Take control of your online image

Posted on July 18, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

Take control of your online image

The rise of online networking sites has made it easier to connect with colleagues and learn about job openings. It’s also part of a much larger trend in which more information about you may be available to anyone who’s interested including hiring managers, who often perform Internet searches on job candidates.

If you want to advance in your career, you need to make sure that both your online networking efforts and your overall Web presence are working for not against you. A good way to do so is by treating all of your online activity as part of a public relations campaign that presents a professional image for potential employers and colleagues alike. Use networking sites with care.

Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn make it easy to expand your web of business contacts, an essential element of any successful IT career. Valuable professional connections can also come from more socially oriented sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Google’s Orkut.

Keep these three points in mind when networking online:

* Craft your profile carefully. Pay just as much attention to the content of your profile as you would to the information in your resume. Make sure it clearly highlights your professional skills. Double-check for typos and grammatical errors.
* Strive for quality, not quantity. While it may be tempting to amass as many contacts as you can, it’s important to be selective about the company you keep. Guilt by association can become a factor if you’re linked with people who have poor professional reputations. If you make your contact list public, potential employers may reach out to the people on it for referrals.
* Ask for recommendations. Most professional networks provide space for others to comment on your work or recommend you to others. Don’t be shy about asking trusted colleagues to post on your profile. These testimonials can quickly give hiring managers positive input about your work ethic and experience.

And remember, online networks aren’t just job search tools; they can also help you stay up to date on industry trends and find mentors who can offer valuable career advice. Also, they can alert you to upcoming events and educational opportunities. Learn what the Web says about you.

Your ongoing “PR campaign” should also address your overall Web presence. Blogs, personal Web sites, legal documents, message board posts and newsgroup comments all may contain information that hiring managers can see.

Start by performing an Internet search for your name. (If you have a common name, add your city, profession, past employers or alma mater as search terms.) Use multiple search engines, and be sure to check alumni sites, Web sites of organizations you belong to, and blogs or personal pages of your friends, family members and co-workers.

You might be surprised by what you find an offensive comment, a negative blog post about a previous employer, or even unflattering pictures taken at a party. If you find such material, contact the Web site’s owner or webmaster and ask to have the content removed. If your request isn’t met, consider enlisting the services of a company such as ReputationDefender.

If you find that you can’t have the negative content removed, make sure you’re prepared to address the matter if an interviewer brings it up. In most cases, employers will understand as long as you’re honest about the material in question. Put your online image to work.

The best way to limit the effect of any negative material about you is to make sure it’s counterbalanced by a substantial amount of positive, professional information. Consider launching a polished Web site or blog related to your career. Feature your accomplishments, skills and certifications, and link to any professional associations you belong to. Include your site’s URL in your job-application materials.

Sharing your insights in technology forums or industry message boards is another way to establish a stronger online presence. Posting well-informed comments or authoring articles in your area of expertise can also reinforce your professional reputation.

If you maintain a personal Web site or blog that has little positive relation to your work, it should be clearly separated from material about your professional life. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want an employer to see. On social networking sites, consider setting your profile to “private” and blocking others from posting comments to your profile.

Controlling your online image doesn’t mean blotting out any evidence of individuality or creativity. Employers know that you have a life outside of work and that a lot of online information should be taken with a grain of salt. But as more and more companies turn to the Web to learn about their potential hires, it makes sense to control what information they may find.

Katherine Spencer Lee is executive director of Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. Robert Half Technology has more than 100 locations worldwide and offers online job search services at www.rht.com.

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Job Hunt Tips For Older Workers by Allison Allen

Posted on July 17, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

This isn’t your Moms Middle-Age!

The hunt for a new job is rarely fun. Even at the best of times, it can be stressful and time-consuming. What happens though if you are a 50 something woman and find yourself laid off, or trying to switch jobs?

Unfortunately, it seems to be true that older workers in general face more challenges in the job market than their younger colleagues. They figure more prominently in layoffs according to the Labor Department. Their data shows that workers 55 and older accounted for 18.6 percent of the layoffs in 2007, up from 13.4 percent in 2000.

