By Paul Keegan

(Money Magazine) — Think branding is only for celebrities and cola companies? Think again.

Today whatever reputation you have is spreading quickly across the Internet, thanks to Google, industry blogs, and social-networking sites. (Even failing to turn up on search engines says something about you.)

That makes it critically important to take control of your professional image, or “brand,” says William Arruda of Reach Personal Branding. Actively promoting the brand you’d like to be can help you get your name on the radar of industry leaders and advance your career. Here’s how to do it.

Determine your trademark

First, figure out how you’re perceived: Google your name, and ask former colleagues to give anonymous feedback about your strengths and weaknesses via reachcc.com/360reach. These tools can help you identify both any problems (the photo of you tipsy at JazzFest) and positive qualities to exploit (your efficiency).

Next, in 20 words or less, answer this question: “How do I want employers to view me?” Focus on what makes you unique — maybe you’re an engineer with great people skills or a marketing exec who knows accounting. Think long term. “Your brand should reflect the career you want, not the job you have,” says Dan Schawbel of Millennial Branding.

Spread the word online

Potential employers are likely to look you up online, so you want the top search hits of your name to communicate your brand. Start by making sure your LinkedIn profile plays up your brand message — use the “summary” to state it outright — and that your Facebook page doesn’t distract from it, since both show up early in searches.

You could build a website to promote yourself further. Or you might start a blog on a topic that fits with your brand identity. (But remember that an infrequently updated blog can do you more harm than good.)

Drive traffic to your site by commenting on other blogs and asking them to link back, says search-optimization expert Evan Bailyn of First Page Sage. Also, feed blog posts automatically to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Live and breathe the brand

Make sure your offline behavior is consistent with the brand you’re promoting online by taking on roles that will enhance your image among the right people. If you’re calling yourself a collaborator, volunteer for group projects.

International expert? Join a committee in your trade association that deals with issues abroad. “It’s not about making your brand famous,” says Arruda. “It’s about making it selectively famous among the people who need to know about you.”

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By Debbie Shalom, Amazing Resumes and Coaching Services

You don’t need a Ph.D. to conduct a successful job search. Achieving your career goals requires an organized strategy and disciplined approach. Below are six tips to help you search smarter, not harder.

Sell your value.
What makes you unique? How will your strengths, skills and accomplishments solve prospective employers’ problems? Determine your “unique value proposition” and make it an integral part of your personal marketing plan. Consider every document (résumé, biography, business card) or face-to-face meeting (networking, interview) as an opportunity to communicate your value and address strategic business needs.

Energize yourself.
Searching for a job can be exhausting if you do not have a plan to re-energize yourself. Staying motivated and on task is easier when you develop a practical plan and stick to it. Arrange a daily schedule that is feasible and fits into your lifestyle. Determine how many days and hours a week you will invest in your search and create a document to track your progress.

Activate and build your network.
A strong network can provide you with job leads and information to access the hidden job market. Research shows that more than 60 percent of all jobs are found through networking. Everyone you know or meet and every situation you encounter is an opportunity to grow your network. View every family member, social or business acquaintance as a potential member of your network.

Research your options.
The Internet is an excellent place to begin your research. If you want to know more about specific industries, average salaries or educational requirements, visit sites such as http://www.bls.gov/, http://www.cbsalary.com/ or http://www.hoovers.com/. Employers’ websites are another source of valuable information; there you can learn more about key  decision-makers, products and services. If you want to speak to someone within a specific company, try searching for him or her on professional networking sites like LinkedIn, Brightfuse or Ning.

Customize your job search strategies.
You will increase your chances for success if you focus on personal preferences. Select two or three strategies that fit your personality and lifestyle, and build your job search around them. If you like to meet new people, volunteer for an organization or apply for work at a temporary agency. If you are introverted or shy, contact others through social networking sites or alumni associations. Other job search channels you can try are job boards, networking groups, job fairs and trade shows.

