Personal Branding: Stand Out From the Crowd

By Susan Breidenbach

Personal branding gives you a big advantage in today’s job market.  It’s how you stand out from the flood of resumes triggered by every posted job opening.  And it’s how the hidden jobs—which account for more than 80% of job openings these days—find you.

That’s the message Bret Simmons delivered to ProNet members in a recent presentation.  Through effective use of social media, you must associate your name and face with your value, and let people know how that value makes you uniquely qualified to help them.

“You aren’t trying to get a job,” insists Simmons, an associate professor of management at University of Nevada, Reno.  “You are trying to help someone solve a problem or exploit an opportunity.  Make it about them—passionately, in your gut.”  When you help people, you earn social capital with them, and they will do for you what you can’t do for yourself:  Drop your name and share your value among their circles of connections.

Personal branding starts with blogging

Fortunately for personal branding, the web and social media vaporized the publishing gateways you used to have to get through to publish something.  You can publish yourself, using blogging platforms that are virtually free.

There is a time cost, of course, and unemployed professionals often look at blogging as a drag on more direct job-seeking activities.  But that’s a misconception in today’s job market.  Consistent blogging related to your key value is a job-search shortcut.

“It’s an investment, not an expense,” Simmons explains.  “Blogging is the single best way to increase your value.”  Simmons says he is including himself and his colleagues in that statement—people who get published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

In addition to personal branding, blogging keeps you on your toes by forcing continuous learning and renewal.  You have to go out and learn, and your ability to out-learn your competitor is what sets you apart.

Turning out two or three blogs each week is intimidating to people who don’t write for a living.  Get in the habit of thinking constantly about your next blogs.  Then you are ready to write when you sit down to produce one, and can do so more efficiently.  A great way to get a constant supply of inspiration and material is to set up some Google Alerts for hot topics in your area of expertise.

The rules of blogging are simple:

Put your efforts into a blog, not a website.  If your website doesn’t have a blog, you don’t have an engine for creating relationships.

• When publishing online, perfection is not the standard.  If you don’t provide helpful content, it doesn’t matter how well-written your blog is, or what your credentials are.
• Always provide value.  Never, ever show up selling.
• Contribute value consistently.  Don’t start a blog and then quit—that sends a very bad message.
• If you don’t quit, you will get better.  Your first post can be butt-ugly, but you can’t get to No. 2 if you don’t publish No. 1, and you can’t get to No. 3 if you don’t publish No. 2….

Above all, you must take full responsibility for making yourself remarkable and sharable.

“There is a mass of mediocrity out there—people who will apply tremendous pressure to try and keep you down,” Simmons says.  “You must give yourself permission to stand out.”

Integration and Engagement

If multiple social media platforms are integrated and optimized, the sum can be worth way more than the sum of the parts.  By posting across platforms, you increase the exposure your content gets, because different people use different platforms.

Simmons recommends a hub-and-spokes approach, using your branded web site—with your blog as its centerpiece—as your hub.

“The number one thing you need to do is create content around your name via your blog, and then auto-feed it to other platforms.”  For unemployed professionals new to social media, a blog and a LinkedIn profile are the mandatory starting point.  Microblogging (Twitter) is then a fairly easy extension of your online activities.  And once you really get your social media sea legs, add one of the more complex social networking platforms—Facebook and/or Google+.

Social media and search are also very synergistic.  Create content and connections that will get you indexed indexed and ranked for your name and your value.  “You are teaching Google, and it will learn,” Simmons explains.

Publishing content only takes you so far, though.  You need to identify influential people in your field and engage with them, by joining group discussions, answering questions, and commenting on blog posts.  Show up in places where your expertise is valued, and join the conversation around that value.

The privacy myth

In this digital era, Google is the new business card.  That’s tremendous news, because you know what a prospective employer is going to do—Google you—and you can prepare for it.  By continually posting fresh, appropriate content, you give Google the ammunition you want to show up at the top of the search results.

The “digital natives” are quite comfortable with this visibility, while those of us in older demographics try to insulate ourselves with the same kind of privacy walls we are used to in the brick-and-mortar world.

“You have to be transparent,” advises Simmons.  “Don’t erect walls—tear them down.  For one thing, walls make people wonder what you are doing that you don’t want them to know about.  Also, you want people to search you and find you.  And don’t assume any privacy.  Assume everything you say and do online will be seen by everyone.”

