The interconnectedness of the internet has made it possible for information to spread faster than ever before, for better or for worse. That makes it very easy to root out fakers.
Case in point: Aleksey Vayner.
The Yale student created a “video resume” in 2006 that he sent to the HR department of financial firm UBS. On the tape, Vayner karate-chopped cinderblocks in half, demonstrated his ballroom dancing skills and bench-pressed 495 pounds. Needless to say, it was hilarious, and the video – titled “Impossible Is Nothing” quickly went viral, exposing even more lies in Vayner’s background (including his claim that the Dalai Lama wrote his college recommendation letter). Needless to say, he didn’t get the job.
He has since taken the video down, but here is a funny parody from Michael Cera:
If you’re in the midst of a job search, you know that networks are important. Powerful. Essential. Most jobs are found through some kind of networking contact, so bolstering your relationships with all members of your network must be among your first priorities as you pursue your next role.
Effective networking is all about giving. And although the holiday giving season is far behind us, when it comes to your network, giving is a year-long activity.
One of the best gifts you can give to members of your network is help in building their personal brands. When we make others look good, we look good – to them! So consider these free or very low-cost, Web 2.0-focused personal-branding presents. It’s time to demonstrate your personal-brand attribute of generosity and your knowledge of social media.
Here are my Top 10 tips:
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| Visit Our Bookstore for Great Values! |
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 101 Tips Every Job Seeker Should Know |
 The Ultimate Online Job Seekers eBook |
 10 Biggest Interview Mistakes |
 10 Biggest Resume Mistakes |
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| Check out these hot articles! |
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 This makes us laugh… every time we see it |
 The First Step to a Job You Love |
 Palestinian Traffic Cop Loves His Job |
 Beef up your email signature |
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![Higher Learning Leads to Higher Earnings, Especially for Men [InfoGraphic]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/4340939642_374fbff6e3_m.jpg "Higher Learning Leads to Higher Earnings, Especially for Men [InfoGraphic]") Higher Learning Leads to Higher Earnings, Especially for Men [InfoGraphic |
 How to Ace the Interview BEFORE it Starts |
 Video Resume – May Work Wonders, But Not for Everybody |
 How to Develop All Star Job References |
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For many professionals, networking at a business conference is a daunting prospect. Having an outgoing personality while simultaneously focusing your energy on meeting the right people and making an impression takes a lot of practice. By following proven best practices, you’ll be able to incorporate specific techniques into your repertoire to be truly effective at networking.
In order to stand out among the thousands of attendees at a conference, you’ll need to stay focused on exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. Here are five key tips to networking at a business conference:
1. Build Your Social Network
Hate small talk? Get over it. Talk to others; taking a genuine interest in people you come into contact with is the first step in building your network of friends and associates. Get in touch with old acquaintances, distant relatives and people with whom you went to school. This is a good exercise in reaching out and strengthening your existing connections. The key is to smile and take a keen interest in other people’s lives.
2. Pay Attention to Details
Don’t just get to know people on a professional level. While you’re chatting about business, take a few minutes to find out what they for fun, as well as what their spouse or significant other, nearby family members, and close friends do for work and recreation, too. Then, write it down. You don’t want to forget what you’ve learned. You never know when you or someone you know will benefit from the contacts you’ve met and categorized into an address book or spreadsheet.
3. Find the Extroverts
Once you start networking, you’ll come across people who have been networking for a very long time and seem to know everybody. Get to know these extroverted professionals. They’ll introduce you to others who share your interests or goals.
4. Be Generous
Networking is a two-way street. While you’re looking to make connections that can help you succeed, think of ways you can help others. Some easy ways to be helpful and generous towards others is to listen, offer compliments and be sincere. Networking is not all about making business contacts for jobs; you can offer valuable gestures of kindness and generosity. Remember, you’re establishing good relations with people and opening channels for mutual benefit.
5. Follow Up
People hand out business cards for a reason. Maintain your address database and stay in touch with those which whom you’ve met. Note everyone’s birthday and send a “Happy Birthday” email on their special day. Or, use current events as a reason to make contact. For example, touch base if they’ve had inclement weather in their area or forward a relevant, interesting article their way.
