Executive Resumes, Personal Branding & Executive Job Search

Traffic is less conjested, your favorite TV shows are doing reruns, and you can't count on reaching business people in a timely manner. Yup, it's mid-July and people are on vacation. But Labor Day is just 42 days away, and all that will soon change! The college students will be back, crowding the roads, vacations will be over, and managers will begin seriously looking for new hires to round out their teams. Will you be ready?

July and August are good time to be prepared for the upcoming hiring season (in between boating, going to the beach, and riding horses on a dude ranch!) Hiring is up in many professions, such as software development, and stagnant or down in others, like electrical engineering. But regardless of the jobs forecasts, there are things you can do that will help propel you to a new job.

1. Tune up your LinkedIn profile so that it has the keywords in each section, including headline, that will attract searches. Recruiters are taking advantage of the Big Data that is LI available to them, so you need to be highly competitive here.

2. Bring your profile up to 90%+ completeness. Enhance it with visuals, updates, a Twitter feed, or any other differentiating content, including real time content, that will reinforce your personal brand, your unique promise of value.

3. Grow your LI connections to 400+, join and/or identify 5 groups where the hiring managers for your field and function are present and active, and make a commitment to comment on at least one of them daily.

3. Kick your resume up to the next level. Take a look at resume templates on this site and those of my coleagues for guidance on how to ensure your resume looks professional and attractive, is easily scannable in 6 seconds, contains critical keywords in context, and communicates your brand.

4. Develop and/or add to your target company list. Once you have 50-500+ companies, write two stand-alone approach letters. One will be to your top 15 companies, and you will customize each one to specifically address how you can help the company's situation. The other will be customizable only in company name, address, contact information, and job title sought. Be ready to send the letters out in mid-September to hiring managers of your target companies. Get them ready now. Hire a virtual assistant to execute your direct mail campaign if you need to.

5. Develop your networking plan for when your contacts are back in the office after Labor Day. Do research on which of your contacts work for your target companies. When you get in touch, ask them for 5-10 minutes of their time to ask about company culture.

6. Select your tribe - your closest connections whom you can directly keep abreast of your job search efforts. People love a story and your job search is one! They may, in turn, keep their eyes and ears open for you without your needing to even ask. Leverage LinkedIn features to send out notifications to a select subset of your connections, use email, Twitter or Facebook.

7. Let this be the summer you begin to be more active on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook,and/or Pinterest. Decide which social media platform(s) will benefit you most in your industry and function and become more plugged in to where thought leadership is happening and who is leading the discussion. Consider starting a blog on one of the free blogging platforms and write a post once a week.

8. Prepare to connect or re-connect with your professional association(s). They are goldmines of contacts and opportunities to express your own branded thought leadership.

9. If recruiters are going to be a promising avenue for you, identify the ones active in your space and prepare to send them a resume and cover letter in the Fall so you get on their radar. Another way to get in touch with recruiters is to join the groups they're in on LI and ask to connect with them.

10. Sit down and establish a job search schedule to follow. Begin as soon as you can to follow it. If the above steps seem overwhelming, they can seem less so if you have a plan for making progress on each one of them. If you are unemployed, schedule 40 hours/week for these activities. If employed, plan when you are going to free up 12-20 hours to implement these strategies. Will you get up a half hour earlier? Block out afternoons on weekends? Be as specific and disciplined as you can.

(11) You'll notice that I didn't list checking job boards. I'm going to add that as an extra step, but a step you should spend only limited time on. Much of hiring does take place from job boards, but, for the individual, the chances are not very good that you will get a job from there. Checking the job aggregator sites liked indeed.com and simplyhired.com and one or more niche sites in your field/function should be sufficient. And, if you decide to send in materials, be sure to send them in in ASCII format, with the right keywords and customized content for the specific posting.

What i have outlined is a basic plan for being always ready in the job market for your next great opportunity. I know it seems like a lot, but think about what's at stake. +/-$100k in annual salary, the work satisfaction that can make 40+ of your waking weekly hours great or not so good, a path forward that will meet your goals for progressively advancing your career.

When you consider how important the outcome is to your life now and in the future, pursue these and other strategies in a steady, workmanlike manner. You have had some experience with project management, apply those principles to your job search. It is hard to do today's job search. And it does require learning new skills for many. But the payoff is huge. Good luck! Jean

 Courtesy Gallup

Gallup's 2013 State of the American Workplace Report came out a few days ago and finds that between 1010 and 2012 only 30% of workers report being actively engaged at work, 50% are unengaged, and 20% are actively disengaged (working against the company's interest). The report estimates that this high number of unengaged workers costs the US up to $550B annually. These losses result from absenteeism, health and safety issues, quality defects, and lost productivity.

