MyRetailCareer

to thine own self be true

Who hasn’t heard this phrase?  Ever wondered what it really meant and where it came from?  The entire quote is actually;

"This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."  and it hails from Hamlet.

It’s really a cliché which means that the easiest person to fool is yourself.  Why is this in a career advice column, you might ask? 

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve done about a dozen free 10 point resume reviews.  I look the resume over and provide a candid appraisal. I don’t pull any punches. 

Is it self serving for MyRetailCareer?  Not really, because I always provide suggestions that the job seeker can implement themselves and I always offer them a free phone call to discuss their resume further.  Would I like some business from it?  Sure why not?  To say anything else would fly in the face of today’s title.

Care to speculate on how many people even send a thank you email in response?  None recently.  They are bad resumes from people with bad manners.  It’s readily apparent that they can’t be honest with themselves and as a result can’t take constructive feedback.  Those are really not good traits to have when you’re looking for a job.  Or maybe they aren’t really bad people but they can’t be true to themselves? 

It’s also said around town that when Shakespeare wrote this phrase he was supporting a great thinker named Socrates who believed that if a person was honest to themselves, new pathways would appear.  Sound like something you might have heard a few times.

If someone one tells you your resume is boring and looks like everyone else's,  get over your love affair with yourself and the resume and listen.  I was sent a short video resume yesterday with a note saying, “I’m trying this hoping to get more people to look at my resume.”  I looked at the resume, it was boring and looked just like the last 100 I have seen.  What difference did the video resume make?  None?

It’s not that people aren’t looking at this person’s resume.  The problem is that people are looking past the resume because the writer has given them no reason what so ever to give it more than a cursory glance.  It’s was boring and pedestrian and uninspiring.  Ugh!

And yes the chump, chimp picture has some double meaning and it’s bigger than my usual pictures for a reason as well.  

Labor Day is Dead

Labor Day has passed.  Summer is over. For many, the term Labor Day, had a different meaning this year.  Lack of Labor.  Doom and gloom surround us, the days are getting shorter, darkness replaces light and I’m sure somewhere the sky just fell.

Newspapers are reporting an absurdly high unemployment rate. Then in an effort to sell more papers, less they go the way of the dinosaurs and add their staff to the line, they sensationalize this fact and tell you “Hey, its even worse than you think.” See the NY Times article “Out of Work and Too Down to Search On.”

I woke up today feeling great. I like to draw lines in the sand and then jump over them and holidays always give me that opportunity. Especially when one is linked to the change in the weather. It’s a new season baby, get out and enjoy.  Dig out the sweaters, dust off the resume.  Call people you haven’t spoken with all summer.  Think orange today.

Out with the old, in with the new.  This is a great time to refocus your career, employed or not.  Today, slow down and think.  Where am I and where do I want to be?  Now, think about the places you’ll pass between here and there, choose a close by one and figure out how to get there.  We’re not aiming for the final destination, just a place to get us one step closer. 

And stop listening to the naysayers.  Let them all proclaim their end of the world crap somewhere else.  I think we should send them to a distant location, maybe Long Island.   

A little LinkedIn Controversy

I like spirited debates and I’ve seen one going around on how a person should indicate their employment status on LinkedIn (this pretty much applies to the resume as well).

One camp’s thought is don’t indicate you aren’t working.  Their reasons run from the fallacy that recruiters look harder and think better of the “passive” candidate (employed and not really actively looking) to the concept that if you are unemployed there’s a reason and it’s not good.

The other camp says to shout out that you are unemployed,eager to get back to work, willing to jump through hoops and can start yesterday, in fact, you’re at the door, blackberry in hand.

Let me say up front, my opinions are my own and I base them on having been an executive recruiter placing 100’s of people into great new jobs, but they are still opinions as are others thoughts as well.

As a recruiter, if you send me a resume that says you’re still working and you’re not, we start off badly.  When you try to trick me, I don’t trust you from the start.  That’s a pretty crappy way to begin a relationship that is all about trust.

If I just get your name somehow and I go to your profile on LinkedIn to “check you out” and it says you’re still employed and I find out you’re not employed when I call you at work, I’m not going to take it personal since now it appears you’re trying to deceive everyone.  I’ll be tempted to think maybe it’s because you’re sloppy or lazy and haven’t bothered to update your profile, incompetent because you don’t know how or ashamed because you’re unemployed (or just trying to trick everyone).  None of these traits endear you to me either.

People are going to find out you’re not working.  Do you honestly think that employers won’t like you to begin with because you’re unemployed but after they meet you and realize you’re either deceptive, inept, sloppy or lazy (or all the above), they’ll like you better?  Good luck in your search.

The other extreme, desperation, is just as bad.  You shouldn’t  shout, scream, buy a billboard, perform in the street mostly naked or anything else to draw attention to yourself.  That kind of attention, although great to blog about, isn’t the best possible personal branding image unless you want to work at a theme park or sue some candy maker.

So what do you do?  Change your mental perspective.  Most people today are out of a job through no fault of their own.  Good recruiters and good companies know that.  Be honest; your resume and LinkedIn profile should show correct dates of employment. 

