The Executive Update

When Looking for Career Advice, Use Your Nose to Sniff Out the Rats

There are con artists at work in every business, including job search. I was struck by the number of charlatans out there when I spotted an ad for a free resume service on Craigslist. Of course, when you click through to the web site they offer the resume for free, but you can’t get the resume without a cover letter, which has a fee associated with it. And there is no information about the experience or credentials of those providing the service. Even such a free offer could prove really costly if you rely on amateurs to help you with your job search.

I could see a lot of parallels between the con artists at work in the career field and those at work in the financial services field. I recently ran across a book by Ken Fisher and Lara Hoffmans, How to Smell a Rat, which identifies five suspect factors to look for to avoid being swindled. You can apply many of the same lessons in the field of job search. Consider the following:

1. Never hire a financial advisor who assumes control of your money, and never hire a career consultant who assumes control of your personal brand. You wouldn’t hand someone your wallet and say, “Here, invest this.” You also wouldn’t hand someone your resume or your marketing documents and say, “Here, go find me a job.” Any consultant you hire will be a partner in your success, but you will have to retain control of your brand and determine the best course to promote yourself.
2. Be wary of financial experts who have never had a bad run, and don’t hire career experts who guarantee results. No financial guru is going to get it right all the time, and no career coach or consultant can guarantee success. Anyone who offers a foolproof guarantee is lying to you.
3. Don’t accept an investment strategy or career advice you don’t understand. Watch out for so-called experts who claim to have a magic bullet or some kind of special connections or process. There are no shortcuts in job search, or in planning long-term investments.
4. Avoid financial advisors who tout their exclusivity and only work with a handful of clients, and avoid career experts who aren’t working with multiple clients and offer you special attention. When you retain someone to help you manage your career, you want to make sure they are active and reputable, which means they are working with multiple clients.
5. Don’t delegate due diligence. When you are hiring anyone to help you with your career, check their references, both past and present.

Career coaches and career management consultants can be invaluable resources. They can show you new ways of thinking. They also can help you develop your personal brand and package that brand in your career documents.  And they can assist you in identifying the right kind of company to target, and in identifying the hiring authority who can help you land your next job. However, they can’t do the work for you. It would be like asking your personal trainer to life the weights for you. You have to do all the heavy lifting in order to be successful, and anyone who offers to make it easy is conning you.

"Steal This List" – Some Online Career Destinations You Might Check Out

There is any number of career blogs posted on the Web, including this one. I recently encountered a list of ”The 100+ Career Blog Sites You Must Read” on The Job Swami, which was actually a repost of a list complied and posted by Career Rocketeer. You might even recognize some of the bloggers as contributors to our Experts Connection teleseminar series or our weekly Ask the Coach career strategy calls.

So I am reposting the list here as a public service – to paraphrase Abby Hoffman, “steal this list,” share it with your associates, and make good use of it.

Comments welcome, please. Tell us how you are faring with you own job search, and if you have run across any interesting career sites or blogs lately.

Career Search

• Accelerating Momentum - Joan Schramm - http://blog.achieve-momentum.com/
• Adventures of the Job Search Ninja - Todd Bavol - http://www.integritycareertransitions.com/blog
• Alison Doyle - Alison Doyle - http://alisondoyle.typepad.com/
• Another Point of View - Kay Stout - http://anotherpointofview.typepad.com/
• Back on the Career Track - Carol Fishman Cohen - http://shine.yahoo.com/blog/Z2MKDE5UQ7YUKK4IHQLOD5RKBQ/
• The Big Time - Spherion.com - http://www.spherion.com/careerblog/
• Build the Career You Deserve - Kevin Kermes - http://www.kevinkermes.com/blog/
• Career by Choice - Megan Fitzgerald - http://www.careerbychoiceblog.com/
• CareerDiva - Eve Tahmincioglu - http://www.careerdiva.net/
• Careerealism - JT O’Donnell - http://www.careerealism.com/
• Career Hub - Louise Fletcher - http://www.careerhubblog.com/main/

Learning from the Experts: Using Social Media To Sell Your Personal Brand

There isn’t much difference between selling your personal brand and selling any other type of product. You need to identify your value proposition, your key market differentiators, your competitive advantage, and package those advantages. As I have said many times, no matter what your profession or professional expertise, when you lose your job you are now in sales. You have to sell yourself, and that includes developing and marketing your personal brand.

This is why we decided to have Neal Schaffer host the next session of Experts Connection, our monthly telesminar series on executive career management. Neal is author of Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn, and an expert in social media marketing. The next Experts Connection session is entitled “Social Media for Small Businesses & Solo Entrepreneurs: How to Level the Playing Field,” and is really aimed at entrepreneurs and business professionals who want to make the most of social media to promote their business. However, the same rules apply for you to promote yourself. If you are looking for work, then you are promoting the business that is you, and your own personal brand. The lessons are universal.

We chose Neal as an expert because of his background and proven expertise. Neal has a pragmatic approach to social networking and marketing that I find refreshing.  Social media is still a relatively new phenomenon, and the rules of engagement and metrics for success are still being worked out. Neal’s approach is practical. He doesn’t assume you have to engage everywhere. Rather, he recommends being strategic and selective to help build your brand. He understands how to leverage a blog as a centerpiece to your social media marketing strategy. He also understands how to leverage different platforms such as Wordpress, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, including determining which are right for your strategy. He also understands how to monetize social networking and how to build a gameplan for success, no matter what you are selling.

So listen to the marketing experts. They can help demystify social networking for you and unlock new insights into how to promote your personal brand using new networking channels. Remember, your expertise is just another commodity or product that a potential customer, i.e. your next employer, is looking to exploit to help their bottom line. Understanding how to market that personal brand message using new, more effective techniques like social media will put you ahead of the competition.

