SEO your name - Google your name - Increase your page rank

If you google your name what do you find? If a potential employer googles your name what do they find? Below I will outline a number of ideas on how to increase your page rank in the Google search results. Before we delve into that topic I think it is important to get a refresher on how important search engines are to internet users.


1. Search Engines are the primary tool used to find links to information on the internet. In a recent survey 40% of all internet traffic goes to Google.
2. In order to get a high placement on Google's search engine you must understand how the Google search algorithm works.
3. Specific and strategic techniques can be used to elevate content to the first page of the search results.

All search engines work in a similar way, so we will just focus on the Google search engine. Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com are a few of the main competitors to Google for English speaking internet users.

How does Google work? Google crawls every available web page and index's everything into a giant relational database. Then it ranks pages based on a number of factors...

Details from http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Top 5 Ranking Factors

1. Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links
   73% very high importance
   

2. External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links)
   71% very high importance
   

3. Diversity of Link Sources (links from many unique root domains)
   67% very high importance

4. Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag
   66% very high importance

5. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains (e.g. TrustRank, Domain mozTrust, etc.)
   66% very high importance

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Overall Ranking Algorithm

• 24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
• 22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
• 20% Anchor Text of External Links
• 15% On-Page Keyword Usage
• 7% Traffic and Click-Through Data
• 6% Social Graph Metrics
• 5% Registration and Hosting Data

So, we need to focus on keywords (your name) written multiple times in the title and body. This is common as the author of the posting or article is usually given credit a couple of times.

Here are 3 strategies that you can use to elevate the content that you desire people to find when they use google.

1. Use Linkedin (professional contacts) and Facebook (personal contacts) to connect with everyone you know and all your colleagues through out the world. The goal is to have lots of people link to you. (see ranking factor #1 and #2). Sign up for these free services, get out every address book you have and send everyone an invite.

2. Start a blog. One idea would be to publish tidbits that you find during your weekly reading or interesting ideas. People love to read and comment on these things. You only need to publish one 250 word posts per week, to make a huge difference.

3. Encourage your friends and co-workers to utilize these free tools (facebook and linkedin). Every link back to the your name or website will strengthen the hold on managing the on-line presence. Encourage your friends to write their own blogs and link to each other and you.

Consistency is more important than anything else. Follow these strategies each and every week and the search engines will display changes immediately and any noise content will be relegated to the back pages in 30-60 days.

Why Padding Your Resumé Doesn’t Impress Employers

Why Padding Your Resumé Doesn’t Impress Employers

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Uploaded on August 11, 2006 by lseley

Have you ever heard of padding your resumé? It’s a term used when people exaggerate their experience on their resumés.

These are the types of people who get involved in school activities just to fill up the white space in their resumés.

My opinion is this never works to impress employers. As someone who’s recently assisted my current employer with university recruitment, I had the opportunity to look through about 60 resumés of students on my campus to fill one position.

For me, it’s easy to tell which students have really been involved and which students are merely embellishing. The students who were genuinely involved tend to have better experiences and skills listed, and can talk passionately about the work they do in an interview.

Who would you rather hire? The student who worked in a team to co-ordinate an event for over 500 students, or the student who simply attended?

My advice to job seekers is to only put something on your resumé if it is something that really exemplifies your personality and accomplishments. Make sure you put down things that you can talk about with zeal.

For example, stating that you are an “active member” of your local business students’ association is a bit of a stretch when your only involvement included attending a seminar and all you did at that one seminar was sit and listen.

Instead, you should include activities where you actually did something to develop your skills, such as participating in a networking workshop, or even planning one! These are the types of meaningful experiences employers look for.

Also, don’t worry about the size of the club or organization you are involved with. Often times, heavy involvement in a small club is far more valuable than occasionally attending events by a larger organization. Employers look for quality in resumés, not quantity.

The bottom line is you should focus on things you enjoy and if it happens to be something great for your resumé, then so be it. If not, then so what? You had fun and learned a thing or two along the way – that’s all that matters.

