All You Need To Know About The Employer Identification Number

by akhil shahani The days of business planning, incorporation and start-up pains are over. Everything is set for you to start off your new business. Just when you think all the paperwork is done, the Employer Identification Number stares you in the face. What is it? Well, you know that any business entity is required to file tax returns every year. Will your Social Security number suffice for that? Not quite. Unless you are the only person working in the business, you need to get an identification number for your enterprise. This is a unique nine-digit number assigned by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to business entities operating in the United States for the purposes of identification. When the number is used only for identification, it is usually referred to as Tax Identification Number (TIN) and when used for the purposes of reporting employment taxes, it is known as Employer Identification Number (EIN). So, it’s clear that all new businesses need to obtain an EIN. The only exception is for sole proprietorships which do not have any other employees. However, it is a good idea even for sole proprietors to obtain an EIN, so that they can use it instead of their personal Social Security number on bank accounts and legal paperwork. Confused? We’ll make it easier for you. You need an EIN: 1. When you have employees in your company 2. When you purchase an ongoing business 3. When you change your organization type - for example from a sole proprietorship to partnership or corporation 4. When want to hold different accounts in your bank and use EINs for your business and Social Security number for your personal accounts 5. When you have a qualified retirement plan 6. When you file any of these tax returns: o employment o excise o alcohol, tobacco and firearms The EIN is specific to a particular business and you cannot transfer it if you sell or otherwise divest your company. It is very much like your Social Security number which is specific to each individual, and is usually written in the form 00-0000000. To obtain an EIN for your company, you have to file Form SS-4, which is the prescribed application format, with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The forms are available at all IRS and Social Security offices. You can apply for it over phone, fax, mail or online. There is no application fee but the form can take several weeks to process depending on how you ask for it. You may also have to apply for a state EIN in states that charge their own income tax. If you do not have your EIN by the time a return is due, write "Applied for" and the date of the application in the space shown for the number. Do not use your social security number in place of your EIN. With that out of the way, you are truly set to be in business! Hi, I'm Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. If you like to work smart, check out http://www.SmartEntrepreneur.net . It's full of articles and resources to help you start and grow your business successfully. Please visit us & download our special "Freebie of The Month" at http://www.smartentrepreneur.net/freebie-of-the-month.html Article Source: ArticleRich.com

