Identifying Your Personal Brand

Following is an excellent article by Robin Ryan.

Can you quickly state what your key strengths are? Do you know what your career identity is? We’re not talking about your job title, but your career identity. It’s that unique authentic reputation you have among bosses, colleagues, and other employees. This reputation is what I call Brand You.

Personal branding may not be a term you are familiar with, but you need to be. It took me quite a while to consider exactly how I could teach someone else about self-marketing their personal brand in order to advance their career. The heavy ‘corporate brand’ advertising or marketing approach would lose people quickly. So I spent over two years working on the process, and the end result is in my newest book, “Soaring on Your Strengths.”

Your career identity is not some slick piece of advertising. Brand You is based on the authentic, talented, and genuinely unique and special person you are. It is not phony or conceited, or an exaggeration, nor is it a trick or fleeting fad. The components of Brand You are the essence of you as a person, which include: your work strengths, your image, your passion and your personality traits, along with other people’s perceptions of you, applied in a work-environment that enhances your productivity.

I recommend you give yourself a gift if you care about career advancement. No matter at what stage you are in your career — at the beginning, middle, or at a senior level — or if you are changing careers or reinventing yourself — you’ll have a game plan for your future. You will know how to self-promote and market yourself successfully to become the very best you can be.

Robin Ryan is considered America’s top career coach with over 1000 TV and radio appearances including Oprah and Dr. Phil. Robin has a busy career counseling practice providing individual career coaching, resumé writing services, interview preparation, salary negotiations, and outplacement to clients nationwide. She is the best-selling author of:

• 60 Seconds & You’re Hired!;
• Soaring On Your Strengths;
• What to Do with the Rest of Your Life;
• Winning Resumes; and
• Winning Cover Letters

I highly recommend Robin’s work. I have found it to be inspirational and I use many of her ideas in my work with my own clients.

Richard (Ric) Ward
IT Job Coach

Your job search business card

Looking for work, conducting a job search, is in fact a business in its own right. You are selling your services and looking for interviews.

Every business person and sales person has a business card. And when you are engaged in a job search you need to have a Job Search Business Card to hand out to everyone you meet so they know what you are selling. It is a micro resume.

Your Job Search Business Card should have the following information:

• Your name
• Your degrees and any certifications
• Keywords about your IT experience
• Your email address
• Your telephone number - it needs to have voice mail
• A link to your web based resume and profile

This is an especially useful tool to hand-out to all of your family and friends. Afterall you cannot really expect them to remember what your information technology skillset is. And give 5 or 10 copies. Ask them to hand them out to their friends. Build your network of people who know about you. If you are not sure about how to network for success then this ebook - The Last Guide To Networking You’ll Ever Need - may be for you.

Richard (Ric) Ward
IT Job Coach

Using a web based resume and personal profile

Every job seeker needs a web based resume.

A web based resume is a necessary tool in your job search toolbox in addition to your email ready resume and your print resume…and of course a text based resume for easy posting to job boards.

Publishing a resume on the Web is advantageous in a number of ways:

• Employers can access your resume 24 hours a day - 7 days a week.
• You can quickly refer a recruiter or potential employer to your web resume during an impromtu phone conversation.
• You can provide a link to your online resume on your job search business card.
• Web published resumes are readily found by employers using resume spider technology to find passive resumes
• A web based resume enables you to include links to work samples (written work, graphic design, other Web pages you’ve designed, photographs, reports, etc.) that can demonstrate your skills to employers.

Here is a sample of a web based resume and personal portfolio available at IT Headhunter.net and JobsWorkCareers.com.

Richard (Ric) Ward
IT Job Coach

The Last Guide To Networking You’ll Ever Need

In this tough economy, people who find jobs usually do so by networking. Are you networking at least two hours a day? Have you already called everyone you know to ask them not for a job, but who they know that you should call? Have you called those people yet? If not, then you’re being left behind in the employment race by those who know how to network. Now, with The Last Guide to Networking You’ll Ever Need, you won’t lose out to those who network and you’ll have a huge advantage over those who don’t.

You’ve probably heard it before, and probably dozens of times. You’ve got to network to find a great new job. While that’s true, very few people know how to network and even fewer are able to communicate how to do so to others. It isn’t just calling your friends and family to ask for a job. An average person knows 250 people. If you call all of them and ask who they know, you’re only one step away from 62,500 people. You’re in a fight to land a job, right? Wouldn’t you rather have 62,500 people on your side than just yourself?

Written by Keith F. Luscher specifically for the job hunters, this new book will give you a clearer understanding of what networking is all about, and what it isn’t about. You’ll learn how to overcome your fear of picking up the phone. You’ll learn the vital importance of listening twice as often as you speak. And you’ll learn to make networking a daily habit rather than a short-term effort.

Find out more about The Last Guide to Networking You’ll Ever Need.

I’m back

After dipsy doodling back and forth with installing WordPress on my IT Job Coach website I’ve decided to move my blog to WordPress so that I can focus on the coaching and writing and not have to deal with updates and upgrades.

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