Of course, a little preparation goes a long way. Before the conference, research keynote speakers and others who will be in attendance. Set goals and identify those that you’d like to meet. Plus, you can always establish connections via social networking websites beforehand. With these simple tips, you’ll be armed with the knowledge and techniques to make networking work in your favor.
Claudia Vandermilt is a skilled project manager with many certificates from Villanova University. She attends conferences and networking events regularly.
| Be sure to look for us on your favorite networks: |
|---|
|
|
|---|
| Visit Our Bookstore for Great Values! |
|---|
|
101 Tips Every Job Seeker Should Know |
The Ultimate Online Job Seekers eBook |
10 Biggest Interview Mistakes |
10 Biggest Resume Mistakes |
|---|
| Check out these hot articles! |
|---|
|
This makes us laugh… every time we see it |
The First Step to a Job You Love |
Palestinian Traffic Cop Loves His Job |
Beef up your email signature |
|---|
Higher Learning Leads to Higher Earnings, Especially for Men [InfoGraphic |
How to Ace the Interview BEFORE it Starts |
Video Resume – May Work Wonders, But Not for Everybody |
How to Develop All Star Job References |
|---|
Check your email signature and online presence.
You’re on the hunt for your dream job, you’re making progress, and you’re doing most of it on the Internet…
…But are you taking advantage of your e-mail signature?
If you’re looking for a new job, chances are you’re sending lots of emails – to prospective employers, recruiters, contacts, and acquaintances – and every email you send is a golden opportunity to get yourself noticed.
In addition to providing basic information like your full name, title, and contact information, your email signature is the perfect place to distinguish yourself among the pack of jobseekers and promote your unique attributes.
- Do you have a slogan or tagline that expresses your value to an employer? Make one up.
- Do you have a professional website or online resume and portfolio? Be sure to include the link.
Here is a good example of what your email signature might look like:
John Q. Public
Senior Marketing Manager
“Linking Real Results with Cost-Cutting Marketing Strategies for Upstart Companies”
johnqpublic@xxxx.net
415-555-5079
www.MyOnlineCareerSpace.com/johnqpublic
The goal here is to make it ridiculously easy for people to learn about you. Often, making this simple change to how you conduct your online job search will boost the # of responses you receive, so don’t be shy…
Use your email signature to sell yourself and you’ll be happy you did!
This is just one of the 100′s of tips, techniques and how-to’s in a new eBook called “The Ultimate Online Job Search eBook”. For more about the job search and career development process, including mistakes to avoid on resumes, the most important interview questions, appropriate interview attire and creating your online presence head over to the store and get The Ultimate Online Job Search eBook today!
Related articles:
First Impressions Are Important
Simple Steps to Quality References
On Unprepared References, Lies
Five Tips on How to Ask For More Salary
The internet, being an extremely popular source, makes competition for getting that job highly competitive. Get started with your My Online Career Space and let that prospective employer know you are the primary candidate for them. With your own personalized career space you will rise above the rest of the job seekers on the internet.
At our website we offer:
If you would like to get up-to-date information, join us on Twitter or on Facebook .
What you put online, will be read.
Blogging can help or hurt your career
Blogging has become an impulsive contemporary art for careerists. Should you develop your own blog or shouldn’t you? Will it help or hurt your career?
What’s easy can be fun or dangerous. In a matter of minutes, you can set up your Blogger, WordPress, Typepad or related blog site. And the minute you post? Your words can be accessed by billions of people around the world. No Web designer needs to be hired. No technical guru at x dollars an hour has to listen to and potentially kill your ideas. You own this medium. You have freedom. You can say or cite anything. There’s no waste of time and no need to white-board everyone else’s ideas.
How it can help:
1. You have an audience. Keep it positive. Blogging may add to the company’s brand and your position as an authority or subject matter expert within your company or your field so take note of what you put on the internet.
2. Maintain a positive spin. Drive customer confidence. As you cite critical sources and make intelligent, important observations, your personal blog augments your position within your company and promotes your company. You never bash your company. You can be yourself and be authentic.
Get a raise and a promotion. Defend the faith. Blogging helps you document and publish your ideas while associating with great people.
