Jobs & Career

Marie Bernegger, Quilter Bee

My dear friend Marie Bernegger (shown here in front of one of her beauties) and I have undertaken a grassroots campaign to convince Martha Stewart to visit our New Jersey State Fair, which is held in Sussex County in early August.

It was Marie’s idea to give it a try. How could it hurt to just ask? She solicited my wordsmithing to spin our Fair’s homespun brand to align with Martha’s own personal brand, and to grab her attention.

Marie is a professional quilter and a member of the Fair’s Home Economics Committee. She’s deeply involved with several community-supportive projects that are showcased each year at our Fair.

I think the letter is self-explanatory.

Dear Martha:

Did you know that about a one hour drive from New York City lands you smack dab in scenic, rural Sussex County, New Jersey – a farmlands retreat with rolling hills, glacial lakes, and lush greenery? We love our feeling of wide-open space around here.

The 2009 New Jersey State Fair, Sussex County Farm and Horse Show will be kicking it up from July 31 through August 9. We want you to come!

There is no other state Fair so close to the big Apple that is so old-fashioned, wholesome, tradition-driven, and fun. Our community has many proud farmers , an extremely active 4-H Club, and so much to offer.

When I think of celebrated crafty, animal-loving people who might enjoy our Fair, your name tops the list.

Sure, we’ve got the pie-eating contest, the chili contest, the tractor pull, and plenty of live entertainment. But look what else we’ve got:

♦  Many families show their farm animals, including rarities like Nigerian goats, Myotonic goats, miniature donkeys and horses, plus a whole array of lop-eared rabbits.

♦  Knowing how much you enjoy all types of animals, you surely would get a kick out of the “Open Show of the Poultry Fanciers of Sussex County”, in the Small Animal Pavilion. Last year we had 160 different classes of poultry. It’s here you’ll likely come across a 4-H’er being tested on various parts of chickens’ anatomy. The rooster crowing contest in the same building shouldn’t be missed.

♦  Our honey bee-handling demonstrations and honey competition draw people from beyond the tri-state area to our local beekeepers’ and apiarists’ wares.

♦  We have an impressive new conservatory and greenhouse where amateur and professional gardeners of all ages will be exhibiting their finest flowers and vegetables – some beautifully, some whimsically arranged.

♦  Artisans from the local Peter’s Valley Craft Center do a knockout blacksmithing demonstration, featuring ironworking such as hand-forged kitchen tools and decorative scrollwork.

♦  Statewide competition in the quilting category is fierce with talented quilters showing their stitching magic. I’m proud to say that I won best in show in 2006 and 2007. 

G R E A T    F O O D ! ! !

♦  Are you a kettle corn kind of person? Or do you prefer simply roasted Jersey fresh corn? We have both.

♦  I hear you’re a hot dog lover. Drop by the Newton Rotary’s Stand for “the Best of the Wurst” – German hot dogs, sausages, brats, and weiswurst.

♦  Step into the Richards Building where the home economics categories are showcased. Would you like to be a judge in the baking contest or gingerbread contest? Or how about the New Jersey’s Best Cheesecake contest or “The One and Only Blueberry Contest”, featuring blueberries in crafts and recipes?

♦  And don’t forget the “Jersey Fresh” tent for samples of local artisanal cheeses and other dairy delights.

Aside from all the fun, your visit would help increase awareness of our state Fair and bring attention to two special Fair events dear to my heart that deeply impact our local community and ripple outward:

♦  The Quilts of Valor program. A devoted, dedicated group of volunteers (including myself) have been quietly hand-crafting quilts for unknown recipients who have served our country. Would you like to help us make a lap quilt for a wounded soldier home from Iraq? This is what we often hear them say: “I can’t believe that someone who doesn’t even know me made me this quilt!”

♦  Each year I devise and deliver a sewing demonstration spotlighting a special technique, then sell the directions and turn over all proceeds to Project Self-Sufficiency of Sussex County, a local grassroots nonprofit agency providing critical services to lift impoverished, marginalized women and children out of the cycle of poverty.

This year, I’ll be demonstrating how to sew a napkin using a mitering technique I picked up from your Martha Stewart Living magazine years ago.

How can you resist?

The whole county is already geared up for this year’s activities. Your visit would certainly make this the most exciting year ever. Thanks so much for even considering visiting our very special Fair.

Warm regards,

Marie Bernegger
Member, The Home Economics Committee

Think we have a chance with Martha? Any suggestions on how to get her to come? Does this make you want to visit our Fair?

