Check out the latest addition to Job-Hunt.org‘s list of 12 (and counting) free job search ebooks on topics ranging from personal branding, interviewing, and career reinvention, to salary negotiations, working with recruiters and more.

Tim Tyrell-Smith, creator of the Tim’s Strategy approach to job search and Job-Hunt’s Personal Marketing Expert, authored the newest ebook, “How To Create A Personal Marketing Plan: The 5 Powerful Steps To Bringing Your Brand To Life“.

What is “personal marketing”?  Tim explains:

“It is the work you do once you’ve created a personal brand. You know who you are and, importantly, know how you are different from others wanting to play the same role in the world.

You have to expose your brand and ideas to people in a way that gets them leaning in. Not turning away. So you have to be smart.”

He further notes two universal truths:

1. “Marketing is hard. To do it right, anyway.

2. Marketing takes time. Only in rare cases will your brand become viral overnight (or even over a few months). People who ‘rush in’ are making mistakes. And those mistakes can be costly. Giving you a reputation that’s hard to shake.”

Tim is a wonderfully engaging writer. The ebook is quick to read (only 12 pages) and will give you actionable advice and resources, along with the tools you need to make your promise of value known to the world.

Tim takes you through 5 steps to create and execute your personal marketing plan:

1. Build a Personal Marketing Hub
2. Learn to Engage with People
3. Start Building Social Credibility
4. Inspire Sharing of Your Ideas and Successes
5. Take a Few Calculated Risks

Download the free e-book now. Tim and Job-Hunt welcome you to share it freely with your friends or networks.

Related resources:

My ebook, 23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land . . . A practical guide to executive branding, marketing your ROI value and navigating the new world of job search

My free Job-Hunt ebook, Executive Branding and Your LinkedIn Profile: How to Transform Your Executive Brand, Resume, and Career Biography Into a Winning LinkedIn Profile

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.

Related posts:

Bullet-Proof Your Executive Career in the New World of Work

5 Key Elements of a Strong Online Personal Brand

Social Media ROI: Is It Worth the Time?

photo by suvodeb

(An edited version of this article was originally posted on Quintessential Careers as part of the fourth annual Job Action Day initiative, celebrated this year on November 7.)

Finding a job and staying employed today – two separate challenges – require more effort and strategic planning than ever before.

Maybe you think that finding a job in the digital age means posting your resume to as many job boards as possible, then sitting back and waiting for the interview offers to come flooding in.

If that’s how you spend most of your job search time, you’re setting yourself up for failure, and building a false sense that you’re working hard on finding a job.

The fact is, most jobs are not posted on job boards. The majority of jobs that are filled are not advertised anywhere and not posted on a job board. Yet, most job seekers only pay attention to that small percentage of jobs that are advertised and visible.

Launching a targeted personal marketing campaign, with purposeful networking to uncover the goldmine of “hidden jobs”, and strategically positioning yourself, leads you into the huge pool of unadvertised jobs.

What is the hidden job market?

• Positions created to accommodate specific candidates, once they connected with and spoke with companies’ hiring decision makers.
• Existing positions that open up when an incumbent is replaced with someone better.
• An open position that isn’t advertised outside the company. Only insiders know about it.
• Jobs that, for whatever reason, are not advertised or visible, and can only be uncovered and accessed through networking.

But understanding where to find jobs won’t bullet-proof your career. Understanding how to stay employed will.

Gone are the days, for the most part, when you could expect long term employment (5-7 years or more) with the same company. Employer loyalty rarely exists these days. No job is permanent and everyone should expect to be in perpetual passive job search.

Savvy careerists continuously market themselves, always anticipating job transition. Career situations can change at any time, and everyone must be prepared.

Flexibility is key. Some viable strategies include temp to perm and portfolio careers (multiple part-time jobs or consecutive short term consulting positions, including temporary jobs, freelancing, and self-employment). Creating income security, instead of job security, is the new wave.

