The good news is that technology, the Internet, and social media make it easier for us to access information about individuals, companies and prospective employers who may be important resources in your job search.

The not-so-good news is that you are responsible for the care and feeding of your own web presence, and such responsibility demands the kind of thought and attention that is new for many of us.

What will others see when they Google your name?  What’s required to develop the know-how to curate the content of what people read about you on the Internet?

Today, this is not an optional or extra-credit question. If you can find them online, they can find you – or not.

In her March 28, 2012 article published on the HBR Blog Network, Dorie Clark, a former political operative who has served as a strategy consultant for such clients as Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service, draws a perfect analogy in her headline: It’s Not a Job Search, It’s a Permanent Campaign.

Clark maintains that the lessons learned by candidates for political office are relevant for us all. She says politicians have learned that it’s not enough to worry about their image at election time. They now know that there is a permanent campaign going on all the time and that all successful candidates – including candidates for jobs — need to recognize a few new truths:

 Clark writes::

 Many people don’t want to deal with the hassle of a “permanent career campaign.” They think it’s too much work to contemplate their personal brand, maintain their social media footprint, or cultivate relationships when they’re not on the make for a new job. Those are the people who will lose. Whether or not you want to play the game, it’s happening around you.

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Click here to read the entire article and learn what it means to curate your online image.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/03/its_not_a_job_search_-_its_a_p.html

The story of the two women who became successive CEOs at Xerox after each worked at the company for more than 20 years is a story that may not have a future.

Ursula M. Burns, current Chairman and CEO of Xerox, is the first African-American woman to head a Fortune 500 company. Appointed to the position in July 2009, she is also the first woman to succeed another woman as the head of a Fortune 500 company. Her predecessor, Anne M. Mulcahy, appointed in 2001, mentored Burns at Xerox.

Both native New Yorkers, they rose through the company’s ranks through the 1980s and 1990s. Mulcahy joined Xerox in 1976; Burns, in 1980.  

I tell their story as a contrast to the current hiring trend in which companies are neglecting to develop their human resources internally and are increasingly looking outside the organization for talent.

Take a look at the following article by Peter Cappelli, posted on March 15, 2012 on the HBR Blog Network, and see how companies risk becoming penny-wise and pound-foolish by not investing in internal talent. While the article is headlined Bring Back the Organization Man, I felt compelled to lead my story with the tale of two women who served their organization quite admirably.

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Bring Back the Organization Man

by Peter Cappelli

How to find good quality employees, how to hang onto them, and how to develop them into better employees — these are the questions managers across the world constantly wrestle with. I’ve heard them in Europe at Davos this year, and from multinationals across the globe. I’ve seen them ripple across the booming economies in Brazil and Asia, where my colleagues and I have studied the operation of Indian companies, which make huge investments in developing talent. We’re now in the process of studying Chinese companies, where it appears at a minimum they are beginning to do the same.

The one place the picture looks different is the United States. There certainly are complaints here as well about the difficulty finding the right candidates, but the narrative is quite different. Here the story is about getting a “just-in-time” workforce, finding the precise workers we need just at the time we need them but letting them go when our needs change and then replacing them with new ones. It’s a “plug ‘n play” approach to the workforce, and it’s not working that well. (In full disclosure, I wrote about this phenomenon in a book called Talent on Demand, describing how companies in the US have adopted this approach to talent management in order to deal with highly uncertain and volatile environments).

The weak link in that approach is that with the focus on outside hiring to get skills, few employers are providing development opportunities. Why bother developing when we can get the skills on the outside? US large companies have been filling 66 percent of their vacancies from the outside, in contrast to a generation ago where 90 percent were filled from within. Because one company’s outside hire of an experienced candidate is another company’s retention problem, employers rightly look around and wonder whether investments in their employees will pay off. These patterns reinforce each other: less development leads to a greater need to hire skills from the outside, and doing so reduces the need to develop internally; it also creates spillover problems for other employers for whom turnover reduces the ability to finance training.

All that would be ok except that employers are finding it difficult to hire the skills they need. The supply of skills in specific areas is uncertain, so the quality and price jumps around a lot. Some jobs require skills or at least sets of skills that are unusual, and finding a good fit outside is very difficult. Skills that one learns through training become scarce because few employers train.

For the employees, it’s not working well because they find themselves stuck in their current jobs. No one wants to develop them, no one wants to let them grow into a job when the alternative is to find someone who can “hit the ground running” because they have done that job elsewhere. So development and advancement are hard to come by.

To read the whole article, click here:

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/03/bring_back_the_organization_ma.html

 Peter Cappelli is Professor of Management at the Wharton School and the author of several books.

