ExitBuddy

Original Post: The Low Down On Informational Interviews Having just moved from Southern Florida to New York City, I am setting up several informational interviews to further understand social media and new marketing techniques. Whether you have a job or are searching, informational interviews are a key to success. Yesterday, I read an informative article in The Examiner written by James Sanford. My learnings were as follows: 1) Do not present a resume or ask for a job in an informational interview. The purpose of your meeting should be to learn a company culture and network in your industry. 2) Arrive to the meeting prepared with thoughtful questions. 3) The informational interview is a relaxed setting to practice your answers to future interview questions (i.e. “tell me about yourself”). You should not feel as if you are in an interview or selling a product; however, this is an excellent opportunity to practice your personal brand story or pitch. 4) Follow...

Original Post: From Alexandra Levit's United Airlines recently released a statement in response to the YouTube video sensation by a disgruntled flyer who had his guitars broken on a recent flight.  However, it was too little, too late, as more than 3 million people had already watched the video.  If you're the owner of a small business or if part of your job is to look after your organization's reputation, you need to know what to do to avoid being in a pickle like United.  Here are five ideas from Larry Weber, the founder of communications firms Weber Shandwick/W2 Group and the author of Sticks and Stones : Listen and respond to online conversations before an issue reaches critical mass and damages your reputation.  The best protection against negative comments and gripes is to build a positive reputation ahead of time.  In the event of a crisis, you or your leader must take responsibility in order to recover corporate reputation. Explain your sol...

Original Post: 100+ Salary Surveys, Databases and Calculators From Around the World in 2009  [Jobmob] Use this list of salary surveys and other resources to prepare yourself for job offer and salary negotiations. How to use this list The list only includes sites that are credible or that explain where their numbers come from. Compare results across multiple sites for best results. Salaries are always changing and many of these sites are based on employee-submitted information. If you know of any other resources that aren’t in the list, please suggest them in the comments below. What’s in this list? Salary surveys - numbers come from reader surveys about their jobs. Salary databases - readers contribute information about their jobs, sometimes in exchange for access to the rest of the database. Salary reports - more general, a salary report can come alone or from a combination of salary surveys, government statistics, company disclosures, etc. Salary or...

Original Post: Five Social Media Rules for Your Job Search Looking for a new job? Be smart online! Your activity on the internet may make or break your chances of getting a job you want. Too often people sabotage their job search by leaving a trail online of careless, controversial, or foolish posts, pictures, or comments. Others use their time online to create an image that screams “Hire me!” Here are five rules to follow to help insure your success: Maximize your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a tremendous tool for your job search, not the least of which is being found. Also, a recruiter or hiring manager may check you out during a hiring process just to see what you have posted. Spend time to create a full, professional profile. Be as meticulous as you are in creating your resume. Be sure there are no spelling errors and make it readable. Whether it’s to find you in a search, or to check you out as you’re being considered for a position, your LinkedIn profile is critical...

If you google your name what do you find? If a potential employer googles your name what do they find? Below I will outline a number of ideas on how to increase your page rank in the Google search results. Before we delve into that topic I think it is important to get a refresher on how important search engines are to internet users. 1. Search Engines are the primary tool used to find links to information on the internet. In a recent survey 40% of all internet traffic goes to Google. 2. In order to get a high placement on Google's search engine you must understand how the Google search algorithm works . 3. Specific and strategic techniques can be used to elevate content to the first page of the search results . All search engines work in a similar way, so we will just focus on the Google search engine. Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com are a few of the main competitors to Google for English speaking internet users. How does Google work? Google crawls every available web page and...

Why Padding Your Resumé Doesn’t Impress Employers Uploaded on August 11, 2006 by lseley Have you ever heard of padding your resumé? It’s a term used when people exaggerate their experience on their resumés. These are the types of people who get involved in school activities just to fill up the white space in their resumés. My opinion is this never works to impress employers. As someone who’s recently assisted my current employer with university recruitment, I had the opportunity to look through about 60 resumés of students on my campus to fill one position. For me, it’s easy to tell which students have really been involved and which students are merely embellishing. The students who were genuinely involved tend to have better experiences and skills listed, and can talk passionately about the work they do in an interview. Who would you rather hire? The student who worked in a team to co-ordinate an event for over 500 st...

Original Post: You Are Not Your Past Uploaded on April 25, 2008 by Kirpernicus The place where the troops camp thistles and thorns grow.– Lao Tzu You are not the choices you’ve made. You are not the child you once were. You are not your failed marriage. You are not the setbacks of yesterday. You are not the bad things that have happened to you. You are not your past. The Past Guides Our Choices – It Doesn’t Make Our Choices For Us Your thoughts or feelings about the past don’t change it. That’s what makes it the past. Your future is not your past. Your future, right now, is a nest of possibilities. It only looks like your past if your present choices continue the inertia of the past. The past guides our choices; we have real constraints, opportunities, and experiences based off of the past. Right now, though, those constrains, opportunities, and experiences are what they are – wishing they would be diff...

Original Post: The Resume is Dead! Again? Did you ever see the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail? There is a scene where a man is trying to give the body of a live man to “the mortician”. The live man keeps insisting “he is not dead yet”. However, those around him say he is so close to dead you should just take his body anyway. This is clearly a parable for the resume. I recently Googled, Is the Resume Dead? I was astounded by the number of people who have pondered this question, blogged about it, written white papers on it and identified the resumes “replacement”. In a few minutes of research I “learned” the traditional resume was going to be replaced by: Video Social Media Blogs Google® Logical Employment Profiles Personal Web Sites LinkedIn® Visual CV® I stopped reading because my head was spinning. Stop the train Let’s start with what a Resume is by definition. It’s a summary of accomplishments. That’s it, plain and simple. No matter how the hiring process changes, s...

