VisualCV Blog

Are You and Your Executive Brand Digitally Distinct?

By Meg Guiseppi, CPBS, MRW

Have you self-Googled lately? Are you in the habit of routinely Googling "your name" to see how the results stack up? You should be.

In executive job search, having accurate, on-brand search results associated with you is critical these days. Recruiters and hiring decision makers rely on online searches to uncover and qualify candidates for the very jobs that may fit you perfectly.

If they can't find you online, they may never find you, and you may never get the chance to be considered for those jobs.

Conversely, if they find anything to discredit you, you're probably dead in the water, too. But don’t worry. You can work to build up positive results which will push those disreputable ones down to page 3, 4, or lower of results for your name, rendering them ineffectual. But remember that nothing on the Web is ever permanently deleted.

William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson, Reach Personal Branding founders, broke out 5 possible online profiles in their book Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand:

Digitally disguised

Your vanity search does not match any web pages. There is absolutely nothing about you on the Web - you have no online identity. You’re hidden from those who may be looking for you.

Digitally dissed

There is little on the Web about you, and what is there is either negative or inconsistent with how you want to be known – your personal brand.

Digitally disastrous

You have plenty of search results, but they have little relevance to what you want to express about yourself. Results for others sharing your name may be in the mix, too.

Digitally dabbling

There are some on-brand results for you. Even though there aren’t many results, the information about you is relevant and on-brand - nothing negative. From here, you can easily move to the next level.

Digitally distinct

There are lots of results about you that reinforce your brand – the right message about you is out there. You’re among or approaching the superstars in the world of online identity. But your work isn't done. Google results can (and do) change overnight. You need to keep an eye on your online identity and keep building up the good stuff. There’s always room for improvement.

To quickly run your own digital check-up, try the Reach Personal Branding’s Online Identity Calculator. It’s a nifty little tool to assess how strong your online presence is.

When you take the quiz, you'll be asked to type "your name" in a Google search and note the total number of search results, how many are NOT about you, and how many accurate, on-brand results ARE about you in the first 3 pages.

Among the 7 questions provided, you're asked which statement best describes the career level for which you are aiming:

    ■    University/College Student or Recent Graduate
    ■    Entry-level (1-5 years' experience) or Individual Contributor
    ■    Manager with 5-10 years' experience, Director, Consultant or Small Business Owner
    ■    VP, Highly-regarded Consultant or Acknowledged Thought Leader
    ■    C-level Executive, Partner, Board Member, Celebrity, Renowned Consultant or Expert

When you submit your answers, your digital ranking compared to the expected number of accurate results for the career level you chose is revealed – digitally disastrous, digitally distinct, or somewhere in between.

My results showed I made it to the top. After taking the quiz, this note popped up:

Congratulations. You are digitally distinct!

This is the nirvana of online identity. A search of your name yields lots of results about you, and most, if not all, reinforce your unique personal brand. Keep up the good work, and remember that your Google results can change as fast as the weather in New England. So, regularly monitor your online identity. That way, if something negative, such as an anonymous ad hominem attack on your character on a blog, crops up, you can address it quickly, before it gets out of hand.

The quiz is free and takes about 5 minutes to complete. The results can be eye-opening and impel you to get busy. And if you “pass” the quiz, you’ll be given the code for the “I’m digitally distinct” badge to place on your website or blog.

Need some help building your online brand identity and positioning your unique value proposition? Check out my compilation of blog posts, 15 Best of Online Brand Identity and Social Media.

© Copyright Meg Guiseppi, 2009. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

A C-level/Senior Executive Branding, Online Identity, and Job Search Strategist, Meg Guiseppi loves collaborating with forward-focused corporate leaders to define their unique value proposition, demystify the new world of executive search, and strategically position them for job search acceleration. She is one of only a handful of career professionals to hold both the Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist and Master Resume Writer credentials. Meg is also a Certified VisualCV Creator and Certified Professional Resume Writer. For a wealth of insider tips on personal branding and executive job search, visit her Executive Resume Branding Blog/Website. Follow Meg on Twitter.

Tune In To the True Measure of Your Executive Brand

By Meg Guiseppi, CPBS, MRW, CPRW

Gen-Y personal branding expert Dan Schawbel has said:

“You are the chief marketing officer for the brand called you, but what others say about your brand is more impactful than what you say about yourself.”