There are a number of interesting findings in the report. But I am interested today in the recommendations for addressing the problem

Gallup identifies three main ways for companies to increase employee engagement. I'd like to focus on just the second, because it is so key to people's careers and transitions, my particular areas of interest:

"The research shows that people who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job."

We can fairly say, then, that if we increase employee engagement by 60%, we've gotten a lot closer to the desired fully engaged workforce. That's a huge impact! Even though Gallup employs "strengths-based" terminology, many of us this see the concept as very close to what we now call "personal branding." 

So what are the Gallup Report recommendations to improve engagement?

They advise that employers and managers actively help their employees to discover and use their strengths, as distinguished from their weaknesses. The idea is to identify what workers are doing and what skills they are employing when they are being the most productive (and fully engaged). Then they need to make sure to assign them the kinds of tasks that require those skills.

In personal branding, we identify a person's "unique promise of value." This is a concept formulated by William Arruda. It includes what a person does best (talents), skills, his/her attributes, unique knowledge base, the value s/he delivers consistently, personal style, and similar factors.

Gallup found that when teams focused on team members' strengths, productivity goes up 12.5% and translates into increased revenues and profitability.

Whether managers and staff choose to use Gallup's strengths-based tools, branding processes such as Reach Personal Branding, or any other related instrument, they have the power to improve lives and businesses to a remarkable degree, according to the findings.

What can you do today to discover your strengths or remind yourself of them, if you already know them? If you manage others, what can you do today to ensure that your staff are using their individual strengths? If you are managed, how can you influence your manager to make use of your unique constellation of skills, attributes, and talents?

There have been volumes written about cover letters, but has anyone really addressed the following crucial question and what to do about it?

WHO READS IT?

That's right, how you write the letter should depend on who's going to read it first. Take this example. A company is hiring for a CIO, and HR has been given the job description and  requirements for screening purposes.  Since candidates are not screened by the hiring authority (in this case the CEO or the CFO), but rather by HR, your initial and arguably most important audience is an HR person.

And do you think the head of HR will be doing the screening of resumes and cover letters? In any company with more than one HR staffperson, the top authority will probably not be the one making the decision to escalate the candidate to the next level.

So your future with that company most likely rests in the hands a relatively junior HR staffperson. Will they be sophisticated enough about technology and senior technology roles to interpret your resume and cover letter in light of the job requisition? We can assume that your resume has already passed the keyword electronic screen. So what can you do to help your candidacy make it to the next stage?

With your initial audience in mind, here are five things you can do in your cover letter to get past that initial human screen, a very human being whose training is not in your field of expertise.

1. WRITE your cover letter in easy-to-understand terms, avoiding too many multisyllabic words, complex sentence structure, highly abstract concepts, or technical jargon that is not among the keywords for the job.

2.ENGAGE the reader's emotions. Be human. Let the person know that you like the company and what they do. Say why you are interested in the company. Adopt a warm tone.  Infusing this warmth into your writing will help you at this level and won't hurt as your candidacy goes up the ranks to the top hiring authority.

3. IMPRINT a memory in their mind of you by making a connection through story. Try a quick paragraph story that talks about a challenge you faced, what you did, and how it turned out. Indicate why it is relevant to the job at hand.  Stories are remembered far longer than facts, and a person's suitability for a job can be best demonstrated to an unsophisticated audience (or even a sophisticated one) through story.

4. MATCH your background to the requirements in a way that's easy to grasp visually by a non-techie. Consider using a 2-column format with the requirements on the left and your match on the right. I suggest you place this visual after your closure (after "Sincerely, Your Name"), so that the human connection can be made first. Or include a 2nd page addendum with the column matches.

5. HELP the HR screener help you, by stating specifically what you want: an opportunity to speak with the hiring authority about the value you could bring to the company. Thank them for their time.

Observe the usual courtesies in writing a cover letter. Address it to the person whose name is given in the job ad. But hold in awareness the likelihood of someone less senior reading it first.

Newspapers are written to be read for someone at the 5th grade reading level. Ads also are written for a basic reading level as well. Leave the complex, sophisticated content in the resume, but let your cover letter be your wedge in the door to advance your candidacy.

