Microsoft Office

After you get that all-important, rare interview, do follow up with a Thank You letter.

Overcome Objections

If during an interview there were specific objections raised about your candidacy, use your thank-you letter to respond to and overcome those concerns. Demonstrate that the concerns are not an obstacle but an opportunity and you’re fully prepared to meet the challenge.

Example:

You’re interviewing to be an executive for a well-established company in the Midwest. Although you’re extremely well-qualified, the CEO is concerned you’ve never lived in the area and have no network of local contacts. Eliminate those concerns by explaining your network of professional contacts is nationwide and, in fact, you know John Doe of Local Company X, have a long-standing relationship with an economic development director in the area, etc. These contacts will only serve to expand the company’s already-established network.
Reiterate Your Expertise

If the company communicated its specific needs, issues or challenges, use your thank-you letter to demonstrate how you can meet those needs.

Example:

You’ve interviewed to be the CFO of a distressed company in need of immediate action. It needs a candidate with proven success in fast-track turnarounds and revitalizations. Highlight your experience in turning a company around and showing profitability.
Highlight Your Core Professional Competencies and Successes

If the company communicated its ideal qualifications for a candidate, use your thank-you letter to outline how you meet or exceed each qualification.

Example:

You’ve interviewed for the position of EVP of technology and product development with a high tech venture, and company officials have clearly communicated four essential candidate qualifications. Help them see that you have those four qualifications by providing an overview of your career highlights.
How Long Should Your Thank-You Letter Be?

Of course, as with anything else in a job search, there is no definitive answer. One page is the norm, depending on the amount of information you want to communicate. Letters certainly do not have to be only one page.

Remind yourself that you already have the company’s interest or you wouldn’t have been interviewing, and use your thank-you letter as a tool to communicate valuable information. The entire job search process is marketing and merchandising your product — you. There is no reason why writing thank-you letters should be any different than any other of your job search activities.

Courtesy of Microsoft Office Online and Monster.com.

From Microsoft Inside Office Online: Theyhave created a new Office Online Career Center and partnered with Monster.com to make the entire job hunting process - from planning your strategy to polishing your resume and submitting it for a position - as painless as possible.

Check out the video, where they walk Seattle’s Alycia Delmore through the process and help her get ready for her next job. Download a resume template and update your own. Look for a job in your area, and post your resume. They’ve even linked to career advice from Monster’s career experts. It’s all there on the page, and broken down in even greater detail in this article.

They didn’t forget those employers who might have openings, because as difficult as it is to find the right job, they know it’s also challenging to find the right candidate for an open position.

Finally, they know their resume templates are among the most popular templates on our site. Our hope is that this new Career Center helps you do more and we wish you luck in your search for a job.

Here’s Microsoft’s Office Online Career Center:

Four Steps to Online Job Search:

1. Start with a strategy
You can avoid anxiety about your job search by starting with a strategy — and we can put you on the fast track with a strategy that’s ready for you now. Monster.com and Office Online are teaming up to make the whole job search process faster and easier.

2. Search for available jobs
What are you looking for?

On Monster.com, you can find information on what employers are looking for in your field, such as finance career tips or information for technology jobs. Go to the Advice home page, scroll down to the View Information by Category section, and click the industry you want to know more about.

If you need to brush up on some of your Office skills, you can find free, self-paced training courses on Office Online.

3. Write your resume
Now that you’ve found a job you want to apply for — or you’ve learned more about the industry where you want to work — it’s time to dust off and brush up your resume.

You want your resume to look professional and to stand out. And you want it to be returned in Search results — right in front of anyone looking for the perfect candidate (that’s you).

Submit!
You’re ready to start your search officially.

If you created your resume using a Word 2007, template, take a moment to save a copy of your resume in .doc format. That’s the copy that you’ll submit to Monster.

Click the Submit button to submit your resume to Monster.com. You can submit it specifically to that job you saw earlier, and you can submit it generally for employers to find in their searches.

Follow up
You can use the Job search log template or the Interview/Resume Follow-Up Log template on Office Online to keep track of where you’ve sent resumes and follow-up letters, and where you’ve interviewed, as well as tracking the thank you letters you send after those interviews.

