Personal Branding: Perception IS Reality!

In a time when there are a lot of talented candidates out looking for work, unfortunately, it becomes more important than ever for job hunters to think hard about what sets them apart from the crowd — and to promote their “personal brand” aggressively throughout the course of their job search campaign.

Not sure what I mean by this, exactly?  Or think it doesn’t really make all that much of a difference?  For evidence as to the power of this technique, one only has to look at the corporate marketing world, since almost every principle of marketing, advertising, and branding that companies have practiced for 100+ years will work for individual job hunters, as well.  There is very little difference, after all, between a consumer trying to select just the right product to buy from a sea of competitive offerings — and a hiring manager trying to select just the right candidate from a large pool of applicants!

And while the concept of personal branding is too large to cover in a single blog posting, and I’ll be sharing similar thoughts about it in future articles, I’d start by pointing out one critical item to think about, which is the notion that perception, in branding, often equals reality.

Need some examples of this principle in action?

– Is it really easier to get a quote from GEICO Insurance than from other insurance firms?  Could a caveman only manage to figure out GEICO’s system, while being hopelessly stymied by all other competing systems?  Do we really think we couldn’t get a very quick quote and excellent customer service from firms other than GEICO?

…and yet, by all accounts, GEICO’s “so easy, a caveman can do it” campaign has been a tremendous success!

– Is a Volvo really that much safer these days than other modern automobiles?  If so, how do you know?  Can you cite specific engineering features that set Volvos apart from all of the other cars that brag about their crash test ratings, safetey features, and the like?

…and yet, Volvo has been pushing their “safety” angle for decades and almost everybody instantly associates the brand with this quality!

– Is Ivory Soap really more pure than other soaps?  So pure that it floats, as they claim?  So pure that their famous “99 and 44/100% pure” tagline stands up to scrutiny — and if we checked, other soaps would not reveal an equal (or greater) purity percentage?

…and yet, in a sea of soap brands that all pretty much just do one thing, get you clean, Ivory has managed to capture a great deal of market share over the years by sticking to one single characteristic: purity!

Heck, when it comes down to it, even McDonalds has demonstrated some pretty impressive branding accomplishments.  What other company, after all, would have the audacity to simply mix ketchup and mayonnaise together and then brag about this “special sauce” in commercial after commercial?

The point, obviously, is that job hunters can learn a ton from these commercial branding examples — and should realize that effective branding is not solely about figuring out the skills, strengths, and qualities that set you apart from your competition.  Of equal importance is to stick rigorously to your key branding themes in cover letter after cover letter, in networking meeting after networking meeting, and in interview after interview, so that your message takes hold and doesn’t get diluted.  Additionally, it’s important to acknowledge that branding is a game of perceptions, not reality.  Just like most consumers blindly accept the claim that Volvo cars are more safe than others, or that Ivory soap is more pure than other brands, hiring managers will tend to accept your claims, too, if you repeat them often enough with passion and conviction.

So figure out your “special sauce” as quickly as you can and start getting the word out!  Start creating the perceptions you want associated with yourself!  At the end of the day, you may NOT truly be the most detail-oriented individual a given company is interviewing, or the most creative marketeer, or the best leader of organizational turnarounds — but if you claim you are, enough times, the message will usually stick.  For better or worse, Madison Avenue has proven this principle to be true for over a century…

Your Networking Vibe: Is It “Help Me” or “Save Me”?

Unlike the “old days” of the nineties, when the concept of networking (at least as a formal, planned activity) was just coming into vogue, and people were hesitant to engage in it, I’m constantly impressed by how many people today seem to understand the importance of networking and relationship-building as part of their ongoing career efforts.

While there are many well-intentioned souls out there networking their buns off, however, I still see people engaging in some practices that will definitely limit the results they receive.  Perhaps the most common one, at least with regard to professionals going through job transition, is to send off a signal of “save me” or “rescue me” versus the much more productive “help me” vibe.  As you can imagine, the former attitudes are far less effective, since few people are in the “saving” business these days and many individuals will be instantly turned off (although they may disguise it well) by a job seeker who doesn’t seem to be focused, have a game plan, or appears to be expecting somebody else to come along and solve their problem for them.

