Accelerate Your Search™ Now

To accelerate your search you need a strategy that helps you stay focused on the “right” things to build and maintain your network.  I encourage you to balance and nurture your network online and offline.

It is so easy to spend time, energy and effort on the items that take up time yet net you little in real results from your network.  It is also easy to forget to pay attention to the little things that pay big dividends.

There are many tools to help you connect with your network – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.  Technology has made it easy and convenient to connect. 

Yet sometimes technology robs us of the opportunity to really spend quality time with friends, business associates, customers, and possible employers.  Rarely does a technology work as well as a face to face meeting.

One of the “right” things to do in marketing yourself is to meet face to face.  Face to face you have the rare chance to learn more about others and often to explain your business and what you do.

How much face to face time do you have planned for this week?

“There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; it’s what we do with them that’s important.” ~ Ruth Ross

AMBITION: The eager or strong desire to achieve something.

Does your job search reflect your ambition?

Would you be convicted by clear and compelling evidence of your ambition to land the job you want?

Or is there only the slimmest evidence available to demonstrate your intent?  Think about it!

If others were ask to share what you do, how you do it, and the job you want to land, could they share it?

Do you project the end result?  Do you clearly state your end goal or do others need to guess what you do, what value you might add, or if you really could get much of anything done?

What stories are you telling?  What evidence are you presenting?

What are you doing with 3 colors, 10 digits, or 7 notes?

What are you doing with your skills, talent, ability and experience?

Is there evidence of your ambition to land the job you want?

For years I have found inspiration in the amazing and wonderful photos of Dewitt Jones.  His work is joyful and always an inspiration to me.

Dewitt Jones has a great saying ~ “Celebrate what’s right with the World!”   He does this with his gifts and his work. You can find his photos at www.dewittjones.com – Enjoy!

As you enjoy today, celebrate summer, celebrate August or just celebrate life, I hope you do something fun, wonderful, and that you are celebrating what is ”right’ in your world!

Enjoy the week!

What is the best answer or best way to sell myself to land the job I want?

Not a week goes by that someone does not ask this question – there is not one best answer or one best way.   No two people are alike and no two candidates are alike.

The most successful approach it to focus on who you are, your strengths, what you offer and your unique talents.  That’s what sets you apart from the other candidates who will interview for the job you want. 

This approach is not hard but does require focus.  Begin with an assessment of your strengths, skills and talents.  Then plan how to communicate your value in each area.  Build your marketing message and tools showing how you can and will use your talents to provide consistent, performance to help an organization achieve its crucial business goals.  

The reason this is hard for most people to sell their talent and strengths during a job search is they get too focused on the past, or on what is missing or what’s wrong.  Focus first on you and your value. 

It is easy to get focused on what you don’t have, what you need to “fix” or what your weaknesses are, and move into comparison mode, but that is a dead end road to mediocrity.  Invest some time and focus on assessing your strengths, what you do well, your talents and how you can best apply these to the marketplace. 

When you know yourself, your value, your talents, your strengths, and how to communicate what you want, then you don’t dread an interview or talking to a potential employer.  Nor do you need to spend hours fixating on re-wording a résumé or writing a cover letter to fit a job posting, instead you can spend your time on targeted interactions within the organizations who can use and are looking for your skills and talent.

What are your natural talents? 

What pertinent knowledge and skills do you offer the marketplace? 

How can you use your talent to help the organization achieve a significant return on their investment in your salary?

Can you clearly share this information with a potential employer in a few minutes?

Your job, your career, and what you do to earn a living shapes your life and your well being in many ways.  Some people love the break no job allows, some learn to make being unemployed work for them, some love to work and return to work quickly, still others buckle under the stress, don’t know what to do, how to find a new job and struggle to find employment and return to work.  How are you adapting?

The stress of not having a job and looking for a job may not only have major financial and emotional impact, the impact is long lasting.  According to the research by economists Andrew Clark and Yannis Georgellis and psychologists Ed Diener and Richard Lucas that was published the June 2008 issue of The Economic Journal, of the six life-changing events studied, only unemployment has a consistent effect for the five years after the event.  Five years! A 60-month impact!  That is significant. I see that impact daily!  The research is focused on Germans, however I doubt that is would be much different if focused on Americans.

