No More Résumés, Say Some Firms – A résumé doesn’t provide much depth about a candidate, says Christina Cacioppo, an associate at Union Square Ventures who blogs about the hiring process on the company’s website and was herself hired after she compiled a profile comprising her personal blog, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, and links to social-media sites Delicious and Dopplr, which showed places where she had traveled. ”We are most interested in what people are like, what they are like to work with, how they think,”….Read more

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I was reading through Alison Doyle’s job search post  and it is interesting but it lacks proof that professional internet branding (What we call ProfessionaliBranding) is really necessary for your job search or furthering your career. I agree with Alison that Professional Branding is very important. I also know that as an intelligent consumer you need facts that will demonstrate the importance of ProfessionaliBranding and how it relates to you. You also need to know  how being  found online leads to getting hired and furthermore why “being found” is in fact the “new job search”.

Everyone has focused on personal internet branding but when it comes to job search-most employers are interested in your personal brand as well as your ProfessionaliBrand to form opinions about your employability according to a study reported by Microsoft.

You must take charge of your internet brand and make it professional especially considering the The Federal Trade Commission in the US gave the go ahead to tracking everything you say and do on the internet by Social Intelligence for future use by employers in deciding your employability.

The bottom line is you better change your personal brand to a Professional Internet Brand and right away.

According to article in the WSJ, as well as my own research, employers have changed their online strategy when it comes to hiring. They are dropping the job boards and no longer solely relying on the applicants coming through their career portals. Companies have decided to go back to recruiting. Being inundated by online applications and not having a reliable system for sifting through the mass of applications, employers were left with no choice.

Employers are clearly turning to sites like LinkedIn and facebook as well as advanced search strategies to find candidates. Case in point; do a search of Indeed.com and enter the keywords recruiter social media and see how many employers are seeking to stack their HR teams with social media savvy recruiters.

Ask yourself this very important question…Are employers knocking on your door with offers? If not then there is something wrong with your ProfessionaliBranding strategy and you need to fix it quick.

Many professionals need to be proactive about job search rather than reactive once they become unemployed. Now is the time to develop a ProfessionaliBrand that will get results. This includes a LinkedIn profile that shows up first in search, your own online web site that lands on the first page of Google when an employer searches for someone with your skills, a facebook and twitter strategy that puts you in the limelight. When you do this right you no longer have to look for job but rather you Get Found and Get Hired.

Plain and simple job search is no fun. “Clicking and sending” your resume is not a job search strategy and clearly is no longer working for most career professionals as detailed in the WSJ article. So why not attract job offers 24/7 and this way you never have to look for another job again.

We have been setting up ProfessionaliBrands for our clients as well as coaching them in successfully landing a new job. Many of our followers find it beyond their financial reach to have us develop their ProfessionaliBrand and asked us to put together a Do-it-Yourself, step by step system they could do on their own. So we did! We developed a professional product that is affordable and can be implemented in an easy step by step fashion; check it out. Make sure to Get Found in order to Get Hired.

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Recent surveys have shed light on just how discontented Americans are with their jobs. The Conference Board, a market information company that also publishes the Consumer Confidence Index, reported in a study that less than 50% of Americans said they liked their jobs. In one study human resources firm Chiumento, discovered that 51 per cent employees remain in their current position for the salary. A study by The Segal Company, a New York-based compensation, benefits and HR consultancy found that the biggest driver of turnover for employees under 40 is dissatisfaction with career opportunities and job content.

If commuting is the favorite part of workers workday some thing is wrong with the choice people are making when it comes to choosing their work, as the followingsurvey reported in the Washington Post reveals: Tellingly, when asked to name the most enjoyable part of their jobs, the top answer — just above enjoying the company of co-workers — was the commute.
“If the commute is one of the best aspects of your job, that really illustrates how much dissatisfaction there is,” Franco said.