Harness your creativity.
Market yourself with imagination. Five years ago, job applicants would print their résumés on colored paper to get an employer’s attention. Today, employers want to hire qualified applicants who know how to present their value. Producing project portfolios or video résumés are two original ways to showcase your candidacy.

Whichever method you choose, conduct your job search in an organized, targeted and creative manner. And remember the adage, “Success is the end result of creativity and all of the hard work around it.”

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By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

There’s been no shortage of warnings about the career dangers of posting racy content on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Yet many job hunters still don’t heed that advice, and others don’t realize they’re doing just as much damage by doing things like bending the truth or spamming their résumés. Recruiters say such faux-pas can result in immediate and lasting career damage.

“You’re going to be remembered—and not in a positive way,” says Colleen McCreary, chief people officer for Zynga Game Network Inc., a San Francisco developer of social games including FarmVille. “Recruiters move around a lot from company to company, and that can carry on with them for a long period of time.”

Ms. McCreary says candidates consistently damage their reputations by sending cover letters that disingenuously claim a specific position at the company is their dream job. With a check of Zynga’s applicant-tracking system, she can see that those people submitted the same letter for several other openings, too. “They’ve now lost all their integrity,” she says. As an alternative, she recommends that job hunters write about the two or three positions they’re most qualified for in a single letter.

Job hunters also regularly flub by submitting their résumés to multiple recruiters and hiring managers at a single firm. “What they’re doing is a huge turn off because it sucks up a lot of time for people,” says Ms. McCreary.

Likewise, job hunters repeatedly derail their chances by applying for positions for which they don’t even meet the basic requirements. “There are a few people out there who seem to see it fit to apply to every job we ever post,” says Dan Goldsmith, a managing partner at AC Lion, an executive-search firm in New York. “Those people just go right in the trash folder.”

There are also job hunters who repeatedly send the same recruiters their résumés year after year, which can give the impression that they’re desperate or a job hopper, adds Mr. Goldsmith.

Liars make up another category of memorable job hunters. “People will say they graduated from [a] school and you find out from looking online that… they just took a course,” says Ms. McCreary.

Executive recruiter Russ Riendeau says he checks candidates’ résumés against their LinkedIn profiles and often discovers discrepancies. “It’s helping me assess whether candidate is indeed who they say they are,” says Mr. Riendeau, a partner at East Wing Group, a search firm in Barrington, Ill. Résumés should tell a candidate’s full story, he says.

Meanwhile, many job hunters are also continuing to overlook the dangers of posting provocative photos and other dubious content on social-media sites. Case in point: Recruiter Lori Fenstermaker says she lost interest in a recent candidate for a legal-assistant job after finding her raunchy MySpace profile. “She represented herself in a way that would not align with the company’s philosophy and ethics,” says Ms. Fenstermaker, founder of Automatic LLC, a search firm in Grand Rapids, Mich. “Anything someone publishes online could knock a person out of the running per se.”

There are also some job hunters who are unwittingly going out of their way to spoil their prospects. Last year, a candidate for a senior client-services position invited Mr. Goldsmith to be part of his Facebook network. After accepting, the recruiter found a semi-nude photo of the candidate, prompting Mr. Goldsmith to withdraw this person from consideration. “It was so horribly inappropriate,” the recruiter recalls. “To flaunt that with such a lack of sensitivity to professional decorum is very disquieting.”

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By ALEXANDRA LEVIT

Q: I am driven, hard working and smart, but I lack the self-discipline to look for a job. I have hired a career counselor, but I still can’t muster the motivation I need and am always procrastinating. Do you have any advice for being a more effective job seeker?

A: Acknowledging the fact that you have a problem with self-discipline is half the battle. Next, you need to employ some strategies to conquer your natural tendency toward procrastination. Create a calendar of job search-related tasks that you will do each day and concentrate on checking as many of them off the list as you can. When the urge comes to do something else instead, force yourself to think about whether a momentary reprieve is worth having to overhaul the whole calendar to reschedule a particular task. You should also think about the big picture. Sometimes the most effective job hunting activities require the most effort and, in turn, produce the greatest rewards — like a job that is satisfying and pays well. A final trick I use for procrastination is to start with the least complicated part of a particular task. Once I’ve finished one component, I gain momentum and it’s a lot easier to keep moving.

