Social Networking Tools

I have to admit I personally have a mixed relationship with these tools.  I am a blogger, have an active presence on Linkedin, at least a minimum presence on Facebook and have had a twitter account for a few years, but haven’t created my own web page, and while I set up a twitter account 3 years ago, I doubt that I’ve posted a dozen tweets.  My Facebook is family facing, not business.  Well, you get the idea I think.  One of the participants in NFJS is a Social Media Coach/Mentor (Cheryl Richmond) and just an incredible resource and talent.  She is starting to get me focused on this and provided some basic guidelines that make a lot of sense.

Let’s start with an inventory:

●      Linkedin – Must have for a job seeker, this is the key location for defining your “Brand”.  It is a hub for business contacts and activities built around that brand.

●      Facebook – Might be very important for a job seeker about half a step down from Linkedin.  Primarily set up to connect people with each other on a personal level.  With that in mind, it still needs to reflect your brand.  Can be a huge time suck and there are privacy and security issues.

●      Twitter – Optional.  It is an “in-real-time” communications tool that can extend your network while making it much more responsive.  It can also be an amazing time suck.

●      Blog – Optional.  Works great if you have ideas that are relevant to your brand, but can kill you if you drift.

●      Biznik – Useful if you are an independent contractor looking at getting some level of b2b stuff going.

●       “MyPersonalDomain”  Whatever you choose this to be, from a web page to a blog to some kind of store.

●      Geolocation sites like Foursquare or Gowalla:  These provide physical location information with the goal of connecting people in a location.  There are specific situations where these can be useful, but they come with additional cautions

●      Etc.  – there are a huge number of other tools that fall under this category from MySpace to Picasa to Yelp to Meetup.    Any one of these can provide value and that value will vary on an almost infinite array of things.  The challenge with some of these (think MySpace) is that you create a permanent presence with them whether you intend it or not.  That Frat Party you went to in the 90s and that you friends posted on MySpace?  It’s still out there.

I’m sure I’m missing a ton of stuff, but even if I knew what they all were, as of May 2011, this is a great list to start with.

 

There are also some principles that need to be implemented across your internet profile:

●      As much as possible, create one consistent brand.  So use the same picture for every profile you own, represent yourself as the same person with the same skills in every profile.

●      Be prudent.  If you are looking for a job as the Pastor of a church, work as hard as you can to eliminate the pictures of you at the Atheist Convention.

●      Be safe, or at least try.  Control your permissions on all of these tools, organize your contacts/friends into relevant groups.  The Rugby Team and the Rose Garden Club will probably not understand each other or how you could belong to both, so keep them separate.

●      Set up your public profile to reinforce itself from every window.  If you claim to be a “Team Builder” in Linkedin, then your Facebook should feature people beyond yourself.

In very general terms each has a primary purpose (in the context of job search), so what are they?

●      Linkedin is central.  Define your brand here, get a good picture that you recognize, fill out a complete profile.  Focus of your contacts is business connections, but the line is not rigid.

●      Facebook, this is almost as important, but the focus is more towards family and friends.  Use the same picture as Linkedin and consider your brand as you build out your network and fill out your profile.  Be respectful of your contacts when playing the various games.  Don’t spam; accidentally or on purpose!

●      Twitter, use the same consideration when creating your profile, but then remember that this is a real time communication tool.  While Linkedin and Facebook are fundamentally static, there is nothing static about Twitter.  This provides extraordinary resources for researching companies, opportunities and people in real time. 

A key to understanding these resources is understanding that we really have only one network, and while we categorize it for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways, there is far more overlap than separation, so we need to treat it with that in mind.  The tools we have today for the organizing our network and mining information about it are truly amazing.  So far beyond what we’ve ever had, but the central fact remains that “Network” is still just a fancy word describing our circle of friends. 

By the way, Consumer Reports published a terrific article on how to effectively stay safe in their June 2011 issue.  It should be read by pretty much everyone that spends time online.

The Recession is Over!!

Really? Then why do I have so many clients?
This is one of those times when the economists prove how very silly they can be while being technically correct. We’ve all heard the joke about the Dr who comes out of surgery gloating about what a success the operation was and only at the last moment does he acknowledge that the patient also died. That’s kind of what the economists are saying/doing. The economy hit it’s bottom sometime last summer, and given that what they measure isn’t current health, just relative health, what they are really saying is that the Fall of 2009 was better than in the Spring. Talk about damning something with faint praise!!