Here’s an article from the current issue of Inc. Magazine by Harvey Mackay, author of Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. It was written with small business owners — the magazine’s target market — in mind, but there’s a lot to learn here for anyone who moves about in today’s marketplace.   ___________________________________________________

The Golden Rule of Networking: Don’t Keep Score

This is the only way to win at networking: Always offer to help. Never expect anything in return.

I call it Golden Rule of Networking, and it should permeate all your networking efforts.  What makes that a little tricky is that it goes against every naturally acquisitive, ambitious and self-serving impulse in you.

My Golden Rule of Networking is simple:  Don’t keep score. 

What’s that mean? Most of us understand networking as an act of mutual action and mutual exchange. Reciprocity. A transaction that is mutually beneficial to both. That’s the kind of reciprocity that most people are familiar with. 

My definition of reciprocity is quite different.  You must give without keeping score.  No quid pro quo.  It’s the one fundamental concept that is the most misunderstood in business today.  Few people truly get it.  You are either all in or all out.

There have been plenty of people over the years who said they were going to help me in some way, but they didn’t.  Maybe they couldn’t.  Maybe they just forgot.  Maybe they never intended to.  It doesn’t matter.  You cannot keep score, or you will lose for sure.

Deposits in the Brain Bank

Let me tell you how it works:  If you’re smart, you surround ourselves with talented people—the most talented you can find.  They are your most powerful asset.  In my case, I regard this select group as my own personal brain bank.  They include our family, friends, mentors, fellow workers and our industry contacts.  You never know when you’ll need to draw on the “accounts” you create with those oh-so-valuable resources.

With every contact within your brain bank – every call and every visit – preferably near the conclusion, sincerely ask the other person what you can do to be helpful to them.  Ninety-five percent of the time, people will thank you for asking and tell you that there’s really nothing they need.  If, however, they do ask you for a favor, then your eyes should light up.

Here’s Your Chance

As you learn what is being asked for, note every detail with warmth and urgency.  Fulfill the request to the best of your ability.  As you do it, and after it’s done, expect nothing, absolutely nothing, in return.  Don’t shop for gratitude in your phone calls or e-mails.  Do the favor because you like and respect the other person and honestly want to help.

If you manage your career and live your life in this way, two magical things will happen:

1. Over time, people will find ways to do remarkable and unexpected things for you that make your life easier.
2. When you’re hit by a storm, you are likely to find the most astonishing human network of support you could ever imagine.

Over the years, my networking focus has shifted from the quantity of contacts I maintain to the quality of contacts.  The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships.  The quality of your business is no different.

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Check out this article from the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. For some employers, your credit report is your “other” resume.  

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HIRE HOPES FOR JOB SEEKERS WITH DODGY CREDIT

With the nation’s unemployment remaining stubbornly high, a number of states are banning credit checks for job seekers.

 WSJ.com February 3, 2012

By Annamaria Andriotis

With the nation’s unemployment remaining stubbornly high, a number of states are taking a step to help job seekers: banning credit checks.

This month, California became the seventh state to prohibit companies from doing credit checks on many applicants, and similar bills are pending in another 19 states. On the federal level, a bill that calls for a similar ban is awaiting review by a House subcommittee. The moves could be “a game changer for people negatively affected by this economy,” says Persis Yu, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

The trend also has ramifications for employers, who for years have been permitted to review the credit histories of prospective workers. The assumption, experts say, is that a bad credit report might help flag poor work habits and decision-making, and even general untrustworthiness.

Indeed, some 60% of employers report doing credit checks for some or all job candidates, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Of those, more than 60% said they are unlikely to accept an applicant with an outstanding judgment currently filed against them, while nearly half would likely pass on one with accounts in debt collection.

Some research seems to back employers’ fears: Nearly one third of employees with self-reported credit problems engaged in “counterproductive work behavior,” such as theft or accepting bribes, compared to about 18% of employees without financial problems, according to a 2008 academic study.

But consumer advocates say credit problems are more widespread now because of the struggling economy. Over the past two years, for instance, roughly 4.8 million homeowners have received a foreclosure notice, according to RealtyTrac.com. A foreclosure stays on a consumer’s credit report for seven years.

Given that backdrop, some argue that employers should hire based on skills and qualifications and not credit histories. Those in the job market “have plenty of obstacles right now and should not have to try to defend the fact that they missed payments on bills,” says Diane Rosenbaum, an Oregon state senator whose bill banning certain credit checks became law in 2010.

Case in point: Karen Selling, a dietetic technician, says she and her husband, Christopher, a diesel mechanic, of Shelton, Conn., have been on dozens of interviews over the past two years, but neither has been hired because of their credit histories. When their son got sick a few years ago, the Sellings racked up medical debt and fell behind on their mortgage. “Nobody is giving us a chance,” she says.

In many states with the new laws, employers can still check the reports of applicants for certain white-collar jobs, such as bankers and law-enforcement positions.

