How to Respond to Job Postings Faster than the Competition (Without Canned Responses)
Ever wanted to know how some freelancers jump on those job postings before everyone else, and still manage to get the gig? It’s not with canned responses, I can assure you. These don’t go over well when it comes to pitching for a job. But there are techniques one can use to get their name in the hat early in the piece.
Some have questioned the point of jumping on a job quickly. Let me tell you, as someone who has advertised for and applied for many, it counts. I know a whole slew of people who employ freelancers who stop reading applications after the first 50 or 100 come in, and that can be anywhere from twenty minutes after posting the job, to twenty hours later.
Info-whelmed? Should You Declare RSS Bankruptcy?
If you’re a web-working freelancer of any sort, you’re probably following umpteen RSS feeds in your favorite feed reader (Feed Demon, Google Reader, etc.), with your subscription list growing by the day. Are you overwhelmed by the number of RSS feed items in your feed reader that you haven’t read? Are you tired of the “same” items appearing over and over in your subscriptions, even though you’ve read them already? Is using an RSS feed reader becoming counterproductive, even with a structured folder system?
Maybe it’s time to declare RSS “feed reader bankruptcy” and find another way to monitor your niches.
That’s what I did maybe 8-9 months ago, though I’ve never said it publicly. In fact, I didn’t even admit it to myself until recently, fully intending to go back to my Feed Demon app. The massive quantities of unread items and the duplicates generated by some blogging platforms just overwhelmed me. Half my day was spent browsing through feed items I’d never have time to read or use in any way.
What Now?
Freelancers tend to be generalists, which means they need to monitor multiple niches all the time. For some people, a good RSS reader is ideal. If you’re not ready to give up feed readers just yet, I recommend you read Chris Garrett’s excellent 21 Niche News and Feed Reading Productivity Tips.
However, if you are fed up with using an RSS reader, what do you do instead to stay on top of a specific niche? Continue Reading