President Obama has clearly embraced the new world of the Presidency 2.0, with his transparency, pop culture appearances, and brand-driven approach. But is his well-publicized image riding for a fall?

I’ve written before about Obama’s brand here on the Executive Resume Branding Blog in Obama: A Rebirth of the Cool and Return to Intelligible Speech At the Top.

Some pundits are saying that Obama’s brand positioning may backfire – people may stop listening.

According to a post last month by Andie Coller at Politico, The Everywhere President,

In the midst of a severe recession, with two wars overseas, a new president is unavoidably going to be at the center of the news universe. Obama has taken this intense public interest to a new level – encouraging a highly personalized, uncommonly intimate presidential image.

As communications strategy, the idea seems to be that Obama is the Oprah of politics: People will buy his policies because he is on the cover. But a personality-driven presidency does have its risks.

Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said “He’s trying to metaphorically remove the moat from around the presidency, but that can be a dicey kind of thing. People can be really fickle about this kind of stuff.”

William Arruda, author of Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand and founder of the Reach Personal Branding Club, said

Obama is “perhaps the best example of personal branding we have today.” Effective branding is “based in authenticity, and the thing that makes [Obama] so successful and so confident is that he is being who he is.”

But Arruda agreed that relying on the strength of his popular appeal is a gamble Obama may not win.

“There’s a risk because he is so visible; he’s become the face of everything that happens,” he says. Missteps could cost him dearly. “Could it bring his whole brand down? I think that depends on the issue.”

For instance, he said, if Martha Stewart’s stock misdeeds revolved around her personal brand and what she stands for, she may not have been forgiven.

“If we learned that she didn’t know how to make papier-mâché snowflakes, or that none of the recipes were actually hers, or that she stole them from someone else her brand would not have survived.”

So far, I find Obama’s pervasive presence reassuring. And I appreciate his genuineness and authenticity. It’s too early to tell how his brand positioning will affect the presidency, but I like knowing where he is and what he’s up to.

What do you think? Is Obama setting himself up for a fall?

Having a hard time landing your next great gig? No wonder. In this reliably unreliable economy, finding plum C-level jobs can take longer and requires strategic planning.

I’m assuming you know that a search campaign focusing mainly on posting to various job boards – even select niche boards – then sitting back and waiting for responses, will likely yield pitiful results. And fee-based job boards often yield less than a 5% response rate.

Likewise, merely putting the word out to select recruiters probably won’t get you very far either. They’re feeling the same pinch as the rest of us and have fewer jobs in front of them to fill.

As always, networking your brand value is by far the best way to find a job. But more than ever these days, successful networking happens with deep preparation and well-focused follow through.

The key is locating the right people and gently getting to know them, what their needs are, and how you can solve their problems. This requires targeted research to identify industries and positions of interest, compile a list of companies to focus on, and work on identifying leads to penetrate those companies.

The C-suite executives I talk with who proactively attack job search with informed and purposeful networking are landing faster in jobs that are mutually good fits than those who haven’t embraced the new world of search.

With the endless, often free resources available on the Internet, anyone can add targeted career research to their personal brand and job search toolkit and build up a portfolio of background information to help them network into the best jobs for them.

Why arming yourself with targeted research is essential.

♦  You’ll be uncovering unadvertised positions or creating the impetus for your target companies to chisel out an opportunity for you, so you’ll have little, if any, competition. Your focus will be on proving that you have the goods to make an impact.

♦  You’ll be circumventing HR departments and tapping into the hidden C-level executive job market, because you’re not moving through the HR-driven search process.

♦  Your research will also serve as your due diligence work to pre-qualify whether companies will be a mutually good fit.

♦  You’ll become a known commodity and valuable asset, because you’ve taken the time to extend your brand value to the companies’ inner decision making circle.

Where to find company, industry, and people information.

LinkedIn

Not a member of LinkedIn? You need to be. LinkedIn will be a critical component in your online networking efforts. The site also offers powerful company, industry, people, and job search capabilities.

Hoovers Online

Search by companies (A to Z and geographically) and industry overviews.

Dun & Bradstreet

Forbes numerous lists

Lists include: 200 Best Small Companies, 400 Best Big Companies, The World’s Biggest Companies, Most Trustworthy Companies, The World’s Billionaires, Richest Americans, Largest Public Companies, Private Companies. Company lists include comparative data on rank, sales, profits, assets, market value, etc.