A survey from CareerBuilder.com reveals that 4 out of 5 Americans are not working their dream jobs. (EmployeeSurvey White Papers: http://www.nbrii.com). If 80% of workers are not in their dream job that is a scary thought. Are you one of the 4 out of 5 that does not love your work? If you are you need to do something about it before job stress starts killing you. According to a paper by The University of Massachusetts Lowell, A substantial body of evidence shows a strong correlation between workplace stress and the development of cardiovascular problems such as hypertension and myocardial infarction (Belkic 2004, Landsbergis et al. 2004). In the past most studies were related to men and showed direct correlations between job stress and heart attacks in men.
New studies now clearly show the same effect in women. Findings presented at the American Heart Association’sScientific Sessions 2010 clearly demonstrate this: the risk of experiencing any cardiovascular event, including heart attacks or procedures to open clogged arteries, was about 40% higher in women with job stress, compared with women with little on-the-job stress. http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20101114/job-stress-may-raise-womens-heart-attack-risk

The bottom-line is if you are not satisfied with your work –it is killing you- do something about it!

Transition to Hired offers programs to get you hired in a job that is right for you; check out PassionQuest.
GetHiredFastTrack programs are also available to get you in the right job for you, more information at www.TransitionToHired.com or call them at 888-277-8798. Get the job that is right for you- your life depends on it!

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Linkedin- check your public profile URL – make sure that you make it keyword rich, reflecting your profession’s keywords, rather than simply your name, linkedin.com/in/yourname but rather linkedin.com/in/keywords.

This way you get an SEO boost, many who search are not connected to you yet can search LinkedIn profiles using Google.

Your name is already easily searchable on LinkedIn- no need to add it to your public LinkedIn URL.

For instance my public profile URL is ca.linkedin.com/in/GetHiredFastTrackExpert

Recruiters and employers search based on keywords that represent your profession.

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What if you could always have a job and never ever ever ever have to worry about looking for a job again? What if jobs came knocking on your door? How to exploit Google to guarantee yourself a job?

Last time we talked about visibility and how visibility can insure that  jobs come looking for you.

A quick recap:

Visibility is being ‘findable’ and ‘plastered’ all over the place in your field. It is also about how you are automatically perceived favorably by others due to your name being associated with other notable people in your field.

Visibility: is who you know but more importantly it is who knows of you. This requires emphasis -it is not who knows you but who knows of you.

Who is your best  friend when it comes to being ‘visible’? Well you knew this right? Google! Your visibility is directly proportional to the square root of your years  of experience divided by your compensation. Hell no! It is simply your high Googlability. According to our friends at Wikitionary, Googlability is ‘The ease  with which something can be found  using the  Google search engine’.

Now of course we want that ‘something’ to really be something …to be you.

The goal is when anyone is searching for an employee or the media needs an expert, you pop up high in the  search rankings  …at the  minimum on the first page of the search results. That my friends will guarantee that you will always be in someone’s sights –you will be amazed by how many people from far flung places will be contacting you.

SEO- search engine optimization is a term used for describing the process by which one makes an internet item rank higher or be ‘most findable’ by a search engine-like Google or Bing. I do not use Bing – so ‘I have not Bing there done that one’ yet! But I know a thing or two about how to ‘get it up’ in Google.

The average person thinks they are doing great when it comes to Googlability because they say to me “When I enter my name  in Google I rank high.” I say who cares…who’s searching for your name? Who’s looking to ‘hire a name’ anyway?

The first thing to realize is that your name does not mean much when it comes to search engine search. Why? Because  Searchers, Human  Resources, Managers and Recruiters/Head-Hunters, who are seeking a target to recruit, do not search you by name but rather they search you by specialty, geographical region and frequently in combination with the first two, by company name. They usually don’t give a hoot what your name  is rather what your title/specialty is and where you are  located.

SEOing yourself is not difficult. Showing up high in the rankings through organic means takes some time that  is because of the way search engines work. So now is the  best time to start and to be smart and learn how to jump ahead of your competition quickly without waiting for organic SEO ranking. 

So what are some real valuable shortcuts to getting high ranking  quickly? Answer: joining or ‘posting on’ high Googleable ranking web sites, like LinkedIn, YouTube and believe it or not Kijiji (which can be used strategically and simply to bolster ranking  and visibility, more  about  this one later).

When it comes to professional career visibility nothing beats LinkedIn.

LinkedIn ranks  so high in Google, it is a wonder it does not need oxygen.

