UpMo is a next-generation career management and advancement platform that accelerates professionals to their career goals…

it facilitates job hunting, networking, and career management, and is designed for professionals trying to maintain career control. Take a look: UpMo

as we all know, many jobs are found through networking. therefore, many businesspeople are on the lookout for tools to improve their networking skills. the number of business apps is increasing day by day and smartphones are becoming a portable toolkit for business professionals everywhere.

5 useful iphone apps:

• meet people with happening
• exchange information using linkedin
• meet in the middle using meetme
• organize business cards with worldcardmobile
• manage relationships with contactsjournal

a recent survey, conducted by elon university, found that cloud-computing will increasingly gain importance in the future. the majority of social analysts, internet and tech experts questioned in the survey, predict this form of internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information, are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, to prevail. mashable offers a great summary of this study.

image by mashable

not surprisingly, the u.s. is still far ahead of germany and the rest of the world in terms of entrepreneurship. this interesting chart, produced by grasshopper, compares the u.s. portion of gdp (gross domestic product) that comes from entrepreneurship against that of major european countries.

entrepreneural activity in the u.s. (as a percentage of gdp) lies at 11.3%, compared to 6.3% in germany for example. also worth mentioning is how “would-be” entrepreneurs perceive starting a new business in the current economy: according to the data provided, entrepreneurs in the u.s. feel far more optimistic about starting a new business in the near future and foster much less fear of failure.

in addition, the graphic depicts the percentage of enterprises by size, native vs. foreign-born self-employed and the overall difficulty entrepreneurs face when starting a new business.

image by theeducatedentrepreneur.com

check out the full size infographic here.

project-related work requires very different talents and capabilities. the lack of such capacity creates inefficiencies. by utilizing a community of people with similar issues and needs, these inefficiencies can be minimized through collaboration. co-working spaces enable efficient teamwork by bringing people together in a shared working environment. this interesting post on mashable gives a great overview of why co-working makes so much sense for businesses…

image by mashable

why co-working makes sense for small businesses

as the nytimes reports, the workforce is becoming increasingly comfortable with the changing nature of work as it is…”becoming more temporary and project-based, with workers increasingly functioning as free agents and no longer being governed by traditional long-term employer-employee relationships…”. it’s a development that first began in the 90’s but recently gained some momentum.

projektwerk is working hard to provide the best possible service, which is why we’ve yet again made some beneficial changes on projektwerk.com/it. it has long been a top priority to make the service more simple, customizable, and useful.

so what exactly has changed? by adjusting the application on the technical side, an important modification has been implemented: the elimination of the search-function.

we took into consideration our users demand for better structure and more clarity on the site (remarks mainly concerned confusion about what kinds of queries to conduct and the at times overwhelming amount of search results). what we came up with as a solution is a matching-service, which automatically provides the user with appropriate projects and profiles (according to the users predefined specifications).

our brief tour explains how the new service works.

we modified the url-structure and you can now reach the site via it.projektwerk.com

this also applies to our partner sites fashion.projektwerk.com (hosted by tanja weichenhain and josy liebetrau) and automotive.projektwerk.com (hosted by dr. oliver schlösser).

this is what the new home page looks like:

please feel free to have a look at the new site it.projektwerk.com, and as always, we appreciate your feedback.

kind regards,

your projektwerk-team

a recent survey by the pew research center found that job satisfaction is highest among the self-employed. the center studies behaviors and attitudes of americans in key realms of their lives, including family, community, health, finance, work and leisure.

link:

image by fastcompany

this neat video by fastcompany provides a few helpful tipps and hints freelancers may use to make the challenges and difficulties that self-employment entails a little less troublesome. gina trapani (author) suggests time management, money, and expectations to be the biggest struggles. what do you think? what do you find demanding about freelancing?

video: freelance survival skills

…because of the competitive nature of the market, excellent salesmanship is becoming increasingly important for freelancers to win over project bids. proposable is an online tool that allows you to build highly customized, branded presentations. amongst other things, the service offers reporting features to analyze the performance of proposals, a variety of templates, an asset library, and a comment management system for real-time feedback.