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Since graduating from college years ago, I've learned that I don't know much at all. How's that for reassurance after spending four or more years working on that degree? But unlike college, learning new skills as part of your professional development is way more fun. Depending on your career goals, you can pick what you want to learn and the rewards are much more enjoyable. (Think promotions and raises.) Even if you're picking up a new skill for fun, lifelong learning is a habit any employer will find attractive because skill development requires patience, persistence, and a little discipline. I'll admit: Sometimes I just want to take a nap instead of learning about SEO. Though we can't add a new skill directly into your brain, Zapier can help you automate the tedious tasks in your day by connecting web apps. Our automatic workflows, which we call Zaps, send information from one app to another, so you can stop worrying about copy/pasting and can focus on ...

A lot of people are looking for a job right now. Most of them—70 percent—think automation skills will help them find one. That's according to a new survey by The Harris Poll commissioned by Zapier. The survey shows that the pandemic is having a profound effect: roughly 41 percent of unemployed Americans say they were recently let go from their former employer due to COVID-related reasons. With so many Americans seeking new employment, this could explain the desire for people to find new, marketable skills that make their applications stand out. About Zapier: Zapier helps businesses grow using the power of automation to connect 2,000+ apps. Founded in 2011, Zapier has always operated as an entirely remote company, and today has 300+ employees working in 30 countries around the world. Most job seekers think automation skills will help them land a job More than two-thirds of job seekers (70 percent) believe knowing how to use automation tools will help them land their next job. T...

I don't like networking. When I hear the word, I imagine the ultimate schmoozer, thanks to reductive platitudes like "It's not what you know, it's who you know." My mentor put it to me in a different way: always be flirting, or ABF. No, this doesn't apply to romance, and you don't need to be creepy. The idea is that you should be building relationships, no matter where you are in your career. When the time inevitably comes when you're looking for a new job or freelance opportunity, you won't need to scramble through your contacts to reach out to people you haven't talked to in years because you've been building connections all along. Once I approached networking from this perspective, it benefited my career tremendously. Every job or freelance opportunity I've had is because of a relationship I fostered elsewhere. I had the skill to back it up, but that connection is what got me through the door, every time. This kind of automatic...

Like countless small businesses across the U.S., Iavarone Bros., saw its world change this year. The onset of the COVID-19 crisis caused the gourmet Italian market chain's lucrative catering business to dry up overnight. Meanwhile, foot traffic at Iavarone Bros.' four Long Island locations dropped dramatically. Without a change, the 93-year-old business was facing financial disaster. But thanks to some quick thinking—and automation powered by Zapier—Iavarone Bros. did more than weather the storm. It thrived. The challenge: Building a new business model … in about a week As New York locked down amid COVID-19, company leadership knew they had to find a way to serve their customers. The answer was obvious: home shopping. Even if customers couldn't have Iavarone Bros. cater their event or walk into a store, they could still order prepared food and retail products. "When COVID-19 hit, we lost all our catering business. Thanks to automation, we've picked it all up...

It's likely that college life will largely take place remotely this year. I'm sure college students are trying to prepare, mentally, for that reality. I'm not a college student and haven't been for a long time—I graduated in 2007. My college experiences are totally irrelevant in a modern context, and I never took a single online class. It's safe to say I have no idea what college students are going through right now. What I do know about is working from home. I've made my living writing on the internet since 2009, and almost all of that time was spent sitting alone at my computer trying desperately to forget how fascinating the internet is so I could get work done. I suspect that's relatable. I like to think I've learned a few things in a decade, and that some of it might be useful for students during These Challenging Times™. So here are a few strategies that have helped me succeed in remote work—hopefully they'll make virtual learning easier for...

You want to send an email, just not right now. No problem—it's easy to schedule an email in Gmail. Maybe you're responding to work emails at an embarrassing hour and don't want the recipient to know. Maybe you want to send a message to someone who is currently on vacation. Or maybe you just want to send out the same email every day, week, or month. Whatever your reason, here's how. How to send an email later To get started, compose an email, the way you normally would. When everything is ready, click the down arrow to the right of the Send button. You'll see the Schedule send option. By default, you'll be offered a few times—later this morning, in the afternoon, or on the morning of the next work day. Click one of these three options, or use the Pick date & time button if you have a different time in mind. When you're done, the email is scheduled. It won't be sent until the time specified. And if you change your mind before go-time, hea...

