Where a dedicated careerist of old constructed a job-seeking identity through a resume and a few other printed materials disseminated to audiences that seem puny by today’s standards, postmillennial upwardly mobile types are establishing their career identities to vast global audiences using tools such as blogs (short for “Web logs”). And recruiters are responding. Case in point is the notion of the blog as a replacement or accompaniment for a resume. Sarah E. Needleman reported on the Career Journal site that Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., recruitment manager, had filled an estimated 125 corporate jobs by reading blogs.

Authors Heraghty and Adams call blogs “a narrative form optimized for the web,” and blogs are unquestionably storytelling devices in which one’s story can unfold via regularly posted entries and also be told on a bio or “About Me” page, such as Rich Page’s example and one by a blogger who goes by “nahliz”. “Once you have a clear idea of who you are and what you want to do, you can start to tell the universe and attract the people who you would like to work with, talk their language and sell your future,” writes Blogging for Beginners author Margaret Stead.

Examples of individuals with a well-branded online presence include Nina Burokas (which, unfortunately is now password-protected), who begins her personal story by writing: “Nina Burokas is a brand strategist and Web 2.0/3D Internet evangelist.” Another that is more lighthearted and personal is that of Brandon Zeuner.

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Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, Quintessential Careers Press, ISBN-10: 1-934689-00-9. Find out the ways you can own the entire book.

A major job-seeker advantage is that most of the networks mentioned in yesterday's entry provide an opportunity to build a profile on the networking site, thus a chance to engage in storied personal branding. Let your profile tell your story in a lively, exciting way that truly reflects your personality. Jim Randall of The Raconteur describes a process he takes clients though that can easily apply to crafting a profile for social-networking sites. These components can help you create an engaging story on these sites:

• Who you are: Develop this component using your own authentic voice. You may want to draw from your Quintessential You story (Chapter 1).


• What you do: A good way to frame this part of your story, Deb Dib notes, is to think of how you've made a difference for your employers. What outcomes would not have been possible for your employer without your initiatives?


• How you do it: Offer stories, and when possible, quantified proof of how effectively you have performed.


• What you want to be: Paint a word picture that shows your potential.


• Your value proposition: Incorporate your branding statement into your profile story.


• Your commitment: Express your passion for what you do.

Here are some samples of great social-networking profiles that tell at least part of the stories of the people behind them (registration at LinkedIn may be required to see these). Deb Dib shared these in an article about LinkedIn:

• Jason Alba


• Paul Mullen


• Meg Guiseppi


• Mark Beckford


• Paul Copcutt


• Deb Dib

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Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, Quintessential Careers Press, ISBN-10: 1-934689-00-9. Find out the ways you can own the entire book.

You can pump up your online presence through branded storytelling in a variety of venues. But, it’s not the means of delivering an online presence that is most important; it’s the content, and specifically, the story-supported personal-branding content. Deb Dib notes that “companies and recruiters are looking for passive candidates and active candidates with strong brands - clearly defined value propositions and differentiators. They are looking for fit. They are looking for authenticity and passion - the courage of a candidate to be real.” What better way to be real than by telling your own compelling story? Following are just a few media in which you can do so:

Social/Business Networks, Micro-blogging. Many recruiters and job-seekers connect though online business and social networks. The big three are:

• LinkedIn, with at least 25 million registered users, the most business-like of the three; average user is age 39.
• MySpace, with at least 114 million registered users, the most social of the three and especially popular with users over age 25.
• Facebook, with at least 124 million registered users, falls between business-like and social and is wildly popular with college-age and new-grad users but growing rapidly among those age 25+.

Recruiters, who cite these networks along with the people search engine ZoomInfo, like these venues because they can learn about prospective candidates, as well as find out who else knows these prospects. These and other social-networking sites are exploding. Wikipedia lists more than 100 social-networking sites, and those are just the “notable” ones. Recruiters are using them to find candidates, while job-seekers are using some of the sites to get “found.” Another trend is micro-blogging at tremendously popular sites such as Twitter - telling folks in no more than 140 characters what the user is doing at any given moment. Candidates that recruiters actually source from social networks still represent a small percentage of the total, but as Kevin Wheeler writes on Electronic Recruiting Exchange, “Recruiting is moving rapidly from a find ‘em and screen ‘em, to a court ‘em, stay in touch with them, and sell them profession. These networks will power that charge.”

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Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, Quintessential Careers Press, ISBN-10: 1-934689-00-9. Find out the ways you can own the entire book.

Chapter 7 on portfolios touched on the growing trend in which employers seek information on candidates by looking them up on Internet search engines and the accompanying importance of creating and managing an online presence. To underscore that importance, Business Week has reported that 87 percent of recruiters use Google and social networks (such as LinkedIn) to decide about candidates. Google searches are so crucial to recruiters that they hold training classes, write manuals, and share secrets on discussion boards about exotic Google search strategies to find candidates. “In executive circles, having a LinkedIn profile is becoming as expected as being searched on Google,” says Deborah Wile Dib, whom we first met in Chapter 3. “Not having one is almost a negative.” A 2007 survey conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity revealed that 65 percent of business professionals are clicking and connecting via personal and professional social networking Web sites, with 35 percent of them reporting they use networks to assist them in finding a job.

Keep in mind, though, that employers and recruiters aren’t just looking for your “Googlability” - how many times your name pops up in a search. They’re also interested in how positive your online image is. Thus, be very careful about how you project your story online. The Internet is a highly public medium, and personal information floating out there in cyberspace could unfortunately work against you. Business Week reported that 35 percent of surveyed employers have eliminated candidates based on online information.

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Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, Quintessential Careers Press, ISBN-10: 1-934689-00-9. Find out the ways you can own the entire book.