Check out this awesome blog post, article, or almost e-book by Eric Shannon:

I’ve known Eric for years, through our blogs and writing.  He is the real deal.  This article/post is long – almost 5,000 words.  That is about 25% of my first book… !  And about the length of 10 blog posts!

But don’t let the size get in your way.  This resource is awesome.  Print it out, highlight it, make notes, and work from it.

Many job seekers lack direction and strategy – if that describes you, this is what you need!

Eric Shannon, who has been giving the unemployed community for years, hit is out of the park with this one – thank you Eric! And of course, thanks for recommending JibberJobber in the post!

Here’s more about him:

Chip Hartman has done it again.  This book is an excellent resource.  And it’s a free download.  You don’t even have to give your name and email address to get it.

Build Your Brand is a 54 page ebook that is kind of a Part II to The Basics of Personal Branding (also a free ebook - download it here).

I have gone through the book and enthusiastically give my stamp of approval.  Much of what I talk about in my keynote presentations is included in this book.  Chip breaks it down in a great way, and the methods he presents should really help you put your brand together well, and understand what to do with it once you have it put together.

I think both of these are going to be resources that even personal branding experts use and rely on to help their clients.  These are excellent personal branding resources.

Chip is a friend I’ve only met once in person, many years ago at a dinner in New Jersey.  He’s… well… awesome.

He does writing, editing, layout and that kind of stuff as a freelancer.  If you have any writing/layout projects, give him a holler (his email and phone number are on the first page of the book).  If you want to know how good he is, just download his free ebook and you can judge for yourself.

Oh and Chip, thanks for including me in the acknowledgement section of the book… it’s an honor

Remember when the Internet first became popular, many years ago?

Did we have any idea what changes were in our future?

We enjoyed what we had then, and looked forward to things that were to come.

We consumed information differently, and we bought things differently.  It changed our world, changed our lives, and changed the world.

We loved it.

We were excited about it.

That is, we loved it IF we weren’t a travel agent.

What’s that, you ask?  That was a title/role that was very popular, somewhat coveted, fun and rewarded, and utterly destroyed by the internet.

Oh well, too bad for them.  Just a casualty.

Then, the Internet started infringing on other industries and jobs.

What has the Internet done to the car sales, especially the used car sales, industry?  What about the movie industry, the newspaper industry, the post office, the ________, the ______, the ______ … the list can go on and on and on.

I’m going to say in general we didn’t care about the changes in those industries when it happened.  As consumers (of products, services, information) we were glad to see the changes, which enriched our lives.  As long as the downsizing, industry slaughter and casualties didn’t affect us directly, it was all for the good of society, and we could enjoy and be detached from the painful side of change.

Fast forward to today.  I’m not saying the Internet is responsible for any economic downfall, but it caused change and shifting in what our normal used to be.  And really, we voted for it.  With each click, and purchase, we voted for the change.  And now, we’re starting to realize what this change means to us, personally.

It’s the same thing with Wal-Mart.  I like Wal-Mart.  I shop there regularly.  It’s one of the first places I go to find something because they’ll usually have it.  There’s a Super Wal-Mart close to my house.  But every time I spend money there there, it hurts any local store.  (there aren’t many local stores around anymore… most of them are just smaller, or more niche, versions of Wal-Mart)

Its argued that buying at Wal-Mart hurts the U.S. economy, since most everything (gross exaggeration, I know) is manufactured outside of the U.S.  but we don’t think about that too much, when we drop $20 on something.  How could our $20 help, or hurt, the U.S. economy?  It can’t, can it?  Unless, of course, all those $20 bills add up to hundreds of millions, and billions… then it can hurt.

But my $20 can’t hurt.  Plus, it would take too much time and gas to go to two or three other stores just to find what I need.  Wal-Mart is… convenient!

What’s convenient now might be a killer down the road.  Speaking of killer….

What about McDonalds?  Just dropping by the drive-through can’t hurt, can it?  It’s just one meal… how can that have an impact on my body?  I’m hungry and need to feel my belly.

I drive by a McDonalds every time I leave my tiny town.  The last time I drove by I was with my kids and we were talking about nutrition.  I wondered if anything on the MickeyD’s menu had any nutritional value (or, any value that wasn’t outweighed by the horrific ingredients).

