At CareerScribe, we support Dylan’s 30 million jobs tour, and have offered to help by providing FREE profiles to the 100 million+ individuals that will need to apply for those jobs.

We’ve developed a one of a kind, online personal branding tool at CareerScribe. Recently recognized as “the closest to a ‘live’ resume ever devised,” by Killer Startups, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a resource for individuals to take more responsibility in documenting and marketing themselves.

A recent article by TheLadders was titled “How to Use Your Personal Brand to Switch Careers”. Although I like the concept, most people don’t even have a “brand”, let alone one they should be promoting. A personal brand can be assembled pretty quickly by pulling together those artifacts and stories that attempt to show a more genuine identity to others, but just like networking, if not leveraged… personal branding, if not promoted properly and results measured, it likely won’t be worth the effort either. Measuring the results is what will help you understand your Brand Value.

Follow the concepts of product marketing if you really want to understand how to make personal branding successful. Consider concepts such as Brand Identity, Brand Promise and Brand Awareness. Too much to go into here, but stay tuned…. you will be hearing a lot more about these things too in the next couple of years.

More than 750 million people actively use

Facebook.  I’m pretty sure not everyone on there is aware that, whether they are trying to or not, they are actively promoting their brand.  That’s Bad News for them, because a simple lack of awareness can make their brand feel some major ramifications.  But, that’s what I’m here for, and that’s a whole other blog post!

So, we finally know what a personal brand is!  We know that it is very important to build it and properly manage it.  We know that it can be leveraged to give you a competitive advantage, and that it can assist you in your career development.  We also know that CareerScribe is the perfect anchor and a great stepping stone to get you started in the right direction.  So, stay tuned and let’s keep building our brands together!

Hopefully, this is simple way of understanding that we have entered a Free Agency Employment Market.
To make it even a little more scary… a GLOBAL Free Agency Employment Market. If you’re not starting to think about better ways to “market the heck” out of your product (your career), your product is not going to have the value it deserves. Social media and the internet have provided incredible ways for individuals to promote themselves. With tools like CareerScribe, you can tell a more complete
professional story about the product that others (employers) can see they can’t live without. By leveraging “promotional” sites liked Facebook and LinkedIn, you can market the heck out of your product, and measure who’s looking… at what, how long, etc.

I wish I had better news for many of you that are waiting for things to return back to the days when it seemed so much easier… go to school, get offered a job, trust my employer to care about my career, and only change jobs a few times. Sorry… those days are gone, and if you think it’s going to get easier, it’s going to get more complicated. Technology is advancing steadily… actually exponentially, and your competition is becoming global. Don’t despair… more and more tools like CareerScribe will be coming to make this task easier and easier. Your personal professional assistant…. your career Siri is only years away, but start now!

Good luck Job Hoppers!

Jeff Bockelman

It’s true that resumes will continue to be a necessary part of the career planning process for some time in the future, but its value has been diminishing exponentially for the past 10 years with the convergence of web based technologies that allow someone to get greater insight into the story of who you are.

The concept of personal branding, or profile sharing, is beginning to rule the day. Personal branding is about identifying, promoting and measuring the stories and artifacts that support what you want people to know about you professionally. A resume is only a fraction of that story, and can’t possibly add the necessary color and proof of your accomplishments that will make you stand out amongst your competition.

Let’s face it…. that is what it’s all about after all, right? How do I beat my competition to the job? No… it’s about how do I beat them to be considered! If you think a one or two page document in a stack of hundreds gives you an edge… no matter how good of a writer you are, you’re already in trouble. How many top product marketing pieces do you see that are only words? So why would you market your career product that way?

Instead of leading with a resume and cover letter, consider tools like CareerScribe…. a career support solution that allows you to create a digital dossier which can be shared securely in this age of employment free agency.

I’ve found in my experience that everyone wants to get a leg up on their competition, no matter what they are competiting with them for.  It is just in our nature as a society.  That’s why sports are so huge, we are squarely focused on being the best at what we do.  So, whether it’s a person, team or company at some point they are going to want to gain some sort of competitive advantage.

Here’s what baffles me.  Companies KNOW how important branding is, why don’t individuals? With all the tools at hand; CareerScribe, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, why isn’t everyone building their own personal brand everyday?  Sometimes I wonder why people talk about how silly social media is.  Yes, I agree it’s silly if you use it like your average everyday user.  But what most people don’t know is that you can use social media for a PURPOSE!

Change perception!  Don’t think of social media as an opportunity to tell everyone that you’re out walking the dog or having Taco Bell for lunch, use it as a tool to build your brand.  Who are you, what are you about and how do you handle yourself?  Isn’t that what consumers want to know about the brands they purchase?  Why not create a brand out of the most valuable thing you’ll ever have………YOURSELF?!

So how do I create said brand you ask?  Here’s a great way to start!  Sign up for your CareerScribe account TODAY and stay tuned to the blog for more tips on how to use social media to build that brand!

Stick with me, and we’ll gain that competitive advantage together!

