Rita Ashley, Career Coach. Field tested advice for executives.

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By admin, October 29, 2008 8:00 am

Seems the job search engine world is exploding with new job search tools. And along with them, companies who provide SEO and other services to HR departments. For example: Optijob offers a solution for Internet recruiting and job marketing to companies. They advertise: “OptiJob applies cutting-edge search engine optimization – (SEO) technology to showcase your jobs individually, distinctly and uniquely, as separate listings on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Candidates see your job listing as a four-line block of type including your company name on the search results they are shown. From your office to their computer, job marketing made easy. Internet recruiting just got personal.”

As long as companies are making it easier for you to find their jobs, why not use the search engines created to find them? In my previous blog about seven search engines I mention there is quite a bit of duplication on results. But the engines listed here specialize and may render different results. Let me know how they work for you.

Joes Jobs is all about software development openings. And lots of them from around the world.

37 signals has listings for web developers and designers, for the most part.

Creative has a site for about any creative type you can imagine and even allows users to post their portfolio. This is a sophisticated site with a variety of services.

FOR A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF JOB SEARCH ENGINES:  http://tinyurl.com/cdbo4p

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By admin, October 23, 2008 11:49 am

Once you achieve the status of a $100,000+ job, how long you stay with an employer is very important. You must ascertain if a company is a good fit before you take the job. You need all the information you can get.

Just as it is important to monitor and protect your online reputation, it is also important to vet your prospective employer. If you feel strongly that you don’t want to work for people who have certain views or engage in certain activities, you can vet your prospective employer.

Hoovers.com or Vault.com and search engines like Google and Yahoo! all prove valuable when researching companies online.  Other research tools are magazines, periodicals and other publications such as Fortune, Forbes, Black Enterprise, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Jungle Media, Hispanic Business, Working Mother, to name a few. Through best-of and worst-of lists and other featured articles,  these publications  provide  current research on companies.

Use the sites listed on my blog about your reputation to discover your prospective employer’s online presence. Chances are, they are doing the same about you. Also, check out glass door for input from people who work or have worked at the company. Come to your own conclusions about who would make entries on glass door to determine how much weight to give the entries. Also notice the dates. One entry defamed a department of a large company but a new manager was brought in 18 months ago so the critique is no longer valid.

It is important to your career and well being to work for people with whom you feel comfortable. No amount of discovery is too much. Check out former employees using linked. Invite them to discuss their experience with the employer; ask what they liked and what they would like to see change. Don’t ask for dirt; that is unprofessional and not especially useful. Ask how you can succeed and about the culture, don’t ask for gossip.

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By admin, October 23, 2008 11:14 am

Those of you who follow this blog know I advise extreme caution about anything you post anywhere on the Internet; that prospective employers may vet you prior to even an initial contact. This is practical and is not illegal or discriminatory since you are not yet in the running for a job.

Political, religious and any extreme point of view, reference to drunken orgies or worse are easily found. Let us say for example, I am founder of a small company with fragile funding. I need a CTO and a CFO who will fit the conservative culture in my company. If I discover someone I had considered courting to be involved with and commenting on anything of which I disapprove, I simply don’t contact them; and if they contact me, I don’t follow up.

Or I am interviewing and then research the individual. If I find something that alarms me, I remove the person from consideration saying I need someone with an area of expertise you don’t possess, or other acceptable but bogus reason. The end result is the same. I researched and discovered something about you on the Internet and you didn’t get the job.

Over 64% of the HR professionals polled said they vet people on the Internet. I believe the number is much higher because more than just the HR department is involved in vetting/interviewing prospective employees. I think I made my point. Anything you say on the Internet can make you vulnerable.

Want to do a reality check? Job Mob did an excellent job of listing sites that track your Internet activities. I borrowed the list here.  Visit their site for other good info.  Try random searches to see how the world sees you.

