No matter the circumstances, relocating can be a difficult decision for any job seeker. The mere process of moving house can be stressful enough without the prospect of changing roles and suddenly living in an unfamiliar environment.

There’s no doubt that moving for a job comes with a number of considerations, but the process can be much simpler and more positive if you follow these essential relocating tips:

Start by finding a new position

Without securing a position ahead of time, relocation can be stressful and challenging. For that reason, you might want to consider negotiating a relocation package with your current company or even finding a different career opportunity if you’re not quite satisfied with your current position. In either case, do some research on available vacancies in your sector and the most suitable locations for a move.

For example, a large city could provide more opportunities than your small hometown. Then, refine your CV accordingly, start looking for new positions, and even reach out to any contacts you might have in your desired location to ensure success.

Plan your finances accordingly

Landing a new position in a new location always comes with a new lifestyle, and it might even offer higher pay as well. However, the process of relocating will undoubtedly be costly on its own. Apart from the common moving expenses you might expect, a change of location could also mean a difference in the cost of living, especially if you’re moving from rural to more urban areas.

To that end, consider the rent and renting expenses, find out the average cost of groceries, and include the utilities, transportation, and other expenses as well. This calculation will allow you to create a more appropriate budget that will make relocating a smoother and more stress-free experience.

Plan the journey in advance

After you’ve found a suitable role and took care of financial matters, planning the journey to your new destination will be another important step when relocating for work. If possible, try to visit the location before moving and get to know the neighborhood. If not, it’s still recommended to set some time aside to plan a schedule.

Consider the time it would take you to make the journey, think about whether you’d like to move in several spaced out trips or a single one, make the necessary arrangements you might need for work such as setting up the internet, and don’t forget about transportation options, whether that means renting a vehicle, traveling in your own, or getting more familiar with local public transport.

Find suitable accommodation

Finding the right accommodation is a crucial aspect of any relocation and should be sorted out before the final move. Once you know your needs and priorities, finding some likely apartments for rent shouldn’t be too hard. From pricing and swimming pools to floor plans and the availability of fitness centers–most modern apartment finders and specialized search tools let you easily filter your way to your ideal place.

Regardless of your chosen destination, finding a great accommodation with plenty of amenities and a good neighborhood will be essential for adapting to your new environment more easily.

Begin growing a network

It might also be wise to begin building a network before you finally move. You can turn to LinkedIn and find professionals in the area you could connect with, or even local company branches and organizations you could join.

Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter can also be of great help as well, allowing you to find friends with similar interests and professionals with similar careers in the new location. This form of networking won’t only provide new business opportunities, but it might allow you to settle in and feel at home in the new destination as well, which is why it’s advised to do it as soon as possible.

Schedule meetings and events

Once you’ve finally relocated to your new destination, scheduling business meetings and attending networking events will be essential for expanding your network and establishing yourself as a professional locally.

While networking with your new colleagues is important, don’t restrict yourself to your new place of work. You can reach out to any connections you’ve made through social media, and attend regular meetings and conferences in the area as well.

Spending time with locals will provide you with some insider knowledge of the new environment, while also allowing you to make some meaningful professional connections that could be quite valuable for the advancement of your career.

Although exciting, relocating can be an overwhelming experience for many job seekers. Keep these considerations in mind to turn relocating into a better, more well-rounded process.

Develop and reinforce rules for meetings

One of the biggest bottlenecks in developing an inclusive workplace are unbalanced meetings. People talk over other people, communication doesn’t get through, time is wasted, and almost always someone ends up unheard. This cuts down on productivity in two ways: it generates unnecessary conflicts that you have to mediate; and causes the team to miss out on good ideas or relevant feedback.

Outlining ground rules that foster inclusivity in meetings goes a long way towards preventing such bottlenecks. Popular staples of “meeting inclusivity culture” include:

• All opinions are welcome;
• All ideas are worth considering;
• No interrupting/Wait your turn to speak;
• Give feedback on the idea, not the person; and
• Save your questions until the person is finished speaking, etc.

Of course, you can and should expand or tailor these to fit the unique context of your team. Consider things like cultural backgrounds, gender gaps, age gaps, language barriers, disparate areas of expertise, and so on.

Post your inclusivity rules in a visible place and/or read them aloud at the beginning of each meeting. Reinforce them at every turn and demonstrate them in your own behavior. The goal is to create a space where everyone feels appreciated, engaged, and motivated to contribute.

Give a voice to the quieter team members

Some people simply feel uncomfortable with bringing attention onto themselves, and that limits their capacity to contribute in the workplace. Even if their perspective or skill is highly valuable, it might get overlooked.

As a leader, you should strive to identify those quiet colleagues and give their genius a space to shine. Look for different ways to engage your more introverted, shy, insecure, or anxious team members. Such people tend to be the best observers, so they can actually dramatically improve overall workplace results.

There are a few strategies you can try. If you’re usually laissez-faire, switch to a more encouraging role with them. Directly ask their opinions in meetings. Request input specifically from them, especially in areas you know they’re skilled in. Conversely, if giving them the spotlight seems counterproductive, make some time for one-on-one conversations and be an active listener.