As Quintessential Careers’ Randall S. Hansen said:

“Portfolio careers are usually built around a collection of skills and interests, though the only consistent theme is one of career self-management. With a portfolio career you no longer have one job, one employer, but multiple jobs and employers within one or more professions.”

What many job seekers today don’t understand is that staying employed is very much like running a business. You need to think of yourself as the CEO of your own start-up company – BRAND YOU – and continuously market, network and strategically position yourself, just as a business does.

To insure you’re ready for the many inevitable shifts and moves your career is likely to make over your work life, you need to change your approach, whether or not you’re currently facing a job search.

Dive in right now, with this checklist:

1. Define your personal (or career) brand.

Personal branding is a method to uncover and differentiate the personal attributes and hard strengths you possess that outdistance your competition for good-fit jobs with your target industry and employers. Branding is no longer optional. Employers want to see hard skills linked to your softer ones – indicating who you are, what you’re like to work with and how your strengths and expertise will translate to $$$ for them.

I’ve written a 10-step personal branding worksheet that will help you.

2. Get your resume, biography and other career documents together as the foundation for all your personal marketing (or Brand You) communications.

Gone are the days when all you needed to land a job was a one-size-fits-all resume outlining your comprehensive skill sets and qualifications. These days, you need to first have a clear career target so that you can build your career marketing documents around content and messaging that showcase your ROI (Return on Investment) and resonate with a specific audience.

3. Move your Brand You communications online with LinkedIn and other social media.

Being on LinkedIn and having a strong online presence are also not optional. You may not feel comfortable putting yourself out there, but without an online identity, you may be completely invisible to recruiters and hiring decision makers who source and assess candidates through LinkedIn and other search engines. Transform your portfolio of career documents into a LinkedIn profile that’s a magnet for these people.

Beyond LinkedIn, build a diverse online footprint across multiple channels, monitor it regularly for “digital dirt” or incorrect information, and make adjustments when possible. Show that you’re social media savvy by networking through LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others.

4. Keep your network alive . . . always!

A vibrant, far-reaching network is career insurance. Your real-life and social networks need to be ever-primed for you to tap into for new opportunities, introductions and hot leads, and help you penetrate the hidden job market. You need to practice “give to get” networking, being there for your network, so that they’ll be willing to reciprocate.

Put your online and offline brand communications to work in all your networking efforts.

5. Improve or add relevant skills and stay educated.

Job seekers with up-to-date skills are much more attractive than those who haven’t kept up. This means learning industry-relevant skills as well as the new social media skills.

6. Work on developing a back-up or side career.

Think additional income stream to supplement your “real” job and possibly pump up to full-time, if you lose your real job.

A beloved hobby or favorite past time could become a money-maker. Maybe you’re handy around the house and can hire yourself out to help people with their “honey-do” lists, or odd jobs. Maybe you’d go for a part-time job in retail, healthcare, restaurant or business services.

Other options could include teaching or substitute teaching, consulting or contract assignments, and home-based work or telecommuting work that could include technology, sales, office support, bookkeeping, personal services, etc.

Now you’ve done the backend work and you’re ready for the inevitable. When you’re laid off, forced into another job search or choose to transition:

7. Get clear on what kind of job you want, who your good-fit target employers are, what their needs are right now, how you can help them and who their key hiring decision makers are.

8. Work on circumventing the gatekeepers at your target companies and connecting directly with the key hiring decision makers, where they hang out online and offline.

9. Cultivate relationships with several executive recruiters who specialize in your niche.

10. Prepare to brand and “own” your job interviews.

Related posts:

Today’s Executive Job Search Toolkit

How to Build a Powerful Executive Network

LinkedIn Guide for Executive Branding and Job Search

I love blogging – running with the germ of an idea, the writing itself, the research (when necessary), recalling older posts to refer to, even the actual mechanics of loading on the content, finding a graphic and hitting the “publish” button. There’s more geek in me than I ever realized until I started blogging and learning about SEO.