So if you’re in transition, yourself, you’ll want to monitor your networking activities carefully and take the steps necessary to ensure that you’re not giving off the wrong impression, either consciously or unconsciously.  To help with this determination, here’s a quick breakdown of some of the WRONG and INEFFECTIVE types of networking requests, versus the type that produce better results:

Ineffective “Save Me” Networking Requests

“Do you know of any job openings that would fit me?”
“Do you know of any companies that I should be talking to?”
“Do you know any people I should contact?”
“What kinds of jobs do you think I should be targeting?”
“Here’s my resume — please pass it along to anybody you know.”

Effective “Help Me” Networking Requests

“I saw an opening over at Blue Nile the other day that really interests me; do you happen to know anybody at that organization who might be able to help me get a foot in the door?”

“I’ve spent the past week building a list of 25 companies where I think my skills would fit like a glove; would you mind reviewing this list for a second and letting me know if you’ve heard anything about any of these firms?”

“While I’m always open to new connections, I’d particularly like to make contact with a few venture capitalists around town, since I think my start-up experience would be a perfect fit for some of their portfolio companies.  Is there any chance you have any VC folks in your network to whom you’d be comfortable making an introduction on my behalf?”

“While I’ve got a pretty diverse skill set, and could wear a lot of different hats for organizations, I’ve been researching some of the current needs that companies are facing most these days — and have decided to put some serious effort into finding a facilities management role, since that’s one area of my background I’m particularly passionate about.”

“Here’s my resume — since I haven’t had to write one in a while, however, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to look it over and share your feedback, especially since I know you’ve been involved in a lot of hiring over the years.  Any thoughts on how to polish it up even further would be greatly appreciated.”

As you can hopefully see from the above examples, there’s a world of difference between the job hunter that seems rudderless, and floundering, and the job hunter who seems to be pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, doing their homework, and only asking for help with those specific activities that they can’t perform themselves!

I know it can be hard to kick into this kind of proactive, action-oriented mode when you’re between jobs, and feeling a lot of pressure and anxiety, but it’s absolutely essential to getting successful results out on the networking circuit.  And despite the incessant drumbeat of negative news reports out there, I still have tremendous faith in human nature and the willingness of the average person to lend a hand to other people in need.  I just feel the bar has been raised a little bit due to the numbers of people currently seeking favors and referrals — and as a result, while many individuals will still cheerfully “jump on the bandwagon” of people who seem to be helping themselves, they’ll tend to brush off those folks who just seem to be trolling for leads or merely looking for a handout!

LinkedIn Usage: The Top 10 Mistakes!

Having just taught my latest Lassoing LinkedIn webinar last night, to help people learn the ropes of the powerful LinkedIn.com networking website, it struck me that it might be useful to compile a list of the “top 10 mistakes” that I’ve witnessed being made by novice users of the system.  Granted, the observations below are highly subjective, but my hope is that they’ll help some of you out there get even more mileage out of your LinkedIn.com experience!

1.  Not using it — or lumping it in with other social networking sites

Sorry, we’re going to start with the basics — including my passionate belief that the people out there who still haven’t “joined the revolution” in terms of using social networking sites, like LinkedIn, are at great risk of falling behind the technology curve and damaging their ongoing employment marketability.  These technologies may have snuck up on us in recent years, but they’re soon going to become as familiar a part of the business landscape as e-mail and cell phones.  And while this trend applies much more to white-collar professions that other types of fields, at the moment, this could quickly change down the road.  Also, for those who think all social networking websites (e.g. Myspace.com, Facebook.com, Plaxo.com, etc.) are created equal, or of equal value in a business or job hunting context, I’d beg to differ.  Sites like Facebook might have attracted over 100 million people of all ages who are interested in sharing photos, chatting with their friends, and the like, but LinkedIn is populated by over 30 million users — most of whom are in management, executive, and professional roles and looking to use the tool to forge meaningful, profitable business relationships.  There’s a WORLD of difference.

2. Paying for a membership when it’s not necessary

Unless you’re a bonafide “power user” who is going to be using LinkedIn every day, and sending out dozens of introductions each week, it’s unlikely you’ll need to sign up for a paid LinkedIn membership.  Don’t get me wrong — LinkedIn puts out a great product and I don’t begrudge them a single dollar they choose to charge people, but in reality, most users (job seekers included) won’t ever need to purchase more “bandwidth” on the system than they’re eligible to receive as a free user.  The main categories of people who would gain value from a paid subscription include sales professionals, recruiters, people in the human resources field, and other people whose jobs typically involve extensive daily networking.

