Accelerate Your Search™ Now

For years I have been helping job seekers tell their story in a clear manner.  At some point almost all job seekers figure out the importance of being able to tell potential employers their story, and to respond to “tell me about yourself” in a clear and authentic manner. 

In today’s world managing your personal brand online and offline is not just a good idea, but a requirement.  If you are serious about your career, your job search and your reputation you not only need to be able to tell your story in person in a clear, consistent manner to be known, liked, trusted and hired, you must also be able to tell your story online.

Your online presence, and your online your identity will tell a story.  You can either manage your online presence and your online identity to tell your story or you can allow search engines and maybe others to cobble together information about you.

If you are still sitting on the fence, hoping those around you are wrong about all “the buzz” about social media, or if you still think social media and an online presence is just for tech savvy professionals and not for you, for those in your industry or professional – think again!

There was a time you could elect not to have an online presence, I believe that time has passed. Not having a strategy for an online presence may be very costly.  So maybe you will be lucky and find a job before you need to worry about your online profile, or online identity or maybe not. Stop making excuses and think of the benefits of offering your story.

A solid personal story communicated via your online presence offers a consistent message to help you grab the attention of your audience.  It defines who you are, and what you have to offer with the right amount of history and detail about the value and impact your can offer without choking the reader’s interest with unwanted or surplus details. 

Telling your story well helps your create an emotional connection.  It can be the first step in helping someone, get to know you, and like you.  Once someone has knowledge of you, and finds you likable, you are on your way to creating a foundation for trust.  All lasting relationships are built on a solid foundation of know, like and trust. 

You can overcome first impressions, and the cobbled together story search engines may tell about you, but at what cost?  Do you have time to do that?   Do you want to do that?

In most cases it really comes down to “pay now, or pay later”.  Do you want to invest time and energy now, to be prepared, to establish your brand, and take time to building your online presence now or later?  Do you want to set yourself up to be known, liked, and trusted?  Then spend a little time and energy each week managing your brand, and your online presence, or do you want to take your chances and invest later. 

What are the costs the missed opportunities and that you need to overcome a poor first impression?  Maybe you believe the cost will go down over time!  That has not been my experience neither the experience of most of the people I know.

Everyone has a personal brand and an online identity.  Is your story helping your online presence?  Does it help you accelerate your search?   If not, what are you doing about it?

Will you look at what it takes to accelerate your sucess in 2011?  Will you step up, step out and truly shape your world and the perception others have about you, your brand, your career, your business and your industry?  Or will you leave that and your success to others?

If you have decided to be serious about your personal brand and are looking for some solid resources here is a list good list, 50 Excellent Blogs to Help You Build Your Online Brand.

Take a look at your personal brand and how it can help you accelerate your job search, your career and your success in the new year.  If you have questions about how personal branding can help you accelerate your success join my Q & A calls and learn more or read some of the 50 Excellent Blogs to Help You Build Your Online Brand and take action.

Small consistent actions will accelerate your search, build your brand and help you create the success you deserve.   How did you accelerate your search today?

Well if the courier is Santa, maybe a 5 great lessons.  After reading a great story by Sean D’Souza about why Santa’s marketing works better, I thought about his points and how they apply to job searching.

Thanks, Sean D’Souza for your inspiration.  D’Souza is the founder of Psychotactics, a New Zealand-based marketing consultancy.

Here is my view on what every job searcher can learn from Santa. 

 Lessons from Santa

 1. Be authentic.  Santa Claus is real, not a copy or false.  He is a jolly older man for the North Pole.  With a unique calling, the delivery of gifts to boys and girls around the world one night a year. What do you do? 

2. Be consistent.  Santa is consistent.  Same message and very, very powerful imagery.  Keep it simple.  Think about the consistent message – 3 things.  People remember the 3 things Santa does.   What 3 things do you do?  Do you have a consistent image and message?

3. Be different.  Santa is different.  He does stand out in a crowd.  How are you different?  How do you stand out from the crowd?

4. Be customer focused and know your customers.  Santa is focused on his customers.  Everyone on his team, Mrs. Claus, elves, and reindeer are all focused on his customers.  Who are his customers?  Little boys and girls.  Who are your customers?  How do you show your focus on your customers?  Is your team focused on your customers?  Do you have an emotional connection with your customers?  Do you know where they live and want they want?

5. Give to receive.  Santa gives first.  Do you?  What do you give your customers or potential customers?  What do you give to your network with each week?  What do you give to those who share their time and important information?  Do you know what others want? Do you ask, and then deliver?  Santa does.

How will you apply these lessons from Santa to your job search?   Let me know.

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday at a Networking event, I was speaking with three very talented individuals with different views and concerns about doing what they have passion for doing in their next job.  One who is energizes and excited about what he wants to do.  The second fearful and almost stopped in his tracks from fear, unhappy and afraid to take action.   The third,  so on fire about exploring a ‘love’, hobby and the opportunities in the market place he left behind in college you could feel his energy.