I’ve actually never heard of a way to measure economic health. We live in a world where what matters is our ability to pay the rent/mortgage and grocery bills, and while economists live in same world, what they study has some very serious disconnects. So while the “Recession” is over, that isn’t the same as saying the economy is healthy and if we include all of the people out of work and underemployed, then the economy is seriously struggling.

So when I read that the “Recession” over, I’m sure it’s true, it’s just not very meaningful.

Dunn & Bradstreet's Million Dollar Database

This post was written by Michael Casey. He is one of the folks working with NFJS and a salesman with a terrific track record who has committed to moving into a role that allows him to drive resource sustainability within a company.Note that the rest of this blog would look a lot better if Blogspot supported imbeded tables or allowed me to simply attach a document, etc. but it doesn't. I'm going to try to be as clear as I can without them. If you follow carefully, it will work. When you go to D&B/KCLS you will find it much more user friendly.

From Michael:
Assuming that you have decided to develop a “value proposition” based job search, one of the first steps is identifying potential employers. What companies look like good potential employers?

If you allow yourself to approach this in a disorganized way, it is pretty darn intimidating. One tool that can greatly reduce this is the Dunn & Bradstreet Million Dollar Database. Normally access to this is very expensive, fortunately there are some very convenient ways to avoid the expense. If you are local to the Seattle area, the King County Library (www.kcls.org) provides this as one of their normal services. My assumption is that in other areas, the first place to check is your local library as well. The following description assumes you have a King County Library Card then becomes a “how to” for accessing via the King County Library. Most of this is how to use the DB.

• Go to www.kcls.org

• Click on "DataBases" (top of page, left side)

• Go to "Subject List of Databases" scroll down to

• Click on "Business Economics and Investing"  (Note that under this tab, you will see more than a dozen options which may be helpful to you. This is a very comprehensive list of the best tools available for researching companies, so explore!)

• Click on "D & B Million Dollar Database"

Congratulations! You are in.....now go get a cup of coffee or a beer, walk outside and get some fresh air, then return to your JOB SEARCH.

 

We are going to look for some companies that might help someone who is a CAD designer with considerable talent, and look for metal fabrication companies, who have clients that design and then send their product to be fabricated--they obviously have or need to have CAD people designing their stuff.

____________________________________________________

• Find a company, then put it in the fields and search.
• We will choose a company we know, entering Name, City & State


Company Name:    Magic Metals
City:                       Union Gap
State:                     Washington


This is what is returned:

Magic Metals Inc

SIC Code:       7692
City:                Union Gap
State:              WA USA
Locations:       Single Location
Annual Sales:  $11,887,260
Number Emp   146

We see that the SIC code is 7692....but we want more information, so click on the "Magic Metals Inc".  What comes back is more than a page of information specific to Magic Metals including what their DUNS Number is, what they do, who the President is, how many locations, etc. 

Now look at their SIC codes, they are listed as 7692 welding repair but also 3440 sheet metal work.

“Sheet Metal Work” is also known as “Metal Fabrication” so we have found the SIC code we will use in the next step.

Now we want to go and look for other companies with the 3440 SIC code, because that may lead us to companies that are similar and these are companies we know will use CAD drafting.

Go back to the top of the page, yellow box, and click on SIC and then type in 3444, then eliminate the city, or keep it local, then put your state name in and hit search...:  and we come up with !!!!!! 254 companies.  Too many for practical reasons, so let's limit the search and just put a city back in, like Seattle Wa for the search, see what we come up with---i.e., re-enter SIC code 3444, Seattle for city, Washington for state, then hit search and voila; 34 companies, much more manageable.


