All posts by Kurt Kirton

About Kurt Kirton

Song and book writer from MS now living in Nashville, TN. Marketing and graphic design background. Regular blogger on topics surrounding the subject of job searching.

Credit Cards (and rewards!) during job transition

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Acropolis Athens Greece
Did you know most credit cards can earn you points? These points can be traded in occasionally for merchandise or airfare. I bring this up because being on top of your finances is a key part of managing your job search.

Many people follow special introductory offers regarding interest rates or balance transfers when signing up for a credit card. Ask your friends, and surf around. See if the card you choose can earn you points (and make sure the interest rates are still good AFTER the introductory period). If the card doesn’t earn you anything, find one that does. Skip those with an annual fee. Put your credit card to work for you!

As you spend on the card, you can also look forward to getting yourself something like a new flat panel TV, restaurant gift certificates, or even airfare for a vacation. If you’re like me, you’ve worked diligently and very hard on your search, so you deserve this.

For example, I had enough points in 2012 to get airfare for 2 to Europe for free! And my April 2014 airfare to several cities in Mexico only cost me $69 (to buy a few make-up points since I was a bit short.) I took the photo above of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.

As much as possible, pay off your full balance monthly, and only spend on the card what you’ll have in a few weeks. This way you can avoid snowballing debt, stress, and paying the credit card companies any interest.

You can compare different credit cards at creditcards.com. I’ve been very happy with the customer service, perks, occasional bonus point programs, and concierge services that come as a part of the Mastercard I have, (the Citi ThankYou Preferred Card). And there’s no annual fee. Scroll through the options at this page, and check it out.

No, I’m not getting a kick-back from Citi–I wish–but a friend encouraged me to share my technique for using a credit card to your advantage. Enjoying some relax time or a goodie for yourself occasionally is a nice self-reward and healthy addition to your job search. What’s the coolest thing you’ve gotten with your credit card points?

Job posting aggregators and web sites

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Woman with Tablet image
I’ve read that most jobs posted online (up to 80%) are already filled. If you’ve ever wondered, “why!?,” a colleague in the job search realm said it’s not a law that a company must also post jobs online when they already have internal or personal candidates in mind, it’s just company policy. Although most people do NOT find their jobs this way, surfing the boards should be a small part of your job search efforts, just like counting on Social Security is a minor part of your retirement strategy.

Thank God for aggregators—what a time saver! The main two I’m aware of are indeed.com and simplyhired.com. From my perusal, both seem to draw upon most of the same sites, so I have set up alerts only from indeed.com. Lord knows we all get enough email. I also like indeed’s “Last 7 Days” link. That way I can simply click that and go through as many pages of jobs as I want on the day I want instead of opening alert emails every day to try to avoid recurrent listings for the same job posting.

You may also want to check monster.com separately. Indeed.com does not seem to include its results, and for some, monster may have some listings right up your alley. It also doesn’t hurt to post your resume at careerbuilder.com.

I also wanted to recommend beyond.com. I discovered it and have been using it for almost a year, and indeed does not seem to include its results either. It has some good solid leads, and you can post your resume as well. Have you found any other job posting sites or aggregators that have been valuable? If so, what are they?

Freelance work

In Transition, , , , ,
Rollin' In It!
image courtesy of Carlos Eduardo

Over the past few years, I’ve been compiling a list of sites where you can ask for or provide services in exchange for pay. For example, if someone needs a wedding package of items designed or their taxes done. Or you can tout your services. In case you’d like to make some additional money while in transition or if you are a freelancer and would like to proactively seek customers, I wanted to share these sites…

Please comment if you know of any others!