Starting a Successful Career

There are three things you need to do well to start a successful career:

1) Write an excellent CV / Resume

2) Put together a convincing Cover Letter

and

3) Pass a Job Interview

1) Tead the following guidelines on how to write a CV/Resume.

2) Do you have a personal statement on your resume? Learn about how to write one here.

3) Read about the pitfalls of resume writing, examine the "badly" and "well" written resumes.

4) Take the following tests to determine whether those are good or bad resumes.

5) Watch the Video on How to Write a CV/Resume

6) Learn about how to write a good cover letter: how many paragraphs should be there? what does the firt paragrpah contain? how about the second?

7) Read the following guidelines and select the three most important steps.
8) Chose the best WEB Templates.
9) What is a "creative resume"?

Business Briefs

Dear FB students,
Please take the time to browse through the following Busness Briefs: they have some very interesting artcles on various business related topics. We will work in three teams this time: read the articles and write a 300 word summary:

Team 1: on "Emotional Branding"

Team 2: Facebook - faced dismissal (pages 17-18)
Team 3: Global Luxury Survey
Team 4: The G-8 Summit
Team 4: TIME's Person of the Year - 2009

Writing a Business Brief

Dear FB students,
this is a short guide to writing business briefs. Use it to complete our next assignment.
Writing a Business Brief

Let's learn some new vocabulary!

This week we will work with various online resources to boost our vocabulary. Your talk is going to be the following: collect 10 new business English words from the Finance / Banking and Accounting area and post them on the blog in the following format: 

new word - definition - synonyms - example

For example: Overheads 

Definition: business expenses, such as rent, that are not directly attributable to any department or product and can therefore be assigned only arbitrarily.
Synonyms / Idioms / Expressions: Also called burden fixed costs indirect costs oncost.
Example: We have to cut costs in order to reduce overheads.

As resources, you will use the following three websites:

1) YouTube: Video 1 Video 2 Video 3
2) BusinessEnglisSite : Test 1 Test 2 Test 3 Test 4 Test 5 Test 6
3) Accounting for Beginners: Read the article and answer the following questions:

* What are assets according to the article? * What do you know about fixed assets? * What are liabilities? * What is equity? * What are the three basic financial statements that you need to understand to run your business? * What is an Income Statement? * What is the cash flow statement?

Famous Study Cases - Summarising Long Articles

For FB-28K Students: This week we are working on how to write summaries:
These are guidelines and examples you could use before writing your own summary:
Writing a summary - 8 easy steps.
Academic Summary.
Read the following study cases and write a 300 ord summay then present it to the rest of the class. Don't forget the structure of a summary and the eight steps you should follow while writing one.
1) Coke versus Pepsi
2) Pizza Wars
3) Benetton
4)Absolute Vodka
5) Calvin Klein
6) Cadbury Dairy Milk's Advertising Campaigns in India
7) Apple's Marketing Campaigns: From 'Get A Mac' to 'Why You'll Love a Mac'
8) Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness” Campaign: A Model for Global Marketing?

BBC Business News Europe

Dear FB students,
reading about the latest business news in Europe and in the World is going to be an important part of our course this semester. the best resource for you should be BBC / Business , where you can find lots of great articles and videos on the most recent financial issues in Europe. Don't forget to check on the Video news section of the website. Check on what Toyota boss had to say about the car issue we discussed in class. Other interesting stories:
1) In Paris, the customer is not always right
2) Latvia economy reels in recession
3) Europe protects Italian pizza brand from immitation
4) Could Greece be expelled from Eurozone?

Please post your sumaries of the artices you enjoyed most under this post, so that your colleagues have access to this information as well. See you in class!

The 4 Ps of the Marketing Mix

Dear FB students,

TIMES 100 presents a series of case studies which show all the business studies theory you need to know in practice. By studying real life business case studies, you will see how business and marketing work and therefore learn quicker. Each of the following case studies show a different aspect to business and marketing that you can use as a revision tool for your business studies.

1) What are the four Ps of the Marketing Mix (also check the BBC explanation of the four Ps)?

2) The Marketing Mix of Manchester United 3) Nivea Promotion 4) Motorola 5) Ford

6) MacDonald's Monopoly Game 7) Levi's Marketing 8) World's most expensive Ad: Honda Acord 

9) Most expensive TV ad by Guiness

Now watch the video and answer the following questions:

a) When was the term "marketing mix" made popular? b) Which three examples of products did the presenter mention? c) Why did the presenter claim that "place" is everywhere? d) How is the consumer empowered in the 21st century? e) How are the four Ps transformed arrording to the Consumer-Side Marketing (list all 4 of them)?  f) How does the presenter define "position"? g) What is targeting? g) How did Colgate and Crest fight against each other? h) Give 4 examples of the most important demographic segments in Moldova. i) What did Coca Cola do in the 1990s as part of their "Always Coca Cola" campaign (give examples)? j) What was their increase in sales in just 5 years?  

Facebook charges the "king of spam"

I am sure all of you have, at least once, faced unpleasant consequences of spam accumulating in your inbox. According Today, a California court awarded Facebook $711 million in civil damages against Sanford Wallace, the notorious sell proclaimed “spam king” who is also known by the derisive nickname “Spamford.” The court found Wallace guilty of violating the CAN-SPAM act, and he could face time in prison if convicted.
To find out more, read the following articles:
Momento 24 , Just Search , TechnoCom
An article about a Canadian woman who lost her employee benefits because of a facebook photo on Time CNN
Did you know that Facebook is considered to be the next best thing after Google? Do you know how old its founder is? Watch the video and share your thoughts with us:

'CEO of the Decade' by Fortune Magazine

On Monday, November the 9th, Fortune Magazine selected the CEO of the Decade: read the following article to find out who created one the most valuable companies of our times - a real groundbreaking technology leader. Why did that person receive this title? Who are the other business people he/she is compared to? Which company is more valuable than Google? What is its current value? Other related articles published by:
ARS Technica
TalkiPhone
Do you want to see what Bill Gates had to say about that? Watch the video and share your impressions with us:

Professional Networks - LinkedIn

Most of you have an Odnoklasniki or a Facebook account. It allows you to keep in touch with your friends, upload your favourite pictures and learn about the most important events in your community, country, university, etc. There is another spcial network which aims to connect people inside professional communities. Potential employers use it to contact potential employees - check on LinkedIn, a website which helps people empower their resumes and connect to the job market around the world. According to BBC, network has 23 million members worldwide and is constantly growing. CNN Money claims that if you don't connect to LinkedIn, you are left out! This is what professionals think of LinkedIn, this is WHY you should learn about LinkedIn and this one is LinkedIn in plain English: The interview with its founder Hoffman can be watched HERE: