Top Ten Online Job Search Tips-Career Builder Revisited

As you may be aware, Career Brander is sometimes critical pf job boards and their utility for job seekers.  Additionally our Job Search Radar is often mentioned as a disruptive technology to the job search market. That said, we really must admit,  that job boards  do sometimes lead to new positions for individuals and that sometimes Job Board’s offer great content.

Today’s, case in point is an article recently found on Career Builder that outlines Top Ten Online Job Search Tips. It’s a great list!  Below is the Career Builder  Top 10.  After each suggested Career Builder strategy, we’ve added an opinion, link or comment.

______________________________________________________________________________

FROM CAREER BUILDER:

When it comes to a fruitful online job search, successful  job seekers follow these 10 guidelines.

1. If you build it, they can come.
Instead of simply posting your résumé on a Web site, take it one step further and design an easily-navigable Web site or online portfolio where recruiters can view your body of work, read about your goals and obtain contact information.  We strongly agree with this.  That is why Career Brander created Site in 60.  Utilizing Site in 60  job seekers  create their own personal website with no technical skill.

2. Check yourself to make sure you haven’t wrecked yourself.

Google yourself to see what comes up — and what potential employers will see if they do the same. If you don’t like what you find, it’s time to do damage control.  We strongly agree with this and suggest you also check Zoom Info, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.  After you finish your research we suggest, if necessary, you claim your Zoom Info profile.  Then set up a www.vizibility.com search me button.  If you have serious false information, issues with your online identity, or need help in establishing an online identity you might consider hiring a company like www.reputationdefender.com.

3. Narrow your options.
Many job boards offer filters to help users refine their search results more quickly.  You should have the option to narrow your job search by region, industry and duration, and, oftentimes, you can narrow it even more by keywords, company names, experience needed and salary.  In the current economy targeting is more important than ever. We recommend focusing on industry, company size, geography for your initial filters.  However we feel strongly that at this stage job seekers are better served mining databases as opposed to job boards.   Job candidates need to look at the whole universe of potential hirers not just those on job boards.

4. Go directly to the source.
Instead of just applying for the posted job opening, one of the best strategies to finding a job is to first figure out where you want to work, target that company or industry and then contact the hiring manager. Also, many employers’ career pages invite visitors to fill out candidate profiles, describing their background, jobs of interest, salary requirements and other preferences.  We do believe in targeting best-fit companies.  That is why we offer Hoovers premium listings inside of Job Search Radar to help job candidates better identify best-fit target employers.

5. Find your niche with industry Web sites.
Refine your search even more by visiting your industry’s national or regional Web site, where you can find jobs in your field that might not appear on a national job board.  More and more employers are advertising jobs on these sites in hopes of getting a bigger pool of qualified applicants. Staying current with trade group websites is a great job search strategy.

6. Try online recruiters.
Recruiters will help match you with jobs that meet your specific skills and needs.  Not sure where to start?  Sites such as recruiterlink.com, onlinerecruitersdirectory.com, searchfirm.com and i-recruit.com provide links to online headhunters for job seekers.  Great idea. In addition to these resources , we offer our own searchable 20,000 recruiter database inside Job Search Radar.

7. Utilize video résumés.
Video résumés are just one more way to stand out to employers.  Intended as supplements to — not replacements for — traditional résumés, video résumés allow job seekers to showcase a little bit of their personalities and highlight one or two points of interest on their résumés. We do not recommend using video resumes. Our research shows most recruiters find these cumbersome and are hesitant to accept them.  Many corporations have specific policies prohibiting them.

8. Run queries.
You run searches on everything else, from your high school sweetheart to low-fat recipes, so why not jobs?  Enter a query that describes the exact kind of job you’re seeking and you may find more resources you wouldn’t find otherwise (but be prepared to do some sorting).  We also suggest running queries on LinkedIn to optimize your profile.  See our January 25, 2010 blog post on optimizing LinkedIn profiles.

9. Utilize job alerts.
Most job boards have features that allow you to sign up to receive e-mail alerts about newly available jobs that match your chosen criteria.  Or go a step further and arrange an RSS (really simple syndication) feed from one of these job sites to appear on your customized Internet homepage or your PC’s news-reader software. Job Search Radar will email you every morning any new job listings associated with your targeted best-fit companies.  It will also email you an organized view of any and all news associated with your target best-fit companies.  We believe this business intelligence is often more actionable in job search than actual new job postings.