How blogs can hurt:
1. Negative posts can be fatal. Blogging can open you up for many legal, liability and employment questions, problems or crises.
2. Pictures tell a thousand stories. For an example “Larry” seemed to pipe up at work a lot about things that bothered him. So he decided to publish a seemingly anonymous blog. As a techy he posted hundreds of comments on political ideas, named people he thought should be impeached and railed against what he considered bad taste and fashion. He did this anonymously under a lot of different names. But when he decided to take pictures at the year-end Christmas party and publish captions that offended nearly everyone, he was, well, suspended without pay forever (fired).
3. Beautiful art can be destroyed. Knowing that having no blog presence can leave a company vulnerable, it is increasingly interesting and titillating to add negative comments to company products; to dump a list of customer complaints onto the proverbial, anonymous IHATEXCOMPANY.com, the site a former employee developed to stick it to the man. Under pressure, the IHATEXCOMPANY.com author faced legal entanglements and gave up Craig’s name as a blogger.
Today, with more and more recruiters and employers going online, it is important to keep a positive online image. Weigh the pros and cons of starting a blog and then if you do chose to continue, be sure that anything you put up would be something you are proud to have in your ‘digital footprint’.
The Interview was Awesome. Now What?
Observe Communication Style When Interviewing
Interviewing Strategy – Clues to Uncover Corporate Culture
The Four Most Important Interview Questions
Send a Value-Added Response After the Interview
For extensive job and career books, visit our career resources page.
The internet, being an extremely popular source, makes competition for getting that job highly competitive. Get started with your My Online Career Space and let that prospective employer know you are the primary candidate for them. With your own personalized career space you will rise above the rest of the job seekers on the internet.
At our website we offer:
If you would like to get up-to-date information, join us on Twitter or on Facebook .
Facebook has changed dramatically in the past year, and has added significant features to help the job seeker. Please keep in mind, passive job seekers might want to limit some of the more public activities, so their search won’t be apparent to their current employer.
While Facebook started as a social network for kids, it’s grown up on its way to passing 350M members. Facebook’s largest segment is 30+ and there are now more grandparents than students on the world’s largest networking site. Facebook has also surpassed Google as the #1 site to search … for people.
Building a Facebook network can leverage your job search efforts, but only if you build the right network, and learn how to use Facebook as a communication tool.
Here are the 10 most effective ways I’ve found to use Facebook for your job search:
Prepare:
1. Clean up your profile – Start off with effective Online Reputation Management (http://recareered.blogspot.com/2010/01/online-reputation-management-4-steps-to.html) and audit your Facebook presence and remove comments or photos you wouldn’t want your Mom or Boss to see. Remove Facebook game applications that may give the impression that you’d play Mafia Wars on company time. Monitor your Facebook profile regularly.
2. Make yourself public – Update your Facebook security settings to make everything on your profile public. This helps employers and recruiters find you on Facebook, and makes more of your profile information searchable on Google.
3. Post your Resume – Posting your resume on Facebook can be as easy as saving it to Google docs or Box.net and posting the link to your info tab on your profile.
4. Build an Online Portfolio – Include links to examples of project work, reports, presentations, or a portfolio site you’ve built elsewhere (http://recareered.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-online-portfolios-put-you-at-top-of.html). You can include these links on your info tab, or build a custom Portfolio tab and store directly on Facebook.
Network:
5. Build your network – Use a targeted approach to build your network, using the ‘Rule of 50’s’ (http://recareered.blogspot.com/2009/12/now-that-im-linked-who-do-i-link-to.html) I describe for Linkedin – just applied to Facebook. As you are building your Facebook network, focus on heavier users, people who post regularly and who’s friends go beyond close friends and family:
6. Friend Recruiters – Use Facebook’s search function to search for recruiters in your area, in your industry, and who focus on your job function. Add all you can find.
7. Join/Start a group – Go beyond the job search groups and local networking groups. (link) Join industry groups to gain information, share information, see what companies are likely to be expanding. Better yet, start your own group to build your own industry leadership and encouraging inbound industry friend requests. Invite industry recruiters to your group.
