I received this way cool email from Linkedin the other day:

I know that others received this email too. But I still love it. Here are 76 people…which, by the way, is 18% of my network! 18% of my 423 contacts on linkedin changed gigs in 2010. Some were unemployed. Some changed companies. Some moved up in the companies they were in. Some of us did 2 of those 3.

First, that is just a SICK percentage.

Second, there is some HARDCORE talent in that mix.

HARD.

CORE.

Third, there are a few lessons to be learned here. Besides the fact that I have a frickin’ AWESOME network. The first lesson is that you COULD find a new gig in 2010. 18%! That is so HUGE. The second lesson is that you need to have your profile picture on linkedin. Do you want to be the person – THE ONE PERSON – of that 76 without a picture? No. No you do not. All of these people are also on linkedin. There is a TON of opportunity in that email/picture.

76 people all with a whole NEW set of problems.

76 people all with a whole NEW set of connections.

76 people all with a whole lot of positive energy looking to pay it forward.

76 people all with a whole lot NEW set of needs.

There are sales people, executives, software developers, recruiters, hiring managers, career sherpas, etc all in different states, different countries, different verticals.

This is an email of OPPORTUNITY.

Go!

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I took my brother to Career Sherpa’s Employment Club meeting last night. She walked through her presentation on Using Social Media in Your Job Search. This made me feel guilty, because I was working on an update for this same subject. So – here it is. This goes into a lot more detail this time around. This isn’t just about searching for a job, this is about managing your career and your online identity. Enjoy! Drop a comment and/or share if you like it!

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I know a couple of people that are re-entering the job market after years of not working or only working part-time. I thought I would share some thoughts and words of encouragement.

First. You need some kind of marketing vehicle. Traditionally, this is called a resume. Right now, I have three documents. I have your traditional resume – HOWEVER, it is a way cool resume updated for the 21st century. I have a Marketing Plan – which between you and me, I should update. I have something called a “pre-resume” which is something I recently read about and thought I would give it a try. It is a one-page combo of a resume (with limited info) and the meaty part of your marketing plan. If you need help with any of these things, you need to throw a little bit of money at Hannah. She will tighten you up.

Second. You need to get yourself on Linkedin. And you need to get yourself a complete profile. And you need a picture. Linkedin is a part of your marketing toolkit. But – more important – Linkedin is a giant relational database. It is not Facebook. You cannot play Farmville on it. But, if you work it, and use it to your advantage, it will help you find people inside of companies where you would like to go work. It is a tool to aid you in your most important job searching task…

NETWORKING.

Third. I don’t have a college degree. Yes – I went to college. I started as a Political Science major, got dis-illusioned in a hurry, switched to English Lit because it was fun and easy to read books and argue with people (two of my favorite things to do ). But ultimately got bored because I was working full time and going to school full time and making money and LEARNING a load of stuff that I still practice TODAY…20 (shut up) ish years later.

Not having a degree hasn’t hurt me. Yes, there have been a couple of companies that wouldn’t even look at me. Too rigid for me anyway. They did me a favor. It hasn’t hurt for two reasons. One – I hustle. I work hard. I achieve results. I win. Two – I focus on BUILDING and MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS. Some of you know this as “networking”. Every job I have had since I started delivering newspapers – with the exception of a very few of them – came from relationships and recommendations. In fact, the crappiest jobs, were jobs where I went in cold.

Starting in 2007/2008 when the world went ape-shit, HR departments decided they could add even LESS value by REQUIRING a degree from everyone. In fairness, they did this because there were just an overwhelming number of candidates for every gig. There are stats. You can look them up.

None of this matters to you though. You don’t answer ads on Monster or (sweet baby Jesus!) ads in a newspaper. No – you are new school. You build relationships and market yourself. While all the sheep are pounding on the front door, you have a close personal relationship walking you and your kick-ass marketing document (resume) to the hiring manager and and she tells that manager what a total rock star you are and how sick it would be to have you on the team.

Talk to Hannah. Or come with me on the 19th to her career club in Canandaigua.

