The Executive Update

Online Portfolios: Takin’ It To the ‘Net

So if you want to be out there and build a brand online, you need to feed the web. If you need to bury digital dirt, for example, then your best defense is a good offense. Build an online portfolio that says what you want to say. That way you are not only creating something positive and, ideally, searchable, you are taking positive control of your brand so that the right kind of information is weaving its way through the web.

We have talked before about building an online profile using services like Ecademy, and Netshare. An online portfolio should go farther. It should not only present the vital statistics – the who, what, when, where, and why – but it should also present samples of your work, third party endorsements, links to references or past employers, and other content to demonstrate that you are a valuable and well-connected commodity.

There are services like LinkedIn that build a rudimentary portfolio for you. LinkedIn is structured to help you build an online resume and gather personal references as part of your searchable profile. But like many of these self-service job sites, it doesn’t really help distinguish you or your capabilities from the rest of the pack.

Some job seekers go that extra mile to stand out from the pack. Consider entertainment broadcaster Courtney Friel who has posted her best clips on YouTube for all to see. YouTube is a gold mine of career desperation, yielding examples of online portfolios that plead, perplex, cajole, entertain, but do these kinds of over-the-top online portfolios really help you get a job? Not likely. Acting like the class clown doesn’t ensure you get an A, and exhibiting outrageous behavior online won’t land you a job interview (unless, of course, you are trying to sell a concept to The Comedy Channel or a new column idea to The Onion).

Take a look at the sample portfolios posted on Brandego.com and BlueSkyResumes.com. These profiles show how these savvy execs have packaged their skills in a Web-friendly way that distinguishes their expertise. These kinds of portfolios pop much more dramatically than a conventional resume and are great professional branding tools.

However, when creating an online portfolio that demonstrates your professional prowess, the golden rule is “Know Thy Audience.” Specialized professions have specialized language, and you want to talk intelligently to your peers to show off your smarts. At the same time, you need to make your credentials appealing to HR professionals and recruiters, the middlemen who have to filter the hiring data.

An example we discussed during a recent Experts Connection teleseminar was the concept of creativity itself, and how that plays out in different professions. Being creative in accounting or packaging is generally perceived to be a good thing, and is generally understood. But what about creative accounting? A CFO could consider his approach to financing, venture funding, or operations as extremely creative, and that is definitely something he would want to promote as part of his professional brand. But those who are uninitiated in the ways of balance sheets generally perceive the concept of creative accounting as something negative.

Seen any good online portfolios lately? The best way to learn is by example so, share what you find. We’d love to hear from you.

Digital Dirt: Does Your Online Persona Need Laundering?

The Internet has made the world a much smaller place, and a much more public place. If you ranted in a letter to the editor about the local school board, posted a racy profile on that online dating site, chat with buddies about your hobby collecting beer cans, or even posted on your high school web site about your upcoming reunion, it leaves a cybertrail and a potential employer will find it. So when you are looking for a job, what will recruiters uncover when they check you out online? Do you have skeletons in your Web closet?

Digital dirt is a growing phenomenon, especially for younger job seekers. With the growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, ”Stupid Web Tricks” are growing in popularity, and are starting to come back to haunt job seekers. Remember, the first thing a recruiter does when checking out a potential job candidate is run a Google search. When was the last time you searched on your name? What did you find? Have you ever uncovered something online about a coworker or potential employee? If so, please share your stories.

There have been countless cases of candidates who need to compete for a job and who come in second because of digital dirt. Face it, if you have two candidates with similar credentials, are you going to hire the guy with the online profile about his debauched weekends, or the guy who shows up as a member of the local PTA, or with no online presence at all? Research shows that more than half of the recruiters who have researched candidates online have rejected someone because of digital dirt.

Then there is what I think of The Nanny Diaries phenomenon. If you are looking to become the best in your profession, don't write a “tell all” book or post a blog revealing the dirt at work. Believe it or not, there are people foolish enough to bite the hand that feeds them by going online to tell who their boss is sleeping with or complain about the lech who works in sales. Remember the news story about the Delta flight attendant who was fired for posting provocative pictures of herself in her uniform. This might be an extreme case, but use common sense!

Parents should also be careful about what their kids post on line. Digital dirt can rub off, particularly since more and more recruiters are actively searching social networking sites when qualifying candidates. Do your kids a favor and help them clean up their online act. You don't have to squash their creativity, but help them clean up their online profiles and build their own online brand. It will not only help your career, but it will also help them get into college and be in a better position to land a job once they graduate.

If your muddy blog posts are already on the Web, there are steps you can take to cover up digital dirt. We'll discuss some of the tactics you can use to promote a positive online presence in future posts.

Building Your Online Brand

Successful job seekers want to be one of the hunted, those sought after by aggressive recruiters who have access to the best positions. But how can you place yourself in their sites? How can you become the professional that reaches the top of the dogpile?

Most job seekers turn to the online job boards, posting resumes on the obvious sites such as Monster, HotJobs, and Careers.com. Even when you look to post on more exclusive web sites like Brass Ring, you are still just adding your resume to a stack of electronic resumes that recruiters typically will ignore. These resume postings are not visible to the Web at large, which means they are not searchable and will never be picked up by Google, Yahoo, or any of the most commonly used search engines. What’s worse, an increasing common practice is resume scraping, where career professionals lift your electronic resume and reuse it on other web sites (a topic for another time).

To be seen you need to market your brand, just as you would market any other product. In Internet terms, that means becoming as public as possible and promoting your professional persona in public forums that are seen by other like-minded professionals, and that are Web searchable.