William Arruda, personal branding guru and founder of Reach Personal Branding, puts it this way:

"Your personal brand resides in the hearts and minds of those around you."

With many career successes, you may be well aware of your unique value proposition in the job market, but your own assessment of yourself is just one opinion and may not tell your entire brand story. Soliciting feedback from those around you will help you more precisely distinguish your top brand attributes and uncover your authentic personal brand.

What better indicator of your greatest strengths and assets than what those who work with you day to day have to say about you? They’re in a position to know how you use your strengths to make things happen and benefit the company. They’ve seen you in action many times, tackling impossible challenges, re-engineering failing operations, driving bottom line profitability, etc.

An extremely useful practice when developing your personal brand, getting feedback is also a big confidence-booster as you move forward in a job search. Who doesn’t need that?

Here are a few questions I have my executive clients ask the people around them:

■    What do you feel are my greatest strengths that have most benefited the company and others?

■    What was my most important contribution to the company?

■    What things do you know you can always rely on me to deliver?

■    What would you say are my top personal attributes that define how I make things happen?

■    What did you learn from me that helped you do your job better?

As we go over their input, we start seeing consistencies. Often to a person, certain personal attributes and strengths shine through. Combining that information with my client’s own assessment, we’re able to validate and crystallize a personal brand message that differentiates them from their competition and will resonate with their target audience.

I think you’ll find that the people around you will be happy to tell you what a positive impact you’ve had on the company’s success and their own careers. Their feedback will give you a deeper appreciation of what differentiates you from others doing the same work and help you nail your promise of value to your next employer.

You may already have some written recommendations from the people who know your work. Do you have any relevant LinkedIn recommendations? They can be very telling. Also, pay attention to how people introduce you to someone new. Their brief intro probably contains important nuggets.

Extend the value of this exercise:

■    Create a high-impact job search document for your career portfolio – a reference dossier with accolades. More powerful than a typical list of professional references with their contact information, this document includes short quotes from your references.

■    Lead your career biography with a quote from someone who knows your work firsthand – a compelling attention-grabber that immediately generates chemistry.

■    If you haven’t already, ask these people to transform their input into compelling LinkedIn recommendations for you.


For more help in building your executive brand, see my series of blog posts, Best of Personal Branding Strategies, Lessons, and News.


© Copyright Meg Guiseppi, 2009. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

A C-level/Senior Executive Branding, Online Identity, and Job Search Strategist, Meg Guiseppi loves collaborating with forward-focused corporate leaders to define their unique value proposition and strategically position them for job search acceleration. She is one of only a handful of career professionals to hold both the Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist and Master Resume Writer credentials. Meg is also a Certified VisualCV Creator and Certified Professional Resume Writer. For a wealth of insider tips on personal branding and executive job search, visit her Executive Resume Branding Blog/Website. Follow Meg on Twitter.

Put your Email Signature to Work

A great way to get people looking at your VisualCV is to promote it with a "My VisualCV" button. You can use these buttons as part of your email signature, as a bio link on your blog page, as your discussion forum avatar, or anywhere you want to be noticed.

 

Creating the button is very easy to do, we've got instructions over in the Learning Center.  That page also includes instructions for configuring your email application to use the VisualCV button as part of your email signature.

Making the button work properly in your email signature can be a bit tricky.  Be sure you follow the step-by-step instructions for doing so.  Making this button work in your web-based email (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL) just got a whole lot easier because of our newly announced partnership with WiseStamp.

WiseStamp is an innovative service that evolves and empowers email signatures.  WiseStamp seamlessly integrates with the leading web-email providers, such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and AOL, automatically signing every composed message.

We recently released a couple of video tutorials that show you how to use your VisualCV button and  WiseStamp to put your email signature to work.  Watch the videos now.

Mind the Privacy Settings!

Before you include your VisualCV button in your email signature, on your blog, or anywhere else, you'll want to review the privacy settings for your VisualCV.  From your home page, you'll see the privacy of your VisualCV.  It must be set to "Anyone" in order for the VisualCV Button to work properly.

You'll also want to review some More Privacy Settings...

Make sure the privacy setting is correct for your contact info and that of your references.