• RapLeaf – a website that scours the Internet to find information about a given person based on their email address. Sign up for free and tell Rapleaf about any email addresses you use. Within a few hours, RapLeaf will have results to show you. No longer as impressive as it used to be, the results about me were minimal after weeks of searching.
• Naymz – a “reputation network” that lets you create a profile and then invite people to vouch for you, earning you points and improving your “Repscore”. Once you sign up, use the Naymz Reputation Monitor as another method to see what the Web knows about you. A nice touch is that Naymz lets you see who has visited your profile, which might be handy in seeing which companies are interested in you.
• Wink – claiming to “find people”, Wink pulls in results from a number of sources including Google.
• Spokeo – another people search, this one covers dozens of websites.
• Whoisi – a people search over social media sites like Flickr. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work too well- it couldn’t find any of my public social profiles.
• Usernamecheck – just what it says, this tool will check dozens of websites to see if your username is being used there. A good way to find out if someone is posing as you or just has the same name.
• socialmention – a search engine across social media. Use the ‘All’ option first. Annoyingly, putting your name in quotes doesn’t seem to improve the results, making this site almost useless right now.
• RSSmeme – a tool for following the public RSS feeds generated by your social profiles at sites like StumbleUpon or del.icio.us. See what people are saying about you (by searching your name in quotes) or check what you’re sharing publicly.
• Repcloud – a Facebook app that allows you to see what’s being said about yourself or anyone else.
• StartPR – an online reputation tracker that follows keywords and lets you manage the results with favorites, read/not read flagging and other handy features.
• pressflip – create searches and save them for updating over time. You can then ‘flip’ the results that aren’t relevant and pressflip will learn your preferences and improve future search results. For the learning to work well, you’ll need to come back often to check for new results, which is probably not worth the time.
• FaveBot – track your name or keyword across different types of information like blogs, news or even local events (based on Eventful.com) and follow FaveBot’s results via RSS feeds. As of this writing, there seems to be a problem with the site finding results although it has worked in the past.
• Swamii – a continuous search engine like FaveBot but more general in the types of information searched. Get results via email alerts.
• Trendrr – track a term or keyword across many sources, compare results (the most interesting feature) and even share them.
• AllTh.at – calling itself a “search agent”, AllTh.at saves searches and lets you follow via email or RSS as new results appear over. You can also choose which sites AllTh.at searches and even add your own, plus you can fine-tune your results with some filtering to remove irrelevant items.
• Yotify – create “scouts” that search for relevant information and notify you when they find it. Has some good features like the ability to include friends in your searching but the site is clunky and slow.
• PageTiki – a simple site for following web page updates via email or RSS, useful for watching a webpage that mentions you.
• ChangeDetection – track any webpage for changes and be notified when the page changes.
• WatchThatPage – another webpage watcher but one with many features like letting you decide what will be shown in alerts.
• TrackEngine – another site for tracking changes on the Internet, this one is feature-heavy but easy to use.
• Versionista – might be the king of following website changes. Versionista checks for updates hourly and will keep up to 5 versions of a page (paid users get more) while allowing you use the site to compare versions or to receive change notifications by email.
• FeedWhip – gets updates about any webpage via RSS or email.
• Notifixious – a handy service that you can use to keep updated about changes anywhere on the Internet and in the way you choose: email, RSS, even Yahoo Messenger, etc.
• Pingie – will send you an SMS whenever an RSS feed is updated (US-only for now).
• ZapTXT – does both of what Notifixious and Pingie do but with more features.
• UpdateScanner – “A FireFox extension (add-on) to monitor web pages for updates. Useful for websites that don’t provide Atom or RSS feeds.”
• Google Alerts – a very simple service that sends you an email whenever it discovers search results for the terms or keywords you chose, such as your name.
• Yahoo Alerts – like Google Alerts, but with many more types of alert to choose from. Also, alerts can be sent to Yahoo Messenger or even via SMS (US cell phones only).
• Windows Live Alerts – Microsoft’s alerts service, similar to Yahoo’s in features but based on their own search engine.
• Technorati Search – generate an RSS feed based on what people are saying about you in blogs.
• BlogPulse – search the blogosphere and follow the results via an RSS feed.
• Alerts.com – another free alerts service with even more features and kinds of alerts (including job alerts). Use their RSS Feed alert to follow sites that might have negative things to say about you and your work.
• TweetScan – set up alerts based on what people are saying on Twitter. Can also search over Twitter and Identi.ca (another micro-blogging site).
• Plurkerati – search across users of Plurk, another micro-blogging service like Twitter.
• TweetRush – “aims to provide estimated stats on Twitter usage over a period of time.” Another way to learn about someone via their Twitter usage.
• Twitter Search – search for a name on Twitter and subscribe to the results via RSS feed.
