Arruda and co-author Kristin Dixon’s book Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand is the best resource I’ve found to give you both a strategic overview of personal branding as well as practical advice on how to actually do it. To quote from the book’s web page,

“Whether you are looking to move up the corporate ladder at your current organization, find a position at another company, make a major career change, or start your own enterprise, you will no longer be hunting for your next position. Instead, opportunities will come to you.”

Below is the link to the book’s web page as well as the link to a free Online Identity Calculator™ to help you make sense of your Google search results and give you advice on how to better build your online identity.

http://www.careerdistinction.com/

http://www.onlineidcalculator.com/index.php

PS: Do you want to share this article? Please do. Just be sure that it remains intact and includes the following bio.

About Julie: Julie Maloney is a sought-after coach, trainer, speaker and author in the fields of leadership, career and work-life balance. She has designed and delivered hundreds of programs for professionals and executives, and her most recent book is The Blue Jean Manifesto: Working & Playing in a Jobless World (Amazon Kindle, 2011). http://www.juliemaloney.com

For six weeks, I studied writing of a different kind – Karen Bergreen’s beginner comedy class at the Manhattan Comedy School.  I always tell my job-seeking clients and column readers to be well-rounded and unique and to keep learning and stretching.  So learning about things seemingly unrelated to my own day job is part of taking my own advice.  Luckily, comedy is relevant to job search technique:

Be specific. The funniest comedians give very specific details.  The same can be said about compelling job candidates:  the best candidates are specific in explaining what they want and what they contribute.  When good job candidates give an example, we understand the scope of their responsibilities and the scale of their accomplishments.

Edit ruthlessly. You don’t need a lot of explanation before getting to the punch line of the story.  In fact, too much explanation diminishes the power of the joke.  Similarly, don’t ramble in your interview responses and other job search communication.  Get to the point quickly and keep your listener’s attention.

Talk about what you know.  Being comfortable and familiar with your subject matter made it infinitely easier to be specific and find the humor.  Successful jobseekers need to get comfortable and familiar with the industries, companies, and jobs they are targeting.  Do research before meeting people.  Prepare your interview examples.  When you talk about what you know (because you have researched and prepared in advance), you captivate your listener.

Be yourself.  There is no one profile or style that is the funny one.  It is better to infuse who you are genuinely into your comedy set.  In the case of job candidates, your unique personality differentiates you in addition to your professional attributes.  There are other good communicators, exceptional problem-solvers, and strong leaders.  You compete on skills and experience but also contribute your unique style.

The audience needs to get the joke.  Sometimes a student was really attached to a joke that others in the class didn’t understand or didn’t think was funny.  Instead of arguing the point, students were encouraged to rewrite and rework the original premise.  Similarly, jobseekers should pay attention to any feedback that suggests what you’re doing isn’t working.  You may think your job search technique is fine, but if it’s been several months and you haven’t landed anything, employers clearly aren’t “getting” you.  Don’t argue with the market; rework your job search.

Sometimes when you are overly-focused on a goal, you can get stuck.  It’s very helpful to step back and focus on something very different – to refresh, reignite your creativity, and broaden your perspective.  You may find that you come back to your original goal with fresh eyes and are more productive.  You don’t have to take comedy class specifically or even do something artistic.  It can be sports, cooking, joining a book club.  Diverse interests are valuable to the jobseeker because they make you more unique, they stretch and challenge you in different ways, and they enable you to remain fresh and productive.

About the Author

Caroline Ceniza-Levine helps people find fulfilling and financially-rewarding career paths, as the co-founder of SixFigureStart®, career coaching by former Fortune 500 recruiters. Caroline has recruited for leading companies in financial services, consulting, media, pharmaceutical/ healthcare, and technology. She is the co-author (along with Donald Trump, Jack Canfield and others) of the best-selling “How the Fierce Handle Fear: Secrets to Succeeding in Challenging Times” 2010; Two Harbors Press.  

A coaching client of mine reminded me yesterday of the real gift of planning time – a chance to do things differently/better over the upcoming year. She’s challenged herself to do that in a big way, so that she can better “scale up” her own time and resources. She is a leader of a large, diverse organization with huge revenue goals. She clearly knows that she cannot do it all. And she is deeply committed to developing the leadership skills in her own direct reports.

So she’s pushing herself to delegate to others, not just the easy but the critical things. The things that she previously felt only she could do and/or were too high stakes to leave to someone else. Her results thus far have been spectacular. Because of many smart, practical reasons around how she’s done that. But also because I think she is allowing herself to learn a new definition of “independence”.

Leadership is a paradox. You have to take full responsibility for results, while being fully dependent on others to get the work done. In that sense, leadership is constant journey of letting go of control and doing things in our own way. It is a loss of independence as we once defined it.

Yet leaders who step into that paradox actually gain a new kind of freedom, one that is far more valuable in today’s complex and ever-changing business world. The freedom that comes from discovering that they don’t have to know, do, own, anticipate, save or control everything themselves. (In fact, the more they try to do that, the more they will actually fail.) They become more powerful not less, because they learn how to influence and direct others in ways that exponentially extend their reach.