Take everyday inclusive actions

In addition to rules, policies, and situation-specific strategies, you can take small measures that build inclusivity on the daily basis. A lot of them hinge on simple human connection. Encourage all employees to see each other as individuals, rather than just coworkers.

For your own part, check in with your team members about their personal circumstances as well as work updates. You should be familiar with each employee’s work dynamic, communication style, preferences, and boundaries. You can also seek out role models in your industry to learn how successful leaders think and see what processes they implemented to develop high inclusivity in their workplaces.

In terms of the actual tasks, you can facilitate inclusivity by increasing positive validation. When someone makes a mistake, reframe it as a growth opportunity. Teach staff that failures are a road to improvement and make sure they are open to learning from each other. Most of all, celebrate the small, incremental achievements instead of acknowledging only the big milestones.

Utilize employee uniqueness in practical ways

Each team member has something that makes them stand out from the others. Maybe they’re an expert in a niche, have a rare skill, a creative perspective, or a valuable talent. Observation and attentiveness will let you draw out the most out of each employee and maximize their productive impact.

Successful team initiatives depend on utilizing those observations. When the team as a whole succeeds, every individual member is better accepted and more acknowledged. This empowers them to perform their best in their respective areas.

Your job as a leader is to identify everybody’s strengths and see where each fits. Try to assign tasks and projects according to people’s skills. In addition, leverage those insights when giving career advice and preparing performance reviews.

Facilitate strategic sponsorship and mentorship

Mentors and sponsors are instrumental in any employee’s career advancement, especially in terms of applying for pay raises and promotions. That said, they also play a significant part in developing a culture of inclusivity. Optimize the assignment of sponsor, mentor, and mentee roles to achieve maximum diversity.

Include minorities, people of color, women, employees with disabilities, and members of marginalized groups. Pair them in a way that they’ll rectify each other’s weak spots and offer perspectives the other might be lacking. In a nutshell, try to achieve the same effect that people get from traveling among different cultures, scaled to your office environment.

Final comments

No matter what traditional “style” your leadership falls under, you can level it up to be more inclusive. Universal strategies include having meeting rules that let everyone speak, encouraging the more withdrawn team members, and actively paying attention to each individual’s needs.

On top of that, you can strategically assign mentors and sponsors and encourage employees to see each other as unique individuals. Assigning tasks based on team members’ strengths and focusing on a positive mindset can also let people feel like they belong and motivate them to thrive.

Become essential

Convince your employers that you are indispensable to their success. Go the extra mile. Finish your assignments before the deadline. Include additional information or insights with your reports. However, avoid being seen as so useful in your current position that nobody will want to move you from it.

Your extra effort has to manifest in a way that is forward-useful. Learn how things are done and obtain insight into company processes. Figure out a more efficient way and subtly let your superiors know that you have. Then make it clear that you can best apply it as a full-time employee.

Portray yourself as someone who doesn’t shy away from responsibility, but builds upon their role. Demonstrate that you’re useful beyond your current job description, and that the company would benefit from having you full-time.

Be available and responsive

Keep yourself easy to reach and remember to reply to communications in a timely fashion. First, establish a few contact channels that you’re comfortable keeping open. Common options include email, telephone, Skype, Slack, instant messaging apps, and social media.

Choose at least one slow-pace channel, like email, and one instant reach channel, like WhatsApp. Throw in a middle-ground option that you can snooze to custom schedule, like Slack. Establish boundaries for each, like hours after which you’re categorically unavailable.

Choose only one channel via which you’re available for emergencies, and make it clear it’s for emergencies only. Establish consequences for abusing that channel. This demonstrates that you understand healthy work-life balance, as well as that you have integrity.

Once you’ve chosen your communications setup and let people know, maintain it. Respond to messages and calls before end-of-day or within 24 hours. Protect your off-the-clock time. Handle emergencies with grace, but don’t let every task be made into an emergency.

Make your aspirations clear

Your superior might not have the slightest idea that you’d like to graduate to a full team member. Make sure you communicate that desire in a timely fashion.

You might consider consulting with employment contract lawyers to confirm your advancement options under current employment conditions. Review your contract together and determine the best, legally safest, most efficient avenue of moving up to a full-time position.

As far as hinting to your superiors, be clear and tactful. Don’t keep winking at your availability or pushing for a contract extension in every conversation. Instead, opt for professional statements of intent, like:

I’ve enjoyed working with the team on this contract and am interested in any full-time positions you may have open.

or:

I’m interested in continuing to work with this team/ at this company and I wanted to check in with you about any possibility of a full-time opportunity.

Demonstrate diligence

Show the company that you’re a proactive employee who works hard and gets engaged. Make a point of taking the initiative. When your own workload is in a lull, volunteer to help with other assignments. Managers like to see high levels of employee motivation, even if the employee in question is a contractor.

Use your spare time to learn about other aspects of the company. Learn about their operations and how different departments come together. Look for opportunities to integrate yourself in processes beyond your current job description.

Take every chance you can to showcase the skills you don’t get to utilise in your usual assignments. There might be an opening that they wouldn’t otherwise consider you for. Employers always appreciate versatility. It opens more potential doors for you if they see that you can do more than they signed you on for.

Make friends

On a final note, don’t neglect the power of connections. Network with the full-timers and build a camp of supporters for your bid to join the team. Strategically let people get to know you. Show that you’re likeable and a good team addition.

