Friday, April 24, 2020

The week in review - April 24, 2020

Monday - "Tomorrow is #HawaiianShirtDay" I think this one is pretty self apparent. "I think the "official" Hawaiian Shirt Day is in August, but Urban Dictionary says it's April 21st."

Tuesday - "Become a SendOutCards Professional" SendOutCards is making it easier to build your SOC business. "The big SendOutCards announcement was yesterday! It was aimed directly at SOC affiliates by offering a new tool called the SOC Pro app."

Wednesday - "No blog post today" Going to bed 6 hours early kinda threw my schedule off. "My sleeping schedule is all backwards right now and I went to bed before the time I usually work on my posts."

Thursday - "The jobs market is changing — and so should your resume #TBT" I'm not sure what the job market will be like after this is all over! "Today's blog post was originally published last year. Quite a bit has changed since then. In fact, quite a bit has changed in the past month!"

Interesting days



Tomorrow - Veterinary Day, (Virtually) Hug A Plumber DayFinancial Independence Awareness DayAnzac DayInternational Marconi DayMalaria DayGo Birding DaySave The Frogs DaySense Of Smell DayDNA DayIndependent Bookstore Day and World Penguin Day

Week long celebrations:
April 20 - April 26: Stationery Week
May will be Asian Pacific Heritage MonthPrader-Willi Syndrome Awareness MonthCystic Fibrosis Awareness MonthLupus Awareness MonthMilitary Appreciation MonthDeck Safety MonthBike MonthLyme Disease Awareness MonthGet Caught Reading MonthHamburger MonthGolf MonthPhoto Month and Barbecue Month

Next Friday - Tuba DayTherapeutic Massage Awareness DayGlobal Love DaySpace DayPurebred Dog DayInternational Workers’ DaySchool Bus Drivers DayExecutive Coaching DayMother Goose DayNew Home Owners DaySchool Principals’ DayNo Pants Day and Lei Day

Week long celebrations:
Apr 26 - May 2: Go Diaper Free Week
May 24 - Tiara DayEscargot DayBrother’s DayIndianapolis 500 and Aviation Maintenance Technician Day


Thursday, April 23, 2020

The jobs market is changing — and so should your resume #TBT

Today's blog post was originally published last year. Quite a bit has changed since then. In fact, quite a bit has changed in the past month!

Today's blog post is from an article on CNBC.
The jobs market is changing, that's no secret. 
Today, shifts in technology and demographics mean that more of us are working for longer and in totally different ways than previous generations. 
And that trend shows no sign of abating. The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2025, 75 million jobs will have disappeared to be replaced by 133 million new ones as automation spreads in the workplace. 
What's less clear, however, is how to respond to that mammoth move. 
Yet, according to experts, it likely starts with rewriting a centuries-old concept: The resume.
I haven't updated my resume in years...mainly because I'm hoping to stay where I am until I retire in about 3 1/2 years.
In a recent LinkedIn Influencer post, Alistair Cox, the CEO of global recruitment firm Hays, praised luminary Leonardo da Vinci for creating the resume in 1482, but opined that "as the world in which we work changes beyond recognition, so does the C.V."
What kind of changes are they recommending?
So, just what does the new resume look like and — more importantly — how should you rewrite yours? Well, according to Cox, there are four things to keep in mind.
1. Readers will be both man and machine
2. Skills will be the focus
3. Gaps will become more common
4. Personalization will be key
And although it wasn't mentioned here, be sure to send a thank you card to the interviewer.

From a previous blog post:
One of the most valuable, and least utilized, uses of thank you notes is after a job interview. I know...you've heard it a thousand times! But guess what? Nobody does it!

