Companies may be hiring more now in some sectors as the economy continues to recover but they are still running lean. People inside of organizations, happy to be employed, are working hard...very hard indeed just to keep their situation.

I delivered a webinar today to UCLA entitled Digital You. It was about using three key online tools that combined together would give any executive or professional an edge in the competition to be seen and heard. 

Someone reminded me that five years ago I was passionate about being on Linkedin.com and now I was telling people to move on to other sites and tools. They asked, "Why was that?" I explained using the analogy of the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass telling Alice as they were running that in order to get anywhere they had to run twice as fast.  

Technology is like that.  What's new today will be used by everybody in 4 years or less. Everybody (reaching for 200M) is on Linkedin.com now and that's a good thing for networking but not for personal branding. Linkedin is a template-based site as is VisualCV and they have you fill in their blanks. You end up looking just like everybody else. I described it as an online MBA resume book. Good people look at it but you can get lost in the shuffle. You are running, so to speak, to stay in the same place.

Using new tools like personal profiles (flavors.me, about.me/pattiwilson ), personal presentations (sliderocket.com) and personal pages using website builders gets you moving twice as fast as others vying with you for visibility, eye-balls, and market share online.  I personally use Weebly but there are others that are great too ( here is Wikipedia's list of top website builders).  

Is this more work? Sure. Do you want your career to continue until you retire? Then run twice as fast to get somewhere and keep doing it. The good of all this is that once it is in place the only maintenance you do is blogging or updating when you change positions, write articles, are interviewed by Wall Street Journal or other notable events worth capturing ongoing. 

There is a downside. One person asked at the end if this required that you have a very clear, defined, well-positioned brand, value proposition and career target. Yes, it does and that's is the most difficult part actually. Once you have clearly defined yourself the content, images, and look all falls into place.  My mentor, Richard Bolles author of What Color is Your Parachute said, in describing this process, "this is the hard part. This is where you have to think, people"... and run faster.

Despite four years since the global crash and 9+ since Linkedin was born, many executives and professionals haven't grasped the full impact of a reset economy and the Internet on a job hunt.

Here are some the most common ill conceived notions that I hear:

1. Being on Linkedin will bring job opportunities to you.
There is a common belief that if you build your profile, then the recruiters will flock to you. Well, most likely, your Linkedin profile will give you a boost on Google ranking in a name search.

Solution: The big value of Linkedin is the access you get to networking in 50 groups and 50 subgroups. Rather than waiting to be found, build your Linkedin connections into thousands for ongoing leverage. 

2. I customize my resume for every position and opening.
Good luck with this one because they will all have to synch your one Linkedin profile. For that matter, all your profiles on Viadeo, Xing, Linkedin, Orkut, etc should all deliver the same message about you.

Solution: Focus your search target on one or two overlapping business domains. Gear all your branding and positioning of yourself around those sectors.

3. The search firms don't get back to me or they have nothing for me.
Search firms more than ever are working to find the perfect fit for their client companies. Given that their business is down by more than half since the crash, the demand of top talent continues to exceed supply. Unless you exactly fit their requirements, you will find no opportunities forthcoming from them.

Solution: Using search consultants and headhunters as a source of information about market trends and companies hiring would provide more fruitful results.

4. My continued outreach to my network is wearing out my welcome with them.
Don't use up your direct network by continuous asking for introductions to job openings. When those turn up empty, or as dead ends... and they mostly do... then your network is exhausted.

Solution: Double or triple your network by using your existing connections for introductions into their network. This grows a relevant source of contacts in your field without much effort.

5. My employer will suspect that I am looking if I am highly visible on the Internet.
I am still surprised by how much that concerns people when millions are on social networks now. Just do an advanced people search on Linkedin by your company and competitors. You will find more than you expect.

Solution: Get on the Internet with gusto because you only have to do it once. Put up profiles. Build a website and blog. Become visibly well branded and be done with it. Once you are on it, that becomes old news. 

6. Since I am not willing to relocate, I am looking only at local employers.
The market place for talent is now global and your competition can come from anywhere thanks in part to the Internet and to the willingness of professionals outside the USA to seek opportunities anywhere.

Solution: Search globally and work locally. You cannot determine who or where your next employer will be. You can negotiate the details like location when they make an offer.

7. I don't need to be visible online as my job is secure and I am happy in my current situation.
Nowadays all marketing is online. Look at every Superbowl ad for its references to product websites. Professional advancement, and career promotion are done equally outside your organization as within.

Solution: The professional status you build for yourself outside your company reflects positively on you and your organization. Making a name for yourself is most easily done online.