As I listened, I recalled a post from Meg Guiseppi, “Can You Work Your Passion in a Lousy Executive Job Market?” Meg shared the three points, from Curt Rosengren’s article in the US News & World Report article, “Does Having Passion for Your Work Even Matter?” – the point, here is that why passion is such an important investment for your career, was playing out before my eyes and why it is important to your job search as well.

It still surprises me that so many people, elect not to spend a little time to discover or think about what they have passion for and find a way to incorporate that passion within a search to land their next job.

For years I have shared, “Do what you love, money follows”.   To do that you do need to discover what you have passion for and how that aligns with your purpose and goals.

A job search is always challenging.  Work and life will always include bumps in the road.  When you know your purpose, what makes you unique and different, what brings you joy, what you want to do, it is much easier to find and once you are working, it make your career much more fulfilling.

Can you answer the questions?  What do you want to do?

Have you taken time to explore what makes you happy?

What excites you?  What matters to you?

What makes you get up in the morning or stay up late?

What is stopping you from spending the time right now to reconnect with your passions or to answer these questions?

Why are you afraid to do some soul-searching?

Every day I’m blessed that I get to learn from others.  There are many super stars in the world and some “super heroes”.   I am very grateful for those “super heroes” who have touched my life this week.

As you know, I enjoy learning and sharing what others share with me.  This week I want to share a post from City Sylvester.

On June 18 City Sylvester posted “Personal Branding Stars of the Week!” where he shared insightful wisdom from six other inspiring people.  Read and enjoy!

When it comes to using social media for business, yes your job search is business, it is important to periodically assess where you are, what you are doing and if your actions are achieving the results you want.

So often when I talk to top talent about social media they are in one of three camps.  Camp one views social media as threat, silly, and a waste of time. Camp two loves social media, uses tons of different social media sites and activities, they “poke”, “tweet”, “friend” hundreds a times a week without a care, thought, plan, or concern for the benefits or consequences to their brand or reputation.  Camp three views social media a big opportunity and realize the value of the tool.  This camp is looking for smart balanced approaches for using social media and managing its challenges.

Which camp are you in?

No matter which camp you are in you need to grow your social media literacy and realize it is a part of a fundamental shift in the way people interact and business gets done.  It is important for you to have a plan and regularly assess how you use (or don’t use) social media to do business, enhance or build relationships in all aspects of your life.

Here are a few tips smart “top talent” and  top organizations employee when using and planning to use social media:

1.    Listen before you talk.

2.    Invest in training and learn to use the technology.

3.    Know how to communicate and what you want to communicate before you engage in goofy social media schemes or online marketing.

4.    Create a plan and policies for using social media.

5.    Understand the appropriate tone, image and use for the various social media channels.

6.    Build real relationships and connections using authentic conversations.

7.    Use caution if you outsource you social media activities.

8.    Understand the benefits and the consequences of failing to have and follow a plan, current practices and policies for using social media.

9.     Routinely review what you do and the results you get from your using social media activities.

What else would you add to the list of tips?

How are you using social media now?

What are your results?

Last week Dan Schawbel captured the just of Google Buzz and provided four simple steps to begin to use Google Buzz, check out his post 4 Step Personal Branding With Google Buzz .  It is important to have a basic understanding of the many tools available to help you assemble your online presence and build relationships.

How are you communicating the value you add to the world and your future employer?

Being visible and helping those you want to reach find you is not only critical in a job search it is a requirement to accelerate your career.

What are the best tools for you to use?

For years video has been used in career management to help the career minded advance their career.  However, again the Internet is changing how we use video.

Early in 2009, there was an explosion of people recording 60-second video clips and video resumes as local Cable TV groups and others began to help job seekers produce videos designed to grab attention and help people land jobs.

Some of these videos popped and made a great impression and others, well a not so great impression.  This trend was like the early use of VHS tapes mailed to firms by new grads with a goal of landing an interview, some were top quality, well done and others were not.

In December 2009, William Arruda, the Founder of Reach Personal Branding shared his predictions on the top trends for 2010 in Personal Branding.  His top prediction was “Video, Video, Video”.  On Thursday, William Arruda and the Reach team launched personalbranding.TV (PB.TV) if you are interested in how video can help you advance your career and your personal brand you must check this new site out.

I have followed the work of William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson since 2007, when I first read “Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand”.  This is a book I have re-read several times and share with others often.  In my view William is the top expert on Personal Branding and watching his new site and learning from him and team of Personal Branding experts is worth your time.

Instead of just using video to land an interview or to be better prepared to interview by seeing ourselves as others see us, today’s trend is to use video to help communicate your brand.  Are you ready to communicate your brand via video?

We all have a personal brand.  Most of us understand little about how to leverage our personal brand, communicate our personal brand and really build a strong personal brand.  Just as strong corporate brands fair better in economic downturns, so do individuals with strong personal brands.  If you have a strong personal brand and you are clear about your target audience and communicate your unique points of differentiation to the companies you are interested in, it makes a difference in the value proposition.

Check out personalbranding.TV and let me know your thoughts.

What does your brand say about your value in the marketplace?

What do you do to communicate your brand?

To your accelerated success,

Cindy Key