3.  Failure to use the “Get Introduced” feature

One of the amazing things I’ve discovered, in teaching my Lassoing LinkedIn classes over the past few years, is that while millions of people have joined the LinkedIn system, a relatively small percentage of folks have actually used its single most important feature — which is to search for people relevant to their business/career goals, then reach out to these folks using the “Get Introduced” functionality of the system.  Hands down, this is the killer application of LinkedIn and the feature that trumps every other aspect of the tool, combined.  So if you haven’t been using the People page of the site to make these kinds of connections, you’re really missing the boat!

4.  Lack of creativity in People searching

As a follow-up to item #3, above, I’d mention that even those people who ARE regularly using the People page of the site to search for contacts may not be using it to full effect.  While the mechanics of the search process are fairly straightforward, many people would benefit from thinking more outside-the-box in terms of how best to pull up a list of useful individuals — or how to separate these individuals from the thousands of other profiles that might turn up in a simple, kneejerk search effort.  For example, if a job hunter was looking for a position as a paralegal, they could certainly just search using the words “legal” or “law firm” in the Keywords field of LinkedIn’s People page.  Such a search would be almost worthless, however, since there are way too many different contexts in which those words could come up in a member’s profile.  A much more targeted and effective search would be to search the Title field (set to Current only) for the phrase Counsel OR Attorney OR Lawyer.  Or to search the same field using Paralegal, simply to identify the companies in town that had a proven track record of hiring paralegals.  Or to search for the Title: Partner OR Director OR Attorney OR Counsel combined with checking the “Law Practice” box in the Industry field.  In most cases, there are several different searches you could run that would produce great results, but you have to first familiarize yourself with all the search field options — and then apply a strong dose of creative thinking!

5.  Lack of Profile optimization

Upon joining LinkedIn for the first time, most people are in such a rush to whip through the sign-up screens that they fail to flesh out their Profile to a sufficient degree.  Having an incomplete Profile, however, can result in many missed opportunities, since tons of employers and recruiters use LinkedIn these days to find talent for hire — and if you’ve got a wimpy Profile, you’re not going to show up!  So at the very least, you’ll want to put your full work history and education into your Profile, and I’d also recommend you create a powerful Summary statement and then pack your Specialties section with at least 10-15 of the most relevant buzzwords in your field.  For example, if you’re a Sales Manager and don’t have phrases like sales pipeline, sales funnel, prospecting, negotiation, sales presentations, and lead qualification in your Profile, you could easily get missed by a recruiter searching for those specific skill sets.

6.  Usage of the default LinkedIn scripts & templates

Okay, while this may not technically be the biggest mistake one can make on LinkedIn, it’s definitely my biggest personal pet peeve!  Whenever you initiate contact with somebody on LinkedIn, such as inviting them to connect with you, requesting an introduction, sending an InMail, and the like, the system pops up an automatic, generic note that you can send along by default.  The problem with using these built-in scripts is that 1) they’re vague, boring, and painfully overused; and 2) they defeat the fundamental purpose of the system, which is to build trust with your key relationships.  In other words, if you come across an old friend on the site and decide to reestablish contact with them, after many years, I think they deserve something more heartfelt than “I’d like to invite you to join my personal network on LinkedIn.”  So take the extra 30 seconds, delete the default note, and write a more customized message that says something meaningful.  It’s basically the equivalent of how you feel when you receive a birthday card with just the cheesy Hallmark slogan inside, versus a card that includes a handwritten personal note…

7. Inviting people you don’t know to connect

No matter how many times LinkedIn warns against this, or I emphasize it to the folks I encounter, there is still the perception among many people that the goal of LinkedIn, and similar sites, is to build as many connections as possible with other people on the system.  Nothing could be further than the truth.  Remember, the only thing that separates these sites from simply picking up the phone book, and connecting with other people at random, is that they’re built (at least ideally) on a web of friendships and the deep chains of trust between individuals.  So if the “arms race” continues and people continue to connect with tons of other people, willy-nilly, my prediction is that people will start to abandon LinkedIn in favor of other sites where the networking pool is less diluted.  We’re not there yet, thankfully, but I’d urge people to do their part by only connecting with those people they’ve personally met — and with whom they have a personal relationship and a healthy level of conditional trust.

8. Requesting endorsements from the wrong people

Endorsements are great.  Endorsements feel good.  Endorsements add those cute little “thumbs up!” icons next to your LinkedIn profile.  When requesting endorsements from other folks in the system, however, make sure the person you’re asking is truly in a position to say something meaningful about your skill sets, experience, or character.  It’s considered bad form to ask for an endorsement from someone, say, that you met just last week at a networking event or who is a friend that hasn’t really had the chance to work with you professionally.  So be somewhat judicious when making these requests — and make sure to give back and write them for other people, too, whenever appropriate!

