead and revenue goals are two and a half times as likely to use personas than companies who miss lead and revenue goals.

Source

Today’s consumers have nearly countless brands to choose from. And they know it.
A well-defined voice that aligns with your ideal customer is an effective and low-cost way to develop return buyers and bot users.

For example, GrowthBot sounds like Dharmesh Shah — founder and CTO at HubSpot and loving father to the chatbot itself.

That means it’s light-hearted, respectful, and just a tad quirky all while being truly helpful.

We’ve found that a truly helpful voice in a world of chatter is more powerful than you might think.

Bots make life so simple, search feels painful

Google search has made an impact. There’s no denying that.

It’s almost a force of habit to visit a search engine to find what you’re looking for. Habits are notoriously hard to change, especially the more gratifying and automatic they are.

Current studies show it takes an average of 66 days for a behavior to become “unchangingly automatic.”

Because search behavior is second nature to us now, bots must do what a search can’t:

• Provide customer service conversations and solutions without the wait
• Deliver the information a user is looking for in just seconds, on the first try
• Make recommendations based on powerful personalization
• Aggregate information from a variety of sources right inside the apps we’re already using

That last point is what GrowthBot is founded on. We make growing your business easier by using the power of a chatbot to put information at your fingertips — not siloed in more apps and interfaces than you can count.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what AI-enabled bots can do with enough data and well-planned conversational flow.

But things can still go wrong if you aren’t aware of and managing your users’ expectations.

Where Facebook’s Assistant M Got It All Wrong

RIP

Chatbots are relatively new and their capabilities are varied. If you want people to love your bot, it’s important they understand why they need it and how to use it.
It’s not that Facebook’s Assistant M chatbot didn’t work. It’s that expectations weren’t managed; which overwhelmed the system and underwhelmed its users all at once.

“The first thing chatbots should do is quickly introduce their core competencies. Not only should chatbots start within a specific scope, they should always firstly tell you how they can help you and what they can do best.”
— Instabot

Clarify upfront exactly what your bot is capable of. Provide specific examples and invite the user to try out a few practice questions. Don’t make them learn any new tricks right away.

Using your chatbot for the first time should feel like starting an online chat with a new friend or customer service agent.

There will inevitably be times when users ask your bot to do something it can’t do yet. Offer them an alternative, but don’t let that learning opportunity slip away.
Scan your chat logs regularly, they’re the most valuable market research you’ll ever get on what people want your chatbot to do.

Wait, have I mentioned value already?

Be on the lookout for every chance you can find to provide extreme value to your users.

Go above and beyond what people expect your chatbot to provide. Delight them with thoughtful little extras that make their days better.

Extreme value doesn’t have to stop when a user leaves your bot interface.

Offer to send customers an alert when their size is back in stock. Tell readers where they can find more articles like the one they just read on your website. Or, like us, celebrate with them every time you connect another tool that will make their jobs easier.

These kinds of interactions don’t just provide extreme value, they keep you top of mind and keep your customers coming back for more.

Nobody needs another app for this, that, or anything.

Instead, people need smart ways to accomplish more within the tools they already know and use regularly. When our chatbots deliver that level of service, we’re sure to start changing behavior and creating better automatic habits.

Fight back against bad bots. Build yours to be delightful to interact with, provide extreme value, and just not suck.

Originally published at blog.growthbot.org.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-we-got-105k-people-using-our-chatbot

Unriddled: "Not a Media Company" Facebook Launches a Quarterly Publication, Apple Fights Election Interference, and More Tech News You Need

Welcome one, welcome all to another Wednesday: the day that marks the halfway point -- almost -- to the weekend.

The tech industry has seen quite a busy week, so we're bringing you another edition of "Unriddled": the HubSpot Marketing Blog's mid-week digest of the tech news you need to know. 

It's our Wednesday tech news roundup, and we're breaking it down.

Unriddled: The Tech News You Need

1. Facebook Launches Grow: A Print Quarterly Publication for Business Leaders

Despite repeated insistence from its leaders that it is not a media company, Facebook has launched a print quarterly publication in the UK -- Grow by Facebook -- which it describes as "a thought leadership platform shining a light on people, companies and trends that challenge the status quo." According to the Grow website, a permanent online "home" for the publication (which Facebook won't call a magazine) will launch soon, and feature content like niche brand case studies, as well as profiles of business leaders that achieved seemingly impressive feats. The Press Gazette's Charlotte Tobitt has more. Read full story >>

2. Apple's Fight Against Election Interference

Apple News -- which was rumored to be experimenting with products competing with those of Google News in April -- will now have a dedicated section for the 2018 U.S. Midterm Elections.