According to Fortune: 
We were surprised to learn that over 75% of the people surveyed did not receive any kind of thank you note from most of the candidates they interviewed, and for 30% of those surveyed, no follow up meant no further steps for the candidate. One hiring manager remarked, “The follow up is the linchpin for me. If the interview goes well and I feel invigorated and excited about someone, I wait to see what kind of follow up efforts they put forth."
When asked about a preference for email or snail mail:
Our sources didn’t show a strong preference for email or snail mail, and both have their benefits. An email can be more timely but a handwritten note might really stand out. Quoted in a New York Times article on the subject, New York fashion publicist Cristiano Magni says, “It is so important, in a digital world, to have the dignity to sit down and write something in your own hand.” And when prompted further, many of our sources agreed that a hand-written note stands out as more personal, and there’s no denying it requires a bit more effort than its digital equivalent. Most important is just to do something within 24 hours of the interview. 
Why not send both? Send an email out because it's timely, but a card received in the mail a few days later will have a stronger impact. Wouldn't you want your resume on the top of the stack when they make a hiring decision?
You can send out one free thank you card (or any other kind of card) to anyone in the world. Just go to www.socoverview.com/#!611

I don't know what the job market is going to look like when the shelter-in-place orders are lifted. They're already being lifted in some places, although quite prematurely in my opinion. (But nobody asked for my opinion...but since this is my blog, here it is)

Interesting days


Today - Talk Like Shakespeare DayThank you ThursdayLove Your Thighs DayLost Dog Awareness DayWorld Book Night and English Language Day

Tomorrow - Teach Your Children to Save DayHairball Awareness DayPig In A Blanket Day and Firefly Day

Next Thursday - Honesty DayOatmeal Cookie DayPoem in Your Pocket Day and International Jazz Day

Week long celebrations:
Apr 26 - May 2: Go Diaper Free Week
May 23 - Turtle DayWorld Product DayTitle Track Day and Lucky Penny Day


Wednesday, April 22, 2020

No blog post today

My sleeping schedule is all backwards right now and I went to bed before the time I usually work on my posts.

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Become a SendOutCards Professional

The big SendOutCards announcement was yesterday! It was aimed directly at SOC affiliates by offering a new tool called the SOC Pro app.

This app makes it easier to build your SendOutCards business by giving you the tools you need in an easy to use app. There are training tools, marketing tools, follow up tools, and much more.

Here's a Facebook post that I posted from the app:


I can post images and videos...and maybe more. I've just started playing with it.

The app is free to all affiliates for 90 days and then it'll probably cost $15 - 20 per month...unless you maintain some amount of activity with the app...they haven't decided what that activity will be yet.

You'll also receive stats on whether the video that you sent via text or email has been watched and whether the prospect has viewed your website. Like I said, I'm just getting started and I have a lot more to learn about.

The waiver of the $59 annual affiliate fee has ended. It now costs $99 for the first year and $79 per year to renew.

Interesting days



Tomorrow - World Stationery DayEarth DayJelly Bean DayBookmobile Day and Administrative Professionals Day

Next Tuesday - Superhero DayClean Comedy DayPay it Forward DayShrimp Scampi DayBiological Clock DayCubicle DayBlueberry Pie Day and Workers’ Memorial Day

Week long celebrations:
Apr 26 - May 2: Go Diaper Free Week
May 21 - I Need A Patch For That DayWaitstaff DayGlobal Accessibility Awareness DayMemo DayRapture Party Day and Notebook Day

Monday, April 20, 2020

Tomorrow is #HawaiianShirtDay

I think the "official" Hawaiian Shirt Day is in August, but Urban Dictionary says it's April 21st.

