Using Wordle In Your Job Search

As a business analyst, I'm always looking for ways to improve things.  One particular situation has to do with performing a job search in a competitive marketplace such as in today's age.  There are a number of strategies and coaching steps around positioning one's self well with prospective company's.  Whether refining your resume or analyzing a job posting or reviewing a prospective company's corporate culture site, there is a tool for you!  The tool is called 'Wordle' and it can be found at www.wordle.net.

The object of Wordle is to create 'word clouds' which -- in analyst terms -- is a pictorial method for determining 'key words' in either your resume or job description or corporate culture site.  So what is the purpose for all this analysis?  How many times have you heard your career coach say: "put key words from the job description in your resume to customize it for each job."  Before Wordle, there was quite a bit of guess work in determining key words.  Using Wordle equivocates to pressing the 'easy button' with regard to ciphering the key words out of a document.  One can quickly be drawn to key words in documents when they are in word cloud pictorial format.

For a tutorial on Wordle you can go to YouTube and the URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J-s68cO7-A.

Again, the philosophy behind finding these kind of short cuts (or Process Improvements as us Business Analyst types like to say) is to remove time constraining activities.  Leaving more time during the job search for face-to-face networking activities is ultimate objective. 

Review of "Searching the Hidden Job Market" Meeting

February 16th, 2011 at the Koelbel Library 5955 S Holly St, Centennial CO 80121.  Sub-titled "Be Your Own Recruiter & Job Information Sleuth".  With Suzanne Kaller and Kathleen Rainwater; Business Librarians.

First of all, these two experts in research imparted a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience in a very short amount of time.  As an overview their theme was DO YOUR HOMEWORK.  Their philosophy is to be well informed to uncover trends in the business world which may give clues to who's potentially going to be doing hiring.  Once that has been determined then: NETWORK, NETWORK, NETWORK.

Among the two most valuable research tools was to find the on-line reference material available at most libraries found in their "Databases: A-Z".  If you happen to have an Arapahoe County library card, go to http://arapahoelibraries.org/ald/ and look for their database area.  These can also be accessed from your home computer with your Arapahoe or Douglas County library card.  First is the EBSCO database and look for Business Source Premier.  The second is the ReferenceUSA database which is a powerful tool to be used for reviewing companies and includes many search parameters.  For an overview go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW6NmgZIB90&feature=player_embedded.

Among other periodicals they recommend you READ EVERY DAY are: The Denver Business Journal http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/ and The Colorado Business Magazine at http://www.cobizmag.com/.

Armed with these tools, you can quickly search for trends and go out to networking events and / or job interviews with confidence and poise.

LinkedIn's New Feature Called: Signal

I'm very please to bring you a new blog post on the newest search feature inside of LinkedIn called Signal.  Please pay close attention to how this can be used as it offers search functionality for BOTH job seekers and recruiters alike.  If you are a job seeker -- like I am -- it becomes relatively important to understand how recruiters using Signal will be prospecting for talent.  The important thing to remember is to be "findable". 

Judging from my experience, recruiters ARE using advanced tools to locate prospective employees.  It is done through key word searches and that is the beauty of Signal.  Even though Signal is in the experimental stage, I would encourage everyone who is interested to get a feel for it by taking it for a test drive.  The site can be found at http://www.linkedinlabs.com/signal/.

What this tool does is allows users to peruse through updates made on LinkedIn.  Without setting any filters, there are virtually hundreds of thousands of updates to sift through.  But, when the user sets key word parameters, network level, even company, industry and geographical preference, the list becomes quite manageable.

When the user has narrowed the list of status updates, the key is to be on the lookout for people who could influence hiring decisions.  For example industries referring to human resources and staffing and recruiting may be likely candidates to choose from. 

The flip side would be from the perspective of a recruiter looking for a status update from a prospective employee.  One could surmise that it would be a good idea to "make some noise" on your status updates as to what kind of position you're interested in, what skills / experience may be relevant and what geographic preference you're interested in.

