Internet Presence - Yet another day

Focus
Working on a career transition is not easy - but it is cathartic and it certainly helps to provide much needed focus on what is truly important, what you really want to do, what your goals really are. There is a book out "Stumbling on Happiness" showing that we don't really know what we want - if we got what we think we want, we would be miserable. Guess what - when you are in transition you still need to think about it.

Job Search = Sales and Marketing Job
I don't have to tell anyone in job transition that the old adage "Finding a job IS a job" is true. What else is true is that finding a job is a Sales and Marketing job - I have never had a sales and marketing job and I have not been trained to do it. I am an engineer with lots of business experience, but not a sales and marketing guy.

Well I am learning to be a Sales and Marketing guy - the hard way - I am learning to do sales and marketing on myself, probably the hardest product to work with, we are not unbiased observers of ourselves. So, how do you do this? Get some training. I have hired a coach to help me do it right. Tiger Woods has a coach and he is a better golfer than I am a job searcher - I deserve a coach. I used Execunet to find the coach, but there are other ways as well.

Internet Presence
My latest endeavor is to increase my own internet presence so that I actually exist on the internet. Its not actually that complicated, but its not simple either. There are two really good sites devoted to help on this topic.

Ron Bates, who is the most connected guy on LinkedIn, sponsors two great sites on improving your job search CV-Advantage and Search-Advantage. Both provide excellent instruction for getting an internet presence in a few weeks. He is also a very helpful guy and runs a successful executive search firm. I am following his advice and have had some good results.

Eric Wolfram also has a site that provides excellent instructions on getting improved internet visibility - his is mostly focused on a business, but the same rules apply. http://wolfram.org/writing/howto/3.html

Hope all this helps all the active job seekers out there - e-mail me if I can help you more directly.

Jim Rowland