10. Get connected.
How many times have you been told that it’s not what you know, but who you know?  Thanks to the emergence of professional networking sites like LinkedIn.com, job seekers no longer have to rely on the old standby of exchanging business cards with strangers.  These sites are composed of millions of industry professionals and allow you to connect with people you know and the people they know and so forth. (A word of caution: When you sign up for online social networking sites, you are in a public domain.  Unless you are able to put a filter on some of your information, nothing is private, and it can be difficult to erase once it is posted.)   Most jobs are found through networking and online social networking sites allow individuals to network faster than at any time in history. Once you begin to build your online networks you will be amazed how different people in your life know each other and can potentially help you find your next job.LinkedIn’s connection features are embedded inside Job Search Radar so you can do all your career networking from one  website.

Who dat stealing my brand

An interesting thing happens with brands.  The more popular they become, the more lawyers get involved in protecting them.

What if Tom Peters, filed a trademark today on Personal Branding?  From this moment forward anyone trying to use the words without Tom’s permission would be in violation of his trademark.  What if Tom also asked for royalty payments from all the blogs, books and services that use the words personal branding.  Crazy concept?  Peters is clearly credited in 1997 with creating the category/concept and naming it Personal Branding, so why isn’t he entitled?

Well, the NFL has a more ludicrous case then this, yet they are pursuing it with the State of Florida, State of Louisiana & New Orléans.  You’ve got to read this article. I laughed out loud when I read it.

The NFL is trying to say they own “Who Dat” which is a battle cry of New Orleans folks cheering on their sports teams.   The NFL literally sent cease and desist orders to t-shirt shops and merchants in New Orleans saying the NFL owns the rights to “Who Dat”.  The NFL’s claims are ludicrous, appalling and bordering on anti-american. (No offense meant to all our readers that are lawyers.)

If the NFL continues down this path, Major League Baseball is well positioned to claim they own the rights to Na Na Hey Hey Good Bye (The “kiss him” words from the original 1969 song are not used in sports stadiums.)   The major leagues will claim in 1977, the organist at the Chicago White Sox game started playing the song and it caught on as a sing a long and a rival taunt.  Thus it is theirs!

What’s next? The legal wrestling will begin  between Neal Diamond and the Boston Red Sox over Sweet Caroline.

Brands are created and built. Did the NFL create Who Dat? What did the NFL do to build the brand of Who Dat?

I understand Brands that are strong and have been invested in, need protection.  However, they also need to be truly “your brand” to protect.

My advice today is go out and create and build your own personal brand.  Also, send your resume to NFL headquarters.  There may be some jobs opening up.

Optimize LinkedIn Profiles for Job Search

LinkedIn continues to gain momentum as a resource utilized by both internal and external recruiters to find well qualified candidates. A quality LinkedIn profile is quickly becoming an essential element of a complete career marketing package.

Like a resume, a LinkedIn profile serves as a summary of your work history. Both your resume and your LinkedIn profile need to be well-organized, well thought out, and well written. Although a resume will typically go into greater detail of accomplishments, a LinkedIn profile needs to offer enough facts to drive further action by recruiters.

As every job seeker is hopefully aware, when resumes are submitted to corporations or job boards, they are then filtered by Applicant Tracking Software.(ATS) The software looks for “key words” to decide which of the thousands of resumes being reviewed, deserves a personal review by the recruiting or hiring manager. There are great resources on the Internet to help job seekers identify for inclusion, commonly searched key words utilized by ATS systems.  These resources will be make specific keyword suggestions based on the position a job seeker is targeting.   However, in the end, once the resume is submitted, it is a bit of a “black box” in terms of how your resume is actually parsed. So although, you may attempt to include all the right keywords to go to the top of the pile, a candidate is never really sure how a particular ATS system will treat their resume.

Conversely, LinkedIn profiles are not a black box. A simple audit will allow you to see which queries bring your profile to the first few pages of a search. Try it.