Wall Street Journal’s Earnings News

The latest headlines on company profits and health.

Fortune 500

Loaded with valuable info like each company’s CEO (with contact info), revenues, profits, assets, market value.

JobBait

Offers job market reports by state and industry, with 12-month and 10-year growth rates, calculated using the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, along with lists of decision makers (CEOs, Presidents, etc.)

Individual Company Websites

A wealth of valuable information can be found by spending a little time on the websites of each company of interest, such as company history and where they’re going, annual reports, products/services they sell, and the company’s top executives (maybe with contact info).

Google

Is there anything you can’t find using Google? Once you compile a list of companies and industries of interest, search each one. Look for any press about the companies and top executives in blogs, press releases, articles, etc. Google the name of people who will be interviewing you.

Google Finance 

You can spend hours perusing Google’s in depth and up-to-the-minute financial news, key stats, company summaries, related company financials, market summaries and quotes, a stock screener, and so much other market information.

Job-Hunt.org’s Pick Your Employer page

For how-to articles, links to employer websites, employer rankings, best-of lists of companies, and countless other research resources.

Also check out Job-Hunt’s list of over 900 professional associations and societies to connect with people at companies of interest.

Libraries

Often overlooked, libraries are all about research and librarians are trained research experts. Tell them what you want to find out and they’ll lead you to the resources.

How to use the information you find.

♦  Locate the decision makers you want to position yourself in front of or those closely connected to them then purposefully network your way into their networks. Find out if you already know someone in their networks, or someone who does. Keep your brand value top of mind with the right people in the companies of interest to you.

♦  Determine what challenges are impacting the companies and/or what their needs are so that you can craft value-driven solutions. How can you leverage your expertise to solve their problems?

♦  Familiarize yourself with industry trends and all the details you can find about the company, so you’ll be fully informed and will speak intelligently when you communicate with decision makers at that company. Using their lingo and tossing “inside” references into an interview conversation will position you as an engaged, knowledgeable candidate.

♦  If you’re transitioning to a new industry, learn everything you can about it to make an informed decision as to whether it’s a good move for you.

♦  Once you know what a company and industry’s needs are and how you can fill them, target your career marketing communications (resume, bio, leadership profile, etc.) to evidence your promise of value to them.

Does all this research sound overwhelming? If you don’t have the time or inclination to do the work yourself, talk to me about putting together a personalized targeted company and/or industry research campaign for you.

Related posts:

Top 10 Trends for 2009 C-Level Executive Job Search and Personal Brand Management

In Executive Job Search? Don’t Call a Recruiter, Think Like One

Tap Into the Hidden C-Level Executive Job Market With Top 10 Lists of Best Companies

As if dealing with today’s executive job search 2.0 landscape and figuring out how to position yourself above the competition in your resume weren’t difficult enough, now you’re not supposed to look like you’re over 45.

The wisdom you’ve earned over decades of hard work is greatly valued, but your face better not show it. Apparently, in some industries, a stellar track record isn’t enough.

According to an article in Yahoo! News, more and more 40+ job seekers (even those much younger) in the U.S. are investing big bucks in plastic surgery to look “fresher” so they can better compete, especially given these rocky economic times.

One Manhattan plastic surgeon is taking advantage of this growing trend by offering a “Job Fighter Package” to men and women. Procedures range from non-invasive cosmetic injectables to face lifts.

At a time when money is so tight, many of those going under the knife rely on plastic surgery loans to foot the bill, with finance charges of 12 to 19 percent.

Although certainly not pervasive, isn’t it depressing that a youthful appearance may be the deciding factor in landing jobs in some industries?

Considering the green industry for your next great gig? Maybe you’re looking to transition out of your waning niche to a more promising green job?

First step is researching who to connect with and where to find them.

A great starting point for your research is Job-Hunt’s brand new, ever-growing list of Green Industry Professional Associations and Societies.

Last I checked the page had links to over 130 groups within the following categories:

Air & Climate
Biofuels
Building & Construction
Ecology
Education
Energy Efficiency & Conservation
Engineers & Engineering
Environmental Business & Industry
Forestry & Plants
Health, Medicine & Toxicology
Hospitality & Tourism
Hydropower
Recycling
Regulations, Law & Management
Renewable Energy
Solar Energy
Solid Waste
Sustainability & Permaculture
Wind Power

 What can you do with this list?

♦  Connect with people in the know in this thriving industry and get a feel for whether you may be a good fit, too. Become familiar with the lingo and culture.