Anyway, I just came across this article on "The History of the Hawaiian Shirt" in The Smithsonian Magazine:
Mainland Americans have long looked to Hawaii to ease their minds. At the height of World War I, with America about to enter the conflict, Hawaiian music was all the rage. In 1916, Hawaiian records outsold all other genres, while ukuleles were so ubiquitous in college dorms and upper-crust nightclubs that the New York Tribune ran a full-page illustration of an imagined “Ukulele Square, the Hawaiian Quarter of New York.” During the Great Depression, Americans again cast their eyes toward Hawaii, co-opting another piece of Hawaiian culture: the aloha shirt.
Even though Ukulele Day was in February, I came across this build your own ukulele kit. This might make a fun quarantine project.
Though its precise origins are lost to history, the aloha shirt first appeared in Hawaii in the 1920s or ’30s, probably when local Japanese women adapted kimono fabric for use in men’s shirting. The shirts achieved some popularity among tourists to Hawaii and found greater commercial success when they hit the mainland in the mid-1930s. America at the time was riddled with hardship and anxiety, with many men out of work and many others struggling to hold on to their breadwinner status. Perhaps in response, hyper-manliness came into vogue—the popularity of bodybuilding skyrocketed, Superman burst onto the scene. It may seem paradoxical that men embraced a garment with such feminine appeal. “You’d better get two or three because it’s a cinch your daughter, sister, wife or even mother will want this bright-colored shirt as soon as she sees it,” the Los Angeles Times teased in 1936. That didn’t stop men from buying. By 1940, aloha shirts were bringing in more than $11 million annually (in today’s money).
I don't have as many as I used to have, but I still have two or three of them, but this may be a good excuse to buy one or two new ones.
One reason men adopted a garment otherwise suited to their sisters’ closet was that rich, famous men wore it. Visitors to Hawaii in the 1930s were invariably wealthy, and before long, aloha shirts were being sold by celebrities whom everyday Americans sought to emulate. American heroes from three-time Olympic swimming champion and surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku to singer Bing Crosby were lending their names to particular brands. Those endorsements, says Dale Hope, a historian and the author of The Aloha Shirt: Spirit of the Islands, had “a huge effect on people purchasing those shirts.” If you could wear what the man unscathed by the Depression was wearing, it didn’t matter that it was feminine: You looked like someone who didn’t need to worry about his masculine bona fides. 
Once the shirt reached stores in the Lower 48, any day laborer could have for just a dollar what before had required an exorbitant trip. A man in an aloha shirt, with its depictions of hula dancers and luaus—“symbol[s] of the comfortable, gay and picturesque,” one journalist put it in 1939—could look the part of the carefree swell. 
The notion that Hawaii was a quiet paradise was shattered in 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and makers of aloha shirts, like others in the garment industry, turned to supplying the war effort. When production resumed, Japanese-influenced designs that had been common—featuring cherry blossoms and shrines—temporarily fell out of fashion, supplanted by designs that highlighted Hawaii’s local culture. Service members returning to the mainland from the Pacific made the signature apparel more popular than ever. 
By the 1960s, the shirt had become truly ubiquitous. Aloha Fridays were a fixture of a certain kind of workplace, and everyone—from Elvis to the decidedly unhip Richard Nixon—seemed to have an aloha shirt. Over time, perhaps inevitably, it lapsed into the realm of corny suburban-dad-wear.
I pretty much started wearing them during the corny suburban-dad-wear days. Although I hope I pulled it off better than Nixon did!

Yet in just the past five years, fashion magazines have been heralding a comeback, and high-end labels like Gucci are taking the aloha shirt to new heights, with prints that draw on Japanese designs favored in the garment’s early days. Meanwhile, some shirtmakers from Hawaii’s old guard are still going strong. Kahala, founded in 1936 as one of the first brands producing aloha shirts, has been raiding its vaults to reproduce designs dating back to the 1930s—including some popularized by Duke Kahanamoku. “People are looking to bring some light, some color, some vibrancy into their lives,” says Jason Morgan, Kahala’s general manager. “I think that’s needed now more than ever. If an aloha shirt can help improve somebody’s day, I think that’s pretty powerful.”

Interesting days


Today - Volunteer Recognition Day and Chinese Language Day

Tomorrow - World Creativity and Innovation DayBulldogs Are Beautiful DayChocolate Covered Cashews DayAmerican Red Cross Giving DayTea DayLibrary Workers Day and Kindergarten Day

Next Monday - Morse Code DayTell a Story DayWorld Tapir DayPrime Rib Day and Marine Mammal Rescue Day

Week long celebrations:
Apr 26 - May 2: Go Diaper Free Week
May 20 - Pick Strawberries DayWorld Bee DayClinical Trials DayQuiche Lorraine DayWeights & Measures Day and Be a Millionaire Day


Sunday, April 19, 2020

Your weekend guide to interesting days - April 18, 2020

This week


Sunday - Deskfast DayWalk On Your Wild Side DayGrilled Cheese Sandwich Day and Licorice Day

Monday - Scrabble DayInternational FND Awareness Day and Thomas Jefferson Day

Tuesday - Dolphin DayLook Up at the Sky DayEqual Pay Day and Be Kind To Lawyers Day

Wednesday - That Sucks! DayAnime DayASL DayMicrovolunteering DayBanana Day and Take A Wild Guess Day