• Go to the peoples tab and hit advanced search.
• Now enter a keyword or keywords associated with your targeted position. Ex: customer service manager
• Now enter a geography zip code and a distance quotient. 50 miles is a reasonable choice.
• Then select an industry or multiple industries that apply to you. Understand the broader you make your search the lower your ranking will be.
• Now hit search. Can you find yourself in the first few pages of the LinkedIn results?

Now look at the top few names that have appeared and open their profiles.  By looking at the highlighted words, you will see the criteria that LinkedIn used to filter the search.    As of today, LinkedIn appears to scan  only four categories: Professional Headline, Titles, Specialties and Industries. LinkedIn scans these categories for frequency of the keywords selected. In our example: customer service manager.

So what do you do with this information? The simple answer is optimize these four LinkedIn categories with the keywords that you believe a recruiter would most likely use when looking to fill the employment position you are targeting. If you invest an hour to insert the keywords to make sure you show up in the first few pages of a LinkedIn search for the position, geography and industry you are targeting, you will increase your chances of being found.

Now remember, a quality job search strategy encompasses both pull and push marketing. Optimizing your LinkedIn profile is only one important component of a “pull marketing” job search strategy.  Never forget as a job seeker, you should focus the majority of your time and effort on a “push marketing” campaign focused on targeted job search networking.

Google Me: An exclusive interview with the CEO of Vizibility

I recently tested the services of a new start up called Vizibility. They have developed an innovative service which is like a “Google Me” button for individuals.  It can be posted to online profiles, personal websites, resumes, email signatures, business cards and anywhere else a user wants to be visible.  I believe it will quickly become a standard component utilized for personal branding.  Through a simple wizard, the Vizibility service enables people to quickly create the optimal Google search for themselves based on their name, employment history, and relevant keywords. It also allows for exclusion of irrelevant keywords and inaccurate search results. This PreSearch can be shared easily through a short, personalized link or “SearchMe” button.  I recently talked to company founder James Alexander about his new company (you can Google him at: vizibility.com/james):

James, tell us how you came up with the idea for Vizibility?

The inspiration for Vizibility hit when I couldn’t find myself in Google.  I spent a great deal of time learning how the engine worked and experimenting with the advanced search features.  Ultimately I was able to create the perfect query for me that returned the right set of search results.  The query was long and used a lot of Boolean jargon but it worked.  In an unintended tribute to the movie Minority Report, I started calling this curated query a “PreSearch” because I built the search in advance of someone actually needing it.  I posted my PreSearch on LinkedIn and the light bulb went off!

In going through this process, I was struck by four things: first, using advanced search is just too time consuming for most people; second, the ability to easily post or share searches didn’t exist; third, even if someone could share their PreSearch, they would need to be able to change it from time-to-time (when they changed jobs, for instance), and; fourth, a user also wants to know when their search results change and when they’re being “Googled”.   All the ingredients were there for a new approach to people search.

Ok, can you get more granular on the problem Vizibility solves for individuals?

For career professionals “Googling” and being “Googled” are now standard practice for professional, personal and other reasons.  If you cannot be found quickly in search engines, you miss an important opportunity to make a powerful impression and validate your credentials. Almost all companies are conducting online searches prior to hiring anyone.

When it comes to search engines, individuals have three fundamental problems that Vizibility helps to address: 1. Name expansion; 2. Mistaken identity, and; 3. Name entry errors.

Name expansion is a big problem.  I was recently introduced to Carl Mark, one of the founders of Jones Soda.  Not only is his name common, search engines use expansion dictionaries to find variations of each word and then return a name combination that it thinks you meant.  In his case, Google thought I wanted to see results for “Karl Marx”.  This produced useless results, of course.  I understand the logic behind the approach search engines take but it really exposes the fact the search engines have a significant blind spot when it comes to people search.

Mistaken identity can happen when two or more people have the same name.  It can be serious because the results may look like they are about you but are actually about someone else.  I read a story recently in which a woman named Lauren Bernat felt her job search was hurt by the search results for someone else with the same name whose results cast her in a negative light (http://www.hrtechnews.com/mistaken-identity-google-search-hurts-womans-job-hunt/).