Again, the main focus of using social media effectively in the job search is to limit the time spent using the computer for prospecting by efficiently being found.  This should free up your time to do really important things which should definitely include networking and performing informational interviews.

For a very useful screencast on this topic, please visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZjp_ZEExMc.

As always, this is intended to help my fellow job seekers become better at what they do and to reduce the length of the job search.

A Brief Synopsis of How I Implement Software

An example of how I implement software and train users is listed below.

I just finished up implementing a Google App called Insightly that can be used for Customer Relationship Management (CRM).  There are several steps along the way to watch for if you want to try this for yourself.  First, link a gmail account to your website in the cpanel area of the site hosting account.  Next, install Insightly from the https://www.google.com/a/ (Google Apps for Business site).  You'll also need to migrate all of your contacts from other email accounts; this was perhaps the lengthiest phase.  Finally, configure your new gmail account so that all inbound and outbound conversations are tied to various contacts or organizations.  Later other user accounts can be set up to share in the maintenance of CRM interactions.  Training documents were generated using Camtasia for end users.  Cost for the non-enhanced version came in at a whopping zero dollars.  Read more on the product blog at http://blog.insight.ly/2010/12/complete-organisation-history-task.html.

Simply Hired Webinar Review

This article is written as a review of a webinar I attended on November 10, 2010.  The topic was Social Media Recruiting; The Game Changer sponsored by Simply Hired and hosted by Matt Baum. 

As a job seeker, it was quite interesting to see how recruiters are using social media to attract talent.  I was invited to participate in this event by Jodi Addison with onTargetjobs.

Simply Hired is job aggregator which collects job postings from all over the internet and consolidates them in one place.  The advantage of these kinds of sites is that it can greatly reduce the amount of effort required to look for a job.  All you need are a few key words and a geographical preference.  The disadvantage of these kind of sites is that sometimes the positions become stale and when click-through is performed, the position posting has already been taken down.

My single biggest take-away from this webinar was the fact that when looking through Simply Hired job posts, the user is immediately reminded of his/her 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree contacts on LinkedIn who work for or know someone who works for the hiring company.  Of course this 'mashup' needs to be established to allow LinkedIn and Simply Hired to work together.

Other take-aways include Simply Hired's connection with other large media players in the internet space such as WSJ Tech Blog, CNNMoney, Fortune, Business Week, Washington Post and others.  The primary function was that each of these site provides 'real estate' which Simply Hired uses to advertise relevant positions for the readership of these sites.

Controlling on-line brand is a paramount concern of mine as my name and reputation are searchable.  On-line brand is also a concern of recruiters and firms providing a service for job seekers.  Building this brand is important for active and 'passive' job seekers.  The next time a prospective employee is looking for work while either gainfully employed or seeking full time employment, Simply Hired wants to be the brand that is remembered.

For a link to the webinar you can Download a copy of the presentation now!

Networking Important to Job Search

Attended a recruiter panel event at Right Management on 11/9/10.  Included on the panel were onTargetjobs represented by Jodi Addison, tw telecom, inc. with Tammy Fornelius and Tierney Talent Ventures, LLC represented by Kay Tierney, president and founder.  Many timely insights were gained from this first-hand panel roudtable.

Five steps to follow for narrowing job search using Twitter

A friend of mine pointed out to me that there are thousands of microblog job post tweets everyday on Twitter.  A great source for position openings, yes.  An easy task to find what you are looking for without spending precious time, no.  So how can one harness the power of the internet to simply send a composite summary -- short list -- to an email address once per day?  The steps are listed below.  Hint: it involves Twitter's new location feature.  Again, remember that these tips are intended to shorten the laborious task of on-line job searching so that you can do what really makes sense; networking.

1.  Create a Google alert with hash tags.  For example use hash tag: #jobs and #(your city)

2.  Select 'Updates' in the drop down under Type:

3. Choose 'once a day' in the drop down for How often:

4. Allow alerts to be forwarded to your email

5. Preview the results of your search terms in the box on the right

Below is a screen shot of the Google alerts window for reference.