The impact is great for some and not so great for others.  The stress of a job search with little focus, a limited plan, and poor execution can throw a talented professionals into a long drawn out search.

A long search can create financial challenges, stale skills, and adaptation to circumstances that often do become a double-edge sword.  Don’t get me wrong – adaptation is not a bad thing. It is a good thing that people are adaptable and can flex to a change in schedule, changing seasons, or 30% to 40% cut in pay – that is often the difference between a paycheck and an unemployment check.

However, I see adaptation play out on the other edge of the sword too.  Such as behaviors the lead others to make value judgments or have their biases confirmed.  Have you adapted to a more casual dress or appearance, a different view of time or activities, a different sense of urgency or sense of value, or a sense of entitlement?  How you clarified your view of what is important and what type of work you want to do going forward?

In many cases our behaviors and actions are not perceived by others as we intent.  People adapt to their environment over time, some do this with purpose and for some this just occurs.  People get used to everything, a style of dress, pace, culture, weather, and income level. It does take time to adjust but everyone adjusts.

The caution I have for those in a search is that employers know people adjust too.  If your pace, dress, or attitude has adjusted, take a look to see if this adaptation is one that the employers you are targeting view in a favorable manner.  Does the adaptation align with your values and the values or the organizations you want to join?

If the adjustment is not favorable or in alignment, the change may impact how potential employers view you and your ability to get the job done and how you will fit into the culture.  The employer’s perception is their reality. 

If you don’t at least understand the perception of your target employers, it can be very hard to address the needs or concerns.  If the employer’s concern is you have adapted to a slower pace of life or business, or different manner of dressing, and the employer wonders if you can quickly adapt to a high stress, fast pace again, or a standard of business dress, it may be in your best interest to discover and address the concern.

What adaptations have you made?

How do these changes impact your goals?

What are the concerns a target employer might have about your recent adaptations?

Have you adapted too much to being unemployed?

Focus is critical for many tasks and activities.  Your job search is one of those activities where shifting your attention, zig-zagging and shifting your attention from one thing to another without full engagement not only does not net the fastest results it can be deadly to your career.

On the highway recently I was reminded just how deadly just a little shift in focus can be, when I shifted my focus to my directions, then a map and away from the traffic around me.  I did avoid a mishap, yet those seconds of lost focus cost me hours and could have been deadly.  Just as engagement is critical to driving, it is also critical to prevent the slow death of your career.

According to productivity experts it can take 4 to 15 minutes to recover and refocus depending on the complexity of the task and other variables such as your mindset, etc.  That consistent recovery and refocus in time within your job search is inefficient and ineffective.  It may also be the reason you miss or overlook the opportunity right in front of you. 

The impact of lack of focus may be frustration, feeling lost or disappointed.  Those emotions may then create other distractions.

There are three steps to providing CPR to your job search, gaining focus and avoiding the slow costly death of your career.  Those steps are: 1) assess where you are and decide where you want to be, 2) plan how to get there and 3) execute the tasks, activities needed to get where you want to be. 

Continued shifting of focus, zig-zagging, doing too much or diffusing attention during your job search may not just be costing you time, and causing stress, it could also be deadly to your career.  Stale skills are viewed as less valuable in the market; time and stress take other tolls on your mindset and your body.  Lack of focus has been the cause of death of more than one career; will it cause the death of yours?   

Where are you today?

Where do you want to be next week and next year?

What are you willing to do to be more focused in your job search?

Steven Wade Smith tackled three of the myths about hiring the unemployed in the weekly edition of the HR Examiner.  It is a great read.  I hope you will take time to read “Three Myths About Hiring the Unemployed” and share your thoughts and comments below.

Believe it or not, many are passionate about helping others find the job they want, and building teams of talented people to achieve goals.  Recruiters, HR professionals, workforce development professionals, hiring managers, those who have been unemployed and yes, those who right now find themselves unemployed are just some of the titles these passionate people engaged in this worthy work use.  I am proud, as a career strategist to share this passion with so many wonderful and dedicated people.