In particular, don’t play around on Facebook.  Develop a content strategy and stick to it.  Be aware that the News Stream is just noise you can’t influence all that much.  Instead, really watch what goes onto your wall.  And show people by example the kinds of things you want on your wall, by consistently posting them yourself.

Additional Tips

• Buy your name for your Internet domain.  It’s a piece of real estate that can only appreciate over time as you make content deposits.
• Use the same profile picture everywhere—the same picture, along with the same name and the same value.  You are branding yourself across different social media platforms.
• Use a good picture.  People experience emotional reactions before cognitive ones, so a good picture that triggers positive emotions is critical.
• Use a professional-sounding e-mail address, preferably with your own branded domain name in it.  Go for clear, not cute.

“Employers now exist in hyper-connected communities, whether they realize it or not,” sums up Simmons.  “Very few companies are really leveraging the power of this.  But you can leverage it to get noticed by them.  Actually, companies should be hiring digital citizens—people who understand the power of social media.”

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.

Unemployed Professionals Give the Gift of Life

By Susan Breidenbach

It is easy to feel down and out when you are unemployed, and this negative affect makes it harder to find a job.  One way to combat these feelings and maintain a positive outlook and a better sense of self-worth is to give to the community.  Donating money may be out of the question, but healthy people can literally give the gift of life by donating blood.

It’s what we call “paying it forward.”

The unemployed professionals who make up ProNet kicked off this week with another successful blood drive, bringing total ProNet donations to 105 units since the events began in July 2009. Twenty-one ProNet members cycled through the United Blood Services bloodmobile parked in the ProNet parking lot at 1200 Terminal Way on July 25.

“It is very uplifting to see the ProNet members, unemployed professionals, give of themselves literally to the community,” remarks ProNet Branch Manager Pieter Droog.  “You can see in their eyes and their smiles—they have a sense of accomplishment and purpose.  Every blood drive we have had gets a better response than the event before.  For me personally, besides giving to the community, the checks they do—blood blood pressure, temperature, and hemoglobin count—is almost like getting a mini physical.”

Experts say nearly 40% of people in the U.S. and other developed countries meet donor requirements, but only 5% to 10% actually give blood.  Some may be worried about the procedure, some may be worried about the impact on their health, and some may feel they don’t have the time.

The procedure does involve needles, but is virtually painless once the IV is in place.  While some people pump out a pint faster than others, the entire process takes an hour at the outside, including the juice-and-snacks post-donation interval.  It is particularly convenient if the bloodmobile is coming right to your office door.

Benefits of donating blood

There is no evidence that donating blood is bad for healthy people, and some indication that it may have some health benefits.  These include:

• Lowering iron levels.  High blood iron levels can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, because iron accelerates the oxidation process of cholesterol in the body, which damages arteries.
• Reducing cancer risk.  According to Miller-Keystone Blood Center, correlational studies associate regular blood donation with lowered risks for certain cancers, including liver, lung, colon, stomach and throat cancers.  Risk levels dropped in inverse relation to frequency of blood donation.
• Reducing risk of heart attack.  According to Florida Blood Services, people who donate blood regularly over a period of years reduce their risk of heart attacks by 88 percent and their risk of other severe cardiovascular events, such as a stroke, by 33 percent.
• Replenishing blood.  According to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, your body replaces the donated blood volume within 48 hours and all of the red blood cells within four to eight weeks.

These apparent benefits do have to be viewed with a grain of salt.  People in the studies are not being assigned to donor and non-donor groups randomly.  Rather, they are self-selecting into these groups, and the donors are doubtless healthier than average to begin with.

But donors in general have no ill effects, as long as they are properly hydrogenated before giving blood and take it easy for the rest of the day afterward.  And we walk away with the knowledge that we have given a very precious gift to the community.

Free mini-physical

Perhaps a more direct benefit for unemployed people without health insurance is the free mini-physical you get in the screening process right before giving blood.

A healthcare professional takes your blood pressure and checks your blood for certain key components.  The results can give you an early warning about problems you may not have been aware of, or just affirm your confidence in your continuing good health.  You also get some free snacks and beverages!

People with O-negative blood—the “universal donors”—are always in high demand because, in a pinch, their blood can be given to anyone except newborns.