But it’s convenient, and cheap, to eat at McDonald’s.  Just this once.  Not a big deal.  It can’t hurt that bad, can it?

I was talking to a nutritionalist a few weeks ago.  She said one of the most addictive and harmful things her clients eat is french fries.  She said McDonalds rolls their fries in sugar, which makes them more addictive.  And her clients are on them like crack addicts are on crack.  Here’s a google search with more info on rolling fries in sugar.

What’s the point of all of this?

Change is inevitable.  No one can stop the Internet, even as it changes industries (ie travel), products (ie books), services (ie phone services).

Instead of getting in the steamroller’s path and then whining about being destroyed, how can you move, and then look for new opportunities?

Also, small decisions that we make will have an impact on the future we live in, and create for our children.

Attitudes, habits, ethics, our language, how and where we shop, will have more of an impact than we think.

My message for the last six years has been a message of “you CAN take control of your career, and your future.”  Today’s post is more macro, bigger than your career… you CAN take control of how you live, and what you get out of life.

You can even start today.

PICK UP THE PHONE.

I’ve blogged about picking up the phone before.  In this post I talk about even calling the people you are afraid to call: Get Out Your Chicken List and Make a Call.

On Recruiting Blogs, James Nathan writes a post called Hello phone, my old friend.  He talks about how recruiters “have grown up in a world dominated by email, and on-line recruitment systems.”

We, as job seekers, have somewhat grown up in a world of online applications and job boards, right?

Read his post.  My favorite part is this:

When I was a very new consultant, I was sent to meet one of the company’s top billing temps consultants and he taught me a very simple lesson. He said “listen, its really simple. You pick up the phone, and money comes out of it”.

You pick up the phone, and money comes out of it.

Was there ever a statement, so well put, so simple or so true.

The same thing applies to you, as the job seeker.  Or you, as owner of Me, Inc.  Or you, as a consultant.

Hide behind email and online applications all you want… but you need to simply get on the phone.  Money might come out of it.  Or a job.  Or a gig.

Afraid of the phone?

Figure out how to get over it.  I’d love to hear how YOU got over your fear of the phone (or, how you are getting through your fear of the phone).  Leave a comment below…

John Hadley, a career coach in the NY/NJ area, asked me to be his guest on a teleseminar titled How to Accelerate Your Job Search.  I’ve been receiving Johns newsletter for years and almost spoke for him in person last year when I was in his area… I was excited to be able to do this teleseminar with him.

You can sign up for it here.

It is on Wednesday morning at 10:30 am MST (that is 12:30 Eastern, 11:30 Central, 9:30 Pacific).

There is no cost.  John is asking his newsletter subscribers: “If you could ask Jason Alba just one question, what would it be?”

I’ll be anxious to see what questions come up…. I’m guessing this will be much less technical than I usually do, and there will be a lot of general, basic job search questions… we’ll see

Want to join? Sign up here. I’m not sure if it will be recorded and made available later.

If you’ve ever seen me speak then you know that I’m… well… opinionated :p  My opinion is that most people throw together a sketchy LinkedIn Profile, and hardly give any thought to the Professional Headline.  Thus, most LinkedIn Professional Headlines simply stink.  That’s why I wrote:

July 14, 2010: LinkedIn Professional Headline: Yours Probably Sucks. (92 comments… this is on my LinkedIn blog: Im On LinkedIn – Now What???)

One of the amazing things from this post is that a reader and friend (whom I’ve never met in person) jumped in to do the critiques.  And he was brilliant.  I was so comfortable with is critiques that I let him run with it.  And he did… tirelessly!

Read my short post about why I think your LinkedIn Professional Headline stinks, and then sift through the comments to see what others have put, and how Peter Osborne helps them become better.

NOTE: I have since closed comments on there because I continue to get people who want help with it, and I don’t have the time to keep up with it.  However, I do LinkedIn Profile Critiques (which includes the Professional Headline) for only $99.  Here’s an example of what the critique looks like.  If you want me to critique your LinkedIn Profile,  let me know.