1: Lighthouse For The Blind Inc
8331 Seattle WA USA Headquarters $37,597,000 350

2: Ellstrom Manufacturing Inc
2431 Seattle WA USA Single Location $11,500,000 85

3: Pioneer Human Services
8331 Seattle WA USA Branch $9,487,600 200

4: Qual Fab Inc
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $6,600,000 45

5: Pacific Aircraft Welders
3581 Seattle WA USA Single Location $5,000,000 10

6: Queen City Sheet Metal
1761 Seattle WA USA Single Location $4,345,596 25

7: David Gulassa & Co Inc
2514 Seattle WA USA Single Location $3,200,000 26

8: Ballard Sheet Metal Works Inc
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $3,000,000 20

9: Pacific Sheet Metal Inc
1761 Seattle WA USA Single Location $2,900,000 20

10: Park North Heating Co Inc
1711 Seattle WA USA Single Location $2,200,000 16

11: Global Inc
3443 Seattle WA USA Single Location $2,000,000 15

12: Central Fabricators Inc
5051 Seattle WA USA Single Location $900,000 10

13: Williams Form Engineering Corp
3444 Seattle WA USA Branch $737,508 6

14: All Metals Fabricators Inc
1791 Seattle WA USA Single Location $730,000 6

15: Precision Fabricators LLC
3444 Seattle WA USA Headquarters $625,000 8

16: B & D Sheet Metal LLC
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $610,000 6

17: Decorative Metal Arts
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $570,000 8

18: Apex Metal Fabricators Inc
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $550,000 5

19: Canopy World Inc
3444 Seattle WA USA Branch $491,672 4

20: Mutual Industries Inc
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $480,000 5

21: North Industries Inc
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $410,000 3

22: A Quality Sheet Metal Co
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $270,000 4

23: Whitehead Manufacturing
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $250,000 3

24: Form Factor Inc
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $210,000 2

25: Kenneth A Edleman
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $200,000 2

26: Pacific Northwest
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $160,000 2

27: J R Grantham Inc
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $140,000 1

28: DK Works
3444 Seattle WA USA Single Location $130,000 2

29: Dockside Repair
3449 Seattle WA USA Single Location $100,000 18

30: McKinstry Co LLC
1711 Seattle WA USA Headquarters 500

Choosing one, say #4, Qual Fab Inc., click on that and once again, we have tons of information:  Location, Sales, CEO, start date, etc.

This tool works for any industry and location. in addition, Dunn & Bradstreet is the tool companies use to check out each other, so it is the most up-to-date available (although it can be as much as six months out of date). It will normally provide the name of at least one senior executive; probably the CEO.  What you end up with is the address of the company, the name of a senior exec, a clear idea of what the company makes, etc. This is a great start.

Microsoft

I had the opportunity this afternoon to spend about an hour with Kenji Yamaguchi, a recruiter in the Windows group at Microsoft.  It's pretty much impossible for me to provide a complete synopsis, but the blog he contributes to is something that every job seeker should be following.  I've added it to the list of blogs I follow and strongly recommend you check it out.  It is a lot like the conversation was, very wide ranging and informative.  http://www.jobsblog.com/.

Resume construction part 2

Mike will finish his discussion of resume development soon, but in the meantime, one of the regulars at Notes from the Job Search sent me an analysis of how to create an entry or bullet point on your resume and I wanted to share it with you.

She starts with the idea that in the custom resume you deliver to a prospective employer, each role you held should have no more than five bullets. That is different than our Work-Life Database™.  The Work-Life Database™ is the source document  and as such it doesn’t have a limit.  What goes on the resume sent to a some company, comes from the DB. At any rate, here’s what Deborah Arline has to say.

“The first paragraph of a job experience within the resume starts with a statement describing the scope of duties, level of responsibility, number of staff supervised, budget amounts managed, etc. This statement is followed by short sentences describing responsibilities, using words like “Managed”, “Led”, “Facilitated”, “Oversaw”, “Initiated”, “Planned”, “Provided”, “Performed”, “Created”, “Analyzed”, “Designed”, “Developed”, “Achieved”, etc.

“This paragraph is followed by “Significant Achievements”, no more than 5 bulleted items that:
   • Identify an Action, USE A VERB, that demonstrates the value I added or contribution I made; i.e. “Saved money”, “Increased profits”, “Developed staff”, “Decreased response time”, etc
   • Then, the sentence continues to show how I achieved them: “…by deploying”, “…by initiating”, “…by upgrading”, “…by migrating”, “…by implementing”, etc.
   • And may conclude by showing the result of my efforts: “…that enhanced”, “… that improved”, “…that reduced”, “…that decreased”.
   • Then try to quantify the value added; answer the question “By how much?”

