Career Advancement, Personal Branding, Job Hunting Secrets

1. Be The Captain of Your Career!
Jack Molisani
Twitter: @JackMolisani

2. About the Speaker
• President, ProSpring Technical Staffing
• Executive Director, The LavaCon Conference on
Content Strategy and User Experience
• Author, Be The Captain of Your Career:
A New Approach to Career Planning and
Advancement

3. In this Session
• The Top 10 Mistakes Professionals
Make When Looking for Work
• Expanding Your Sphere of Influence,
and Your Income
• Advancing your Career Using
Branding and Positioning

4. The Top 10 Mistakes
Professionals Make When
Looking for Work

5. Overview
• Recruiters (both HR and external
agents) receive tens if not hundreds
of resumes a day.
• Do everything you can to make it
easy for them to help you get the job.
• The mistakes are presented in order
of chronology, not severity—some
are more “deadly” than others!

6. 1. Not Following Submission Directions
• Make a good first impression—
follow the submission directions!
• MS Word or PDF?
• “No calls.”

7. 2. Not Building Professional Relationships
• Get to know people, build your professional
network, meet your recruiter.
• You want someone who will sing your
praises to the next person in the hiring
process…
• …especially if you are not an exact match
or have an odd situation.
• Plus, when a great job comes in, who do
you think we’re going to call first?

8. 3. Bad Manners
• It's poor form to mail your resume
to 45 recruiters in one email...
• …especially when you display them
all in the To: field!
• Keep a log of where your resume
has been sent.

9. 4. Applying When You Are not Even Remotely Qualified
• Pay attention to the "must have"
vs. "nice to have" requirements.
• Do apply for jobs that are a bit of
a stretch, but at least be in the
ballpark!

10. 5. Not Summarizing Skills vs. Requirements
• Not all recruiters have the time to
read your resume from top to bottom.
• Many just skim for keywords.
• They can’t possibly understand what
you do as well as you.
• Do you really want someone who is
not a professional deciding if you are
a good enough to pass on?

11. 5. Not Summarizing Skills vs. Requirements
• Be proactive: send a summary of
how your experience matches the
job requirements.
• If you don't have one of the
requirements, this is where you say,
"I don't have XYZ, but I do have
ABC..."

12. 5. Not Summarizing Skills vs. Requirements
• Suddenly, recruiters love you:
- They didn't have to search for the
information.
- You typed the summary for them.
- You pointed out important information
they may have missed.
- All they had to do is verify the
information and pass it on.

13. 6. Misnaming Your Resume
• Remember, recruiters receive tens if
not hundreds of resumes a day.
• Would you want to receive 100
resumes a day named "resume.doc"?
• Name your resume so it can be found
easily: for example, "Joe Jones.doc"

14. 7. Poor Resumes
• Your resume is the first sample of your
writing skill and attention to detail.
• Hiring managers judge candidates
based on their resumes...
• …and will disqualify you if they find
errors in your resume.
• Make sure you have ZERO DEFECTS
in your resume!

15. 8. Mis-evaluation of Importances
• Highlight your strengths.
• Minimize your weaknesses.
• Put the most applicable
information, experience or skills
near the top of your resume.
• Put less applicable experience
near the bottom.

16. 9. Not Anticipating Questions
• Recruiters will wonder about oddities
in resumes, so be proactive and
explain them.
• Examples:
- Gaps in Your Work History
- Your Citizenship or Work Visa Status
- Moving from Contract to Perm
- Need Relocation Assistance?

17. 10. Not Keeping Current
• Keep current with popular tools.
• Nothing is worse than losing a great
job because someone else kept up
with the latest tools and technology
and you did not.

18. Summary
• Follow submission directions.
• Use good manners.
• Name your electronic resume.
• Use a professional email address.
• Have a flawless resume.
• Highlight your strengths, minimize your weaknesses.
• Keep your skills current.
• Include a summary of how your experience and
skills match the job requirements.

19. Expanding Your Sphere of
Influence, and Your Income

20. Overview
• To expand your sphere of influence, you must
first identify your current sphere of influence.
• To do that, assess the value you bring to your
organization.

21. Defining “Value”
• What, exactly, is “value”?
• Encarta.com has two definitions that apply:
– Monetary worth: an amount expressed in money or
another medium of exchange that is thought to be a
fair exchange for something
– Worth or importance: the worth, importance, or
usefulness of something to somebody

22. Defining “Value”
• Education.Yahoo.com defines value as:
– Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor
– (emphasis added)

23. Defining “Value”
• Thus there are two types of value:
– Actual value: Do you generate revenue and reduce costs
for your organization?
– Perceived value: Are you perceived to generate revenue
and reduce costs for your organization?

24. Measuring Value
• You can’t manage what you can’t measure
• So how do you measure your corporate value?
• Your actual corporate value?
• Your perceived corporate value?