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, companies must get permission from applicants in writing to check their credit reports. For those with credit problems, it is better to explain what happened rather than deny permission, says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at SmartCredit.com, a credit-monitoring site.

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I write about the world of work and the job marketplace. And at a time when the notion of “job” has changed dramatically, people who want to make a living find that they have to invent their own job. Jobs simply don’t exist the way they used to.  

“Innovation” is a word we hear a lot. Bill Gates, for example, loves to use it. He and other business leaders believe it is the Holy Grail of economic growth. The contemporary thinking is that, if you have an innovation that changes how the world works, you’re ahead of the game. Not only do you have a job, you’ve got something much bigger than that. 

But what is innovation, and how can regular folks like us think about innovation? 

Here’s an excerpt from an article in the forthcoming April 18, 2012 issue of Fast Company that focuses on innovation. The title of the article is “Six Questions That Lead to New Innovations.”  Written by Sarah Krasley, who makes an important distinction between innovation and invention, the article takes us to a project led by Bill O’Connor of the Innovation Genome Project to look at six core questions that have spurred innovation in human history.

As O’Connor worked with a team of MBAs from Hult International Business School to review the first 100 innovations, they quickly identified six questions that famous innovators have consistently asked and answered to generate ideas that can lead to new innovations.

These six innovation questions are:

• What could I look at in a new way? (Steve Jobs looked at the computer in a new way, leading to the Mac and the personal computer revolution.)
• What could I use in a new way? (Paleolithic humans turned fire from a scourge into a means of cooking, heat, light, and protection.)
• What could I recontextualize in space or time? (The Sumerians moved language from spoken to written form, expanding its power and reach.)
• What could I connect in a new way? (Thomas Edison connected the light bulb to the electrical grid, leading to electrified cities.)
• What could I change, in terms of design or performance? (Nearly 3 million years ago, the world’s first “innovator” transformed a simple rock into a stone hand-axe.)
• What could I create that is truly new? (In 1776, American colonists created the first “intentional” nation, based on specific abstract principles.)

Click here to read the complete article:

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679231/the-6-questions-that-lead-to-new-innovations

This week, I’ll be starting my third year as an adjunct at the Hunter College of the City University of New York where I’ll be coaching students who are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on preparing for job interviews.

Importantly, I will help them to answer the interview question that stumps most people: So, tell me about yourself. They will learn how to talk about themselves in a way that enables prospective employers to see them as valuable to their business or organization.

I Googled “Returning Veterans” the other day and downloaded an item that illustrates the need I serve. It was the transcript of an interview that aired on Boston’s public radio station on Veterans Day last year.

The correspondent, Sacha Pfeiffer, interviewed a veteran, Jacques Duverna, while he was attending a career fair. She asked him what he would say if he were in a job interview and an employer asked him what special qualities his military service would give him over a civilian interviewing for the same job.

According to Pfeiffer, Duverna paused for a few seconds, and said “Wow. Shoot. Gotta put me on the spot.”

When the question was repeated, Duverna was able to say “I would guarantee you an honest employee. Disciplined. On time. Next time you interview me, I’ll be better.”

It’s my job to help veterans like Duverna answer such interview questions. In my classes, I coach them to talk about themselves in a way that is powerful, memorable and succinct. This means my listening carefully to their experiences and helping them to distill the elements that would make a prospective employer say, “Wow, we’d like to have you work for us.”

I also downloaded a blog that was posted on Veterans Day by Randy Stover, Co-CEO and Partner at Praemittias Group, Inc. Its headline was “Why I Hire Vets.” In the blog, Stover lists the “special qualities that military service gives a veteran over a civilian interviewing for the same job.” When I read Stover’s list, I thought about Duverna.

Click on the link below and see the qualities Stover identified.

http://www.inc.com/randy-stover/why-i-only-hire-veterans.html

Check out this excerpt from The Four-Year Career, an article by Anya Kemenetz that appears in the January 12, 2012 issue of the business magazine Fast Company. The article’s subtitle says it all: Lessons from the new world of quicksilver work, where “career planning” is an oxymoron.

Shorter job tenure is associated with a new era of insecurity, volatility, and risk. It’s part of the same employment picture as the increase in part-time, freelance, and contract work; mass layoffs and buyouts; and “creative destruction” within industries. All these changes put more pressure on the individual–to provide our own health care, bridge gaps in income with savings, manage our own retirement planning, and invest in our own education to keep skills marketable and up to date. Financial commitments like homeownership or starting a family are a much tougher proposition when one, you can’t expect to stay in a place for long and two, you can’t expect to ever earn more in real terms than you do at age 40, as recent surveys at Payscale.com suggest.

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 Click on the link below, read about the smart and talented people Ms.Kemenetz introduces, and glimpse the changes that are occurring in the workplace right before our eyes.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/162/average-time-spent-at-job-4-years