The Local’s new series Job Talk offers tips for working in Germany. For the first instalment, we explore the unique aspects of the German résumé.

• Most Germans think fat cats get too much cream (30 Jan 13)
• German workers feel more stressed (29 Jan 13)
• Consumer confidence edges up slightly (29 Jan 13)

Landing a job in Germany as a foreigner can be tough. But knowing what German employers expect from your CV could mean the crucial difference between getting an interview and getting dumped in the wastepaper basket.

The Local spoke to professional careers advisers to find out how job-seekers in Germany can turn a English-language curriculum vitae into a slimmed-down, factual German Lebenslauf.

Check out The Local’s My German Career series for inspirational expat success stories

When sending out an application in Germany it’s important to get the layout of your CV correct. If your information is where German employers will be expecting it, your document will be much easier for them to process at a glance.

“It’s really important to know what you’re doing when writing your German CV. It will get thrown out if you don’t do it in the style which Germans are used to,” career adviser Heidi Störr told The Local.

The first thing to note is that a Lebenslauf is one or two pages in a formal, fact sheet format, which looks and feels very different in style and content from a typical English CV.

“The Lebenslauf is a datasheet, a fact sheet,” Gerhard Winkler, contributor to Der Spiegel magazine’s online careers section, told The Local. “The cover letter is a briefing – where you show how you’re right for the job. Both texts are best when they are factual, sober list free of egotistical statements.”

German CVs are also set out in a two-columned table. You need to separate the table into six rows under the following headings written on the left column: ‘Personal Details,’ ‘Professional Experience,’ ‘Education and Training,’ ‘Voluntary Work,’ ‘Scholarships’ and ‘Computer and Language Skills.’

Underneath each of these headings on the left go your exact dates – the time frames of activities, training or jobs which you will list in the right-hand column opposite. It’s best to put activities in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent, according to career advisers.

The column on the right is where you enter your experiences. Underneath each job title or educational programme, describe your role in short, keyword sentences, concentrating on what you consider the most relevant details for the job you are applying for.

Germans tend to consider some information you might have on your English CV to be superfluous or even egotistical, said Winkler, so leave out any description of personal qualities, interests and hobbies, but do include membership of groups or organizations under ‘Voluntary Work.’

There are a few must-have personal details every Lebenslauf should include which you might not have on your original CV: a photo, your marital status and place of birth. Also make sure you cover your language and computer skills in detail.

The photo question

Unlike most English resumes, German CVs always include a passport-style professional photo in the upper right-hand corner – a detail advisers say you would do well not to leave out.

“German employers are used to seeing a photo on a résumé, they can’t explicitly demand in the job advert that you put one because that goes against privacy laws,” Störr told The Local.

“But they’ll be looking for it so always put one. A photo allows potential employers to make a different kind of personal connection with someone and will help them connect your skills with your face when you come to an interview.”

Finally, since you will be applying for a job in a German workplace, you need to think carefully about which language to use on your CV. Advisers say if your German is up to it you would do well to show it off.

“If you can do it in German, make the effort, it doesn’t have to be word-perfect,” said Störr.

But if those German lessons have not quite paid off yet, then avoid the temptation to get it translated and leave it in English. This will avoid any awkward moments if you get to an interview and an employer decides to test out your language skills.

“If an applicant has no or only a little German but has written their CV in German it would give the impression they had better language skills than they actually had, which could lead to problems,” said Störr.

“Personally, if English was my first language I’d write applications in Germany in English – unless I had to prove excellent German language skills for the job,” Winkler told The Local.

Generally, said Winkler it was important to remember his golden rule for CV writing: “Stick to the facts.”

Josie Le Blond

No blog post in the month of January is complete without talking a little about 2012, and I won’t disappoint. 2012 was full to the brim with gifts from all the search engines, and not just the mighty G. Never before has the inbound marketing community been so directly involved with influencing changes in algorithm updates and, to some extent, linked to products created due to the impact of these algorithm updates. Before you start attacking, give me a second to elaborate. I only ask for you to mentally detach yourself from any emotion associated with a site you may have worked on that was negatively impacted in 2012 (this will only hurt for a minute, I promise).

Ready?

2012 saw the emergence of a new paradigm, one that calls for a slightly more transparent world in relation to search engines. Smaller search engines have been doing this for some time and I want to highlight Blekko for really bringing transparency to the forefront of their search experience. The difference between what the smaller search engines did and what the top search engines did is simple: The big guys gave us invaluable insight into their thought process and gave us access – however cryptic and shrouded in code names – to what they think a better internet looks like. From this, we saw the ever popular Panda and Penguin updates as well as greater importance in the role of UX and information architecture. The latter changes opened the flood gates to a richer web experience for both humans and bots.

