I came across Håkan’s LinkedIn Profile and I LOVE something he is doing with the formatting.  What he is doing gets around something that bugs a lot of people…. they want real bullet-point formatting!

Alas, for the last many years, and even today, LinkedIn doesn’t allow hardly any formatting in the long description areas.  But check out what Hakan has done:

In #1… how did he get that bullet?  In #2, how did he make the lines below the bullet indent, the way that bullets are supposed to?

Very, very simple.  I blogged about it on my LinkedIn blog here. Scroll down on my profile and you’ll see a bunch of bullet icons you can copy, and then paste to your own Profile.

Okay, so we got that, right?  How do you make the line below indent to the correct place?

You simple put enough spaces in. Really.  You “hard code” spaces in.  With your space bar.

If I mouse over and select the space from the left of the page to where the line starts, I can see there are individual spaces there.  There are 5 spaces before a bullet point and 8 spaces before each line under a bullet.

It’s that simple… but the results really stand out, and are easier to read.

Cool, huh?

This entire profile also works because Håkan uses the underscore (_______) to make visual line separators throughout his profile, which makes it easier to read.

He’s put a lot of effort into his profile, from content to formatting, and it clearly shows.  Great job Håkan!  Click on the image below to see his entire profile:

Here’s another favorite I wrote in May of 2012.  I’m surprised it didn’t become a Favorite Friday before now: Stop hiding and actually start your job search.

Many years ago I worked as a clerk at the FBI.  I was bored beyond description.  There really wasn’t anything to do, as our department was overstaffed.  Some of my colleagues picked up projects from the analysts, but I was too low on the totem pole to do anything like that.

So I found myself organizing, and then re-organizing, and then re-organizing my file folder drawer.

You have to understand, as a clerk, I really didn’t have anything important in my file folder drawer.  The exercise was about as useful as sorting, and resorting, and resorting the garbage.  It didn’t help anyone or anything… it just burned time.

Do we, as job seekers, do this?  I know I did.  Here’s my ode to this wasteful, rut of a practice:

Leave a comment below…

Julie Walraven of Design Resumes has a great post titled The Chief Cause Of Many Poor Hiring Decisions.  She starts off with CareerBuilder’s new stat about how long hiring managers spend reviewing resumes…as we know, it’s pathetically low.

But then Julie takes her post in an unexpected direction: how long SHE, as a professional resume writer (she is certified and has been doing this, afaik, for over two decades): she will easily spend six hours creating a resume.  Usually that is for an entry-level person.  It’s not unusual for her to spend ten or more hours designing a resume.

Julie is a resume expert, having investing more than 10,000 hours in her trade to claim expertise.  When I lost my job I spent a couple of weeks fumbling around trying to piece together my own resume.  I had no expertise, experience or training… just an attitude that if I could put myself through two degrees, I could certainly write a one or two page document!

Right??

I didn’t understand that a resume was not simply a list with work history, dates and some “cool” action verbs.  I thought I could easily put that document together… but what I didn’t realize was what a great resume really is.

A great, even an excellent resume, is a marketing document. Coincidentally, a sucky resume is also a marketing document – it just screams: don’t hire me!

A resume is not a standard business document for filing away in a three ring binder, simply to be forgotten.  Your resume has a very specific purpose.  What’s more, the “judge” of your resume is going to take your days, weeks, and for some of you, months of work and give it a cursory 30 or 120 seconds… it’s almost an atrocity!

But really, spending less than two minutes really is NOT an atrocity.

You see, it’s not about YOU.  It’s not about the amount of work you put in.  It’s not about how amazing you are, how clever you are, or how dumb the viewer is for not “getting” how brilliant you are.

This is all about THEM. Pursuing you will reflect on them and could have an impact on their career. Are they capable of hiring the RIGHT person?  Can they hire the BEST person?  Or will they hire a dud, or a lemon?  This could cost them their job!  Hiring the wrong person could sink the entire company!