With a mission of "providing a new resource for timely, trustworthy midterm election information," Apple is drawing attention to a key factor that differentiates it from other tech giants who are fighting election interference, like Facebook: human editors.

To address fake news —
Facebook:
-3rd party fact checkers
-Algorithm ranked by news trustworthiness poll
-“how to spot fake news” education
- less news in feed
- publishers in political ad database
- not being “arbiters of truth”
Apple:
-human editorshttps://t.co/hsqE5rHIcj

— Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) June 25, 2018

(Twitter, too, announced on Tuesday new efforts to combat the spread of fake content and platform abuse -- largely through machine learning.)

According to its official statement, Apple will employ a "team of editors focused on discovering and spotlighting well-sourced fact-based stories," which will include exclusive pieces from the likes of the Washington Post and Axios, as well as coverage from televised news sources. Read full statement >>

3. The Less-Than-Successful Meeting of Big Tech and Intelligence Officials

Within the realm of preventing election interference, several representatives from eight tech giants -- including Facebook (which hosted the summit and recently published an update on its efforts to fight fake news), Apple, Google, and Twitter -- met with representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to discuss how they can better fight election interference in the months leading up to November's midterm elections.

(Facebook, meanwhile, announced yesterday that it has removed 10,000 fake Pages, Groups, and accounts in Mexico and across Latin America because they violated Community Standards -- though it is unclear if the removal is related to possible election interference.)

The desired outcome, it seems, was to compare potential meddling activity each company had witnessed on its own platform to what U.S. intelligence has been monitoring and intercepting, as well. But those hopes were all but thwarted, with the U.S. government officials sharing no intelligence and leaving the business leaders assuming they would have to fight election interference without any federal intervention or assistance.

It's a particularly interesting outcome considering April's congressional hearings, in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was challenged with questions about the potential regulation of the company, as well as its Big Tech peers. But that potential regulation -- should it materialize -- does not appear as though it will play a role in the company's efforts to cease the weaponization of social media sites by foreign actors. Sheera Frenkel and Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times share more. Read full story >>

4. New Metrics Emerge for Time Spent on Social Media

According to new data from SimilarWeb, the average Instagram user spends about 53 minutes on the app each day, trailing closely behind an average 58 minutes on Facebook. (Snapchat, evidently, isn't too far behind, with an average of 49.5 minutes.)

The data comes at an interesting time, after recent announcements from Apple that it will include a Screen Time app in the next version of iOS to help users manage the time they spend using their phones. Not long after that feature was unveiled, Instagram confirmed it was testing a "time well spent" feature and rumors emerged that Facebook (which owns Instagram) is experimenting with similar technology.

Screenshots reveal Facebook is building a Time Well Spent dashboard https://t.co/C8bmfsK4fz pic.twitter.com/dlyAnSh7tA

— Josh Constine (@JoshConstine) June 22, 2018

But despite the efforts of the latter two apps to, on the surface, help users better manage time spent on them, both have released new long-form video products -- as well as newly-released group chat options and a redesigned explore tab from Instagram -- over the past few weeks that appear to be designed at least in part to encourage more time spent on each platform.  Recode's Rani Molla and Kurt Wagner explain why these metrics matter. Read full story >>

5. Uber is on Probation in London

Since Transport for London revoked Uber's license to operate, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has spent much of his time doing "damage control" to repair the company's relationships in the UK, as well as in its U.S. homebase. Now, the ride-sharing company has regained a license to operate in London, after a UK judge ruled that it can legally offer its "digital services" there. But it might not be permanent -- the ruling comes with 15 months of probation, which is three months short of the 18-month period the company was seeking. Politico's Mark Scott has more. Read full story >>

6. Facebook Will Allow Cryptocurrency Ads Again

In a statement released Tuesday, Facebook announced it would once again permit the purchase and publication of "binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency." The new policy follows a January decision to ban any "misleading or deceptive promotional" content related to financial products -- which has been revised to allow such ads from pre-approved accounts only. Facebook and Google were among the first platforms to ban ads related to cryptocurrency, and were followed shortly thereafter by Twitter. Read full statement >>

That’s all for today. Until next week, feel free to weigh in on Twitter to ask us your tech news questions, or to let us know what kind of events and topics you'd like us to cover.

Featured image credit: Facebook

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/unriddled-tech-news-facebook-quarterly-apple-election

The 7-Minute Guide to Getting Started With Google Tasks

If you’re anything like me, you love to-do lists. Heck, sometimes you love to-do lists so much, you even put completed tasks on your list just for the satisfaction of crossing them off (No? Just me?).

