KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

7 Ways to Make Extra Money in 2011 by Kimberly Palmer

by Kimberly Palmer Monday, January 10, 2011

provided by: US News

Job security might be out, but freelance, contract, and temporary work is in, which makes it easier than ever to moonlight as a graphic designer while you spend your days as a public relations rep. Slimmer staffs mean companies often need the extra help, and new websites offer free tools that match potential employers with workers. And earning extra money beyond your steady paycheck, if you're lucky enough to have one, can provide a big boost to your financial security.

Here are seven ways to make extra money off the new economy in 2011:

Launch a Brand

When Kimberly Seals-Allers, former senior editor at Essence magazine, was expecting her first child, she discovered that black women face higher risks during childbirth and pregnancy. "I realized we were a special group, and I wanted to write a book about everything in black women's lives. Not just pregnancy, but money, men, and myths in our community. [I wanted] to create a new way forward."

Her first book, "The Mocha Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy," turned into a series as well as an online magazine, maternity line, and consultancy. Seals-Allers also licensed use of the Mocha Manual name to create an instructional DVD sold at Walmart and supermarkets.

[Click here to find an online degree program]

Start a Blog

The anonymous blogger behind Lazy Man and Money defies his site's name. He works about 14 hours a day on weekdays and then puts in nine hours on Saturday and Sunday. But his hard work is paying off -- his blog earns him enough to support his lifestyle; back in 2008, he estimated his annual earnings at around $30,000. But it's tough for part-time bloggers with full-time jobs to keep up with all the demands of a lucrative blog. "There's simply a lot more [to do] than what the average reader sees," he says.

Even if the blog itself doesn't generate a six-figure salary, it can lead to other money- making opportunities, such as consulting or speaking gigs. Silicon Valley Blogger at The Digerati Life has carved out a successful niche as the expert on personal finance and technology in Silicon Valley. While she says she didn't earn much during the first six months of her blog's life, she received her first $100 check from Google AdSense shortly after that point, when she was getting around 600 unique visitors a day. She now earns money from her blog-related consulting, as well.

[Industries With the Biggest Boosts in Hiring]

Sell Your Skills

Whether your expertise lies in social networking, editing, or web development, several new websites can help you find potential clients willing to pay you for your work. Elance.com, Odesk.com, and Guru.com make it easy to advertise your skills and find work, which you can do from the comfort of your home at all hours of the night. To get started, explore the websites to see what might be a good fit. You can also stick with a more traditional approach and use Craigslist.org, which allows users to post advertising for their services, ranging from household labor to music lessons.

Sell a Wacky Service

For those interested in a more unusual approach, the innovative website fiverr.com allows users to sell (and buy) services for $5. Current offerings include sketching a stylized portrait, writing a name on a grain of rice, and digitally restoring a photograph. It's one of the trendiest ways to make a quick buck for the internet-savvy; dozens of videos, websites, and blogs offer advice on how best to earn money off the site. The best advice? Since you're only going to make $5 a pop, sell a service that you can do easily and quickly.

Talk and Teach

Colleges, organizations, and companies are constantly on the lookout for new experts that can inspire an audience. If you've built up an expertise on a subject, perhaps through your blog, then consider branching out with some speaking gigs. Offer to talk for free at first to build up your reputation, and then a speakers' bureau can help connect you to paying gigs (for a cut of your fee).

More from USNews.com: • 10 Kitchen Tools That Will

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• 50 Ways to Improve Your Finances in 2011

• The Best Money Lesson For Kids? Independence[Resolutions That Will Save You Money]

Design T-Shirts

Companies such as CafePress.com allow people to design and sell their T-shirts for a cut of the profits. According to the company's website, some users earn over $100,000 a year. But it's not always easy: Jen Goode, who earns enough through CafePress to pay her mortgage each month, found success after a year and a half of long, sometimes 16- hour days. Her time is spent creating designs and then uploading them. She has uploaded about 2,500 designs, many of which are cartoon oriented, including the popular penguin series. For her, she says, the secret has been to make many different images that are steady sellers, as opposed to creating one or two megahits. Now, she says she doesn't need to put as much time into her shop because she has such a large inventory of designs.

Sell Other People's Products

Make-up companies such as Avon and Mary Kay are always looking for new sales representatives, as are other companies such as kitchen products seller Pampered Chef. "If you don't have to make a big investment to get into it, it's probably not a bad idea," says Marcia Brixey, author of "The Money Therapist." But she warns people to stay away from businesses that require sellers to make significant up-front purchases that they might not be able to unload.

The bottom line: The new economy offers plenty of creative ways to earn extra money; to find the best fit for you, consider your skills, lifestyle, and ambitions.

 

How Can You Improve Performance Metrics and Employee Productivity?

A study of the Corporate Executive Board found that since the recession began, managers have become less effective at defining employees roles and accountability. Before the recession, only 60% of employees said their managers did an okay job of effectively communicating expectations, since the recession that number has dropped to 45%, which considering is quite low.  Before, Front Line and HR Managers told employees how they fit in to the overall strategy and market share objectives, now they tell employees to get to work and be grateful they have a job.  Ouch…….that is pretty short sighted thinking.

The highly interesting part of this is that when employees understand how what they do fits into the overall strategy of the business and the achievement of their corporate objectives productivity can increase by 10% at a minimum. Ten percent of ten employees equates to an additional headcount.

When I lead my Maximize Your People ROI workshop and keynotes I speak a great deal about Jim Collins’ call to action, “Put the right people on the Bus”.  Five years ago I learned two provocative processes for assessing, evaluating & validating job specifications, at Keen we call these Benchmarking and Role Analysis.  Both of these tie Organizational Development and Recruitment processes together and drastically improve hiring metrics and recruiting success rates.