Deborah provides a couple of examples:
1. “Delivered $1.2 million annual savings by cutting call handling time 40 seconds per call across all centers.
2. “Improved operational efficiency by designing continuous learning process that provided call centers with structured approach to process improvement and data sharing.”

As you can see Deborah has broken this down to very specific small pieces. When she creates the actual bullet, she positions the element with the biggest value ("$1.2 million annual savings") where it will be seen most easily and have the most impact. It’s almost like we had a bunch of refrigerator magnets, only in this case we are using them to effectively tell real stories and actions we really took.

Strengths (again)

My last entry was on the book Now Discover Your Strengths so obviously it’s a key element in the Notes From the Job Search (NFJS) approach to job search. Another component of NFJS is our suite of weekly support groups for professionals looking for new jobs. What these groups provide is a continuing reality check for ideas and strategies in general. This includes the ideas expressed in Now Discover Your Strengths. (http://www.strengthstest.com/)

This book, as well as the others in the series, positions our strengths as tools we have choices regarding. Which isn’t the experience NFJS has of them, or at least isn’t a complete description of our experience with strengths. The Top Five Strengths, which is the report we get when we take the test, look far more like a description of how we approach the world. One friend of mine took the test last summer and found her number one strength is “woo”. This means she always finds ways to embrace the people around her and have them embrace her. This is who she is. One example of this is she has never been in a job interview without getting a job offer. She is certainly smart and hard working and other good things, but so are lots of other folks. Her consistent approach to relationships—all relationships—is to find ways for people to align with each other.

As I mentioned in my last entry, my greatest strength is “ideation” and my second greatest is “strategic.” I also wrote about how those have played out in my career. Turns out that is a darn good description of how I function. I always want to understand the ideas that drive how something works and I always approach it strategically first. When working on new development, this can be a huge advantage. It allows me to create clear coherent programs that do what they are supposed to do and that can be changed over time, etc, etc.

When working on maintenance (fixing/modifying something someone else created), I still approach it looking for the ideas behind the whole, and then how a particular piece fits. That doesn’t work—essentially it’s as big a problem as it was an asset for new development.

There is just very little that is as much fun for me as a discussion of how something works. It’s part of what drives me at NFJS. What is the suite of tools, the process that allows people to identify and achieve their dream job? That’s what I can build on. It’s a strength; it’s also not especially negotiable. I can acknowledge it and build on it, or I can frustrate myself and everyone around me by ignoring it and trying to be what someone else wants.

I can give lots of examples: A “learner” I know is always investigating new ideas and new areas of knowledge and new ways to do his current job. He is partially motivated by the enjoyment of solving problems, but mostly he is simply trying to learn something new.

Where taking the “strengths test” helps in the job search is by giving us words to describe what we do and why we are special. Then as we examine our work history, it helps us identify more easily where we were successful and how that success occurred. It gives us a coherent set of characteristics to build our “brand” around. What is it that makes you special? Looking back at your career through the filter of your strengths will help you identify those characteristics and help you identify the proof required to make you stand out in this market.

Now Discover your Strengths

If you read this regularly, you will have noticed that I try to focus on the positive and help people build on their strengths. A piece of this comes from Now Discover your Strengths, and somehow I've missed writing the book up. What this book does is validate things most of us know intuitively, but may be afraid to commit to.

In my case, math and science are noticeably easier for me than reading and writing, or at least it started out that way. :) Unfortunately, I was 32 before I allowed myself to use that information in relationship to my career. I also have a need to understand how things work and while that’s useful in lots of areas, I didn’t nurture that as part of my career until about the same time. This combination led to changing careers and embracing computers and systems development... More accurately, my previous careers hadn’t been all that successful, so when I chose a new path, I actually included this information in the equation. The result was a career in computers and development that lasted most of 30 years and that was very successful.

The point is not about me, but what happens when building a career based on strengths, which leads back to Now Discover your Strengths. One element in their process is an online test that can provide a view of your natural strengths. You can go straight to the test via http://www.strengthstest.com , but context helps, so maybe you borrow the book and take the test. What you will get back from the test will be a list of the five areas of how you approach life and problem solving that are your strongest tools. For example my first one in “Ideation”, in this case it means I need to understand stuff, there’s more to it of course and you can look that up if you care, but the real point is that when I took the test 20 odd years after I switched into computers systems, I found something that actually had language around why my choice worked. Very powerful stuff.