A well thought out profile and  title in LinkedIn with the right keywords is worth tons of easy attention. If you are  not on LinkedIn then when you are done reading this get on it ‘tout de suite.’ www.linkedin.com

Let me give you an example: if you enter these 3 words into Google: operator lcmsms Toronto (which means an operator of a mass  spectrometry instrument in Toronto) the third and the fourth  non-paid Google results are  Alpana Parikh – Canada  | LinkedIn. This is what I am talking about! This person is a category killer because whenever anyone is looking for an LC-MS/MS Operator in Toronto  …guess who they are going to find.

The key here is that the  key words in her profile show up more than once. LC-MS/MS shows  up 11 times and Operator shows up twice, and ‘LC-MS/MS Operator’ (the words in combination) shows up twice. For your information, Google makes no distinction between lcmsms, or lc-ms-ms or LC-MS/MS it is all the  same to Google; dashes hyphens etc… do not mean anything to Google –Google does not distinguish them. Lastly she also has joined a LinkedIn Group that has LCMS in its profile. She is doing everything right except  for one very important strategy she  is not using if she  wants to rank first.

If she wants  to rank first for that  search all she  has  to do is change her LinkedIn title from ‘Experienced Pharmaceutical Professional’ to ‘LC-MS/MS Operator’.  This a classic mistake most people make -they want to look like they have a broader appeal in fact that  works against them, because a searcher never looks for an ‘experienced pharmaceutical professional’ as a keyword search. It is just too general a search. I am not criticizing this person’s entry  rather she has an excellent profile from a keyword perspective- if she wants to improve it she  can change her title.

So now it is your turn to be a category killer. Think like a searcher. What would he/she be Googling when looking for someone with your expertise? Make sure you enter your keywords over and over again in your LinkedIn profile.

The idea is you want to dominate the  top 5 or 6 search results. You can do this by signing up to YouTube with an account title like ‘lcmsmsoperator’ and then posting a number of videos about yourself –i.e. for instance 2 or 3 minute videos about yourself and your experience. Of course make sure you edit them  so you look good and sound  good. Then put the right tags in your video description and tags  like “lcmsms operator Toronto, Toronto lcmsms operator, operator lcmsms Toronto etc…” and I guarantee, you will dominate those top spots in Google.YouTube and videos are loved by Google since Google owns YouTube.

Lastly if you post your resume on Kijiji you will also get  high ranking. I recommend you take your specific address off and just put your city, for instance in the  above  example – the  city would be Toronto, and also use a new web based email address for your resume on this posting because you will get  a lot of spam. There are pros and cons to posting your resume on the  Internet, if you do it right by guarding your privacy and do it strategically to get  ranking  it can really pay dividends for you.

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You just got a new job. Great! You figure “Thank God my job search is over and all I have to do is get through the test… the 3 month work triathlon. Put out real hard for the next 3 months until I pass the probation period, then I can pull back a bit and get into cruise mode.”

In the back of your mind something is still nagging at you, “will I still be safe after three months?” Well my friend, I have news for you and it is not what you are thinking. You are thinking that I am going to say “You can’t cruise you have to keep putting out real hard so you don’t get laid-off or fired again.”

NO! Look there is only so much you can do –and you are not in control of your fate at work. At any time the company can be sold, your boss could change, a fire can ruin the building, your boss could decide to stop taking his/her Prozac and turn into a big big gigantic meanie…you just never know what lies hidden in the treacherous waters of employment.

In fact, cruising or finding your work balance is cool -as long as you don’t turn into a sleep walker… remember respect yourself. You have to be true to yourself, your body, your mind and your spirit… after all it is your life not your boss’. With the above in mind why not make it easy to always be employed.

What if you could always have a job and never ever ever ever have to worry about looking for a job again? What if jobs came knocking on your door? What can you control?

What you can control is your “visibility”, that my friend is your key to being employed. Some of the big thinkers call it branding and marketing yourself but I like to call it your visibility. What is visibility?

Visibility is about how visible you are to everyone in your field. Visibility is being “findable” and “plastered all over the place” in your field. It is also about how you are automatically perceived favorably by others due to your name being associated with other notable people in your field.