Take advantage of lunch, coffee breaks, feedback meetings, online discussion threads, and after-wok social gatherings. Establish your presence. The more people remember you in a good light, the better the chances that they will put in a good world for you.

Even if you don’t land a permanent role from this particular contract, you’ll have better reach. There may be another opportunity at the same company or with a third party. Plant yourself in people’s minds as a potential future candidate.

To sum up, the best way to join the team full-time is to make it obvious that you want to, and then make it obvious why you deserve it. Showcase your full skill range, demonstrate commitment and proactivity, and make sure your coworkers like you and want you around.

The global lockdown restrictions led by COVID-19 Pandemic have completely transformed the way people shop these days. 

Before the Coronavirus Pandemic, the worldwide eCommerce market was valued at $3.3 trillion in 2019. The same amount has nearly doubled in 2022 and is forecasted to reach $7.3 trillion in the next three years. 

So what does this mean for retail businesses? Endless opportunities!

As the number of online shoppers are increasing by leaps and bounds year on year, so is the number of retailers taking their businesses online. 

Unfortunately, just setting up an online store is not enough in today’s fiercely competitive eCommerce world. There are tons of aspects an eCommerce business owner needs to take care of to survive in the industry.

And this is where an eCommerce consultant comes to the rescue. 

In this article, we’ll discuss the subject in detail, and talk about five tips you can follow to grow your career as an eCommerce consultant.

Who is an eCommerce Consultant?

An eCommerce consultant is someone who has an ample amount of knowledge about every aspect of running an eCommerce business. 

And since eCommerce consultants are experts on the subject, they’re primarily responsible to provide an eCommerce business everything, from marketing strategy and user experience to conversion optimization.

Put it bluntly, the role of eCommerce consultant is not an easy feat. It involves taking charge of many aspects of an eCommerce business including:

• eCommerce website management
• eCommerce marketing campaigns
• Increase rankings & traffic through eCommerce SEO
• Discover new business opportunities for clients
• Optimizing product pages for high conversion rates
• Creating and executing up-sell & cross-sell campaigns
• Running paid ads on multiple channels
• Dealing with email marketing 

…and much more.

As you can see, there is more than what meets the eye when it comes to becoming an eCommerce consultant.

However, the good news is that you can most certainly become a successful eCommerce consultant even if you’ve no clue where to begin from!

Below, we’ve shared our top five tips on how to grow your career as a successful eCommerce consultant in 2022.

Tips for Growing your Career as an eCommerce Consultant

If you’re trying to start and grow your career as an eCommerce Consultant, you have most certainly made the right choice. 

With an increasing number of online shoppers and retail businesses moving to digital space to cater to those online shoppers, there is an abundance of opportunities for you to become an eCommerce consultant (and succeed at it!).

Here are the top five tips to keep in mind for starting and growing your career as an eCommerce consultant. 

Get the Business Basics Right

When you’re embarking on your journey of becoming an eCommerce consultant for the first time, it’s easy to overlook the most important aspects of building a consultancy business. 

However, it’s absolutely critical to learn the business basics at the beginning of your journey. For starters, you should begin with drawing up a legal and business framework for your consultancy business. 

Concurrently, you should also decide whether you’ll run things as a sole proprietor or go into partnership? Will you hire employees as your business grows or will you start with a team from day one?

Answering these and many other important questions is crucial at the beginning. Apart from that, you’ll need to have a lawyer draft your consulting agreement and decide which software to use for handling invoices and payments among other stuff.  

Define Clear Business Objectives

When you’re starting your career as an eCommerce consultant, it is critical to define appropriate business objectives. 

Preparing this foundation at the start of your eCommerce consultancy business can help you during interactions with your potential clients, peers, and partners. 

Furthermore, clearly-defined business objectives not only help to negotiate deals more effectively, they even help to identify and turn down deals that do not align with your long-term vision or goals. 

Be a Jack of All Trades and Master of One

As we said earlier, as an eCommerce consultant, you’ll find yourself taking care of a broad range of tasks, especially in your early days. 

For instance, you’ll be performing SEO to achieve your marketing goals, deciding whether to offer overnight deliveries through express air freight service, identifying profitable products, and negotiating with suppliers.

But keep one important thing always in mind — as a consultant, your primary job is to deliver expertise! 

Therefore, you must obtain expert-level knowledge to be able to offer specialized knowledge and value to your clients in the long run. You can decide to acquire specialization in about two or three aspects of eCommerce and let your peers take care of the remaining responsibilities.  

Build a Professional Network of Contacts

Becoming an eCommerce consultant means you’ll need a steady stream of recommendations. At the beginning, these referrals often come from friends and family who want to help you succeed. 

But later on, you’ll need to cultivate referrals by building a network of professional connections in your industry. New referrals could either come from former & current clients or they could come from other consultancies pointing your way when they do not have necessary skills or resources to get the job done.  

In fact, a study has even revealed that business referrals create up to 65% of new business opportunities. 

The key takeaway is that new referral business can come from many sources, which is why it is essential to build and nurture professional connections within your industry.

Prioritize Your Clients’ Needs

Being an eCommerce consultant, your primary responsibility is to help struggling eCommerce businesses navigate a specific niche in the marketplace. Therefore, you must adopt an empathetic approach towards all your clients. 

