Feature Article: Career Networking Assessment for Job-Seekers
Special Features: Top 5 Career Networking Strategies for New College Grads and Entry-level Job-Seekers
AND Top 5 Career Networking Strategies for Established Job-Seekers
Bonus Feature: Take Control of Your Personal Branding
Quintessential Reading: QuintZine's Review of Career Books: Me 2.0
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
Latest Additions: What's New on Quintessential Careers
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Editor's Note: About this Issue...
This issue is about the most effective form of job-hunting: Networking -- with a smattering of personal branding.
Why personal branding with networking? As Wendy Terwelp writes in our third Q-TIP in this
issue, you need to know yourself and your brand when you're networking. That self-knowledge
enables you to seek out groups with whom to network that are a
good fit with your brand and personality. You want to network with people who "get" you.
Publisher Dr. Randall S. Hansen offers an assessment in this issue that
enables you to evaluate your networking situation.
In separate articles, I've provided five networking strategies for two kinds of
job-seekers. One article targets new college grads and entry-level job-seekers, while the
other is aimed at established job-seekers.
Contributor Rob Swanson suggests ways to take control of your personal brand, and I
review Dan Schawbel's book on branding for Gen Y, Me 2.0.
We wish our readers celebrating various holidays this time of year
a lovely holiday season and a peaceful, empowering new year.
--Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., Master Resume Writer, Credentialed Career Master,
Certified Electronic Career Coach, and editor at
kathy(at)quintcareers.com
Feature Articles: Career Networking Assessment
Career Networking Assessment for Job-Seekers: A Quintessential Careers Quiz
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
Creating and maintaining relationships with others is an essential tool for all job-seekers.
Your network of contacts can assist you with career advice, resume assistance, and job leads.
More jobs are found through networking than all the other job-search methods combined.
Have Your Resume Ready in Case of Job Loss in the Current Economic Climate.
QUINTESSENTIAL RESUMES AND COVER LETTERS, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service, provides solutions
with unmatched quality in the areas of professional resume writing. In fact, in 2009, during one of
the worst recessions in history, they still achieved a 98.7% effectiveness rate!
Top 5 Career Networking Strategies for New College Grads and Entry-level Job-Seekers
and
Top 5 Career Networking Strategies for Established Job-Seekers
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
Would you like to know how to get the most bang for
your networking buck? Want to know the five very
best networking strategies for new college grads and entry-level job-seekers?
Read the top five strateies here.
Corporate branding is often the most misunderstood marketing tool in universal use. Brands fail when the
company mistakes the visual image for the actual brand, missing the fact that the "brand" is the
client's corporate experience not the icon that is supposed to represent it. (In the same manner,
communicating the brand throughout the company does not mean changing the letterhead; it means training the
employees to match the implied promise of the visual brand.)
Personal Branding often falls into the same trap. An executive once told me that his "personal brand"
was Armani suits with a power tie and Gucci shoes. A personal brand is not put on like a coat (and it is certainly
not a coat). A personal brand is what a person doesconsistently with effectiveness.
Everyone has a brand. It's not a matter of creating one; too often it's a matter of rehabilitation instead
of establishment. Your first goal, then, is to know where you're starting from.
Dan Schawbel is one of those people who makes you wonder how he does it all.
He's constantly writing blog entries for his Personal
Branding Blog, lining up guest writers, interviewing folks about personal branding,
speaking in public, and maintaining a highly active presence on social-media venues.
The fact that Schawbel is relatively young -- still in his 20s -- makes his relentless
activity is all the more remarkable, especially given Gen Y's reputation for a less-than-stellar
work ethic.
He has positioned himself as the leading personal-branding expert for Generation Y
and targets that group in the book, although readers of all ages can get something out of
Me. 2.0.
My wish list for the next edition of Schawbel's book includes more discussion
of storytelling. I content that one's personal story is a key component of one's brand, but
story gets only a tiny mention in Me 2.0.
In our two special-feature articles this issue, we mention "Hansen's Online Social-Media"
Formula," which recommends the minimum collection of social-media sites a careerist
needs to belong to to have an effective online presence. Niche networking sites are part of
this list. But how can you find a niche networking site in your field?
A great place to start is Ning, a social platform for the world's interests and passions online, boasting
more than 1.8 million Ning Networks and 39 million registered users. If you can't find a social-network
in your niche on Ning, you can always start your own.
Ning offers an easy-to-use service that allows people to join and create Ning Networks. Millions of people
every day are coming together across Ning to explore and express their interests, discover new passions,
and meet new people around shared pursuits.
Academe Jobs -- a global online resource that connects
job-seekers and employers in higher education, including full-time faculty positions, adjunct
teaching jobs, administrative and executive jobs, and jobs at community colleges and distance
education institutions. Job-seekers can browse job listings, post your resume/vita, register for
job alerts, and view employer video profiles. No cost to job-seekers.
