Monday, December 21, 2009

Meet me. Trust me. Hire me.



Remember the last time you did something crazy to get in the door? We’ve all heard the stories--- some highly creative like designing a jigsaw puzzle from scratch with the one ‘missing piece’ being you. While mildly amusing and sometimes eye catching, these gimmicks rarely work. Employers are time deprived and desperately looking for the ideal candidate. If you run down the list of attributes employers are looking for in their new hires today, many of them stem back to some of the basics in ‘fit 101’. Will this person fit into our culture? Will this person work well in a team environment? Does this person have the initiative, energy and enthusiasm to add value in the role? Is this person a good communicator? A creative thinker?

How many of these items can be communicated effectively in a resume? VERY FEW.

People hire people, not resumes. Where the rubber hits the road from the employers view is, do I trust this person? Do I feel they understand what we are looking for and have taken the initiative to communicate this to us? Is this a stand-out candidate? What if you could bring this advantage out earlier in the hiring process—before the interview? What if you could give yourself that leading chance to get in front of that hiring manager? Would you do it?

Believing in yourself and conveying that authentically and relevantly goes a long way with potential employers. It is tough to fake enthusiasm and video tells a full story and goes a long way in creating trust much earlier in the hiring cycle. Innovative and committed job seekers are investing in videoBIO’s to improve their chances of getting noticed and standing out of the crowd at the earliest stages of resume review. Your personal brand is something that is uniquely yours and by some statistics can represent over 75% of the ultimate hiring decision. In this market climate where employers are paralyzed by perfection, the skills and experience outlined in the resume are expected, so do something unexpected that helps to create trust and familiarity early on.




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Friday, December 18, 2009

How dumb is your resume?

by Laurinda Shaver

Here is the challenge.

You are a job seeker looking for work in various disciplines. You have an extensive education and background in creative design, but finding that your "creative" resume puts you in the overqualified category for retail, food or general work. So you dumb down your resume.
Its easy. Take out some of your education, work experience and create various versions.
1) creative
2) retail
3) food
4) general
And..then send the correct resume for the correct job posting.

But, how do you reflect this online? If someone Googles you, how do you get them to see only specific information about you? You can't. What lives online can't be filtered for a specific user. What is online is there for the viewing. You can't control who sees what.

What can you control?
And this might seem obvious, but what you put online.

What is most important of the 4 versions? The creative one. The others help pay the bills until your Creative Work does. So, you focus on that. Make your online presence support your creative endeavours and showcase your talents. Make sure your presence is clean and focused.

So, your Food/Retail/General resume gets you in the door. Manager X Googles you and sees your creative side. Doesn't find any digital dirt about you. There are no flags. You get the interview.

Simple as that.

Do you agree? Would love to hear your thoughts.

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

What's your digital dirt?

by Laurinda Shaver

William Arruda, founder of Reach Personal Branding, has a great Personal Branding prediction list for 2010.

Item #9: Digital Dirt Elimination caught my attention. I spend alot of time talking with clients about how videoBIO can help increase their visibility on Google, but spend no time thinking about how to remove "dirt" from the Google Search results.

You know what I'm talking about. That ugly picture from a party or that association that you no longer want to be associated with. Pretty much anything that will tarnish your online reputation.

So, who can help you eliminate your Digital Dirt?

William talks about 3 companies:
1. ReputationDefender
2. Defend My Name
3. Internet Reputation Management

Lets review their offerings:
1. ReputationDefender
They are a global online reputation management and privacy company. They focus on 3 goals. To SEARCH your online information, to provide DESTROY assistance, and to deliver CONTROL on how others are able to perceive you online. This is done through their 4 products:
1. MyReputation
2. MyChild
3. MyPrivacy
4. MyEdge
Essentially you pay a monthly fee for reports and additional fees if you want to "DESTROY" online information. The Privacy option allows you to remove your personal information from search databases. They go a step further and will promote you at your chosen online locations to increase your search results rank. A very comprehensive offering.

2. Defend My Name
I had to dig around a bit to figure out what services they offer. I believe that at their core, they are a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company. They build content to promote you using SEO techniques to drive up your ranking. There is no listed price, so you will have to get a quote.

3. Internet Reputation Management
This company is solely focused on identifying and evaluating all your negative search results. From there, they create a plan on how to move the negative notices and to replace them with positive ones. The site is simple and straightforward. There are no prices listed, but there is a Contact Us form to fill out if you want more information.

Have you used any of these or other similar companies? I would love to hear about your experiences.

At the end of the day, being careful and monitoring your online presence is extremely important. Therefore if you do stumble across some digital dirt, you can catch it quick and deal with the issue before it explodes.


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