Been paying attention to the Survival of the Fittest going on before our very eyes in the case of bees? The very bees responsible for pollinating much of the world's crops? This is the current state of affairs: honey bees hives are failing in large numbers, so much so that many growers have to depend on trucked-in bees to pollinate their crops. In China, crops are being pollinated BY HAND!

What is the reason for this serious threat to our foodstocks? Scientists are not sure; some say perticides and herbicides, some say malnutrition (too much monoculture of low-nutrition crops). Still other scientists opine that honey bees have been bred for low aggression traits, so that handlers don't have to wear as much or any protective clothing.

In any case, there is a third option some growers are using: introducing African killer bees to pollinate their crops. This strain appears to be thriving in Texas and other states that have imported these aggressive bees. The danger of course is to humans and animals who can die from these stings. Killer bees sting readily in contrast to the domesticated honey bees. It appears that being highly protective of the honey correlates with robust hives.

I couldn't help but think about this lesson from nature and wonder if it is suggestive of what we are seeing in the new world of work. Not just how to get a job, but how to keep it and how to keep your career growing robustly. The recommendations below are based on commonly understood trends that currently prevail.

1. Keeping your job: Get aggressive about owning the results of your work; don't let someone else taka advantage of your less boastful personality and take the credit - and the promotion!

2. Keeping your job: Abandon the passive honey bee side of you, and fiercely hone your branded value proposition within the company. Get the word out by circulating project status memos, networking internally, and pushing to get on projects that will enhance your brand.

3. Getting a job: Forget waiting around for recruiters to get back to you about jobs you've applied to. Aggressively mine your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, college alumni, and professional groups to make contact with employees of your target company. More about this in other blog posts here.

4. Getting a job: ALWAYS be in the job market. Gone are the days of the "company man." you cannot count on an employer to have your career security as a goal. That's the honey bee way: "OK you took away my protect-the-hive response, now you have to take care of me, your employee." It's not happending. Now, you will be cut loose if it's financially beneficial for the firm. So get your branded value proposition out there internally and externally and get active!

5. Getting a job: Every day of your job search, pick something you can actively do to get in front of decision makers: build a company list, network into the companies, connect with employees, send a direct mail campaign, work your alumni and association member lists. In other words, leave the traditional passive job search in the past and aggressively go after unpublished and post opportunities. Even approach organizations with the idea of writing your own job description.

The work world of the past is the world of the honeybee. The hives are dying. Employers won't look out for you. So aggressively protect your work product from being poached just as the killer bees protect their honey. And aggressively pursue job search strategies that have a high success rate. You need to win in this world of hyper-competitive search and short duration jobs by channelling your inner killer bee!

Quoting Teshma Sohoni (Fast Company Ap 2013), "Software is indeed eating the world as...industries are adopting SaaS/cloud faster than ever." He goes on to state that startups are targeting both niche and large industries with custom solutions.

For tech job seekers, whenever there's a disruptive trend, new types of jobs will never be far behind. These startups, in addition to established service providers, will be expanding their services and markets and in need of skilled tech workers. However, there's been a perceived downside for technology professionals in the trend to SaaS/cloud:

"What will happen to my job when my IT Dept. increasingly oursources both applications and infrastructure that have traditionally been under the control of the internal IT shop?"

Contrary to the fears that SaaS/cloud would decimate IT departments, it appears that tech jobs are still around but rapidly adapting and changing to service the new landscape. How will this trend affect you in your job search and career? Forbes addresses this question in their article, "The Great Cloud-induced Job Implosion That Never Happened," in reference to the Deloitte study published in the Wall Street Journal:

"If anything, cloud computing is increasing complexity and workloads, creating more demand for IT skills."

But the skills needed for current and future IT jobs will need to be actively cultivated in order for IT professionals to stay relevant. Oddly enough, we're not talking about mastery of new languages or technologies here as much as learning to interface effectively with internal business customers, vendor staff, and external customers.

In addition, new types of competencies are growing in importance:

"Deloitte reports that rather than diminish in-house IT departments, it is generating more “value-added” activities such as 'high-end software development, business analytics, enterprise architecture, and strategic vendor relationship management.'"

We have discussed in this space before how IT professionals are increasingly expected to be business savvy. The sought-after hires will be those who are attuned to leveraging IT to add value to the business.

