Accelerate Your Search™ Now

Even before you interview for a job, you and others have influenced the opinion of the interviewer.  Do you know what others are saying about you?

The easiest place to start?  Google yourself.  Your online presence can be friend or foe.  It can open doors to amazing opportunities -or- it can slam doors shut, sometimes forever.  Things like your endorsements, number of contacts, recommendations and your photo on LinkedIn allow people to “get to know you” before you even meet.

If you are contemplating a change, do yourself a favor.  Before you spray your resume worldwide, stop and take a careful look around.  Gather a little data from your peers, co-workers, bosses (past and present), friends and family.  Understand what people are saying about you.  If you are a little fearful to do so, my bet is you will be pleasantly surprised at what you hear.

Then take a hard look at your talents, skills and experience.  Decide how you want to use and share what makes you valuable to an employer.  Ask yourself where you want to be in a year, three years and five years.

Now (and not before), update your resume.

By doing these simple activities — before you jump into the job market — you will accelerate your search and move forward faster.  Even though the press is highlighting the gloom and doom, there are many opportunities for you to do what you love and the land the job you want at the salary you deserve.

It is easier and faster than you think to land the job you want when you understand who you are and what others are saying about you.

Do you need interview assistance to speed up your career transition?  Post a question or contact me.

This year is quickly coming to an end!  In this season of go and do, it absolutely takes focus to keep your career moving forward.  You need to find a way to keep your value visible among all the glitz and glitter of the lively fourth quarter.  With that said, it is a great time of year to leverage your personal brand.

Whether you are preparing your year-end progress report (a.k.a. your performance review), putting the final touches on your 2014 plans or seeking a new position, you want to be well-positioned to leverage and discuss your value.  Your personal brand and workplace contributions directly effect the salary you command.

Your personal brand is what sets you apart — and it is the fastest way to get noticed in a crowded field of solid performers.

Leveraging what makes you unique (your “special sauce” if you will) helps others quickly connect to you and better understand your value.  However, this does not just happen.  You need to engage the process.

Without leveraging your personal brand, you may not get the offer you desire.  Your skills and experience count, but what makes you different matters the most in any selection process.

Imagine you are searching for a Christmas tree at the local lot.  There are many trees to chose from and most look similar, are in the same price range and will serve the purpose.  To find the “right” tree, you narrow your selection by considering the qualities you most desire and then you look at only those trees.

Finally, you look for a unique feature — something only one tree possesses.  You end up selecting a tree because it fits your wants, needs and has something special — a signature strength, element or specific look.

The tree that goes home with you has become a resource to help you create exactly the holiday experience you desire!

Getting hired, securing a promotion or building your career is very similar to the tree selection process.  Those who best leverage what makes them unique are the ones selected for an interview and ultimately hired.

The tree you chose was selected not only because it was, in fact, a tree, but also for what made it different and unique.

Are you leveraging your uniqueness — that special part of your personal brand?  Yes?  Great, share what you are doing below.

In my next post I’ll share the steps to help you focus on your unique strengths.  You don’t want to miss it!

In January, I am hosting a 3-part workshop:  Identify, Leverage & Own Your Uniqueness.  The workshop is designed to help you quickly identify your strengths and see how others view those strengths, so that you can stand out in the eyes of hiring managers.

If this opportunity speaks to you, drop me an email.  I will send you the details and information on how to sign up for the workshop.

Have an amazing week!

A basic building block for effectively communicating your personal brand is color.

Color is key in creating visual connections to your personal brand.  It helps you stand out and reinforces your brand attributes.  According to a University of Loyola study, “Color increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent.”

Think about strong corporate brands.  They absolutely leverage color to help the marketplace recognize their brand.  For example, UPS, thought of as the world’s logistics company, uses what colors in their branding?   That’s right – brown and gold.  Brown and gold are everywhere — employee uniforms, delivery trucks and marketing campaigns.  

Color instantly creates a visual and emotional connection to the brand.

What color is best for you?  Select your brand color(s) carefully as they determine overall impact, help spread a clear, authentic message and make you more memorable.  This process of selecting your brand color is not about picking your favorite color.  It is about selecting color(s) that reinforce your brand attributes.