Babies require a subset of O-negative, from individuals who are also CMV-negative.  This blood is particularly precious, because the majority of the donor-age population is CMV-positive.  The ubiquitous cytomegalovirus is virtually harmless to all but newborns—particularly infants born prematurely, who are routinely given transfusions.

False-positives are common

Prospective donors should know that false-positives are fairly common in the blood screening process, and not be discouraged by one bad experience with them.

Blood must be used when it is fresh, so the screening process for contamination must be rapid and aggressive.  A byproduct of this requisite rush is more false positives—some of them for very alarming diseases and conditions.  The donor gets a nasty shock, and the false-positive blood doesn’t get used even after the mistake is discovered.

Most of these unlucky donors never come back, presumably because the experience was so unpleasant.

“The impact of a false-positive could be devastating,” Dr. German Leparc, chief medical officer of St. Petersburg-based Florida Blood Services, told the Association of Donor Recruitment Professionals.

More eligible people need to donate blood, whether previously false-positive or not.  If your health permits, join the job-seeking professionals at ProNet and check with your local blood banks about donating blood or blood products—especially if you are unemployed.  We all walk away with the knowledge that we have given a very precious gift to the community.

So follow the ProNet example and give the gift of life if you can—especially if you are unemployed.  Find a local blood drive, or start your own, or just go to the local blood bank.  They need platelets and plasma as well as blood, and will tell you which type of donation will have the biggest impact.

No amount of money can take the place of actual blood, and almost all of us will need blood products at some point, or have loved ones who do.

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer seeking pre-screened applicants , call (775) 674-5408 today.

ProNet Featured in Reno Gazette Journal

By Susan Breidenbach

If you are an unemployed professional, why should you seek out an organization such as ProNet?  Or if you are recruiting professionals for your company, organization, or clients, why should you go to a ProNet-type organizations such first?

ProNet Reno’s branch manager, Pieter Droog, spelled it all out in a recent article published in the Reno Gazette Journal, headlined “ProNet members stay upbeat, find work via job-finding agency’s unique volunteerism model.”

ProNet is a network that teaches networking skills.  And networking is the only way to reach the hidden job market, which represents upwards of 80% of the available jobs out there.

If you are an unemployed professional–especially if you are an older professional, and more especially if you are also going through a career transition–you need to be focusing your job search on this hidden job market.  And organizations like ProNet will teach you how to maximize your results.

If you are a prospective employer faced with sifting through mountains of resumes, get prescreened candidates from organizations like ProNet.  These are proactive, motivated professionals who are developing and updating their skills as they look for a job.

Read the Reno Gazette Journal article to get a great explanation of what organizations like ProNet can do for unemployed professionals and employers.

Then contact ProNet Reno below if you are in the Northern Nevada area.  Or look for similar organizations if you are elsewhere.  And consider starting one up if your region doesn’t have anything like this.  The ProNets of the world are member-run organizations with minimal overhead that produce maximum results.

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.

Social Media: The New Language of Business

By Susan Breidenbach

Too many job seekers are failing to exploit social media.  Some are worried about privacy and identity theft.  Others see it as a confusing and ever-changing category of technology that they don’t have time to master.

They fail to see it for what it is:  A new language that is rapidly becoming the lingua franca for 21^st Century business culture.

“You need to embrace the new medium of the new era,” Gideon F. For-mukwai of XtraMiles Solutions told unemployed professionals at a recent ProNet general meeting.  “You don’t want to be passive observers.  Rather, you should be using social media to position yourselves ahead of other people looking for the same jobs.

Gideon For-mukwai

“Use social media to leverage the best minds in your field.  Use social media to network with recruiters.”

For-mukwai knows a lot about learning new languages and adapting to new cultures.  He grew up in an impoverished Cameroon community in Central Africa, and sees some parallels between his formative life experiences and people tackling social media today.

Building Social Capital

“Social media is a new language we all have to learn.  And the best mindset to bring to this process is that of a missionary.  Approach social media as if you were a missionary working overseas with a bushman.”

Beyond this, you must first identify an appropriate niche.  Who are the people you want to be working with?  What industry are you targeting, and what geographic region?