Specifically, in three companies, here are examples of how certain jobs are morphing:

Programmers/coders to.....Application Developers, Technical Analysts

IT Staff to.....Business Analyst, Architects

IT Staff who maintained/fixed apps to.....Teachers/mentors/trainers supporting end-users in the use of new cloud/SaaS services

Where do you see possibilities for your career in these changes? I'd love to hear!

An algorithm deciding which programmer to interview? Permission to ignore resumes?

It had to happen sooner or later. Applicant tracking systems (ATS) were the first major application of technology to the decision about whom to interview. Now there is a new kid on the Siliconblock in Gild.com.   .

A good article in the NY Times ties the paradigm of applying technology to applicant selection to Big Data and the emerging field of work-science. Already top companies are testing and using Gild's software: Facebook, Wal-Mart, Twitter and others.

The thesis is this: Traditional hiring of programmers for coveted employer brands such as Google and Apple has depended on credentials such as a degree from MIT or Stanford, work experience at another premier company, etc. Glid.com believes that talented programmers who may be as good or better are being overlooked because they don't have a degree from a top tech school or a prestige background. They have developed a technology to address this problem.

How do they identify promising candidates then? By applying Big Data analytics to recruitment and using ~300 variables to predict a valuable hire. Instead of looking at three or four factors, they weigh more heavily the actual programming work someone's done.

The NY Times describes the broader criteria this way: "The types of language, positive or negative, that he or she uses to describe technology of various kinds; self-reported skills on LinkedIn; the projects a person has worked on, and for how long; and, yes, where he or she went to school, in what major..."

Executives at Gild.com in an interview with NPR said that they have ambitions to apply similar technology to fields in which work is harder to quantify: teaching, community organizing etc.

Gild's vision aligns well with the paradigm shift going on in HR (human resources) towards metrics-based decision making about recruitment and new hire evaluation. HR increasingly is needing to justify its existence in terms of providing quanitifiable value to the business.

Takeaways for programmers and job seekers in general? If this early-stage tech company is a harbinger of things to come, jumpstart your online footprint now! Leverage Linkedin to the max, including work products (once you get the media feature), put up a personal website to provide even more examples of your work and its impacts, start now to build thought leadership on Twitter, and blog. In other words, be everywhere and anywhere recruiters might be looking.

It's hard for me to say this more strongly: If you're not branded online - with breadth and depth, you will not be ready for the hiring environment of the future. With the tremendous communication potential of the Internet, you have the potential to beat out other applicants with much more impressive credentials. Who doesn't want to be able to do that?

What are your thoughts on this trend? I'd love to hear.

 Photo courtesy of Mat Robinson of Enduring Images Studio

“If someone doesn’t have a photo of himself on his LinkedIn profile, I’m not inclined not to trust him,” a hiring manager said the other day. Many people feel this way. Whoa! This message is coming in loud and clear: If your goal on being on LI is to network and potentially be considered for job opportunities, get a photo up there, and make it a good one!

Have you noticed that the photos are bigger on the new LI profiles? LI is moving in a direction paved by other social media sites that know that visuals are HUGE in terms of impact and influence. You only have to look at the role visuals pay on Facebook and, of course, the explosive growth of YouTube. The new media button that is being rolled out by LI is further evidence that visuals – in this case slide shows, videos, and additional photos – are key to conveying individual and corporate brands.

With the new, larger LI photo, you have more of a chance to create a more personal connection with the employer or recruiter who views it, before they ever read a word about you. Your executive resume also will be read with more interest if the reader has a mental picture of you. A properly lit image of you, appropriately dressed, with an engaging expression, can enhance your written profile, invite trust, and provide an intimacy that words alone could never do! 

Think about what a friendly, open, constructive person looks like. Do you like the headshot of someone you’re connected to? You want your image to be professional but not stuffy.  Above all, you want to look approachable.

The good news is that you don’t have to win a beauty contest for your photo, just have a great expression.

Here are 7 valuable tips that can help you ensure that your photo will HELP YOU, not hurt you (remember, having no photo WILL hurt you), and even serve as a competitive advantage for you!