Although my ongoing blogging strategy is to focus content on my 14 blog categories (listed in the sidebar directly to your right here), I still run out of ideas that make me want to actually sit down and write.

One thing that keeps blogging interesting is getting pumped by something I read and building my own blog post around it. The inspiration can come from a news or business site, a magazine article, a book I’m reading, or many other things. Sometimes content I read on other sites prompts a nifty blog post title first, then the content all falls into place.

But maybe my favorite inspirations are other bloggers’ posts, or other bloggers themselves.

I like to showcase or link to their work, and I do it often. Over the past year, I designated separate posts to some of my favorite job search bloggers. You can see the list in my post about blogger Jason Alba of Jibber Jobber.

Jason returned the favor with a post on his blog showcasing me, Has the Job Search Changed?

Here’s why I love this strategy so much:

Of the millions of people actively blogging out there, there are so many people doing such a good job of posting content that is meaningful and worth reading. I typically only zero in on people writing about job search, personal branding and related topics, but I wander away from that, too.

In business networking, reciprocity is critical. If you want people to support you and evangelize your brand, you first (usually) have to get on their radar, support them and evangelize their brand.

Writing about another blogger or their writing builds community and encourages mutual brand evangelism.

The beauty part about writing a blog post that mentions and links to another blogger’s site or their content elsewhere is the satisfaction I derive from doing something nice for someone I admire and respect. It makes me happy. It makes them VERY happy to be singled out and spotlighted in this way.

Many colleagues in the careers and other industries have been kind enough to mention me in their blog posts. I can tell you that it not only made my day … It made my week. The goodwill you create with this simple strategy goes a long, long way. And, when I get writer’s block, this is a relatively easy kind of post to write.

If you’re on Twitter (and you really have to be if you’re blogging), don’t forget to send an @mention or direct message to that person to let them know you’ve written about them. They’ll be happy to support you with a retweet. Who knows? Your post could go viral and generate lots of traffic to your site.

Make someone’s day, or even week. Give this strategy a try.

Related posts:

You’re a C-level Executive Job Seeker and You’re NOT Blogging?

C-level Job Search: Blogging? What Am I Going To Write About?

Blogging and Twitter: How Tweet It Is!

photo by Sean MacEntee

If you think that HAVING a photo on your LinkedIn profile (and elsewhere online) may red-flag you for discrimination – age, weight, ethnic background, etc. – think about this.

NOT having a photo can be a red flag, too.

Discussions persist over whether including your photo can cause people to discriminate against you. My c-level executive clients – typically over 50 years of age – are understandably worried that they’ll suffer from age discrimination. You can minimize the age issue by not including earlier career history in the “Experience” section, but a photo could well show age.

Your reasoning for not including a photo may be that you hesitate “putting yourself out there” so visibly. Although you know that for executive job search and networking, you have to be on LinkedIn, you resisted putting up a profile in the first place.

You didn’t really want to have an online presence at all, but you slapped up a LinkedIn profile because you felt you had no choice. But you feel that adding a photo will make you way too visible online.

You may have good reason not to include a photo, but I encourage you to include one. The benefits far outweigh the pitfalls.

Think about the recruiters and hiring decision makers at your target companies who click through to your LinkedIn profile. The first thing they’ll notice is your photo . . . or lack of one. If you have no photo, their initial thought will likely be “What is this person trying to hide?”

One of the strategies you should be using with your LinkedIn profile is branding yourself to differentiate the qualifications and qualities you possess from your competitors. Branding is also about creating emotional connections.

People connect easier and believe content more when it’s accompanied by the author’s photo. They’re more likely to reach out to someone when they can “see” the person. Your photo helps to personalize and humanize your brand-driven content.

