"This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."  and it hails from Hamlet.

It’s really a cliché which means that the easiest person to fool is yourself.  Why is this in a career advice column, you might ask? 

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve done about a dozen free 10 point resume reviews.  I look the resume over and provide a candid appraisal. I don’t pull any punches. 

Is it self serving for MyRetailCareer?  Not really, because I always provide suggestions that the job seeker can implement themselves and I always offer them a free phone call to discuss their resume further.  Would I like some business from it?  Sure why not?  To say anything else would fly in the face of today’s title.

Care to speculate on how many people even send a thank you email in response?  None recently.  They are bad resumes from people with bad manners.  It’s readily apparent that they can’t be honest with themselves and as a result can’t take constructive feedback.  Those are really not good traits to have when you’re looking for a job.  Or maybe they aren’t really bad people but they can’t be true to themselves? 

It’s also said around town that when Shakespeare wrote this phrase he was supporting a great thinker named Socrates who believed that if a person was honest to themselves, new pathways would appear.  Sound like something you might have heard a few times.

If someone one tells you your resume is boring and looks like everyone else's,  get over your love affair with yourself and the resume and listen.  I was sent a short video resume yesterday with a note saying, “I’m trying this hoping to get more people to look at my resume.”  I looked at the resume, it was boring and looked just like the last 100 I have seen.  What difference did the video resume make?  None?

It’s not that people aren’t looking at this person’s resume.  The problem is that people are looking past the resume because the writer has given them no reason what so ever to give it more than a cursory glance.  It’s was boring and pedestrian and uninspiring.  Ugh!

And yes the chump, chimp picture has some double meaning and it’s bigger than my usual pictures for a reason as well.  

I find Facebook a little tough to figure out.  It doesn’t have the intuitiveness that I’ve come to expect in this day and age and having a short attention span, I’m not likely to use something that requires a lot of study.

KISS (keep it simple, stupid) is a motto I happen to subscribe to as days get shorter and task lists longer.  I did set up a MyRetailCareer page, linked this blog through Networked blogs and played around with some other features as well.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it all quite correctly and that I’m missing a lot of features and abilities. 

I also read up on how other social media guru’s use Facebook and I recommend you do the same. I do think that Facebook has a place and I will caution you to look at your Facebook page from the eye of a potential employer.  I hope I don’t have to lecture you about inappropriate pictures and everything else we’ve all heard about.

A little over a year ago Phil at reCareered wrote a pretty good primer for what your Facebook profile should look like as a career centric individual.  Some things are dated,  but hey, in these times, things get dated before they get posted.

Newspapers are reporting an absurdly high unemployment rate. Then in an effort to sell more papers, less they go the way of the dinosaurs and add their staff to the line, they sensationalize this fact and tell you “Hey, its even worse than you think.” See the NY Times article “Out of Work and Too Down to Search On.”

I woke up today feeling great. I like to draw lines in the sand and then jump over them and holidays always give me that opportunity. Especially when one is linked to the change in the weather. It’s a new season baby, get out and enjoy.  Dig out the sweaters, dust off the resume.  Call people you haven’t spoken with all summer.  Think orange today.

Out with the old, in with the new.  This is a great time to refocus your career, employed or not.  Today, slow down and think.  Where am I and where do I want to be?  Now, think about the places you’ll pass between here and there, choose a close by one and figure out how to get there.  We’re not aiming for the final destination, just a place to get us one step closer. 

And stop listening to the naysayers.  Let them all proclaim their end of the world crap somewhere else.  I think we should send them to a distant location, maybe Long Island.   

One camp’s thought is don’t indicate you aren’t working.  Their reasons run from the fallacy that recruiters look harder and think better of the “passive” candidate (employed and not really actively looking) to the concept that if you are unemployed there’s a reason and it’s not good.

The other camp says to shout out that you are unemployed,eager to get back to work, willing to jump through hoops and can start yesterday, in fact, you’re at the door, blackberry in hand.

Let me say up front, my opinions are my own and I base them on having been an executive recruiter placing 100’s of people into great new jobs, but they are still opinions as are others thoughts as well.

As a recruiter, if you send me a resume that says you’re still working and you’re not, we start off badly.  When you try to trick me, I don’t trust you from the start.  That’s a pretty crappy way to begin a relationship that is all about trust.