• TwitStat – search Twitter by user or keywords, and follow results via RSS.
• TweetBeep – get email alerts based on results from Twitter searches.
• Twitter Search Sentiment – an offshoot of Twitter Search, this tool tries to give you an idea of what people are talking about right now. Searching on your name (in quotes) will hopefully return a sentiment of wretched which means that no one’s talking about you.
• TweetTrak – track what’s being said about you on Twitter IN Twitter.
• Monitter – lets you track up to 3 terms in Twitter in parallel. Either subscribe to the results’ RSS feeds on watch the tracking live on the fly from the Monitter website. I like this one.
• 24oclocks – see what someone – e.g. you – has been doing in Twitter over a period time.
• Blogdigger – a search engine for blogs that lets you subscribe to an RSS feed of results.
• IceRocket – a search covering blogs, MySpace and a few other sources, I like how the results are ordered by date.
• Blogscope – another blog search engine.
• Technorati – a past champion search engine of the blogosphere, Technorati still indexes millions of blogs and also lets you create an RSS feed based on a search of your name, for example.
• TinEye – an image search engine, TinEye lets you upload an image and will tell you where it can be found on the Web. Hopefully nowhere if the image is one you’d like to wish away.
• Serph – a buzz tracker, use Serph to see what people are saying about you right now.
• Chatter – a blog comments search engine, follow results via RSS feed.
• Chatterguard – a paid service, Chatterguard watches social media sites for you and provides alerts and reports. Might be worth the price if you’re very active online and have lots of information to track and filter through.
• Yahoo Pipes – with this free service you can create an ego feed, a customized RSS feed that pulls in search results about you from many different sources.
• MonitorThis – this tool takes a keyword and generates searches of that keyword across 19 different search engines, with the results being generated as RSS feeds in one downloadable OPML file that you can import to your RSS feed reader.
• Rich Schefren’s Reputation Monitor – does the same thing as MonitorThis but some of the search sources are different. Also, Rich has included his business-oriented blog feed in the generated results, so remove it right away but keep the rest.
• Filtrbox – funnels and filters any sources of information you choose. Pick the Free option on signup.
• Trackur – an “Online Reputation Monitoring & Buzz Tracking Tool” created by Marketing Pilgrim and reputation guru Andy Beal, Trackur was initially aimed at companies worried about what consumers and competitors might be saying about them online. Trackur is a paid service but there’s a free 14-day trial which might be enough time to discover things that other tools couldn’t find.
• Attenalert – “a web service that allows you to find out who is talking about you, your brand, company or products on websites, in videos, the news and on blogs.” 7-day free trial. Like with Trackur, use the free trial to see if you can find any nuggets that the other (free) tools couldn’t.
• Distilled Online Reputation Monitor – this paid service lets you have a whole free month to test how well it can find information about you.
• ReputationDefender’s MyReputation service – a paid service (currently US$9.95/month) that generates a report of all information it can find about you online and gives you tips on how to react. Don’t be surprised if some of their tips try to get you to buy more of their paid services.
• ReputationHQ – another paid service that scours the Web for information on whatever you choose.
• BoardTracker – a search engine that will help you see if anyone’s said anything nasty about you in discussion forums. Many features.
• Big Boards – a forum search engine that covers international sites, it either has many results or none at all.
• BoardReader – a forum search engine with a very wide reach.
• Omgili – another forum search, this one with a full-featured advanced search. There’s even a Hebrew version.
• Yuku Find – yet another discussion forums search engine, it doesn’t work very well.
• Twing – this site also lets you find out what people are saying in forums.
• Linqia – a forums and “communities” search with a nice interface and useful filters, I wasn’t very impressed when it couldn’t find my name and adding quotes had no effect on the search results.
• DataPatrol – originally intended as a way to prevent identity theft, DataPatrol’s alerts and reports can be used to find information about you online. There’s currently a free 30-day trial offered, but the site is only available to UK residents for now.
• BackType – search through comments people – you? – have made on blogs. This is useful because many sites block search engines from indexing (taking into account) reader comments. You can search by commenter’s name like a potential employer would do, or by comment text e.g. to see if anyone has written about you in blog comments.
• Keotag – a site that makes it quick and easy to search blog post tags across many different search engines. Try searching on your full name in quotes and without quotes.
• Commentful – track responses to your comments on blogs.
• myComments – another way to follow responses to your comments, but requires blogs to be compatible and most aren’t.
• co.mments – track your blog comments via RSS feed or email alerts.
• coComment – yet another way to keep track of the conversations you’re having on blogs in one place. Their practical Firefox extension automatically records where you leave comments. Stay notified by responses via the Firefox extension, a Google Gadget, email alerts or RSS feeds. Plus, you can decide whether your RSS feeds should be public or private.

