Exciting stuff and I hope you enjoy these additional selected articles for your Sunday Brunch Reads (along with Your Sunday Brunch Silicon Valley Catchphrase of the Week) . Eat well and have a great Sunday.
Your Sunday Brunch Silicon Valley Catchphrase of the Week: Solutions That Scale / We’re All About Scalable Solutions.
Writing to summarize results and convey information
Writing to communicate ideas or explain informaton clearly
Incorporating information to develop strategic insights
57 Resources to Land that First Marketing Job
There's Hope, If You're Willing to Put in the Work. These various resources are categorized to aid recent college graduates who majored in marketing and communications (or current students majoring in these fields) during their full-time job search (or an internship search for current students).
These resources (along with resources from previous posts in this series) can give recent graduates ideas, strategies, and tactics providing a competitive advantage not only in the job search but also in developing several of the requisite skills and knowledge employers say recent graduates lack.
The categories are listed below with a make-shift table of contents:
Resource 1: Your Online Portfolio, Evan Kirsch and FolioMatch.com
Resources 2 – 9: Resources / Ideas from Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, and David Meerman Scott
Resources 10 – 18: Career Success Ideas from Dan Schawbel for Young People and Millenials
Resources 19 – 20: Job Search 101
Resources 21 – 28: Interviewing 101 (and Beyond)
Resources 29 – 30: Using Twitter's Real-Time Capabilities to Power Your Job Search
Resources 31 – 46: 21st Century Marketing and Communications: Walk-the-Walk and Talk-the-Talk
Resources 47 – 49: LinkedIn
Resources 50 – 51: Preparing Your Resume
Resources 52 – 57: Inspiration on Demand
Resources 2 – 57 are in no particular ranking or order. I included numbers to track the number of items and subsequently group them with some logic.
Addressing Unmet Needs. FolioMatch.com fulfills HUGE unmet needs for young people who may have recently graduated, will graduate in Spring 2014, or are current college students seeking internship opportunities while in school:
Providing a living/breathing, on-demand online portfolio capturing all relevant projects, class assigments, internship deliverables / work products, accomplishments, awards, etc. throughout a college student's four-year college career
Making it easy to manage and deploy this online portfolio in a one-screen world
Devoting a career-focused, portfolio-centric, social network for a narrow audience (college students AND ambitious high school students)
From the Video."We started FolioMatch to be a one-stop resource for a student to keep track of all the projects they've completed over the years. Since then we have started sponsoring educational challenges so that we could help boost the content of students' portfolios."
Required Full Disclosure / Am I Receiving Any Money / Am I Receiving Any Equity / Am I an Advisory Board Member and other Boilerplate B.S. I Have to Write For Speaking So Highly of Evan and FolioMatch.com. I receive zero, nada, nothing, and any other cliche, etc. in financial compensation for talking up Evan and FolioMatch.com.
If you're a parent who's worried your son/daughter who graduates from college in Spring 2014 may face difficulty in this brutal job market (because the odds are he/she will), go to the FolioMatch.com site and register.
2.Tom Peters / Fast Company: The Brand Called YOU: This August 1997 article is the original classic highlighting the rising importance of personal branding. Mr. Peters was ahead of his time in publishing and describing these timeless career management principles.
Bonus.David Meerman Scott — Inbound Job Search: David published this video on December 2nd. He shares five (5) inspiring stories about people publishing creative and remarkable content to win dream jobs. One of the stories is how his daughter, Allison Meerman Scott, leveraged her personal blog to differentiate herself from thousands of outstanding Columbia University undergraduate applicants to win admission!
I do. And, even though he's 20 years younger, I believe his teachings apply to any age group or professional experience level. He's the epitome of entrepreneurial hustle
These Mashable articles do a great job in describing the basics AND the things to do to stand out. The common theme here is "put in the work." No magical formulas. Just get to work.
The common theme throughout these articles: Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. Do this and you'll eliminate 50% – 60% of your competition before walking in the room.
When it comes to real-time news and responsiveness, there's Twitter and then there's everybody else. Leverage its real-time capabilities to your advantage. Finding out about that open, entry-level position before other candidates is a competitive advantage.
You don't have to memorize vocabulary lists by rote. But, you have to credibly demonstrate your awareness of how marketing, communications, and public relations are constantly changing.
