It’s time for all working professionals to create a robust Online Career Brand. It’s time for you to go beyond the resume. When it comes to your career, you can’t afford to have a boring general resume and not optimize your online career brand.
If you answer yes to more than one of these questions below, you need to up your job search game and create a more robust Online Career Brand:
1. Have you ever applied for a job- either externally or internally at your current employer, or pitch new business as a Consultant or Contractor, and don’t get considered for the opportunity?
2. Your LinkedIn profile is not fully configured and certainly not optimized.
3. You frequently get the final interview and do not receive job offers.
4. You work as a consultant and don’t close business after long sales cycles.
5. Employers and potential clients keep on postponing a final decision indicating that they aren’t sure about whether your skills match what is required for the role or project.
Too many people wait until they actually lose a job to “ramp up a job search” when they should be actively marketing themselves on a continuous basis through an Online Career Brand.
All working professionals should have an online career brand. Now either it is a default brand or it is a brand that you have developed strategically. Strategic development of your online Career brand is critical in your job search because:
– Recruiters search for candidates using keywords on LinkedIn, social media, online searches and their Careers candidate database.
– If your online brand is keyword rich, search engine optimized and easy to find based on critical keywords, more Recruiters will find you in their searches.
– You want to be easy to find online because many jobs are confidential searches and not posted online.
Even if you have a job, you need an online career brand.
•Semi-active and passive candidates make up 77% of the workforce and while they are not actively looking for new opportunities, Recruiters will reach out to them regarding roles for which they look like they could be a potential fit.
•Recruiters are constantly developing and revising ways to approach passive candidates based solely on their online profile, making it critical to maintain a strong, marketable presence
Online Career Brands Allow You to Continuously Market Yourself
The best time to look for a job is when you don’t need one. When you have a job. That’s when you are considered a “passive” candidate.
Many times, Recruiters will work to meet a passive candidate’s decision criteria if they feel they the candidate is a strong match for the role because the candidate was not looking to make a move.
Without an Online Career Brand, you will not seen by Recruiters. Recruiters hunt for those with outstanding personal brands who are marketing themselves professionally and have the right skill set.
All Working Professionals Need an Online Career Brand
CareerRx ProTips on Career Brands
1. Treating your career brand as if it were a business makes you more marketable and sustainable in a market that offers minimal job security.
2. Your brand allows you to establish your expertise in the industry.
3. Developing an Online Career Brand allows you to extend your reach to all media and platforms, providing evidence that you are current with technology trends and not against innovation.
4. People are able to see not only what you do at work but how you do it and who you are, providing much more information than a resume.
5. You are seen as your own valuable entity instead of just your current role or another member of your organization.
(Neasmith, 2013)
About The Career Launcher
After spending years managing Talent Acquisition for Fortune 500 companies, The Career Launcher created the CareerRx™ program along with ResumeGenie™ for resume optimization.
In CareerRx™, The Career Launcher reveals how recruiting and job search has been transformed by recruiting technology including applicant tracking systems, social media, LinkedIn Recruiter, Indeed.com and how we must change our definition of “job search” to launch and continuously promote an Online Career Brand.
With over 20 years of hands on direct recruitment experience, The Career Launcher demystifies the online job application process and offers job seekers a comprehensive program to jump start their job searches. She provides an insider’s perspective to what companies are seeking from candidates in the interview process.
It’s time for you to go beyond the resume. When it comes to your career, you can’t sit on the sidelines in the social media revolution. Click below to jumpstart your job search today with CareerRx™.