Employment | The Personal Branding Blog

Using Your Personal Brand to Develop Your Elevator Pitch

July 3, 2012 by Maria Elena Duron 1 Comment

As Reach’s Chief Content Officer, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you our guest blogger for today, Susan Guarneri. Susan is a Reach certified Master Personal Branding Strategist and content contributor to "Personal Branding for Dummies". Today's Guest Author: Discover and land your dream job! Susan Guarneri, the Career Assessment Goddess, is a certified career counselor and career coach, Reach-certified Master Personal Branding Strategist and content contributor to Personal Branding for Dummies. An early adopter of personal branding and online identity management, she specializes in Career Focus, Proactive Job Search, and Branded Communications. “You know how many professionals and executives yearn for a better job, but it’s a nightmare to make it happen. My clients are the ones who land not only a better job, but often their Dream Job. And they enjoy every moment of the ride!” The above example is my Elevator Pitch, which identifies my target audience … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Quick Tips Tagged With: Career Management, Employment, Reach Personal Branding

Resume = 6 seconds reading time. STOP sending your resume.

April 11, 2012 by Paul Copcutt Leave a Comment

According to recent Ladders.com research, the average time spent by a recruiter reading your resume is now just 6 seconds! Hopefully if the recruiting person is internal or a hiring manager the time is longer, but realistically it still might only be a few more seconds. The article shows images of two different resumes and the heat spots where eyes were tending to focus on in the short time they spent scanning the documents. Having information properly formatted and well laid out and clear is obvious. BUT isn't the more pressing point why are even we still bothering with a resume? If you are in mid-career with at least 10 years of professional experience you are easily capable of supplying enough information to write a 3-6 page resume - not the accepted format - rather than a 1-2 page targeted resume. The trouble is that if a company is hiring for a number of positions and is accepting referrals, or the position is internal, you, based on your experience might be suitable for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Expressing Your Brand, Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding Quick Tips, Personal Branding Trends Tagged With: career, Employment, job search, LinkedIn, Personal Brand, personal branding trends, resume

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

August 8, 2011 by Kristen Jacoway 3 Comments

Several months ago, I read an article about “How Social Media Can Hurt Your Job” by Rachel Zupeck, and it gave me pause. Why? Because I have had people ask me who can read their tweets. If you have your tweets on a public timeline, then everyone can read your tweets. Companies have taken proactive measures to “listen” to their brand being discussed on social media platforms. It’s really quite easy for them to know if you are talking about them or not. Tweetbeep, Google Alerts, Radian6, Company Buzz (LinkedIn application), etc. makes it very easy for them to “hear” when their name has been mentioned on a social media platform. So, before you decide to give negative press about a company or its’ people, remember that it’s quite possible they are listening with one of these tools and will discover it. Remember, once you click “submit,” the tweet has been seen. Sure, there is a trashcan icon where you can delete a tweet, but … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, careers, Company Buzz, Employment, Google Alerts, Radian6, Tweetbeep, Twitter

5 Quick Tips for Using Twitter in Your Job Search

August 1, 2011 by Kristen Jacoway 2 Comments

Twitter is a growing platform for recruiters and employers to identify and recruit potential employees. In fact, Twitter has exploded in growth, experiencing a 5000% surge from 2008 to 2011! Twitter is a great place to increase personal brand awareness by following these simple steps: 1. Complete your profile thoroughly! I cannot stress this point enough because, many times, I run across profiles with just the Twitter name and worse, no picture. Your profile should be filled with keywords that are applicable to your background and experience. Also, upload a nice headshot of yourself—people like to see a picture of the person with whom they are connecting. 2. Use keywords. One useful tool to locate keywords that employers and recruiters might be using in their search parameters is job postings in your career track. Go through several postings with a highlighter and highlight noun and noun phrases. What are commonly used keywords? If they apply to you, make sure … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, careers, Employment, Profile Optimization, social media, social networking, Twitter

3 Twitter Tools to Accelerate Your Job Search

July 18, 2011 by Kristen Jacoway Leave a Comment

According to the 2010 JobVite Study, Twitter is one of the Top 3 social media sites for employers and recruiters to use to identify and source potential job candidates. Twitter is also a platform for someone in a job search to find job advice and job openings. My Top 3 Twitter Tools for a Person in Career Transition 1) Hashtags: Hashtags has the # sign preceding the words. Most commonly seen is the #FF / #FollowFriday where people on Twitter recommend some of their favorite people with whom they follow on Twitter. Essentially, hashtags create a filing cabinet. Type a hashtag in the Twitter search box and you will arrive on a page that is filled with tweets containing that hashtag. I recommend for people to find the most commonly used hashtags at a website called hashtags.org. You can type in your keyword and find the most commonly used hashtag for that keyword. If you are looking for an IT job, you could type #ITjobs in the Twitter search box and yield job postings for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, careers, Employment, Hashtags, social networking, Tweet My Jobs, Twitter, Twitter Chats