Q: I’ve worked at a series of small companies where I’ve mostly done in-house computer programming. The projects were designed by me, built by me and serviced by me. However, my methods have since been replaced and I have no intention of learning new ones. I’m not sure what to do next. I’m nervous about entrepreneurship or working for a large company.

A: Here’s the thing that stood out to me in your e-mail: “I have no intention of learning new methods.” In order to stay marketable in any field, you have to keep your skills current. This is especially true in information technology, where technologies change rapidly. I know that it can be frustrating to be at a certain level in your career and still need to pursue education or certification, but to refuse to do so simply isn’t practical. It seems to me that starting your own business or making the transition to a different type of organization won’t solve your problem and will probably result in more work than revisiting your programming methods and determining what you need to learn to develop these home-grown applications in a twenty-first century small to medium-sized business.

Q: For 20 years, I ran an enormously successful business in Massachusetts, raised and educated three children, and kept a nice home. I retired, moved to California, began teaching, and pursued graduate education. Along the way I noticed gaping holes in knowledge among the students, so I wrote a book comparing those who succeed to those who fail. Now, I’m running up against brick walls promoting the book. What can I do to get my work reviewed?

A: Many people believe that the hardest part about writing a book is coming up with 60,000 words worth of material, but this is not the case. Promotion, which these days is moreand more the responsibility of the author, is far more difficult. Now that more than 300,000 new titles are published every year, even with an established platform in a particular industry it’s hard to get noticed amidst all the noise. So don’t be too hard on yourself. That said, there is one major thing that you can do to increase the likelihood that your book will get real or virtual ink. First, get to know the editors at the education trades and the writers of related blogs; volunteer to write expert guest pieces for them (instead of asking them outright for reviews). You’ll be providing valuable content to their readers and your book will be promoted indirectly through the byline you’ll get at the end of each piece.

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Is there anything you want done with regard to your job search before the end of the year?   

Are you hoping for a series of first interviews during the month of November?   

Do you want to go deeper into your current interview process before Thanksgiving?   

Is it a Christmas job offer you’re craving?   

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then keep pressing forward.  Do not let up for one second.  You are just inches away from November 1^st which means that you have about 6 weeks before hiring managers turn their thoughts from interviews to sugar plums and Christmas shopping.   If you’re reading this and have a first interview scheduled for November 1^st, there’s a chance that you can walk out of the month with a job offer by the time hiring managers go home for the holidays.  If you’re reading this and staring at a blank calendar canvas, you’ve got to do whatever it takes – network with medical and pharmaceutical professionals, ask for informational interviews, stand in front of hospitals and hand out your resume to sales reps – to kick-start your job search.  Get moving!

This crazy economy and marketplace are spreading into every facet of our daily lives-including our job searches-because we’re all looking for the same things: a great career, advancement, earning potential based on personal achievement.  And today more than ever, the job candidates who are achieving those things are the ones who are outsmarting and outhustling their competition.  Their hard work, determination, and output are translating into opportunities. 

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By Guest Blogger, Kevin Kermes 

Many of the same tools that are supposed to create efficiency (email, cell phones, Twitter, texting, IMs) are often the culprits accused of creating our inefficiency.  Or, is it that they are a symptom versus the disease?  Managing technology plus the myriad of tasks – finding new job leads, marketing yourself, networking, responding to emails/phone calls, etc. – often paralyzes job seekers and results in even higher stress levels (as if the job search isn’t stressful enough).  So, the real question here is: what can you do to alleviate these issues in a technology-laden environment?