1. Hire a portrait photographer to get a professional quality headshot of you facing into the camera. An angled picture can make you look sneaky. A profile picture doesn’t allow for eye contact. Sometimes your investment can be little more than $100 for a professional to help you out. Don’t use a Facebook-type picture of you partying with friends. If you can't afford a professional, then find a friend with a digital camera to take some pictures of you against a white background. Then pick the best shot.
2. Use good lighting so that your photo gives a fair representation of what you look like and so that your face isn’t bathed in shadows.
3. Use a white or neutral background. Some people use black. You don’t want to have a photo with a distracting background. Try to capture from the neck or shoulders up.  
4. Dress for success. If you are applying for an executive or managerial position, dress for the role. A good rule of thumb is to dress the way your immediate superior does on the job. For a woman, avoid too much jewelry or busy patterns. For a man, keep your tie (if you are wearing one) from stealing the show.
5. Have the photographer try to capture some of your personal brand attributes by conveying them in your expression. They may include one or more of the following: leader-like, sincere, assertive, strong, charismatic, steady, creative, humorous, outgoing, confident, etc. 
6. If you are worried about age discrimination, then feel free to touch up the gray hairs and use a healthy layer of foundation for a youthful and energetic appearance. I recommend getting a professional makeup job done, for both men and women. There’s a reason why TV anchors look so great and why they have teams to make them look that way! Ask your local hair designer for a referral to someone good.

1. Finally, try to look as up-to-date as possible. This means having your hairstyle and your clothing styles current, but not far-out trendy. Some of the larger stores have personal shoppers: Nordstrom, J Crew etc. Take advantage of their free guidance in selecting a suitable outfit.

See how great a professional headshot can be by viewing the image above. If you are in the New Jersey/New York area, contact Mat. Otherwise, try to find a professional near you whose work you like. Your headshot on LinkedIn, done right, can be an immediate invitation to a recruiter or hiring authority to read on and find on-brand, written content and, hopefully, more visuals that cause them to contact YOU.

Where is that? Yup, you guessed it, social media is where recruiters report sourcing 25% of executive hires. And those are 2012 figures! I'm ready to say it straight out:

"If you're not spending a portion of your time every week on one of more of the following -  LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, youtube, Pinterest - you will be seriously handicapped in your job search both now and in the future." Here's what you'll want to do: Leverage the power of social media sites to build your thought leadership and make connections with professionals and recruiters in your space.

No longer is private reputation all that matters. What matters is that you are a player in your industry and function and visible as such. I don't say this to make anyone feel overwhelmed - we all have enough of that! But the executive resume is no longer your only reporting mechanism for your professional achievements and brand. The Internet is where recruiters will first make decisions, based on what they find, about whether to contact you.

LinkedIn is apt to be the first place recruiters will be encountering you. So pay AT LEAST as much attention to getting your LinkedIn profile 95-100% complete and keyword loaded as you do to developing a branded executive resume that can be visually scanned in 6 seconds.

So to fight the overwhelm, I'm going to list FIVE concrete, easy steps you can take to start reaping the benefits of social media for job search. But first, get the basics in place and establish a discipline for "keeping at it" in social media. You may actually find this fun after awhile and a valued addition to your usual professional activities.

The Basics: To start, I suggest you have profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and ZoomInfo. Make sure they are marbled through with the right keywords and that they convey your branded value proposition. Then...

The Discipline: Set aside a half hour a day or 2-3 hours a week (maybe Sun. night?) when you can start to participate in online conversations going on in your industry and functional area. You are aiming to become known. You are also aiming to get to know the movers and shakers in your space and the recruiters who are monitoring where you hang out. Every interaction potentially creates valuable two-way networking opportunities.

The Fun:

- Start curating content relevant to your target market. Mine it from blogs of thought leaders and leading news sources and magazines. Select a RSS reader to aggregate your favorite blogs and enable you to quicky scan for content you would like to comment on and tweet out. There are lots of them. I use Google Reader and now Feedly. Try to do 2/day and space them out, using Buffer or one of the Twitter clients (TweetDeck, HootSuite). Feel free to tweet your own thoughts. One of my clients after implementing this advice says he gets all of his professional information now from Twitter.

- Set up your tweets so they automatically go to LinkedIn as well. When recruiters find your profile through keyword searches, they will see you are part of the conversation in your space. (Good!). Creates credibility and reassures them that you are a solid professional person to contact.

- Write a blog post once a week or comment on blogs you read that prompt a response in you. You will find that this activity will keep you in touch with emerging trends and news and enable you to filter it through your unique perspective, as a specialist in what you do.

- Select LinkedIn Groups you want to be part of. Choose ones where execs in your target company are active and recruiters participate. Comment, ask for opinions on something, link people to relevant content.

