Alec’s approach was so simple and so direct, that it will undoubtedly be copied frequently by other job seekers. And why not? It was imaginative, it was unique and it worked. No reason others shouldn’t push the same envelopes in their job search endeavors as well and take full ownership of their personal brand and determine precisely how it’s presented.

For those imaginative small business owners, you can do the exact same thing when preparing to meet with a client who needs SEO or social media services. Buy the Google adwords for their company name a few days ahead of your meeting. Then, during your pitch, ask them to Google themselves and see your pitch for their precise needs at the top of the page. They’ll wonder how you got the top position, they’ll be impressed that you know how to manipulate the page rankings and you’ll have demonstrated your capacity to outimagine your competitors.

Bottom line, you and your firm can appear distinctive and memorable. And that’s always a good thing.

Now that Tim has laid the foundation for his job search, it’s time to raise his online profile by engaging and participating on the social media platforms so that others recognize his talent, intelligence and potential.

Most professionals start their social media participation on LinkedIn. It’s the social media platform most closely associated with professional pursuits and employment, so it makes sense for Tim to start there also. While Tim has completed the essential task of creating and populating his personal profile, even securing recommendations, the next step is just as important: join professional Groups to engage with others in your field.

Perform a quick search on your profession – sales, marketing, finance, healthcare – and review the list of Groups available. Narrow your search by inserting your city’s name in the search string. “Cleveland Networking” returns a much more precise list than the broader term “Networking.”

Then simply join some Groups. Visit their pages to see what types of conversations they’re leading. Find one that’s interesting to you and join the conversation. Provide your opinion, your insight and your expertise to the topic of the day. Become visible.

Do the same on Facebook. Search for professional groups that interest you, become a Fan and follow their posts, adding your own comments regularly.

If you’re new to Twitter, visit twellow.com where Twitter users are indexed by their professions and specialties. With a click you can follow the thought leaders in any field and start receiving their tweets in your twitter stream. Click over to their Twitter profile to see who they follow and who’s following them, then follow the same people and start engaging with these professionals.

It won’t take long for your name to be recognized and for you to develop relationships with successful, networked professional in your industry who have the capacity to inform you of job openings and introduce you to others who can help you in your job search.

It’s understandable why most job seekers think that their resume is their most important written job search tool. After all, they’ve heard throughout their professional lives that the resume is universally demanded by virtually every company  engaged in the hiring process. So it’s natural that most people associate resumes with landing their next job.

Although it’s true that your resume will likely play an important role in your job search it’s best used only when you’re applying for a specific position. After all, that’s the purpose of a resume – to articulate your background, skills, abilities and credentials – with the hopes of obtaining an interview.

Sending out resumes blindly in the hopes of attracting attention will likely result only in high postage expenses, not any job offers. Studies repeatedly confirm that over 80% of jobs – especially skilled jobs – aren’t filled from responses to online or newspaper ads, but from personal networking with friends, family and current or former employees at the hiring company. It’s these contacts that get you in the door and face to face with the hiring manager.

Not all of these contacts are interested enough to read your whole resume, but they do want an understanding of your professional capabilities and background. The best way to provide them with this information: your bio.

Brief Biography

Your online bio can provide you with substantial leverage during your networking activities. If written effectively, it will convey  your background in a crisp narrative format before, during or after your networking meetings, providing just enough detail to garner interest and generate further inquiries.

Benefits

Your bio should provide a readable and concise description of your professional background to anyone who want to check you out online. It’s much more conversational than a resume and doesn’t require a significant level of effort to read and absorb. Written in the third person and without the rigid structure of a resume, you bio is much more readable and conversational than a resume.

The bio is also useful for those job seekers who don’t with to announce their intentions to pursue new job opportunities. While posting a resume online announces your intentions, your online bio is simply a convenient resource that informs any interested person of your professional capabilities and experience.

