While there are a lot of great entrepreneurial jobs for people to do from home, sometimes it’s necessary for folks to just pick up and grab a part-time or seasonal job to help make ends meet.  While a great concept, landing that job may be harder than you’d think.

A friend of mine is a hiring manager at our area Target stores and she recently shared some really good advice.  If you’re applying online or at a store kiosk, they will ask when you are available to work.  Answer ALL THE TIME. This way your application won’t get automatically thrown out because only night hours are available that day your application hits.

Once you get your foot in the door and can get to the interview stage, your hours are negotiable.  If the store really wants you because you’ve made a great impression as a hard worker, they will negotiate the hours that you are scheduled to work.

Click here for more tips from MSNBC.com that could help, including:

Be positive and upbeat on job interviews. In the survey of hiring managers, three out of 10 said they viewed a positive attitude as the most important trait in any prospective employee. Employers also like to see previous experience — but an enthusiastic, can-do attitude can get you noticed more than you might imagine.

Good luck job hunters!

Photo from Eastern Washington University via Flickr Creative Commons.

Some say it’s lazy, I say it’s innovative and ingenious.  Work smart, play smart!

Many people in the real estate business are looking for other opportunities to supplement their incomes while the housing market is down.  From making soap and selling it at a local market (also operated by a real estate agent) to painting rooms and laying tile, agents are staying busy, but perhaps not with real estate 100 percent of the time.

So the conundrum is what to do when the market is on a slow (albeit VERY slow) recovery, but an opportunity in the form of an idea begins to germinate. An idea that could potentially do very well, but it could take as long to come to fruition as it would for real estate co completely recover… one to five years.

The advice I would give to anyone is what a friend told a friend on Facebook. First she suggested that the potential new business owner contact someone else with a similar business to gain a realistic understanding of what the costs would be.  Then,

If she decides she still wants to pursue the business, she shouldn’t do it without first contacting an accountant and a lawyer (even though it will cost her more up front to do so). I hate to sound pessimistic, but people are constantly encouraged to pursue their dreams and turn their hobbies into businesses. While this is wonderful in theory, the fact of the matter is that more than 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% of them fail within the first five years. People invest their life savings pursuing their dreams and, more often than not, they lose everything. That’s the sad reality.

So I’m not suggesting that she shouldn’t research the business, but she needs to go into this with her eyes wide open and if she doesn’t have a strong financial/accounting background, she needs to seek professional advice right from the start.

Good advice.  Do you have a dream business you’d like to pursue?  Mine would be the House of Cupcakes, but I believe the best way to start this would be on a part-time basis to see if the demand is there.