Broadcast:
8. Start a ResuBlog – Use one of Facebook’s many blogging applications to build your own ResuBlog (http://recareered.blogspot.com/2008/05/you-dont-have-to-be-shakespeare-to.html), or use an outside application like Blogger or WordPress and import your ResuBlog to Facebook. Create a separate tab for your ResuBlog.
9. Search for industry or target company information – Use Facebook’s search function to find information on your industry or target companies already posted on Facebook. Set up Google Alerts to email you daily on new industry, target company (and target company competitors), information posted to Google. Set up Twitter searches for the same.
10. Be a source of information – Now that you’ve searched for information, use it. Post links to relevant articles to your Facebook wall, to the walls of your industry and job function network, to your network at target companies, to groups you’ve joined or created, and to your ResuBlog. People at your target companies will especially find information about their competitors to be valuable. Build your reputation within your targets and industry as a key information source. The more places you post this information, the more searchable it is and the easier you’ll be found.
Facebook for Active Candidates:
Keep everything public, but understand that it’s public. If you are addicted to Facebook games, set up a different user profile with a cartoon avatar and limited personal information for your gaming. Also remember that your posts to other users’ walls or groups are also on your wall (you can remove these comments from your wall (it won’t erase your original post).
Facebook for Passive Job Seekers:
Passive candidates may want to be more selective with privacy controls, and might not want to put resume or portfolio links on their profile. Instead, passive candidates can still be a source of information, still build networks, still join/start groups, and make their ResuBlog into a source of industry and competitive information. You may want to limit postings about your own organization (especially non-public info), but you can post info about other companies to your heart’s content. Again, be careful about comments you post to other’s walls or to groups. Links will also display on your own wall – you can remove from your profile without affecting the original post.
These are just 10 of the best ways I’ve found to use Facebook in job search. There are many others currently, and more uses will likely appear as Facebook continues to mature.
Phil Rosenberg is President of reCareered (http://www.reCareered.blogspot.com), a career coaching service, helping great people discover new career paths and beat the challenges of modern job searches. Phil runs the Career Change Central group (http://www.tinyurl.com/cccpost), recently named one of Linkedin’s top groups that job seekers must join. An active blogger about career change, Phil’s articles are republished by Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, ZDNet, CIO, FastCompany and dozens of job and recruiting sites. Phil can be contacted at phil.reCareered@gmail.com .
For more career coaching, check out these articles:
Prep for a surprise interview with quick-but-deep Internet research
How long should you wait for a business appointment?
The 3 Things to Bring to the Negotiating Table
Career Numbers: How Much Does A Bad Resume Cost You
The internet, being an extremely popular source, makes competition for getting that job highly competitive. Get started with your My Online Career Space and let that prospective employer know you are the primary candidate for them. With your own personalized career space you will rise above the rest of the job seekers on the internet.
If you would like to get up-to-date information, join us on Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook and MySpace.
Online Media Stats
Benefits of Online Degree Programs
Online degree programs have undergone a startling change in quality in the past ten years. Distance learning used to be comprised of courses via television and cassette and have since upgraded to fully-interactive classrooms on the Internet, to the point where online degree programs have risen from an inferior to a superior method of learning. A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education found that online degree programs produced graduates with more success than their campus-based degree counterparts.
Some of the benefits of an online degree program versus a campus-based education:
Online degree programs are available from colleges and universities that offer exclusively distance learning programs, and from universities that have both online degree program options and campus-based degree options. Universities that offer both online degree programs and campus-based degree programs combine the benefits of online learning with their traditional learning expertise to create truly rewarding academic experiences. Learn more about hybrid schools like these and secure your educational future today.
Here are two more articles about online degree programs:
10 Reasons Online Education Will Outdraw Traditional Universities by 2020
Prejudice Against Online Degrees Needs to Shrivel up and Die
For related articles about resume and job search, review these articles:
Make Yourself (and Your Resume) Relevant
Job Specialization – Take a Second Look Before Taking Your First Step in Job Search
The internet, being an extremely popular source, makes competition for getting that job highly competitive. Get started with your My Online Career Space and let that prospective employer know you are the primary candidate for them. With your own personalized career space you will rise above the rest of the job seekers on the internet.
If you would like to get up-to-date information, join us on Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook and MySpace.