51. LinkedIn Labs Resume Builder: This handy app transforms your LinkedIn Profile into a PDF resume. Therefore, fill out your LinkedIn profile with as much detail as you can.
Inspiration On Demand
52. to 55. LinkedIn Influencers — My First Job Job Series: If you're getting down on yourself during the process, GO HERE IMMEDIATELY. Everyone had to start out somewhere. That includes some of the world's most influential movers & shakers in every industry.
My First Job. I started out as an unpaid, summer laboratory tech intern / dishwasher at The Washington University School of Medicine. Luckily for me, the department's head researcher paid me that fall because my boss said I was a good guy.
56. Jonathan Fields — The Good Life Project: Jonathan is an A-List entrepreneur and a person driven to help others succeed personally and professionally via entrepreneurship. His video interviews are inspiring.
57. Video: Best Day of My Life (Dog Version) by American Authors: Trust me, this video will make you feel soooooo good after watching it no matter how bad you feel. And, it's probably why American Authors are my new favorite band and why this song is now my all-time favorite.
Closing Thoughts
This is post five (and the final one) in a series to help new college graduates and current students land full-time jobs or internships.
If you're a college graduate looking for work, a concerned parent, a worried relative, or a current college student, please let me know in the comments if the content here helped (or if it didn't).
What should be kept on this list? What should be taken off? What resources did I miss? What should be added?
Please help me in continuously improving this page as a helpful resource to others.
It’s hard to believe I graduated from Washington University twenty-plus years ago.Since that time, I’ve made many important professional relationships.“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is more than a clever cliché.Relationships and access to key individuals is vitally important to succeeding in any organization, conducting a job search, executing a strategic plan, or selling a solution.
I started using LinkedIn more than a year ago to build, centralize, and maintain my professional relationships.LinkedIn is a social networking site targeted to business professionals.According to its website, LinkedIn counts 43 million+ members in over 200 countries.In many ways, it’s the business audience version of Facebook.Similar to growing and keeping in touch with Facebook “friends,” your primary purpose is to grow and maintain your LinkedIn “connections.”
Participation in LinkedIn is Important for Personal Branding and Online Visibility When I started documenting ideas for The Social Media Reinvention Blog, I naturally thought of writing a LinkedIn-related article, and its importance in personal branding.Here are some helpful online resources describing the importance of participating in LinkedIn:
Your individual, LinkedIn Profile is a personal branding opportunity that promotes your skills, capabilities, and connections to:
·Your current employer
·A prospective employer
·A prospective connection
Even more importantly, LinkedIn public profiles rank very high in Google Searches which significantly increases your online visibility.My public LinkedIn profile consistently ranks as my highest Google Search Engine Result when searching for “Tony Faustino.”
The Popular Profiles Section Measures Your Personal Branding Efforts Within LinkedIn Many LinkedIn features are highly useful in personal branding.For this post, I will focus on the “Popular Profiles” feature found in the LinkedIn Company Profile Page of a respective company.
In a LinkedIn Company Profile Page, the top five Popular Profiles are displayed for that respective organization.According to LinkedIn’s Frequently Asked Questions: Origin of Data for Company Profiles, a Popular Profile is defined as: “These are LinkedIn users who have the most Profile views for the Company Profile page you are viewing.”
Therefore, the Popular Profiles Section measures your LinkedIn Profile’s “findability” or “searchability” to other LinkedIn members.This is extremely important so I monitor my profile’s popularity on a weekly basis.This monitoring activity helps me gauge how well I’ve optimized my profile with important keywords and the effectiveness of my comments in various LinkedIn Discussion Group forums.
Note: I checked with LinkedIn Customer Service if the Popular Profile algorithm also factors in the number of views of one’s public profile – it does not (e.g., LinkedIn profiles views resulting from Google Searches).
I’ve Maintained a Popular Profile on my Firm’s LinkedIn Company Page for 22 Consecutive Weeks Maintaining a Popular Profile on LinkedIn takes significant time and commitment.When I discovered the Popular Profiles feature, I made it a personal goal to get my profile listed in this section.Here are the four tactics I employ to continue achieving this result:
·Optimize Your Profile for Important Keywords (Particularly The Specialties Section)
·Thoroughly Describe Your Work Experience
·Frequently Update Your Status with Useful Content
·Actively Comment in LinkedIn Discussion Group Forums
In LinkedIn Lessons Part 2, I will describe in further detail how I specifically employ these four tactics.
