Regulating Your Digital Footprint

Posted on August 29, 2011December 23, 2022 by Bill Ryan

It is not news that people go to the Internet first for information on just about anything these days. But it may be news to some that this includes recruiters, hiring managers, and just about anyone else who is trying to locate talent for their businesses and organizations.

About 90% of all recruiters and 50% of all employers perform web searches before making a hiring decision. If you are trying to find a new job, transition to a new career, or seek new business opportunities you need to have a presence online. Can you imagine anyone in 2011 making a claim of professional greatness and not being found online? It is unimaginable.

Your digital footprint refers to all the web information there is about you out there. It can come from many places, including social networking media, profile and biography pages you may have established on your own or that exist on employer and association web sites, blogs, forum and message board postings, chats, and even political or religious contributions that you have made. Even if you are committed to not being online, it is hard not to find yourself there somehow.

If you are serious about regulating your digital footprint — and you should be — there are five things to strive for:

Your presence should exude self-confidence and be in multiple locations.
A positive professional image should be displayed.
A consistent and keyword rich value proposition should be present across all platforms.
A clear and memorable career brand should exist.
There should be no digital dirt or negative unprofessional content about you found in searches.

Above all, never assume that anything you write or post online is anonymous.

Begin regulating your online presence by seeing what it looks like now. Google yourself in quotation marks and find every reference to you on the first three search ranking pages. Assess what is being shown about you. Is it positive or not?

It is highly probable that you are sharing your name with others. Note how often this happens. You may even find that old information once confined to paper has now been converted to digital format and is available online.

Now that you have a baseline, get started managing. There are three fundamental steps to establishing a digital footprint that you control:

Have a well written resume with a distinct value proposition that serves as your image anchor.
Build a basic online by completing profiles on Google Profiles and ZoomInfo.
Set up a business networking presence by having active accounts with LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

All the above-mentioned websites are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) rich meaning that they will rank high during web searches.

There are additional sites and features to consider opening accounts with such as MyWebCareer, Google Alerts, Reputation.com, Vizibility, Ecademy, and BrazenCareerist. Taken together these will give you a lot of power to control your cyber appearance.

Some management techniques to know when using these sites include:

Fill your profile with tangible competencies.
Be aware of the privacy settings, set them accordingly, and check them frequently for usage changes.
If sharing a name with someone, differentiate yourself, such as “John A. Smith, Senior Marketing Executive”.
Use headshots taken by a professional photographer.
If you cannot remove digital dirt, then bury it by creating enough multiple positive presence points that the bad stuff gets lower search rankings.
Untag yourself from friends’ Facebook tags.

Follow these suggestions and you will be well on your way to managing what the online world will learn about you. And you don’t have to be a control freak to want or need that level of self-authority.

Education and the Unemployment Rate

Posted on August 15, 2011March 21, 2022 by Bill Ryan

I read a couple of interesting statistics the other day in a National Journal article about the widening talent shortage among many American companies. The first was a citing about a study done by ManpowerGroup, a Milwaukee-based workforce consultant, showing that 52% of employers cannot recruit skilled workers for their open positions. The other stat, this time by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed that of the 9.2% of Americans currently unemployed, 78% of them have only a high school education or less.

These numbers are surprising, and they tell me a couple of things worth noting regarding our stubbornly high unemployment rate. One is that the rate might not be so high if Americans would get educated and trained in areas of shortage and need. The other is that thinking you are going to get ahead in the 21st century with just a high school education is not preparation for the future.

The public and their proxy the media love to play the blame game for the high unemployment rate. It is the Democrat’s fault or the Republican’s fault. It is greedy Wall Street or lazy Europeans and so on and so on. Instead of finding fault, perhaps we need to hold up a mirror and look into it. We could lower the unemployment rate and all the misery associated with it significantly if we would further our education in strategic ways. Education is one of the best ways out of this mess.

I rarely hear or read the mainstream media report about this lurking education gap as being a contributor to the unemployment rate and I pay attention to a lot of news. Why do you think that is? Why is the national anchorperson hesitant to say that too many of the unemployed are lacking in the right kinds of education? Perhaps there is a concern that to say so might be perceived as elitist or that someone’s feelings may be hurt. There is an elephant in the unemployment room that is being ignored and not fully discussed. And we as a country do ourselves no favors to avoid it.

We should address this issue head on. If we could be delivered news we could really use such as where the human resource shortages are and what is involved in preparing to fill them, we could be much better informed. Let us hear more reports about the skills deficit for a change instead of this constant obsession about budget deficits. Let us agree that without a vigorous push for high quality education at all levels, then our chances of competing in the world marketplace are greatly diminished.

School districts and universities need to be more engaged in this conversation as well. Of course, their mission is to provide a broad range of learning opportunities to the greatest number of people. But by not identifying and shifting resources to address critical shortage areas of the economy they are denying our workforce significant solutions needed now. Academic advisors and counselors need to work more aggressively to align emerging talent with areas of employment need.

Let us try harder to see education as the benefit that it is. There is too much of an attitude that views education more as a cost than as an investment. Education can provide individuals with practical skills, a critical thinking ability, and confidence to succeed. It is among the best self-help techniques society can do for itself.

We can do more to reduce unemployment than to just wait for banks, corporations, or government to release more money. We can be smarter about creating a congruence between hiring gaps and workforce development.

Looking At Work Experience Gaps on Your Resume

Posted on May 23, 2011December 20, 2022 by Bill Ryan

Among the abundance of things worrying the job seeker today is the work history gap on your resume that occurs when there is a break in the employment chronology brought on by any number of reasons— most often by having been laid off.