9.  Confusing 2nd Degree contacts with 3rd Degree ones

While this is an innocent mistake, to be sure, I’ve noticed that many novice users of LinkedIn don’t pay close enough attention to the “degree” of the contact they’re targeting when they request an introduction to somebody — or perhaps they don’t fully understand the “degrees of separation” concept that underlies the system in the first place.  This problem materializes most often when somebody decides to try to make contact with another LinkedIn member who shows up as a 3rd Degree contact (i.e. the friend of a friend of a friend) in their network.  So let’s say they know me, and I know Bob, and Bob knows Judy — and Judy’s the person they’re hoping to reach.  When they send their introduction request out to me, however, they’ll often say something like “Matt, would you introduce me to your friend Judy?” without realizing that I don’t actually KNOW Judy, myself.  She’s the friend of my friend.  Not a big deal, to be sure, but as their note gets routed along the chain it makes them look a little silly — or exposes them as a total LinkedIn greenhorn, at the very least!

10.  Setting up more than one Profile

Unfortunately, many LinkedIn members have become “born again” users of the system without even realizing it.  It’s not uncommon for people to create an account on the system, connect with a bunch of friends, and later discover that they actually had already created another profile on the site years ago — and forgotten about it!  As a result, they end up having two sets of books on the system, so to speak, with some of their contacts attached to one profile and a bunch of other contacts connected to the other.  Their network not only becomes highly confused by this duplication, but a ton of inefficiency ends up being created as valuable Profile updates, new connections, and other changes would need to be made twice.  Trust me, you don’t want to be in this situation, and there’s no easy way (no way at all, actually) for a person to merge two or more profiles together.  So if you’ve discovered that you’ve got more than one profile on the system, immediately address the problem by searching the LinkedIn help menu for “merging accounts” and follow the instructions provided.  The sooner you nip this problem in the bud, the better!

So there you have it.  You’ve now got my “top 10″ list in terms of the most common mistakes I’ve seen people make on LinkedIn — and since I’m on a roll, here’s one bonus (and hopefully self-explanatory) mistake I’ll throw in for good measure…

11.  Adorning your profile with that fuzzy/embarrasing/unflattering photo your brother/friend/self-timer took of you lounging on the sofa/hugging your pet/partying down in Cabo…

Why, oh why, do people keep doing this?

Scuttlebutt on TheLadders.com

Of the 40,000+ employment websites that now exist, few of them attract as much attention or generate as much controversy as TheLadders.com.  For a subscription fee of $30 per month, this site claims to provide job hunters with a steady stream of job openings at the $100,000K level and above.  Here’s a direct quote from their website, in fact, summing up their unique value proposition:

“TheLadders.com brings $100k+ job seekers real, open executive-level jobs across the US and around the world. Our targeted sites list more than 35,000 new $100k+ jobs each month across every industry, in companies of all types and sizes. We only list jobs that pay more than $100,000/year, including many C-level, VP, Director and Manager jobs. If you’re in the market for a $100k+ job, you won’t find a better resource anywhere.”

Is this service worth the price tag?  That’s where the controversy kicks in.  Having asked my clients repeatedly over the years whether they felt they were getting value out of the service, for those who had subscribed to it, the answer heavily leans to the “no” end of the spectrum — although there were definitely a few folks who DID feel it was worth the money.  In addition, I personally don’t care for the company’s advertising strategy and the fact that they claim to have a “free” membership tier, but this tier does not allow people to actually APPLY to any jobs or see the application details.  It smells a little bait-and-switch from my perspective.  They also imply (or at least have in the past) that a subscription will provide people to access to many exclusive jobs not advertised anywhere else, which is a highly questionable claim, at best, although I noted that the lingo they now have on their website carefully tiptoes around saying this overtly — and positions them, instead, as a site that simply aggregates listings from other places to make things more convenient for the six-figure job hunter.  This is a very important distinction, since the average person may well be willing to pay $30 each month for a set of top-drawer job leads not available anywhere else, but I doubt many people would pay this same fee for the “convenience” of just having these leads collected in one place, when they could get similiar results from a free search on sites such as www.indeed.com and www.simplyhired.com.