Ideally, you should begin by asking your clients to state their challenges and their short-term & long-term business goals. Afterwards, come up with appropriate solutions to overcome those challenges and give the best value for their money.

Conclusion

eCommerce consulting is undoubtedly one of the lucrative and rewarding career choices in 2022. However, individuals must learn all the ins and outs of eCommerce and become an expert to become a successful eCommerce consultant. 

Hopefully, these tips will help you to navigate and grow your career as an eCommerce consultant while minimizing the majority hardships involved in it.

Keep learning

Make an effort to keep up with industry developments. Broadly speaking, you need to follow technological news, emerging skills, and consumer trends. Read dental news and see what tools and technologies are being developed. Pay attention to anything that could make your work easier and your patients’ experience better. This includes tools, dental technologies, patient management, and patient communication.

Also keep an eye on what skills are in demand among the new dentist generation. These can be practice-specific or soft skills, like communication. In the same vein, observe the opinions of the patient base – what people are complaining about, who they are praising and why, etc. All of these insights can help you keep your career contemporary, relevant, and thriving.

Catch up on your networking

You should start networking with other professional dentists while you are still in dental school. That said, if you missed that train for whatever reason, you’re not late. Start fostering those relationships now. Get in touch with dental professionals in your area, or your school’s alumni, and seize every opportunity to connect.

Most industry members are happy to share their experience and knowledge with up-and-coming colleagues. If you graduated recently, they will likely be willing to give you some advice about starting your career off on the right foot. You might even get some recommendations and introductions. And even if you’ve already joined the workforce, you can get insights from their practice that you would never encounter in the classroom.

Establish your own practice

Admittedly, this is a hefty investment, but it will skyrocket your career. As soon as you can afford it, open up your own dental business. The factors you will need to consider are location, equipment, and eventually staff. First, decide where you want to work. Pick a specific city, or just a general area, and research it. What are the state regulations? Will you need to take a board exam? Will you need any additional certifications? How much competition are you facing and how can you get a leg up on them?

Next, reach out to a reputable dental equipment provider and start investing in quality dental equipment. Start with the basics and build your equipment over time. Choose individual tools that best fit your practice and purchase the best quality.

Consider the future staffing of your office. You may want to eventually hire employees who will complement your speciality. At the very least, you will need one or more reliable assistants and some amazing hygienists. Keep an eye on new dental talent and see who is entering the workforce to ensure your practice is solidly established.

Consider going into family dentistry

If you would like to step up your practice, or simply boost your profits, consider becoming a family dentist. Children can admittedly be difficult to work with, but it’s really just a matter of patience. Most of the time they just need an adult to validate their fears and help them navigate.

This could be an especially effective strategy if you are restarting after a career break. Things will have somewhat changed since you were actively employed. Reorienting your efforts toward the family dentistry field gives you space to evolve, and there’s a better chance of being in demand.

Ask for feedback from clients

Finally, take advantage of every chance to hear people’s honest opinions. If you get stellar impressions, great! But if there’s something that could have been better, take that feedback to heart. Do your best to discern between objective and biased testimonials. If you receive some small token of appreciation from your patients, feel free to display it in your office for others to see.

Children’s drawings are a common example. If you get an upset review, keep a cool head. Figure out if there’s an objective basis for it. If the person is unfairly venting, set the record straight in a calm, respectful, but firm and clear manner. If their complaint is legitimate, honestly apologize, rectify the problem immediately, and don’t let it happen again.

Summing up

Growing as a dental professional requires smart networking and keeping up with industry developments. If you can, start your own practice, and always keep the experience of your patients front and center.

Change starts at the top, with leaders having a significant impact on company culture and the prevalence of workplace burnout. To combat this widespread issue, leaders must develop the right skills, supporting and empowering those around them to avoid excess stress and exhaustion. Below are six leadership skills required to mitigate burnout and help employees thrive.

What Is Burnout?

The World Health Organization categorizes burnout as an “occupational phenomenon”. It is defined as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Common signs of burnout include:

• Feeling drained or exhausted
• Feeling helpless, trapped, or defeated
• Having a negative outlook on one’s job
• Feeling detached
• Procrastination and taking longer to complete tasks
• Self-doubt
• Feeling overwhelmed.

Leadership Skills That Help Prevent Burnout

1. Empathy

Empathetic leaders connect with their teams and are more likely to recognize signs of burnout. With empathy, leaders can ensure the emotional needs of employees are met and that support is provided to those who need it. Demonstrating empathy as a leader means having a genuine interest in the well-being of others and being aware of their thoughts and feelings. It also means being conscious of one’s actions and behaving in a positive and impactful way.

• Resilience

Resilient leaders thrive in the face of adversity. When difficult situations arise, they have the confidence to manage them and maintain a positive mindset. This measured response to challenges sets an excellent example to employees and ensures that teams work in a positive environment.

• Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is a critical leadership skill to prevent burnout. Self-aware leaders are committed to self-improvement, stay connected to their thoughts and feelings, and relate more easily to their teams. They’re also open to feedback, which helps them continuously strive to better themselves and bring out the best in others.