You probably do most of your non-work communication through text messages, right? That's why businesses want to market through text messages: 90 percent of text messages are opened within three minutes , so it's a clear cut way for brands to capture the attention of their audience. As a consumer, you've probably experienced SMS marketing—just look through your phone for the offers and promotions that brands have texted you. But one thing brands often miss is the opportunity to use two-way SMS marketing, the conversational segment of SMS marketing. Here, we'll define two-way SMS marketing, show you how it can make you more money, and explain how it fits into your marketing strategy. What is two-way SMS marketing? Traditional SMS marketing is about campaigns . Two-way SMS marketing is about conversations . Let's use Usual Wines as an example. They're a fast-growing brand that sells wines by the glass directly to consumers via its website (I just ordered thei...

When I got my first YubiKey, I plugged it into my laptop, tried setting it up with a few accounts, then gave up. For a year and a half. It doesn't matter how computer-literate you are, or how much you value security—something about the YubiKey just feels confusing. But it doesn't have to. The YubiKey is a device that makes two-factor authentication as simple as possible. Instead of a code being texted to you, or generated by an app on your phone, you press a button on your YubiKey. That's it. Each device has a unique code built on to it, which is used to generate codes that help confirm your identity. Press the button and you can log in. We could get into the math, and break down the various protocols supported by devices like this, but most users don't need to know any more than "enter your username and password, as usual, then press the button on the YubiKey to log in." A YubiKey is required to access many of Zapier's internal tools, so I've final...

There's no secret recipe for overnight success—but there are ways to give yourself a fair shot. And while you're likely not trying to create the next viral video game, I think any small business can learn a lot from everyone's favorite quarantine game: Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Animal Crossing: New Horizons took the world by storm. It sold over 13 million copies in the first six weeks , and to this date, it continues to bring people in. Here we'll look at a few reasons the game is so popular—and how its success can become a recipe for yours. If you've been living under a rock, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a video game that allows you to design your own island town, populated with up to 10 adorable anthropomorphic villagers with strong personalities, and slowly pay a mortgage you didn't know you were signing up for to a friendly tanuki. You also get to fish, catch bugs, and plant flowers, all in real (and happy) time. Timing matters Animal Crossing: ...

Feedback is like a multivitamin—really good for you, but hard to swallow. You may be a little hurt by constructive criticism from a supervisor, so you ignore the actual thing you need to work on. On the other hand, you might forget about that glowing review from a client and fail to bring it up in a job interview or an annual review. When we don't use feedback to our advantage , we end up hurting ourselves. We forget about our accomplishments, struggle to answer behavioral questions in a job interview, or worse—stunt our professional growth. Tracking anything manually can be annoying, but Zapier can do the tracking for you. Our automatic workflows, which we call Zaps, send information from one app to another, so you can do things like sending any feedback you get through Slack straight to a feedback spreadsheet. Read more about how Zapier works and then sign up for free . Meet the brag sheet We often don't think about our accomplishments until it's time for a performa...

The coronavirus pandemic devastated many businesses in the event industry, and Museum Hack was no different. They run public museum tours and offer private tours for families, parties, and corporate groups as team-building events—and that's not something you can do while social distancing. But Museum Hack found a way to pivot its business model to a virtual team-building service—appropriately called Team Building —and scale in a way they couldn't before. As a small business, Museum Hack was already using Zapier to take care of administrative tasks. With this new social-distancing business model, automation became even more critical to keeping the business running. Here's how Museum Hack used automation to power through the crisis and scale their new business model. Challenge: Identify qualified leads and prioritize action With changes to their business, Museum Hack had to revisit what a "qualified lead" was for new sales processes. "We never did lead s...

In March, a viral leaked email from a Wall Street Journal manager instructed newly remote workers to keep managers informed if they're "taking a break, conducting an interview, in a meeting, or will otherwise be unavailable for a while." This is how you ruin remote work. Managers might as well ask to be informed every time an employee takes a bio break, eats a Snickers bar, ties their shoes, sneezes, scratches their elbow, or tidies their desk. I understand where the impulse comes from. Millions of people are working remotely for the first time, and managers are trying to adjust. Most are used to seeing their direct reports in person throughout the day, and think this gives them an idea of what exactly folks are doing with their time. But here's the thing. Good managers don't actually care what folks do with their time. They care if they get their job done or not. Micromanaging does not work remotely—trust does Remote work stops working when you can't...

It's timeless advice: if a website isn't loading properly, clear your cache. We've all done it, noticed that things work again, and proceeded to not think about the browser cache ever again (until something else breaks). But somewhere, in the back of your mind, you can't help but wonder: what the heck is the cache? Why does clearing it fix things? I care about you, and want you to know things, so let's get into it. What is a cache? There's a Zapier logo at the top-left corner of this page. If you go to another post on this blog, or to the Zapier homepage, that same logo will be there. It's following you. Your browser could re-download the logo every single time you visit a different page on this site, but that would be wasteful. So, instead, your browser stores the logo, and all sorts of other things, on your computer. In the cache. That's all the cache is: the place where your browser stores images, code, and other files to avoid re-downloading th...