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By admin, October 23, 2008 7:00 am

Landing a six figure job is different from finding a job as an individual contributor. There is more competition and the unwritten rules for pursuing them are different. If you are an executive or technology professional looking for $100,000 jobs, you must be very clear on the job you want through a resume objective.

Your objective must be spot on to what a prospective employer needs. Your resume objective tells the employer the job you want in no uncertain terms, in fact, it tells them exactly what they can expect if they hire you. “To create and implement software development strategies and processes that result in products that add to the bottom line and increase shareholder value.”

Examples: “To continue my career as a regional sales manager” tells the employer what job you want, but not what you will do or how you will do it. Instead, these objectives make clear what you will do, how and the results. They compel the reader to learn more.

“Provide sales leadership and experience to build or revitalize a sales organization through the use of proven sales processes, coaching and mentoring: Build a robust pipeline of prospects.”

“An executive level sales position that will leverage my experience building and leading sales teams to grow revenue from $6 million to $60 million in three years.”

Many resume services encourage six figure income executives to omit the objective in favor of the summary. When you omit the objective, you omit a marketing opportunity that tells the reader why they are reading your resume.

Thus, a resume with a summary of technical accomplishments requires the reader to ask, “But what does he do?” If the objective includes: “Lead highly effective teams to create mainstream products from innovative technologies for customer facing applications,” the reader has a frame of reference for the summary.

And, “Build and lead development teams to reduce costs and complexity of technology solutions while delivering increased service levels and customer satisfaction,” peaks the reader’s curiosity to read more.

Experiment with several versions of your objective to highlight different aspects of your success. Select which one is appropriate for each job opportunity. $100,000+ jobs go to those who ask for them, specifically.

For additional support with your resume objective, resume reconstruction or resolution to other job search issues, read Job Search Debugged or contact Rita Ashley to discuss your job search challenges and how Coaching will help get you hired, faster.

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By admin, October 18, 2008 6:12 pm

Leaving the $100,000+ job requires finesse. Why? Because every single person in your organization will work in another company or know someone who works in a company you’d like to consider as a future employer. You want those people to be convinced you are a class act and not the least bit negative about your former employer; that you did not/will not spread harmful rumors about the company, products or colleagues.

People love to gossip and the more negative the gossip, the more quickly it is spread.