• Focus

Focused leaders act intentionally and work on what matters most. They can delegate effectively, keep track of important tasks, and clarify what needs to be done to team members. This makes the workplace better organized and less stressful for everyone.

• Adaptability

When there’s a great deal of change within a business, it’s easy for employees to become stressed and at risk of burnout. Adaptable leaders can calm the storm by constantly learning from new challenges and providing clarity and purpose to their teams.

• Commitment to Inclusivity

Another key way leaders can address burnout is to ensure a culture of togetherness. Inclusive leaders build diverse teams where employees feel safe to be themselves and are encouraged to support one another. This gives staff members a whole community they can turn to for help or advice, preventing them from bearing the pressure alone.

How Can Leaders Develop These Skills?

Leaders hoping to prevent burnout within their teams should look to the conscious leadership model, which encourages the development of all the above skills and helps leaders become their best selves.

Through conscious leadership development, leaders gain the knowledge and awareness to lead themselves and their teams, helping them to continuously grow, work sustainably and thrive in the modern workplace.

As a result, companies searching for top-tier talent must act proactively, often taking some cues from their marketing departments. Today’s outreach efforts can be enhanced by the content strategies that increasingly dominate the marketing landscape.

Let us take a look at how online recruitment and hiring goals can be facilitated through content marketing.

Use blogging to make your brand more appealing

Initially, it is important to present your organization as a reliable, still-developing employer that offers outstanding opportunity for professional advancement. One avenue is through blog posts that can position you as an industry authority, give your enterprise a unique voice, and allow you to steer the narrative of your brand. Also, blog posts do an effective job of familiarizing prospects not yet looking for employment, but who otherwise show an interest in your native field.

Tap into the growing popularity of podcasts

While podcasts have historically been a relevant content channel, they are now beginning to reach a new heightened level of potential. Their growing level of popularity can, in part, be ascribed to the pandemic. Using Australia as our guide, as much as 81% of podcast listening is done at home, while 85% of on the listeners using their mobile phones. Providing quality content in this fashion can help initially engage with a significant captive audience.

Rank your website high on the SERP

Job search, like most other query, usually starts with a Google search. For this reason and as only approximately 40% of users ever reach the second search result page, it is critical that your recruitment efforts and promotional content receive sound SEO treatment. Again, using Australia as our guide, we find that SEO experts in Sydney and other large cities have developed proficiency over years of experience in utilizing specific keywords to place their clients’ brand on the first page of the SERP. A similar approach could be applied to mirror the process in the employment realm, using keywords that prospective candidates rely on in exploring their career options.

Pen down the candidate journey map

Content marketing frequently relies on first identifying the ultimate consumer and then reverse engineering their journey, evaluating the multiple stops on the purchase path. A company’s recruitment team could certainly emulate this practice to chronicle a candidate’s path to gainful employment. Where to start? Look for the social data used to find employees and build upon this engagement to develop more experience.

Leverage infographics to quickly generate attention

A couple of years ago, infographics skyrocketed to prominence as one of the most popular types of content on the web. The reason behind this popularity is simple – they convey the information in a very neat, fun, and engaging manner. They are also incredibly social media friendly and people like to share them with their followers. These are all good reasons why your recruitment and promotional pages should be sprinkled with appealing infographics that provide relevant data and descriptive information about the state of your industry. Aside from generating additional traffic to your site, these bits of strategic and entertaining info should also raise the profile of your business.

Promote your company through video content

Video content represents a true powerhouse performer. Recent studies indicate that this year the share of video traffic will reach an astounding 82% of all traffic. If you want to make the most of your content strategies you can’t overlook this channel. Video content provides a perfect showcase for featuring the ‘behind-the-scenes’ positive culture that distinguishes your company. That said, make sure to supplement any self-aggrandizing fluff pieces with noteworthy intelligence. Providing real value-added videos to consumers and prospective job applicants affords you the chance to also improve your company’s image with some promotional materials.

Final comments

These six techniques constitute effective content strategies aimed at stimulating future job candidates to come knocking at your door. The days when job vacancies alone virtually assured a response from talented applicants have seemingly come to an end. Finding talent, like attracting consumers, requires much more thought, ingenuity and comprehensive marketing tactics. Implementing a few cues from the content marketing world may not completely solve a changing employment landscape, but it definitely appears to be a great place to start.

And so, you had a home improvement boom; Brits alone spent £110 billion on home improvements, with common projects ranging from home renovations to outhouses and home gyms. 

However, the increase in building projects has also led to a labour shortage, exacerbating the construction worker crunch that was simmering long before the onset of the pandemic. According to the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), Britain’s construction industry will have to hire 217,000 more workers to keep up with output, which is on track to recover to pre-pandemic levels in 2022.

On the flip side, it’s happy days for skilled tradespeople. According to a report by B2C platform Angi, 83% of tradespeople said they were satisfied with their choice of work. And why wouldn’t they be when work is everywhere, and they’re in a position to demand more pay? 

In other words, now is the perfect time to consider a career in the skilled trades. We look at a few of your best options based on the latest data.

1. Wood Trades

Cabinet makers, wood machinists, woodturners, and furniture makers are among the top trades over the next few years, with CITB estimating annual average recruitment (ARR) of 5,500 in Britain. These professionals are responsible for building a wide range of high-quality wood products, ranging from picture frames, floors, and cabinetry. Skilled woodworkers are highly sought after in home construction and manufacturing, although they can also be in demand in retail and niche industrial sectors.  