Conventional wisdom has been and continues to be that having a period during which you were not employed is a detriment to finding future employment. The well-founded fear is that a hiring manager will check to see if there exists an employment gap when reading your resume, and if finding one, will instantly draw the conclusion that this indicates you are a flawed candidate.

Being seen as out of work is still very much considered a stigma, which is unfortunate given how much unemployment was foisted upon so many. But this is the reality facing job searchers. Gaps in your resume’s employment experience section make finding a new job even more difficult.

Obviously, avoiding gaps is recommended when rewriting or updating your resume. However, lying on your resume by stating false employment that did not really exist to fill in time is not recommended. So, what can be done?

Job and career counselors typically advise that employment downtimes be accounted for with some type of professionally meaningful pursuits, such as schooling, training, interning, or volunteering. Furthering your education can be advantageous but has that annoying consequence of costing money at a time when it is in short supply. On the other hand, offering an organization or company free work in exchange for useful experience is cheaper and potentially a powerful way to approach explaining in the future how you spent your time between jobs. Let us examine the options of interning and volunteering more carefully.

First, to clear up some semantics: By interning I mean engaging in a non-monetary exchange, whereby the intern provides a novice-level professional service and in turn receives a documented benefit from the organization, such as professional oversight or instruction. I see volunteers as providing a service which is either an organizational need or enhancement, while expecting little to nothing in return except for an emotionally satisfying feeling and/or for the opportunity to list the experience on one’s resume.

If considering interning, check to see that the organization has an established policy, and if so, that you agree with its terms and conditions. If it does not, either look elsewhere or get involved with the development of a new intern policy, thereby giving you a say in the arrangement. Note, volunteering can raise complications for both the volunteers and the enterprises taking them on.

In general, the considerations from both parties should be focused on whether the tasks being performed by the volunteer are compensatory or not. The rules are defined by state labor law, employment discrimination legislation, and by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The latter essentially puts the kibosh on volunteering with for-profit private sector companies along with federal, state, and local governments. It is just not allowed.

Most people’s professions linked to the private sector or government would appear to present a challenge to the volunteer looking for a place to offer services. Fortunately, the FLSA does not deter you from volunteering in public, charitable, or religious facilities. So, perform whatever service feels right in those cases.

When approaching any kind of organization about interning or volunteering, especially one that also hires employees ask the following questions:

Would your service in any way violate the FLSA or state labor laws?
Would you be displacing or replacing an existing paid employee?
Would you be performing work that is normally paid employment?
Will the intern or volunteer duties require a contract or to be documented in some way?
Do you have control of your hours and level of work intensity free of coercion?
To yourself ask, “Is this worth it to me?”

Filling in that troublesome work history time gap on your resume is worth some effort. If the reason for the absence is elder, child, or personal care, or possibly even bereavement, then insert it in the professional experience section as a “job”. But if the gap occurs because you were let go from your previous job and it is taking you six months or more to find another, then consider interning or volunteering. Just go into whatever you do with your eyes wide open.

The Job Interview

Posted on May 2, 2011December 20, 2022 by Bill Ryan

Job interviews are about as eagerly anticipated as root canals. Even if you have been out of work for a long time and are desperately wanting to reenter the workplace, the necessary step of performing well during a job interview can be daunting. Interviewees tend to think the practice is akin to an interrogation or grilling, the result of which can be a harsh judgement, like getting voted off the island. They can be stressful enough to make even the most seasoned professional anxious.

The job interview can be a faulty procedure and not always reliable. We have all heard of how someone can shine during the interview only to lead the employer to feel buyer’s remorse once the candidate is on the job. Notice how subjective interviews are. One wonders if there should be a more objective way of identifying talent before the job offer is made.

For most hiring situations, however, there needs to be a subjective screening component. The interview provides just that and is not going away anytime soon. Think of it this way. The interview provides a much-needed opportunity for dialogue, in other words, a two-way conversation. Here is a chance for each of you to check each other out. It will help the pre-interview jitters if you can go into it feeling that you have some control over the situation. Even if they offer you the spot you do not have to accept it unless the potential employer passes muster with you. Go with some questions prepared that show you are inquiring about them.

But, of course, the harsh truth is that you must convince a hiring manager or team of interviewers that you are a fit for the position and the organization. If you have not had an interview in a while and are wondering what to expect from an upcoming one, you might be helped by considering some likely scenarios. I have had many clients brief me on how their interview experiences have gone and here is what I can confidently generalize about them:

Go into an interview prepared. To think you can wing it, no matter how professional and experienced you are, is taking an unnecessary risk.
Be ready to talk about yourself as a relatively short introduction. Here is where you present your value proposition. This intro should also describe how your skills and qualifications are a fit for the position.
Know and be prepared to describe how much onboarding and induction training you will need. You are a cost to the employer. They may want to know how much expense you may be at the start of employment.
Have a response to the dreaded, “What are your weaknesses?” question. I recommend having two weaknesses to which you are ready to admit. But frame them as challenges you are actively managing. Have at least one example for each, describing how you have recently and positively addressed the challenges resulting in good outcomes.
Show that you are developing your career by having specific short and long-term goals to share.
Get ready to talk about how well you work both independently and as part of a team.
Be able to furnish information about the employer. Let them know that you have researched them and have a couple of questions designed to learn more about them.
A large and likely category of interview questioning is known as behavioral questioning. This is where you talk about how you handled or would handle realistic situations and challenges on the job, whether fabricated or actual from your past. Always think of presenting your answers such that it is clear how you added value to the circumstances.

There will likely be more questions than these, but by preparing and having responses ready for typical questions you are fortified for what may come.