Name entry errors are a problem for people with names that are difficult to spell.  When we were developing Vizibility, I would occasionally hear someone tell me they have a truly one-of-a-kind name and probably wouldn’t need a service like this.  I find that level of uniqueness and spelling difficulty usually go hand-in-hand.   Having a one-click SearchMe button overcomes this problem, of course.

The challenges we address don’t stop with the people being searched.  The people doing searches face problems too.  If you’re searching for someone online, you don’t want to have to become an expert at advanced search to find nuggets here and there about your target.  You want to spend the least amount of time and energy to get the most accurate, trustworthy results.  That’s why Vizibility displays the results of its users’ PreSearches on the Google site and transparently shows all of the search terms that were used to build it.

Obviously, that has particular interest to folks in career transition, is this your core market? How do you see it working for job seekers?

The concept behind PreSearch and the methods used to create them apply to people as well as to products and services.  We’ll be rolling out some interesting new services later in 2010 for businesses.  For individuals, which is our immediate focus, we think of our core market as anyone who needs to be visible within a search engine.  This includes transactional use for active job seekers, of course.  But it also includes passive job hunters who don’t want to miss that next opportunity.  It includes entire categories of professions such as lawyers, management consultants, Realtors, communication professionals, etc. who are routinely “Googled” as part of the screening process.

How do you intend to charge for your service?

The basic service is free.  So anyone can create and/or update their PreSearch with our wizard and download a SearchMe button.  We also offer a $2.95 monthly subscription or an annual $29.95 subscription which provides premium services such as alerts when you’ve been searched or when your search results have changed.

Can you offer a compare and contrast of your offering with People Pond, My Life or Place Your Name?

There is clearly a lot of interest in improving people search and it’s only going to get more intense. The approach to date has largely centered around three strategies:

1. Seeded Profiles: In this approach, a user proactively creates a searchable profile on a 3^rd party site which is then seeded in search engines. Access to these profiles is often only available for a fee or to other members of that site (i.e. MyLife, Google Profiles, Classmates, LinkedIn, etc.).
2. Crawling: In this approach, servers crawl publicly available information collecting data on people and sell access to it on a proprietary site (i.e. ZoomInfo, Intelius, WhoWhere, PeekYou, 123People, etc.). On some sites, like ZoomInfo, people can ‘claim’ their profiles.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): This approach attempts to boost organic results for individuals by creating content about them and seeding it all over the Internet (i.e. PeoplePond, PlaceYourName, LookUpPage, ReputationDefender, etc.).  Businesses have been doing SEO for years and these tactics are now being brought to individuals.  It can be expensive and once you start, you have to keep it up.

Individually or in combination, there is no question that these can be useful approaches.  None, however, can address the fundamental people search problems of name expansion, mistaken identity, or name entry errors.  If two people with similar names start an SEO campaign, for instance, you’re back where you started.

In contrast, Vizibility’s approach is not about hoping to influence search results or trying to drive Google users to some other site to see a profile.  Through the simple idea of creating of a robust and portable PreSearch, our approach is to leverage the strength of search engines themselves to build a set of search results that are entirely about a specific individual.

What about Reputation Defender?

ReputationDefender, along with a bevy of other personal online reputation management firms, provide a variety of services for individuals to improve their search placement primarily through SEO techniques.  Some of these firms will also help someone try to remove what could be viewed as negative material online.  These will be useful services to some people.  Unlike SEO, however, our approach isn’t to influence search results but rather to outright control them through a highly focused PreSearch that can be posted anywhere and easily tracked.

Your solution seems spot on in terms of matching a user friendly application to a problem. Can you tell us a little about yourself, your team and how you created the Vizibility application?

I started two technology companies in the 1990’s and spent most of the last decade as a product management executive at Adobe, when the company almost tripled in size from  about $1B in revenue to more than $3B in revenue.  My first start up, which I co-founded in late 1994, was called eWatch and helped Fortune 1000 companies manage their brands online (PR Newswire acquired the company in 1999).  There are some obvious parallels with Vizibility.

The core team at Vizibility includes people I’ve worked with in the past in marketing and development.  The application was built for us by Navantis, one of the largest independent software development companies in Canada.  Today’s release is a beta so we’ll be initially focused on tightening up the service and the experience.  We have a terrific product roadmap for the rest of the year as well and will be releasing several useful new features in the quarters ahead.