For-mukwai says there has been an unfortunate decline in social capital in America, as outlined in Robert D. Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Next, you need to be socially engaged.  You must develop social capital, which consists of your friendships and connections.  You use this social capital for your job search, by leveraging the knowledge, experience, and additional connections of all these people.

Ironically, this has happened just as businesses are shifting from closed hierarchies to relatively flat, overlapping networks.  Social capital is the glue that holds these network structures together, so we need more of it than ever.

Bonding and Bridging

There are two basic types of social capital:  bonding and bridging.  You engage in bonding with family and friends.  Bridging consists of reaching out to different people.

“You must make a conscious, consistent effort with this bonding and bridging,” says For-mukwai.  “You need to get out there more often and build social capital.  Then you will have more voices speaking on your behalf.  You need to develop it offline and deploy it online.”

Social media doesn’t mean you can ignore real-world interpersonal connections.  Rather, it enhances and builds on them.  Studies show that the people who are most active on social media are more likely to meet people face-to-face and get involved in their brick-and-mortar communities.

“Besides building social capital, join tribal groups like a good missionary,” For-mukwai says.  In social media, these groups include LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  “Twitter looks flimsy, but it really has some strength.”

Don’t make the mistake of joining groups of colleagues.  If you are a marketer, don’t just join marketing groups.  If you are an engineer, don’t just join engineering groups.  If you are in HR, don’t just join HR groups.  It is other groups that need your skills.  Identify groups that need your skills and have the necessary resources to hire you.

Learn the Language of Keywords

Remember you are a missionary as you join these groups of bushmen.  They don’t know you yet.  You have to tell your story, and let them know what makes you special.  And to do so you have to speak the local dialect—which in social media is keywords.

You must optimize your profile with a liberal sprinkling of the right keywords.  Benchmark the leaders in your field, see how they are setting up their profiles, and copy them.  In social media, “R&D” often stands for “rip off and duplicate.”

Also, read current job descriptions to find the right jargon—the specific buzz words that the people who need you are typing into search engines.  You can refine your keyword selection with free keyword tools that give you statistics on the current search popularity of specific keywords.  There are many such tools available, including Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Google Trends, SEMRush, Keyword Discovery, SEO-Digger, and SEO Book.

Master such tools—the tools the bushmen are using.  To do so, engage the help of the digital natives.  They know these tools, although they may not know how to optimize them for job search.  You may have some of these digital natives among your family, or you can engage them online via forums such as LinkedIn’s Questions or Ask.com.

Once your profile is optimized, start sowing seeds far and wide.  Do so by joining the conversations taking place in relevant social media sites, and commenting on relevant blog posts.  Augment these digital seeds with some brick-and-mortar ones, by in-person networking and volunteering.

If this all seems a bit daunting, don’t go it alone, or reinvent the wheel.

“We all need comforters along the way—people who can help point us in the right direction, sums up For-mukwai.  “Ask for help, and make full use of organizations like ProNet.”

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.

Volunteering: The Benefits Flow Both Ways

By Colby Stott

At the end of 2010 some 20 ProNet members, joined by family and friends, celebrated the holidays in a very special way:  We converged on the Food Bank of Northern Nevada and volunteered our time.

When our shift was over, we had bagged nearly 6 tons of fresh produce—a mountain of bell peppers, potatoes, and onions—for distribution to Northern Nevada people in need.

“Besides helping others, it felt good to be doing actual work,” said ProNet volunteer Patrick Callahan.  “We were assigned a task, we worked at it, and we accomplished our task.  While searching for a job is work—sometimes very hard, time-consuming work—you often don’t know what, if anything, a day’s efforts have accomplished.  With volunteer work like this, you know what you’ve done, and you know it will be helping people this week.”

We capped our afternoon in the warehouse with an “I Make a Difference” workshop taught by career and personal coach Kit Prendergast of Career Connections of Sierra Nevada.  Unemployment can be a very discouraging state—if we surrender to it.  Through volunteerism, there are many ways we can make a difference in our communities, helping others while giving ourselves a sense of accomplishment.

Help Yourself by Helping Others

In fact, we volunteers can be the biggest beneficiaries.

Brian Summers explores this phenomenon in “Can Job Loss Be a Positive Experience?”  Job seekers and the recently re-employed answer in the affirmative, providing testimonials about turning unemployment into a confidence-building opportunity through volunteerism.