2. Electricians

Electricians are among the most sought-after trades workers in the UK. According to a 2019 study by the Electrotechnical Skills Partnership (TESP) and National Electrotechnical Training (NET), the country is expected to need an additional 15,000 electricians by 2024. 

3. Pipefitters, Steamfitters, and Plumbers

While employment of plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters is projected to increase by only 5% from 2020 to 2030 (lower than the average for all occupations), the BLS notes aspiring professionals in the US can expect an average of 51,000 job openings each year until the end of the decade. Most of this growth will be driven by high numbers of workers moving to different occupations or hitting retirement age. 

4. Metal Workers

Although metal workers play a critical role in propping up the UK manufacturing sector, the industry is experiencing a skill shortage crisis and low recruitment levels. According to a study by FEIN, 76% of current metal workers believe the number of young professionals joining the sector has been steadily declining over the years. Nearly half said the manufacturing industry would face a crisis if it does not solve this skills shortage, whether by embarking on a domestic training push or loosening migrant visa restrictions. 

5. Carpenters and Joiners

According to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), vacancies for carpenters and joiners saw a sharp increase in August and September, creating bottlenecks in construction projects across Britain. 

According to a report by managed cloud provider Navisite, a third of employers did not have the tech stack or IT infrastructure in place to facilitate remote work during the pandemic.

And though many companies are pushing for their teams to return to the office, studies show that remote work, or at least hybrid work (where employees hop back and forth between remote work and the office), is here to stay. Gartner reports that 47% of employers plan to continue with full-time remote work and 82% will do so on a part-time basis.

This has forced many companies to accelerate their digital transformation plans. By leveraging digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and automation, you can optimise your HR processes and support new work methods.

Below are a few examples of HR processes being transformed by technology. 

1. Hiring and Onboarding

Hiring and onboarding processes take an excessive amount of an HR department’s time. Fortunately, HR software systems provide solutions that enable recruiters and hiring managers to automate tasks, such as:

• Answering potential candidates’ questions about your open positions
• Screening candidates based on the content of their CV
• Conducting background checks of potential hires
• Scheduling appointments for interviews
• Guiding new hires through the onboarding process. 

Apart from HR management software, HR departments can also use other cloud-based services such as HR chatbots to automatically engage and screen candidates on their website and social media channels.  

2. Making Employee Support More Accessible

The normalisation of remote work means that HR departments will need to do more in order to engage employees outside of the traditional, co-located workplace. As your workers submit requests for annual leave and ask questions about payroll and employee assistance, you will need an efficient system for staying on top of these queries. 

You will need to create an HR policy that accounts for your remote workforce and marry it with an appropriate cloud-based HR tool that employees can access on any device. This is where tools like BambooHR and Gusto come in, providing a simple way for employees to:

• File requests for annual leave
• Track their annual leave allowance
• Track their attendance and productivity levels
• Fill out HR requests for benefits, maternity leave and compassionate leave
• Submit expense reports after a business trip.

Because these tools are based in the cloud, your workers can perform these tasks anytime, anywhere. This is ideal for organisations with non-desk staff — think workers in the trades. 

3. Conducting Employee Sentiment Analysis  

Apart from providing employee support, HR departments will also have to find new, digitally-driven ways of monitoring the performance and satisfaction of both office and remote staff. 

Just like customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Salesforce and HubSpot, HR management software comes with built-in data analytics tools that enable you to monitor employee wellness and satisfaction metrics, such as:

• Turnover
• Absenteeism
• Net promoter score (NPS)
• Employee health index
• Production.

Predictive analytics can even detect when an employee is most likely to resign based on metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, IBM’s proprietary AI can predict when workers are going to quit their jobs. 

Employers can also use chatbots to conduct quick pulse surveys in the channels and apps their employees are already using. This increases the likelihood of employees completing surveys as they can do it in platforms they’re already active in, whether that’s WhatsApp, MS Teams or Facebook Messenger.

Digital marketing can offer an impressive ROI – but that doesn’t mean that digital marketing is all smooth sailing. In fact, sometimes it can simply feel like a struggle – a slog through murky waters, with ever-changing rules, demands and requirements. It’s enough to overwhelm even the most seasoned entrepreneurs – in fact, it often feels like a full-time job in and of itself.

The reality is, if digital marketing feels like a breeze – it’s likely you’re not doing it right – at least, not every single aspect. And that’s normal. After all, you have a business to run, and there simply aren’t enough hours in a day.

To find out where most people struggle with digital marketing, we spoke to ten founders and CEOs, who shared their digital marketing frustrations, from paid social and PPC through to gaining brand recognition and attracting the right traffic.

1. Building Trust With Our Audience

Kimmy Dickson, Founder at HyperTribe, raises an important concern, and one that is probably high on most people’s list of digital marketing struggles – how to establish and build trust with your target audience. 

“It’s pretty funny because for our artists we find that their biggest issue is finding their market, but for us as a business we know how to do that. Our biggest challenge is to make sure we are communicating our product the best way we can and build trust with our audience. We want people to know we are here with a solution for musicians and we know how to help them.”