- Make heavy use of LinkedIn Updates and Mentions. More on these in another post. This prominent real estate - the Updates - on your LI profile enables you to give real-time information about an interesting talk you heard, infographic you saw, presentation you are giving, or people who have impacted you professionally in a positive way. If you set your Settings so that the updates go out to your contacts, they will start to know you as an interesting person and active in your field. Mentioning someone's name too is something LI is promoting now - the person mentioned will get notified and a potential connection can be made.

This is JUST ONE plan for getting going in social media. There are lots of other possible ways to engage. But, for executives, this one gives you a solid start. For more on how to create a killer LI profile, see other blog posts here. Good luck and let me know how it goes!

People come to an executive resume writer for a number of reasons. One or more of the following may sound familiar to you.

1. "My resume is attracting lower level jobs that are too hands-on technical"
2. "My resume doesn't communicate my true value"
3. "My resume doesn't communicate anything beyond my technology skills, like my business skills"
4. "I’m not sure what job titles I should apply to out there - my company uses titles no one else is using"
5. "I’m not sure what my objective should be and what jobs I can get"
6. "I got off track in a niche area of IT and don’t know how to get back into what I want to be doing"
7. "I’m not being paid what I think others are for what I do"
8. "I’ve done everything there is to do here, and I feel as though my career is getting stalled – I need more challenge"
9. "I want to be making more money, and I'm not sure how to go about getting a higher salary"
10. "I'm more of a generalist, so how do I go about getting a job where my skills are valued?"
11. "I have a lot of skills and experience, but all the tech jobs, even the executive ones, want specific technology experience that I often don't have"
12. "I want to change industries, but employers want you to have had experience in their industry; how do I break into a new sector?"
13. "I don’t have the exact tech skills and experience with certain environments employers are looking for, but I know I can do the job – how do I convince them?"
14. "I'm too senior for a lot of the tech jobs but too junior for the ones I know I can do and want to target; what do I do?"
15. "My resume and LinkedIn profile are attracting the wrong kind of jobs"

If you can relate to any of these issues (there is some overlap), you are not alone. There are ways to overcome hurdles like these with a skillfully written (and strictly honest) resume and LinkedIn profile and some career and interview coaching. Don't be hesitant to reach out for help to someone in the careers community. It can make the difference between getting a great job and just settling. Good luck!

Every once in a while I get to step back and look at the work I do with my clients from a larger, more expansive perspective. Ordinarily, we are laser focused on developing a branded executive resume and LinkedIn profile that will attract interviews and job offers. But what is really at stake here?                

Nothing less than your life. I'm currently reading The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling by Stephen Cope, Director of the Institute for Extraordinary Living at the famed Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Western Massachusetts. I tell you I did a double-take! He's talking about personal branding using the vocabulary of yogic fulfillment!

Yet, the criticality of discovering who you are, who you are given to be in your life, is rarely mentioned in personal branding discussions. Personal branding sounds like it's "nice to have," optional, a smart thing to do for career advancement, for making more money, and achieving greater fulfillment, but - is it a tragedy if you don't do it, find it, live it out?

Steven Cope says it is. If people "miss the mark" by even a little - say, they're a priest when they reallly want to lead the choir - that person may well experience ill effects from boredom, depression, feeling out of sync with what they do with most of their waking hours. And the world will have an uncomfortable, conflicted priest instead of inspired sacred music making.

Another thing that happens is that people undervalue their gifts, and therefore continue to do what they do with a nagging sense of falling short of "the big thing" they should be doing.

This is the situation I see most often. Wiliam Arruda's Reach 360 Survey is a fabulous tool for helping my clients see the gifts that others see in them - that they are too close to to see - or that they discount because their gifts come so naturally to them.

Learning that others DON'T usually have their particular gifts and that they turn to them for their gifts is a real eye-opener. The process helps my clients achieve a new sense of themselves as highly valued for their unique, natural-to-them ways that they do their work and interact with others.

What does the world lose by inidividuals not valuing themselves for their intrinsic personal brand? A person on fire with their passions and coming from a place of inner alignment with the greatest life that they can have - who does his work skillfully and with joy.

So, when you come to write your executive resume, be sure to let employers and recruiters know who you are - someone no one can duplicate - along with why the company needs someone like you. Get your personal brand out there - and give the world a chance to be benefited by you, living out your greatest life.