Volunteer gigs can also lead to actual jobs.  If you are going through a career transition, for example, you can start down a new and more promising path by offering your services as an unpaid intern or apprentice.  Such arrangements can be very mutually beneficial—although there is potential for abuse.  Carolyn Kepcher provides some guidelines in “Unemployed and need help finding a job in 2011? Volunteer to get your foot in the door.”

Job search aside, lending a hand in a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, or home for battered women is a great way to get a fresh perspective on your own situation.  Interacting with a lot of people who are much worse off than you are can whip you out of the doldrums and re-energize you.

In some parts of the country, there is talk of requiring people who are collecting unemployment benefits to do volunteer work in exchange.  A Virginia House of Delegates member has actually proposed such a law.

That would actually take the volunteering out of volunteer work, and destroy a lot of its benefits.  It is much better to take the initiative and proactively search for volunteer opportunities that let you give to the community while sharpening—or even expanding—your job skills.

“If you are not volunteering right now, you are missing a great opportunity,” concludes Jonathan Begley, resource coordinator at Nevadaworks.  The Nevadaworks ItsAboutJobs.com job site includes listings of volunteer opportunities.

Some other places to look:

• Food Bank of Northern Nevada
• Nevada Museum of Art
• SPCA of Northern Nevada
• Nevada Humane Society
• Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful

A more comprehensive list of local non-profit organizations can be found at http://www.newtoreno.com/nonprofit.htm.

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.

Career Change: It’s Time to Reinvent Yourself

By Susan Breidenbach

On Dec. 6 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke announced that we can expect high unemployment to be the norm for the next four to five years.

That’s bad enough, but we job seekers are simultaneously up against what may ultimately be a much bigger obstacle:   While a lot of us are basically trying to find our old jobs, they don’t exist anymore, and they aren’t coming back.

This has nothing to do with the state of the economy, although the downturn hastened their demise. Rather, fundamental disruptions–primarily Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and the resulting globalization–have changed the job landscape forever.

Change We Must

Making a career change is very tough, especially if you thought retirement was in sight before everything tanked.  As some sage once put it, “The only person who likes change is a wet baby.”   But change we must.

That’s why ProNet’s comprehensive week-long Job Search Workshop includes a major segment on analyzing transferable skills and discovering your strengths .  It sends us on a journey of self-discovery, so that we can identify all our skills and strengths and map them to needs of the current job market.

The results may surprise you.

Finding Transferable Skills

Finding our transferable skills is fairly straightforward.  There are many other tests and exercises available online–some free, some not–that help you with this process.

At ProNet we use the Career Coach evaluation process from Profiles International.  First, you fill out a questionnaire that compiles your skills and characteristics.  Then, you match these composite results to job characteristics in the U.S. Department of Labor’s comprehensive O*Net database of worker attributes and job characteristics.

One of O*Net’s filters generates a list of job categories that have particularly bright prospects for the foreseeable future.  You can browse through these descriptions and see if your skills and characteristics are a fit–or near fit–to some of them.

A good starting point for transferable skills analysis is to compile a master resume.  You list everything you’ve ever done on every job you’ve ever had–including things that weren’t in your job description–in excruciating detail.  (For more on this process, see “The Master Resume–A Critical Job Search Tool.”)

Discovering Your Strengths

Strengths are more subtle and less task-specific, and discovering them is a bigger challenge.  ProNet has been using Tom Rath’s Strength Finders 2.0 book, which comes with an online strengths test.  The book groups strengths and talents into 34 basic themes, and the test discovers your top five themes–the themes where your strengths are concentrated.  Each theme description is accompanied by action items you can use to build on those strengths.

Strength Finders 2.0 is based on the premise that focusing on fixing weaknesses–which is what most people tend to do–offers only very minimal returns.  Studies show people “have several times more potential for growth when they invest energy in developing their strengths instead of correcting their deficiencies,” writes the author.

So identify your strengths and transferable skills and use this knowledge to reinvent yourself to meet the demands of today’s job market.  It will give you a big advantage, because most of your competition won’t make this effort.  And you will also be more likely to end up with work you really enjoy.

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.

Still Unemployed? Start a New Business!