Want to Find and Contact Recruiters? Try These 5 Techniques

by Laura SmithProulx If you're conducting an active job hunt, you're probably aware that working with a recruiter can be an effective method for your search. However, finding a recruiter that specializes in your field can be a daunting prospect. Where should you look? How do you know what to expect? And what precisely should you be prepared to provide? Finding and effectively collaborating with recruiters is mostly a matter of sharpening your networking skills (which is a good idea during any phase of a job search!). Read on for some ways to expand your options and locate key professional recruiting contacts that may also be looking for YOUR expertise: 1 - Avail yourself of professional organizations in your industry. These associations can be a boon to the active job hunter, as they frequently offer job postings, member networking events, and other resources that can help you tap into unadvertised positions. Recruiters who source candidates from a particular industry will often attend professional association meetings. Where allowed, recruiters may introduce themselves with the idea to stay in touch, although most won't solicit members directly. If you don't attend association meetings, there's never been a better time to start. Perform an Internet search for organizations in your industry, and attend some of their events in order to familiarize yourself with potential new resources for your transitions. 2 - Consider automating part of your search. Recruiter distribution services abound on the Internet and elsewhere. What do they offer? For most, this is a combination of fast access to recruiters, plus ease of use. When evaluating different distribution services (such as ResumeRabbit, ResumeMachine, Resume Zapper, and ResumePromotion), be sure to compare distribution coverage (as in the number of major metropolitan areas), plus the number of recruiters that the service claims to have in their network. Two caveats should be mentioned in conjunction with resume distribution: first, not all recruiters appreciate receiving an emailed resume, and may not respond, and second, if your resume isn't a fit for current openings, you may not receive the same level of personal consideration had you contacted the recruiter personally. In addition, if you aren't a great candidate for the requirements of the market, distributing your resume to recruiters won't increase your chances of success. However, in terms of time savings, this type of mass distribution can definitely cut some corners. 3 - Use online social networks to find additional contacts. This method also allows you to view recruiter qualifications and specializations. For example, if you're concentrating on getting out of the mortgage industry, contacting a recruiter who works exclusively with technical sales professionals would not be a fit. Conversely, most recruiters who maintain profiles on LinkedIn or other social networking sites will delineate what they are looking for in a candidate, and this can save you some time. 4 - Build your own online profile to make it easy for recruiters to find YOU. If you don't already maintain your own LinkedIn profile, this is a great time to jump on board. Visit www.LinkedIn.com to build an online presence, add connections from your email address book, and start looking around to see what else is offered, including plenty of job postings and professional advice. 5 - Send a brief query that indicates your interest, and then follow up. After you've identified recruiters that specialize in your field, it's best to attach a resume for perusal, or point to your online profile to give the recruiter more information. Follow up with a phone call to gauge the level of interest and start building a relationship. I recommend sending out a short, pointed letter of inquiry, rather than a wordy description of your skills. Recruiters are by definition quite busy, and they'll appreciate your brevity. To summarize, finding recruiters takes the same type of activity that you would typically engage in for a job search. Be prepared, just as you would be to approach an employer, to review your goals in some detail and decide if there's a collaborative fit. A unique resume authority on executive and IT career search, with experience as a former corporate recruiter, Laura Smith-Proulx, CCMC, CPRW, CIC of An Expert Resume has attained a 98% success rate winning interviews. Visit An Expert Resume to get Laura's FREE E-Course, "The 7 Biggest Resume Mistakes That Can Keep You From Your Dream Job… and How to Avoid Them." Article Source: ArticleRich.com

Several Key Ideas for Small Business Success

by Alan Gillies Everybody wants to be a big player - whether it's a tiny company or an individual employee! A lot of people seem to have the notion that "Bigger is Better", but recently this notion has changed, and the new concept of "Small is Big" has come onto the scene. It is usually true that the bigger you become the more profit you'll earn through a higher overall sales threshold, and the more efficient you get in your operations, the greater status you will eventually achieve. But there is another side to this example - something really unfortunate, which is that the larger you become the more general risk you will deal with, developing increasingly inflexible and out of control individual client relations. Small firms are much more focused in their approach because there is a much greater possibility of innovation and experimentation in their in-house operations. These small companies may not be able to implement the benefits of "global economics", but they are certainly open to every advantage of "local economics". In the present scenario small businesses are more profitable and growth oriented, as they have the potential to earn significant levels of profit and growth - at unprecedented levels, which percentage wise, big businesses cannot possibly match. Small businesses are far more flexible than big businesses, and they can easily adapt to almost any changes if the need arises, as they are able to rapidly implement informed decisions in a short span of time. Small businesses are successful because they know what they are good at - and they do it, effectively and efficiently. They can serve the needs of their customers in an ideal fashion - regularly pursuing personal interaction, with the common result of an ever expanding number of long term relationships. Small businesses have actual direct communication with their employees and stakeholders, giving them much more control over their operations so they are better able to integrate and coordinate all sorts of activities. Also, with respect to the stock market, there are numerous occasions where we find that stocks of small companies consistently outperform the stocks of their big business counterparts. Their stocks can sometimes earn very high returns for their shareholders and at times may even be less risk prone. During really difficult periods of the market, there is also much less impact on their share values compared with the stocks of big businesses. So what do you think, what matters most - thinking big or becoming big? Copyright (c) 2009 Alan Gillies Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the L2L Group. He specialises in supplying Executive Coaching, Training and Consultancy Services to International Businesses around the Globe. Do you want to discover more about these truly impressive business success strategies? Get Alan's essential FREE ebook today! Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com