♦  Check out the membership directories to source potential employers.

♦  Once you find companies of interest to you, you’ll want to conduct due diligence and prepare yourself to intelligently communicate with decision makers at each company.

♦  When you join a professional association, be sure to add it to your online career marketing communications (VisualCV, LinkedIn profile, online career portfolio, etc.). Recruiters and hiring decision makers searching those key words when vetting candidates will likely be led to your online materials.

Augment your research with Job-Hunt’s also-new Green Industry Job Search Resources page.

Here you’ll find several green job boards and links to the careers pages for over 40 green industry employers, including powerhouses like BP Solar, Duke Energy, Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas, and SunEdison Solar Energy Services.

How will these resources be of value to you?

♦  Determine who the top decision makers are and start connecting with them through LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other online and offline networking groups.

♦  On company websites you’ll find a wealth of information, such as Boards of Directors, C-suite company leadership, and news and press releases. These resources will help you in due diligence and arm you with plenty of background information before stepping into the arena.

A green job not your thing? I frequently direct my C-suite executive clients to Job-Hunt’s extensive list (over 900) of Professional Associations.

Current industry categories include:

Computers & Technology
Education
Engineering
Finance, Accounting & Banking
Government (Federal, State, Local)
Human Resources
Journalism
Law & Law Enforcement
Marketing, Sales
Medicine & Healthcare
Women’s Associations 

Your takeaway?

By far one of the best ways to get your next job, networking your way into companies allows you to tap into the “hidden” job market, circumvent the gatekeepers, and deal directly with decision makers.

Related posts:

Top 10 Tactics to Build a Vibrant Executive Network

Tap Into the Hidden C-Level Executive Job Market with Top 10 Lists of Best Companies

Get the Best Out of LinkedIn for Your Personal Brand, Networking, and Executive Job Search

The first book about personal branding written for the millennial generation by a millennial, Dan Schawbel’s Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success will be an invaluable resource for career success in this shaky economy.

To be published by Kaplan on April 7th, the book teaches people how to use social media tools for personal brand building.

Some highlights from the book include: 

• A proven 4-step process for building a powerful brand (discover, create, communicate, maintain). 
• Tips on using social media tools for personal empowerment, confidence building, and professional networking in order to attract jobs directly to you, without applying!
• Tested advice on how to create an online and offline presence for career protection and self-promotion. 
• Over 40 expert quotes from leaders including Don Tapscott, Guy Kawasaki, Penelope Trunk, and David Kirkpatrick of Fortune Magazine, among others.
• More than 70 research reports, three personal case studies and examples to give you a broader perspective on the topic.

A few advance accolades:

“Dan Schawbel’s thorough and systematic approach will prove useful to anyone engaged in a job search, or more accurately looking to find the right career.”

– Dipak C. Jain, Dean, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
 
“Developing a personal brand is one of the best ways to prepare for a successful future. Read Me 2.0 and learn the secrets of personal branding from Dan Schawbel, one of the leading voices on the subject!”

– Marshall Goldsmith, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal #1 bestselling author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
 
“There is a path in this book.  It leads through reality all the way to truth. In this landmark book, Dan Schawbel reveals how you can and must be your own brand. It will be your most powerful marketing weapon — if you do it right. And in these pages are the keys to doing it right.”

– Jay Conrad Levinson, father of guerilla marketing and author of the “Guerilla Marketing” series of books with over 20 million sold in 60 languages

Related posts:

What Is Personal Branding?

Dan Schawbel on Would Your Personal Brand Survive Without the Internet?

Personal eBranding is a Necessity in the Digital Age

Twitter has become an important place to be when you’re building and managing your online personal brand identity by optimizing its user profile title tags.

My own Twitter profile title tag now reads, “Meg Guiseppi (megguiseppi) on Twitter”, where it used to read, “Twitter / megguiseppi”.

Doesn’t look like much of a change, does it?

But it means that your public Twitter profile, even if you don’t actively tweet, will likely show up on the first page of results when people Google “your name”. It could even become your number one search result, making Twitter a high-impact SEO tool and an instantaneous, potent personal branding tool. That’s a pretty big deal.

When I Googled my name today, my Twitter profile landed at the top of the second page. About a week ago, it was on the fourth page. I can only assume it will inch its way up with this tweak to the way Twitter is presenting title tags.

Another thing to consider is that most of your 160-character Twitter bio – your concise personal brand message – lands in the search result description, which may be the very first thing people see about you when they’re searching your name.