Thanks so much for granting us this interview in conjunction with your launch.  Career Brander intends to promote your solution to job seekers and add access to your application within our Job Search 2.0 Link Directory.  Is there anything else you would like to add in closing?

Thank you Ian.  We appreciate the opportunity to tell you and your readers a little more about Vizibility.  I’d encourage everyone to create a free, custom SearchMe link from our site at http://www.vizibility.com.

Job Search Blogs

We are in a world of constant connectivity and endless communities. Open platforms to publish instantly, consistently and with large distribution.  We are digesting more and more information, some good, some not so good.   Distributive content is changing our lives.

 The last figure I read was that the world now has over 200 million blogs and 80% of all Internet users read blogs. Have you started your blog?

Many personal branding thought leaders feel a blog is a necessary central component of personal branding. I’m not so sure.

 First, most of us are not gifted writers, including your humble author. Thus, it may not be the best medium to drive your personal brand.

 Second, the rules of blogging seem to require the consistent delivery of new content.  Do individuals always have something news worthy to write about?  I’ve discussed this with several, successful, well known, bloggers and it is amazing how hard they work to find new topics and new angles on old topics to keep publishing. Are you committed to publish daily or weekly?

Third, the idea that we all should be blogging to demonstrate our thought leadership specific to our personal brand seems like a stretch. Do you have that many original thoughts, specific to your area of expertise?

Think about career branding.  How many blogs do you read on this topic, and how many are really valuable to you? Are there that many original thoughts on how to position “you” to find a job?  According to Technocrati, a service that tracks blogs, there are 1700 blogs that write about personal marketing. (Even more on job search and other related topics)  If on average, each personal marketing blog publishes twice a week, that’s 170,000 articles a year on personal marketing. How many of these articles, actually increase your chances of finding your next position faster?

In previous postings, I have emphasized, job seekers should minimize the time they spend on job boards.  Today, I am suggesting two additional things related to time managment.

1)      Think long and hard before starting a personal blog to drive your personal brand.

2)      Spending too much time on the Internet blogging, or reading blogs, is  not a prudent use of time. (Unless blogging is literally your career.)

Since I have no other new wisdom to provide this week, let me offer several quotes from others that I think are probably more valuable than any advice I can give.  Apologies, the authors are unknown to me.

“In golf and in life, the follow through makes the difference.”

“Determination, patience and courage are the only things needed to improve any situation.”

“You need to do what the others won’t to achieve what the others don’t.”

“Insanity is doing the same thing, in the same way and expecting a different outcome.” (Albert Einstein is attributed with a similar, but different, quote.)

Think about your current job search and career marketing plan. Now reread the quotes. Get off the Internet and take action.  Time is your most valuable commodity.

Job Search Marketing

The idea that a successful job search requires a strategic plan is not a new concept, but it still is not executed by most individuals in career transition.  

In this piece we outline a basic sales and marketing principle that is taught in ‘marketing 101’ as well as sales training courses. Only we apply it to job search.

One approach of teaching the basics of marketing and sales are referred to as the P’s.  The P’s are a system to break down the elements of a marketing mix and sales process into easily understood terms.

The 5 P’s of marketing are: Product, Price, Packaging, Place and Promotion

The 4 P’s of sales are: Prospecting, Problem Solving, Presenting and Persuading

The Marketing P’s from a job seeker perspective

Product: In a job search, it is you.  You are the product.

Price: The compensation question will inevitably be asked.  In the current economy, this can be a “trap” question and should be handled very delicately.  There are undeniable facts regarding a candidate’s historical pay grades, salaries, bonus plans, benefits, and perks.  However, the more important aspect of price is a job seeker’s compensation expectations.  We strongly recommend job seekers understand the potential hiring company’s compensation philosophies and structures prior to answering the price question.

Packaging: For a job search this is your resume, CV, your personal website, your online identity, cover letters, emails, business card, LinkedIn profile, interview presentation materials, and everything else associated with your personal brand.  When speaking to job seekers, I often ask the question: Do successful salespeople enter a sales call with no marketing literature or presentation materials?