These trends may seem not new to many in the career coaching field or in Silicon Valley but  this article does an excellent job of covering and updating the take on these dynamics in global work:

5 Trends Driving the Future of Work
by Chris Jablonski

Summary: From legions of independent consultants to cities dotted with coworking facilities, the future of work is virtual, online and global.

Trend 1: Independent consulting to see hockey-stick growth curve
Trend 2: Order books, movies and now … workers online
Trend 3: Coworking moves beyond early adopter stage
Trend 4: Adaptive lifelong learning the norm
Trend 5: Jobs of the future will either retrofit and blend existing jobs, or solve entirely new problems.
Read more at ZDnet.com,

Yes, we know that the jobs of the future will be different, even with the same title, from what they do now. Who would have thought that a car mechanic would need some computer skills to diagnose and repair the inner mechanics of an automobile 50 years ago? But they do now. Certainly, marketing exists more and more online than off.

Challenge: predict where your job/field/function is going and how going are going to mutate into those changes yourself. One solution includes applying #4 and being continuously learning new skills before you need them.

Coworking suits the Contract Nation USA just fine as more and more of the labor force is on a just-in-time basis. Banding together for company, economy of scale, and collaboration yet remaining independent entities is one very useful technique to survive working as Me Inc.

Challenge: finding the right co-habitation work space with people who create synergies of opportunities and networks with yours. This is more critical than finding your soul mate.

But the article does well in painting in tangible living color brushstrokes just how fast we are moving to that Me Inc. world with the visceral image of the hockey stick. Fan that I am, it also brings to mind the brutality of that game as an apt analogy to the sometimes cutthroat competition for projects and gigs.

Challenge: to differentiate yourself and keep from becoming a commodity price-driven member of a herd of contractors chasing business. This is another place where #4 learning new skills and acquiring new knowledge would help.

We know everything will be online as it seems like most of it is now. Of course recruiters live on Linkedin and deploy Google searches to find talent. Resumes are rapidly becoming obsolete in favor of more copious dossier on you in the interweb. Workers online using the various sites such as guru.com, elance, etc is now the norm.

Challenge: to by-pass the 3rd party brokers that add on 20-30% to your hourly rate and market yourself directly to potential employers making copious use of online branding and marketing. Using a website, blog, social profiles (lots of them), etc, build visibility to promote Me Inc.

Good trend spotting means good responses on all our parts. If we see it coming we can do something about it. Moreover, these trends are global. We compete, work with, network and collaborate across borders, timezones and countries. Opportunities can be anywhere and so can you.

Email me if you want to find out how I can help you be a guru consultant and look like a thought leader online. I have done it for others and can show you how too. patti@careercompany.com

As the saying goes you either have lunch or be lunch. When Kodak filed for bankruptcy restructuring, I wept over my vintage Brownie and played the Kodachrome lyrics by Paul Simon:

Kodachrome 
You give us those nice bright colors 
You give us the greens of summers 
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah! 
I got a Nikon camera 
I love to take a photograph 
So Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

What can executives and professionals take-away about from this? Why does a company have talented teams who create bleeding edge products see failure because executive management fails to capitalize on it?

"Through the 1990s, Kodak splurged $4 billion on developing the photo technology inside most of today's cellphones and digital devices. But a reluctance to ease its heavy reliance on film allowed rivals like Canon Inc. and Sony Corp. to rush largely unhindered into the fast-emerging digital arena. The immensely lucrative analog business Kodak worried about undermining too soon was virtually erased in a decade by the filmless photography it invented." This is from an article by Ben Dobbin for Associated Press. 

The article went on to quote:
"If you're not willing to cannibalize yourself, others will do it for you," said Mark Zupan, dean of the University of Rochester's business school. "Technology is changing ever more rapidly, the world's becoming more globalized, so to stay at the top of your game is getting increasingly harder." Read more here

Like Kodak, Xerox PARC (now just PARC) invented but never capitalized on the Graphical User Interface that made the personal computer a tool for the masses but Apple did with the Macintosh. Sony and Canon capitalized on Kodak's digital camera breakthroughs. Other sector leaders have met with the same fate such as RIM and AOL.  These companies were all market makers yet lost out to the competition by a failure to adapt, transform and innovate. 

Certain people have management styles that tend to be risk averse and impede the growth and expansion of the company with a "let's not get ahead of ourselves" attitude. They need too much proof and they take too long to make the right decision in the face of market movements. They lack a capacity to see beyond their self-imposed company rulebook, and, worst of all, they fearfully protect their next quarter profits by keeping dated products alive too long.

When a sector is moving, like the global economy, at the speed of light agility and flexibility are essential skills.

Keeping up is not sufficient when getting ahead is in order.