By Susan Breidenbach

So you’ve sent out 800 resumes and are still unemployed?  You may actually be ahead of the curve.  Employment is a buyer’s market right now, with each new publicly posted job listing attracting an avalanche of resumes.  In some job categories, it isn’t unusual to get 1,000-plus applicants.

Create your job

If you can’t join existing businesses as an employee, consider beating them—or supplying or otherwise leveraging them—by starting your own business.  In other words, create your own job.

Economic downturns are actually great times to start businesses.  A majority of the Fortune 500 companies were started up during economic depressions or major recessions, including Alcoa, AT&T, Bristol Myers, Eli Lilly, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Merck, and Microsoft.  It seems that necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

Pretty much everything you need for your startup—from office space and equipment to human resources—is cheaper in a downturn as people slash prices.  The flip side of this is the opportunities created by businesses looking to change suppliers in an effort to get more for less.

You also have a much bigger pool of highly qualified people to choose from, and you don’t have to pay them as much.  One startup here in Reno is getting most of its personnel for free—at least from a cash flow standpoint.  Top people—the crème de la crème—are working for stock and stock options.

Entrepreneurship Workshops

While ProNet is focused on job search, ProNet members are encouraged to consider the entrepreneurship option.  We even have entrepreneurship workshops run by serial entrepreneurs (and ProNet alumni) Matt Westfield and Rod Hosilyk.

Patrick Callahan

“I took the class in September and was amazed at the amount of information we covered in just 3 days,” said Patrick Callahan, a ProNet member looking for a position in manufacturing or R&D.  “It was also quite an eye-opener to see how well the same set of entrepreneurship principals applied to such a wide mix of ideas.”

These ideas were in categories as diverse as manufacturing, hospitality, health care, senior living, financial services and business management.

Some found they didn’t have an appropriate business model, at least at present. They returned to the drawing board, using the feedback from the workshop to save themselves a lot of time and money.

“Rod and Matt were very good at getting us to examine our own strengths and weaknesses, target the right market, and focus on what we need to be doing to move our business forward.”  Issues covered in the workshop include intellectual property, marketing and advertising, financing, networking, and defining and targeting the right customer base.

“Our instructors did a great job of making complex subjects understandable and enjoyable,” reports Callahan.

The Time Is Right

Callahan himself had come up with an idea for an offset bender for electrical conduits, and had gone as far as commissioning a machinist to build a high-quality prototype.  The day he dropped off the blueprints, he was laid off and figured he would have to back-burner the project until he found another “day job.”  The entrepreneurship workshop at ProNet re-galvanized him.

Matt Westfield teaches entrepreurship at ProNet

“I hauled out the product design and updated it, and I am now in the process of obtaining a patent for my invention, getting the prototype machined, and negotiating with a metal casting company to get sales samples produced.  Then I can seek more feedback from industry experts.  Networking with my ProNet workshop classmates and their contacts has helped me with these efforts considerably, by expanding my reach exponentially.”

Jobs are to be cherished in this economy, but jobs for the most part consist of trading hours for dollars.  If you want to leverage your time and make money while you sleep, consider the entrepreneurship route.  And look for local organizations like ProNet that can help you get started.

For more on why this is a great time to indulge any entrepreneurial urges you may have, read:

• “Top 10 Reasons to Start a Business in a Recession”
• “Why Great Companies Get Started During the Downturns”
• “Why a Bad Economy Is the Best Time to Start a Business”

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.

Securing More Job Interviews

By Susan Breidenbach

You are unemployed, so your biggest challenge is getting a job, right?

“Wrong,” recruiter Jesse Gregory of Applied Recruiting Solutions told ProNet members at a recent job-search workshop. “Your main challenge is to secure the interview, so that should be your focus.”

Jesse Gregory

Nevada currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, and effective unemployment among professionals in the Reno area is well over 20%. Given this grim reality, the typical job-seeking professional is getting one interview every three months.

“That’s not enough—you must get more interviews,” Gregory insists.

So, what can you do to make yourself stand out amid the tsunami of resumes each job opening triggers? Gregory shared a number of tricks his clients have used successfully to increase the number of interviews they land.