• Give only positive reasons for leaving, commenting on what you are going towards, not going away from.
• Stick to the story. Don’t discuss the “real reason” with your favorite colleagues. Human nature being what it is, that reason, the confidential one, will soon replace the “for publication” reason throughout the company and on the street.
• Don’t rant. When co-workers want to discuss their own dissatisfaction, mention only your good experiences and things you like about the company.

THE EXIT INTERVIEW:

Of importance, as mentioned by Lyndsay Swinton author of the blog, The Rest of Us, “…is a mental checklist to run through to remind you how to behave in the exit interview.

• Have I chosen to attend this interview? It’s not compulsory, so if you’ve decided to attend, do so with grace and dignity.
• Will anything change based on my comments? …
• Who will benefit from my honesty?…
• Who will be harmed by my honesty? Remember that bland answers are an option if you’re likely to get upset during the interview.
• Do I want to work for this employer again? Burnt bridges are difficult to repair.”

The possible list of exit interview questions is exhaustive. Be prepared for those which are most likely to trigger a negative or emotional response from you. It is imperative to keep a positive attitude.

The temptation to “let the employer have it” during the exit interview must be resisted in every case. There is nothing you can say that will change their behaviors or erase the reasons for which you are leaving.

While HR professionals honestly believe there is merit in conducting an in-depth exit interview, senior management (your peers) rarely views the actual interview as more than an indication of how you as a former employee will represent your time in service.

Remember too, that when casting aspersions on your soon to be former employer is an indictment of those who chose to stay. Tread lightly and avoid generalizations and a critique of the company as a decent employer.

Don’t be fooled by the questions that ask your opinions about what could be changed or improved. Companies know disgruntled former employees can be a liability and make recruiting and hiring other $100,000+ employees difficult. Thus, they show they care by asking your advice about how they can be a better company.

Chances are, they won’t make any changes and they don’t really care. They ask these questions primarily to make you feel you are listened to and that you might make a difference thereby diffusing some of your anger towards them. Don’t take the bait.

Let all your comments be neutral, innocuous and positive. Remember, every person who reads your exit interview is a prospective reference for your next two jobs. Be on your best behavior and manage your personal PR with finesse. Your next two $100,000+ jobs may depend on it.
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By admin, October 17, 2008 8:08 pm

You gave your employer many opportunities to make things right. You told them of your needs and they did not respond. Now that you tendered your resignation, they are ready to oblige. Should you accept the counter offer?

Fortune Magazine reported a few years back that of people who accepted counter offers, only 25% were still with their employer at the end of one year. And most reported that the reasons for which they originally wanted to leave did not change.

The danger of accepting a counter offer extends to other career damaging events: You are no longer considered a trusted team player so you are passed over for the big projects. Or you resigned at an inconvenient time for the company. They need time to regroup, perhaps find your replacement. Then they can fire you.

Advice: Trust yourself. You interviewed and received an offer for an attractive company. Don’t be confused by the counteroffer. Don’t succumb to the apprehension of starting something new and convince yourself staying with your current employer will benefit you. It rarely does when you accept a counter offer.

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By admin, October 17, 2008 9:33 am

I didn’t eat the dog food. My counsel to $100,000+ candidates has long been to negotiate a higher base in lieu of stock. Yet I found myself shaking my head in disgust last week. A company for whom I accepted partial payment ( six years ago, for recruiting fees) in shares finally had a liquidity event…with a 20 to 1 reverse split. My six figure options are now three figures.

Early stage companies trade on the wishful thinking for enthusiastic employees. Most people believe it won’t happen to them; or they have protected shares. When a liquidity event occurs, all bets are off. Whatever it takes to make the deal is what happens. I have seen technology leaders invest 90 hour weeks for years in hopes of a huge Microsoft-style reward devastated when the actual return on their life’s investment is a few thousand dollars.

And some companies, large public companies, offset base or reduce raises because they award stock options yearly. Employees are expected to liquidate those stocks and consider them as income rather than a perk or retirement investment.