You Are Not Your Past

Original Post:You Are Not Your Past

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Uploaded on April 25, 2008 by Kirpernicus

The place where the troops camp
thistles and thorns grow.– Lao Tzu

You are not the choices you’ve made.
You are not the child you once were.
You are not your failed marriage.
You are not the setbacks of yesterday.
You are not the bad things that have happened to you.
You are not your past.

The Past Guides Our Choices – It Doesn’t Make Our Choices For Us

Your thoughts or feelings about the past don’t change it. That’s what makes it the past.

Your future is not your past. Your future, right now, is a nest of possibilities. It only looks like your past if your present choices continue the inertia of the past.

The past guides our choices; we have real constraints, opportunities, and experiences based off of the past. Right now, though, those constrains, opportunities, and experiences are what they are – wishing they would be different doesn’t make them different.

Whatever happened, you are here. But being here doesn’t mean you have to stay here or that you will stay here.

Life is but an endless chain of presents and choices. You have never been your past.

What If You Stop Attacking Yourself?

What if you stop beating yourself up about what you did or didn’t do? Perhaps you’d see what you can do.

What if you stop wishing that things were different than the way they are? Perhaps you’d see how to move toward the future you want by using the bounty of the present.

What if you didn’t assume that past failures are who you are? Perhaps you’d believe, just for a second, that you could be successful.

What if you choose to let the past be the past? Perhaps you’d see the ripe possibilities of the future.

Every ounce of energy that you spend attacking yourself is an ounce of energy that’s diverted from your growth. We are finite beings; use your resources wisely.

The Resume is Dead! Again?

Original Post: The Resume is Dead! Again?

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Did you ever see the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

There is a scene where a man is trying to give the body of a live man to “the mortician”. The live man keeps insisting “he is not dead yet”. However, those around him say he is so close to dead you should just take his body anyway. This is clearly a parable for the resume.

I recently Googled, Is the Resume Dead? I was astounded by the number of people who have pondered this question, blogged about it, written white papers on it and identified the resumes “replacement”. In a few minutes of research I “learned” the traditional resume was going to be replaced by:

• Video
• Social Media
• Blogs
• Google®
• Logical Employment Profiles
• Personal Web Sites
• LinkedIn®
• Visual CV®

I stopped reading because my head was spinning. Stop the train

Let’s start with what a Resume is by definition. It’s a summary of accomplishments. That’s it, plain and simple. No matter how the hiring process changes, somewhere there must reside a summary of the job candidate’s skills that can easily be accessed by hiring managers. For practical purposes, it also must be down-loadable, up-loadable, and easily shared via both electronic and hard copy means. The resume may not be the document that opens the door for the opportunity, but somewhere in the hiring process, a resume will be requested.

Here is some perspective on the mediums that I “learned” will “replace” the resume.

Video and Visual CV -In essence each of these are attempts to offer some sizzle to a resume. Dress them up through technology advancements. Conceptually I agree that embedding graphics and video has great utility. However, the issue is that most Human Resource professionals and hiring managers will not take the time to view or review them. Generally speaking these systems of enhanced presentation will not work with the Applicant Tracking Software companies use to manage resume data. Over the past year, I have spoken with several hundred human resource professionals and recruiters. Not once, did I hear any of them suggest they would like to receive multimedia, in lieu of, or as an enhancement to a traditional resume. Numerous times I did hear candidates would be removed consideration if they did not provide traditional resumes. I also heard broad concerns about potential discrimination; including directly from a former Equal Opportunity Employment Commission chairperson. I recognize this argument against leveraging technology, may sound like a luddites response, but I am only reporting what the marketplace is telling me. I am definitely a believer in enhancing job candidate’s presentation materials, but it cannot come at the expense of having a traditional resume prepared and available.