Trust is such an important element of any successful business. With any industry, you will have an incredible number of competitors, so it’s essential to answer certain questions to help establish your position in the space – what is our unique selling point? Why would someone pick us over a competitor? Is our offering clear, strong and compelling? Do we have appropriate trust signals on our website?

The first thing all business owners should know when discussing trust is that everyone is time poor. What’s more, most of us have waning attention spans. You need to grab your potential customers’ attention as soon as they land on your homepage: you have a lot to convince them of in not much time and it’s all too easy to click away and check out another offering. Keeping trust signals above the fold is key. This means showing off your credentials, your testimonials and your accolades. Describe in one sentence in a no-nonsense way what your business does and what it can offer. Many businesses choose to give something away for free in order to build trust, such as a free trial or consultation.

Alongside this, businesses can do a lot to build trust by building up a presence on social media – they’re seen as more human and relatable. Make sure you update your social channels regularly, don’t make all your content promotional and ensure your social buttons are clearly displayed on your homepage. 

2. Finding a Trustworthy Digital Marketing Agency

From building trust with customers to trusting a digital marketing company, Su Morgan, owner at Dog and Hat, expresses her struggles and disappointments when it comes to finding the right business to partner with:

“The hardest thing we ever found was engaging companies to support our digital marketing. Early in our business we joined a pay per click campaign that charged £100 pcm, and the company vanished from all communications. It took a while to get it cancelled. We were essentially being ripped off as we didn’t fully understand what we were asking for. Now we run most things in-house.”

Engaging a digital marketing agency can be a tricky process, but the more involved you can get in a process, the more likely you are to find success. 

Research your potential marketing partners thoroughly; you’re looking for case studies and testimonials, trust signals like award logos and partner logos, and an active content presence. You want to see evidence that they can run activity, so if you’re looking for a content agency they should have an active blog. A social media agency should be able to manage its own social channels.

To make it more likely that you’ll get a successful partnership, you can run an RFP (request for proposal) process. This process takes up a fair chunk of your time but allows you to get a more in-depth understanding of how the business will work with you and make sure you get a good match. It’ll also weed out less serious contenders who might waste your time and money. 

3. Finding a Digital Marketing Agency That Understands Our Brand

There’s no one who knows your brand like you do, which can become a problem when you’re working with agencies. Ann Lowe, Head of Purpose at Spice Kitchen, highlights the difficulty of finding an external digital marketing agency that is as invested in the business:

“Our biggest challenge to date has been finding a digital marketing agency who really gets our brand and who we feel we can trust with our communications. We’ve wanted to outsource and take advantage of external expertise in the industry but ultimately have brought this side of the business in-house, as we feel that no one can do the job in quite the same way as the team who are invested in the business.”

Finding an agency that has the perfect balance between external expertise and investment in your brand is difficult to get right, and it’s true that many agencies simply won’t be as passionate about your business as your team is. This can be a difficult hurdle to overcome, but you can try to reconsider how you want to engage your agency.

If you’re concerned that your agency can’t do the job in the same way as your internal team, consider instead working with a consultancy, or as support for specific projects. This way, you can gain the benefits of an agency’s expertise without compromising on what your team put into their work. Alternatively, consider how you’re onboarding your agency to make them as excited about your work as you are. Do you have new starter training that you could share or time to run a fact-finding workshop where both teams can get to know the other’s business? Finding a way to really bring your agency into the fold will help them to get just as excited about your work as the rest of your team. 

4. Knowing Where to Start and What Will Work

The world of digital marketing is one that can be incredibly complicated. With the sheer amount of options available for businesses to explore, Andi Lonnen, Founder and CEO of Finance Training Academy, notes that it can be difficult for micro and small business owners, in particular, to know where to start. 

“For me, [my biggest digital marketing struggle is] knowing what digital marketing to do and finding out what works. The costs charged by most places are too high for micro business owners.”

Knowing where to start with your digital marketing efforts requires an understanding of your target audience. You’ll need to know where your audience is spending their time, how they’re currently finding your business and your website, and what their customer journey looks like. Understanding where you can find your audience will tell you which channels you should begin investing in.

For example, if your target audience spends a lot of time on Twitter, you’ll need to spend time developing and executing a strategy that focuses on Twitter. If your audience relies heavily on reviews before making a purchasing decision, attention will need to be given to how you’ll accumulate reviews. Customer data will be a saving grace to those who are overwhelmed with choice. 

5. The Sheer Amount of Things You Need to Do

Once you know which channels are going to form the bedrock of your digital marketing strategy, you have the even more daunting task of actually executing your campaigns. As Dimple Athavia, Founder of All Things Drinks, says:

“For me, it’s the sheer amount of it and the time it requires!”

The first and most obvious way to reduce the time pressure that digital marketing can put on you is to, of course, outsource your activity. Through agencies or freelancers, it’s the most common way to manage your workload, but it’s not the only way.

Over the last few years, automation tools have become more and more advanced, and savvy digital marketers will explore the different ways that marketing automation can help to reduce the workload and save you time. Examples can include PPC automation, automatically triggered email nurture campaigns and content that is shaped by on-site behaviour. 