Once you've got your email signature set-up be sure to catch-up on some other recent news:

• How can you pay for VisualCV?
• Exclusive Offer:  Charter VisualCV Membership
• CAREEREALISM Surreal Resume Contest - Use your VisualCV to win a FREE Spring Break trip

A VisualCV, Inc. Company Update

By Phillip Merrick, Chairman

It's been a while since I last blogged here, and a lot has been happening at the company level at VisualCV, Inc.  The biggest news is that our ownership structure has changed quite a bit.   The current financial environment is not helpful to venture-capital backed companies.  As a result, several of our original investors, founders and staff have banded together to acquire majority ownership of the company, with continuing support from our partner Heidrick and Struggles.   We are genuinely excited about this, and see it as an important enabling step for the future growth of VisualCV.

As part of our business plan, and to ensure this future growth, we are bringing forward several of our revenue generating initiatives.   As you have seen, we have begun featuring advertisements and sponsorship on some selected parts of the site.  As we have promised, you will never see ads popping up on your VisualCV -- that's part of the original commitment we made to members.

We also plan to begin offering premium paid memberships.   In this economy, we think we can start rolling out some features (complementing existing features) that really help jobseekers manage their job search and stand out in front of employers. Again, as part of our commitment we will absolutely ensure that creating, maintaining and sharing your VisualCV is free. And employers you share your VisualCV with will never have to pay to view it.

As you might expect, we're having some healthy internal discussions about what features should go in the premium version -- and what we think members would be willing to pay for.  Many of you have already volunteered your opinions about what you would value in an enhanced VisualCV offering -- and we really appreciate your thoughts.  In fact we want to broaden the discussion and let all members weigh in on what the premium paid offering should include.   To that end, we've created a short web survey for members.   We'd be grateful if you can help us by spending a few minutes on it.

VisualCV Stands Out In Recent CNET Review!

At VisualCV, we are dedicated to one simple proposition: giving you the best possible vehicle to stand out and highlight your professional achievements in front of employers and the world.   And we are happy to see CNET validating that vision by ranking us as the #1 online resume website in their recent review of the category.  To quote:  "With such a nice design and some cool features, VisualCV is the service to beat."

We plan to continue working hard to ensure they don't ever beat us!

Use Social Media to get an Interview

By Abby Gutowski

The time between submitting your resume/cover letter and receiving a call for an interview can be extremely long and stressful. Each employer has different selection processes, requirements and formality that you're unable to control. And many are using that time to do some research about you based on your social media profiles. In fact, more than forty-five percent of employers reported in a recent CareerBuilder survey that they use social networking sites to research job candidates, a big jump from 22 percent last year.

Luckily, you now have the power to control your brand online and influence employers’ perceptions of you. For some this is a frightening revelation, but if you use it to your advantage it can reap incredible rewards. How? Make sure your social media channels are cared to properly and represent who you are, or the person you strive to be.

First, get your LinkedIn profile up to par. Start by adding elements of your resume, connecting with influential industry professionals and building your database of referrals. Also, don’t be afraid to be transparent - optimize by adding links to your blog, Twitter profile, social media bio and VisualCV. A well-kept LinkedIn profile that tells everything it can about you tells the employer you’re serious about your job search and provides them with more information needed to separate you from other applicants.

Keep your Twitter profile clean and relevant. Twitter can be a powerful job search tool if you’re smart about how you use it. Many employers will look up your Twitter profile to see if you’re connected to people that matter in your industry, if you’ve ever badmouthed a former or current employer, if you’re a positive person or if you provide relevant content to followers. If employers see that you’re using Twitter to connect and learn, they know they’re more likely to have a worthwhile interview with you.

Don’t hide on Facebook. It’s become a trend for many young professionals to alter their Facebook identities so current and potential employers can’t find them. I’ve seen many variations of this, such as using a middle name instead of your last name, or changing your name altogether. People who think they’re being strategic are really showing employers that they have something to hide. Employers understand that you are human and will probably be going out and having fun, so photographs of you partying will only become problematic if that appears to be the only thing you do. Complement and balance the personal photos by posting news articles or joining groups relevant to your industry.

Be smart and transparent on Facebook and other social media tools to tell a future employer you’re comfortable with how you present yourself. How you’re perceived can help turn your lifeless application into an interview.