How to be a Good Manager and Coach

by Madisen Harper Career expert Madisen Harper outlines five simple coaching actions to become an good manager. If you want to know how to be a good manager then you need to learn how to be a great mentor, coach, leader and role model. But despite all their management training (or lack thereof) one of the biggest complaints I hear from clients is that their manager couldn't inspire a dog into action even if they had a steak around their neck! Harsh words! But unfortunately there's not a lot of love in the office and a recent statistic indicates 60% of workers hate their manager. Employees want to be lead by a manager who is clear, focused, results driven, inspirational and most of all team driven. A great leader sees the value of up-skilling their team and are advocates of on-going development. Team members want to work for people they can learn from and coaching is a great way to support and inspire. Here are 5 tips on being a great coach. 1. Ask your team members what skills they would like to develop. I once asked a man in my department, "If there was one skill you'd like to learn, what would it be?" I kid you not, his eyes welled up as he said, "Nobody has ever cared enough to ask that." Wow! Such a seemingly simple question had such a huge impact. In reality, you shouldn't need to ask this question as skill development is usually part of your company's performance appraisal program. Nonetheless, I've discovered, even when it is, there is little activity or coaching to help employees improve their skills toolbox. So put the effort in and nurture your employees. 2. Work on developing 1-3 skills over a 3-6 month period. The bigger the goal, the fewer goals you can work on at any one time. If the goal is complex you don't want to overwhelm or lead them to fail because there's not enough time to invest in success. If the goals are simple, then you can work on a number of them concurrently. 3. Guide, don't give solutions. Coaching is about helping people, help themselves. You can use your expertise to ask people the right questions which in turn leads them to them to the answers they're after. Employees feel a great sense of accomplishment when they realize their success was a result of their own initiative. 4. Uphold accountability. Keep people on track and accountable. Establish tasks that are due every 1-2 weeks and let your team member know they are responsible for completing the tasks and reporting the progress at your next coaching session. If they start to slack off in delivering, it may be a sign of fear, so it's worth taking the time to investigate what's really going on for them. 5. Reward and recognize. It's my personal belief that we need to celebrate life more and a great way to do that is to acknowledge when milestones and goals are met. Sometimes it is as simple as kind words, because quite honestly, we hear so few in our day-to-day lives. Repeat and replicate the above 5 steps as you work through your teams' goals and watch them flourish in their success. Here's to you becoming a coaching sensation. Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com ABOUT THE AUTHOR Madisen Harper is a career expert who provides a proven system to help people take their first jump into a management, team leader or supervisor role. Get her free report on why "Dealing with Difficult People is Your #1 Priority as a Manager" => http://www.BecomeAManagerNow.com . Madisen recently co-authored a book with Dr Wayne Dyer, Brian Tracy & 'The Secret's' John Assaraf & Michael Beckwith.