Place: Job seekers must choose the right distribution channel to get their message out.  Some choose old fashioned push marketing methods such as paying to have third parties fax or email blast their resumes. Others focus on more modern pull marketing techniques like optimizing LinkedIn, a personal website or blogging.

Promotion: Promotion can be thought of as activities or incentives to get the buyer to take action.  For a jobseeker, this occurs by creating demand for your services through wide networking.  If you can creatively position yourself as someone highly sought after by the competition, even better. Sometimes, this can be accomplished by simply having a meeting with the competitor of the company interviewing you. The hiring manager will be very interested in hearing anything about the competition.

The Sales P’s from a job seeker perspective

Prospecting:  Today, many job seekers are focused on prospecting on job boards. I believe a better job search approach is to target a list of best-fit companies, based on industry and geography. Then utilize databases to identify the management teams of these companies, cross referencing key managers with your personal connections.  Social networks like LinkedIn can really accelerate this process. Never leave a meeting without a new name to contact or an action item for next steps.  Doing so is like taking your foot off the gas pedal of a car. Your networking will slow down and targeted networking is the lifeblood of accelerated job search.

Problem Solving: The best way to get hired is not to show people your resume, but rather to communicate how you can solve their business problems.  People are hired to solve business problems.

Presenting:  Successful interviewing requires a well thought out plan, research on the hiring manager and the company.  Come prepared with good questions, examples of your work, and be polished and alert.  This is not the time for your mind to drift. This is the opportunity to look someone in the eyes with confidence.

Persuading: The art of persuasion is effectively the ability to overcome objections.  The best way to persuade is to ask questions that will uncover the buyer’s (hiring manager’s) requirements, needs, issues, and pains. Then take information provided and appeal back to the hiring manager with a careful balance of logic and emotion that convinces them that you are the best person to achieve their desired outcomes. 

Although not included in the traditional sales and marketing courses, I think one more P deserves mention. That’s Passion.  Passion is contagious. If you can inject passion into your networking and interviews, it will definitely accelerate your job search. True passion will make you stand out in the crowded job search market.

The Hidden Job Market

As we enter 2010, Career Brander has the most comprehensive suite of Internet based job search tools of any career website.  We pride ourselves on being forward thinking in terms of Internet job search and we constantly monitor software services, trade magazines and blogs to identify new job seeker technology that can aid those in transition.   We also try to offer perspective that is fresh.  However, it is humbling at times to see that others have thought through perspectives, issues and opportunities years before you think you have “original ideas”.Over the year end holiday’s I found an article that served as one of those humbling moments. 

 I do not often think it is worthwhile to quote government websites, but below I am repurposing content from the Department of Labor’s website.  The fact that it was written 6 years ago, to me is even more amazing.     

Here is a snippet from the article that caught my attention:  “A chainsaw is great for cutting firewood. Use the tool the wrong way, however, and you could really hurt yourself. The Internet is like that for job seekers. It is a power tool. It can aid a job search or prolong joblessness, depending on how it is used.     

Before the birth of the Internet, savvy job seekers commonly did several things in an orderly manner to find employment. They prepared résumés, did research, contacted employers, engaged in networking, arranged interviews, and pursued job leads from many sources. Today’s savvy job seekers still engage in the same activities, but they add online methods to the traditional process.”   The article goes on to say:  “Employers fill the majority of job openings without advertising them. These unadvertised openings are called “the hidden job market.”     

“Hunting for jobs in the hidden market takes pluck. (definition below) It requires initiative, communication skills, resourcefulness, time management, perseverance, and research skills.” As I recently read the above, I could not think of a more appropriate segue for 2010 than to share these words with the readers of the Career Brander blog. We believe in these words and we also are passionate that Job Search Radar is the best tool available for job seekers to access the hidden job market.  

___________________________________________  

Merriam Webster’s third definition of the word pluck.    