Myths as I understand them are traditional stories explaining some natural or social phenomenon.  Myths are stories – powerful stories. 

What is your career story?

Are you telling your story in a powerful manner?

One solid way to build your personal brand online and share your knowledge is to write articles for online publications.  Sometimes there are little hassles to know about and avoid.  One of those issues can be your quotation mark style.

If you are publishing articles online and never had this issue – that’s great!  If not, here’s an important tip from Susan Friedmann, CSP.  Susan helps companies put their best foot forward at trade shows and events.  Her focus on increased results, and on building better relationships with customers, prospects and advocates in the marketplace is not only solid information for companies it can help you too.  She is also a literacy volunteer for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Here is Susan Friedmann’s tip to “Avoid a common hassle when submitting articles online”

If you write articles for online publications, you need to change your quotation mark style to avoid hassles.

Many online text boxes don’t accept “smart quote” or “curly quote” quotation marks. When smart quotation marks are copied from a MS Word document and pasted into an online text box such as a blog editor, the result can be text mashed up with incomprehensible symbols. It’s easy to change your quotation marks.

Instructions:

Open a new text document or the document you are working on. Click on the “Tools” menu.
Click on “AutoCorrect.”
Click on “AutoFormat As You Type” in the AutoCorrect menu.
Deselect the “Smart Quotes” option and select the “Straight Quotes” option in the ticker boxes.
Click “Save”

Thanks – Susan for sharing this information!

I appreciated this tip and I bet my readers will too.

Accelerate your search today!

Have a comment, tip or thought?  Post it below.

In Katherine Bindley’s post “Should Women Wear Engagement Rings to Interviews?”  she explores an interesting question.  She addresses elements of interviews and/or negotiations that I still find many people don’t think through completely – the perception of others.  What others think is their reality and it counts!

Everyone (recruiters, career coaches, hiring managers) I know will tell you eliminate distractions and sending the wrong message during interviews and negotiations.  I agree.  One of the best ways to avoid sending the wrong message is to be very clear about your message and to be on brand.

 When you take the time to identify, clarify and communicate your brand you create solid ways to leverage what sets you apart from the crowd and your unique value.  It is one of the best ways to avoid and eliminate distractions.

You may never change the perception of others.  However, a strong personal brand will draw your brand audience and those who value your unique value to you.

Your strong personal brand will help you leverage your strengths; align your values, goals and vision.  A strong personal brand will help you dliminate distractions.

Also with a strong personal brand you will not find yourself asking the question – Should I wear ___<you fill in the blank> ___?  … before an interview, negotiation, or performance evaluation again.  Instead you will prepare with confidence and a smile knowing what you wear is on brand and helps to send your message without distraction.  You will also give the interviewer and the world what is exclusively yours to give.

Do you have questions or comments?  Post them below.

Here are five tips for improving your online visibility with your personal portal profile:

1.  Have a plan.  Think about your brand, what you want to communicate and how do you want to show up online.  Be consistent.  Stay on message and stay on brand.  Start with one site, use it and maintain it. Don’t know where to start?  Explore about.me.

2. Add your photo or branded background.  If you just started your search you may not be ready to do that, so until you have the photo you want to use on your page, or your branded background ready to go, select one of the many backgrounds in a gallery that is a good fit for your brand.  There are many for you to select and use.  You can change and update your background easily in the future.  The prior background photo is saved giving you instant flexibility.  I suggest you add a high quality personal picture that captures you and your brand.  But if you are not ready to do this, or your appointment with the photographer is next week – the background gallery is fine for now and helpful.

3. Personalize your page.  Selecting the font that is right for you and on brand.

4. Add your brief bio. It is easy to go to your Branded Bio file, copy and paste.  Style the page to fit you, be sure to view and proof.  The features on most sites allow you to select color and location of your brief bio.  These features help you stay on brand.

5. Add links to tell visitors to your page where your web content is – make it “one click” away.  Consider adding an email link so visitors can email you directly from your page.

Do you still have a question?

Post it below or join the next Q & A and ask your question or contact me.