When I started my job search, about 6 years and three weeks ago, I knew what I wanted:

• More than I was making in my last job (I had forgone three years of raises and salaries, and really felt I was underpaid (long story)).
• A short commute from my house.  The commute I had just left was 30 minutes, which I didn’t like.
• To stay in my house. I didn’t want to uproot my family.

I’m sure I had other criteria, but those are the three that I am remembering right now.  As the weeks went by, and my job search got more pathetic, my criteria changed.

I was okay to not have such a senior level title.

I was okay to commute into the city (yuck – I cringe as I write that!!).

I was started to look at jobs that would require me to move.  And I figured if I would move outside of my town, I might as well look anywhere in the world.

What would I entertain?  I was more excited about moving overseas and working in the high tech space.  For example, I would have loved to work at TomTom… here is a link to some cool TomTom jobs.  Doesn’t that look freaking awesome?

Honestly, if I found a job a couple of hours away from my house, I might as well move 20 hours away, right?  A job at TomTom, working on that awesome technology, in another country, is exciting to me, even now

What was on YOUR list of requirements when you first started your job search, and how has your list of requirements changed?

Yesterday I did some research on a company that should acquire JibberJobber.  I’m not in talks with them, yet, but if it happens, I want to know who I’ll be talking to.

I went into LinkedIn and did a search on the company, narrowing it down to executive titles.  I opened up six LinkedIn Profiles that I want to keep track of.  I was going to put them all into JibberJobber today, one by one.  But then I thought it would be faster to import them. So I did

First, I created a very simple spreadsheet. Note the first row:

In the first row, each column starts with what I’m putting below.  First Name, Last Name, Title, etc.

Then, I saved it as a CSV.  That is critical!

Then, when I imported this very small spreadsheet, in the last column, I chose which company to associate them to from this dropdown:

And then, just to double-check, I went to the company page and they were all there… beautiful!

I could have taken extra time to hand-enter them into JibberJobber one-by-one, but instead I opted to create a simple spreadsheet and enter them all in at once.  Easy!

This is a premium feature.  $9.95/month

On the user webinar this morning someone asked my thoughts about their situation: two advanced degrees, and not even able to get an entry level job.

I have a few thoughts on that:

The idea of a career and job has changed.

I’ve blogged about this quite a bit.  No longer are we shooting for a long-term career with retirement benefits.  We’re happy if we find a place where we might settle in for a few years.

My recruiter friend Robert Merrill told me a couple of years ago that he thinks we’re getting closer to becoming a world of 1099 workers.  What’s that?  1099 workers are contractors.   No more FTE (full time employees).

Have you seen a trend moving in that direction?

Even if you are hired as a FTE, the company treats you as a 1099, with frequent layoffs and rehiring.  Crazy stuff.

That’s one reason why I’m writing the book 101 Alternatives to a Real Job.

Whether we are out of the recession or not, employers are going to be cautious/skeptical.

Until they feel really good about their market and customers, they aren’t going to commit to the salary and overhead of a new employee, unless it’s critical. (So, how do you prove you are critical?)

The pending election will probably make employers wait on big (hiring, strategy, product line, etc.) decisions.

What impact would Romney or Gingrich have on our economy, trade, markets, taxes, etc.?

What impact would another Obama term have?

Whatever you think it will be, each employer has their own opinion, and they might be waiting on big decisions until… the end of the year :s

Trivia: One of the biggest spikes in JibberJobber signups was when Obama was elected President, through the inauguration.  I was amazed to see how many people started to seriously take career management into their own hands upon hearing that news.

If that’s the case, what does 2012 mean for job seekers?

January 8, 2008.  The Other Hardest Question: How Can I Help You? I was about 18 months into my business and networking like crazy.  Meeting lots of people, becoming a “power connector,” and having fun.

But people would ask: how can I help you?

And my response was usually something like “nothing for now, I’ll let you know.”

It was a bad answer, because people wanted to help me, but I wasn’t letting them help me!  Crazy, I know.

Here’s my post about it, where I actually answered in a much better way: How Can I Help You?

My advice to you: figure out how to best answer that question (and it’s variations).  And maybe you, too, can find out how close you are to Mr. T (read the post for more :p)!