MyRetailCareer

More About Ivy Exec, Continued

I wrote about the benefits and value that Ivy Exec offers for job seekers in More About Ivy Exec.  Today, let’s delve into what we offer for Companies. 

How about access to 70K+, hand selected, top-of-their class, elite, global business professionals (that’s a mouthful)?  95% of which hold graduate degrees, 85% MBA’s, 78% passive and 42% diversity.  A database that more than doubled in 2010,is  currently adding over 1000 new members a week (and  accelerating), and could reach 150K before the end of the year. 

Add to that Power Post job postings with packages for every recruiting budget.  A robust Database Search offering allowing you to see top business professionals.Plus Assisted Search, performed by professionals who are experts in locating and engaging high performing, passive talent.  Staffed by a team of experts who represent your company with the highest level of professionalism and enthusiasm.

If you’re a talent acquisition specialist in a business environment, I invite you to visit Ivy Exec and visit the Employers Pages.

More About Ivy Exec

I promised to tell you more about Ivy Exec and I thought I‘d start with the benefits for an individual.  At Ivy Exec, we prescreen every person who requests to join.  Yes, you may not be accepted.  On average, we accept about 1/3 of all applicants.

What does that mean to you? 

If you are accepted, you are in a much smaller pool of highly qualified talent.  It’s easier for the companies that use our services to find you.  You also receive personalized attention, early notification of top quality, career enhancing openings and access to career development tools specifically developed for the disconcerting professional.  Over 75% of our members are employed, passively choosing to learn about select openings.

If you aren’t accepted, it’s not the end of the world.  Since we review your application and your resume, I suggest you take a close look at your resume.  Surprisingly, many highly qualified candidates resumes just don’t get the job done. Unless your profession is Resume Writer, I highly suggest you get some professional resume help and here at Ivy Exec we can do just that.

If your employment history is only a couple of years long, you simply might not have enough experience .if your employment history is spotty or jumpy, I suggest you find your path and stick with it for an appropriate length of time.  Consulting a professional career coach, most offer a free initial consultation ,might be a good idea.  If you are in retail/fashion/luxury world, have applied and not been accepted, shoot me an email at brad@ivyexec.com and set up a time to talk.

If you have more questions, visit Ivy Exec and take a look around.  Use the promo code RETAIL2010 for a free 3 month premium membership.

Day 13, The Holidays and the Job Search

I know there are a million, maybe a billion people out there that will tell you to keep your professional profiles (LinkedIn like) as far apart from your personal profiles, (Facebook like) but I think the horse is out of the barn.  Since I’m an early adopter, I’m not really concerned that the line has blurred.

Just a hint, the line of demarcation between your personal and professional life isn’t going to suddenly become the Berlin Wall again.  Think of it as a grey mist, which will eventually lift.

Bear in mind that this writing isn’t political, but Ronnie makes a great speech!

For the brave, those with chutzpah, creative and innovate types, jump all over this. Yes, I know it’s in French, which I happen to adore.  Google will translate it for you anyways.  Facebook’s new features are being jumped all over and if you don’t make a statement, well c’est la vie. 

My thanks to Mashable for pointing me in this direction, here is their awesome article.

10 Creative Uses of the New Facebook Profile

Yes, it takes some skill and some work but I’ll have it figured out by the weekend and if I can do it, so can you.

Consider it a gift to yourself this holiday season. 

Day 12, The Holidays and the Job Search

Sunday, in between games, jump over to newsweek.com and build your own career tree from your LinkedIn profile.  

I find that sometimes a visual view of the old black and white can provide a new prospective on things.  Have fun.

Day 15, The Holidays and the Job Search

When you really stop and think about it, the first social media job search tool was the resume and the first real effective method of delivery was an envelope (with a stamp of course).

Yes, it’s that simple.  A couple of pieces of paper and a stamp.  It took some effort and thought and probably almost always was looked at.  Then came the fax machine, hugely expensive pieces of equipment back then. Remember going to Kinko’s and paying a lot of money to fax your resume to “the first black hole" created on earth (yes, showing my age today)?

