Roadmap – From Idea to Start-up Business

A great idea is the seed of a good business, but it can only grow to its full potential if it is cultivated properly. Most great ideas remain dormant because people don’t have the courage, resources, time and/or money to take action. And for those who take action, most are unprepared and thus find themselves spending their valuable time and money on a dream that simply goes off track. 

If you follow certain steps, you can turn your vision for a successful new business into a reality. Here’s a start-up roadmap:

• Figure out the problem you will try to solve – You get excited with your idea and focus on the solution it will provide to your customers. But, you have to first focus on the problem which will be solved by your business. Amazon, for instance, solved how e-commerce was, at one time, expensive and inconvenient. Today, it has more customers (and sales) than its brick-and-mortar competition.
• Analyze your idea thoroughly – Evaluate it through all angles – its timing, potential customers, competitors, execution plan, payoff vs. risk involved etc. A rough business plan is a great way to make sure you've covered all your bases. Assess your idea based on SWOT – your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
• Analyze latest trends - If you are looking at a new product or service, does it meet your clients’ needs in new, creative ways? Will it stand out or get lost in the chaos? Explore your idea to see how you can make it different and/or better from the rest.
• Feedback from friends/peers - Ask friends, business colleagues and other strategic people to assess your new idea. Welcome their feedback.
• Find your exact market – You need to actually figure out where exactly will your solution fit into the market and in the lives of people. You may have to relocate to a different place, if it sounds more promising for your new business.
• Prepare financial model – Create a financial model that focuses on how your product or service is created, marketed, and sold to an individual user. Doing this will give you more insight on how your business will function. Your model should also focus on the target sales to earn a profit.
• Find out sources of capital - Possible sources of funding are self-funding, money from friends and family, credit cards, or loans. Depending on the amount you need, a more helpful source can be angel investors and venture capitalists looking to back your mission for a percentage of profits.
• Create a minimum viable product (MVP) - A principle of the lean start-up  method is to create an MVP to determine demand early on and discover what works and what doesn’t. Take your MVP to potential target customers, listen to feedback, and use insights to develop your original model into a successful product or service that fully caters to your customer’s needs.

If you have a bright business idea, register on TheGongzuo.com and bring the idea to us. We will keep all the confidentiality about your idea and will also suggest to improve and groom your idea on the basis of our expertise and experience.

Women in IT Industry

Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple - all are billion-dollar success stories. Thanks to their revolutionary technologies and must-have products. But these tech giants have one more thing in common - a shortfall of female employees.

The big names of Silicon Valley have begun releasing diversity figures that reveal men outnumber women two to one. If we consider purely technical roles in these companies women population is only 10 to 20 per cent of the workforce, whereas it is 57 per cent for all other professional roles in the US.

• Why there aren’t more women in technology?
• There aren’t enough women in the US choosing tech careers. According to a research, only one third female teens responded that STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) would be their first career choice.
• Women's decisions to have children make them less desirable to tech companies filling demanding roles. 
• Women do not consider IT as their choice of career because of hostile male culture.
• Lack of clear career path 

Organizations’ initiatives to attract women

Attracting and retaining women in IT is something several companies and organizations are working toward.  Google offers several scholarships for women in computing and technology. “Google Prize” is a financial award specifically for outstanding female computer science students. The prize is intended to encourage women to enter and remain in the field of computer science.

By inspiring the younger generation of females at high-school age, Microsoft have been showing the lighter side of IT and how women can make a difference to a very male-dominated workplace.

Many IT companies are hiring remote employees and offering flexible schedule to help them maintain work-life balance. This especially proves to be appealing to women who are often juggling career, children and home responsibilities.

Why do companies want gender diversity?

Diversity makes the team stronger. By bringing together different points of view, different personalities and life experiences, organizations build better teams. Studies show that teams with more women perform better. Woman-friendly workplaces are nice places for everyone to work. A diverse collection of skills and experiences (e.g. languages, cultural understanding) allows a company to provide service to customers on a global basis.

With the increased public awareness of the lack of gender diversity in technology field, companies will experience more pressure to disclose their statistics and be accountable for reaching diversity objectives. It is time for organizations to address their cultural bias and create initiatives to attract and retain women.

As more and more tech businesses are taking initiative to hire female employees, obviously, women have a better chance to get hired by a reputed IT company. Register on TheGongzuo.com and post your resume today!

Getting Over Anxiety at the Start of the Job

Starting a new job creates anxiety in even the experienced professionals.  It's not uncommon for people to worry about their performance, ability to come up to speed and adjust to a new work environment.