When you take the test, it will not tell you what your career should be, “ideation” doesn’t tell me I should be a developer, but when I look at an opportunity, it allows me to evaluate my chances for success much more clearly and with significantly better tools. It will also help you understand the styles of work that will facilitate your success.

In Now Discover your Strengths Marcus Buckingham defines a strength as “consistent near perfect performance in an activity.” The level of performance must be consistent, which means you’ve done it before and can expect this when you do it again. One of Buckingham’s examples is Tiger Woods. Woods drives are amazing and consistent and he can (and does) rely on them. Realistically, there isn’t anyone who drives like Tiger, but driving is a strength for a lot of golfers and many of them build their games around their drives. In other words, “near perfect” is relative. What the test will give you isn’t a description of your drives, just a description of how you can optimize your approach to many things.

Using my own example again, “ideation” is my first strength, and “strategic” is my second. As a developer, I found I did a great job on new development and honestly struggled with maintenance work. My strengths translate to someone who is almost exclusively a top down thinker, and if I don’t understand context I struggle until I get the context. The strengths of a good new system developer includes an ability to understand the whole and to get the details right inside that whole. A maintenance developer works best if they don’t need the whole, just the three or four details required to fit the new code into a program/system etc. Prior to taking the test, I understood that my performance was distinctly different in maintenance mode vs development mode and I just could not figure out why. Taking the test made the reasons very clear and really drives me to focusing on one vs the other. What the test did for me was give me vocabulary to understand why one function was relatively easy and very satisfying while what seems to be a very similar track was just a major challenge and nothing but frustrating.

Equally important, the test results help me understand what would be a successful future choice. Moving from IT to career coaching, it’s clear to me that I need to base my coaching on my strengths… Actually it’s clear that I will base it on my strengths because I don’t know how to do it any other way. If that way is incompatible with career coaching then I need to come up with a plan B. Your particulars are different than mine, but you do work from your strengths or you struggle, just like me. Knowing what these are allows you to avoid a lot of frustration.

Start by reading the book and taking the test. The words it will come back with might not be all that familiar so read the descriptions. Think about how those apply to your work life. The descriptions will be describing things you did when you were successful, how can you build on these? How can you use more of these in your life? Your work?

Job Search sales

My last post was on “branding” and creating a consistent message or “brand” when talking about your work skills and talents. This post takes the concept of approaching job search as a sales job a bit further.

I distinguish between good sales and bad sales. “Good sales” is when we identify real problems and offer a solution that addresses it successfully. We’ve all experienced it, and we tend to remember the person or people that helped us with it. It’s amazing how many processes look like this, for example: In IT, a good job of analysis and development fits. It is also what we’re doing in job search.

A tool I use to organize this process is “OGOOALS”.

OGOOALS system for thinking about job search (and sales)
Orientation: “Hi, How are you” portion. Very short, especially the first time you meet. Standard pleasantries… you know the things, weather, Mariners, Seahawks, stuff like this. Meaningless, mostly used to initiate the conversation and cover the ourselves as we measure each other physically

Gather: Asking about the company, the job, the environment, the tools, etc. This is the meat of the time and the meat of your approach. Orientation only happens in person, Gather starts way before you meet. It’s reading the job description, the web page, etc. The purpose is to find out what problem is being solved. Are they expanding? Did they just fire someone? Are they changing direction? Why are they looking?

Offer a solution: Once you understand the problem, look at your history and provide a way to solve the problem based on your experience and your strengths. If they advertised for a Java developer, but the problem is a poorly designed web page, address the Java, but focus on the problem. What of your strengths will allow you to redesign this web page so that it solves whatever problem it was intended for.

Offer proof: You proposed a solution, now show them proof that you can implement the solution. What in your work history qualifies you to do this? How can they be certain that you are the one who really can implement this solution.

Ask for the sale: “I would love to work here, what’s the next step in that process?” or “I would love to be the person that tackles this problem for you. What needs to happen for that to occur?” Then listen. Let them tell you how to move forward. Wait. If they need to think their answer through, respect that silence.

Leave the premises. You know you have the job or you know the next step, so say “Thank you” , and leave. Don’t ask about the wife/husband or the Mariners or the weather. The interview is complete, Leave.

