Your Personal Brand and a Chamber of Commerce Brochure

During our monthly Chamber of Commerce meeting last month I volunteered to create a brochure highlighting the benefits of joining the chamber.  The board plans to translate the brochure into Spanish and then distribute both the English and Spanish versions to the local businesses in our downtown. Funny how something as straightforward as a Chamber of Commerce brochure can parallel your personal brand and help with your job search planning. I’ve listed the major brochure headings and where you can use similar headings to create your brand.

Mission Statement:  A businesses mission statement describes why a company exists.  It’s a short portrayal of why they are in business.  This can be used to describe your personal brand. What drives you? What can you do to improve business?

Membership: For the purposes of a Chamber of Commerce, this statement identifies the types of organizations eligible for membership.  For you, it’s identifying the types of businesses or audiences that you would enjoy working for.  List them, research them, and look for members in LinkedIn or other professional sites.

Benefits:  The benefits of joining a Chamber include contributing to the vitality and growth of a town. In perspective to a job search, how can you contribute to the growth and vitality of an organization? What are your strengths, what are your marketable accomplishments, how can you contribute to the success of an organization?

The value of networking cannot be underestimated for either a shop owner or a job seeker. The ability to communicate the benefits of a/your business, services or abilities is vital! 

Try jotting these concepts down. Once you put it all together; your mission, membership or audience, and benefits you’ll be better able to visualize and then speak to your specific brand.  This, in turn, will increase your networking confidence.

The Power of Volunteering

The other day I read an article about a potential law that basically states that if you want to collect unemployment insurance, you must prove that you are volunteering. I don’t know how that will go over but it had me thinking again about the importance of volunteering as it relates to the job search or career change.

Why Volunteer?

There are many reasons to volunteer including getting out of your house and making a difference. As far as being beneficial to your job search though, there are three major benefits:

1.     Improve/maintain your current skill set (Think: resume)

2.     Learn new skills (Think: resume. Think: career change)

3.     Grow your Network (75%-85% of jobs are gained through networking)

In every job search class I take an unofficial pulse of the volunteer activities of the people in attendance.  Less than half of the people I’ve polled have volunteered since losing their jobs.  In addition, as a whole, 100% of every group never recognized the three major benefits of volunteerism.  What’s keeping people away?  The responses vary but generally fall into the, “I never thought about it”, “I don’t know where to go”, I’d like to but I don’t have the time”, and the always present, “If I were volunteering, when would I have the time to look for a job?”

The benefits of volunteering outweigh the responses.  Even if you offer an hour or two a month, you are out of the house, sharing your skills, learning new skills and meeting the people who might be able to network for you.

What do you think?

Off Topic - The Shooting in Arizona

Have you ever seen so much hatred spewed in the name of free speech? Have you too been amazed at the self centered, “Me, me, me, I’m right and you’re an ignorant ass if you don’t agree with me” mindset of more and more people lately? Has it become so commonplace that when someone causes a despicable act or a horrible crime against someone that immediately the majority of voices rise up without substantiation to blame it on politics or some other ridiculous motive?

Today as I watched the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords (D -Az) and others unfold, I opened my computer to read the account of the event on Yahoo News. As I scrolled down to the Comments section, I was sickened. Torrents of hate and finger pointing and joking were pouring out of the computer like venom. Of the thousands of comments, possibly only 20% expressed any serious concern for the victims.  Those that did were laughed at or even threatened.

What’s wrong with people these days? What happened to our country that just ten years ago came together as one? Where did the hate come from? Where did the offensive, self-absorbed, boorish behavior spring from?  Why do a great many people feel that it is their God given right to threaten or offend someone while hiding behind a computer?

People are flesh and blood. People have lives. People can change lives. No wonder our country is so disagreeable. People have become so used to typing vicious words that they have actually forgotten how to feel.

Twitter and the Job Search

Today I read a report from Jobvite, Inc. (a recruiting platform).  It stated that in the upcoming year, 80% of companies plan to recruit through social networking with 78% using LinkedIn, 55% using Facebook and 45% using Twitter.  The report also notes that many companies are eliminating the added expense of posting job openings to job boards or working with recruiters and plan to move ahead with a push to recruit through social media. 