How to write your bio

Most people have difficulty writing about themselves and have trouble even getting started. A quick way to jumpstart your own bio is to visit LinkedIn profiles or blogs of people you admire. Read their personal profiles until you find one that you think can serve as a model for your own. I’m not suggesting that you simply cut and paste their profile to your own, but you can use their profile as a template for your bio, substituting your own professional details and personal skills.

At a minimum, your online bio should include a brief paragraph summarizing your profession and overall expertise. You’ll also want to add specific career highlights and significant accomplishments in your field. Ideally, you’ll also include some details concerning your professional philosophy and approach to your business. Details that illuminate how you differ in your professional capacity from everyone else in your industry. Include your education credentials and any type of professional associations that you belong to that can embellish your professional prestige. Finally, humanize yourself with a brief comment on your personal hobbies and pursuits – as long as they don’t have the potential to alienate any prospective employers.

Once your bio is complete, you need to paste in into every social media platform where you participate, on your blog’s About page and on your Google profile (don’t have a Google profile yet? Get one now at Google Profile)

Day 4 of our real-life, real-time job search with Cleveland sales executive Tim Krenn.

For those of you just tuning in, we’re documenting the real-life job strategies and efforts of a Cleveland-based sales executive whose looking for a new job.

So far, we’ve had Tim create his social media identities on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, we had him take a headshot that could be used as his visual identity across all his platforms, we created a professional blog bullgoosesales.com focusing on power sales and networking and we’re in the process of creating Tim’s personal brand.

Creating a distinctive and memorable personal brand may be the most important component of your entire job search. Every job seeker is armed with the same tools: a resume, cover letters and a lot of hope.

But, not matter how well written your résumé is or how thoughtful your cover letter is written, you still haven’t done enough to separate yourself from the rest of the people seeking the same job. You’ve got to stand apart. You’ve got to be distinctive. You’ve got to be memorable. Bottom line: you need to build your personal brand.

Your Unique Selling Proposition
At the core of your personal brand is your personal branding statement. What is it that separates you in your professional field? What makes you unique and desirable?

In sales, this would be called your Unique Selling Proposition. What is the one thing that will make a hiring manager tell himself that he’s got to meet you?

The problem most job seekers make when they define themselves is their definition is simple a restatement of their professional responsibilities. “I’m a recruiter .” Or “I’m a tax accountant.” But that’s not nearly enough. Your branding statement has to be much deeper than that. It must really reflect your core strengths and attributes that an employer will desperately want to have.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, when working with Tim, his first attempt at defining who he was resulted in the generic statement “I’m a sales executive.” Having known Tim for nearly 20 years and having worked with him professionally, I knew there was much more to him than that.

360 Degree Evaluation
I gave Tim an assignment to talk with his former managers, peers and clients and ask them how they would describe him. This process of getting feedback from people above, below and at your peer level is often referred to as a 360 degree evaluation and can be enlightening and revealing.

The feedback Tim received was pretty consistent and included descriptions like: genuine, passionate, empathetic, great listener, adjusts to anyone, understanding, personable, sincere, caring, achieving, personable and visionary.

The dominant theme revolved around Tim’s ability to connect with his clients and peers and build lasting relationships. And in sales, those relationships are crucial because people do business with people they like. Tim builds lasting friendships with everyone from the machine operator to the CEO and is able to convert these relationships into sales.

The Branding Statement
This recognition resulted in Tim creating his own personal branding statement:
I’m the guy who can build the relationships with the people you most want to do business with.

It’s simple, it’s focused and it’s intriguing. It’s the type of statement that invites the next question from a hiring manager: Tell me more.

Note what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a laundry list of everything that Tim can do. It didn’t include his record of achievement, though that record is impressive. It didn’t focus on his strategic sales and business development experience, though his skills there are also strong. But Tim focused on one thing. A single differentiator that leads to curiosity, interest and a face to face meeting where Tim can tell his whole story.

And that’s where we’re headed next. Telling the stories that illustrate who you are and why they need you. Stay with us as our real-life, real-time job search continues here on the Job Shopper.