Keep in mind that simple is better so if you send a resume and enclose a cover letter, just say, “ABC Company restructured, reducing it’s labor force 15%” or “ZED Company exited it’s Ukrainian expansion plans.”

Then there is that little area in LinkedIn under your name where you can update your status.  It always starts with your name so write your update accordingly.  Some people ignore that area, some scream “Susie needs a job yesterday.”  I just updated mine to say, “Brad is writing the last blog of the summer.”  If I was a job seeker, I’d be honest (gasp) and write, “Brad is presently seeking a [insert something here like] creative position with a Web 2.0 company focusing on personal branding.”  Sorry it’s Friday and I’m not very creative today.

Have a safe and wonderful Labor day and see you after summer.

Back with the Creative Job Search

A few days ago I was throwing in my 2 cents about LinkedIn.  As I said, there are numerous places to get information about how to use LinkedIn, how to write a profile, who to connect to, etc. and so forth.  Just look on the internet.

I stressed that LinkedIn gives you a chance to humanize yourself.  You can have a picture.  You can add your interests.  You can build your brand because you can include more than you would on on a resume.  You can have a link to your resume.

So why do so many people just cut and paste from their resume to create a LinkedIn profile?  I think there are a lot of reasons, unawareness and unfamiliarity come to mind as does laziness. Hey, it’s easy to cut an paste.

Think of it this way.  Any good recruiter is going to look for your profile on LinkedIn.  When someone that I don’t know sends me an email, where is the first place I go to find out about them?  It just makes complete common sense to have a decent profile and maximize it to the hilt.

Your profile doesn’t and shouldn’t be a rehash of your resume.  Yes, it needs the positions you’ve been in, the companies you’ve worked for and what you accomplished but this is a chance to give yourself some body.  You can become a person, not a 2 page sheet of paper.

A little departure, Dan Schawbel…

I had this link saved and never bothered to do anything with it but since I’m discussing social networking and LinkedIn specifically, here you go.

If you’re a job seeker, or anyone else for that matter, Dan Schawbel is someone you should follow.  No, Dan doesn't have the silver bullet (or arrow) on getting a job but he is one of the foremost experts on Personal Branding. 

 

You all know I spend a lot of my effort when working with job seekers on how to pull all the tools together and execute a seriously awesome job search.  You also all know that while I still believe it starts with the resume (no one has proven me different yet), a killer resume does you no good if no one sees or reads it. It’s the old tree in the forest thing.

I always talk about how you need to make yourself visible and differentiate yourself from everyone else and what, pray tell, do you think branding is all about? Yes, networking too.

This article is almost a year old yet is resonates as loudly, maybe even more today as it did back in November.

Success Story: Build Your Dream One LinkedIn Contact at a Time. 

Follow the links and learn about how to use Facebook and Twitter while you’re there reading and if you are really serious, buy his book, “Me 2.0.”  It’s to your right under Books I Recommend.

Here’s a more current link to another great article, this guy is simply a must read. 

Position Yourself for the Career You Want Not the Job You Have.

 

The Creative Job Search, Part 1 even more

As I wrote yesterday, there are numerous articles, books and blogs on how to maximize the use of LinkedIn. Some say one thing and then next says the exact opposite.   I want to give you my overall philosophy on how your resume, LinkedIn and other social profiles should be put together and maximized.

Your resume is the most business like of all tools.  There is little room for demonstrating more than your professional experience, background and accomplishments and in fact, disclosing personal information is usually looked upon unfavorably.

While every effort needs to be made to keep all your social media professional such as leaving off the naked tequila shots from college, you are afforded some ability to better round out your persona and transform yourself from a couple of pages of black and white.

LinkedIn is really your next step.  While I advocate keeping the resume 100% straight arrow in content, I look to LinkedIn as 85% or 90%.  I think you need to round yourself out.  Number one, put up a good picture but don’t put up the cheap grey, or worse, brown background.  Never put a picture on a resume.  Already you look better!

Write a compelling summary.  Humanize yourself but don’t lose your professionalism.  Another no-no, don’t just cut and paste from your resume. While LinkedIn can reinforce what you have stated in your resume, here you have an opportunity to add layers of color and interest.

Take advantage of the specialties area.  Anyone ever hear of key word search?

Take a look at some of the LinkedIn applications and make use of them.  If you travel, TripIt is a good thing.  Say your going to be in Kalamazoo next week.  Wouldn’t it be great to meet a 1st Level LinkedIn acquaintance? 

To be continued….(always wanted to write that.)

The Creative Job Search, Part 1 Cont.

LinkedIn was formed May 5th, 2003 and as of June 17th, 2009 has over 45 million members in over 200 countries on all 7 continents.  Probably a good place to start if you want to be found.  Just in case anyone is wondering about Antarctica, I found 129 members in the French Southern Territories which is a dependency of Antarctica.  Enough geography for today.

There are a lot of books, articles and blogs available to tell you how to use LinkedIn, I’m going to hit a few highlights that I think are particularly important to a job seeker and then close with a controversial one.