According to Robin Wauters at TechCrunch,

Being the top result for a name search means business, just ask all those venture-backed startups building people search engines who are vying for the sweet spots on the first page. Consider the fact that Facebook is changing its profile URLs to better carry a person’s name for their profiles.

This is all popping up at a time when the startup’s [Twitter's] business model is becoming more and more apparent, its momentum is going through the roof and much larger companies are turning their heads to see what all that noise is about.

Your takeaway:

Even if you don’t have the time or inclination to be active on Twitter, claim your name with a public Twitter profile and pop in your branded mini-bio for a compelling, top-landing Google search result for your name.

Related posts:

Leveraging Twitter to Market Your Personal Brand

Twitter Gets the Job

If you’re not already volunteering some time to your local community, think about getting involved. Savvy business leaders like you have so much to offer those organizations that are a good fit for your talents and sensibilities.

And guess what? The returns to you can be immeasurable:

♦ Volunteering affords some terrific networking opportunities.

Serving on the Board of Directors of an organization, or in some degree of leadership, may put you elbow to elbow with people who are industry-leading decision makers or connected in some way with your target companies or industries.

♦ Volunteering takes advantage of one of the essential and most powerful principles of networking – give to get.

Your generosity and good work build good will and evangelism for your personal brand and keep you top of mind with your community. People who see evidence of your efforts, especially if you don’t shy away from the grunt work, will likely be happy to help you out when you need them.

♦ Volunteering builds your credibility and reinforces you as a subject matter expert in your field.

You may already be known as the “go-to” person within your industry for your functional areas of expertise. Spread that notoriety through your community.

♦ You can never underestimate the good feeling you get from sharing your expertise to help others.

And how gratifying it is when you get something tangible, like a solid lead or two, in return.

♦ You may not realize that meaningful volunteering makes for some powerful content to fuel your branded career marketing communications — resume, bio, blog, online profiles, etc.

When I’m crafting these materials for my c-suite executive clients, I get a little giddy when they tell me they have a deep commitment to their community. Their contributions are especially valuable and compelling in their career bios, a vibrant platform to evidence their “softer” brand attributes and further differentiate them from their peers.

♦ Your volunteer efforts may open you to new career directions that you had never considered before.

If you’re at an impasse in your executive job search because you’re dissatisfied with what you’ve been doing or jobs within your industry have dried up, it may be time to reinvent yourself and re-think your approach to earning a living. The new connections you make through volunteering can impel your career transition.

Your takeaway:

Get behind an organization that will benefit from your functional expertise and leadership skills. Keep your eye on doing your part to make it successful. You may soon experience personal and professional dividends. You never know what opportunities may emerge from your own backyard.

Related post:

Executive Networking Secrets: Mind Your Manners When Building Your Personal Brand

A blog called “Job Tips” (saboteototal.info) owned by Robin Gupta (robingupta.com), who is ironically a Search Engine Optimization services provider, was born about 2 weeks ago from content stolen from my Executive Resume Branding Blog.

I was alerted to the blog scraping through several pingbacks to my blog. A visit to the pirating site showed me about 15 of my most recent blog posts, duplicated in their entirety without my knowledge or permission. No other content but my stolen posts is on the site.

Since then, every time I post a new article to my blog, it immediately shows up over there. Take a look at the blog if you want, but I won’t give them link juice by providing a hyperlink in this post.

My initial reaction was shock and horror. I felt like someone had ransacked my home and grabbed what was valuable and easy to profit from.

Although I knew a little about scraping, until it was in my own backyard, I had no understanding of its devastating impact. I never would have thought such a thing could make me feel so violated.

According to Wikipedia,

Blog scraping is copying a blog that is not owned by the individual initiating the scraping process. If the material is copyrighted it is considered copyright infringement, unless there is a license relaxing the copyright. The scraped content is often used on spam blogs or splogs” (spam blogs).

Scraping is a nasty tactic used usually by lazy and/or unscrupulous bloggers who decide it’s okay to ride on the coattails of, and benefit from, established, popular bloggers by stealing their content.

Unfortunately, scraping is a rampant practice and, if this scraper decides to slither back under a rock and take their site down, another one will probably rear its ugly head in no time.

Somehow, it’s of little consolation to me that the scraping is probably a direct result of the fact that my content is good, and therefore my blog has become popular. This doesn’t feel like a sincere form of flattery.