Structured data keeps a website protected

Love it or hate it, Google’s algorithm has catapulted over our SEO moat, through the rickety 30 foot walls of Link Building and past the watchtowers of Keyword Research, crash landing atop our perfect castle made of sand. In order to defend ourselves from this assault, we must fortify the information architecture in a way that can withstand the constant barrage and ever changing assault from search engines. The simple, yet underutilized, option is to add HTML markup to the website. So the million dollar question is: Why are websites not using it?

2012 saw the emergence of a new paradigm, one that calls for a slightly more transparent world in relation to search engines.

I think that 2013 will be the year that structured data is incorporated into the make-up of fundamental SEO. This concept is no longer theoretical and, with the ever encroaching mobile threat, it will become increasingly vital to have data and content organized. I am not implying that once markup is added to the HTML rankings will instantly rise or that this is a cure-all for a poor SEO foundation. Structuring the data in a meaningful way reinforces the site architecture by sending clear and concise signals that the data being crawled can best be organized and classified as a schema. The idea here is not to think of structured data as a way to leap frog competitors, but as a tactic to prove a website’s valuable and unique data. After all, we are not talking about investing in unoriginal, shallow content.

How does one get started with structured data?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can say with certainty that it’s a big deal to me when the top search engines agree to support a schema for making the worlds information easier to crawl and in return, classify. I want to highlight a simple approach that I took to change the process of how pages are built at my company.

1) Get your best developer on board

This is a no-brainer and, frankly, if you are not best friends with your top dev(s), then there are bigger problems to solve before tackling structured data. Getting this first piece in place will not only provide insight into the realities of marking up the HTML but also carry a lot of weight in the organization when that person is seen in your corner.

2) Evangelize structured data

This second important piece keeps structured data top of mind even when you are not around. This means dropping recommendations in reports or tying the value of HTML markup in meetings (when the topic is relevant, of course) and having conversations about the great attributes available and how they tie to your business. Basically, incorporate markup opportunities into your daily jargon.

3) Find real examples in the wild

This piece ties directly to evangelizing in that you should be taking notes and reporting on examples of competitors or other industries that are utilizing HTML markup. It differs in the sense that this is research driven where evangelizing is all about planting the idea that developing a webpage is incomplete without the inclusion of markup.

4) Keep it fun and pain-free to implement

Don’t be a dictator about implementation by making it all or nothing. This is the last piece of the puzzle because ideally you have collected all the information in the first three steps. Let your developers do what they do best and advise where to best retrofit this idea into legacy code. Most importantly, give them the freedom to get creative and experiment. This is new territory so nothing should be off the table.

Please keep in mind that these are not rules by any means, just a framework that I used to help with the adoption of structuring data on our pages. Depending on the organization, steps 1 – 3 are completely flexible. The only one that doesn’t move is the fourth step, which is all about deliverables.

Case Study: Implementing Schema.org

I want to highlight an example of the fourth step that comes from my own experience of implementing schema.org markup. A developer and I were meeting about the pros and cons of implementing the code on a certain page when he had an idea to create item properties specific to the data we display. I had absolutely no problem with this, and I felt that this is one of the few ways that we could contribute to a better web. I reached out to Duane Forrester via Twitter to ask, in his opinion, would it be worthwhile to add schema tags that do not exist in the main document. To my surprise, he responded and said that the bots would crawl it, but until it is widely used throughout the web it will not be incorporated into the schema family. Nonetheless, the developer wanted to go full speed ahead and we ended up releasing three completely new schema.org item properties for our pages. With Searchlight, I was able to monitor the pages [full disclosure: I am a current Searchlight customer] and I have noticed a small increase in rankings over a few weeks’ time and most importantly, much less fluctuation of said rankings. This has led to an overall incorporation of schema markup on all newly created pages as well as guidelines to retrofit existing code to include schema markup.

Now what?

I have heard the skeptics, and agree to some extent that structured data sets up websites to be scraped more easily or that search engines are using our precious time to do their jobs for them. Without getting too sidetracked, I want to make the point that if webmasters are complacent with the way search engines interpret their site, then those webmasters should not be surprised when other sites, who put in the work, are rewarded with higher levels of ranking. Gone are the days of “I set up a WordPress site; Google is smart enough to do the rest.”