Why NOT having a LinkedIn photo is NOT a good idea:

• You can be perceived as not understanding how to use LinkedIn. It can make you seem out-of-touch with current technology and trends. You can appear to be technically incapable of loading on a photo.
• “Fake” LinkedIn profiles do exist. Those without photos may be perceived as not belonging to real people.
• Lack of a photo keeps your profile from being 100% complete, according to LinkedIn’s criteria. Profiles that ARE 100% complete are more likely to show up higher in search results, giving them an advantage over “incomplete” profiles.
• LinkedIn research indicates that profiles with pictures are seven times as likely to be viewed as those without.

Choose your LinkedIn photo wisely. This is the first thing people are likely to see when they open your LinkedIn profile. Select an appealing photo that strikes the right image and professional tone for your industry and niche.

Remember that your LinkedIn photo isn’t only visible when people click through to your profile. It also shows up with all of your status updates, group discussion comments, contributions to LinkedIn Answers — any of your activity on the site — so make it be a positive reflection of you.

Related posts:

LinkedIn Guide for Executive Branding and Job Search

My free e-book: Executive Branding and Your LinkedIn Profile: How to Transform Your Executive Brand, Resume, and Career Biography Into a Winning LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn: Best Tactic for Undercover Executive Job Search

29 Biggest LinkedIn Mistakes

photo by nan palmero

So many of my c-level executive clients and potential clients are surprised that Twitter is such an integral part of my personal branding and social media marketing efforts, even though it’s wildly popular and stories about its value for business-building and job search abound.

They still think Twitter is a time-drain for people who have nothing better to do than tweet about what they had for lunch, or other trivial matters.

My Twitter ROI was dismal at first when I started tweeting seriously late in 2008, and I thought I was wasting my time. It took about 6 months of tweeting several times every day (except weekends) before I could see that my time spent was gaining traction, and I was beginning to make a mark.

I certainly haven’t been as heavy-duty a tweeter as many others, but I’d say my Twitter schedule is realistic for someone who is actively job seeking. Some say it’s better not to tweet too much anyway, and risk overwhelming your followers.

Because tweeting is micro-blogging, Twitter is a natural complement to my blogging efforts. It fits in perfectly with the kind of marketing that works best for me – spreading my own content across various social media channels, showcasing my writing skill and its value to c-suite job seekers.

It’s all about getting my brand and promise of value noticed by potential clients and those who can lead me to more clients, and getting recognized as an industry thought leader and expert.

The idea is to get on their radar and stay top of mind with them so that, when they have a need for my services or know someone who may, they’ll reach out to me.

Sounds just like job search networking, doesn’t it?

Good networking on Twitter, just as in real-life or through any social media channel, works when you think “give to get” – promote and help others, and they’ll likely reciprocate. I’ve built professional friendships with all kinds of people (other career professionals, executive job seekers, social media experts, entrepreneurs, etc.) with whom I’ve formed alliances.

We’ve become brand evangelists for each other. I support them by retweeting them, tweeting their blog posts, spreading the word about them and referring them to good-fit clients. They’ve reciprocated by referring potential clients to me and sometimes their contacts in the media who are looking for career experts to interview and/or to contribute to their publications.

One of my Twitter strategies is using relevant keyword phrases often, in my retweets and original tweets, and/or adding hashtagged (#) keyword phrases at the end of tweets, if it will still leave room for others to retweet them.

Savvy Twitter users search these phrases for information, products, services, and to find people to follow. Here are some of my recurring keywords:

#C-suite
#PersonalBranding
#JobSearch
#Executive
#SocialMedia
#LinkedIn
#Blogging

Other strategies I use to attract potential clients, colleagues and thought leaders within my niche:

• Using hashtags on my relevant keyword phrases strategically, tweeting with and without them.
• Retweeting people I want to notice me, if they’ve tweeted something relevant and worthy.

And my efforts have paid off:

When I published my executive branding and job search ebook, I knew I could rely on my Twitter network to help promote it.