Note: This blog post is Part 2 of a two-part series on LinkedIn Lessons.The first blog post is titled, LinkedIn Lessons Part 1: Monitoring Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn with the Popular Profile Section.
For 22 consecutive weeks, I’ve maintained a LinkedIn Profile that’s listed on the Popular Profiles Section of my firm’s Company Profile Page.
Here are the four tactics I employ to continue achieving this result:
·Optimize Your Profile with Important Keywords
·Thoroughly Describe Your Work Experience
·Frequently Update Your Status With Useful Content
·Actively Comment in LinkedIn Discussion Group Forums
Optimize Your Profile with Important Keywords It’s important to include keywords in your profile so a prospective employer, recruiter, or connection can easily find you.In particular, the Specialties Section provides an outstanding opportunity to highlight your skills and capabilities.Make sure this section fully lists and describes the knowledge you’ve acquired throughout your entire professional career.Too often, people make the mistake of not fully elaborating on the many skills they’ve implemented in different jobs.In the leaner world of Corporate America, you’ve probably developed additional skills that weren’t part of the original job description by frequently multi-tasking.Make sure you describe those skills in the Specialties Section!
A leading indicator of your profile optimization is the “Who’s Viewed My Profile” Section.This section is located on the right side bar of your LinkedIn Home Page.“Who’s Viewed My Profile” measures how many people recently viewed your profile, and the number of times it appeared in search results.
Thoroughly Describe Your Work Experience LinkedIn allows you to host and exhibit your entire resume online.Take full advantage of this opportunity!I recommend copying and pasting every bullet point from your resume into the LinkedIn template.A full explanation of your work experience ensures your profile contains several keywords.In addition, LinkedIn provides the option to make your public profile available with a customized URL that includes your name.A customized URL with your name provides another search engine opportunity for Google or Bing to identify and display “your name” in search results.Remember, LinkedIn Profiles rank very high in the Google Search algorithm so take advantage of the customized URL option.Doing so will maximize your online visibility to prospective connections or employers.
Frequently Update Your Status with Useful Content I view the Status Section as channel for sharing content that other connections will find personally or professionally beneficial.This philosophy is similar to my strategy for crafting a tweet on Twitter.Whenever possible, I link an article or online reference to my status update.Using a URL shortening service like bit.ly makes it easier to accomplish this task because you’re limited by character spaces.
Here’s an example of a LinkedIn status update that connections favorably commented on: “A permanent job is a temporary one disguised with benefits.” Reinvent Your Job-Forbes http://bit.ly/EuuO8; One connection even tweeted this article to his Twitter followers and referenced me.
I wrote this updated linked to a New York Times article on the recent Yahoo-Microsoft deal: Why Carol Bartz Sold Yahoo Search: Matching Google & Microsoft's investment level is unsustainable strategy; NYTimes http://bit.ly/g5G8D.
Here’s the status update I provided this Friday morning: Is Universal Care & Cost Containment Viable? France's universal healthcare experiencing challenges|WSJ http://bit.ly/1U412E
Actively Comment in LinkedIn Discussion Group Forums Joining and actively commenting in LinkedIn Discussion Groups allows you to demonstrate your knowledge in particular topics or industries.It’s important to write thoughtful and helpful comments because this is how other LinkedIn members will primarily interact with you. Essentially, these discussion forums are the online equivalent of a 24/7 networking event.After all, it’s called social networking for a reason!
Starting or posting a Discussion Topic is one of my favorite ways to establish a presence on LinkedIn.In my own experience, trial and error determines what types of posts other members will favorably respond to and provide comments.When a particular post strikes a favorable chord, the results are absolutely rewarding.Four months ago, I posted a provocative article in my graduate business school’s LinkedIn group.The article, RIP MBA: The Economic Crisis has Exposed the Myth of Business-School Expertise, and the ensuing discussion generated 33 comments.I acted as the discussion moderator and let commenting activity take a life of its own.More importantly, it gave me a credible entrée in connecting with other business school alumni that I otherwise would never personally meet.And ultimately, isn’t that what we all would like to achieve through LinkedIn …