Doing More Often Nets You Less - A study done at Microsoft last year looked at how long it takes people to return to a task when they are interrupted by an e-mail or instant message. The average was 15 minutes. More than a quarter of the people did not return to the task at hand for two hours! Moreover, when people did finally start working again, they did not reach their earlier level of concentration for an additional 10 minutes. When you take all of this into account, you realize multi-tasking can be a colossal time waste.

There is Focus and There is Focus – Being focused on the task at hand isn’t enough.  To be more efficient in what you need to get accomplished daily, break out your to-do-list into blocks.  Segment your day by activities: returning email, following up on leads, finding new target companies (preferably through the “hidden job market”), network, reinforce your SME (subject matter expert) status.  By getting in the zone on each of these tasks, your increased focus will net you better results.

Turn it Off – Email and IM are the biggest culprits here and are not the exception to working in blocks.  Shut your email down and set up 2-3 times a day when you open it and respond.  There are very, very few things that cannot wait an hour or two for a response.  And, if they are that critical, someone will typically pick up the phone and call you.

Always the Exception to the Rule – We always need one of these, right?  Waiting for a call back from a prospective employer?  Expecting to hear from someone you have been trying to network with for weeks?  Make a list of critical events that allow you to break out of working in blocks.  But, remember the stats we talked about earlier and weigh out if the event is really so important that you want to lose 15-25 minutes of prime productivity out of your day.  Some events are worth it, others not so much.  You be the judge.The job search is a full time job and an extremely draining one at that.  So, don’t add to that anxiety by being inefficient in your daily tasks.  Try implementing a few of these techniques and see your productivity increase and your stress level decrease.

Want to learn more about uncovering the “hidden job market?”   Listen to a recording of my – “5 Secrets to the Perfect Job Search” webinar.

Kevin Kermes publishes the ‘Build the Career Your Deserve’ e-zine with over 21,000+ subscribers. If you are ready to empower yourself with the vital tools and information necessary to find the job you want and build the successful career you deserve, visit him now www.kevinkermes.com

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I love urban legends.  Remember the one about the couple who travels to the foreign country for their honeymoon?  They buy what they think is a pet dog only to find out that they’ve purchased a small rat.  I loved that one as a kid. 

Here’s an urban legend that I’ve enjoyed as an adult recruiter.  It goes like this…

“When writing a resume, more is more.  A resume must be two pages if it’s going to worthwhile.  After all, one has to include a much as possible about a person’s career in order to be considered for a job listing.”   

Most of the resumes that arrive at our company and are later re-developed by our coaching and resume writing division need to go on drastic diets.  We put them on the scales because of what medical and pharmaceutical managers demand from resumes. 

The 3 most important things I have learned about resumes in my 20 years of recruiting:

1.   Stop writing long sections at the top like “Summary of Qualifications” or “Personal History” or “Skill Sets”.  Start with a simple and clear objective targeting the specific industry you are trying to break in to.

2.   Stop writing long, detailed job descriptions.  Instead, bullet point out your top accomplishments.  Hiring managers want to know results more than they want to know what you’ve done.  Talk about - no flaunt - your sales numbers.

3.  Keep it to one page unless you’re the president of a major corporation or a large country.   

Does your resume need to go on a diet?   

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                            

NEW YORK CITY – July 22, 2009 – The Tom Ruff Company, one of the country’s top firms specializing in recruiting medical device and pharmaceutical sales and sales management personnel, has launched an Employment Coaching and Resume Writing division. 

The new division, headed by 15-year executive recruiting veteran Paul Cox, will allow the Tom Ruff Company to focus on delivering detail-oriented, highly personalized employment coaching to candidates throughout the country. While the Tom Ruff Company will continue to meet the needs of its healthcare clients, the new division will assist job-seekers in all industries. 

“Over the past several months our company has been deluged with calls and emails from people who are struggling to find a job.  The first thing we challenge them to do is to rethink almost everything they’ve ever learned about the traditional job search.  There is nothing traditional about today’s job market,” said President and CEO Tom Ruff.

