Quite a few companies hire professional genealogists in a wide variety of positions. If you’d like to work for a company like Ancestry.com, LegacyTree, MyHeritage, legal offices, and hundreds of other small to large businesses, then it’s a matter of matching your skills and experience to the job you’d like to have and/or getting the education you need. …
Introducing our Graduate of the Professional Development Certificate between June 2019 and October 2021. What an impressive achievement! It took a lot of hard work, patience, and determination to reach your goal. It is time to celebrate the success of all our recent graduate. We are so very proud of you. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CERTIFICATE Lynn Reesor, PLCGS Warmest congratulations to our graduate, Lynn… Our Team at the International Institute of Genealogical Studies ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our Graduate has completed all requirements for our Professional Development Certificate Follow us on Social Media: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. *Note: Please be aware our social media accounts are monitored regularly, but NOT 24/7. If you have any questions, please contact the office directly. Contact information:1 (800) 580-0165 x1Website: www.GenealogicalStudies.comBlog: blog.GenealogicalStudies.com
Are you interested in developing Business Skills to take your genealogical research to the next level? The International Institute of Genealogical Studies offers a Business Skills Package that includes 18 courses to give students a good understanding of how to start and manage a genealogical business. Business Skills Courses – The Foundation – 4 courses Business Skills: Creating a Business Business Skills: Business Administration Business Skills: Establishing & Promoting Your Website Business Skills: Marketing Your Services & Products These four courses form the basic foundation to increase the skills needed for a successful business. The step-by-step process ensures you have covered all the requirements. From set up, to day-to-day management, to finding your online distinction, to letting the world know of your existence, your mandatory business practices will be covered. Business Skills Courses – Finding Your Niche – 2 courses Business Skills: Career Development: Choosing a Niche – Part 1 Business Skills: Career Development: Choosing a Niche – Part 2 An integral part of your Career Development involves Choosing a Niche. These two courses feature excellent suggestions for possible business opportunities available to genealogists. Course materials and assignments allow you to examine the requirements relating to a variety of research themes. After analyzing these results, you will easily see how you can draw from your own unique skill set to enhance your genealogical research strategies for your clients. Business Skills Package – Researcher Essentials – 12 additional courses Creating Genealogy Programs for Adults & the Younger Generation Demystifying Culture & Folklore…
Client Management When you first started your genealogy business, you perhaps did a few projects for family members to get some experience and work out the details of your offerings and fees. At some point, you began actively marketing to obtain new clients. Depending on how long you have been in business, you probably now have had some experience with actual, paying clients. Client Correspondence Although researching, writing, editing can be done alone, much of the work a genealogist does involves communicating with clients on an ongoing basis. These communications include but are not limited to: making appointments discussing projects conducting interviews negotiating a change in the project scope asking for fee payments soliciting feedback Every interaction with a client can affect the business relationship. A positive interaction can enhance the relationship and might even help to smooth over a difficulty or repair a problem. A negative interaction can do all sorts of damage. Technology has brought us many new ways of communication. Email, texting, and social media have become the go-to forms of connecting and exchanging information. However, there are not without their drawbacks. First of all, not everyone uses all forms of communication equally well. In a way, an invoice is also a form of client communication, by which I mean communication between you and the client. You are communicating with the client about what work has been completed and what fee is owed. Take advantage of the fact that there can also be room on the invoice for a comment, such as “Thank you for this opportunity to be of service”…
Client Proposals Many genealogy researchers charge for their services on an hourly basis. This is simple to administer and easy for the client to understand. However, some clients are uncomfortable with an open-ended expense. One way to deal with this is to tell the client an upfront estimate of the number of hours expected for a given project. As an alternative, some genealogists simple quote their clients a flat fee, which is fine as long as the anticipated work fits with the project quoted in the fee schedule. The proposal you present to the client does not have to state all the details of how you will accomplish the work. Focus on what is important to the client – what they will get as an end product and what it will cost them. If you do create proposals, review them periodically to see how effective they are. Be honest with yourself. Review your past proposals to see what has worked best and identify what areas may need more work on your part. One way to find out how accurate your time-based proposals are is to keep a log of the time you spend on each project. By taking our, “Business Skills: Business Administration” course you will come away with the tools needed to create effective proposals for you, your clients, and your business as a whole.