Day 3 of our real-life, real-time job search with Cleveland sales executive Tim Krenn continues with a focus on how to create and market your personal brand. Over the course of our first couple of days, we instructed Tim how to create his social media identities, how to create a blog focusing on his sales experience and had him actually post his first entries on his blog.

Now, we’re going to focus on exactly how Tim is going to define and present himself to prospective employers. How is he going to stand out from the crowd to gain attention and, ultimately, job offers?

Your job search is marketing. You’re the product, and the employer is the consumer. You need a clear and compelling personal brand enables you to stand out from the pack and helps employers perceive the benefits of your product, giving you an advantage in the job market.

The first rule in developing your personal brand is that it must be founded in authenticity. It should be about who you are, what your work-life purpose is, and what you are committed to causing. As a starting point in developing your brand, brainstorm a list of all the things you’re good at.  Write down the stories of your professional successes. Your favorite memories of work. What really inspires your passions and gets you excited about going to work?

Then examine these stories to see what common elements and themes run through them. It’s not enough to be a great accountant or a terrific programmer, you have to really divine what makes you great at what you do, so you can translate that into a personal branding statement that appeals to employers.

Once you’ve identified your unique area of expertise you need to determine the advantages of that professional skill. For instance, if you are great at relationship building, the advantages to prospective employers might be greater loyalty from clients, more referrals and a more stable revenue base.

If you’re still lost among the crowd, make your brand more specific by fine tuning. With Tim, his positioning as a sales executive, while true, just isn’t powerful or memorable enough, so he’s going through this exact exercise to determine how he’ll position himself with prospective employers.

I’ve told him to focus on developing a Three-Point Marketing Message that conveys his unique strengths. Three things that define who he is, why he’s successful and most importantly, will appeal to prospective employers.

Tim selected:

• Strategic sales and business development
• Relationship development
• Consistent performance and achievement

Once you know what strengths you’re going to focus on, the next step is creating a powerful branding statement that defines who you are, why you’re valuable and why they need to meet you. And that’s what we’ll cover next as our real-life, real-time job search continues on the Job Shopper.

This week starts a new real-life real-time experiment detailing the job search efforts of Tim Krenn, a Cleveland sales executive who like millions of Americans recently found himself out of work and in need of a new job.

Tim approached me a couple of weeks ago asking for advice on how to refine his resume and get the word out to prospective employers who might be interested in meeting him. The more we spoke, the more apparent it became that Tim didn’t just need a better looking or more adroitly phrased resume, he needed a job search strategy that encompassed personal branding, networking and effective use of social media.

I’ve known Tim for nearly 20 years, and I’ve worked with him professionally, so I know how talented he is, I could see the enormous amount of see the untapped potential that could be released with the right strategy and disciplined and consistent tactical execution.

We’re going to be documenting the advice that we provide to Tim, discussing why we’ve selected the strategies, platforms and tactics that we pursue, and track the results of our efforts until Tim lands a new job. It could be six weeks or six months, but we’ll be there to document the highs, the lows, the technical challenges, the mistakes and hopefully the ultimate success.

And as a starting point, I’ll share with you exactly how I started with Tim. Laying the social media foundation that will enable you to create and distinguish your personal brand, build your personal network and start engaging online with professionals who have the capacity to recommend or even hire you.

So, let’s start at the beginning and start building your social media persona.

First steps: create identities for yourself on the three big social media platforms: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Don’t feel overwhelmed by the fact you don’t know how to use these platforms yet, you don’t know how to build a network and you think that Facebook is for teenagers and Twitter is time wasting text messaging. They’re all simply tools that you need in your job search toolbox right now. We’ll learn how to use them effectively later.

Second, find a terrific professional headshot that you can use on all your social media platforms. I want to make sure you heard that: pick one headshot to use across all the platforms. The same picture. This is all related to personal branding and your creation of a brand image that is unmistakably you.  And there’s a reason that I qualify the shot as a headshot, not a full body shot or a full torso. The photos on social media sites are often displayed at 40×40 pixels. That’s tiny, and if you use a large shot, you’ll be unidentifiable.