Visibility: is who you know but more importantly it is who knows of you. This requires emphasis -it is not who knows you but who knows of you. You need to be findable, and notable. Now I did not say you need to be great and the best in your field – I said simply notable.

Let me give you an example –McDonalds is one of the most notable and visible names in the restaurant business and one of the most successful. Do they make the best hamburgers in the world? Personally I feel far from it –I believe many hamburger restaurants make much better burgers. Why is McDonalds so successful? Visibility and association.

They are in front of their most important audience children-they target children not adults. They have cartoon characters as their front men (Ronald and his gang) and celebrities as well. They target their best audience -kids, and maybe even your kids. Boy does it work. A tantrum screaming kid who wants his/her happy meal or an excited kid wanting McDonalds as a reward is a powerful weapon against the better judgment of adults. Ronald wins to the tune of $22.74 B that’s right folks- 22 billion dollars a year.

What’s my point? You do not have to have the best product to make it big you just need the right visibility, the right marketing approach and you need to target your audience. When children think fast food they think McDonalds, when they think hamburger they think McDonalds, when they think happy restaurant they think McDonalds. It is excellent and a bonus if you are the best in your field but that alone will not make you visible. You still need more. Let’s assume you are good or even fair at your job. What can you do to become more visible and grab your audience?

First you need to identify who is your target audience? Your target audience is decision makers –ranging from front line Managers to CEOs, peers/colleagues, and human resource professionals in your field as well as head-hunters. And Secondly you need to be visible to your target audience.

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Have you ever prepared for an interview using an ”interview how to book”? Then you did everything by the book and walked out of the interview knowing in the root of your soul that you aced every question. Yet, you still did not get an offer!!!

If it is any comfort you are not alone- but who needs comfort when you have to eat, right!

The reason you did not get the offer is that you failed to understand the most powerful law of human motivation-we like people who are like ourselves and that goes for the hiring process –the decision maker a.k.a. “The boss” likes people who are the same as her that is who have the same “Hiring-Archetype”. There are only 4 hiring-archetypes. Once you establish which archetype you need to influence during the interview, it all becomes real simple-to deliver your secret weapon.

Sales–Archetype – You need to be a seller

How to identify- look for them to be confident, candid, direct, high-energy, closers

This type of hiring manager is a survivor, a fast talker, fast thinker, someone who is hard to nail down. She has not spent much time thinking about the “real candidate” vs. “ideal candidate”. This is the take charge type who wants someone who is sharp and has a “proven track record” and she controls the whole hiring process.

She knows it when she sees it. If you think quickly on your feet, you are polished and look and dress the part, as well as have the right answers- she might even hire you on the spot. She will rewrite the job description. This is the type you can influence the easiest as long as you have rehearsed your lines and can deliver like an actor.

What to do in the interview- be polished, spit shined, answer quickly and sharply and to the point- make sure to let your interviewer dominate the interview. It is OK for you to point out that you are a bit of a rebel, you can break the rules in order to get the job done and you can work independently.

Service-archetype- You need to be a server

How to identify- these are the friendly talkers-they can not shut up, they may even
have cookies or candies on their desk

This archetype is the structured and the rules type, since customers are their number one priority they want to make sure they hire employees that can follow the rules and balance the rules without giving away too much to the customers. No matter what type of industry insurance, telephone, and cable you name it, these archetypes track and control employees with computers. Everything is measured and quantified.

No decision is made independently here- everything is done by committee.

This is where the resume is the most important part of the whole process. If the resume is customised to the job description then the pre-screening is done ahead of time-the interview is just a formality. In most cases the references are done before the interview.

You have to patient, nice and service-oriented and play by the interviewing rules and you will get the job.

What to do in the interview-Be friendly and communicative. Make sure not to get caught up in a chit chat- you need to take control of the interview so you can actually talk since the interviewer tends to talk too much and use up all the time. Make sure you make your answers precise so they actually register with the interviewer,. When they are focused they will key on the resume for most of their questions so make sure you know your resume.