6. Getting (and Maintaining) Brand Recognition and Engagement

In a crowded and competitive space, brand recognition is becoming harder and harder to both build and maintain. This is a struggle that Gabriella Diana, CEO of Onesta, knows all too well:

“One of our main struggles is getting brand recognition and engagement in the digital world. It changes rapidly and the turnover of people’s feeds is so fast that there is a struggle to stay relevant and get picked up by the algorithm while also staying relevant and interesting. There is a pressure to keep up with the already well-established brands and try to present ourselves in the same way even though we are still new.”

Brand awareness and engagement are gold dust to marketers: the more well-known your brand is, the more people you have primed to purchase from you when they’re ready. So, it’s easy to get frustrated as you try to compete against well known, established brands, especially as a younger brand. The important thing to remember is to always remain true to your brand’s message and values, and to keep your audience front of mind.

Tailoring your content to your target audience and focusing on your brand values will help you to build awareness with the people you’re most interested in reaching. Having some insight into your competitors and their strategies will help you to identify new opportunities, but your best insight will come from your consumer data. 

If you want to be really proactive about brand recognition, we recommend engaging with relevant influencers and submitting quality guest posts to high-authority publications. Develop your name as a thought leader, and increase brand awareness by demonstrating that you know your industry, the struggles of your customers and trends within your sector.

7. Converting Visitors Into Paying Customers

Brand awareness and engagement is one thing, but getting conversions is quite another. Stewart McGrenary, Director at Freedom Mobiles notes the difficulty that eCommerce brands have at getting customers across the line:

“Converting visitors into paying customers is one of the most difficult eCommerce challenges. An eCommerce website may receive a lot of traffic, clicks, and views, but it isn’t generating the sales it expects. What should they do in order to increase sales?”

Conversions are the ultimate goal of any marketing strategy – particularly for those that conduct their business entirely online. The trick, as always, is to find a way to resonate with your users and visitors so that they are compelled to make that final step.

One way to do this is to implement a system of attribution so that you can see which of your channels is actually driving conversions. Identifying the channels and activity that are successful at pushing potential clients over the line will show you where you should be placing more of your investment. It will also show you which channels are good at bringing in traffic, and so are primed and ready for experimentation.

8. Climbing the SERPs

Google is your biggest ally in your digital marketing quest, but it can also be your biggest foe. Increasing search rankings can seem like an insurmountable task, as Dr. Ana Andrés del Valle, co-founder of TidyChoice comments:

“As a digital services start-up, our biggest struggle has been to gain search engine ranking position (SERPs). We have followed best-practice for both on-page and off-page SEO and have been consistently gaining online brand awareness, recognition and backlinks. However, gains in SERPs have been painfully slow. After a number of years we have struggled onto the first page for many of our targeted search terms but not to the coveted top places. The same incumbents have been at the top of the rankings monopolising organic traffic and conversions giving them lower costs of acquisition and an economic advantage. We struggle with the opaqueness of Google’s ranking algorithm and its apparent favouring of older, incumbent businesses which ultimately suppresses competition.”

Unfortunately, it takes a long time for you to see the results of your SEO efforts. Those who expect to see gains in a week will be sadly disappointed. However, if topping the rankings in the SERP is your ultimate goal, there are two main ways to do this. The first is to place less of your focus on high-traffic, high competition keywords that you see many of your competitors ranking highly for, and instead turning to longer-tail keywords. These are the ones that better encompass the actual terms that users are typing into Google when they’re searching for your services. Long-tail keywords tend to have much lower traffic because they’re so specific, and so there also tends to be lower competition – making it more likely that you’ll appear at the top of the SERP.

An alternative strategy to get to the top of the SERP is to put some money into paid search advertising. This way, you can increase the likelihood that you’re appearing on the front page of search results for these search terms. Identify the keywords that you really want to appear for and develop paid search campaigns to target these terms. Not only will you be more likely to appear, but you’ll also appear above the results of your biggest competitors. 

9. The Utter Complexity of Social Ads

Paid Search ads tend to be fairly straight forward but many small businesses find that Paid Social advertising is a whole different story. Greg Wixted, Founder & Chief Baking Officer at Britain Loves Baking is all too familiar with the complex nature of social media ads.

“Beyond a doubt, our biggest digital marketing struggles are Facebook and Instagram. They just seem to suck the life out of you when it comes to ads and it’s never enough for small businesses – it seems you’re never there on conversions. It’s now so complex to use, it’s like they are forcing you to use an agency, as no one understands their business dashboard. I don’t think the people at Facebook do, either.”

Getting the most out of your paid social ads requires a thorough understanding of user journey and the role that different channels can play. Social media doesn’t tend to play as much of a role in driving conversions, but it is a fantastic tool in building brand awareness and educating your customers. With this in mind, you can create social ads that are able to help you reach your performance goals as part of a holistic marketing mix.

Digital marketing can be quite challenging, especially for smaller or newer businesses, but the rewards are certainly worth it. Working with a digital marketing agency will help you to navigate the more difficult waters of online channels – whether that’s helping you to develop your buyer personas or outsourcing the more complicated aspects of your marketing strategy. However, with a thorough understanding of your business, your target audiences and their user journey, and a willingness to experiment, you’ve got plenty of tools to help overcome your digital marketing struggles.