There are very few truly great outcomes these days for accepting shares instead of cash. Wherever possible, take the money, invest it on your own and be relieved that you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. To have both your income and your investments in one place is rarely a winning proposition, just ask your financial advisor. Don’t have one? All $100,000+ earners need a financial advisor because it isn’t how much you make, it is how much you keep.

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By admin, October 8, 2008 2:53 pm

eBay just laid off a covey of employees and HP laid off about 15,000 world wide. More companies will add bodies to the pile over the next several months.

Do what you can to get the jump on jobs opportunities? Your first step should be to join every alumni group for which you qualify. Get exposure to your cohorts.

1. Jobs are listed
2. Colleagues are more apt to help with leads and introductions
3. Enhance your research using the Q/A sections
4. Recruiters and hiring authorities target alumni groups for candidates

Use all the social networking site’s alumni groups as well. As an example, linekedin has an HP Alumni section.

Now create the best resume and elevator pitch you can. Need help with that? Use the search box to the right.

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By admin, October 8, 2008 2:23 pm

It happened again, a coaching client was invited by a local recruiter to “represent” him for jobs my client located and was interested in pursuing. Oh, No, says I. What sounds like a boon is actually a trap. Seductive as it may seem to pass the heavy lifting to a recruiter, it could back fire. It is important to learn to work with recruiters to get the best from them and not weaken your own search efforts.

First warning: If the recruiter in question does not have the job search in which you are interested, she will try to use your resume to get the job search. While in itself, not a horrible thing, it turns ugly very fast. If he is unable to land the search, the company still has your resume and NO recruiter with whom they do have an active search can EVER represent you in that company (that is company, not department). And you can’t represent yourself either. The company is now off limits.

Companies will not engage in “recruiter wars.” If there is any question about representation, companies will simply pass on considering you for the job. Always ask what relationship the recruiter has with the hiring authority and her history placing people there.

Second warning: Unless you instructed this eager beaver to limit sending your resume to only those companies you approve, she may submit your resume to other companies with the same result as above. Companies track resumes and their sources. Ask the recruiter what placements he has made with the company in question.

Third warning: When you tell her where your resume has been presented and for what jobs, she can now contact those hiring authorities and ask for the search on behalf of her other clients. The recruiter has just expanded his client base at your expense; you now have more competition.

An Encouraging word: To establish and maintain an excellent relationship with a recruiter invite them to send your resume to only those companies/opportunities you discuss. No need to know where you have already submitted your credentials if they discuss each opportunity prior to representing you.

Be meticulous about telling him when you have already submitted your CV to a company in question. You don’t want to have more than one person representing you because it appears you have no control over your search. And worse, if the recruiter does submit with your approval and is rejected because you had previously presented your resume, you loose their favor/interest.

When you interview with the recruiter be specific on what locations, job titles and responsibilities fit your background. While you might give an example of a job or company, there is no need to reveal any more than this. If the recruiter pushes, ask yourself why.

For more Recruiter advice, use the Search box to the right. For assistance with your job search, click on the buttons on the left.

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By admin, October 7, 2008 1:12 pm

Suresh was skeptical. As my most recent coaching client, he had not yet learned that my advice works. He downloaded “Blog to a Job” from the “Free” page on my web site, but didn’t create a blog saying, “I don’t believe people are going to do an Internet search to find people at my level.” I badgered him into compliance knowing the blog would work to attract employers with real jobs looking for his exact qualifications.

Imagine Suresh’s surprise when after three days, his blog had over 60 hits and he was contacted directly by a CEO who had a job that mapped to Suresh’s resume. The CEO said he has an ongoing search (feed) for key individuals and Suresh’s credentials were spot on for the opening he had. Unfortunately, the job required relocation which Suresh wasn’t interested in, but he did ask for and received referrals from the CEO.

Suresh created a Boolean string for Google and his own resume came up first. And that is how employers and recruiters use search engines to discover both active and passive candidates (prospects). To learn more, go to web site for your own download to learn how to Blog for a Job to let employers find you.

Need more assistance? Consider Job search tools that work from Job Search Debugged.

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