If I just get your name somehow and I go to your profile on LinkedIn to “check you out” and it says you’re still employed and I find out you’re not employed when I call you at work, I’m not going to take it personal since now it appears you’re trying to deceive everyone.  I’ll be tempted to think maybe it’s because you’re sloppy or lazy and haven’t bothered to update your profile, incompetent because you don’t know how or ashamed because you’re unemployed (or just trying to trick everyone).  None of these traits endear you to me either.

People are going to find out you’re not working.  Do you honestly think that employers won’t like you to begin with because you’re unemployed but after they meet you and realize you’re either deceptive, inept, sloppy or lazy (or all the above), they’ll like you better?  Good luck in your search.

The other extreme, desperation, is just as bad.  You shouldn’t  shout, scream, buy a billboard, perform in the street mostly naked or anything else to draw attention to yourself.  That kind of attention, although great to blog about, isn’t the best possible personal branding image unless you want to work at a theme park or sue some candy maker.

So what do you do?  Change your mental perspective.  Most people today are out of a job through no fault of their own.  Good recruiters and good companies know that.  Be honest; your resume and LinkedIn profile should show correct dates of employment. 

Keep in mind that simple is better so if you send a resume and enclose a cover letter, just say, “ABC Company restructured, reducing it’s labor force 15%” or “ZED Company exited it’s Ukrainian expansion plans.”

Then there is that little area in LinkedIn under your name where you can update your status.  It always starts with your name so write your update accordingly.  Some people ignore that area, some scream “Susie needs a job yesterday.”  I just updated mine to say, “Brad is writing the last blog of the summer.”  If I was a job seeker, I’d be honest (gasp) and write, “Brad is presently seeking a [insert something here like] creative position with a Web 2.0 company focusing on personal branding.”  Sorry it’s Friday and I’m not very creative today.

Have a safe and wonderful Labor day and see you after summer.

I stressed that LinkedIn gives you a chance to humanize yourself.  You can have a picture.  You can add your interests.  You can build your brand because you can include more than you would on on a resume.  You can have a link to your resume.

So why do so many people just cut and paste from their resume to create a LinkedIn profile?  I think there are a lot of reasons, unawareness and unfamiliarity come to mind as does laziness. Hey, it’s easy to cut an paste.

Think of it this way.  Any good recruiter is going to look for your profile on LinkedIn.  When someone that I don’t know sends me an email, where is the first place I go to find out about them?  It just makes complete common sense to have a decent profile and maximize it to the hilt.

Your profile doesn’t and shouldn’t be a rehash of your resume.  Yes, it needs the positions you’ve been in, the companies you’ve worked for and what you accomplished but this is a chance to give yourself some body.  You can become a person, not a 2 page sheet of paper.

If you’re a job seeker, or anyone else for that matter, Dan Schawbel is someone you should follow.  No, Dan doesn't have the silver bullet (or arrow) on getting a job but he is one of the foremost experts on Personal Branding. 

You all know I spend a lot of my effort when working with job seekers on how to pull all the tools together and execute a seriously awesome job search.  You also all know that while I still believe it starts with the resume (no one has proven me different yet), a killer resume does you no good if no one sees or reads it. It’s the old tree in the forest thing.

I always talk about how you need to make yourself visible and differentiate yourself from everyone else and what, pray tell, do you think branding is all about? Yes, networking too.

This article is almost a year old yet is resonates as loudly, maybe even more today as it did back in November.

Success Story: Build Your Dream One LinkedIn Contact at a Time. 

Follow the links and learn about how to use Facebook and Twitter while you’re there reading and if you are really serious, buy his book, “Me 2.0.”  It’s to your right under Books I Recommend.

Here’s a more current link to another great article, this guy is simply a must read. 

Position Yourself for the Career You Want Not the Job You Have.

Your resume is the most business like of all tools.  There is little room for demonstrating more than your professional experience, background and accomplishments and in fact, disclosing personal information is usually looked upon unfavorably.

While every effort needs to be made to keep all your social media professional such as leaving off the naked tequila shots from college, you are afforded some ability to better round out your persona and transform yourself from a couple of pages of black and white.

LinkedIn is really your next step.  While I advocate keeping the resume 100% straight arrow in content, I look to LinkedIn as 85% or 90%.  I think you need to round yourself out.  Number one, put up a good picture but don’t put up the cheap grey, or worse, brown background.  Never put a picture on a resume.  Already you look better!