For more details, click the blue link above to access Microsoft’s Career Planning site.

This is a great demo from Office Online, How to Brand your Business Documents

When your documents, presentations, and workbooks have a unified and polished appearance, they make a positive impression. Now you can “brand” your Microsoft Office documents quickly and easily by applying a document theme — a set of colors, fonts, and other formatting details that work together to give your documents a stylish, professional design. Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 offer a wide range of predefined document themes, and you can also create your own by customizing existing themes. Document themes are shared across the programs so that all your Office documents can have the same look. Watch this demo to see how easy it is to get great results.

You can quickly and easily format an entire document to give it a professional and modern look by applying a document theme. A document theme is a set of formatting choices that include a set of theme colors, a set of theme fonts (including heading and body text fonts), and a set of theme effects (including lines and fill effects).

Programs such as Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint provide several predefined document themes, but you can also create your own by customizing and then saving an existing document theme. Document themes are shared across Office programs so that all of your Office documents can have the same, uniform look. However, unlike Word and Excel, PowerPoint includes background style customization options. For information about adding and customizing backgrounds, see Add a background to your presentation.

Click the blue link above for more information.

Microsoft is looking for their newest office (tentatively called Office 2010) to work with other Office programs

Microsoft engineers at the Redmond campus are busy at work with the next iteration of Microsoft Office, tentitively called “Office 2010″.

The hints, innuendos and rumors that have been posted all over the internet (as well as this site) is looking to be more true than not.

The three year wait between Office products is on schedule, according to Ina Fried’s article (link above). The new software is to work with open formerly rival office programs, such as Open Office, Google Docs and the like.

Microsoft is also working to make Office 14 (Office 2010) work with Microsoft phones (and phones in development) and the new up and coming Office Web Aps, that will include Word, Excel and Powerpoint (the Campus’ office mainstay programs). These are to be accessible online, either from their Cloud, including Live Mesh, Windows Live SkyDrive, and Office Live Workspace. Though, I have seen a rumor that Microsoft may combine all their workspaces into one online application. They are already making changes to their Office Live Small Business framework.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft combines Office 14 with web aps, fully compatible with Open Office, Google Docs and not only with Microsoft phones, but the iPhone, as was reported in the above article. As of now, there are compatibility issues with Microsoft Office 2007 and the above said issues, though Office 2007 Word does have a way to save in the 97-03 formats, I wonder if Office 2010 will have a similar venue, to ’save as’ OOo or google doc?

Whether you’re on the road for business or pleasure—provided you’re not traveling by canoe in the Amazon jungle or dog sled in the arctic—there’s probably a way to stay in touch by e‑mail. With a little knowledge and advance planning, it’s easy to check your e‑mail from the road. Here are some tips to help you remain in contact with friends, family, and colleagues while you’re on the go.

1. Use web mail and travel light

If you use a web-based e‑mail service such as Windows Live Hotmail, you can send and receive e‑mail using someone else’s computer, without the need to carry around your own mobile PC while you travel.
2. Carry a laptop and use your own e‑mail program

If you’re traveling on business, chances are you’ll have your own mobile PC with you. In this case, you can use a more full-featured e‑mail program such as Windows Live Mail or Windows Mail.
3. Try doing e‑mail offline

Write messages when you’re inspired, not when you’re connected. If you have a laptop with you, take advantage of offline time to read messages you have already downloaded and compose replies and other new messages.
4. Hone your skills at finding Internet cafés

If you’re traveling without a mobile PC, train yourself to watch for Internet cafés and other places where you can rent a computer for a short period of time to check your e‑mail.
5. Look up Internet café locations before you go

If you want to be sure you can check your e‑mail from the road, make a list in advance of Internet cafés where you will be traveling. This can be important if you will be traveling in areas where Internet access is less likely to be available.

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Valentines Card for your sweetie from Microsoft Office Templetes. Just download and print from your home office. There are several to choose from on their download site.

How about a special Powerpoint Valentine to share with your loved ones?

Throwing a Valentines Party? Send out E-Vites with this Microsoft invitation templete.

Make a Valentine’s Day card
Let’s create a card. There are a number of Valentine’s Day templates to choose from on Office Online. If you find one you like, you can print it, sign it, and, voilà — you’re done! You have an instant Valentine’s Day card, sure to be a pleaser.