The same holds true for individuals. We must continually evolve and respond to organizational, market and economic changes. Knowing when to get out and move on is insufficient if you don't do it. 

Executives that do not embrace the trends of today will have the marketplace pass them by because of risk averse and dated views regarding their own career advancement.

Why are professionals so easily convinced that if they add on one more certification or degree they will somehow be more employable or desirable? My field is among the biggest offenders and first initiators of this practice that includes the breadth of services consulting: management, projects, counseling, coaching, IT, financial, etc. 

I don't mean certifications in technical, scientific tools and methodologies. I am speaking to certifications that fluff up one's perceived expertise, importance and value to the marketplace.
Just to name a few in my field as it's so easy to find them, but I am sure you can find them in yours as well:  

Master Career Counselor (MCC), Professional Certified Coach (PCC),  National Certified Career Counselor (NCCC), Master Personal Branding Strategist, Board Certified Coach (BCC), Career Management Fellow Practitioner (CMF), Career Development Facilitator Instructor (CDFI), Distance Credentialed Counselor (DCC), Master Resume Writer (MRW), Credentialed Career Master (CCM), Certified Employment Interview Professional (CEIP), Certified Job & Career Transition Coach (JCTC)

Let's take my favorite the Distance Credentialed Counselor. Since I work with clients all over the planet, I use a phone, SKYPE, a web-cam, web meeting sites, and file sharing tools. Does that require a certification? Really? Or do you just need a good IT person to set you up and provide tech support? 

Here is how the certificate is described:
A Distance Credentialed Counselor (DCC) will be nationally recognized as a professional with training in best practices in Distance Counseling. Distance Counseling is a counseling approach that takes the best  practices of traditional counseling as well as some of its own unique advantages and adapts them for delivery to clients via electronic means in order to maximize the use of technology-assisted counseling  techniques. The technology-assisted methods may include telecounseling (telephone), secure email communication, chat, videoconferencing or computerized stand-alone software programs.

Those unique advantages are further described as flexibility, convenience and asynchronous communications. Okay, but do you really need a certificate?

The phenomena is epidemic in professional services today because enterprising people in an industry discovered that the best way to make money is to sell certifications, products and tools to other professionals. Investment bankers are masters at this technique to expand their wealth. It is called leverage. 

From the professional's perspective, this is a way to get immediate credibility whereas a university extension program, let alone a college degree, would take longer, and be much more arduous and rigorous.  

Industry trade associations and Universities extension program certifications have blossomed into a hundred million dollar cash flow based on revenues from tuition and their profits help underwrite programs within the organization and the university.  At least, we can know that there is an academic, knowledge-based foundation to these programs with the organization or university's brand at stake.

However, all this has been been eclipsed by enterprising professionals who leverage a certificate out of their business and books...often not even that much.  For example, a business colleague extended his consulting practice on product management to tools, online training, books and now a certification. The degrees are non-regulated, with no legal compliance, and rest solely on the fame, expertise and brand of the provider. 

Am I flying a red flag here? Indeed, I caution any professional before spending 10's of thousands of dollars on unwarranted certifications to talk to potential hiring entities or customers in your target marketplace and see it they value your being certified.

If they would rely more on your Linkedin.com recommendations, tangible examples of the results you produced for others, and a solid, customized proposal with deliverables for the value solutions you provide to them, then forget the certification.

Competing for a piece of one pie leads all of us to try and get an advantage, but branding differentiation is not best done solely by degrees (or certificates)...no pun intended. 

_You are busy being pulled in all directions from pillar to post. The only quiet time you get is on trans Atlantic flights. And, I ask you to write a blog to help build and promote your thought leadership online? You tell me you have no time; that you will get around to it. You never do.

How can you find the time to write when you don't have time to update your resume, add connections to your Linkedin profile or have dinner with your family?  How could you ever keep up with daily or even weekly posts?

You use excuses that your company would has privacy requirements; that the PR department would want to approve all postings. Of course there are the issues of non-disclosure and protection of intellectual property that your company likes you to follow.

Not to mention the issue of coming up with something to write about.  A total brain freeze arises when you try to think of a topic. What really is the point of starting a blog that ends up an embarrassment, when not updated, left floundering in the Socialweb?  Finally, you wonder, exactly what is the point really when nobody will read it anyhow?

Most professionals mistakenly believe that have to actually write something if they post blogs. They also mistakenly believe that all they have to write about their company's products and services. In addition they think that somebody has to actually read their blog posts.

The point of blogging is to establish in advance an ongoing base of credibility and demonstrated expertise. Thus, when you need it, you will have it. For example, if you are down to being one of the final two candidates for a job, your blog may and its content may just be the tipping point for you.