How are you using color as a component of your personal brand?  What personal characteristics and brand attributes are you reinforcing with your use of color?

Does the color you are using set you apart and authentically communicate your value and brand?  Have you developed a solid strategy for using color to support your personal brand identity system? 

Review all the components of your brand identity system and use your color selection consistently.  Color can be used in your résumé, email signature block, business card, personal stationery and all other career marketing materials.  Your brand color should permeate all you do, helping to set you apart and enhance how you are known and recognized. 

Share how you use color to be recognized or stand out.

But, are you willing to do the labor to have a great resume?

Yes?  That’s great!  So many people aren’t — they’d prefer an extra day at the beach.  Then they wonder why their resume isn’t getting results.

Your resume is a key marketing tool.  Good marketing doesn’t just happen.  It takes work, thought and oftentimes a team to fine tune it and help get the message out.

Many people think creating a great resume is akin to developing a BIG billboard, posting it on a busy highway and then waiting for the phone to ring.  Businesses who depend solely on one advertising vehicle, like billboards, don’t stay in business long.  A single billboard may not been seen by the business’s target audience or remembered as the reader flew by at 60 mph.

A great resume is employer-focused.  It clearly identifies how you can meet their needs and wants.  It speaks to the employer in his or her language.  In other words, it is targeted directly to them.  Your resume demonstrates the value you alone bring.  It clearly states how you will earn your salary.  It markets and sells YOUR value.

A great resume includes:

• Your branding (what differentiates you from the competition)
• Appropriate keywords
• Strong examples of the results you achieve
• Relevant work history, and
• Your education

Your resume should leave nothing to the imagination — a hiring manager will clearly see how you will benefit the organization.  It is a marketing tool that visibly demonstrates your value.

Mostly importantly, it is unique.  You are different.  You need to see that, own it and share it.

Your assignment is to take a look at your resume.  Ask yourself, “Is it great?”  Rate it (1 is poor and 10 is great).  What’s your rating?  What will it take to move up one number?  Take that action.  Improve your resume!

Do you need an objective eye to look at your resume and career marketing materials?  Are you ready to stand out from the competition?  Let’s connect and discuss how I can assist you.

LinkedIn is a great tool.  Yet, if you are making some of the most common mistakes, your profile may by hurting you more than helping you.

Recruiters search LinkedIn for candidates.  Hiring managers use LinkedIn to prep for interviews and decide who lands on the short list.  Your friends and network contacts (new and established) access and use your LinkedIn profile to share information about you, connect with you and decide if they would like to do business with you.

What message are you sending?

Here are 4 common mistakes to avoid if you want to be in the running for the ‘right’ position:

1. Pasting your résumé into your profile.  LinkedIn is not a job board, rather it is a gateway to your online presence.  With its volume and traffic, your LinkedIn profile will show up in most searches for you and for the job you do.  Create a compelling summary that gains you favorable attention.  Ensure your prose encourages people to read your summary, click your links and learn more about you.  People hire people they know, like and trust.  Use your profile to become trusted and to build relationships.  Job opportunities will follow.
2. Ignoring the details.  Your LinkedIn profile is a 24-7 marketing site for you.  Be sure you optimize your profile, so it will be found in a search.  List, at minimum, your past three job titles and link to your past employer(s) Company LinkedIn page’s (if they have one). Focus on your key skills, the benefits you offer and problems you solve. Be selective and highlight the talents for which you want to be known.  Manage your endorsements — looking like a ‘Jack or Jill of All Trades’ does not enhance your value.
3. Being generic.  Your profile needs to pop and paint a picture of you.  If it reads like a dry job description, it may be promptly discarded.  People hire people, not lists of skills.  Include your personality.  Create an emotional connection.  Use facts to tell your story and demonstrate your experience and value.
4. Dropping in only occasionally.  Create a plan to regularly engage in the community and update your LinkedIn profile.  Just as not returning a phone call reflects your lack of interest, so does not responding on LinkedIn.  A slow response reveals much to those who use LinkedIn as a recruiting or sourcing tool.  If you are shopping for a home and pass a house with neglected gardens, what is your first thought?  Do you perceive it to have a lower value or be a bargain due to its need of repair?  The same principal applies to LinkedIn.