If you want to attract more of the best, you first have to truly understand why some of your employees are high performers. Is it coincidence, dumb luck or a lot of hard work when a key manager assembles a team of high performers?  Or is it a calculated and well-executed strategy?

Experts say that building a high performance work-group does not happen by anything other than a well defined, executed recruitment plan and selection hiring process. High performing teams are not created by accident.  There is always a plan of attack that attracts people with solid competencies, required behaviors, complimentary traits, and shared values.  Companies like HP create programs for this by assessing their top performers and understanding what drives their performance; aspects like competencies, motivators, behaviors, values, work style, and emotional intelligence.  They then build a hiring model that vets candidates with similar winning formulas.

This is what KeenHire refers to as benchmarking.  The Keen team has assessed over 1000 high performers conducted over 200 corporate benchmarks since our launch.  In one company alone, we saved the employer over $1,000,000.00 in poor hiring costs  Download Keenhireclarknatcasestudy because they stopped hiring people who they thought would fit and they started hiring people they knew would fit.  This new age Talent Management stuff really works!

Conducting a Role Analysis on positions that you are filling whether through an internal promotion or a new hire impacts not only your ability to put the right person on the bus, it effects your companies ability to improve workforce production and engagement. When your employees know that you chose them because they had the natural ability to do the job in a way that amplifies the companies mission and vision and they know what is expected as well as how these accomplishments impact the big picture; they are awake and aware to exactly what you are counting on them to achieve on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis they are much more likely to achieve it. 

The Bottom Line is if you want a more productive, engaged workforce hire the right people for jobs they are well equipped to do, make sure they know what you expect from them and then encourage them to use their natural talents and abilities to get the job done.

If you have professional HR Management, Contract Recruitment staff or In Sourced Recruitment consultants on your team make sure they are trained in these critical hiring selection programs and strategies; if you do not and you need to go outside to Recruiting services require these service providers to offer solutions that enable you to hit your hiring and retention metrics. 

Recruiting: Filling The Talent Pipeline

Filling the Recruiting Pipeline  

Sourcing and Selection are two very different worlds. One puts as many applicants in the pool as possible and the other sorts and selects the best fit for the fulfillment of the positions’ key objectives.  Given there is a War for Talent many companies fear that they can not afford to be highly selective in their recruitment efforts. The reality is while there is a war, there is also a recession which means certain industries are dying and with that is the emergence of talent from hidden sectors. 

If you strategize effectively you will easily attract solid ‘core’ talent from industries that are highly compatible to yours. Yes, you may have to train the candidate to your company, products and services. However if you conduct the hiring process with thoroughness and integrity you hire ONLY the best suitable talent - rather hiring the best suitable experience (which we all know backfires when it’s the wrong ‘fit’). Either way you have to train a newcomer to your firm, so it is your choice whether you want to train and fix bad behaviors or invest in up front industry, product and service training.  

To attract, hire and retain the “right” talent Keep in mind there are now a multitude of cost effective options and alternatives.  If you are choosing to pay a fee, or hire a contract recruiter ensure your recruiter is highly skilled in both search and selection, or consider outsourcing pieces of the processes to firms or people who are highly skilled in a specific area, or make certain that your internal resources have all the tools & training  they need to improve their hiring batting average.

Options for Generating Candidates at the top of the funnel:

A. Hire a Contract Recruiter, a full scale Search Firm or a local Employment Agency

Interviewing & Hiring A Recruitment firm or Professional Recruitment Contractor:
Questions you may want to ask.
1) How many placements have you made in our field/niche/industry/position level?
2) What is your passive candidate strategy? Please outline it.
3) What system are you utilizing to evaluate your candidates strengths, behaviors,and competencies as they compare to our immediate and long term needs for the role?
4) What is your due diligence process? Who pays for that?
5) What is the average tenure of your placements?
6) Will you consider a fee arrangement with a percentage weighted on retention
7) How many customers have you retained for 5+ years?

B. Sourcing Candidates through the Boards & Internet

1) If you using the boards to source candidates – hiring a 3rd party sourcing company might be a prudent option; these companies have armies of people who scour the job boards while we in America are sleeping. The average cost of this service is $1500.00 per search to $2500.00 per month.  Different companies charge based on the deliverable. This emerging industry is rapidly taking their stake in the talent acquisition sector.
           
2) Resume Search Aggregation and Filtering – these are software as a service subscriptions that take your job specifications and pull appropriate resumes from a multitude of job boards. This type of software can save your internal Sourcers or Recruiters hundreds of hours.

3) Posting technology - There is job board and social media posting technology that takes your single job posting and delivers it to hundreds of specialty sites in seconds. Pretty cool!

C. Passive Candidate Acquisition: Social Networking 

1) If you chose this route make sure you are hiring/contracting with a person who has no fear of rejection, is willing and able to make an abundant of outbound calls on a regular basis and who has strong talent in navigating around the internet.

2) Linked in and Face Book are by far two of the most effective ways to find passive talent. 

D. New Fashioned Head hunting

How is your recruiter planning on building the list of who to call? Do they have the resources for list building; will they outsource this function; if so how much will that cost?  There are excellent technology solutions that your recruiters need be using to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. 

E. Create an EVP and promote the hell out of it

Find out why people work for your company, find out why they stay. Create an Employee Value proposition and promote it on social media, industry sites, internally, to customers, to local colleges and vocational schools, etc. 

F. Pay Referral Bonuses

G. Build Your Internal Recruitment Team to Maximize Your People ROI

Consider implementing B-F with a carefully selected and trained internal recruitment team. The internal team must be evaluated based on hiring metrics, retention, efficiency and value they provide.

The bottom line is make sure you are investing in the right solution for your unique situation.