25. Measuring Value
• API story
• RoboHelp story
• Boxtop story
• Decision tree story

26. Measuring Value
• While bringing a project in on-time and on-budget
clearly saves a client money, have you ever
helped the company generate revenue?
– Sales proposals
– Marketing collateral
– Presales-tutorial, etc.
– Lead generation (I met someone at a conference…)
– Anything that helped generate revenue? How much?

27. Measuring Value: Actual
• Have you helped generate decrease costs for your
company?
– Decreased time-to-market (which does both)
– Decreased tech support costs
– Decreased translation costs
– Anything that saved your company money?
How much?

28. Measuring Value: Perceived
• Compensation (salary or hourly bill rate)
• Where you are in the product development cycle?
• Are you considered a critical member of the
development team (profit center)…
• …or someone who has to be there, a commodity
to be acquired for the lowest possible price given
an acceptable level of quality (cost center)?

29. Other Ways
• Other ways to identify what companies value:
– Statistics from job postings
– Feedback from hiring managers

30. Statistics from Job Postings
• I chose 50 riting jobs at random using Indeed.com
(a job posting aggregator)
• I copied job “Requirements” into a file and then
sorted and tabulated the results
• I did not include “pluses” or “nice to haves”
• I’m only reporting on skills or attributes that
appeared at least two times in the results

31. Skills and Attributes
• Excellent communication skills 58%
• Ability to work alone, work in teams 22%
• Ability to adjust to changing priorities, deadlines 18%
• Ability to multitask/juggle multiple projects 18%
• Good organization skills 14%
• Attention to detail 12%
• Strong interpersonal skills 10%
• Self motivated 6%

32. Tools
• Microsoft Office 50%
• Microsoft Project 22%
• Others 20%
•

33. Feedback from Hiring Managers
• I posted the following question to the
various social media lists:
– I know what’s popular these days with respect to tools and
technology, but what “soft skills” do you look for when
interviewing candidates?
– Please reply to me off-list.

34. Feedback from Hiring Managers
• I requested “off list” feedback because I
wanted to see if multiple managers identified
the same qualities
• Unfortunately this was such a hot topic it
created quite the online conversation
• At one point a manager had to say,
“Enough—get back to work!”

35. Feedback from Hiring Managers
• “Here is a rule of thumb that I swear by: You can tell more
about a candidate from the questions they ask than the
answers they give.
• Do they ask about your business model? Where they fit
in? Why the position is open? Are there any “challenging”
projects or people they should be aware of?
• Do they ask about what problems you are facing that they
can solve? What keeps you up at night that they can take
off your plate, etc. …?”

36. Feedback from Hiring Managers
• “Business acumen. Understanding the basics
of how and why an organization ticks and what
motivates managers in general so that when
specifics come around no one is surprised.
Oh, yeah. Business acumen.”

37. Feedback from Hiring Managers
• “Here are the traits I think are vital to being a successful tech com person:
– Curiosity
– Ability to analyze lots of disparate input and distill it into the essential bits
– Thick skin
– Ability to work with a variety of people in a virtual environment
– Sense of humor
– Self-motivated
– Ability to move between the clouds and the weeds without getting stuck in
either place
– Interest in science and technology
– High but realistic standards for quality and strong work ethic”

38. Feedback from Hiring Managers
• “I think it’s interesting that Kit listed “curiosity”
first. At ProSpring, the first attribute I list in the
Recruiter job description is, ‘Curiosity and the
desire to help.’
• I think that summarizes what we’re all looking
for in an employee, eh?”

39. Recap
• More companies are looking for soft skills than
particular tools and technologies
• Managers want to see excellent communication
skills combined with curiosity, observation skills
and the desire to help
• The upshot: Have those and the hottest tools and
technology to increase your corporate value.

40. Advancing Your Career
Using Personal Branding

41. • I recently went to a conference where
attendees’ name tags included the
phrase, “Ask me about… [then an
answer we provided when registering].”
• From this came a major career
realization:
Introduction

42. The whole concept of personal branding
can be summarized by that simple
phrase, “Ask me about…”
Introduction

43. • Before we look at some examples,
let’s define some terms.
Introduction

44. Branding vs. Positioning
• A brand is: “a unique design, sign, symbol,
words, or a combination of these,
employed in creating an image that
identifies a product and differentiates it
from its competitors.” BusinessDictionary.com

45. Branding vs. Positioning
• Companies spend billions of dollars
advertising and building brand
recognition.
• Why?
• So people will remember and buy their
products.