It allows you to store, document and track all of your greatest work and accomplishments, in one user-friendly location.  What this means is that you can quickly and easily record and share who you are, what you’re about and how you handle yourself.  It is easy for others to view, and it looks really good when you present it!

What does that do for your brand?  It gives it the right kind of exposure, and more importantly, it gives you the right kind of FIRST IMPRESSION.  Let’s face it, with technology the world is a smaller, faster and more connected place.  We’ve got to be very careful about how we represent ourselves and how we position ourselves.  You never know who’s looking, and CareerScribe gives you the tool you need to make sure that when they look….they like what they see!

Sign up today and give YOUR brand a MAJOR leg up!

Oneself

CareerScribe is a perpetual career support system that contains a broad array of tools and services that enable you to thoughtfully develop, manage and promote your career, as well as a helping to develop an overall sense of responsibility for your own career development. At the foundation of the CareerScribe system are three core functions: 1) capture, store, develop, present, share, and report on career related information; 2) get people interacting with each other more frequently and on a deeper, more impactful, level in order to support the career planning process; and 3) matching people with service/product providers that can help you grow as professionals so you can achieve your goals and reach your career potential.

Virtually all economic activity is in some form of transition into the Digital Age and this includes the world of employment. The old certainties of work and career no longer apply. Swings in unemployment are commonplace, and job tenure for those that are employed is compressing. All of this human resource activity in the Digital Age has led to an advent of job boards and networking tools that have expanded the traditional search functions for job seekers. But professionals–in particular, “Knowledge Workers”–in the marketplace today, those gainfully employed and those that aren’t, are seeking more…and they need more. They are no longer satisfied to be merely being on a company’s payroll. You need to proactively manage your career in a meaningful and compelling way.

The IF in that sentence is key.  Facebook can do amazing things for your personal brand, but it can also damage it just as quickly.  I recently read this article about recruiters using Facebook to look more deeply in to the candidates they are sifting through.  People are looking at us everyday!  They are looking at who we are, what we’re up to, our pictures, our friends…..they are researching and who’s to blame them.

So what can you do to make sure you are displaying the you, you want them to see?  For starters, think of Facebook as more than a social network.  Think of it as a way to turn yourself in to a brand, not just a profile.  It is a way for you to show off the you that you want people to see.  Here are three easy tips to start building your personal brand and differentiate yourself with Facebook.

#1 Be Careful
Like I said, people are looking so pay attention to what you’re showing them.  Pictures, posts, things you like, all reflect on you.  So make sure that those things are what you want people to see.  This is a quick way to build your brand and show what you’re about, but if you’re not careful it can damage that brand just as quickly.

#2 Be Creative
There are some really cool things you can do with your Facebook profile.  One of my favorites is using your profile pic as a tool to market yourself.  You can make it bigger, show more stuff and do some really cool tricks.  Check out how these people used their PhotoStream to do some really cool stuff!  Get creative and it will really catch people’s attention.

#3 Be Active
Don’t let your profile sit stale.  Make sure you are actively contributing to the social aspect of Facebook.  Join conversations, post links, generate interest, but make sure that you are doing it in the right context.  Don’t forget, people are watching and reading, so make sure that you are sharing in a brand conscious way.

There is so much stuff that Facebook can be used for.  It’s a perfect marketing and branding tool for both personal and business use.  It is a powerful tool and the great thing is that over 700 million other people think so too.  That gives you the potential to have a huge market to share yourself with!  So sign up or sign in to Facebook and start branding yourself TODAY!

The reality is that I want, and need to know, that your education was 30 years ago if I’m an employer. By not disclosing that to me, you’re forcing me to spend more time and effort trying to find the information if it’s important to me. If you don’t want to be transparent and forthright with me as a candidate, then I have to question what else aren’t you telling me, with hopes that you’ll trick me into talking with you.

Ultimately, you could be wasting everyone’s time, especially your own, if I truly have a problem with that fact as an employer. In the end, you’ll end up getting some other excuse… such as, not enough experience, not the right experience, someone else more qualified, etc, which in fact isn’t the real reason. Candidly… if you don’t show me, I assume it was 30 years ago anyway… maybe more, so you might as well disclose it.

We feel everyone should be completely transparent with relevant facts such as employment, education, certifications, dates, salary, etc., and then market/promote your story to show accomplishments, progression, initiative, passion, continuous learning and education through use of actual proof ( documents, pictures, videos, etc.) as much as possible. In today’s age where information is more readily available via the internet, this is the story that employers want to see… portraying honesty, genuineness, transparency, trust, enthusiasm and all the things I just mentioned.

Don’t make me hunt for facts. The facts are the facts, but filling in the story around those facts is the art form that gets people hired. If someone has problems with the facts… better to get that out of the way quickly. I have never seen anyone EVER get hired if there is a problem with the facts of dates, etc. It just a question of how much time do you want to spend in interviews that likely should have never happened.

Interviewing for practice isn’t a bad idea… but quantity over quality as a strategy to ensure finding a job is generally a waste of time, but I might support quantity over quality if you don’t feel you have a compelling “story” to tell.