• The Cover Letter: The cover letter should be a single page with no more than two paragraphs and plenty of white space. Don’t use a generic letter; customize it for the particular job you are seeking, and make sure you use the name of the appropriate recruiter or manager.
• Use Courier Service: Use a courier service for application delivery and/or follow up. People will typically open a FedEx envelope before tackling a huge stack of regular mail.
• Hand Deliver: If it is a local company, hand-deliver a copy of your job-customized resume with the very well crafted, pointed cover letter. In a bottom corner of the envelope, put “Confidential” and highlight it. This gets your resume past assorted gatekeepers, because anything directed to human resources that has “confidential” on it CANNOT be opened by anyone but the addressee.
• Bypass Job Boards: If you find a job listing on one of the job board aggregators such as Indeed and SimplyHired (and these two between them, Gregory tells us, pick up every single job on the Internet that is not hidden behind a pay wall), don’t rely on these sites if you can avoid it. Also go directly to the web site of the company in question and apply there.
• Follow Up: Build and update a job application tracking spreadsheet and use it to prompt you to follow up. Interviewing decisions are typically made within four to seven business days, so you want to follow up within that time frame, with a carefully crafted voicemail and/or e-mail message. Follow-up is an extremely important part of the job-search process, and most people don’t bother with it.
• Include Gift: Follow up by delivering a copy of a classic business-related book, such as Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People or Jim Collins’ Good to Great.  Include a letter saying, “I applied for this job 5 days ago, and I can’t understand why I haven’t heard from you because…..I’m going to call you tomorrow at….”
• Include Gimmick: Buy a new shoe, and put it in a nicely gift-wrapped box. Include a cover letter or card that says, “Now that I have my foot in the door, I’m going to call you tomorrow at….” Other gimmicks that have been used successfully include pizza boxes and toys that reflect the particular industry.

True, gimmicks like shoes and pizza boxes may rub some recruiters the wrong way. However, what are the odds that those individuals would have picked your particular needle out of the resume haystack if you hadn’t done anything special?  If nothing is working, you don’t have a lot to lose.

“At the end of the day, you are trying to be different and stand out,” Gregory reminds us.

Securing the contact information

Start with the company’s web site. Some have very detailed information about key employees down to the director level. And look through the press releases archive for releases that might quote someone from human resources or the department of your target job.

Then try job-oriented social media services such as LinkedIn. Look through the company’s LinkedIn members for someone in HR or some other appropriate department. (During this process, you might also stumble across some people you know—or who know people you know—at the company, whom you can leverage to help secure the interview.)

If the job description says the position reports to or coordinates with some other positions, use the “Advanced Search” feature to find individuals at the company with those job titles. If they ask, “How did you get my name?” reply, “Nobody can hide from me!” Of course, individuals contacted this way will often say they don’t handle job applicants and refer you to HR. However, they may have some influence, and you may impress them enough that they use it on your behalf.

If you can’t find a name through the company web site or through Internet or social media searches, try contact exchange services like Jigsaw.com

ProNet members get tips on securing more interviews

It isn’t always possible to find a name to use, but it is more possible than most applicants think. The research is worth your time, because having a name will increase your chance of securing an interview significantly.

“Even if the only contact information you ultimately find is just hr{at}company.com, sending an e-mail directly to the company through such an address is a lot better than just applying through a job board,” sums up Gregory. “But do apply online, so if you reach someone and they ask you if you’ve applied, you can say yes.”

The Hidden Job Market

If you aren’t willing to make all this extra effort, you are probably wasting your time pursuing publicly advertised/posted jobs. Your application will just get buried in the mountain of resumes they attract.

However, keep in mind that some 80% of jobs are never publicly advertised or posted, and must be found through networking.  You never know when or where you might encounter someone who has or knows about one of these hidden jobs. Make sure your resume is in the hands of family and friends; send it by e-mail so they can blast it out at will. Include a customizable cover letter that is the first page of the document.

“Be on edge every moment of every single day, and keep a stack of resumes and your “brag book” in your car,” Gregory advises. “Always be ready, and follow up aggressively.”

Don’t blow opportunities at job fairs, trade shows, and networking events by just shot-gunning out business cards. Instead, identify and target a few specific people at each event, and engage with them. Ask, “How can I help you?” And be in interview mode. Show up as if you are going to be doing an interview—because you are. Carry yourself with confidence and certainty, make good eye contact, and dress the part.

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.