But what if you want to make your own card with personal touches? Let’s make one from scratch in Publisher.

Step 1: Choose the predesigned publication and layout
Start Publisher. In the New Publication task pane, click Publications for Print, click Greeting Cards, and then click Valentine’s Day.
Scroll through the pre-designed greeting card publications on the right. Select any one you want, as we’ll soon customize it. In this example, we’re using Valentine’s Day Card 11.
In the Greeting Cards Options task pane, under Design, click the option that allows you to modify the layout and appearance of the original design. In this example, we’ll use Art Bit.
Note Some card designs, such as the Fading Frame and Tipped Title designs, are set up for only one layout option. If you choose one of these designs, the layout options displayed under Design in the Greeting Card Options task pane will not be available.

Click Page Options, and then choose the card size and fold style you want under Size and Fold.
Click Color Schemes, and then choose your color scheme.
Click Font Schemes, and then choose your font scheme.
When your greeting card looks the way you want, save the file.
Step 2: Choose the right clip art
Next, let’s change the clip art on this card. Nice heart, but let’s delete it and find another clip.

Step 3: Copy and paste clip art from the Web into your document
On the Clip Art and Media search results page, click on Copy to Clipboard for the clip you want to copy.
Go to your Publisher Valentine’s Day template. On the Edit menu, click Paste.

Give to your Favorite Valentine!

Learn what Microsoft Office can do to make your everyday life easier.

Microsoft Presspass has a great interview with Michael Schultz, Microsoft Office Live Director of Marketing.

There are millions and millions of people around the world using Microsoft Office to help manage their lives. They use the Office products to help schedule carpools, grocery shopping, design party invitations, write reports, just to name a few of the many helpful ideas Microsoft Office helps.

This week, Presspass (of the Microsoft network) spoke to Michael Shultz at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Schultz talked about how using traditional desktop software in conjunction with services such as the upcoming Office Web applications (lightweight, Web-based versions of Office applications expected to be released as part of the next version of Office) could change how consumers work and play, as well as about how parents, students, and home-based businesses can use Office 2007 to make life easier.

In part, here’s what Shultz and Presspass had to say:

Office 2007 can synchronize with Office Web Online to help search for ideas, products and reports. This can help students with school products, businesses with employees online and many other applications. Office Web applications, such as one being developed for Microsoft Office OneNote (becomea MOONie–MicrosOft OneNote!).

Office 2007 can help with tracking your exercise. Says Schulz: “After each daily run, you can post your time to a personal fitness workspace in Office Live Workspace and compare it to previous times. If you share that workspace with your teammates, they’ll get an e-mail every time you update the workspace and will be able to see how you’re doing, and whether they need to step it up.”

Use one of the many online options to share your information: from Office Online, Web based applications, Groove, Infopath, Outlook, for starters. The options are limitless on how you choose to share your information.

Families, businesses, schools and friends can keep in touch instantly with all the available technology Microsoft Office has to offer.

It’s no secret I use a tablet pc in my work as a blogger/writer. This set of tips from TipTalk is highly recommended. Although they discuss Office 2003, I’ve been successful with my tablet and Office 2007.

Too many meetings and increasing responsibilities mean I need to make the best use of my time as possible—without sacrificing quality. Saving bits of time can add up to a lot at the end of the day. I use the Tablet PC as my only computer and throughout the day it helps me work more efficiently and quickly.

For example, do you edit business documents—memos, presentations, manuals, or other documents? If so, the ability to mark up documents in digital ink with your Tablet PC, and send those marked documents electronically, is incredibly useful. I can type edits onto a document, but there are several reasons that I find using digital ink more helpful.

Ink markups on text document better convey the intentions of my points. I can draw arrows, circles, and use paint-style highlighting on the page to better communicate my edits. When I’m done, I can share the edited document electronically with anyone. Learn more about using ink in Microsoft Office Word.
I often edit while I’m commuting or out of the office, perhaps at home in a comfortable chair. Typing can be difficult with a conventional laptop keyboard perched on my lap. The Tablet PC interface is easier to use, and more relaxing. It is just like marking up a paper document on a notepad in my lap, and just as comfortable.
If I’m in a meeting it’s easier to edit related documents. With the Tablet PC, I don’t need to bring out a noisy keyboard-based laptop. I can make my edits in pen with the Tablet PC in my lap or on the table like a paper pad.
There are several programs you can use to mark up your documents. Word 2003 and 2007 come fully pen-enabled for marking up documents, as do Excel and PowerPoint.