It’s also crucial that you select a photo that conveys the appropriate professional image. This means that your shot should capture you dressed as you would for work, not at a party or a wedding, not with your spouse or kids and not a grainy shot you grabbed from your laptop’s webcam. Your photo may be the single most important visual element in your entire personal branding effort, so take the time to get it right.

Third, and finally for now, think what topic you can write about and contribute professionally on your own blog. What’s your area of expertise? Where have you had your greatest successes? What aspects of your profession get you excited? Write down some ideas, because your professional blog will serve as the focal point of your job search, will provide the content you need to display your expertise, generate conversations, feed your social media channels and position you as a leader in your field.

So, get busy, start thinking, because tomorrow’s topic is going to be all about the blog as the central element in your job search.

The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday that described how many major search firms actually keep a blacklist of candidates that they would never consider for any job opening.

Typically, these firms add candidates to their blacklist who have exaggerated their qualifications, pitted recruiting firms against each other, received negative references or performed badly during the search process.

Previously, having your name blacklisted at a single search firm may not have affected your ability to find a new position, but with the proliferation of social media platforms, including industry specific social networking sites, your poor behavior won’t be limited to a single recruiter, but has the potential to be broadcast to a national network of recruiters.

Recruiters spend their entire day on the phone and online chatting with prospective candidates, checking references and engaging with other recruiters. They are professional communicators who have the ability to broadly disseminate negative information about any candidate who lied to them, falsified their accomplishments or behaved deceptively.

Job seekers often feel pressured to enhance their education and their professional achievements to merit consideration for a new job. However, it’s easier than ever to verify the details of a candidate’s background and once caught in a lie you may destroy the prospect of being considered by any recruiting firm. For years, perhaps forever.

The same social media platforms that allow you to reach recruiters all around the country with a single tweet also enable them to check on your qualifications and professionalism. If you’re honest and open, you’ll have nothing to worry about.

1. your education doesn’t match your claims – it’s amazing how many job applicants lie about their education credentials, despite the ease with which these can be checked. And some people make it easier than ever when their Facebook or LinkedIn profile lists an education background that doesn’t match the information on their resume. If there’s any discrepancy across your profiles, it will appear as though you’re lying. Be complete and completely truthful.
2. photos of you in compromising situations – you’ve gone through the interview process, and the hiring decision comes down to you and one other candidate. You have a photo page displaying you chugging from a beer bong, passed out at a friend’s party and carousing in Cancun. The other candidate only presents circumspect shots of gatherings with family and friends, without any hint of drunkenness or out of control behavior. Which of you is the safest hire? It’s essential that you sanitize your photos, untag yourself from unsavory photos in friends’ photo albums and set up privacy constraints that restrict access to your personal photos. Examine your profile as an employer would and remove any item that could be compromising.
3. lie about qualifications – again, your online personal profiles frequently contain a wealth of information about previous jobs, dates of employment and job titles. If they don’t match the information you provided your potential employer, you’re out of contention. It’s also important to know that if you have a blog – whether personal or professional – your prospective employer will likely read that also to gauge your appropriateness for hire. And if your blog posts about your job don’t match the details you provided the potential employer, you’ll be perceived as deceptive.
4. badmouth employer or staff - the Internet is forever. Too many job seekers forget that inconvenient fact. The blog post, tweet or comment that you wrote last year blasting your former employer, revealing personal details about your boss or abusing your coworkers will never disappear. Intemperate comments will raise questions about your judgment, discretion and temperament, so be careful in your postings. When in doubt, don’t hit “Submit.”
5. discriminatory comments – any comments that you make online that can be interpreted as discriminatory, racist or sexist can eliminate you immediately from consideration. It doesn’t matter if you think you were being funny, sarcastic or ironic. Companies are risk averse, and simple won’t take the risk of hiring someone with discriminatory attitudes. Any comment you make in a public forum, like Twitter, or on your Facebook wall will be reviewed and judged so it’s best to refrain entirely from making incendiary or offensive comments.