Job-less -- a job-search engine that gives job-seekers
access to millions of job listings from thousands of Websites, including from major job boards,
newspapers, professional associations, and company career pages. Search or browse job listings by
location or keywords. No cost to job-seekers.
TweetMyJobs -- the largest Twitter job board in the
world, with more than 6,000 vertical job channels segmented by geography, job type, and industry.
Job-seekers can browse jobs by country or company, apply to job listings, and post your resume.
No cost to job-seekers.
WhoToTalkTo -- a job referral exchange, where job seekers
can share information about a current or former job and in exchange find the inside scoop on a
prospective job/employer. You can find out exactly who's doing the hiring, get an idea about what
they're looking for, and can find out how to contact that person directly. No cost to job-seekers.
Find even more career and job site additions to Quintessential Careers by visiting our
Latest Additions section.
Find Your Career Future. Learn More About Yourself
Career Maze is designed to help every job seeker, at every level, make smarter
career choices. Individualized to reflect your unique personality and written in
"plain English," it is thorough and easy to complete.
Once completing the assessmemt, your 2-part report includes:
A specific, career-relevant discussion of your workplace personality
A list of job types compatible with your personality
Career Maze encourages you to think about tapping your full potential to find your future.
Q TIPS:
Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search and Work Life
The 10 hardest jobs to fill this year, as reported by U.S. employers, provide opportunities
for those with qualifications in these fields:
Engineers
Nurses
Skilled/manual trades
Teachers
Sales representatives
Technicians
Drivers
Information technology staff
Laborers
Machinists/machine operators
Note: Survey of 2,000 employers
Source: Manpower
Here's a conversation-starter activity to suggest or implement next time you're in a
situation with networking potential: This activity would work well with a group of
people who don't know each other too well or perhaps have met only for the first time.
Ask everyone to write something interesting or quirky about themselves on a name tag
or post-it and wear it as a badge. It could be one word like "Blue" or "Led Zepplin 1989."
Allow 10 minutes for the group to mingle and hear as many stories they can that reveal the
choice of words people have used and in doing so learn something interesting about each other.
Here are a few possibilities from the conventional to the quirky:
your nickname
sports you love to play or watch
the sports team you follow
your favorite biography
what's on the cover of your diary
a thought-provoking quote
your personal motto
the beginning of an interesting story
So create a name badge for yourself for all the conferences, seminars, and workshops you
attend and let the conversations flow.
Adapted from the newsletter of
Anecdote, an
Australian consulting firm that helps businesses harness the natural power of stories to bring strategy to life.
It's not what you know; it's who you know that gets you hired, writes career coach
Wendy J. Terwelp in the CrossRoads Newsletter. Terwelp continues:
We've all heard this phrase so many times our ears are bleeding, right? Here are the facts: 61
to 85 percent of people land new careers through networking.
Terwelp offers the first of 10 secrets to help turn your networking pain into career gain:
Know yourself and your personal brand: Are you hip, trendy, and cool? If you are, then the networking
group you join should match your style and your attitude. Sure, you want to meet different types of people to
successfully manage your career, but you also want them to "get you." And you want them to be fun to work
with, right?
Quintessential Careers Press Announces Our Latest Book: The Quintessential Guide to
Job Search 2.0: Advancing Your Career Through Online Social Media.
The
Quintessential Guide to Job Search 2.0: Advancing Your Career Through Online Social Media,
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., and Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., provides six chapters to guide you
through the next revolution in online job search. Since job boards, vestiges of the first
revolution in online job search, should still be part of the job-seeker's toolkit, this
book helps you navigate those while also considering the future of job boards. The book
looks at building your personal brand, teaches you to make the most of social-media venues
in the job search, guides you in creating a digital presence, suggests you consider blogging,
and discusses ways to integrate multimedia elements into your job search.
Follow QuintCareers; Read the Latest Advice
Follow QuintCareers Latest Job Tips and Career News on Twitter
Also follow @KatCareerGal for regular career-related tweets.
QuintCareers Network of Empowering Blogs
What are QuintCareers empowering blogs?
The Career Doctor Blog:
Especially for those who miss our former regular feature, Ask the Career Doctor, this blog each day features a question and answer from The
Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD.
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QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming issues of QuintZine:
* How Job Search is Like Online Dating
* Executive Interview case Studies
* Background Checks
* Pre-employment Assessments
* Career Resolutions
* Turn Your Hobby Into a Business
* Entrepreneurship Quiz
* Warning Signs You Won't Like Your Next Employer
* Contrasting Good and Bad Job-Search Techniques
* New Grads: Roadmap to Work and Play
* Working Night Shifts/Odd Shifts
* Tips for Dealing with Office Politics
* De-Stressing Before an Interview
* More Cover-Letter Components
* Empty Nest Job-seekers
* How to Stay Motivated at Work
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Book reviews
. . . and much, much more...