We've talked about using LinkedIn in your job search but haven't really said much about Twitter or Facebook.  Today I thought I would give you a couple of links to some helpful articles on using Twitter.  While the article from CIO article was published in 2009, it still contains some very useful information on setting up your Twitter account and using it in a way to get you noticed.  I've been Tweeting for a while and I learned a couple of new things from this article. One thing it stated is when setting up your Twitter account, you can link it to your LinkedIn profile.

Another one of my favorite, easy to follow, "go to" sites is About.com.  They have an interesting article about using Twitter to find various job sites. E-How also has some very easy to follow steps on starting up Twitter and using it for your job search.  It even lists some Twitter addresses to get you started.  Finally, I’ve listed Twit Job Search so that you can enter some job titles and see where it takes you.

I’ll have more on this subject soon but I suggest getting started if you haven't already.  That 45% rate is pretty high. My Twitter name is @Nancy_1, feel free to follow me!

New Facebook Page

Come on over and "Like" my new Facebook business page, Blackbird Learning Associates.  I post links and articles dealing with the job search on a daily basis.  Sometimes I link to this page/blog but the content and the contacts over on Facebook are different. I am always looking for new content and suggestions so please feel free to speak up here or over there.  Thanks and looking forward to seeing you.

Goal Setting for the Job Search Process

As promised, here is a piece from Job Search for Moms about setting goals to maintain your focus on your job search. As you can see, the steps listed here are not just for Moms.

Goal setting is a fundamental part of any business planning process. Here too, it should it be a vital part of your job search plan. Setting goals allows you to visualize your future, clarify your steps, and focus on dates. It is the cornerstone of the job search planning process in that it allows you to focus on necessary steps while weeding out any needless distractions. It is also highly motivating and a useful way to measure your time and progress. Within the context of the job search, your goals should be written in specific terms, they should have precise time frames, and they should be measurable. A specific goal tells you exactly what you want to accomplish. It is helpful to break each broad goal statement into manageable smaller statements. This step not only keeps you on track, but it allows you to feel a sense of accomplishment when each step is achieved. A time oriented goal statement should include specific target dates and the approximate time you will need to complete each of the steps. A measurable goal statement should include concrete criteria or action steps that will allow you to measure your progress. Setting goals in the planning process of your job search allows you to focus and move in the right direction. It also gives you a sense of purpose or accomplishment to check off each action item as you move forward. Try using the “Resume Development Checklist” to create your goal statement and take the necessary steps toward producing the resume.

Resume Development Checklist Prepare final version of resume by August 12, 20__. Identify areas of expertise by.... Choose resume template by... Create career history by.... Create summary statement by.... Type first draft using selected template by.... Get feedback from contacts by.... Type final version by...

Agggg! I Hate New Year's Resolutions!

It's 10:15 am on New Year’s Day and I am reading all the resolutions my friends have written on their Facebook pages. Good for them but not me, I never made or followed resolutions.  It never made sense to me that I had to declare that I was going to change or do something differently because it happened to be the first day of the first month of a new year.  It just set me up for disappointment if I broke my promise.  Who needs that?  Instead, I make objectives throughout the year and then a couple of goals to keep me on the straight and narrow to get there. For example one February my objective was to clean out the coat closet by month end. That was an easy objective and not one that was going to disappoint me if I didn't get it done. I then set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) goals to help me accomplish the tasks. They went something like this:

1.  Sort coats, mittens and hats by size by Friday (date).
2.  Organize coats, mittens and hats by (date) to donate or toss. 
3.  Donate usable coats, mittens or hats to church by (date). Toss remaining items into receptacle in the Pep Boys parking lot on the same day.
4. Admire spacious closet daily. 

You can do this with your job search too. In my book, Job Search for Moms I talk about breaking your job search goals into SMART manageable steps because you don't want to overwhelm yourself or set yourself up for disappointment.  Your job search goals are so much more important than cleaning out your coat closet but the premise is the same.  I'll share those tips with you tomorrow (shoot; now I have to make another goal). 

Happy New Year! We'll get there, step by step.