 Pluck: courageous readiness to fight or continue against odds : dogged resolution  

 

Ten 2010 Predictions: job search and otherwise

1. Corporate recruiters will fully embrace social network recruiting. Over 50% of the Fortune 5000 will be utilizing social media as a central part of their talent acquisition strategies.
2. Twitter will have an increasing role in job search strategies.
3. Job Board listings will decrease for the fourth straight year.
4. Job seekers that minimize time on job boards and increase focus on personal branding and online social networking will find new jobs faster.
5. The movement toward a common form/language based resume will gain momentum.  There are millions of dollars and millions of hours wasted because the resume has not properly evolved with technology.
6. The fall and partial failure of the US commercial real estate market will be an anchor on the US economic recovery.  It’s ripple effect will have a significant negative impact on the credit recovery.
7. On December 24, 2010 the Dow Jones Industrial Index will close at 10,500 and the S&P 500 will close at 1100.
8. LinkedIn will end 2010 with 80 million profiles.
9. Tiger Woods will not finish top 20 in any major golf event, however, known “friends of Tiger” will exceed 20.
10. The media buzz in the second half of 2010 will be the emerging new auto industry based on electric cars in 2011.  This will be hyped in every major newspaper (10 remaining?), numerous magazines and of course thousands of blogs.  It is 2010 after all.

Job Search Radar

This week, Career Brander is announcing a major expansion of our service model.  The new offering is called Job Search Radar. We believe Job Search Radar is the most sophisticated piece of job search technology available to the consumer market.

Job Search Radar provides individuals a better way to manage their job search.

Here is how it works:

1)      Candidates enter the geography, industry, company size and position they desire.  Job Search Radar than cross references this request with 20 million companies in the system and provides job seekers with a list of best fit-target companies.

2)      Job Search Radar than populates all target company information into a candidate’s job search dashboard. The dashboard is effectively a customer relationship management (CRM) that is totally customized to the individual and will be automatically updated on a daily basis. 

 Information  is then automatically pulled into the dashboard, including:

• The key contacts and managers at target companies, that  are then cross referenced against the job seekers social networking accounts to identify relationships that will allow job seekers more direct access to opportunities. 
• Job boards and corporate sites are scanned by web spiders and mining software so that all job listings at the target companies are auto- populated into the candidates dashboard on a daily basis.
• News events associated with a candidates target companies are then pushed to individuals on a daily basis.  This could include, new contracts, expansion plans, new product launches, earnings releases and other events that can signal hiring events as well as catalyze a communication strategy between the candidate and the target company.

3)      Job Search Radar also allows candidates to identify best-fit recruiters for their search.  Our database of over 20,000 recruiters can be sorted by industry, job title, and/or geographic information. These recruiters fill hundreds of thousands of jobs per year.

4) Job Search Radar’s log in dashboard is effectively a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system.  However in the context of job search we think it might be better referred to as a personal networking dashboard.  The system centrally organizes the entire job search process.

Statistics vary on how new jobs are found, but the best available data suggests job boards represent a very small percentage of actual placements.  That means the overwhelming number of new hiring occurs through networking.  Job Search Radar is the best networking tool ever created. By consolidating all the information necessary for successful networking and targeting, individuals will find work faster!

Career Brander now offers a fully integrated brand launchpad as well as  highly sophisticated job networking technology, all controlled within our “ad free” portal.

We will be sharing more about Job Search Radar and new expanded functionality in the months ahead.

Career Networking

The Holiday season is upon us and with it comes an endless “to do” list,  year-end reflections and more social commitments than any other time of the year.  Some people embrace the season, while others feel overwhelmed. Unfortunately most comapnies are also winding down interviews and filling new position until after the new year.

However, is there ever a better time to network than the Holidays?

No there is not. This is it, the chance to leverage your social contacts to open up new doors for next year.  For those in career transition, it is time to seize the moment.  

If you are in career transition, here are 12 things you should  do this holiday season.

1. Attend as many social and holiday events as possible.
2. Bring a highly positive attitude when attending these events.
3. Mingle as much as possible with people you can not easily get on to see at other times of the year.
4. Be social, have fun, but be sure to make or reestablish a few contacts.
5. Emphasize how helpful people are being during your career transition.
6. Ask people about their jobs and their company’s growth plans.
7. Ask people about the companies they compete with.
8. Ask people what trade groups or other organizations they belong to and are they beneficial.
9. Tell people you are currently in transition considering what you want to do next with your career.
10. Tell people you would love to have to a cup of coffee in the new year to learn more about their company.
11. Tell people, in no more than a few sentences, the direction you may be looking to take your career.
12. Be thankful for your friends, your family and the health of your loved ones.