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I started writing “a” blog on this day in 2004. I cannot believe it has been six years. I’ve been through a lot in that time.  I was running a telemarketing operation at the time. Then I had back surgery. I tried to launch an outsourcing business with some partners. That failed. I went to a major telecom provider where I spent a year commuting to Florida helping to launch a 500 seat call center. I went to a learning solutions company to become a product manager. I got laid off after one year. I spent a year out of work. My daughter spent 15 days in the hospital with what we now know was H1N1. Now I am doing account management/project management for a software company.

Whew.

In ’04 I started it all off by referencing Tom Peter’s Brand You Survival Kit from FC. ALL of what TP says in this article is still relevant. Lots of us STILL aren’t hearing it. To re-cap:

• Turn every project into something the recruiter or person doing the hiring is going to get excited about.
• You must market yourself. Accomplishments on a resume are NOT ENOUGH.
• Don’t settle for being a jack of all trades. Master something. But be able to adapt at a breakneck pace.
• Loyalty to the “company” is dead. Loyalty to your peers is crucial. Build your contacts.
• New technology is useless for the first five years. But you need to know its out there and be ready to use it when it becomes useful.
• Constantly re-invent yourself.

The funny thing is that in my original post I said that you should build your contacts in your Palm Pilot. I also said “rolodex” but I think in 2010 I have a better shot at people snickering at the dinosaur that is Palm Pilot versus the Rolodex (the modern day equivalent of writing on stone tablets.)

But DAMN, Tom is right. Was right. WILL CONTINUE TO BE RIGHT.

You have to be marketing/re-inventing. You have to be a hammer as Harry Joiner says. Loyalty to your peers IS critical. Your network is your future.

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I just signed an offer letter for a small company looking to do big things here in Rochester. (In fact it is about 3 minutes from my house! Bye Bye Jefferson Road!) I had been out of work for a little over one year. That is a long time.

I had/have some immediate thoughts on what I/my family did to survive this past year. Yes…survive. I am deliberately using that word.

1. Get your finances under control. In a hurry. We went to Defcon 1 on day 2 of my unemployment. What does D1 look like? It looks like cutting all non-essential spending. Satellite bill cut down dramatically. (Come on…you need SOME tv.) Meal planning started. No dinners out. This let us keep Family Friday Pizza Night.
2. Don’t let it affect your kids. Our goal was to not disrupt our daughter’s life. We had to cut violin lessons. (I think she was happy about this actually). But I went the extra mile in ensuring she was living a balanced life.
3. Exercise. Every day. We joined the local YMCA and practically LIVED there. This was $90 a month WELL spent. Especially in the summer. We ROCKED that place. And continue to do so. We extracted more ROI out of that $90 than anyone.
4. Work your network. I say this with the assumption that you already have a network built. If you didn’t have a network in place – an ACTIVE network by the end of 2008 – you are beyond screwed. I was volunteering at a place in the Summer. It didn’t work out. I got a new job earlier this week. BOTH came through my EXISTING network. I battle with the networking gurus all the time on constantly expanding your network. I like to grow organically and farm, farm, farm my relationships.
5. Have an internet presence. This helps with number 4 but it also helps you CLOSE the deal. I could SEE the hits on my Linkedin page. I could see the traffic on this site jump after I talked to people. I can’t tell you the number of times people have referenced my site, my linkedin, or my twitter (which I don’t use all that much) during conversations. It works.
6. Volunteer – work with kids. It will humble you. I worked a lot with my daughter’s second grade class. I worked with a non-profit that worked with kids teaching them entrepreneurial skills. I coached a group of 8 and 9 year olds in a flag football league. It gives you perspective. It will keep your head on straight.
7. Open yourself up. Possibly the hardest part. Under stress, I tend to hunker down and get inside myself. Fight that urge. Let people love you. Let people help you. And most importantly ASK for their help. So easy yet near impossible. Trust me. I know.
8. Learn. Every day. I had a teacher in highschool. Freshman year. All boys school. Priest. Taught Latin. (Now you have some insight about me. Only man I have ever really feared. But he said something profound. He told us to make sure we read something every day. Even if it is the comics. When you read – you learn. I made sure I was using my gray matter. I took on projects that FORCED me to learn.
9. Stay positive. As the great prophet Bob Marley used to say – “Everythings gonna be all right.” You have to keep a positive mental attitude. Even when you are bruised and battered. You HAVE to get up. You have to put your helmet on. And you have to go attack that rock and keep pushing it up the hill. Because ONE DAY it will not roll back down on top of you.