At ANY rate, my intention here isn’t necessarily to bash TheLadders into oblivion, but simply to educate the novice job hunter about what they’re really buying when they sign up for this kind of service — since it’s easy to get sucked into the marketing hype.  And if you want a second opinion, I’d strongly encourage you to click here and read a recent article written by my favorite career author of all time, Nick Corcodilos of Ask the Headhunter.  He’s not nearly as shy as I am about sharing his opinions of TheLadders.com.  It’s well worth a few minutes of your time…

Question of the Month: February 2009

“What sectors of the economy are hiring or experiencing strong growth right now?”

While the questions I feature in this recurring segment have traditionally come from my client base, I thought it would be appropriate to feature one this month that was recently asked to me by a Seattle Times reporter — since I’m sure it’s a question that’s on almost everyone’s mind!

Unfortunately, the straightforward answer to the above question is “very few’”.  The economic climate right now seems to be highly equal opportunity in nature and the credit crunch and low consumer confidence levels appear to be affecting virtually every business sector out there.  Across the board, companies are in the process of cutting costs in order to stay competitive, and as a result HR reps and hiring managers are in full “risk management” mode as they try to avoid taking on any additional overhead, if they can help it.  And while I could throw out the token answer everybody seems to give when asked to name an industry that’s faring well — health care — this industry isn’t without its challenges, as well, and it’s unlikely that every displaced worker out there is going to be able to retrain overnight and suddenly become marketable as a polysomnographer, pediatric nurse, dental hygienist, or phlebotomist!

While the bottom line isn’t very pretty, however, and there are aren’t many major industries one can point to that are immune to the economic forces at work right now, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t hiring still going on.  A recent search on Indeed.com, for example, reveals that there are still 65,000 job openings in Washington State waiting to be filled.  One also shouldn’t overlook the opportunities that constantly open up through attrition, even in a flat or declining economy, as people retire, resign, transfer, get promoted, or get terminated for poor performance or not having the right skill set for a certain assignment.  So while career counselors may not be privy to any secret industries out there that are going like gangbusters, they will incessantly remind people that it’s time to step up, in the face of adversity, and focus on competing more effectively and vigorously than ever before for the many jobs that are still out there.  There are many people out there who are job hunting no differently in this economy than they would in a booming economy, and this just doesn’t make sense.  The average person is going to need to put a lot more time into their search and get more outside their comfort zone, this time around, than they would during times when the labor supply/demand curve is more favorable.

Additionally, one should note that there are certain industry sectors that DO tend to thrive when the economy, in general, isn’t faring well.  Moving companies, liquidation firms, and used office furniture dealers come to mind.  Credit counseling, career counseling, and outplacement firms also meet this description, as do certain colleges and vocational training schools.  Even in my recent search for new office space, I discovered that the executive suite companies I was trying to rent from (at least some of them) are experiencing record low vacancies right now, based on the growing demand for temporary, flexible office space.  So much for any negotiating leverage I thought I’d have!   Highly motivated job hunters should therefore ask themselves “What types of companies tend to meet various needs that come up only during times of economic turbulence and downturn?”  If you ponder the matter for a bit, you might come up with some fresh ideas.  And while you might feel like a vulture for targeting these kinds of businesses, you shouldn’t — they’re ultimately all part of the “circle of business” (can you hear Elton John breaking into song?) and part of the natural order of  the economy.  And always have been.

So at the end of the day, as painful as these recessionary periods always are for individuals and businesses alike, there are still pockets of opportunity scattered out there for those who choose to look for them.  These types of times also tend to stimulate incredible amounts of creativity out in the market, as companies are given little choice but to invent new ways of doing business and many individuals, thrust out of the corporate womb, are forced to take risks, try new things, and launch new enterprises that they likely wouldn’t have initiated in more economically-abundant times.  No fewer than 16 out of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, in fact, were started during periods of recession or depression.  So while again, it would be absolutely wonderful to be able to point people to an economic escape hatch, or a new growth industry that is laden with potential for tons of hiring in the coming months, I’m afraid I haven’t caught a glimpse of one in my crystal ball, quite yet.  As stated above, however, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t still a lot of good jobs around for those willing to compete for them, and if we all fasten our seat belts and ride out this violent economic squall together, history suggests that there’’s likely to be some pretty neat stuff coming on the other side of it…

P.S. Agreement?  Disagreement?  Ideas about some industries that might be much better off than others out there?  If so, please feel free to submit a comment to this post, since I’d love to hear your thoughts and share them with the rest of the Career Horizons community!