You know about my LinkedIn book.  My Facebook book just went to the second edition.  Did you know about the other Now What books?  Here they are (prices are for paperback… all are available as ebooks or for the kindle):

Hands down the biggest issue I hear about from around the world is age discrimination.

Sometimes, though, your age is the least of your problems.

Julie Walraven wrote Is It Age Discrimination Or Your Job Search Strategies?

Go read it.  If age is your problem, read the post carefully.

Age discrimination is real. It is out there.  BUT, someone who will discriminate based on age will also discriminate on other things, including height, weight, color, religion, race, number of teeth, how you smile, etc.  You just can’t win with everyone.

Maybe you need to focus more on strategies and tactics, and mastering those, rather than blaming your age.

I know Tim and Dick and Nick and many other job seeker advocates would agree.  Don’t throw in the towel and admit defeat because you are old (whether that is 40 or 60 or 70 or 80).  Focus on what you CAN influence and change!

Read Julie’s post here.

Recently a JibberJobber user sent me a resume that one of my colleagues did for him and asked me what I thought.

The resume was really quite impressive.  I’m not surprised. The resume writer is someone who has been doing this for a long time and loves to stay current and do a great job.

My first impression after looking at the resume was that this guy had decades of doing amazing things.  The companies he worked at, and the products he worked on, are household names.

If I were interviewing I would want to satisfy curiosities and ask more.  I would want to ask stories about his experience.  Some of my questions would be because it would be intriguing to know, and others to learn how involved and instrumental he really was in each of the things he claims on his resume.

He needs to go through his resume, pull out every claim, and put at least one story behind it.

I’m not much for critiquing resumes.  I almost always decline when someone asks me to look at their resume.  But I opened this one and that was my very first impression.  You have a great resume, now what?  Be ready to TELL STORIES!

My second thought was to be careful not to ask too many UNQUALIFIED people their opinion of the resume you just got.  I asked people for opinions of my resume and the information I got was misleading (making me think it was great, while it really kept me out of interviews).  Everyone will have their opinion but recognize this is a marketing tool to get you interviews, and that is it.  Dick Bolles talked about resumes very frankly in our last Ask The Expert – you can view the interview here (he comes on 20 minutes into it).

I found this article on About.com at the end of last year: Ten Keys for Taking Control of Your Career

#7 says to get organized.  I would definitely encourage you to use JibberJobber to get (and feel!) organized.

#9 says to boost work relationships.  From tracking and recognizing birthdays, like the author says, to other small gestures, you need to NURTURE relationships NOW.  Don’t wait until you are in transition.  Dig that well now!  Yes, JibberJobber is the tool to help with that.

Experts are talking about this stuff… JibberJobber is the tool to DO IT.

You know networking is what you should do.  What if you are doing it but it doesn’t work?  Sam asks:

I am having very poor results on my networking efforts and feel very concerned by the overall situation.   Is there any useful advise you could share with me to help me turn things around?

Sam, I feel your pain. When I finally bit the bullet and started networking, I was doing it wrong.  My first guess was that Sam is doing it wrong also, but I had to ask her what she is doing. From her reply I see that she is:

“…using Linkedin heavily. I reach out to people inside & outside of my network. No one answers. Whether these are school alumni or personal friends or contacts of contacts. No one answers or sends me a laconic:”sorry I do not know this person” or “I do not have any contacts in this industry”"

I wonder what her outreach looks like to get ignored (see below for an idea of what the problem might be). She is also asking for people’s time:

“I try to set phone meetings by emails when I can not find the info of the person I want to speak to. I look them up on the web and find their email and just email them to avoid cold calling and either interrupting their day or leaving a voice mail that stays unreturned. “

Again, I wondered what her message/request looks like. Sam sent me an email that she would send to a prospect where she is asking for time on the phone (what I would call an informational interview).  The introduction, which I’m not including here for privacy, is very good.  She ends with this:

“I would very much welcome the opportunity to speak to you informally over the phone 10-15 minutes just to solicit your advice and exchange about the working environment at (company name) and the hiring perspectives at the moment. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. Sincerely,”

The biggest problem I see with this request is that she is not asking for time.  Read that last bit again.  There is no invitation or call to action.  The second biggest problem is that she is saying “I’m a job seeker… do you have any openings?”  I’m a lot more informal than Sam is (she is an executive)… I would personally rewrite it like this:

“I have some questions about your company and the industry in general and would appreciate your perspective. Can we get on the phone for fifteen or twenty minutes?  My schedule is flexible this week and next week.  Is there a good time that works for you?”

That (1) has a call to action and (2) changes the conversation from “help me, are there openings” to “I’m a peer and colleague, let’s talk shop.”

The “fix” to this problem might be that simple… what do you think?

The book is getting close to going to the printer.  I am sending a draft to “the person” who will write the forword, and my graphics artist shot me three book cover ideas.

I would love your feedback on these three covers.  Will you please tell me which of the three you love, which you love the least, and WHY?  Thank you!

Idea A: Lightbulb Head

Idea B: Triangle Head

Idea C: Elephant on Tightrope

Please leave a comment of email me (Jason@JibberJobber.com) what you think. Again, I’d love to know your favorite, least favorite, and WHY.

I had a great call with Margaret Meloni a number of weeks ago.  She does “soft skills” training with professionals and organizations.  As we were talking told me she has a Congratulations You’re Out of Work program.

You can get her free audio and ebook here (scroll down to the bottom).  Oh wait, there is a signup form there.  She said if you don’t want to be on her list, you can download the goodies from this hidden page.  THANK YOU Margaret!  (everyone, send Margaret a thank you, and refer her stuff to project managers!)

I liked what I heard from Margaret because:

• Some people are out of work because they need to work on their soft skills, 
• Some people haven’t “needed” to but they have time to work on them now,
• Some people are having zero success in their job search because of their soft skills.

From her products page you can see she lives in the business world, helping people communicate better.  She has a soft spot for professionals in transition.

Check it out!

I found this article on Job-Hunt.org: How to Organize and Track Your Job Search. There is a link to another article about following-up in a job search.

I like everything Hannah is saying in her articles.  End your frustration, and impress recruiters by not sounding lost or uninterested, by staying on top of this.

Hannah suggests some systems, I used an Excel spreadsheet, but I don’t think there is anything better than JibberJobber.

Read her articles and just about everything she talks about can be done within JibberJobber… even the free level!

Old being 50.

I know, I know.  That’s not old.

But it is old enough to have discrimination.

Read what Nick says here: Over The Hill At 50?

Nick was recently an expert on my Ask The Expert webinar.  You can find his video in the Ask The Expert archive.

I have a blogger crush on James Altucher.  I love his story, his advice, and his writing style.  I’ve blogged about him before.

I was reading How To Go From $0 To $1,000,000 In Two Years on TechCrunch and wanted to share this with those interested in job search, career management and personal branding:\

Rule No. 5: Blogging is not about money. Blogging is about trust. You don’t sell ads on your blog (rarely), you don’t get the big book deal (rarely), but you do build trust and this leads to opportunities. In Bryan’s case it led to more inflow, rather than him going door to door, and it also led to his biggest early opportunity. My own blog has made me a total of zero cents but has created millions in opportunities for me.

Blogging is pull marketing.

Providing great content, relevent information, intriguing stories, tips and ideas will bring people to you.

They might end up reading your blog regularly, or they might be a flash in the pan, coming in from a google search.

But when you provide awesome content, you can “become a trusted source” (quoted from right above the excerpt I took out – read the whole article).

Want to have a strong personal brand?

BLOG.