Up until recently, I’ve been using my Google Calendar as my to-do list -- but it can get confusing, particularly when someone wants to book time with me but sees “buy salmon” already takes up most of the afternoon. Even worse, you can’t prioritize your Google Calendar to put more important tasks ahead of less important ones.

Fortunately, Google offers an alternative solution: Google Tasks, a tool which enables you to create to-do lists within your email, links those tasks to your calendar, and more.

Google Tasks

Google Tasks lets you create a to-do list within your desktop Gmail or the Google Tasks app. When you add a task, you can integrate it into your Gmail calendar, and add details or subtasks. Tasks also enable you to drag and drop emails into your to-do list, rearrange the order of your tasks, and check off completed ones. With the updated Gmail design, Google Tasks is sleeker and easier to incorporate into your work routine.

Gmail has offered a Tasks tool for years, but with the new Google design, Tasks is sleeker and easier to use. Here, we’ll show you how to get started with Google Tasks in just seven minutes, on your desktop or phone.

How to Use Google Tasks on a Desktop

1. Log into your Gmail account. Click your “Settings” icon, as indicated by the arrow below, and then select, “Try the new [Gmail].” Since I’m on a work email, it says HubSpot, but it’ll say something different depending on your email account.

2. With your new updated Gmail, you’ll see a blue icon on the right side (underneath Calendar and Keep). Click the icon, labelled “Tasks”.

3. Click the blue “+” button to add your first task.

4. Now, type a task in the line beside the bubble and then click the “Enter” or “Return” key.

5. If you only need to add a basic task, you’re all set. However, the Tasks tool also allows you to edit your task -- to do this, click the pencil icon beside your task.

6. Here, you can add details including when your task is due (which will integrate into your Calendar), a paragraph box for your own notes, and the option to add subtasks if you feel the need to break up your task into parts.

7. When you’ve completed a task, simply click the bubble beside the task. When you do, it will briefly show a check mark, cross itself off, and then disappear off your list.

8. You can also drag and drop your tasks to rearrange the order -- for instance, I dragged “Dinner reservation?” to the first item on my to-do list.

How to Add Tasks to Google Calendar

1. Click “Edit details” if you’re using Google Tasks on a desktop, or “Add date” if you’re using the app version.
2. Choose a date on the calendar that pops up on your desktop or app.
3. The task will be automatically integrated into both your phone and desktop’s Gmail calendar.

How to Add an Email to Your Google Tasks

If you receive an important email you’re too busy to answer immediately, you can add it to your Tasks list for later. Here are two different ways to do this:

1. Simply hold the email and drag it to your open Task list. You’ll see the email icon underneath the task, which, if you click, will take you to the email.

2. If you’re within the email when you decide you want to add it to Tasks, simply click the three-dot icon at the top of your email and select, “Add to Tasks”.

How to Use the Google Tasks App

If you’re often making to-do lists on the go, you might want to use the Google Tasks app supplementarily -- since it’s connected to your email, your tasks will sync up with your desktop Task list, and they’ll also integrate into your Calendar on both your phone and desktop.

After you download the app on your phone, here’s how to use it:

1. When you open the app for the first time, here’s what you’ll see (look familiar?). Click the blue “Get started” button.

2. Next, click the blue “Add a new task” button.

3. Using your phone’s keyboard, type your task and then click “Save” or “Done”.

4. If you click on your task within the app, you’ll have the option to “Add details”, “Add date”, or “Add subtasks”. For this instance, if I want to add my task to my calendar, I’ll click “Add date”.

4. A calendar will pop up within the app. Choose the date your task is due, and then click “Ok”.

5. When you add subtasks, you’ll see the bubble beside each task. When you complete a task, simply click the bubble.

6. To rearrange the order or change the dates of your tasks, click the three-dot icon in the bottom right corner.

7. Here, you can sort your full task list by customized order or date, rename the list, or delete all completed tasks.

Google Tasks vs. Reminders

You can add reminders to your Google Calendar at any time, by clicking a spot on the calendar and choosing “Reminder” instead of “Event”. When you’ve scheduled a reminder, it pops up in the right corner of your screen at the time you’ve entered, i.e. “finish article, 10 a.m.”. Google Tasks also integrates into your Calendar, but offers more details than date and time, so it’s a better tool when you need to include more in-depth information, such as personal notes or subtasks.

Ultimately, Google Tasks is an effective organizational method, since it integrates seamlessly into other Google features including Gmail and Calendar. If you’re feeling overwhelmed filling up your calendar or sticky notes with to-do lists that range in level of importance, you might want to give Tasks a try.

Additionally, take a look at 12 Tools That'll Keep You Productive Morning, Noon & Night to further increase your efficiency levels.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/google-tasks