If you’re even an infrequent reader of my Executive Resume Branding Blog, hopefully it’s apparent how much I love everything about blogging and my blog. I’m so attached to it, it’s practically a body part.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky that, because the offending blogger copied my full posts, the internal links I put in them came along for the ride. At least I’m getting a little bit of bounce-back traffic from the links.

So what’s a blogger to do to combat such an attack?

The thieving blog originates in India, so I don’t think I have much recourse legally, and I don’t know if it would be worth the effort and expense anyway.

Kevin Muldoon at BloggingTips offered some extremely helpful and comforting advice in his post, Don’t get stressed about blog scrapers stealing your content.

He explained how scrapers easily accomplish the content theft by quickly setting up a blog through a free hosting service like Blogger and using a plugin or script to automatically copy the content from RSS feeds that they specify.

Often these thieves repeat the process, stealing content from many blogs. The benefit to them comes from driving traffic to their site, lured by someone else’s wonderful content, and getting people to buy whatever product or service they’re selling on their site.

Aside from the fact that all the loving care and hard work I invest in each blog post has been swiped for someone else’s benefit, I’m concerned about what this may do to search engine results for my posts, and therefore traffic to my blog.

Google and other search engines don’t like duplicate content. It takes up valuable space. After researching Google’s Webmaster/Site Owners Help site, I learned what can happen with duplicate content.

Google chooses just one version of a web page to show in search results. They may show the offending site’s version of my post and ignore my own blog’s version, which affects traffic to my blog. Google says they do a good job of discerning which version was published first and which is the duplicate, so more than likely they’ll choose my original version, but there’s no guarantee.

In his post, Kevin somewhat alleviates my concerns with these 4 points:

♦ It can be very time-consuming dealing with scrapers (eg. reporting them to their host etc). This is time you could be promoting your blog or writing more posts.

♦ Google determines where the original article came from by inbound links to the article and from the authority of a website so you don’t lose any search engine traffic (Google can sometimes get this wrong.

♦ Blog scrapers will not lose you any money and will not lose you any traffic. Most of their traffic comes from commentating and trackbacks (which you can delete).

♦ Blog scrapers soon realise that scraping is a waste of time. The people who are scraping BloggingTips now are different from the people who scraped it 2 months ago (this has been the same since the blog started). It seems to take scrapers a month or so to figure out that whilst creating a scraping site doesn’t take long, it just isn’t worth it.

What am I doing about my malicious blog scraper?

I’ve decided my best course of action is to blog about it, knowing this post, peppered with internal links to my blog, will show up on the offending site as soon as I hit “publish”. I’m outing them on their own blog and riding on their coattails for my own benefit.

Blogging and the power of words may be the best revenge.

In her recent Wall Street Journal article, It Isn’t Always a Job Behind an Online Job Posting, Sarah Needleman advises:

If you’re launching an online job hunt for the first time in a while; take caution. What may look like an ad for employment may lead to something entirely different, like a hard sell for career services or job-training manuals. Or worse, it might be a plan by identity thieves to get you to share sensitive personal information via “phishing” expeditions. Some of the job postings — sometimes for positions long filled — also could be from recruiting agencies looking to collect résumés.

A case in point was one job seeker spotlighted in the article who took the bait and drove a distance to meet the firm’s recruiter, only to find himself listening to a pitch for a career service. No job existed.

Despite efforts to weed out the sham ads, some deceptive ads end up on job boards anyway, because scammers are adept at learning how to circumvent the latest filters set to knock them out. They’re a devious bunch who keep coming back and trying new techniques.

If you’re unsure whether an ad is sincere, the article offers some ways to protect your identity when responding.

Fortunately, there are tip-offs indicating that an ad is likely to lead you to a dead end. If you don’t give out confidential information, responding to one of these bogus ads will probably just cost you time and energy.

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A note to my readers:

If you find this post on a blog called “Job Tips” (saboteototal.info) owned by Robin Gupta (robingupta.com) who ironically is an SEO services provider, you are reading content that has been “scraped” from my Executive Resume Branding Blog.

Scraping is a nasty tactic to gain search engine results for one’s website by stealing and publishing large portions of someone else’s web pages, without the original writer’s permission.

In this case, the entire Job Tips blog consists of scraped full blog posts (not excerpts) from my Executive Resume Branding Blog.

Duplicating the content of my blog posts in this way will likely negatively impact the search results for my blog and therefore deeply cut into traffic to my blog.

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