Original Post: Is Human Resources Fatally Flawed? Don’t think about it. Just answer me quickly: Is HR fatally flawed? How many of you answered yes? When I first started writing this in April, I said yes too. Yes, this has been on my mind since April, sitting in my draft folder waiting for me to answer the question. And I can tell you, if I waited until I had a perfect answer, you may never have seen a post. In that time frame, I’ve gone back and forth but I finally come to the conclusion that HR isn’t fatally flawed but it does need some work. Is The Tide Turning Against HR? When I wrote this question back in April, I knew my answer but was afraid to post it. So I thought about it over and over again for almost five months. Here’s why I thought HR was through: Most of HR’s value could be outsourced – Heck, it already was in many cases. Everything from talent recruitment and selection to heavy lifting in critical employee relations and benefits matters were being taken c...

Original Post: Do You Know What You’re Looking For? So often, I have people that are looking for a new job, network with me but they can’t tell me what kind of position they are seeking. Sometimes they only know they don’t want to do the same thing as their previous position, or they don’t want to ‘limit’ their options, or they just don’t know what’s available. They tell me they are “open right now”. I can’t help you if you can’t tell me what it is you want! That may sound obvious, but to a great many job seekers it’s the biggest obstacle to getting meaningful leads. Before you send your resume to a job posting, or go to a networking meeting, or pursue specific companies, take the time and put in the effort to figure out what you want to do and what you are looking for. Here are some ways to help you figure that out: ~ Take assessment tests to help you figure out your strengths, and understand your personality better. Google “career assessment test” and you will find a multit...

Original Post: Why LinkedIn Recommendations Really Are Valuable LinkedIn recommendations are like public reference letters, but are they too positive to have any credibility? In a blog post titled “ Requested Recommendations on Social Networks: Why I Won’t Do It “, web strategist Jeremiah Owyang weighs in against recommendations on LinkedIn. Although what he says has a lot of merit, ultimately this is an example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In his article, Jeremiah sums up by saying- I Won’t be Giving LinkedIn Recommendations Although I’ve only given honest recommendations in LinkedIn, I won’t be giving anymore recommendations on that platform (at least for the foreseeable future), instead, I’ll use my blog and Twitter to provide them in a more organic area where there aren’t obvious filters –making the recommendations count even more. The challenge of course is finding them will not be easy. If his blog post was initially aimed at requested recommenda...

Original Post: What Advice Would YOU Give To Job Searching Baby Boomers? Baby Boomers are aging picture: realestate.co.nz When I was downsized last December, I knew exactly where to look. I knew who to talk to, I knew who to solicit advice from and I knew what I wanted to do. And it still took two months and a lot of luck to find a gig. What if my job search was for something that DIDN’T relate to the internet as much as mine does? What if I was an instructor, a teacher for safety products or another profession B2B profession that REQUIRED on-site time, dealt with a group that hadn’t yet mastered technology or who just didn’t care? My dad is going through this. My hard working, never quit and never give up dad has found himself on the wrong of a company downsizing and I’m having trouble figuring out how to aid him in his job search. Does he make YouTube videos of what he can do? Start a blog? Join Twitter? He’s a safety product representative, an industry I know nothing about. S...

Original Post: Your Social Media Power Belt: 5 Powerful Tools You Need For Your Job Search A short list of useful social media tools that will help you manage and organize your job search. This a guest post by Patrick Ambron. The job hunt can be overwhelming and scary, especially during a recession. If you can’t relate to that statement, you’ve either never had a job or you work for your dad. Between browsing for openings, researching companies, preparing for interviews, touching up your resume and networking, it often feels like there is too much to do and nowhere to start. So how do you maintain an edge? With your job search social media power belt. 5 kinds of social media tools for your job search 1) Google Reader   & Google Alerts These Google tools make the job search significantly easier by bringing the important information to you, rather than the other way around. With Google tools you can: Keep up to date with industry trends and news. Find r...

Interview with a Successful Social Media Job Seeker Uploaded on July 24, 2008 by Pasquale D'Silva   Yesterday, I had a great conversation with Danny Cox who is helping to pioneer a new way of Job Seeking. I found Danny on Twitter because of his recent success in getting a great interview. Watch the video below to get some GREAT tips that you can use tonight. Just to summarize the video : Danny has only been using social media for his job search for just 2 months. And his parting words were, “I wish I had started sooner”. If you are holding off on starting this, then it’s time to jump right in. Danny, a senior in college, was able to get a killer job interview in 2 months without spending a penny. I argue that it should be even easier for a returning professional with more experience to bring to the table. Here is Danny’s Twitter strategy: Tweet about potentially interesting topics to target compani...

Original Post: 93 Most Linked To Articles of Top Job Search and Career Blogs These are some of the most popular articles from the top English job search and career blogs in the world. If you think I’ve missed any, please tell me in the comments below. This article took a long time to compile. Enjoy! Job search strategies How Not To Ask For Help In The Job Search from Lindsay Olson A Radical Job Search Strategy – Offering Bounties from The Job Bored Looking For Work? Don’t Be A Desperado from Spin Strategy™ Blog Best of C-Level Executive Job Search Strategies from Executive Resume Branding Can I Start at a New Company If I Don’t Plan To Stay? from JT & Dale Talk Jobs™ What’s Wrong with This Job Search? from The Career Doctor Blog Career Q&A: Making a career transition at 55+ from RiseSmart Blog Identity Theft and Your Online Job Search from Careers Today 10 Ways to Find a Job in a Recession from Grad to Great Recessions, Layoffs & Unemploymen...