Send a thank you note. Hand written. Email works as an add-on, but the hand written is what counts. If you can walk it in, do so. It’s another touch. People are hired, not resume’s and not skill sets, so as you become more of a person, you are more likely to be hired.

Networking

Early on in my blogging, I wrote a piece on "Resilience". Actually I copied something my wife wrote. That's important, because her expertise is mental health, while mine is mostly IT management, and lately I've learned a lot about job search. At any rate, I mention this because of how much networking supports resilience and resilience supports networking. If you go back to that article, you find a key component is building and maintaining relationships, and that pretty much is networking. With that intro:

Networking:

• Definition: Targeted (around career) making of friends.
• When: Throughout our careers. While we are working may be more important than when looking. That's when the foundation is laid.
• Where: Pretty much everywhere. Sometimes it's about handing out a business card, sometimes not, it is pretty much always about getting names and following up
---- Note that the purpose of a business card is at least as much about getting theirs as it is giving ours. It allows us to initiate the follow up. -----
• Who: People connected with our profession and the businesses that might employ people like us.

In simple terms, we network pretty much everywhere and all the time. It's not about becoming somehow different, but about being ourselves. The hard part is emotional, not skill or technique, it requires that we start things and we follow up. Someone compared it to being a high school boy asking for a 1st date and it's apt. The risk though is pretty much all in our heads and somehow, we still need to drive through. We need to remember that as hard as it was for the boy who did ask, he had a date that weekend, the boy who didn't ask, didn't.

Resumes (more)

I’ve blogged about resume’s previously and covered a lot of the basics. You know the stuff:
· Use bullets,
· Start each bullet with one or more active verbs
· Leave lots of white space
· Use numerals unless there is some specific reason to use the number names
· Use your spell checker
· etc
Others have added unknown billions of bytes about what to say as well. Frequently they recommend that each job being applied for requires a different resume. When we look at a job description, we should line our experience up with their requirements then submit this unique resume.

At Notes From the Job Search we agree with most of that, but we also recognize that it’s much easier said than done. Who has the time to rewrite their resume 3 or 4 times a week? Who remembers all that stuff we did 5 or 10 years ago? If I tell someone that I wrote an inventory system for a company that maintained inventory for about 100 smaller companies, do I also tell them it was in Cobol? That I did it 15 years ago? How about the fact that it was for a logging company?

One of the volunteers at NFJS is Bob Jackson (Colonel, USAF ret) and he came up with a process for making those individualized resume’s possible. It starts by separating the resume build process from the application process, so when an interesting opportunity surfaces, we’re ready. It’s still a challenging process and takes time. First to figure out what to include, then to figure out how to phrase it, then to figure out what to extract for a specific opportunity.
So what is this magic process?
· Create a resume database including: everything.
· Phrase accomplishments such they can be cut and pasted into a new resume.
· Include all of your recommendations
· Cherry pick the good stuff out of evaluations
· Write short (2 line max) descriptions of jobs held.
· Focus on what you did, not what you did it on. (in the example above, what I did was write the “inventory system”, what I did it on was “logging”)

The place to start is a simple chronological list of jobs you’ve had. If you are just entering the job market, then add an entry for every year of school from your freshman year in high school.

Next take your resume as it stands now and cut and past them into the list aligned with the job where they took place.

Add the stuff back in that you took out because it happened too long ago.

Add all of the recommendations you’ve received. If they are in hard copy, type them in.

There are people who can do this without a support system, Bob did it that way, but most of us need someone to check in with and compare notes with, so if you’re in the Seattle area, check out the NFJS schedule and join us. If you are outside the area, find some kind of support system. Maybe just a friend you can get together with every week, maybe it’s your spouse, maybe it’s a support group like NFJS, but getting support is very important. Perhaps the best part is the mutual re-enforcement, but there are amazing numbers of benefits.

Elevator Pitch

My brother suggested that the various bits of information that we use in our job search are really part of "branding" our work. It's a great concept and a great way to think of the parts. It suggests that the message is consistent and that while the format changes, and the words change and even the examples used, we understand our work as a product and that we understand that getting a job is really selling that product. So our elevator pitch is the first and shortest description of our brand

Elevator pitches:

Basics
o Short 30 seconds
o Part A, what are you looking for
o Part B, What makes you special (with specifics)

Key is to focus on your audience and to think out expectations before starting
o The neighborhood block party has one presentation
o A corporate CEO has a different presentation
o Core elements need to remain -- the brand is still the brand

When describing your history, describe what you did, not what you did it on.