Do you think your schedule is too busy for a great well managed LinkedIn profile?  You can have a great LinkedIn profile and manage it in just minutes a week.

Email me to learn more about effectively managing your LinkedIn profile.  I will send you a video link and a fun tip sheet.

It is mid-year — time to review where you are, update your résumé and plan your career strategy for 2014.

Does your résumé share YOU and what makes YOU unique?  What should change?  Ask the tough questions as you review, edit or craft your branded résumé.

Performing a mid-year check of all your personal marketing tools, including social media profiles (LinkedIn) and your elevator pitch, is important in maintaining an up-t0-date brand and career focus.

Here are three tips to guide you:

1. Use your words.   Your words are the best words to describe your work and what others experience when working with you.  Repeating the words in a job description will tell someone you can read, yet it won’t help you stand out or create a competitive advantage.  You will sound like every other candidate.
2. Tell about your experience in short stories.   Share your current experience.  Write down your accomplishments and results in the last six months. Draft your short specific stories and be sure to include how you work.  Your stories will help you communicate to your boss, the CEO or a hiring manager how you work, the results you achieve and will provide evidence that you can solve the problems the manager, team or business faces.  Remember, a hiring manager wants to know you can do the job, how you will do the job and what the results will be.
3. Express why you do the work you do.   What is it about this work that excites you?  What is it that drives you, interests you and makes you want to jump up each day and engage in the work? Are you the architect who loves to create beautiful buildings? Sharing why your work matters is important – what is the emotional connection for you?

It is time to stand out, share what makes YOU unique and leverage your powerful competitive edge.

Additionally, think about who needs an updated copy of your résumé.

Help others keep YOU top of mind and quickly recall what you have to offer your employer, your next employer and the world.

Do you fret about rejection as you prepare or send your résumé?

Are your thoughts so focused on rejection that your résumé is ambiguous, general and plain?

Hopefully, your fear is not driving you to send out a boring résumé.  If it is, it is time to revolutionize the way you think about your résumé. (Remember, not every employer or hiring manager is going to like you or your experience — and that is OK!)

At the end of a recent presentation, a woman approached me and shared how frustrated she was having to spend endless hours targeting her resume to the large list of job openings found on the internet.  She shared her disappointment that after 100’s of applications, she had received a handful of rejection emails and not one interview.

Her kind soul, bright smile and brief words led me to believe that she was an organizer of projects, people and things.  She was someone who knew how to keep customers happy and projects moving forward.  I knew this in just a 3 minute conversation.

With tears and a crack in her voice she asked if I would look at her résumé.  I did.   The skills and personality that I experienced in our brief meeting were totally absent from her résumé.

I inquired if my impression of her was correct.  She confirmed it was.  Then, I inquired why she had elected to omit her uniqueness from her résumé.

In a bolded voice she stated, “Rejection is awful.”  She pulled her résumé from my hand, saying, “I am old school and what you are asking about does not belong in my résumé.”

Standing out, sharing who you are and how you deliver value can feel uncomfortable.  Clearly, this was outside of the woman’s comfort zone.

I smiled – I do get it.

Many people like to play it safe.   Innovation can feel risky.

For years, I was afraid to stand out or to share how I am different and unique.  Why? I didn’t know how to communicate my unique value in a way that worked for me.

Therefore, I took the safe, blend in, be the same as others, approach.  It seemed far less risky than standing out and facing the ridicule I feared.

Here is what I discovered — there is far more acceptance of my unique value when I genuinely share who I am.  It doesn’t mean everyone likes me or that I don’t experience rejection, I do.   Not everyone likes me, wants to work with me or hire me.

Are you leaving YOU out of your résumé?  WHY?

Is it fear of rejection?  Fear of ridicule?  Not sure how to communicate your unique value in a manner that is comfortable for you?

Here is a activitiy to help you revolutionize your thinking:

• Write down all the possible rejection and ridicule you might experience in a week, a month, in a year.
• Beside each item, note how many times you experienced the specific rejection or ridicule.
• Describe the rejection or ridicule experience in detail, then note how likely the same experience is to occur again.