Re-employment is tougher as well. The most recent Labor Department statistics (2006) show that 25 to 54 year olds have the best chance of getting another job. Seventy five percent of those had new jobs within a year, compared to 61 percent of workers between 55 and 64.

The situation becomes more complicated if youre a woman in her 50s who exited the workplace for a few years to care for elderly parents, for example.

What gives? Several things could be at work. Many companies:

# Believe they can hire younger workers for less money than a seasoned 50 year old professional.

# Fear that older workers bring with them a higher possibility of medical and health complications that can raise the companys health care costs and lead to greater absenteeism.

# Believe many older workers arent as tech-savvy or flexible in their ways as their younger counterparts.

# See older professionals as having a more limited skill sets and range of work experience. Many workers in their 40s can expect to hold 14 jobs during his or her work life as compared to 7 for the average 50 something.

While sobering, the situation isnt hopeless by any means. But, it may require some changes in the way you think about the job search.

First of all, understand that if you have not had to search for a job in the last 4 or 5 years, you may be completely out of touch with how the process works these days. Kate McLagan, Vice-President for Right Management in Austin, Texas, manages outplacement services. She offers some words of advice for an older woman looking for employment:

# Basically a job search is a sales and marketing campaign with you selling yourself.

# In general, networking, not resumes, get you the job. But, there is an art to making networking work for you. Find help with this to keep from wasting precious time.

# Begin by getting your verbal and written strategies/materials in place. This includes the important step of distilling your particular gifts into 3 or 4 diamonds. If you skip this step, you can count on doubling the time it takes to find a position.

# Too many times, Kate says, we are trying to get a job rather than figure out what our role in the company could be. We are aiming at some box defined by a job description, rather than thinking about (and helping the hiring manager see) the broader picture of how our particular gifts fit with the organizations goals.
# Its critical to understand the broader trends that are driving change in our industry to keep ourselves current and up to date.

Renee Trudeau, Founder of Career Strategists, a career planning and coaching firm in Austin, Texas helping people navigate their career path, believes you start by asking: What do I want? What do I do best and how will a particular job leverage my innate strengths? Determining a good fit is based on factors such as your life stage, personality and preferences with regard to company culture, ideal boss, etc.

“Its really important that your resume, cover letter, and interview success stories be tailored to the job youre applying for. Make sure all of your marketing tools position you for the next job, not the job you used to have.” says Renee.

With regard to age, she says, “Many of my clients who are afraid of age discrimination or as being viewed as overqualified, are carrying around self-limiting beliefs which are sabotaging their success in interviews. Go into an interview with energy, enthusiasm and expecting the best. Your attitude has a huge impact on how youre perceived.”

Finally, if youre still having trouble landing your new job, a career coach can give you some objective, knowledgeable support in determining where youre stuck.

Sanjay Sathe, CEO of job search web site RiseSmart, also had some practical tips to share for older workers:

# Look for a new job before you get laid off. Its more difficult to find a job when youre out of work, and this becomes especially true when youre 55 and over.

# If youve been laid off, regroup and do some soul searching before plunging in to look for something new. It takes longer when youre older to find work, so making sure you know what you want to be doing at this stage of your life can save you steps.

# To trump the over-qualified card, you may want to consider dumbing down your resume. The company may assume you want too much pay for your 30 years of experience and screen you out before youve even had a chance to discuss salary requirements.

# Maintaining your personal network is absolutely critical. Use online tools like LinkedIn or Plaxo to extend your network, or become an active member of local professional groups.

# Patience is a virtue. When youre over 55, it simply takes longer, but persistence does pay off.

WomenBloom:

1)Provides intelligent, provocative, and substantive information, resources, interaction and commentary on issues that deeply affect mid-life women.

2)Shares stories about real life women that highlight and explore the cool ways they are reinventing what it means to be a woman at the center of life

3)Changes the way women 45 and beyond are perceived no more becoming invisible at 50!

Allison Allen is Founder of WomenBloom, a web community inspiring and supporting women who want to make the most of midlife. Women in their mid 40s and beyond are redefining what the middle of life looks like. More options. Better health. Longer life.

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The Cover Letter - Is it Your Blind Spot in Searching For a Job?