Chipping at small sections of the site has proven to work the best and doesn’t burden engineering resources as much as doing one large code update. There is no need to markup every single piece of data either, just the important bits that matter the most to your business. Last, boost the benefits of structured data and the security it provides by future proofing your site to your stakeholders.

Everyone’s website is different and companies vary, but hopefully there is enough here to help you start down the path of organizing the most important data on your site. Here’s to another year in the exciting world of inbound marketing…Cheers!

Please note: All guest posts are the opinion of the author and may not be reflective of the views of Conductor.

This article originally appeared on Conductor Blog and has been republished with permission.

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Citizens looking to get involved in the legislative process–but unsure how to do so–have some help this session from the Kanu Hawaii Capitol Workshops.

In the first workshop, Jan. 16, Kanu Fellow Joe Heaukulani recounted his experience in turning an idea into a bill that’s been introduced this session.

When Heaukulani began researching the political process, he came across a practice called “gut and replace.” This allows a bill’s content to be radically changed even after it has passed through committees or public hearings–then voted on without public input (“Gut and Replace,” Oct. 3, 2012).

Heaukulani began talking to politicians, and the result is SB837, which proposes a constitutional amendment requiring that a bill have the same intent from start to finish. Heaukulani encouraged attendees not to be intimidated at the thought of proposing an idea for a bill. “Just give [your representatives] a call and see how it works,” he advised.

The workshop provided concrete tips on how voters can support and propose legislation. The first step is to contact your district’s legislators (visit [capitol.hawaii.gov] and type your street name in the upper right-hand corner). Once a bill has been introduced, you can search for similar bills by keyword and sign up to be notified by email if a public hearing will be held. But if no bill on a topic has been drafted, your reps may be able to tell you if one is in the works or what committee would handle that topic, and may even draft and introduce the bill for you.

Rep. Chris Lee, who attended the session, emphasized the importance of letting committee chairs know if you’re in support of a bill, as they set the agendas. He also recommended organizing friends and family members who live in that politician’s district. “Find four or five other people . . . and become a conduit for them,” he said.

See “Civix,” for more information.

Over the course of the past few days I’ve enjoyed watching Super Bowl media day. Reporters have generally done a good job of asking interesting interview questions, especially when it comes to Ray Lewis and his deer antler spray.

Players are well trained and usually give a politically correct answer, yet sometimes they step outside the box and challenge the reporters. Randy Moss proclaiming he is the greatest receiver of all time has to be one of my favorite answers to a loaded question that was asked yesterday.

Do we really expect him to say anything else? We all realize the size of his ego, plus he must be excluding Jerry Rice from the competition when he compares himself against the greatest wide receivers of all time.

Rice’s response to Moss’ proclamation was simple, yet spot on:

Randy Moss said he’s the greatest all-time WR. To which @jerryrice just said, “Put my numbers up against his numbers.”

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 29, 2013

However, that is a discussion for another day considering debates like those become instantly irrelevant after hearing Chris Culliver‘s anti-gay comments. If you haven’t heard the comments yet, click here to listen. Cam Inman of the Mercury News also transcribed Culliver‘s quotes from the Artie Lange interview that was posted on Yahoo! Sports:

I don’t do the gay guys man. I don’t do that. No, we don’t got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff. Nah … can’t be … in the locker room man. Nah.

The second-year cornerback out of South Carolina also went on to suggest that NFL players should keep their sexuality a private matter for at least 10 years after they retire. The interview was only about a minute long, but by that point the damage had already been done.

According to Martin Rogers of Yahoo!, there has never been an openly gay active player in the league.

Regardless, sexuality and its openness in an NFL locker room have come more into focus over the last decade or so. 

Which makes Culliver‘s comments more unacceptable than ever. Sure, it’s one thing to think that about homosexuals in your own head, but to say it out loud is complete asinine. Freedom of speech only goes so far because none of the freedoms in the Constitution are absolute.

Additionally, it goes without saying that players have had worse conversations in private. The keyword there is “private.” There’s a difference between talking amongst your friends and thousands of people who will hear your interview at one of the largest sporting events in the world.

I wish I had more to say, but honestly there isn’t much else to say other than he made a dumb comment that he now regrets for making out loud. Culliver‘s comments go to show that homophobia lives on in the NFL and it probably always will.