Blogs & Social Media - Blogs and social media offer a great platform to demonstrate expertise. By their very nature, they also serve as great mediums to expand awareness of potential job candidacy and also accelerate networking. However, none of these benefits will replace the resume.

LinkedIn - Do you need a resume if you are up on LinkedIn? The quick answer is absolutely yes. LinkedIn’s template, does allow an individual to summarize their accomplishments, but it is not a transferable or up-loadable file, it is not graphically pleasing and it is rigid in construction. No doubt Linked In is playing an ever growing role in job search, but it is not a replacement for the resume. I have had human resource executives specifically tell me they are not interested in being provided links to LinkedIn profiles. They also may contain personal pictures which are prohibited as part of some companies hiring policies.

Personal Websites - Personal websites provide a much broader palate to present information about a job candidate. They offer candidates tremendous flexibility in describing their expertise, beliefs and accomplishments. They really can serve as a wonderful platform for expanded personal branding and the de facto centralized Internet location for the most complete and up to date information regarding an individual. They also can serve as a great delivery mechanism for a resume, however, like LinkedIn, they will not replace the resume.

Google - Google is the new resume. What a statement! I’ve heard it numerous times. So whatever the ever changing Google search algorithm returns when an individual’s name is entered into a search engine, now serves as your resume? This is preposterous. I’d hate to be named Brad Pitt, but not the actor. No one would ever see “my resume”. Online Identity Management is becoming critical in job search, but it is not replacing the resume.

Logical Employment Profiles (LEP) - There certainly is some movement in the taxonomy matching world. Think e-harmony. You fill out a form and it matches you to a job. Several new job boards and service providers are pushing this concept. I firmly believe it will work, but only for a small subset of the total positions people are looking for. Two of the early leaders in this market are My Perfect Gig for engineers and One Wire for finance professionals. I have no data to back up this next statement, but I have a suspicion, the candidates that are matched for positions by LEP’s, will still be asked for a resume even after the profile match.

Today, the resume is not dead, nor is it about to die in the near future. I would argue is not even sick. The resume remains the central document in an individual’s personal marketing for career transition.

Have your resume ready to go and make sure it is specifically targeted to the position you are applying for. If submitting to job boards, make certain you have embedded the proper keywords and tagged correctly for optimal search results.

There are many great job search and persona branding technologies and tricks to leverage. In this ultra competitive job market it is critical to utilize them all when personal marketing in a web 2.0 world!

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Guest Expert:

Ian Levine is the founder of Career Brander. The Internet’s first personal marketing portal focused on individuals in career transition. Career Brander’s site includes software tools for creating resumes, instantly building personal career websites, financial planning calculators, professional business card printing, and proprietary content & links that aid and educate for a more effective modern day job search. You can read additional personal branding and career articles by Ian Levine on the Career Brander Blog.

Is Human Resources Fatally Flawed?

Original Post: Is Human Resources Fatally Flawed?

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Don’t think about it. Just answer me quickly: Is HR fatally flawed?

How many of you answered yes? When I first started writing this in April, I said yes too. Yes, this has been on my mind since April, sitting in my draft folder waiting for me to answer the question. And I can tell you, if I waited until I had a perfect answer, you may never have seen a post. In that time frame, I’ve gone back and forth but I finally come to the conclusion that HR isn’t fatally flawed but it does need some work.

Is The Tide Turning Against HR?

When I wrote this question back in April, I knew my answer but was afraid to post it. So I thought about it over and over again for almost five months. Here’s why I thought HR was through:

1. Most of HR’s value could be outsourced – Heck, it already was in many cases. Everything from talent recruitment and selection to heavy lifting in critical employee relations and benefits matters were being taken care of (or very heavily influenced) by outside agencies and consultants.
2. Unclear goals and ROI – If you are a small to medium sized company, you can’t afford to have an entire department sucking funds from your other profitable departments. At some point, HR will become a luxury department for large Fortune 500 companies (the same one’s that can afford to run advertisements simply to raise “brand awareness”).
3. No input on business direction – You don’t get a seat at the table without having business savvy. You want to know why C-level titles or so inconsistent for HR? A true lack of business courage outside of the talent world. If you have nothing to add about marketing messages, sales forecasts, or budgeting issues, you’re of no use at the table. Let’s just put that to bed.