For some time now I have been maintaining an online profile on Ecademy, an online community based in the United Kingdom that attracts professionals who are looking to connect online. I have found that maintaining an Ecademy profile is extremely useful for online branding. It provides a public location where I can post my biography and background information that I want to share with others, and it has a keyword section that lets me post terms I want associated with my personal brand. I also make sure I promote my Ecademy profile whenever I can, even using simple techniques like adding a link to my profile in my e-mail signature.

Ron Bates, managing principal of Executive Advantage Group, Inc., and U.S, Country Manager for Ecademy, is a highly successful recruiter and a big advocate of online branding. Ron has the enviable title of being “the most connected professional” on the Internet, with more than 70,000 direct connections on LinkedIn. Ron uses a number of tactics to promote his online brand, in addition to LinkedIn. For example, Ron maintains multiple blog sites and posts articles in multiple locations on different topics, such as resume development and building Internet presence. And it works. To prove the point, just punch the name Ron Bates into Google and see how successful he is at disseminating his brand online.

As Ron observes, the objective is to get out there in as many online locations as possible and let the search engine spiders cross-index the online information. In Internet parlance, this is called organic search, and it is one of the best ways to increase search engine rankings.

A personal brand is useless unless you use it as a springboard for self-promotion. Get out there and promote yourself. As a member of NETSHARE you are entitled to a complementary membership on Ecademy, and that’s a great place to start. I look forward to seeing you online.

Okay, You’re Branded. Now What?

Once you have created a professional brand, what do you do with it? It’s fine to package your brand in a resume or present your brand as part of an interview, but is that really going to help you advance your career? In the words of Max Bialystock, “If you got it, baby, flaunt it!” This is the age of the Internet. You don’t have to rely on handbills or drop leaflets from airplanes. You need to disseminate your brand widely, and intelligently.

Since we started NETSHARE almost two decades ago, the rules have changed. Personal branding is a relatively new concept, and the whole concept of confidentiality has been turned on its head. Before the age of the Internet, confidentiality was to be cherished, especially when job hunting. People wanted to protect their privacy. Now, in the age of MySpace and Facebook, it’s important to be “out there.” Your “Googleability” gives your Internet street cred. These days, the first thing a recruiter or potential employer does is punch a candidate’s name into Google to see what might turn up.

What most job seekers fail to understand is they need to become the hunted, not the hunter. Job seekers spend most of their time and energy looking for potential job opportunities. If you promote your professional brand correctly, through your network of contacts and online, then the professional recruiters who control those job offers should come seeking you, because of the value of your professional brand.

The best recruiters are hunters. They like to demonstrate their worth by seeking out the right candidate using their networks and contacts. So to be more desirable to these career brokers, you need to play hard(er) to get. Recruiters like the thrill of the chase; of seeking out the perfect candidate rather than having him (or her) handed over on a silver platter. Recruiters are seeking those candidates worthy of being sought, so your job is to become one of the hunted.

In future postings we will delve deeper into the nuances of online self-promotion, including building your personal networks, creating online profiles and portfolios, blogging, and sweeping online dirt out of sight. If you have your own ideas about promoting your Internet brand, we would love to share them.

Packaging Your Professional Brand

In recent posts we have been offering ideas on branding yourself, differentiating your personal brand from your professional brand, and creating a persona that is attractive to employers. Great stuff, but it seems too daunting, and too ethereal. For those of you not immersed in marketing, the idea of creating a “brand” can be daunting. So let’s offer some ideas of where to start.

Your professional brand – your unique value proposition – should be closely linked to your marketability. Your brand promise needs to be packaged in sales collateral, which is your resume. You can use the same steps you use (or should be using) to build your resume to help you define your professional brand. You have to ask yourself a series of hard questions, and not be afraid to take an even harder look at the answers.

Deb Dib, Certified Brand Specialist and president of The Executive Power Group, (and one of the regular speakers on our Experts Connection and Ask the Coach series), has worked with a number of clients to help them uncover their personal brand, and package that brand in a resume. Here are seven of the brand identification questions she uses with her clients:

1. What parts of my job do I truly love?
2. How does my performance reflect that enjoyment?
3. What do my peers, staff, and past bosses say about me?
4. What are my top business and leadership skills?
5. Can I provide examples of performance, including defining the challenge, implementing an action, and measuring the results?
6. Do the results have transferable value to my target market?
7. What about my value proposition makes me an irresistible hire?

If you breeze through this exercise, you didn’t do it right. This should be tough, and the better you are, the harder it will be. Dib says “It often takes weeks or even months to truly understand your brand and your value proposition; you’ll find yourself in the mud a lot! But slogging through the mud until you’re clear about your executive value is worth the reward to your career.” One approach Dib suggests to help give you gain a broader perspective and refine your value proposition is to create your own personal board of directors, drawing from mentors, peers, colleagues, family, and others who can help you define your brand.
Once you have identified your personal and professional brand differentiators, document them. Create a grid that lists the components that make up your personal brand, and your professional brand. Periodically, refer back to the list and see if you can defend those brand points with concrete examples. Remember, your personal brand should be core to who you are and should not change. Your professional brand should evolve as your career advances. You should be able to reorder and update the list of elements that represent your professional brand.

Let us know how you are progressing with your personal brand development. What kinds of roadblocks are you encountering? Do you have your own personal board of directors? Have you tried out your professional brand in a professional setting? We’d love to hear from you.