46. Branding vs. Positioning
• Often a name-brand product and a
no-name (or store brand) generic product
are the same product produced by the
same manufacture

47. Branding vs. Positioning
• What matters is that consumers perceive
that a brand is better and therefore buy it
(usually at a higher price than a non-
branded generic equivalent)

48. Positioning
• Positioning: to communicate about a
product or service by comparing it to a
better-known product or service
• “Stronger than steel,” “Faster than FedEx,”
“Cheaper than Walmart”
• Each phrase above identifies what makes the
product different (quality, speed, price) and
then a better-known product (or company)
against which the item is positioned

49. The Power of Branding and Positioning
• Philip Morris originally launched the
Marlboro brand in 1924 as a woman’s
cigarette, and advertising was based
around how ladylike the cigarette was.
• When smoking was linked to lung cancer
in the 1950s, Philip Morris repositioned
Marlboro as a man’s cigarette.

50. The Power of Branding and Positioning
• Men at the time indicated that while they would
consider switching to a filtered cigarette, they
were concerned about being seen smoking a
cigarette marketed to women.

51. The Power of Branding and Positioning
• So Philip Morris’ advertising agency
decided to use a series of manly figures
in the ads, starting with a cowboy.

52. The Power of Branding and Positioning
• Within a year, Marlboro’s market share
rose from less than one percent to the
fourth best-selling brand

53. The Power of Branding and Positioning
• Within a year, Marlboro’s market share
rose from less than one percent to the
fourth best-selling brand

54. Personal Branding
• Branding and positioning obviously
apply to selling shoes or laundry soap,
but what do they have to do with you,
the project manager?
• That’s where personal branding comes in.

55. Personal Branding
Just as a company creates a brand and
promotes why people should buy the
product or service, so should you create a
personal brand and promote why people
should buy your product or service.

56. Personal Branding
• In Tech Comm 2.0: Reinventing Our
Relevance in the 2000s (Intercom, Feb
2012) Scott Abel and I asserted that certain
roles are in danger of becoming a
commodity, a product or service to be
acquired for the lowest possible price
given an acceptable level
of quality.

57. Personal Branding
• Why?
• Because many companies do not
perceive the value that project managers
bring to their organizations
• And why not?
• Lack of personal branding!

58. Personal Branding
• Personal branding and proper positioning
communicate why companies should buy
your services and pay the rate or salary you
want to be paid.

59. Personal Branding
• Example:
• Andrea Ames at IBM, when asked
what she does for a living, answers,
“I solve business problems.”
• Not, “I’m a project manager.”
• Not, “I wrangle programmers.”

60. Personal Branding
• While she may actually do those things
as part of her job, they’re not the way she
approaches her job, and they’re certainly
not how she defines her corporate mission.
• “I solve business problems.”
• What a great personal brand! It instantly
communicates what she does and why she
is valuable!

61. Responding to Market Changes
• In their book Built to Last: Successful Habits
of Visionary Companies, James Collins and
Jerry Porras state that of the visionary
companies they studied, all had a history of
responding to market changes while staying
true to their core values.
• Content Strategist Sharon Burton’s
rebranding story illustrates this beautifully.

62. Responding to Market Changes
“The whole reason I got into tech comm was not
because I loved to write, it was because I loved
being at the crossroads of people and technology
and I could make a difference. That’s why I do what
I do.
When the recession hit and I got laid off, it forced
me to reexamine what drives me in this field, what
excites me. I realized what was true when I started
is just as true today: I love being at the intersection
of people and technology.

63. Responding to Market Changes
Unfortunately, writing online help topics just
doesn’t excite me anymore. But helping
companies adopt a content strategy that gives
people the information they need so they can go
out and change the world?
That excites me!

64. Responding to Market Changes
Our industry is changing. We’re in a content
development revolution. Companies don’t
need just user manuals anymore, they need
social media and webinars, YouTube videos
and multi-channel publishing.
These are the areas on which companies are
spending money, and they need help to do it
right.

65. Responding to Market Changes
So the process of rebranding wasn’t just
calling myself by a new title, it included
reeducating myself and repositioning myself so
I could effectively offer the services that
companies need as the very ground beneath
them changes.”

66. Responding to Market Changes
Alvin Toffler, an American writer known for
his works discussing the digital revolution,
takes the concept of reeducation a step
further:
“The illiterate of the twenty-first century
will not be those who cannot read and
write, but those who cannot learn,
unlearn and relearn.”

67. Ask Me About…
• How can you respond to market changes
while staying true to your core values?
• What can you do well that you can
promote as a specialized service for which
you should be handsomely paid?

68. Ask Me About…
• Are you an expert in rolling out
HIPPA-compliant software systems?
• A specialist in earthquake-safe commercial
construction?
• A wiz at recovering troubled IT projects?

69. Ask Me About…
• What should people ask you about?”

70. Recommended Reading

71. Reach the Speaker
– JackMolisani@ProspringStaffing.com
– Twitter: JackMolisani
– The LavaCon Conference: www.lavacon.org