Ask the Coach: Know Your Brand, and Make Your Mark Online

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from a recent session with Cindy Kraft, The CFO Coach.

This weeks’ career coach call started with a question from a seasoned CEO which exemplified the branding challenge facing most executives. The first caller was a serial CEO/president/general manager with years of experience running companies and preparing them for acquisition or IPO. Like many well-connected executives, he never had to worry about creating a resume or looking for his next job. In the current market climate, he finds himself looking for a job and is not sure how to get started.

The caller also noted that he usually stays in a position for no more than two years and is looking for more stability. Cindy noted that the average tenure for a C-level position is between 18 months and three years, so his job has been stable. She added that she has been working with a CFO client who has worked for the same company for five years, and that client is being looked at suspiciously because of his long tenure; “What’s wrong with him?”

The first step is to sit down and determine what he really wants to do; what type of role he really wants to have. What does he really enjoy doing? When you start your search, you have specific steps:

1. Figure out what you really want to do. You need to establish a target so you know when you hit it.
2. Create your marketing documents to map to your targets. You then can target those companies that offer a position that matches your criteria. You need to determine who needs you, and who is willing to pay for your services. You also need to find the best route to get in front of the hiring authorities. Remember that your marketing documents need to concentrate on contributions, not responsibilities.
3. Build your online visibility. Create a digital footprint that will highlight your strongest points. Remember, in the world of job search, you are who Google says you are.

You can’t underestimate the impact of your digital footprint. It’s what recruiters and hiring managers find online that is associated with your personal brand. More than 80 percent of recruiters will “Google” you before they contact you. Your job is to make sure they can find you and to make sure you can present the most compelling information about yourself that you can. Your executive profile is very important, since recruiters reach out on both what they see or don’t see. You can use your executive profile to populate your LinkedIn profile, or your Google Profile.

Be sure to complete a Google profile so that information shows up on top any time someone searches on your name. Also consider obtaining a vanity IRL on LinkedIn to increase searchability.

Cindy also offered a success story by way of example. One of her clients had all of his marketing documents well-branded and focused. He participated in highly targeted groups on LinkedIn, and was very efficient with his networking. He saw a position that seemed perfectly suited to his expertise and forwarded his marketing documents. When the company responded, they asked if the white papers and material were written after he sent in his application. He could say with confidence, “No, this is me.” He’s now a finalist for the position.

Social Media Works Best with an Integrated Campaign

If you are leveraging social media as part of your personal brand strategy, you know it can be tough to coordinate your online activity. You probably have multiple accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere, and every time you want to reach out to your network you have to determine where to post your updates.

There are a number of ways you can consolidate and integrate your social media strategy. Jason Alba, a past speaker for our Experts-Connection teleseminar series and author of I’m on Facebook – Now What??? offers some tips on how to tie together your social media marketing program:

1. Link your Twitter Tweets and your Facebook status. It’s easy to do. Just Google “Facebook Twitter” to find the Facebook application, or try using a third-party application like TweetDeck.
2. Pull your blog posts into your Facebook Notes.
3. You can use your Facebook status and other Groups and Pages and link them to your LinkedIn profile, blog posts, newsletters, etc.
4. You can link your other social media channels to your destination on your LinkedIn profile page.
5. Create a Group that you can use to send group e-mails, like newsletter or blog updates.
6. When sending direct messages, ask your Facebook friends if you can invite them to connect to you on LinkedIn.

The more you can cross-connect and cross-pollinate your social media channels, the more followers you can gather who will share your insights and social media data with their followers. It’s all a matter of casting a wider net using the same content you are already posting to your social media outlets.

If you are interested in learning other strategies to build your social media marketing program, join us at our next upcoming session of Experts Connection teleseminar on December 16 when Neil Schaffer, author of Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn, will share his insights for building a cohesive social media marketing program for small business.

Ask the Coach: Debbie Ellis’s Five Tips to Proactive Networking

Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from the most recent session with Debbie Ellis, President of the Phoenix Career Group.

Debbie is good at keeping her finger on the pulse of the job market. According to Debbie, things are starting to settle down and there are indications that things will start looking up in 2010, but competition at the senior level is going to continue be tough and companies are moving more slowly with new hires.

That said, Debbie also notes that networking and maintaining your personal brand are still the best strategies for career advancement. She recommends five general steps for proactive networking:

1. Build a list of from 10 to 50 companies you have identified as a good match for your professional value. Make sure these companies are a good fit for your functional expertise and your personal and professional brand, as well as a cultural fit and a fit with organizational structure.
2. Do your homework. Make sure you have a solid understanding of the company’s objectives and their problems. Discover who within the organization has the authority to hire you for the position you are interested in, even if they don’t have an opening posted. There are any number of groups you can use to identify stakeholders, including friends, family, alumni, and professional contacts.
3. Develop targeted solutions for each candidate company. Look at the organizational challenges and provide two to five solutions as to how you would address them.
4. Earn the access to the hiring authorities. It’s often easier to find phone numbers than e-mail addresses. Make a call. It’s best to call around 9:00 a.m., around noon, or after 5:00 p.m. when the gatekeepers are gone. This approach is more proactive than e-mail and gives you an opportunity to present your value proposition directly.
5. Once you have access, demonstrate your value by providing specific information. Also be sure to listen! Listen to how they describe their challenges and then help provide options. Then follow up with additional information.

As Debbie notes, the key is to find out what the potential customer wants and then give it to them. Of course, this approach takes a little work, but isn’t the outcome worthwhile?