Accelerate Your Search™ Now

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?

“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

Hubbard’s words ring true for your job search too.  Be careful that you don’t take your job search to seriously or not seriously enough.  Either end of the scale can be fatal to your career.

I have worked with thousands of people engaged in a job search.  Some are not serious enough about the “job search” and others are so serious about the job search it consumes each minute of the day.

Both of these paths will impact your success.  If you are not serious enough you may lose focus, miss opportunities and often extend a search so long that the prolonged search causes damage to your finances, your career and earnings potential.  Being too serious about a job search can also result in lack of focus, damage to your relationships, lack of balance and tons of effort in the wrong direction.

Do you have the right balance in your job search?

What are you taking too seriously in your job search?

What in your job search should be more serious?

Is the job search you are conducting effective?

“Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.” ~ James Allen

This James Allen quote reminds me that my success begins with my thoughts and is nurtured by my thoughts and my vision.   My vision inspires, my thoughts provide direction, my goals act as a roadmap, and daily execution builds exceptional results and delightful conditions.

Having just returned from a wonderful trip that provided my husband, me, and an enthusiastic group of top performers with an opportunity to celebrate a terrific 2009, the most delightful part of the trip was the reminder of the power of a shared vision.  As the trip ended the eagerness and expectation of something just as wonderful for 2010 was clearly expressed.

What is your vision?

How do you cherish your vision?

What action items will you do this week to support your vision?

Don’t tell them about your warts –

“I have these big ugly warts on my feet.  I have had them for two months now.  Some are small and rough, some are growing together.”

WHAT?

That’s right you would not say that in public or to your friends.  Yet almost daily I hear professionals who are looking for their next gig and trying to connect with other professionals, to get referrals and introductions to the employers they want to work for say things about themselves and their job search that I call WARTS!

If you want to increase your connections and referrals, it is critical to educate your family, friends, and the people you meet so they can become your personal advocates.  Doing so helps you create a mini sales force.

If your friends, family and allies know you, know what you do, know about your experience and what type of work you are interested in doing, they can help you.  When you have a team of people who like you, trust you, know you, and can explain what you do.  It is super easy for them to refer you to possible employers, their friends and contacts,  and to help connect you with the best companies and the best positions for you.

Here is one secret so few people use.  The “update letter”.  Use this tool to connect with family, friends and allies.    Most people will be very happy to hear from you, to learn about what you are doing and most will be happy to help if you tell them how they can help you. Be specific.

This is not a WART LETTER – don’t say

Dear Friend:

Poor me, I lost my job, after all these years of toil and I need a job.  Do you have a job for me?

Signed, Mr. Big Wart.

Any letter, email or conversation like that is a burden on all who receive it.  Telling anyone about your WARTS will make them want to run away from you as fast as they can and/or avoid you now and in the future.

Tastefully done an update letter allows you to connect with your network, share key achievements you since you last connected.  It provides an opportunity for you to let friends and family know what you are doing and asking them to think of you if they overhear of or connect with a situation relating to your current interests.

An update letter also provides you with an opportunity to connect, catch up, and talk about business.  You can connect and discover what’s new and or different in life and in the business of your network contacts as well if there is a way that you can help them.

Does an “update letter” really get results?  Not always, but after four months of resisting the idea, here is what happened for one person who decided to send just 10 “update letters”.

One letter went to a former executive assistant, whom he had not seen in 8 years.  She called him after receiving the “update letter”, he took her to lunch, during lunch they talked about family, old friends, business in general and her new job.  In less than a week she called him to coordinate an appointment with the COO of her employer.   The result, an interesting conversation about a new project within a division of the organization scheduled to start in a few months.  What is next?  Another conversation, then who knows?  This grateful executive is glad he composed and sent an “update letter” and connected with someone in his network and is busy updating other advocates within his network.

Who should you send an “update letter” to?

When you compose your “update letter”?

Let me know about your results.

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

“Our words reveal our thoughts; our manners mirror our self-esteem; our actions reflect our character; our habits predict the future.”   ~  William Arthur Ward

This week I encountered one of those people who was so angry and so frustrated, he just had to tell everyone within earshot how he has been wronged due to his age.   The clash was over the top when this angry man shouted at two “millennials” about everything from their education, dress, type of cell phone, and ideas on what would be a dream job.

Just as I was stepping forward to ensure there was not an atomic blast, one of the young ladies this man was targeting with his angry spoke up.  Her words spoken with a slight quaver in her voice turned more than a few heads.  She shared that she thought ‘AGE’ was just an excuse.  Then she shared how that excuse had helped her justify for 18 months, what she wanted to do or say without looking at the impact or the result.

She disclosed how she figured out something very important – to get interviews she had to play up her unique attributes and connect those to the employer needs and follow that by downplaying her unique attributes, including her preferred manner of dress that clashed with employer wants and/or needs or she was going to remain without a job and become homeless.

Her message was that when she stopped blaming AGE and started to think of ways to leverage her differences to provide mutual benefit and stopped her personal “WAR” with older candidates, employer systems and the authority of hiring managers she began to get interviews.

Are you waging a war?

Is AGE a blind spot in your job search?

Are you a highly qualified candidate, struggling to prove your value to companies?

Would you benefit from leveraging your value, attributes and differences?

Are your perceptions and expectations about AGE helping you connect with employers or encouraging them to call ‘security’?

What perceptions should you examine this week?

What is your policy?