The discovery for me?  The odds that the response I feared would actually occur were minimal.

Here are additional questions for you:

What is the real risk of genuinely sharing what makes YOU unique in your résumé?

Will sharing your unique value really increase the number of times your résumé is rejected?

What are the potential benefits of taking the risk and sharing your unique value?

We make hundreds, maybe thousands, of choices every day — some critical and others not so much.  Grape jam or strawberry jam on toast is a choice.  Is it critical?  Generally not.

Confidence is also a choice.  A choice I put in the critical bucket.  The “critical bucket” holds the most important areas of your life, the areas where you need to make intentional, conscious and informed  choices — those that include your career and personal brand.

Confidence is that simple acceptance and certainty in your ability to succeed.  You can see and feel confidence.  Confidence has a clear, positive and powerful vibration.

Confidence is one of those qualities we admire when we see it.  It is that quality of self-assurance that we see from both afar and up close.  You see confidence, or the lack of it, as someone walks into a board room, onto a football field or even when a small child begins to peddle a bicycle down the sidewalk without training wheels.

Confidence is a mindset, a belief and an attitude.  For me, that mindset comes from doing what I believe is right.  It is also acquired by taking risks, learning, improving and graciously receiving feedback.

Sometimes confidence just shows up, but for me, at least at this point in my life, confidence is a choice.  This has not always been the case and there are still times when my confidence wanes — like when I try something new or dare to step out of outside of my comfort zone.

I understand the power of  personal branding on my personal and professional success, yet it was once a BIG struggle for me to have confidence in my own personal brand.

Clarity did not come as I thought it would.  As I grew and evolved as a person what once fit no longer did and that created an internal struggle for me.  The process was much like hanging out in the morning fog on a day when the fog never clears.  I struggled and wandered through the fog because I lacked the confidence to share my uniqueness with the world.

If I did that I would stand out — what if someone laughed or thought I was nutty?  What would that do to my career, my stable business, and my self-esteem?  I wasn’t sure I wanted my apple cart turned upside down.

Then, I lacked the confidence to share myself in a bold manner — for all the reasons above and the additional fear of ridicule.  Years ago in high school, I had dared to do be bold.  I was met with laughter and mocking from the very girls I considered to be my best friends.  When I reflect on that experience, the pain still pieces my heart.  So, what would be worse?  An upside-down apple cart or ridicule?  I voted for neither.  I was stuck — with no clarity and no confidence.

I had made the intentional choice to move in a direction.  I wanted to move on to a more satisfying, fulfilled and happy life.  Yet there it was – that one little ounce of doubt, showing up again.  Where did it come from?

Was it a look backward?  Was it my strong fear of ridicule or another past experience?  Did I fear failure or was it success?

Any thought could lead me to dwell upon that distraction.  After all, distractions and making excuses saved me from making a choice.  It saved me from taking action and moving on to either success or failure.  While I did not enjoy feeling in limbo, it was easy and held less risk.

That place of inaction became a place of comfort.  Fear, worry or concern shook my confidence just enough to send me back to my comfort zone — to the place of inaction.  I didn’t have the confidence to leverage who I was becoming and to share it with the world.

Rather than take action, I convinced myself I could do it own my own.  I used every excuse and then judged myself for the excuses.  I was not ready to step out and be confident in my ability to succeed.  The excuses and inaction allowed me to not select success.

It was very hard to ditch the “go it alone” attitude, to seek honest feedback, to engage an expert to help me and to choose to be successful.

It took me a long time to gain the necessary confidence and make the choice to pick up the phone and engage the expert I knew could help me.

So, I absolutely understand the excuses.  I know the fear of getting feedback — wanted or unwanted.  I, too, hear that little voice that begins to chatter and causes confidence to wane.  I answered no to the question, “Do you have the confidence to leverage what makes you unique ?” many, many times.  I did it all — wandered alone in the fog and plodded along for years hoping to sort it out  — before I got tired of holding success at bay and ditched my fear and finally said “yes” to success.

Post your comments below – what is holding you back from leveraging who you are and building a strong brand?