But, the sooner you can face those fears, the sooner you can dive in and start making an impact. Here are five helpful ways to keep those nerves at bay, ease your fears, and feel more confident at your new job.

1. Be calm - Your body is a great mirror for how your mind is, so if your body is tense and anxious, there is a good chance it is because that's how you are feeling. So relax. Loosen your shoulders. Breathe naturally. Listen to your body, and when you feel it becoming tense or tightening up, make a deliberate choice to loosen up and relax.
2. Trust the process – In a new job, you feel stressed because you try to find the best solutions, provide right answers and impress the right people. But actually, nobody expects you to know everything. Sometimes the brave thing to do is to tell people you’re still figuring things out and that you’ll get back to them with an answer. 
3. Remember, no one is perfect – When you are new in an organization, you think that everyone around you is better in some way; that they know more or do more or are capable of more. Everyone around you is incomplete and imperfect. Everyone has their own strengths, weaknesses, wins, losses.

Best Companies for Women in IT Industry

A recent survey conducted in 2016 revealed that among 60 companies evaluated during survey, only 21.7 per cent of technical roles are held by women. While there is a marginal increase in this per cent over the year 2015, the number of women at senior and executive levels is too low than that of entry level jobs. The main reason behind this adverse ratio is promotion gap.

The top IT companies for women are leaders in recruiting, retaining and advancing more women in technical roles. These companies are committed to building workplaces where women in technology roles can thrive. These companies are assessed on the basis of following metrics:

• Representation of women at entry, mid, senior and executive levels
• Recruitment, retention and promotion of women
• Policies regarding maternity leave, flex time, gender diversity, leadership development programs etc.

Necessary IT Skills For An App Developer

Mobile phones and applications are growing and adjusting with how we communicate and work. The technology is exciting and evolving, new devices are popping up all over the place, and there is a very high demand for developers. 

There is no specific minimum qualification for this career. However, a person looking forward to learn Mobile Application Development is expected to have received some sort of computer programming training, either from a school/college or a training center. Acquaintance with the programming basics is a must, since application development is all about programming and creativity. Any computer savvy person might be fit to learn how to develop mobile applications but being able to develop mobile apps requires a specific set of skills.

Following are the technical skills, which will help a programmer/developer to excel in app development.

Top 10 Job Portals in USA

We all wish for that plum job that offers a great workplace environment, excellent remuneration, work-life balance and good opportunity for growth. But where do we begin our search for such coveted positions? Well, here is a list of the 10 most preferred Job Portals in USA.

1. TheGongzuo.com
Searching for the best opportunities is not only easy at The Gongzuo job portal, but also accurate. The portal has tweaked the systems to allow you to refine your search to the finest detail imaginable. Even the information of job seekers is categorized clearly which allows easy filtering.

2. CareerBuilder.com
CareerBuilder is a well-known and reputed job portal that provides resume posting, job listings and directions to job seekers. Experts are at hand to offer career advice and best possible solutions. The site offers local and national job listings as they have collaborated with many newspapers.

3. Dice.com
If you are looking for technical jobs, Dice.com is perfect. You can search by company, job title, keyword and location. If you need some career advice, experts at Dice.com are quick to help.  There is a news section for avid techies to keep abreast of current trends.

4. Glassdoor.com
A great place with a community of people, jobs and companies, Glassdoor is a veritable network of members and connections. Members of Glassdoor can spot Inside Connections at a company through their Facebook network and view recent job listings.

5. Indeed.com
You have access to zillions of job opportunities, job boards and newspaper classifieds. The site helps you tap other online sources of job postings.

6. LinkedIn.com
When you are part of LinkedIn, you are part of the world’s largest professional network on the Internet. The site allows you to search, view jobs that match your profile and track companies of interest.

7. Linkup.com
Linkup.com is a reliable job site that connects applicants with authentic job listings. Here the jobs are sourced directly from company websites, so it is a good way to avoid spam, scams and duplicate job listings.

8. Monster.com
Applicants search for and apply for jobs online. They can upload their resume and also read about the company. Even information about salary and career advice is available on the site.

9. SimplyHired.com
Simply Hired provides access to millions of job openings across all job categories and industries, and job aspirants can benefit through their enviable network of thousands of partner sites.

10. TweetMyJobs.com
Job aspirants at TweetMyJobs are now part of a globally well-known social and mobile recruiting platform. They can have a say as to where the matches can be sent either as text, social media or email and how often they would like to receive job alerts.

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