Write a compelling summary.  Humanize yourself but don’t lose your professionalism.  Another no-no, don’t just cut and paste from your resume. While LinkedIn can reinforce what you have stated in your resume, here you have an opportunity to add layers of color and interest.

Take advantage of the specialties area.  Anyone ever hear of key word search?

Take a look at some of the LinkedIn applications and make use of them.  If you travel, TripIt is a good thing.  Say your going to be in Kalamazoo next week.  Wouldn’t it be great to meet a 1st Level LinkedIn acquaintance? 

To be continued….(always wanted to write that.)

LinkedIn was formed May 5th, 2003 and as of June 17th, 2009 has over 45 million members in over 200 countries on all 7 continents.  Probably a good place to start if you want to be found.  Just in case anyone is wondering about Antarctica, I found 129 members in the French Southern Territories which is a dependency of Antarctica.  Enough geography for today.

There are a lot of books, articles and blogs available to tell you how to use LinkedIn, I’m going to hit a few highlights that I think are particularly important to a job seeker and then close with a controversial one.

Just put your name in, not a bunch of other stuff and certainly not your email.  If someone wants to search for you, don’t make it difficult.  If someone wants to download your info, don’t make it so they have to edit it to put it into Outlook or a mailing list.  If you are Joe Smith, sorry, but if you go by Joe Smith, please don’t use Joseph Randolph Smith, Jr., SHRM jrs_jr@yahoo.com as your name.

You have 3 lines below your name.  Make the most of them.  Mine says exactly what I am and includes my email letting people know I am open to invitations.  Don’t include your email address and then when you get invitations click on the “Don’t Know” button ever.  Someone did it to me once and I got even several times over.

Geographic location.  Hey, if you are in Arkansas, willing to relocate yourself to NYC, I don’t have a problem with it saying Greater New York City. 

I think this is self explanatory for the most part.  Get meaningful recommendations, not too many, not too few.  Build a solid network of connections, I have 951 and recently de-connected about 50 people.  Choose the correct industry.  I use retail but I could use staffing & recruiting, apparel & fashion or human resources.

Websites.  Remember to edit them instead of using the default names.  I have a link to this blog, my business website and my resume.  I know you can now add applications and I use box.net a lot but I don’t like that it shows up right in the middle of your profile. 

Tomorrow we’ll tackle content.

We’ve built a resume, a creative summary and a website.  We have explored our medium and our message.  We have begun to brand by using consistent visual reminders, the colors, the stripes and the logos as well as tie those to our message of Design, Develop and Deliver.  None of that does us any good unless people see it.  Oh yea, forgot about that…..

This really brings us to our second goal.

2.      Present this collateral in an effective and unique way to get the recipient to sit up and take notice.

What tools are available to us?  First and foremost, LinkedIn.   Nothing I know of lets you get yourself in front of more executives and recruiters than LinkedIn does.  Facebook, Twitter, US Postal Service (surprised?), networking groups, conferences, other social sites, YouTube, Flickr and a host of other places.

Tomorrow we start with LinkedIn.

PS.

If you click on the framing picture and go to the original on Flickr you will see a neat feature.  The picture has notes so when you scroll over it you can see that it will have a fireplace and flat screen TV when completed.

Now we get to the website.  For this project we’ve been following, we used GoDaddy to register the domain name audreylowedesign.com and host the site.  There are numerous places you can go to to register a domain and host your site, feel free to look around.  I just happen to be used to using GoDaddy and find that for most beginners it’s pretty easy to learn and the support has always been good.

Why would you want a website? Why not?  For about $10 for the domain and less than $5 a month, you suddenly have a presence.  As they say, “you have a chip in the game.”  Plus, you learn something new and it demonstrates you understand technology.

As I had written earlier, my client used an existing Go Daddy template, one that I liked so much I used the design elements in both the resume and the creative summary.  My only caveat is that you give some thought to how you intend to brand yourself prior to jumping in with both feet.   A circus theme might be your favorite thing in the world but do you really want to associate yourself with clowns.

Explore Audrey’s website.  Watch the PowerPoint presentation, download a resume or her creative summary.  Most importantly, if you know someone that might benefit from visiting the site, pay it forward and send them a link.  Start networking and helping others and you’ll get back much more than you ever anticipated.