If an expert, like Julie Walraven, spends six hours to develop the most basic of resumes, which she can only do because she has over ten thousand+ hours of writing resumes, what makes you think that you, or I, without this expertise, can “throw something together” in a few hours, and have it be good enough (much less great!)?

The mistakes I would make would undoubtedly cause my resume to be in the “under-ten-seconds-and-then-throw-away” pile.  Whether that is a typo or a grammar mistake, or not using the best word(s) to put us in the right light, it will cost me.

I know there are people out there, including one of my favorite recruiters (Steve Levy… read his blog!) who say that we must write our own resumes, and hiring a resume writer is as good as hiring a charlatan (those are my words, but that’s the message I hear from him).  I agree that we should do a lot of work to help get the resume done.  We should put our hearts into it.  We should spend time going through our past, listing our accomplishments, and doing the very hard work of self- and career-evaluation.

But I still think we should run it past a real resume writer who will polish our final marketing document so that it gets more time, and more respect, from the person evaluating whether they should bring you in for an interview or not. (professional resume writers are not merely polishers.  They are experts in creating perhaps the most important marketing document at this point in your career)

Convinced you need resume help? I suggest considering either of these two options:

We’re working on creating an list of specialized resume writers that you can reach out to on your own… stay tuned

The point is, make sure that you are putting enough time and resources into getting this marketing document put together the right way.

I wrote a guest post for the Pluralsight blog titled How do you manage more than one personal brand?

I actually hear this question a lot when I’m on the road, speaking to audiences of people in transition.  What I’ve found is that people are okay with their day job (if they have one), but they have some really interesting passion that they also want others to know about.  Or, that they think will become a significant revenue stream down the road.

In the post I give you two scenarios, one where you have a main brand (like, your day job) and the other is mostly a strong passion…. the other scenario is where your other brand is at least as important as your main brand, especially when you aren’t at work.

Check out the post and leave a comment over there – If you do, I’ll answer your questions on the Pluralsight post.

How do you manage more than one #PersonalBrand? by Pluralsight author @jasonalba ==>http://t.co/91vollcntN

— Pluralsight (@pluralsight) March 26, 2014

@ChicagoDana @jasonalba “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room” – Jeff Bezos

— Praveen Minumula (@minumula) March 26, 2014

A user from Europe asks some questions (slightly reworded), which I will answer below:

At my level and with my expertise, I usually go through a headhunter to get hired. How does the system handle this?

He gets more specific below, but just to clarify, if you only work with recruiters, I would use JibberJobber to track the recruiter (as a Contact), the recruiter’s company (as a Company – and only if it is not a one-person-company), and each job (as a Job) I learn about from the recruiter.  More below…

How do I enter a job opportunity that is being proposed by a headhunter, and where I have both the headhunter contact as well as company contacts?

And here is where it gets really COOL, although I’m a little embarrassed to write this now, because we should have designed this in 8 years ago.  Soon, really soon (I’m told this week) we are going to do a release to JibberJobber where we add a few more features.  One of the features is the long-overdue ability to have multiple contacts and multiple companies associated to each job record.  This reflects the real-world scenario of pursuing a job with a recruiter, then getting introduced to three people at a panel interview… you will be able to associate that job with all four of those people.

It gets better… see my answer to the next question…

Sometimes the headhunter does not disclose the company name or company contact. How do I handle this in the system?

This is the same issue, with a different record.  We will also be able to associate multiple companies to the job.  So, associate the recruiter’s company, and then when you find out what the hiring company is, add it and associate it to the job.  You will even be able to prioritize the contacts and companies.

So, to let the cat out of the bag, we are doing this thing for contacts, companies and jobs, which means:

This is a great enhancement, and should make your data make a lot more sense.

I loved this post. It was like the post I hated my lawnmower, which was about a stupid problem I had for a long time, until I figured out the fix was quick and free.

In our job search we might have problems that are really resolved quite easily, quickly, and at no cost.

The water damage post was more about long-term neglect of a little problem that could get out of control and have huge consequences.  I’m including the text here (with some edits and reformatting), but be sure to go to the original post to read the comments.  Then leave your own comment on this post, or the one from 2007 .