Time Management Skills - 21 Ways to manage your time more effectively

Are you looking for some inside information on time management skills? Here's an up-to-date report from time management skills experts who should know. Way Never before has the time management skills been so important as now. Today life is very busy for most of us. In the private sector, ask any working mother or a college student working part time to pay for an education. And in business, ask any employer trying to juggle a number of priorities at the same time. With improved time management skills that can make the change from reactive to proactive, we can set goals and take time to work with them. It is no secret that those of us who can better manage our time, get more things done. When you have time to give priority to the everyday issues of our private lives and businesses that need urgent attention, the fall in stress levels and are able to manage our resources more effectively. Here are 21 ways to dramatically improve your time management skills 1. Be decisive 2. Establish clear goals and objectives 3. Establish a daily work plan, the night before 4. Priority Tasks A - B - C - D then re-prioritize tasks with a 1 - 2-3 to identify the most urgent 5. Separating the urgency of the important 6. Using the efficiency of the law enforced, what is the highest value use of your time? 7. Use 80/20 rule management to improve their time by identifying the skills of the tasks that have the greatest benefit and the first 8. Resistance and high-energy diet and regular exercise9. Develop management skills just concentrate on one task at a time Truthfully, the only difference between you and time management skills experts is time. If you'll invest a little more time in reading, you'll be that much nearer to expert status when it comes to time management skills. 10. Ugly toad eat first, making things more difficult in the first place 11. Organize your workspace using the acronym TRAF: Toss - Check - Action - Archives 12. Use travel time to listen to CD's and educational programs to prepare working 13. Develop expertise in key tasks through practice and repetition 14. Working in real time, rapid and continuous development of a sense of urgency 15. Time management skills generally improve when you learn to make decisions quickly, without buts or IFS 16. Redesign work processes, map out and determine what to do and works to reduce the number of steps by 30% 17. Reinvent you once a year. Identify what you need to do to be more productive, because the only constant is change in life 18. Ask yourself the following on a regular basis - knowing what I know now, I'm going to do things the same way 19. Set priorities, identify tasks that can stretch on, ie the lower priorities can wait. 80% of the tasks that have less value and contribute only 20% of productivity 20. Decide to work to live, not live to work. This means working towards a balanced life. The amount of downtime and quality time at work to 21. Being intensely action oriented. This is acting and execution that generates results There you have it, 21 ways to improve your time management. Apply only a few and he was way ahead of the pack. So now you know a little bit about time management skills. Even if you don't know everything, you've done something worthwhile: you've expanded your knowledge.

Approaches to management

By peit14121951

All organizations have objectives. However in a market economy the prime motive of any organization is to maximize owners wealth or to earn a rate of return, which is in line with the risk. In addition, all business have stakeholders such as suppliers, workers, government, community, interest groups such as trade uniions, employer associations and other interest groups such as environmental groups in the contemporary world.

This requires management of a business to plan, organize, control, coordinate and motivate all levels of employees to meet the set and agreed objectives. However, the managment can use appropriate management theories to accomplish the main functions of business. They also provide the requisite knowledge to understand human behavior and feasible human resource policies to control and motivate employees to maximize the potential of all the employees to improve the efficiency and effctiveness of the organization as whole on a continuous basis.

The main management theories are classical managment theories, human relation theories, systems theories, political perspectives of managment and modern contingency theory of managment. The classical managment theories focus is on the principle of specialization or division of labor, specifiic authority and resposibility, prescibed rules and procedures, pyramid structure of organization, low span of control, top down communication channel, less employee direction in the decison making process, mostly authoritiave managment style in planning, organizing, coordinating, control and motivating emplyees. They beleived employees are primarily has to be directed and they are primarily motivated only by money.

They also belived that this theory can be applicable to any organization irrespective of size, nature of activities, nature of employees. the nature of external environment, cultural factors and political factors, group behavioral factors. However, it has been found that even though classical managment theories are used in varying degrees the oversigt of the complex factors at work in organizations may create conflict and dysfunction in organizations particularly in large organizations, where the external and internal enviornment is dynamic and nature of tasks are complex in nature.

The other theories of managment have evolved over a period of time due to the weaknesses observed by organizational theorists in the 19th and 20 th century. In the modern thought, all theories have some relevance, however the choice of these theories is contingent on internal and external environment in terms of dynamics, nature of tasks, nature of managment, nature of employees, motivational factors, political activity, importance of leadership, approriate mangement style development, change managment issues, decentralization vesus centralization, organizational culture. That is in most organizations the size, and the issues as mentined above will determine, which mix of theories are useful in accomplishing the functions of management and management roles in modern organizations. That is managment theories, without context will not work and may create more dysfuctions than improve the organizational effectivess in achieving its set goals.

As mentioed above, the theories of managment are one of the essential store house of knowledge to management. If used wisely, will enable the top managment in undertaking their main fucntions of managment to meet organizational goals in their specific internal and external environment. That is, the contingency approach is the best possible world combined with the insights in to human behavior by other management schools of thought.

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