A preferred recruiter for more than 100 of the largest medical device and pharmaceutical companies in the country, the Tom Ruff Company is broadening its practice to work with job-seekers regardless of their industry with its one-on-one coaching program, while still offering the same highly personalized service and attention to detail that the company is known within the healthcare sector. 

“Though we have always specialized in medical and pharmaceutical sales, we realize that job-seekers in all sectors need coaching, and that many of the same skills apply,” said Ruff.  “That’s why we’re excited about being able to help candidates across all industries by sharing the wisdom we’ve earned in 20 years of placing over 3,200 candidates in careers with companies like Johnson and Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, Medtronic and Boston Scientific.” 

Paul Cox will lead the new division and can be contacted at 310-802-8165 or via e-mail at paul@tomruff.com. To learn more, visit www.tomruff.com. 

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There have been dramatic shifts in the hiring process since I began recruiting over 20 years ago. It used to be about the company and its products. Then there was the time when the hiring process was about people, a company´s most valuable resource.

All that has changed.

For hiring managers today, the recruiting process is about one critical question. “Can this candidate help improve the bottom-line for our company?” 2nd P of a successful job search marketing campaign - Positioning.

In other words, what makes you different from other job candidates? That question has been a favorite of mine and for many of my clients because it reveals so much about an individual.

Here´s a typical interview conversation for my clients: “Tim, you´re a great candidate, and I really like you. And because I like you, I have to be real honest. There are five individuals sitting in our lobby right now who want this same job, and two of them have more experience than you. Why should I hire you? What makes you different?”

If you´re like Tim and most job seekers today, you´ll respond with something pithy like, “I´m a people person.” And you´ll respond like that because you haven´t done a self-inventory of your skills and abilities. You did a little research, but hey, you´re just grateful to have an interview.

Listen, everyone says that they´re a people person. One time during an interview I´m positive that a candidate was unaware that I had actually heard of Barbara Streisand because she said, “I´m a people person, and people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” Most candidates also respond with, “I´m a hard worker.” Listen, I´m not begrudging a strong work ethic. It´s just that everyone says that, too.

What can you do for the company that´s going to bring them results?

What are you going to do to improve their bottom line?

You´re going to work extremely hard to answer these questions. It´s going to take sweat equity to be able to answer them with all your heart and with passion and believability. I´m not talking about clever replies to tough interview questions. I´m talking about a core-of-your-being type of response.

Interviews come down to two questions:

1) How will I improve results at the company? 2) How will I increase their profits?

If you can´t answer these two questions, then your employer has no idea how hiring you will benefit them. You must position yourself, especially in this marketplace.

Stay encouraged,
Tom

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In no time flat the economy has gone from worse to worser.  Unemployment figures are rising and the number of jobs lost continues to climb as well.  And it doesn´t appear that our economy will right itself anytime soon.  

So how do you look for a job in this troubled market?  You develop a marketing plan.  A great one.   

And any good job search marketing plan contains the 3 Ps:  Personal, Positioning, and Persistence.

Personal

Who are you?  What are your skills and abilities?  What are your career goals?  Where do you want to work and whom do you want to work for?   

If you don´t know the answers to these questions, do yourself a favor and stop interviewing now.  I admit that these aren´t easy the easiest of questions to answer.  But in this type of market, you must invest the time in unpacking who you are and what skills and abilities you possess. And what you bring to the table! 

Here´s what you need to do today.  Prepare 4 elevator responses to the questions listed above.  In other words, if you and I were to get on an elevator together, and I were to ask you one of those questions, by the time it reached the 6^th floor (about 10 seconds) could you give me a sharp, crisp answer?  

“So, Brad, how´s the job search going?  What are you looking for right now in this kind of market?”   I call them elevator speeches, and you need to have them ready when you´re returning volley in an interview setting.   

Folks, this is your marketing plan.  Knowing who you are, what you bring to the table and how you can contribute to the bottomline are essential in these remarkable times in which we live. 

Friday, we´ll talk Positioning-the 2^nd P of a good job search marketing plan.

Stay encouraged,

Tom

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