Many of my blog posts have gone viral, broadcasting my name and business on many other sites. People have referred to and linked to my blog posts on their blogs, helping to build SEO on my sites and bring more visitors … all potential clients or people who can refer potential clients.

About 15-20% of visitors to my blogsite come from Twitter. If I’ve tweeted an especially popular blog post of mine, that number can jump to more than 50%. Those visitors are people who probably otherwise wouldn’t visit my site. Every visitor is a potential client or may know someone who is.

Some clients who found me by Googling relevant keyword phrases, landing them on my blogsites, said they wanted to work with me because of my Twitter and other social media involvement, indicating my expertise in online identity and online reputation management. They watched my ongoing activity in the Twitter stream on my blogsites.

Leading job search experts who found me on Twitter have included me in their lists of approved career services providers.

Your takeaway:

As an executive job seeker, if you build a realistic strategic plan to incorporate Twitter into your search campaign – even as little as 10-15 minutes a day – you’ll get the word out about your unique promise of value to the companies you’re targeting.

Many of them are on Twitter, tweeting opportunities and updates on their products and services, which could alert you to needs of theirs that you can fulfill. Job search experts are on Twitter, tweeting valuable (and free!) information that can help you. They’re all active on Twitter. You should be, too.

Related posts:

Twitter Turbocharges Executive Job Search and Personal Brand Visibility

Twitter Executive Branding Strategy: The Beauty of a Retweet

14 Reasons I Won’t Follow You On Twitter

Twin Twitter Executive Job Search Tips

photo by josh semans

So many executive job seekers think that November and December are dead months for job search. No one’s thinking about hiring, talking about hiring, or doing any hiring, right?

That may or may not be the case. But this is a great time to lay some groundwork, make connections and possibly get a foot in the door, ahead of your competitors in the job market who are doing nothing right now and waiting for the new year to roll around.

Here’s what you can do to outdistance the competition:

NETWORK

By far the best strategy to land a job any time of year, networking can be especially fruitful during the holidays when many people, especially recruiters and hiring decision makers at your target companies, are more available.

Get busy connecting on LinkedIn. Do some back-end research first, identify people (at almost any level) at the companies you’re targeting, and work on getting into their circles. Did you know that employee referrals are the main source of hiring? Companies trust people who are referred more than those who are complete strangers, and people who refer candidates who are ultimately hired often receive a financial reward.

Try reaching out to people the day after Thanksgiving and the week between Christmas and New Years Day. Many people take those days off, but many are still working. Make a call, send an email, direct message them on Twitter . . . just get in touch.

Attend some of the charity events, and professional and community networking events so plentiful during the holiday season. The mood is usually lighter this time of year, so it may be easier to connect.

VOLUNTEER

Your favorite local non-profit or charity may need your help with their holiday-related activities. Volunteering makes you feel useful and can help you get out of yourself and change your mindset if you’ve been in a protracted, discouraging job search.

But mostly, volunteering helps people. It’s a nice thing to do — a much appreciated way to give back and position yourself as a community-minded person, which is a valued attribute to employers. Remember to add your volunteer work to your resume.

Besides, you never know who you may be working shoulder to shoulder with when you volunteer.

SEND HOLIDAY CARDS

Follow up with the people you’ve already met in your job search to keep you top of mind with them. I think snail-mailed cards are preferable over emailed ones. You know how good you feel when you get an unexpected card in the mail. Do that for your networking contacts, recruiters, hiring decision makers, etc. They’ll remember you when you call or email after the holidays.

There are always things to do when you’re looking for a job . . . no matter what time of year. It’s okay to kick back some over the holidays, but don’t stop entirely and lose momentum.

Related posts:

Today’s Executive Job Search Toolkit

How to Build a Powerful Executive Network

My ebook, 23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land . . . A practical guide to executive branding, marketing your ROI value and navigating the new world of job search

photo by Meg Guiseppi