Jerome Bettis told the Huffington Post Live, “Because it [NFL] is so testosterone driven, it’d be really difficult for a gay player to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I’m gay and I’m an NFL player.’ ”

Since Culliver‘s comments have been released to the public, the San Francisco 49ers have formally issued a statement on its stance (via Matt Maiocco of CSNBayArea.com):

49ers: “The San Francisco 49ers reject the comments that were made yesterday, and have addressed the matter with Chris….”

— Matt Maiocco (@MaioccoCSN) January 30, 2013

“…There is no place for discrimination within our organization at any level. We have and always will proudly support the LGBT community.”

— Matt Maiocco (@MaioccoCSN) January 30, 2013

The are only a few words of advice I have for Culliver: It’s not required to answer every question and it doesn’t hurt to give a politically correct answer when asked about touchy subjects such as race and sexual preference.

Follow @TysonNFL

Do you have a retail storefront?

Are you a contractor that is supplying services at someones house or place of business?

You should be using a business sign, like a sandwich board or a lawn sign, to draw in traffic or build awareness for you business. Signage is an excellent way to help generate sales leads for your company.

Below are 7 tips that will help you generate a higher percentage of sales leads:

7 Tips for Your Business Sign or Lawn Sign

Phone Number

This is just basic common sense.  But believe it or not, business owners forget to add this one important piece of information to a business sign.

So that you can track your results from any lawn signs, use a unique phone number that people can call. By doing this, you will be able to see how many leads came from that phone number. A great service for this is Toll Free Forwarding or Google Voice.

Your Address

If you have a retail establishment that you want people to go to, why not list your address on your business sign?  It should help you to drive foot traffic to your retail location.

A Strong Call To Action For An Offer

Do you want to get someone to do something? If so, you need to have a “call to action.” Basically, you need to tell people what you want them to do.

A suggestion that ties into the next 2 tips (QR Codes and Text Codes) is to have a coupon or special offer that allows you to capture an email and other relevant information.  By capturing an email, you will have the ability to continually market to someone with an email newsletter.

A QR Code

Add a QR code to your business sign that is tied to a special offer or something that a potential customer may want. The QR Code should send the person to a mobile ready landing page that has a sign up form.

Once the person signs up for your offer, they will be sent an email with a code or a coupon.  A service that I have used before is Kawya.

Text Code or SMS Code

A text code or SMS code will allow a person to text a specific keyword to and assigned short code. This may sound confusing, but in reality, all you do is find a SMS marketing provider and register a keyword. Then you will be able to start directing people to a specific landing page on your website.

I interviewed Jed Alpert, who wrote “The Mobile Marketing Revolution” and he stated that the:

“. . . response rate from adding a text code on a sign is up to 10 times greater compared to no code.”

I can confirm this as I have a client where we added a text code to a radio ad they were running and they saw a twenty-fold increase in sales leads from that spot.

Here’s one more use for a text code:  Place one on your vehicles so that people will connect with you.

For the QR code and the text code, have separate landing pages and coupons and coupon codes. You want to do this so that you can track a conversion rate.

For example, you can see how many people used your text code by the number of hits to a specific page. Then you can see how many people sign up for an offer and finally, the amount of people who redeem your coupon or offer.

Website Address

Make sure that you add your website address to your business sign. If your domain is too long, use a shortener like Bit.ly or get a separate shorter domain that redirects to your website.

Bit.ly allows you to make a vanity url and you can also track the clicks from that specific url. As a suggestion, make sure that if you have an offer on your business sign – that the Web address corresponds with that offer. Don’t just send them to your homepage as your conversion rates will be far lower by doing this.

Email Address

Create a unique email address to put on your business sign so that you can track the amount of inquiries that come in.

Add all of these tips to your business sign and you should see an increase in the amount of sales leads that you generate.  By the way, this isn’t just for signs.  Use these different tactics on business cards, letters, mailers and other printed material that you have as well.

If you have other business sign tips, please share them in the comments.

Sandwich Board Photo via Shutterstock

About Chris Hamilton

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Chris Hamilton is small and medium business sales and marketing consultant who writes a daily blog, SalesTipADay. He also hosts an online video interview show at
NetCastEvent, where he interviews some of the worlds best sales and marketing consultants.

Oh how SEO has changed!

I remember the old days (from 2010 and 2012) when ranking on page 1 of Google was as easy as including your keyword in the page title, image tags, and heading tags, and then blasting hundreds of private blog network backlinks at the site. (Not recommended!)

Those days, however, are long over. Now this type of behavior has the exact opposite effect of pushing websites back to page 100 or worse. In a way, I’m glad those days are over. There was something that left me feeling uneasy about the fact that Google’s rankings could be manipulated so easily.