When we mention “Help” in the software publishing world, we don’t mean technical support or maintenance (that’s generally called “Support”). Instead, the collective term “Help” refers to the free published content that ships with most commercial or professional software programs. When we mention “Help” in the software publishing world, we don’t mean technical support or maintenance (that’s generally called “Support”). Instead, the collective term “Help” refers to the free published content that ships with most commercial or professional software programs.

What you may not have noticed before is that, regardless of the interface, the programs in the Office 2007 suites have two very different Help experiences. When your computer is connected to the Internet, and if you (or your system administrator) have given permission, the Help viewer will fetch and display the most up-to-date and complete content for the Office 2007 Help in each program. This experience is preferred because, in this so-called “connected state,” you’re sure to always see the latest and greatest Help content that’s available for your program(s). In this scenario, the Help viewer bypasses the Help files that were originally installed with each program because such disk-based content cannot be automatically updated and thus becomes outdated rather quickly.

If you yank the network cable from your computer or otherwise disconnect from the Internet for any reason, the Help viewer reverts to the offline Help files on your hard drive — outdated as they may be. All of the Help and How-to content that has been published since the launch of the product is then no longer fetched from the Office Online Web site. This is problematic when you need to look up procedure steps for a program task or feature and the corresponding Help topic exists only online. For example, imagine you’re traveling on business and finishing your big PowerPoint presentation on the plane. Your boss told you to insert an animation or video, but you don’t remember how to do this. If a specific article with the solution to your issue was not published as part of the original “offline Help” files on your Office CD or DVD, you’ll have to wait until you can next connect to the Web.

Tip: To make sure your Office 2007 Help viewer is configured to fetch the latest online content whenever you’re connected to the Internet, click the button in the lower right corner of the Help viewer window (in OneNote 2007 or any other Office 2007 program, press F1) and then choose Show content from Office Online from the popup menu. “Connected to Office Online” means that your Office program will automatically include the latest online content in the Help Table of Contents and in the Search results.

From the Microsoft Office Live Small Business blog: Every morning, it seems, the news brings tidings of another massive layoff. Recently, Citigroup announced plans to lay off more than 50,000 workers. In my industry newsletters, every day at least one big company announces reductions of 10 percent to 20 percent of its work force.

For you, the small-business owner, there is some good news amidst all this bad news. The upside is that an unprecedented supply of skilled, talented, and hard-working employees is up for grabs.

“But I’m not ready to hire anyone right now,” you’re thinking. I don’t blame you. Taking on the responsibility of a new staffer’s payroll, benefits, and training at this time is not the most cost-effective move.

What I am talking about is expanding your business by outsourcing to these workers. With “real” jobs harder and harder to come by, more and more laid-off employees are exploring the freelance world, at least temporarily — and that can be a perfect fit for your business’s needs.

Contracting work to “virtual” workers enables you to meet your company’s demands without tying up cash. You pay only for the services you use. You can pay by the project or by the hour. For far less than the cost of hiring one, you could gain access to the services of a skilled marketer, Web designer, salesperson, CFO, and more.

Where do you find these workers? You don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money advertising on the big job search sites. Craigslist and elance.com are sites lots of freelancers I know go to look for jobs. You can also check out industry-specific trade association sites or job search sites to see what types of listings they offer.

However, often the best way to find good people is simply to ask your colleagues and friends. Sadly, today everyone knows several people who have been laid off. Put the word out to your circle that you’re looking to freelance such-and-such type of project, and you’re likely to end up with several good candidates.

Sure, this may be only a temporary arrangement if the person you hire ends up finding a full-time job elsewhere. But it can also be a great way to test out how well they fit with your company — and if they’re a match, maybe someday you can offer them a full-time job yourself.

Are you contracting work out to freelancers?