Cubicle Farms Are Becoming A Thing of The Past

Most people do not like square boxed in particleboard "offices." Thanks to new technologies many career positions no longer need them. However, these remote working arrangements will completely depend on trust between employer and employee. Whether at an office or working from home, if an employee cannot be trusted to get things done without supervision, they do not deserve to have a job. Both employees and companies continue to discover that the web is revolutionizing the work environment.

Most people, myself included, truly believe they are or can be more productive and happier when working from somewhere other than the standard workplace environment. Whether it’s home, Starbucks or Barnes and Noble the increased use of virtual offices is demonstrating the value of losing the micromanagement in exchange for happier and more beneficial employees.

Thanks to the power of the web, anyone can be anything they want to be in life. A hiring manager gives you an opportunity. It’s up to you to capitalize on it and only one thing will define your career, and that’s your track record. Your office cubicle experience (”track record”) in the corporate world will be the deciding factor on rather or not you will make the switch from cubicle employee to virtual worker.

How To Build An Ideal Track Record

Rarely be sick, never be late, always be early and don’t give a disrespectful “why should I” attitude. Don’t abuse your break time or make excuses or waste time on the phone. Avoid arguments but don’t avoid giving your well thought-out suggestions or opinions.

Be dependable, trustworthy, and don’t loiter around the water cooler or kitchen gossiping. Follows company rules, policies, and protocols and give the extra ten percent by working past office hours occasionally.

Don’t get tipsy at office parties, don’t over shmooze your way into a power clique and don’t succumb to vicious rumors. In other words hold on to your ethics but realize office politics will help a career move forward.

Always strive to be the first team member project managers want to recruit for projects. Have the ability to communicate with everyone from the president of the company to the janitor of the company. The best managers and executive associates never disqualify an idea or opinion based on someone’s job title.

• Learn to listen, listen to learn and be an active member of the organization without becoming a drone.

As we’ve seen time and time again, the companies that adopt will lead the way to tomorrow, everyone else will only follow. Too many companies believe that employees should not be trained to be entrepreneurs for fear of losing them. However, retention rates can increase if employees do not feel the need to leave a company that provides them with an inner company entrepreneur ownership state of mind in relation to the work they do. On the other hand, employee must develop a solid track record and demonstrate they can be trusted working with no supervision.

For the employees who desire nothing more than entrepreneurship starting a business is no longer a risky dream. Employees wishing to make the transition from salaried employee to self employed can develop a business on the side as long as you don’t go after the same clients as your day job. This will only burn bridges and future networking resources and opportunities.

Conversely this will require an education. An education is invaluable to the success of your career. However, too many graduates depend on the illusion that what they learned in college or at a trade school learning foundation is exactly what they will do in the corporate world; it’s not. It is not something that prepares you one hundred percent for your career; it gives you the training you need to step into your career. The development of your career is solely up to you.

Experience (track record) results will speak for themselves when it comes time to seek the virtual office in exchange for the cubicle. Build slowly, listen, learn, take some chances so you can learn from both your success of risks and your mistakes from risks.

Soon you will be presented or you will be able to confidently ask for what you want. You may not conquer the universe, but you might have enough to live the comfortably, which is really the goal after all.

Cyber Tracker - Rhinoceros or Natual Disasters?

Google’s Unavailable After META tag

Tell Google spiders to stop indexing a web page. At the annual SEMNE (Search Engine Marketing New England) conference Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google introduced Unavailable After. It’s a time sensitive META tag that that tells Google spiders when a particular page is no longer available for crawling.

The new META tag provides a way for webmasters to insert instructions that basically say a web page’s information is valid for a specifically set of dates, such as from July to August. The META tag comes as a useful resource for consumer product businesses that frequently lists sales on their website.

During a political campaign the website subject wants as much exposure as possible. However after a campaign (if s/he loses) the subject may not wish to upkeep the website which does not provide a needed community service. The Unavailable After META tag could be a useful tool in discontinuing the Google ranking development.

Anther way the “Unavailable After” can be a resourceful tool is for articles that are free for a particular amount of time, but then get moved to a paid-subscription area of a website. The article can use the META tag in specific marketing campaigns while listed as a Free Article drawing potential readers to the site.

The tag seems to have limited uses, but as the tag is used and experimented with I can see other uses for the new META tag. In theory, those looking for a new career or job could use the Unavailable After tag for their resume on personal websites. This may not be the best use for the tag considering the potential pitfalls of never knowing what opportunities could be missed if the resume is unavailable and not searchable.

However, employers could use the tag for career opportunities “currently available”. The Unavailable After would eliminate the need to manually remove online career opportunities ads after a period of time. Thus ending a flood of emails with resume attachments.

In the past, if a web master wanted to discontinue a web page from being indexed a web master would have to maintain a very large and time consuming robots.txt file. Now Unavailable After META tag can erase the long-drawn-out process. The new tag will not be supported by other search engines immediately, but considering that Google is at the top of the spider food chain, I believe that other search engines will support it soon enough.


Source: Garett Rogers - Google will soon support “Unavailable After” META tag

Cyber Tracker - Rhinoceros or Natual Disasters?