The good news is, SEO is not dead. In fact, it is more alive than ever. As long as you don’t make the 5 mistakes below, you can get your website ranked on page 1 in Google in 2013 and beyond.

1. Over Optimization

I’ll be the first to admit that I made this mistake myself. If you use WordPress, you may remember those plug-ins called ClickBumpSEO and SEOPressor. Well, when first purchased those, I thought they were a godsend.

I literally followed their on page optimization suggestions to the letter. I made sure my keyword density was high. I made sure that I had external and internal links containing my keyword. I made sure that my keyword was in the first and last sentence and in all heading and image tags. And you know what happened? I ranked on page one!

But it wasn’t for long. In April 2012, all of my websites got blasted off of page one to page 500+. Later on, I learned that I wasn’t the only one this happened to.

The lesson? Over optimization is one of the most common SEO mistakes that will sabotage your rankings in Google. Instead of trying to optimize your page for your keyboard, just put your keyword in the title and the first and last sentence. Never make your Keyword Density over 1%. And most importantly, write for humans, not search engines.

2. Poor Anchor Text Diversification

Sadly, many so-called SEO experts are still making this mistake today. What mistake is it? It’s having too many anchor text links using your main keyword.

Linking to your page with your main keyword as your anchor text over and over again used to get websites ranked on page one. Now that strategy can get your website penalized and flagged.

The best overall strategy is to make your main keyword anchor text only about 10% of your total link portfolio. The rest of all of your incoming links should be variations of your main keyword, social qualifiers, and naked URLs. Here’s some examples:

Main Keyword = weight loss tips

Variations:

fat loss tips
weight loss ideas
tips for losing weight
lose weight
get fit
health tips

Social Qualifiers:

Click here
my website
check out my site
look at my website
this website
here
great article

Naked URLS:

http://mywebsite.com/weight-loss-tips/

mywebsite.com/weight-loss-tips/
mywebsite.com
www.mywebsite.com/weight-loss-tips/
www.mywebsite.com

Notice how there are a total of 18 different anchor texts that are used for backlinking.

Varying your anchor text will keep you under the radar and help your website get ranked the keyword you desire, because the way Google sees it, real websites don’t link to websites with the keyword as the anchor text 100% of the time.

Sometimes they say check this out or click here. By mirroring this approach, it will look like other websites are actually recommending your website as a helpful resource.

3. High Link Velocity

Link velocity always had an effect on rankings. Now it has more of an effect than ever.

If you build your links to fast, you may shoot up to the first page for a few days or weeks. After that, your website will most likely plummet into the abyss.

What works in 2013 is building your link slowly and consistently. No more link blasts from SEnuke or forum profiles. You need to focus on building high-quality links from reputable sites slowly over time. Relevant guest posts and high quality press releases work great.

Once you are ranking, don’t stop building links either. Keep building links but slow down the velocity over time.

4. No Deep Linking

A great example for this is Wikipedia. Their site only has 1% of their back links going towards their homepage, and 99% going to all of their inner pages.

Google notices this and they analyze how many of your links go to your homepage versus the number of internal links when determining your rankings. If your site has tons of links only to the homepage, and no links to inner pages of your site, Google will know something is up.

You’re better off building more links to your inner pages then you are building links to your homepage. It looks more natural and it can have a positive effect on your rankings.

5. Focusing Only On Links

In 2013 and beyond, SEO is no longer just about links. Focusing only on getting back links is a losing strategy. Your focus should be on creating quality content like articles, blog posts, info graphics, and engaging videos, then building up your social media profiles with more friends and activity as well.

Google authorship is one last ranking factor is often overlooked by SEOs. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you can see that Google shows people’s Google plus profile photos next to search engine results.

The more friends, activity, and links to your Google plus profile, the more authority you have. And this authority carries over whenever you publish an article. If you publish crappy articles and they are linked to your Google plus profile, you may find it more difficult to rank. However, if you product great content and have lots of activity on your profile, ranking is going to be much easier.

SEO In 2013 And Beyond

At the end of the day, it’s still possible to rank for difficult keywords in Google. As long as you follow Google’s new rules, you will be safe from link penalties and dreaded algorithm updates.

Simply avoid making these 5 mistakes, and focus on the long-term and you’ll find that getting those top three rankings for the keywords you desire is a lot easier than you think.

This article is an original contribution by Steve Goldberg.

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