Example:
o Your job in the Army was "Supply Officer". What you did your work on would be scheduling trucks and truck drivers and munitions and rations.
o What you did was work task breakdown, schedule coordination, critical path analysis...

Summary:
Be specific about your role (thinking of what you did, not what you did it on) the example above might include:
o Trained and Managed crew of 24 working round the clock under adverse conditions
o Designed, wrote and implemented policies that provided for the safety of full crew

It needs to be developed with the audience in mind and it changes based on the audience
It does not answer all questions, better if it generates questions/discussion

In other words, our "brand" is always our "brand" but it can be expressed lots of ways.

resume writing

Just ran into a great resume writing resource. http://toptenresumetips.blogspot.com/
I'm adding it to the list of blogs I follow.

Internet tools

Internet tools are critical for job search. They break down into:
· Job Boards
· Bots/RSS feeds
· Social Networking sites
· Email
· Web pages
· Blogs

There are more than a hundred job boards, a few that are worth special note:
· Monster
· Dice (especially for tech jobs)
· https://fortress.wa.gov/esd/worksource/
· http://marketplace.nwsource.com/jobs/
· www.idealist.com
· Craigslist

bots of note:
· www.indeed.com
· http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en

Social Networking sites
· www.linkedin.com
· www.facebook.com
· www.myspace.com
· www.twitter.com

Obviously there are lots more in all categories. The question is how to be efficient and how to use the tools effectively. In particular, how can you use them to drive networking? The bots and feeds are key to efficiency. They allow you to set up a search of the boards that runs automatically and gives you a daily feed of opportunities. Once you have that, the social networking sites are the tool of choice with Linkedin being the most important. Linkedin is designed to be a business focused social networking site. As you set it up for yourself, this business focus becomes totally apparent. It all but requires an historical resume, and it doesn’t have nearly the friend focus that Facebook or Myspace has. I’m don’t believe you even can enter a slideshow/gallery. What it does provide is a bunch of ways to connect with folks. The key is their search We explored a few. Most notably how to find someone you know or can be introduced to in a company you are interested in. It's also a tool that rewards exploration, so fuss with it and you'll find multiple ways to do pretty much everything. :)

It’s easy at this point to ignore Facebook etc. but your friends are the people who know you and want to help, so the rest of the social networking sites should be on the list. I know that my cousin who lives in Bolivia won’t be much help, neither will the one in Melbourne, but my niece who works for the Downtown YMCA here in Seattle could very well be. The point is our networks need to extend as far as possible, and while there will be lots of folks that can’t/won’t help, our success will be from the person that does.

I’ll work on Web Pages next entry.

Examples, updates

As you will undoubtedly see, I continue to fuss with the format of the blog. I've added a couple of blogs that I follow on the right side of the page, and links that I think can be especially useful. The links will probably change from time to time to stay fresh.



The group on Wednesday has been working elevator pitches for a couple of weeks now and we actually read examples to each other yesterday. My last post had our definition, I think there's more to it. A clear tight elevator pitch becomes the organizing subject for a resume. Everyone over the age of about 20 has more experience than can possibly be captured in writing, some of it relates to work, and some of it has nothing to do with it. The older we get, the more work experience we have making it even more difficult to choose and edit what we include on a resume.

For example, I've been in IT for more than 25 years. In that time, I've been a developer, analyst, resource manager, director, etc, etc. Just describing each role would take at least a couple pages, before I got to experience that is specific to me. All that will do is bore everyone who sees it and threaten an additional forest every time it's printed. Not a useful exercise.

My elevator pitch for jobs in IT is, "Every organization struggles with getting what they need from their IT department at a price they can afford. I've been building teams that deliver on this for more than eight years and would love to have the opportunity to continue." This tells me what events and roles and accomplishments to include. Time as a dev? it's a footnote. Time as an architect? it's abreviated, but bigger than the dev stuff. What I focus on is experience where I have built teams and the team has delivered.

The point here is not that mine is the only kind of pitch, but that by being clear with my pitch, I can write a cooherent resume that supports my goals and my pitch. If I have other parallel goals, then I can write other pitches and focus the experience in my resume around those goals and that pitch.