So I saw all of that and thought that in a decade or so, you won’t see robust HR departments outside of large companies. And even at those companies, HR would be in a precarious position if bad financials started influencing decision making.

Of course, my thinking changed.

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

When you have a near death experience, one of the common experiences is the light at the end of the tunnel phenomenon. One of the other common experiences was a feeling of warmness, comfort and an almost enlightened state. Now some will tell you that it is your soul going on to its next destination or a series of chemical and electrical responses to your body shutting down. Whatever it is, when people come back from an episode like that, it is one of the few ways humans become permanently rewired.

What’s the connection to HR? I am convinced that HR is going to be transformed due to a soon coming near death experience. It is going to become a fad to integrate high performing HR folks directly with operation groups in organizations (it already has in some forward thinking companies). This will end up reducing HR to a complete administrative function and to the brink of death. People are going to scramble and eventually, a new way of integrating the talents of HR will hit someone and it will become the norm for decades afterward.

We won’t get there until something drastic happens though. People in HR are still too comfortable with the current system.

New HR: Now More Than Ever

HR doubters and haters are reading through this thinking I am just making the case for them. Only in their mind, HR just ends up dying at the end and everybody is happy. HR has heard this for how long, right? Maybe the biggest indictment on corporate inaction is the fact that the HR department you see today is still the best thinking we have on how to best manage our “most important asset.”

So I began thinking about what critical functions of HR I would want to keep if I wanted to put together a minimalistic but effective corporate structure. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Workplace Process and Productivity Expert – I would want someone that could look at a workplace process and figure out all of the issues negatively impacting the productivity. While some would put this under supply chain management, I would want a person that could incorporate supply chain principles with organizational development to give a wide perspective.
2. Functional and Effective Internal Ombudsman – This would be a person that becomes the next generation of employee relations. Someone who would be comfortable (and be given the authority) to call out management and employees on their detrimental actions and be compensated based on solving issues. An internal ombudsman will command respect (but not necessarily agree) because their recommendations and results will be explained and made public to all employees. Hard to wiggle out of that.
3. Employee Life Cycle Manager – This person would be the guru on how to best integrate new people into an organization, develop careers internally and anticipate and plan exits for any number of reasons. As part of their internal career management, this person would also be in charge of all internal and externally coordinated training and development activities. If you thought of your company’s employees like a giant factory with thousands of moving pieces, this person would know where each piece is at and will be in any given minute.

Those would be the functions I would choose to continue if I had to cut it down to the bare minimum with functions I could track ROI and clear cut goals on. Everything else I could outsource effectively if needed.

Obviously there are people in HR that cover these areas in various ways but I’ve yet to see an HR organization that organizes them around these sorts of functions.

Does this make sense? If it doesn’t, what does? And if you’re happy with how things are currently structured, what’s the argument against trying a different approach if your manager came to you with this idea?

Do You Know What You’re Looking For?

Original Post: Do You Know What You’re Looking For?

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So often, I have people that are looking for a new job, network with me but they can’t tell me what kind of position they are seeking. Sometimes they only know they don’t want to do the same thing as their previous position, or they don’t want to ‘limit’ their options, or they just don’t know what’s available. They tell me they are “open right now”.
I can’t help you if you can’t tell me what it is you want!
That may sound obvious, but to a great many job seekers it’s the biggest obstacle to getting meaningful leads. Before you send your resume to a job posting, or go to a networking meeting, or pursue specific companies, take the time and put in the effort to figure out what you want to do and what you are looking for.
Here are some ways to help you figure that out:

~ Take assessment tests to help you figure out your strengths, and understand your personality better. Google “career assessment test” and you will find a multitude of options. I recommend taking multiple tests to see if you get consistent results.
~ Ask family, friends and previous co-workers what they think your strengths and abilities are. Often others see talent and passions in us we didn’t recognize ourselves.
~ Evaluate your previous jobs and determine what aspects and tasks you enjoyed or did well to help you discover what new position would be most appealing. Also, separate your tasks from where, and with whom you did them. Often it wasn’t a job you disliked, but rather the company or culture.
~ Research what kinds of jobs exist related to your interests. You can do this by searching online job boards, getting guidance at your state’s workforce centers, asking others you know, and other online resources. Be realistic as to what you can get hired for with the skills and experience you have, however, for most people there are more options than they might initially realize.
This process may take some time. However, once you determine what your target is, you will be much more effective at communicating a specific objective to others and they will be much more able to give you guidance and effective leads and referrals.
Know what you are looking for!

Why LinkedIn Recommendations Really Are Valuable

Original Post: Why LinkedIn Recommendations Really Are Valuable

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LinkedIn recommendations are like public reference letters, but are they too positive to have any credibility?

In a blog post titled “
Requested Recommendations on Social Networks: Why I Won’t Do It“, web strategist Jeremiah Owyang weighs in against recommendations on LinkedIn. Although what he says has a lot of merit, ultimately this is an example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

In his article, Jeremiah sums up by saying-

I Won’t be Giving LinkedIn Recommendations

Although I’ve only given honest recommendations in LinkedIn, I won’t be giving anymore recommendations on that platform (at least for the foreseeable future), instead, I’ll use my blog and Twitter to provide them in a more organic area where there aren’t obvious filters –making the recommendations count even more. The challenge of course is finding them will not be easy.

If his blog post was initially aimed at requested recommendations from him, and even though he mentioned examples of people who found jobs using LinkedIn recommendations, Jeremiah’s conclusion is that all LinkedIn recommendations are cheapened by the way the system is almost entirely geared towards positive recommendations.

That may be true, but here are 3 reasons why I think Jeremiah is wrong to completely stop using LinkedIn recommendations.

1) The job search process is a sales process.

When you’re trying to sell something to someone, one rule is to not give them objections, i.e. reasons not to buy. Stress the positive over the negative.

Even if LinkedIn is only a few years old, this idea is not. Before LinkedIn recommendations, people had (and still have) references and recommendation letters and can choose which ones to give and which ones not to give to a recruiter. By deciding whose recommendations to seek or which ones to hide, you are simply making these same kinds of sales decisions on LinkedIn.

In either case, it’s up to the recruiter to decide whether more reference-checking is needed.

2) The relation between the recommender and the recommended is what matters most.

Not all recommendations carry the same weight or should. Here’s how to rank them:

1. Best - a recommendation from someone by whom you were employed, such a past boss or client.
2. Useful - a recommendation by someone who witnessed your results firsthand or was directly impacted by them, such as a colleague or business partner.
3. Sometimes useful - a recommendation by someone who is impressed by you or your work, like a fan, friend or family member.

You can always click through to see more information about the person who actually made the recommendation and where they are in this ranking.

3) LinkedIn is reliable.

It’s fairly difficult for someone to fake recommendations on their own. If your profile shows that you have recommendations from your last employer, that recommendation almost certainly came from them and is less likely to be faked than a typed or handwritten letter. And of course, you could usually use LinkedIn itself to find other people to confirm the source of the recommendation. Compare this with a typed letter where often the only sign of authenticity is a company letterhead.

Even if I disagree with Jeremiah’s conclusions, his blog post inspired me to rewrite the recommendations section of my
Gigantic Tips Guide for Finding Jobs With LinkedIn by putting less emphasis on the
numbers game and more on the recommendation sources.

If you liked this article and appreciate what I’m trying to do with JobMob, you can leave me a recommendation on
my LinkedIn profile.

Originally published a version of this article on the terrific
Personal Branding Blog.