And that maximize their precious time, so that they can focus on the things only they can truly do.

The fear that we will miss something important drives us to keep paying attention to everything we can, 24/7. Fear is, in financial terms, a never-ending SPEND of time, attention and resources. It actually slows us down, increases our mistakes and undercuts our creativity. While a little anxiety is a healthy motivator in the short term, driving ourselves with chronic fear exponentially diminishes returns over time. Even in just one week, fear can drive us deeper into a hole that only gets harder to leave and certainly never gets us ahead.

Alternatively, focus is an INVESTMENT, where even small contributions can produce big returns. Invest a few moments now to reflect on what top 3 things are most important this week, vs. urgent this day. Write those things down and take 5 seconds to review them at the start, middle and end of every day this week.

The counter-intuitive reality is that focus creates more, not less. The most important things don’t fall off your radar screen and you feel a sense of accomplishment. You can think more strategically AND yet still handle the urgent things faster and with more success. You also find yourself on Friday a little ahead of the game for next week, which puts you ahead of the game for the week after, which gives you a leg up on the following week.. and so on and so on.

What is the value of focus in a world like ours? Huge, monumental, a differentiator in your career and your life. And a lot more fun.

This ranking is a testimony to one of the core messages of the BJM…one of the new secrets of success that I call “Work Life Balance 2.0”. In the Creative Economy, your brain is your most critical asset… and yet the one most neglected by most people. By neglected I mean over-stressed, over-worked and kept constantly “on”, 24/7.

It is literally impossible to sustain a brain that is sharp, open, creative and focused without giving it regular time off-line. And the best way to do that is to PLAY.

In the book, I reference the work of Stuart Brown, M.D., author of Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Feeds the Soul. From the back of his paperback edition: “When we play, we are open to possibility and the sparks of new insights. Play – defined as any kind of purposeless, all-consuming, restorative activity – is the single most significant factor in determining our success and happiness.”

If you can’t get through a day without multitasking, play is the killer app. Read the book to find out why …

Amazon.com Bestsellers: The Most Popular Items in Work Life Balance in Business
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/355580011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_1_4_last

The Blue Jean Manifesto is your introduction to a radically different, new world of work. It takes you through the critical, internal shift you must make FIRST, in order to find work and manage your career in today’s economy. A mindset change that faces reality head-on and yet brings into view the bright, new future possible, for individuals and companies alike.

The book is a short, simple, individual change management program — written by a sociologist, a professional corporate coach and someone who has herself lived The Blue Jean Manifesto for over a decade — all rolled into one. It will teach you:

• WHY continuing to think of yourself as an “employee” is the riskiest thing you can do to your career and your income.
• HOW you can survive and thrive in a world where jobs will forever more be uncertain (where layoffs as a corporate cost management tool will always be a matter of when, not if).
• WHAT is the new perspective you need that will keep you from ending up unemployed without recourse… or feeling trapped into working harder not to lose the job you have. And that will get you started on customizing a career/work strategy that gets you moving, growing and succeeding.
• WHO is already working, surviving and thriving this way – the surprisingly large and growing Blue Jean population.
• And WHERE these groundbreaking people and organizations are already creating the future, right now — including in economically hard-hit Michigan (the supposed land of the down-and-out that is fast becoming the home of the up-and-coming).

The book ends with additional resources to get you going on creating the only job that matters now…becoming the CEO of your own career.

Buy the book now at the Amazon Kindle Store: http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Jean-Manifesto-Jobless-ebook/dp/B004UI6F20/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1301574539&sr=1-2-catcorr.

If you don’t own a Kindle reader, no problem! A free Kindle reader app is available for every smart phone, PC or Mac. Free Reading Apps from Kindle

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Noticed.html?_r=1&sq=on the web everyday is casual friday&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1300712417-8UJVREUi+/ZCOYpU2Yuswg

I think the term that best describes the realities AND the possibilities of this new age is the Creative Economy. As defined by the UNCTAD, the Creative Economy is a new paradigm whereby creativity, knowledge and access to information are increasingly recognized as powerful engines driving economic growth and promoting development in a globalizing world.

Here’s the link to the highlights of their 2010 report: http://www.unctad.org/Templates/webflyer.asp?docid=14229&intItemID=4577&lang=1&mode=highlights

I was blown away by this fact last week, sitting in on a workshop given by local social media experts Heather Coleman-Voss and Ron Marshall from the Ferndale Career Center, here in Southeast Michigan. Their workshop was AMAZING – practical and empowering stuff!! You can find an overview of their services and a calendar of upcoming workshops (all free, funded by Michigan Works!) at their website: http://www.ferndaleschools.org/fcc/

Read what Larry Clark, a senior corporate executive in Corporate Talent, Strategy & Development, has to say: http://bobclarksblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/productivity-reset-no-such-thing-as.html