Leave a comment below…

Lisa Rangel is a career coach who I’ve met, had conversations with, exchanged emails, and trained in my webinars. I trust her. One week from today she is hosting this free webinar titled How to Double, And Even Triple Your Job Leads Using LinkedIn. You have nothing to lose, and hopefully will pick up some great ideas. Here’s her list of things she says you can learn:

• Why the profile you currently have is costing you thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars, and what you need to do to fix it.
• 4 little known and often misunderstood ways to find leads and opportunity using LinkedIn.
• 9 proven techniques for making your LinkedIn profile attract the exact type of job you want.
• 7 actions you must take if you want to be found by your target audience/hiring manager.
• How to create your own custom target list of the exact people you want to hire you.
• The one feature of LinkedIn everyone should use to manage their career, but hardly anyone knows about.

Sign up here for this fast paced, packed webinar.

A phrase that has been floating around my house for the last few months is so profound:

Self-control leads to self-confidence.

I’m not sure where my wife picked it up, but we’ve used it a fair amount.

Who doesn’t struggle with self-confidence issues?

Let me rephrase that:

What job seeker could use more self-confidence?

Here’s a simple formula: have more self-control.  Perhaps you will:

What is it you have been neglecting?  I know, as a job seeker, we tend to neglect everything that won’t lead to a job offer.  But that is so unhealthy on so many levels.

When I wrote Water Damage Is Expensive – Don’t Neglect Your House, I was writing about the results of neglecting things like family and your health.

I didn’t realize at the time that NOT neglecting… that is, having the self-control and discipline to take care of things, would lead to self-confidence.

Again, we all need more self-confidence.  I challenge you to practice self-control for a while and see if you have more self-confidence.

I just got off the phone with David Perry, author of the must-have best seller Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters.  David is one of the most passionate job search advocates that I know.  I love talking with him.  We even did an Ask The Expert together (click here to find it).

He told me the DVD he made, that he used to sell for $50, is now available for a free download.  I haven’t done it yet but I have no problem recommending anything from David.  Just go to PutAmericaBackToWork.com, fill in the small form on the right, and he said you will get a link to download the content.  He said it is big (they had to put it on a DVD), but knowing his stuff, and his passion, I would say it is worth it.

Go on over and do that.  As far as I know, there are no strings attached.  This is pretty cool – thanks David!

I regularly look for old blog posts to send people to, in response to their questions.  Sometimes it is job search related, sometimes it is about depression in the job search, sometimes it about how to send a job search newsletter… sometimes it is about how to import LinkedIn contacts into JibberJobber.

When I go to Google to do a search I find that JibberJobber blog posts are not as high up because of the 1%ers of the internet (MSN, AOL, etc….. the article archives that have a lot of content, but their content is “questionable” :p).

The search tool on the blog kind of stinks… so here’s how I easily find the content I’m looking for.  You can use this to find posts/articles from JibberJobber, or any other place you trust (just replace JibberJobber for another source):

Easiest Method: 

In a search box, simply add “JibberJobber” to any of your searches.

job search advice -> JibberJobber job search advice

job search newsletter -> JibberJobber job search newsletter

job search depression -> JibberJobber job search depression

import from linkedin -> JibberJobber import from linkedin

personal relationship manager -> JibberJobber personal relationship manager

And so forth… this isn’t rocket science, but if you leave off JibberJobber (or the name of your trusted content source) you will get a plethora of generic junk articles.

Next Easiest Method:

This is also very easy… you just have to remember to do it (and do it right).  Simply do a “site search,” which I blogged about here: Do you use Site:_____ in Google searches? I DO!

Guess how I found that post?  I did a site search, like this:

Check out the post for a very easy tutorial on how to do it… but really, a site search is as simple as putting site:(websitename) (search criteria) in the search box.

So, any of the examples above could be refined, like this example:

There you go – two simple ways to get more relevant results back in your searches – enjoy!