#1 Job Search Strategy – Focus, Focus, Focus

July 11, 2011 by Kristen Jacoway 1 Comment

Today, I wanted to give you a starting point for your job search. You can research industries and the companies on many different search type engines, but one of my favorites is LinkedIn (if you are just getting started on LinkedIn, read “Does Your LinkedIn Profile Get a Passing Grade? 5 Tips for a Captivating Profile”). I am going to walk you through the initial steps of how you can start your job search by compiling a prospecting list. You want to develop a list of your Tier A, Tier B, and Tier C companies, so you can better organize your job searching efforts. 5 Steps for Developing Your Job Search Prospecting List via LinkedIn 1) Go to LinkedIn.com and sign in. 2) Click on the “Companies” Tab. 3) In the “Company Name or Keyword,” type in the Industry keyword. If you want to narrow your search, include the postal code. For example, I typed in “Aerospace” for the industry and my zip code to narrow my search results. 4) Click “Search Companies.” 5) On … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Social Media Tagged With: careers, Employment, Hidden Job Market, LinkedIn, personal branding, Prospect List

Cast Your Networking Net Far and Wide

June 27, 2011 by Kristen Jacoway 2 Comments

LinkedIn offers various ways to connect with people to network, even if you don't know many people. College and university students can benefit from these tips to broaden their networking contacts. Email Connections One strategy is to import your e-mail connections to LinkedIn to see who is already a member. Hotmail, Yahoo, Aol, and Gmail are supported platforms on LinkedIn, and you can enter your e-mail and password information, and LinkedIn will populate a list of your contacts presently with an account on LinkedIn. If you don't have one of these supported e-mail platforms, you can also go to your webmail server and export a CSV file of your contacts (CSV-comma separated value or an Excel spreadsheet). Once exported, you can upload this file to LinkedIn to generate a list of potential connections. People You May Know Complete your profile with education and work history, listing the schools and companies to which you are associated. On your Home Page on LinkedIn, you will … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media, Uncategorized Tagged With: career, Employment, LinkedIn, Networking, social media, social networking

The Role LinkedIn Plays in Uncovering Career Goals

June 20, 2011 by Kristen Jacoway Leave a Comment

Did you know that the Department of Labor has estimated that by a time a person is 38 years old, they will have had between 10 and 14 jobs on average? For some people, they will follow the same career path, but others might choose to go in a different direction for a myriad of reasons: industry has offshored or downsized, want to pursue something new, and more. Did you know that LinkedIn is a great resource for helping you to find job titles in an area of interest? If you are passionate about baseball, but don’t know the various job possibilities in that industry, you can run a keyword search and find like-minded people in that industry. You will be able to see their job titles, LinkedIn groups to which they belong, companies where they’ve worked, and have an opportunity to reach out to network. Additionally, you can conduct research on targeted companies. LinkedIn incorporated the ability to “follow” companies a few months ago. If you are targeting … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Business, Career Exploration, careers, Company Research, Employment, LinkedIn, social networking

Do You See What I See?

June 13, 2011 by Kristen Jacoway 2 Comments

Magnifiying Glass over Computer and Word Search

The overwhelming majority of employers and recruiters Google potential candidates and the more I poll audiences to see if they realize this possibility, the more I find that at least half of the attendees never considered this probability. Have you Googled your name? If not, put your name in quotations (e.g. “Kristen Jacoway”) and see the results you obtain on the first 3 pages. Why only 3 pages? iProspect did a study that found that 92% of respondents do not click past page 3 of a Google search result. Three Tools for Evaluating Your Own Online Brand 1. Online ID Calculator: The online identity calculator was developed by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson who wrote Career Distinction. You will enter some data about yourself plus the results you receive when you Google your name. The calculator will score this information and rank you as Digitally Disguised, Digitally Dissed (means you have unfavorable results), Digitally Dabbling, and Digitally … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Branding for Careers, Personal Branding For Entrepreneurs, Social Media Tagged With: Business, careers, Employment, Google, online identity, social media, social networks, Twitter, William Arruda

Using Your Personal Brand to Develop Your Elevator Pitch

Resume = 6 seconds reading time. STOP sending your resume.

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