There are ways to protect personal contact on most social media platforms. Facebook, which contains the most personal information, allows you to determine precisely who gets to view your wall posts, profile information and photos. Users can create multiple lists of friends, some who have all access permission while others have restricted access to a small subset of your online content. Learn how to manage your privacy settings, sanitize your online photos and, above all, simply tell the truth.

So, what led to this huge inflation in value? Each item came with a unique story.

The auctions were part of the Significant Objects Project, an experiment designed to test the hypothesis that “narrative transforms the insignificant into the significant.” Or, put differently, the goal was to determine whether you could take an object worth very little and make it worth much more by giving it a story and endowing it with meaning.

The projects’s originators purchased 100 unremarkable garage sale trinkets for no more than a few dollars each and then had volunteer writers create fictional backstories for each item. They hypothesized that by attaching a creative story to the item, its objective value would increase.

They were right. The stories and associations attributed to each item increased its perceived value nearly 30x.

Job seekers can learn a tremendous lesson from this real world experiment.

When you write your cover letters and prepare for your interviews, you should prepare the stories that you’re going to recout that clearly illustrate your professional capabilities and experience. Rather than tell your interviewer that you have 14 years of product design experience, you should tell stories of the most successful, creative and rewarding projects you worked on. Rather than reciting your years spent in the accounting department, detail some of the specific successes you had working with your CFO to assemble and lead an internal team to solve complex billing issues.

Nobody remembers data, but everyone remembers compelling and meaningful stories. You won’t be just another computer programmer, but the guy who created the staffing iPhone app that was downloaded over 15,000 times. You’ll be the one who stands out, the one who solves problems, the one who’s 30x more valuable than the resume sitting under yours.

The explosive growth of Facebook and its use for both personal and professional networking has revealed some cautionary tales from individuals who didn’t anticipate the damaging potential of too-familiar, vulgar or offensive profile content.

The destructive potential of an artless profile was revealed last week in a post written by Cleveland blogger clevelandsaplum. Her post detailed a candidate search for an addition to their public relations staff. After the first round of interviews, one candidate stood out as the clear favorite. But when the staff did a quick Google search and checked out his public Facebook profile, he lost any chance of being invited back.

Visible to anyone with access to Facebook, and shielded from no one was this stunning paragraph:

About Me:
I am awesome. I run sh**. I had relations with your girlfriend, and yes I got it on tape. I scoff at those less fortunate than me (read: everyone else). I tend to laugh at the handicapped as well as foreigners. I am a firm believer that women are without a doubt the weaker sex. I know more than you. I am a ridiculously huge deal. I’m utterly gorgeous, you (most likely as a result of terrible genes or an unfortunate run-in with the business-end of a shovel) are not. I make fun of ugly people, because they are ugly and they deserve it. My social life is clearly something that you will never experience because you are ugly, unpopular, or a severe combination of the two. I throw sh** onto my neighbor’s porch because I am better than them and they can’t do sh** about it. My friends are also better than you and they will let you know it. I break other people’s stuff. I do whatever I want without any regard for the repercussions. I intentionally ruin the environment via littering, not recycling, and other harmful action. I am an ass****.

Although it’s likely that this individual was attempting to be sarcastic and humorous, his description was highly offensive to those who viewed it within the company and it raised flags concerning his judgment and discretion. And in a heated competition with a dozen other qualified applicants, this was reason enough to eliminate him from consideration.

Now, go check out your own social media profiles and see if you’ve written anything that could offend or concern a potential hiring manager.

Then read these instructions to sanitize and protect your online reputation. Customize your privacy settings to restrict access to your personal information. Segregate all of your contacts into different lists, each with differing levels of access to your updates and photos. At a minimum, you should have a Personal list for your closest friends and a Professional list that allows you to connect with professional contacts but doesn’t grant access to all the intimate details of your life. Prevent photos tagged with your name from appearing in anyone else’s feed unless you specifically approve it. And restrict your personal updates solely to your close, personal friends.

Take control of your personal brand and online reputation before you become a cautionary tale yourself.