There is a foolproof way to write a highly successful blog that is no hassle, no time, and non-interfering with your daily life. Taking 8 minutes to do this will help to brand, position, and market you. The secret is to not write much as that takes time. It's that simple.

Here are the steps in 8 minutes or less:

1. Do a Google search on a topic, find an article on a publication's website or other kind of news, statistics, data, etc. (it is very helpful if you lay out a homepage on your browser using iGoogle or My Yahoo with RSS links to 10 major business news sites, publications and journals. Then you have it all on one place to look for something interesting.)
   
2. Copy the title and beginning part of the article, press release, news announcement to your blog posting.
3. Put a link back to the full article at the end of the excerpt to enable reading the rest it on the site and providing attribution at the same time.
   
4. Write an acerbic, witty, insightful, pithy comment, or critique of the article in less than 75 words (this does not mean you have to read the whole article, just skim it) 
5. Last tip: you don't have to date your blogs. That way, if you post once a month or more infrequently, it won't look dated.
6. That's it. Wash, rinse, repeat every month or so. 

You will look like a knowledge leader by basking in the glory of the writing of others when you simply add a small but observant comment, opinion or viewpoint preceding the article.

I have a client who started with great zeal to write, long tomes for blogs. With every promotion and new position his blogs grew shorter and shorter. I suggested he try the article approach and he did. Now he is a Senior Vice President and his blog posts says "here read this great article".  That is the extent of his blogging but they are all great articles that he posts.

What's the ROI you may ask?

• Well if you set up all your links correctly, you blog posts will be viewed by your Linkedin connections, twitter followers and other social media sites.
  
• You can continue to have a high profile and remain highly visible with little effort.
• You will look current and even at the leading edge in your field.
  
• You may end up on the radar of search consultants without even trying through their keyword searches.
• In addition, telling about your accomplishments on a resume or Linkedin doesn't make nearly the impression as demonstrating your knowledge.
  

In the near term none of this may matter to you, but there could come a day when it will. Picture yourself in the final round of interviews for a position you dearly want and the only difference between you and the other candidate is all the blog posting you have done. That could be the tipping point in your favor.

For examples of what I am talking about, read my previous 3-4 blog posts prior to this one.

_I just found a new cool bright shiny thing to play with! And I may even turn out better presentations as a bonus. Take a look at this.

Prezi - The Zooming Presentation EditorPrezi is a cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas and the connections between them. 

_I speak heresy here as "transferable skills" have been the mantra of career changers since Dick Bolles wrote What Color is You Parachute in 1972. But they just don't completely work anymore.

They are supposed to convince an employer that you can do his job though you have experience in a different function or a different industry or both. This has worked through at least 3 decades and 3 recessions up to the dot.com bust and 2001 recession. Then the game started changing.

Back story first. What are transferable skills? They are a list of action verbs that best describe your abilities. Google it or look in Wikipedia. You will find lists galore or better still buy Parachute as it is the absolute best source.  It really helps to be able to pinpoint exactly which skills are your best ones that you love and excel at using. It used to be that well a articulated set of skills were enough to convince an employer in an interview and on a resume that you were a good fit for the position. Or at least worth consideration.

Fast forward to 2008 and the Great Recession. With an abundance of talent to choose from, employers now demand that a potential employee have a unique set of transferable skills and have used them specifically in their particular industry or field.  They have a list qualifications they want and they check it off with every candidate's resume or profile they see. At the top of the list is knowledge/experience in the industry or field.

The stakes are raised, the options are narrowed, the doors are closing. Or are they? Not if you lead with the relationship and not the resume. People hire people they like or get to like by meeting them informally not in an interview situation.  If you approach your job search in that fashion then your resume won't end up in some recruiter's file 13 (trash bin). 

That means you don't bare your soul and entire resume on social networking profiles like Linkedin.com, but rather use the sites to exhibit a well crafted and branded advertisement about who you are instead. People expect you to have profiles online so manage the message and talk about yourself in a way that minimizes the transition or career change you are trying to make. When you lead with the relationship then you can speak to your knowledge about the sector.

You can demonstrate your experience by being able to "talk shop" about the sector and industry. That means you do in-depth research to be able to demonstrate your knowledgeable competency. Being able to drop names, mention studies, refer to articles, speak about key products and talk about  trends makes you "one of the group". The effort it takes to explain and justify how your skills transfer doesn't measure up in comparison to the impression you can make just "talking shop".

I have seen professionals hired without ever providing a resume. They finally filled out the employment application during the interview process. Leading with the relationship allows you to talk about your accomplishments and the sector you are trying to break into in a way that makes the impression that you can do the job. It is the best tactic to use to skip past your lack of actual experience in a specific industry.