I hope this helps someone. If you are in this place – talk to me. I get it. I can help. Give me some love on this post – add your own tips – crab at me about how wrong I am.

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Last night I gave an updated version of my “Managing Your Online Identity: Using Social Media in Your Job Search” presentation to Hannah Morgan’s Career Club in Canandaigua, NY. It is really aimed at anyone who needs to manage their career not just job seekers.

Give me some love if you found this interesting or yell at me if you think I missed the mark.

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Interesting read from the Career Strategies section of the WSJ Online  in the last week or so. Beyond Job Boards: Targeting the Source provides me with some more cannon fodder for my Using Social Media in Your Job Search presentation I am trying to give.

I was arguing with CareerSherpa’s Hannah Morgan the other day (we do that…a lot over job boards and their increasing irrelevance due to an increase in the use of social networking by companies.

Along comes this WSJ piece that adds to it by saying are focusing inward and tightening up their OWN pages. Why do they need job boards when they can do a BETTER job on their own of finding TARGETED, SPECIFIC people.

Companies say they are scaling back advertising on online job boards, which saves them money. By focusing more on their own career pages, companies also reduce the number of applications they need to sift through. And, they say, people applying through a prospective employer’s own Web site are on average better-qualified than applicants coming through job boards.

The article offers a scary but SOBERING stat: “In May, 22.9 million unique visitors searched for work on job boards…”

MILLION.

UNIQUE.

37% increase from last year.

How are you getting through all of that NOISE?

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Just read the latest from Penelope Trunk.

Do you know who is using social media? Gen X. The average Twitter user is in their 30s. The median age of LinkedIn is 40. The majority of people who are joining Facebook right now are over 35. This is because Gen X wants to meet new people online and reconnect with all the friends they lost along the way. Gen X is using social media to network.

I have embraced all of the above. I was a semi-early adopter of linkedin. Facebook has turned out to be fun. And today, ironically, I discovered a few things about Twitter that I am LOVING!

I figured out how to add a TON of followers. So what you say. Well…I am driving a ton of traffic to this blog. I am fine tuning as I go. Targeting and attracting people that will like what I am doing here.

All for free. All from the internets.

I agree with Penelope. I am trying to reconnect with all the people I lost along the way. Some of them should stay lost. As I should probably stay lost from THEM. I use all three tools differently. I try to use all of them to drive a little bit of traffic to this blog.

I use Linkedin to manage my professional network. It works.

I use twitter solely as a marketing tool. I only use it to “tweet” back and forth with 3 people. I use it to drive traffic. I want to see how many followers I can add. Then I want to see how many people I can get to the site. Then I want to see how many come back and/or subscribe.

Math and science people. Math and science.

I use Facebook to reconnect to old friends. I LOVE this about fb. It lets me get in my way back machine and re-connect with people I LOVED at some prior point in time. I’ve moved around a lot. I’ve lost people. FB ties me back in….sometimes only on the peripheral. But it is better than not at all.

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Great article from McKinsey Quarterly “When Job Seekers Invade Facebook”. (You will have to register). With the apocalypse upon us, we are seeing a huge rush to “network” via the social networking tools of the day.

I love this quote from the article:

“There are, of course, powerful economic reasons behind the trend. As sociologist Nan Lin puts it in his book, Social Capital,

“Individuals engage in interactions and networking in order to produce
profits.” These profits are based upon information, influence, social
credentials, and recognition. The accumulated social capital,
meanwhile, helps individuals to gain competitive advantages in the
labor market as a result of privileged access to “resources” located on
the social networks.“

Of course, you are not going to increase your capital simply by joining. These are tools. They exist to help you communicate and find linkages where you didn’t know they existed. You still have to do the legwork.

The challenge is developing your social capital without seeming greedy. Right? At the end of the day, I want to LEVERAGE my network. I wanted to do this with my network before anyone ever heard of LinkedIn. Hell…even before anyone ever heard of Al Gore’s internets.

In order to leverage you have to embrace the old addage, by a giver not a receiver. Give first. And people will want to give back.

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