Just put your name in, not a bunch of other stuff and certainly not your email.  If someone wants to search for you, don’t make it difficult.  If someone wants to download your info, don’t make it so they have to edit it to put it into Outlook or a mailing list.  If you are Joe Smith, sorry, but if you go by Joe Smith, please don’t use Joseph Randolph Smith, Jr., SHRM jrs_jr@yahoo.com as your name.

You have 3 lines below your name.  Make the most of them.  Mine says exactly what I am and includes my email letting people know I am open to invitations.  Don’t include your email address and then when you get invitations click on the “Don’t Know” button ever.  Someone did it to me once and I got even several times over.

Geographic location.  Hey, if you are in Arkansas, willing to relocate yourself to NYC, I don’t have a problem with it saying Greater New York City. 

I think this is self explanatory for the most part.  Get meaningful recommendations, not too many, not too few.  Build a solid network of connections, I have 951 and recently de-connected about 50 people.  Choose the correct industry.  I use retail but I could use staffing & recruiting, apparel & fashion or human resources.

Websites.  Remember to edit them instead of using the default names.  I have a link to this blog, my business website and my resume.  I know you can now add applications and I use box.net a lot but I don’t like that it shows up right in the middle of your profile. 

Tomorrow we’ll tackle content.

The Creative Job Search, Part 1

As you can see, I’ve made some changes in the title.  The reason being, is although I’m still focusing on how we put together a complete strategy for a creative person, there are a lot of things to be discussed that us uncreative types can learn from here too.

We’ve built a resume, a creative summary and a website.  We have explored our medium and our message.  We have begun to brand by using consistent visual reminders, the colors, the stripes and the logos as well as tie those to our message of Design, Develop and Deliver.  None of that does us any good unless people see it.  Oh yea, forgot about that…..

This really brings us to our second goal.

2.      Present this collateral in an effective and unique way to get the recipient to sit up and take notice.

What tools are available to us?  First and foremost, LinkedIn.   Nothing I know of lets you get yourself in front of more executives and recruiters than LinkedIn does.  Facebook, Twitter, US Postal Service (surprised?), networking groups, conferences, other social sites, YouTube, Flickr and a host of other places.

Tomorrow we start with LinkedIn.

PS.

If you click on the framing picture and go to the original on Flickr you will see a neat feature.  The picture has notes so when you scroll over it you can see that it will have a fireplace and flat screen TV when completed.

The Creative Resume, Part 2

Another Multiplier

Now we get to the website.  For this project we’ve been following, we used GoDaddy to register the domain name audreylowedesign.com and host the site.  There are numerous places you can go to to register a domain and host your site, feel free to look around.  I just happen to be used to using GoDaddy and find that for most beginners it’s pretty easy to learn and the support has always been good.

Why would you want a website? Why not?  For about $10 for the domain and less than $5 a month, you suddenly have a presence.  As they say, “you have a chip in the game.”  Plus, you learn something new and it demonstrates you understand technology.

As I had written earlier, my client used an existing Go Daddy template, one that I liked so much I used the design elements in both the resume and the creative summary.  My only caveat is that you give some thought to how you intend to brand yourself prior to jumping in with both feet.   A circus theme might be your favorite thing in the world but do you really want to associate yourself with clowns.

Explore Audrey’s website.  Watch the PowerPoint presentation, download a resume or her creative summary.  Most importantly, if you know someone that might benefit from visiting the site, pay it forward and send them a link.  Start networking and helping others and you’ll get back much more than you ever anticipated.

The Creative Resume, Part 2

Moving beyond the Resume (multipliers)

I kind of regret giving this series of articles the overall name of “The Creative Resume” since it’s much more that but since we’re stuck with it let’s move and explore what I term multipliers.  Multipliers are some of the additional arrows in our quiver or possibly even another method of delivering those arrows.  Think long bow, cross-bow, etc. They exponentially increase our visibility, reach and message.

Most creative types love the word “portfolio”.  Us uncreative types don’t have a portfolio, we usually have either a binder or a folder, maybe a legal pad.  We’re jealous.  Not to take anything away from you, but I happen to personally think the word sometimes can have kind of a snooty perception. I tried to create a more neutral sounding document name and came up with Creative Summary, our first multiplier.

Most portfolio’s contain a lot of information and can be presented and organized in a myriad of ways.  The creative summary is deliberately focused to give a taste of creativity while echoing and visually reinforcing the overarching theme established, in this case Design, Develop, Deliver.

“It’s the real thing.”  Make you want a cold soft drink?  It should as that phrase has been put in front of you tens of thousands of times.

Reinforcement of impressions in a consistent manner creates remembrance and ownership.  That’s my 2 cents worth of branding knowledge.  This has nothing to do with whether it’s a good brand or not, or if it appeals to you or not.  Just that you remember it.  I drink the other brand anyway.

So the creative summary is an visual expansion of the brand we’re selling today.  You didn’t hear it here first but a picture is worth a 1000 words.  Take some time to look over the creative summary and start to think how you can use this to your advantage.  I think it speaks for itself.