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.

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

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 1 Let’s Wrap it Up

Message and Medium

This week we established 3 goals for the creative resume and we worked part way through goal 1.

1. Develop the appropriate message and medium to communicate skills and abilities.

We established that the resume, loathed as it may be, is still the most widely accepted tool (or arrow in our quiver) to present ourselves with to prospective employment opportunities.

We accepted that a creative resume allows us to push the envelope (yes the photo is an envelope) with content and design but not to the point of being weird (I love that word because it breaks the “I before E, except after C” rule which goes on to say, “unless sounded as A as in neighbor or weigh, except either, neither, seizure, leisure and weird”).

We touched on the the mediums we would use to convey our personal branding message from traditional (resume) to new (twitter).

We discovered that along the journey of putting together the resume, things change and evolve.  That by working on a visual branding tool, the website (an arrow in the quiver), we stumbled upon design elements and graphics for the resume and the creative summary (more on that next week).

The message and the medium became one and we created a powerful yet simple message of “Design, Develop and Deliver".”

Early next week, more arrows.  We’ll look at the creative summary, pick apart the website, discuss LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  If we have time, we’ll look at Goal 2 which is;

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

This is where we’ll figure out how to get all this great stuff looked at by the right people. 

Happy Friday!

PS

I had to include this list.  I think the concept is great.  It’s only a shopping list but replace “buy” in the middle with “Get Job".”  When you look at this carefully, he has lentils in 2 places and salads separate from produce but the list makes sense because you can look at things from several perspectives at once. I always try to make linear lists and then get caught up on where to put things, Jonny has this solved plus he seems to eat pretty healthy.

Jonny Goldstein has a cool blog with 100 days of lists, charts and other stuff. 

Check out his blog here.  http://envizualize.com/blog/

The Creative Resume Part 1 nears the end?

Or “ A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Resume.”

Message and Medium (blend together)

When we started developing the resume I featured yesterday, I was spending my time focusing on the message.  I had taken the old resume apart, asked the designer to start working on some accomplishments, reviewed some job descriptions that she was really interested in to find some similarities and started to organize things in my usual or unusual way.

What I try to do is identify where a person has been, what they have done, where they want to go and how they can get there.  It’s a roadmap of sorts of an unfinished adventure. 

Just like that great Broadway play, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” a funny thing happened on the way to the resume as well.  Phil Silvers and Milton Beryl turned down the part of Pseudolus originally so they cast Zero Mostel.  During a revival, Phil Silvers said yes the second time around then to play the part.  Another revival and Nathan Lane came aboard, won a Tony and was then replaced by Woopie Goldberg.  Who would have though?

While I was focusing on the basics of the resume, I had asked Audrey to lock up a domain name we could use for personal branding and to start playing with a web site.  She did all this for about $15 bucks on GoDaddy.  AudreyLoweDesign.com was created.  She picked the design elements from a template provided by the hosting company. 

So while I was casting Zero, Audrey was messing around with Nathan and Woopie. The message and the medium became one.  I liked the design, and as you can see, used elements from it to put together what some might call an unconventional resume format.  It certainly is colorful and differentiates itself without being weird.  The resume also communicates three key points:

1. Design
2. Develop
3. Deliver

You probably have figured out that these 3 words have multiple meanings and their use as an overarching banner for Audrey Lowe intentionally plays off those meanings.

Tomorrow, I’m going to recap where we are and what we’ve done so far.  Next week, we’re going into the Creative Summary and the website design and how we got there.  Keep in mind what I said on Monday; “It’s not about the resume but it’s entirely about the resume.”

The Creative Resume, Part 1 continued

Message and Medium

Yesterday, I gave you a link to an apparel designer’s resume.  Just in case you didn’t see it, you can find it here.  I also set out 3 goals to accomplish.  We’re going to start with goal 1.

1. Develop the appropriate message and medium to communicate skills and abilities.

Let’s start with the medium first.  I know many people hate resumes and there is article after article about how resumes are dead; social networking and on-line video and clairvoyant savant recruiters have put the resume 6 feet under.  I am still of the opinion that a resume, no matter how despised by many, is the single most accepted “thing” to put into someone’s hands when you want them to interview you.

Since we’re talking creative here, we get some leeway with what we do and how we present it.  I’m not talking pink and scented or some oddball shape or size.  No printing on recycled elephant dung paper, no human billboards and unfortunately, no tee shirts with cute phrases. 

Where’s the fun in all this then?  We can add a splash of color, maybe a graphic or two.  We might even step out and use a (gasp) unconventional format.  You’re creative and you want to convey that, but you don’t want to convey weird.  It’s important to keep your target audience in mind all the time.

We’re not going to just stop at the resume but before we discuss other mediums we need to really strategize about the message.  We have a lot of tools at our disposal and certain mediums work best to communicate certain things This strategizing sometimes becomes a mess so be flexible.

 

Tomorrow we work on strategy (creative strategy I might add).

The Creative Resume, Part 1

So you’re a creative person, aren’t we all?  What sets you apart though, is that your career and professional success rely much more heavily on your creativity.  This also often means you need a slightly different set of tools to communicate and demonstrate your skills than others.  While many resumes rely on quantifiable and tangible accomplishments, creative resumes sometimes lack or have difficulty articulating what the writer has done and has to offer.

While we’re going to focus on an apparel designer resume here, these ideas can easily include those of you involved in any type of design, product development and merchandising from pots & pans to designer couture.  It can also include the world of store design, visual merchandising, architecture, and some areas of marketing. 

There are 3 goals to accomplish as we work through this.

1. Develop the appropriate message and medium to communicate skills and abilities.
2. Present this collateral in an effective and unique way to get the recipient to sit up and take notice.
3. Effectively develop a brand in a way that makes it readily apparent who you are and what you offer.

I say over and over, “It’s not about the resume but it’s entirely about the resume.”  The steps you take on this journey of development are the learning points.  In the end, you’ll have a resume, albeit a pretty nice looking one that certainly is going to gain attention.  You also will have a brand, a marketing plan and the tools to implement it. 

Homework?  Yes, we need to put in a little work.  Pull up this resume, the starting point of this creative project.   There’s nothing really wrong with this resume other than it looks like the hundreds I get every week.  Keep a copy so we can compare the finished product with what we started with.

Now, stay tuned and watch the transformation.