C-Suite Career Services - Resume, Biography, Executive Branding, Online Identity, Job Search

Just Joined the New Work Coach Cafe Team

by Meg Guiseppi on January 23, 2012 · 0 comments

I was thrilled for Susan P. Joyce, my esteemed colleague and online job search guru, when she told me last month that she was about to purchase Work Coach Cafe, a widely-read and highly respected job search and career hub.

I was even more thrilled when Susan invited me to join her new team of career professionals supporting Work Coach Café, beginning in the new year.

Ronnie Ann Himmel, who founded the site in 2007, decided to move on to the next stage of her career. She built an amazing community of supportive members and will be sorely missed.

Taking over the reins from Ronnie Ann, Susan summed up her challenge in her introductory blog post last week:

“Ronnie Ann’s are the proverbial “big shoes” to fill, and I will do my best, honoring what Ronnie Ann has created over 5 years of hard work, and, hopefully, continuing to help people with work and job search issues.”

For nearly 15 years, Susan has been the publisher and editor of the top Internet employment portal Job-Hunt.org, named Forbes Best of the Web for Job Hunting and U.S. News & World Report Top Site for Finding Work.

For the past 5 years or so, I’ve been Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert, contributing articles on the various aspects of building and leveraging branding in job search.

I’ve come to know and deeply respect Susan as a friend, and as a job search expert and website owner who is fiercely dedicated to providing job seekers the best and safest resources and advice. She truly cares. You can always trust her to have job seekers’ best interests at heart. And she knows most of the best career professionals in the industry, so you can bet she’ll have quality support on the site, just as she does on Job-Hunt.

On Work Coach Café, you’ll see me responding to comments, and I’ll likely contribute blog posts and assist Susan with various behind-the-scenes activities. The new team’s mission is to continue Ronnie Ann’s legacy of providing job seekers a safe place to fall in the daunting new world of job search and work.

Come visit us at Work Coach Café and subscribe to receive the latest blog posts. Lots of good things will be happening!

{ 0 comments }

The Lazy C-level Executive Job Search

by Meg Guiseppi on January 16, 2012 · 2 comments

So you’re suddenly in an executive job search or planning one – by choice or by circumstance.

Things look different out there than they did the last time you were seeking a new opportunity, don’t they?

If you’re just starting out or, if your job search is lumbering on and you’re getting few or no interviews or action, you may not know how to job search well.

Or you may be lazy – thinking that if you put out a few feelers and get your updated resume onto plenty of job boards, you can sit back and wait for interviews to roll in. That makes you a passive or REACTIVE job seeker, instead of the PROACTIVE one you need to be.

Or you may be misinformed – putting most of your efforts into job search strategies that yield the lowest return on your time invested. You’re ready to put in the time and do whatever is necessary, but you don’t really know what you’re doing.

You’re a lazy, or misinformed, job seeker if you:

1. Skip over step one – identifying the kind of job you want, targeting the companies that will be a mutual good fit, and researching their current challenges to find out how you can help them solve their problems.

2. Run straight for your old resume (if you can find it) and update it – without first defining your executive brand, and creating content designed to market your ROI and resonate with your target employers.

3. Focus most of your time on job boards – the “monsters” and smaller niche boards. You think that job search in the digital age means hitting the job boards hard because that’s where all the job are. You don’t understand that most jobs are found by penetrating the “hidden” job market.

4. Fear having an online presence and putting yourself “out there” with social networking and social media. You don’t understand that executive recruiters and the hiring decision makers at your target companies are on LinkedIn and other social networks. If they’re hanging out there looking for candidates like you, you should be, too.

Get started with LinkedIn. If you do nothing else with social media, you need to be there, leveraging all that this social network has to offer, just to keep pace with your job-seeking competitors. See my LinkedIn Guide for Executive Branding and Job Search.

5. Neglected your network while you had a job because you didn’t think you needed them any more. Now that you’re looking again, you don’t have the time or inclination to re-connect. It’s too much work! You don’t understand that the way to get at those hidden jobs – where most opportunities lie – is through purposeful networking.

6. Haven’t researched what executive job search is all about today, so you can prepare and do all the back end work, before jumping in.

Are you a lazy or misinformed job seeker?

To get all the inside skinny on landing an executive job in today’s job market, see my post Today’s Executive Job Search Toolkit.

5 Key Elements of a Strong Online Personal Brand

Social Media ROI: Is It Worth the Time?

photo by suvodeb

{ 2 comments }