Most of you know my background is in Business Operations/Management and Human Resources and the systems and discipline learned over the years have served me and those I serve well.  One of those disciplines is to regularly review practices and policies to determine if they need updating and when there is a policy or acceptable pattern of behavior that needs updating to update it.  Times change and you must to this or your practices and policies get outdated.

Okay, before you say WHAT? – “I’m looking for my next gig and will worry about policy stuff when I land.”   Not looking at what you do and how you handle business and your search day in and day can be costly.  Your personal policies and practices drive your results and help you be effective.  Stop, think, and review at least one area a week, if you at not getting the results you want.  This week look at social media.  Think about and review what you doing.  Doing so should help you be more effective.

Social media is changing.  This week I am looking at my practices for LinkedIn and Twitter.  I would encourage you to do the same.  Here are some questions to help you.

Do you have a policy or a practice?

Do your practices (or habits) help ensure you are effective and use your social media time wisely?

How much time do you spent connecting via social media?

Is the time productive and focused?

What are your goals for using each type of social media?

Can you quickly explain how you use social media?

How is social media helping you reach the goals you set for your search?

Can you measure the results?

Now use your answers to review what you do, your habits and what, if anything you should change.

Not being a social media expert, I depend on experts to help me understand, learn and be effective with all the tools and systems I use.  Nancy Marmolejo is one of the experts I trust to help me with social media.  On January 11, Nancy posted a great tip where she talk about the “spin cycle” and shared great information.  Her tips are geared to business owners, but they also apply to job seekers.  After all you are the owner and marketer of your talent, skills and experience.  Read Social Media Tip: Go Micro, worth reading.

If you review your practices and need some help to refine how you use social media to accelerate your job search, do two things.  1) Leave a comment below about what you are doing that works and what you need help with or have questions about, and 2) contact me directly if you need help.

It amazes me that I forget the basics and no, it is not age! When reviewing my year end results I noticed that in some case I just stopped doing what I USED to do. The impact – POOR Results!

The kicker is it’s a phenomenon that happens to most people in business and in life from time to time. Many businesses I work with refine a process, train all, execute with gusto, then over time move on to other things assuming the basics are not that important day in and day out.

In the beginning, like with a new job, you learn the basics and you do them right every day. Taking a no-exceptions, no-excuses approach, then time go on and you stop executing on the basics, you rest on your laurels, get lazy, stop doing the things you need to do. Slowly things change and then you experience a slump.

If you stopped the basics and BANG! things changed in an instant you might return at once to the basics. It rarely works that way. How it works is you do the basics and get results, then build on those results.

If you stop doing the basics, you do at the start of your job search to generate leads and build your interview pipeline. If you stop networking, calling contacts and employers, slowly your results are impacted. The pipeline runs dry and the result is you don’t have interviews, without interviews, you won’t have offers and without offers no new job.

Then there are the lists of excuses such as “no one if hiring”, “jobs are go to China”, “no one calls me back”, “there are no openings in my field”. Slowly, fear, worry and lack of focus set in, and then you begin to reinvent the wheel and search of new things to do in lieu of executing the basics.

If you want solid results, go back to basics. Define you target job, and target the short list of companies you for whom you are interesting in working and get the interviews.

Ask yourself these questions:
What basics of your job search have you been UNWILLING to do recently to get interviews?

What have you stopped doing that you did regularly in the beginning of your job search?

What tasks have you gotten lazy at executing?

Are you willing to do what it takes to connect with potential employers?

If you are really ready to go to work and accelerate your search, then stop doing this and that and look at your marketing and job search plan. What parts of your plan are you implementing regularly? Where are you not being consistent with your marketing and in following your plan?

It’s time to go back to the basics. It’s time to recommit. The neat thing is, when you recommit and you start doing the basic things again, they WORK.

What happens is you start getting calls, finding opportunities, getting interviews and offers. Time and time again, opportunities starts pouring in, and you have many options. It always works.

If you missed Jason Alba’s December 29th blog post be sure to check it out and download the e-book referenced.

What a great gift! This is an e-book packed with wisdom and tips.

For my readers in New England you will recognize many of the names and faces who have shared 100 solid tips and job search resources. For those in the Merrimack Valley don’t miss page 11.

If you know Mitchell Schneir, you know the value of the information he shares to help others. If you have had the pleasure of hearing Mitchell Schneir speak, no doubt you have benefited from his tips and you will not be surprised by his wisdom or the wisdom shared by the company he keeps.

Download your copy of the book. Read it more than once, then pass it on.

Are you missing in piles of paper?

Did you see the Wal-Mart ad, where the two guys are looking through the trash and Christmas wrapping paper on the curb for the doll hair brush?

The feeling and looks on their faces were classic. Is your resume, your experience, what you can do for an employer lost in a sea of papers, or files on the World Wide Web? Are the odds of finding the doll hair brush better than finding you?

Are you ready to tap into your purpose, focus on your brand and have employers call you in 2010?

Would you like get out of your slump and move on to a new job?

Are you willing to do something different?

Here is your action step.

Write down what motivates you. What pulls you forward and ensures you achieve at the highest level? Read your resume. Circle your 3 top skills. Now write a brief statement of how you use these top 3 skills and how they connect to what motivates you?

What, your top three skills and what motivates you are not connected? Why not?

How can you stand out, be found and have employers call you if what you do and what motivates you are not connected?

If you need help to connect the dots, find your focus and move ahead in 2010 join us for the Q & A calls, get your questions answered and move your career and your search forward.

Happy New Year!