Posted on July 17, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

After working for days creating my resume, I’d carefully constructed my employment history with an eye to grabbing my prospective employer’s attention with what (I hoped) would be my spectacular accomplishments. I went over it repeatedly, looking for misspelling’s and typos, trying to find places where I could “word things” better.

Finally, after two weeks, it was ready. I sent it off to the printers to have it printed professionally on the best stock of paper available. When it came back, I decided it was beautiful in every way. It was ready, and I was ready to get the job.

I dashed off a cover letter: “Dear Sir or Madam, I read with interest your job opening and as you can see from my attached resume…”

I carefully inserted the whole package into an expensive business envelope, addressed it and sent it off.

WHAT YOU HEAR BACK

A few years ago an employer would send you a reject letter if he/she weren’t interested (or impressed) with your resume. Many times today, however, you get no response at all.

In my case, I did get a response. I heard something that sounded like a yawn, followed by the crinkling, shredding noise paper makes when it’s been wadded up and thrown in the wastebasket. That was followed by the deafening silence of no further response.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Once again, I was left holding an empty bag wondering what had gone wrong.

I’d spent so much time on my resume and had followed every rule in the book. I’d emphasized my accomplishments; I’d clearly shown, line-by-line, my experience and education; I’d put it on top notch, professional paper; I’d been respectful and confident.

I was clearly qualified for that job, I felt, and I should have at least gotten something back, if it was only a reject letter.

Time passed. My phone was dead. My mailbox was empty. I chafed to call Human Resources to find out if they’d even received my resume, just barely holding myself back from flipping open my cellphone. The fine print in the job advertisement: “No Phone Calls Please” made me feel muzzled — not given a chance.

What happened? I asked myself over and over again. I had no answer; not even a clue.

THE OVERLOOKED ITEM IN THE APPLICATION BAG

It’s hard to look into your “blind spot”. After all, that’s what a “blind spot” is…a place where you can’t see…a place where you don’t look, and would never consider looking. In my case, and in the case of many job seekers, the “blind spot” is the cover letter.

In preparing the application package we send off to employers, most of us spend the least amount of time on the cover letter. Often we regard it as more or less of a formality…a sort of a “window dressing” to the resume. But in actuality it’s the first thing the Human Resources person sees…and IT CREATES THE FIRST IMPRESSION OF YOU.

If it’s pedestrian, if it’s boring, and, what’s more important…

If it shows no relevance to the job you are applying for, you will stand a very good chance of having your resume tossed without even being looked at. This is particularly true in this job market, where HR has stacks of resumes on her desk for every open position.

GRAB ATTENTION AND BE RELEVANT

This is a tough job market. If you are out of work, or think your job is “on the line” and have been updating your resume just in case, you are wise to realize that there are tens of thousands of job seekers like you out there, many of them with higher education and more experience.

Competition is fierce. HR’s desk is going to be stacked with resumes, and she is wading through them one by one, looking first at the cover letter of each. Over and over again she will read, “Dear Sir or Madam, I read with interest…”

Trust me, that phrase is repeated ad nauseum.

And not a single one of the cover letters will actually address the job at hand, or attempt to show WHY the candidate is the best person qualified for it.

THE DISEASED COVER LETTER

If you are scrounging a cover letter example off the Internet and changing it a little here and there or using some “stock” example tucked away on your desktop, you are carrying a sort of job seeker’s version of malaria. You’ve got a “diseased” cover letter that you repeatedly call up to produce the same results: no job offers.

There’s only one way to stop sabotaging your job search campaign. Get rid of your old, overused cover letter. Begin a real study of cover letter writing skills and what it takes to make your prospective employer “sit up and take notice” of you and your background. Discover how to compel her to take that next step…to read your resume…and the step beyond that… to call you for an interview.

Excise the disease, start over, and your phone will be ringing off the hook with invitations for interviews with employers eager to hire you.

Visit “How To Write A Resume” at http://www.resumewriting.how-to-zine.com/ for resume examples, techniques, and tips, and “Is Clever Cover Letters A Scam?” at http://professional-cover-letters.com for a review of a new breakthrough strategy in writing compelling cover letters.

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