Free Job Search Help for Katrina Victims

In the wake of the unprecedented disaster that Katrina has wrought throughout Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, career professionals nationwide have stepped up to the plate to help. Many hundreds of us are offering our time and talents to help those displaced to regain employment as one step on their way to recovery. I have reprinted in its entirety a Press Release from our Volunteers for Careers organization. If you are one of those directly affected, visit www.volunteersforcareers.com to learn more.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FREE JOB SEARCH HELP FOR KATRINA VICTIMS

Individuals whose jobs were swept away as a result of Hurricane Katrina can obtain free job search help from professional career consultants across the country. Volunteers For Careers is offering no-charge assistance with resume writing, job search strategy, and career transition advice to evacuees from the Gulf Coast and others who experienced job loss as a direct result of Katrina.

"People lost much more than their homes in this tragedy," says Volunteers for Careers director Susan Whitcomb. "They lost their entire means of livelihood. Helping evacuees find new jobs quickly is essential to getting the Gulf Coast region, and the country, back on its feet."

Volunteers For Careers was initially formed in response to the September 11th, 2001 tragedy. Their volunteers helped thousands of job seekers in the regions and industries affected. The initiative has now been re-launched and expanded to help those in need from the Gulf Coast.

Hurricane Katrina victims can register to obtain free services at www.VolunteersForCareers.com or by calling 800-513-7439 toll free. They will then be matched with a volunteer career practitioner who will contact them directly, working with them via phone, e-mail and/or in person as each situation requires. It is the objective of all Volunteers For Careers workers to help these displaced individuals return to the workforce as soon as possible.

Career services practitioners — counselors, coaches, consultants, resume writers and others — who wish to volunteer their time and expertise can also register at the organization's web site.

Volunteers For Careers is a collaborative effort of leading career associations nationwide, coordinated by Career Masters Institute (CMI) in collaboration with the Association of Career Professionals International (ACP), Association of Online Resume and Career Professionals (AORCP), National Career Development Association (NCDA), National Resume Writers' Association (NRWA), Parachute Associates, and Professional Resume Writing & Research Association (PRWRA), with the support of technology companies Databasepro.net and AcornCreative.com.

For more information, contact:

Susan Whitcomb, Director
888-449-7474 (Pacific Time)
swhitcomb@cminstitute.com

Wendy Enelow, Associate Director
800-881-9972 (Eastern Time)
wendy@wendyenelow.com

C.J. Hayden, Media Chair
877-946-4722 (Pacific Time)
cj@gethirednow.com

www.volunteersforcareers.com

Beware of Digital Dirt

With recruiters, hiring executives, and selection committees using the Internet to research candidates in ever increasing numbers, executives are beginning to see the impact - and the results can sometimes be distressing. ExecuNet recently revealed a disturbing statistic in their Insider Newsletter. In that newsletter, they stated that a recent survey of recruiters revealed that 75% of respondents use search engines to uncover information about candidates. The disturbing part is that 26% indicated that information on the Internet has caused them to eliminate a candidate from consideration!

Reasons cited by recruiters for dropping candidates were diverse. They include inaccurate academic qualifications on their executive resume, omission of facts regarding publicly available information on an ethics investigation, strange personal habits, misrepresentation of job titles or company information, suspended driver's or professional licenses, and litigation against former employers.

So while you want to work to ensure that there is plenty of positive information about you out there in cyberspace, it is also important to monitor what is out there and its possible negative effect on your candidacy for a position, as well as your overall reputation in the employment marketplace.

I highly recommend that my executive clients do a little detective work and Google themselves to see what is being said about them. If you do find something potentially negative, do what you can to counteract it by commenting on blogs that contain the information, covering it honestly but as favorably as possible in your own blog and/or web portfolio, and taking care to disclose to the recruiter anything that you ascertain can and will easily be revealed about you in an Internet search. It goes without saying that you will also want to correct any inaccurate information on your executive resume.

Executive Recruiter Optimism Grows

Recent surveys of executive recruiter outlook on the executive job market indicate near-record highs in confidence. ExecuNet's August survey reveals a generally bullish attitude regarding ongoing market growth, with 71% being confident or very confident of improvement in the next 6 months. Expectations are for a 17% increase in assignment volume from corporate clients over the next 6 months.

With continuing good news of profit growth and solid economic indicators, businesses have felt the confidence to expand payrolls, leading to plans by 48% of search firms to hire additional professional staff in the near term.

With regard to the industry-specific job picture, recruiters expect the greatest growth in Pharmaceutical/Biotech, Healthcare, Financial Services, High Tech, and Business Services. However, there appears to be solid growth in virtually all market segments, raising the specter of high executive turnover as a concern for employers.

Blogs as Key Component of Executive Employment Search Strategy

Blogs are rapidly emerging as a key strategy for executives to increase visibility on the radar screens of executive search professionals including executive recruiters, venture capital firms, and internal corporate recruiters. They are a relatively easy way to build your personal online brand, increase your industry standing, and position yourself as an expert resource in your fields of expertise.

Blogging is a proactive activity. I strongly recommend that you establish and maintain your own blog. You will also want to visit blog sites and respond to the posts you find there, and use them to develop topics for your own blog entries. You can partially automate the review process by subscribing to an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) that will automatically download recent blog posts to your computer for review without the necessity to individually visit each of your favorite blogs every day. Some resources for RSS feeds include:

http://www.bloglines.com
http://www.feedreader.com
http://www.feedburner.com
http://www.feeddemon.com

Your executive blog can be a simple venue for your thoughts on relevant subjects, or it can be a full-fledged executive portfolio and platform for your online identity including your executive resume, your executive bio, white papers, etc. It is important to regularly post on your blog, and respond to comments and questions. Your posts need not be long, and it is far more important to regularly post than that those posts be highly polished, definitive statements on the subject!

There are various free and low-cost sites where you can create your blog, with no need to know about complex coding. Free sites include:

http://www.blogger.com
http://www.spaces.msn.com

Sites that incur a small fee but do tend to have more flexibility in format, etc., include:

http://www.typepad.com
http://www.blogharbor.com

Once you have established your blog, be sure to submit it for inclusion on the major blog search engines, and include a list of these engines on your blog:

http://www.blogarama.com
http://www.blogtree.com
http://www.blogsearchengine.com
http://www.bloguniverse.com
http://www.daypop.com

Blogs are also a potent secret weapon in the competitive career intelligence area. Major companies often host blogs authored by key employees that can provide invaluable insights into the corporate culture and challenges the company is currently facing. If leveraged well, they can even serve as an access point to the inside track on internal opportunities.

Industry giants like Microsoft, Oracle, HP, and Lockheed host multiple blogs. Resources to find blogs of a company you are targeting and/or its CEO include:

http://www.technorati.com
http://www.blogarama.com
http://blogtree.com

With the majority of executive recruiters "Googling" prospective candidates before making a selection, and many doing so before they will even contact you, it behooves you to use blogs to reassure them of your industry reputation and thought leadership in your field.