Creativity archetype-you need to be a creator

How to identify this type-they are artsy, and usually disorganized or a bit crazedthings are usually unstructured and or unpredictable. They usually don’t like to talk too much- they want to get back to creating.

These are people that are artistically driven and/or designers or inventors like in the advertising industry, fashion or even the high-tech industry. They hire randomly andunpredictably from many different industries. The industry is not as important as the projects the person has done.

A resume does not mean much here nor does an interview unless you bring along patents, a portfolio, or mock-ups etc… these are “the resumes” that get you hired in an interview.

What to do in the interview–It is harder to get hired here because if you are this type you are usually unruly, you do not fit well with the corporate culture, you tend to beat to your own drum and your HR interview is like having your teeth drilled without any anaesthetic. So with your potential boss you must show your creative abilities and with HR you must show that you are reformed and a good rule follower and you are looking for a long term opportunity- you must force yourself to be communicative remember HR is a service archetype.

Scientific archetype-you need to be scientists

How to identify this type-controlled, cautious, rule oriented, planner who has an orientation towards accuracy with a compulsion to try and reduce risk.

This is the type that has a system or a test. The process is always the longest it goes through checks and double checks and then a probability of candidate success is tabulated. If you score +/- 5% within normal range then it goes back to the hiring committee for verification of the numbers. Then and only then do they make an offer. Usually they make you an offer at a lesser level telling you that once you prove yourself they will promote you. Even after your hired they are still not sure if they made the right decision since there is always a possibility that their calculations were wrong.

The trick here is to crack the test. What is most important to them? What are they keying on? Once you know the test and the personalities involved you are on your way to an offer.

What to do in an interview- make sure you have the numbers and the facts straight. Cowboys are not welcome, tread carefully and cautiously make sure you pay attention to details. One wrong answer puts you out. Instead of guessing say with confidence ”In this case, I would do as I normally do, that is go and find out or figure out the RIGHT answer before I proceeded. And then for good measure I would re-check it or have it checked for accuracy. (They will really like the double checking it part).

Your secret weapon
Know your archetype and deliver accordingly- like attracts like

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Does this ever happen to you, you are all gung ho, you have read the latest on making marketing calls and selling yourself to decision makers directly by telephone. You have your list of 10 targets to call and after 5 calls all you have hit is voice mail. You remember the instruction you read “do not leave a message, call back instead” so you plod on. After 10 calls, still no humanoid, so you throw in the towel and go back to clicking and sending your resume. STOP! Hold on to the towel you will need it for wiping off the champagne bottles.
Come on, I know you are dying to leave a message but what type of message should you leave?

Try these out:
The pre-emptive strike! (One of my favs)
This one works because you are anticipating the major objection the decision maker, you are calling, will have… and that objection my friend is skepticism. Bill, this is John Doe calling and I am calling to find out if you can use a top notch professional on your team. And believe me …I know you are probably getting a pile of calls like this every day from desperate people looking for work. Saying the same thing, over and over.
Bill, I want you to know that I am really different and my skills and ability to grasp problems and eliminate problems and make positive contributions have been proven year after year.
Could you please return my call so we can discuss how I can help you?

The rapport builder
This one is great at building rapport with your target. The approach is to leave a query message and to keep in mind less is more –you are simply playing to their curiosity so that they call you back.
Bill,…Do you ever look for senior engineers for your team? I have an interesting proposition to discuss with you. Please call me at ……

How to know when to make a follow-up call and how many total messages to leave.
I am frequently asked “How many messages should I leave and when should I follow-up?”
Use the 4/3 rule. Leave up to 4 messages 3 days apart and leave the same message 3 times; the 4th message- you put a twist on it. The 3 day pause leaves enough time for the person to respond and also spreads it out enough that you are not viewed as a stalker. By using the 3 day spread it is still close enough that you are remembered. When you get to the 4th call it’s been 12 days and by now the person thinks of you as a friend (OK you hope)-it does work.

The last message put a twist on it, like this:
Bill, its John Doe calling. This is important. I have tried reaching you but we have not connected yet. If the day time is not the right time to have a discussion, can you leave me a message with a time and date when I can reach you and I will make sure to make that call. Thank you, Bill. Here is my number again…

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