Thursday - Wear Your Pajamas To Work DayHigh Five DaySave The Elephant DayEggs Benedict Day and College Student Grief Awareness Day

Yesterday - Haiku Poetry DayBlah Blah Blah DayCheeseball DayWorld Hemophilia DayKickball DayDay Of SilenceBat Appreciation DayNothing Like A Dame Day and Ford Mustang Day

Today - Piñata DayHusband Appreciation DayColumnists DayWorld Heritage DayLineman Appreciation Day and Auctioneers Day

Next week


Tomorrow - Amaretto DayBicycle DayHanging Out DayGarlic DayRice Ball Day and Poetry And The Creative Mind Day

Monday - Volunteer Recognition Day and Chinese Language Day

Tuesday - World Creativity and Innovation DayBulldogs Are Beautiful DayChocolate Covered Cashews DayAmerican Red Cross Giving DayTea DayLibrary Workers Day and Kindergarten Day

Wednesday - World Stationery DayEarth DayJelly Bean DayBookmobile Day and Administrative Professionals Day

Thursday - Talk Like Shakespeare DayThank you ThursdayLove Your Thighs DayLost Dog Awareness DayWorld Book Night and English Language Day

Friday - Teach Your Children to Save DayHairball Awareness DayPig In A Blanket Day and Firefly Day

Saturday - Veterinary Day, (Virtually) Hug A Plumber DayFinancial Independence Awareness DayAnzac DayInternational Marconi DayMalaria DayGo Birding DaySave The Frogs DaySense Of Smell DayDNA DayIndependent Bookstore Day and World Penguin Day

Week long celebrations:
April 20 - April 26: Stationery Week

Next month


May 12 - Fibromyalgia Awareness DayPoem on Your Pillow DayOdometer DayNutty Fudge Day and Limerick Day

May 13 - Numeracy DayTop Gun DayReceptionists DayApple Pie DayWorld Cocktail DayInternational Hummus DayLeprechaun DayRoot Canal Appreciation DayDonate A Day’s Wages To Charity DayThird Shift Workers' Day and Frog Jumping Day

 May 14 - Chicken Dance Day

May 15 - Chocolate Chip DayBike To Work DayBring Flowers To Someone DayWorld Facilities Management DayVascular Birthmarks Awareness DayShades DayNylon Stockings DayVirtual Assistants DayPizza Party DayEndangered Species Day and Straw Hat Day

May 16 - World Whisky DaySea Monkey DayDrawing DayHorse Rescue DayBiographers DayWorld Fiddle DayPlant a Lemon Tree DayLearn To Swim DayWorld Fish Migration Day and Waiters Day

May 17 - Work From Home DayInternational Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and BiphobiaPinot Grigio DayNeurofibromatosis Awareness DayWorld Baking DayWorld Telecommunications Day and Pack Rat Day

May 18 - No Dirty Dishes DayMuseum Day and Visit Your Relatives Day


Friday, April 17, 2020

The week in review - April 17, 2020

Monday - "How to Elevate Your Presence in a Virtual Meeting" Some tips for today's world. "To help keep your impact actual when your presence is virtual, consider these six recommendations"

Tuesday - "#GlobalKindnessWorkshops" Workshop 12 is coming up tomorrow. "If you're a realtor in Texas or a CPA anywhere in the country, you'll get CE credits for attending."

Wednesday - "How To Get Great Sleep While You’re Stuck at Home" From Dr. Michael Breus. "If I had one thing to tell everyone while stuck at home due to the coronavirus, it would be this: don’t let your new, abnormal schedule ruin your sleep. "

Thursday - "Random thoughts #TBT" The title says it all. "I was trying to come up with a topic for today but after going through lists of blog post subjects I decided to just wing it."

Interesting days



Tomorrow - Piñata DayHusband Appreciation DayColumnists DayWorld Heritage DayLineman Appreciation Day and Auctioneers Day

Next Friday - Teach Your Children to Save DayHairball Awareness DayPig In A Blanket Day and Firefly Day

Week long celebrations:
April 20 - April 26: Stationery Week
May 17 - Work From Home DayInternational Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and BiphobiaPinot Grigio DayNeurofibromatosis Awareness DayWorld Baking DayWorld Telecommunications Day and Pack Rat Day