Strategies for Managing Stress

By Perry Smith

Being out of work is extremely stressful, affecting us both physically and emotionally.   We can’t eliminate stress from our lives, and we shouldn’t want to.  We can’t grow and improve without regular bouts of stress; it’s only nonstop stress that can hurt or even kill us.

Perry Smith

Consider the athlete working on strengthening muscles.  The muscles are alternately stressed past the “burn fatigue” point, and then rested.  As the athletes say, “No pain (a.k.a. stress), no gain.”   It’s the same thing with the stress of being unemployed.  We can channel it and use it to our advantage, but only if we oscillate regularly—multiple times per day—between stress and decompression/relaxation. Though we can’t get rid of stress, we can manage it.  And except in rare circumstances and under doctor’s orders, stress management is not based on the use of sleeping pills, tranquilizers, and other drugs.  They just disguise the symptoms of too much stress, and lead to a whole new set of problems.

A Buffet of Stress-Management Suggestions

Ever see a stressed cat?

The Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts (LSMSA) has put together a list of 14 healthy activities and practices you can use to manage stress. For example, you should take regular timeouts throughout the day to oscillate between stress and relaxation.  Studies show that people who take such regular breaks get more done in the course of the day than people who push through the day nonstop. Vigorous exercise is also a great stress reducer.  And it delivers an added benefit by causing us to produce beta endorphins, which are great mood boosters.  “Endorphin” is short for “endogenous morphine,” and, ounce for ounce, it is more potent than pharmaceutical morphine.

For a complete list, check out the LSMSA website.  It’s a smorgasbord; pick a few items that stretch you a bit but don’t seem so difficult or foreign that they discourage you. The items on the LSMSA list make some broad suggestions, but leave you to fill in the details.  Here are some specific suggestions you may find helpful.

Contemplation: Pray, meditate, write in your journal, read, listen to music, be thankful.

Family & Community: Call a loved one; spend time with your family; read to your kids; have a girls’ [or boys’] night out; greet strangers and make them smile; encourage someone; volunteer.

Health & Lifestyle: Get a massage; cut back on sugars and caffeine; complete an unfinished project; take a stress management course; start each new day in the evening by getting a full night’s sleep; under-commit and over-deliver.

Recreation: Take a walk; exercise; play a sport; visit an aquarium or zoo; go on a picnic; go hiking; take a long drive; take a vacation; bake some brownies; draw or paint; play a musical instrument; watch a good movie; go to a museum; go to a poetry reading.

Smile--it's infectious!

The Power of Smiling

And don’t forget to smile.  The facial muscular activity that produces a smile actually stimulates the production of the neuro-transmitter serotonin, a mood enhancer. Deep smiles also trigger the secretion of ecstatic endorphins and immune-boosting T-cells, while lowering the stress hormones cortisol, adrenalin, and noradrenaline. And smiling is contagious, helping to spread its benefits to people we encounter.

Again, it doesn’t matter which of these tips you choose to follow—it’s a smorgasbord.  Get started by following the path of least resistance.

The point is to avoid getting caught up in the stressful situation.  Recognize the stress and oscillate away from it at regular intervals.  When you decide to manage stress this way, you will quickly calm down and start to feel better. Some helpful sources of stress management information include:

• Stress on MedicineNet.com
• The Manage Stress website
• The American Institute of Stress website
• Video series: Strategies for Managing Stress, Part A Part B Part C

Designed for and run by job-seeking professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc.  There is no cost to the members.  If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today. 

ProNet Program Discussed on KUNR

Are you an unemployed professional wondering if a program like ProNet is right for you? Are you a prospective employee looking for quality, pre-screened applicants?

Dan Erwine on KUNR’s Nevada Newsline radio program recently conducted an in-depth interview with ProNet Branch Manager Pieter Droog and ProNet members Johanna Downey and Rich Goldman. Topics covered in the interview include:

• Who can/should join ProNet
• How ProNet can improve job search skills
• Using ProNet to network for job opportunities
• Spirit-boosting peer support
• ProNet success stories
• What ProNet membership entails

Listen to the interview to get a great overview of what ProNet is all about, and whether it is right for you. It has proved to be an incredible resource for many now-employed professionals.

Designed for and run by unemployed professionals, ProNet is a program of the non-profit JOIN Inc. There is no cost to the members. If you are an unemployed professional or an employer, call (775) 674-5408 today.