Now you can send hundreds if not thousands of resumes with a click of the button.  It’s easy and cheap.  What do you get for easy and cheap?  Nothing.

All the new social media methods of contact:  Facebook, LinkedIn, Monster, other job boards, meetups, networking groups, etc. usually have you “set up” your profile.  I have a tip for you, all those profiles are resumes and you should treat them as such. Don’t believe me?  Check out dictionary.com then.

That’s right boys and girls, who are we to argue with the Random House Dictionary.  Just because people treat a couple of pieces of printed paper differently than your Facebook page doesn’t mean they aren’t looking at both and drawing their own conclusions.

So let’s look carefully at those resumes profiles through the eyes of an employer.  I’ve been talking about getting your message aligned for 2 weeks now.  How many of you can answer these questions and do your resumes profiles reflect the message?

1. I have found the 3 words that describe the professional me perfectly.
2. In 2 minutes I can tell a complete stranger who I am and what I can do.
3. When I networking I always use #1 and #2.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t answer yes to all 3, most people can’t and keep in mind that things change.  Your 3 words from 4 months ago might not be the best ones to use today.  The important thing is to start thinking in these terms:

Create ~ Clarify ~ Communicate

Here is some help from a couple of my friends.  Chris Brogan has a nice article titled

MAKE YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE WORK FOR YOU and here is a great YouTube video too on how to use LinkedIn once you have a great resume profile there.

How to find a new job using LinkedIn

Have a great Thursday and remember the 3 C’s.

Day 27, The Holidays and the Job Search

If you’ve been reading the past few days, you’ll might have noticed I’ve been focusing on a common theme.

Having a clear and effective message and an audience to deliver it to.

It’s easy to talk about focusing your message but it is difficult to actually do it yourself.  One common problem is most of us know ourselves so we communicate from a perspective of what we know and want to hear.  When we read our own resume, we fill in the blanks subconsciously because we know everything about the person. We often don’t even see the omissions and confusion that can be glaring to another reader.

If you are going to effectively market your professional worth to someone else, you have to detach yourself from your message and you need 3rd party guidance to hone what you are saying.  We just can’t be objective when it comes to ourselves.  That’s ok, it’s human nature, but it does cause problems.

So today, I want you to continue to look at your message and the tools you deliver it with.  Yesterday, you spent some time on LinkedIn; today pick a few trusted confidants from there and ask them to look over your resume  profile and anything else you have and then summarize you in 1 or 2 paragraphs.  Ask them to write the summary for you and ask them to pay close attention to any area that they don’t fully understand 100%. 

It’s important that they write it out for you.

Tomorrow, we can talk about some of the things this exercise can expose.

If you want me to do it as well, send me an email at brad@myretailcareer.net. 

PS.  Here is an example of exactly what I’m writing about from a real resume.

• Transitioned the planning function from reactionary to proactive utilizing a risk and reward evaluation methodology.

The person who wrote this knows what it means because he did it. When he reads this, he fills in the blanks and it makes sense to him.  Most people don’t have a clue as to what he did.  Plus it just doesn’t make sense.  Planning is by nature proactive and just what is a risk and reward evaluation methodology?

Day 30, The Holidays and the Job Search

Yesterday I wrote about “aligning the stars” my term for making sure all the tools you use to communicate in your job search are telling the same story.

Today, I want to talk about angels.  Yes, it’s the holidays, so there will be a lot of metaphors here that are appropriate to the season. Angels, are the people that help you help yourself in your search.

Do you have enough angels?  Are you really working to find more?  I’d suggest you read this article from JobSearchInIsrael and then rate your efforts.

Job Seekers – Help People Help You

The next few days, while we take stock of our blessings is a great time to think of all the people we have been fortunate to know in our career.  More importantly, the holidays gives us the perfect time to reach out to those we may not have talked with for a long, long time.

I don’t advocate calling them up, saying “Happy Holidays, do you know anyone that might want to hire me.”  I suggest some subtlety and tact.

What I would do, is reach out,in a genuine spirit, and just say hello.  I’d find out if they are on LinkedIn or Facebook and add them if I don’t already have them.  I’d get an email address.  I ‘d wish them the best for the New Year.

I’d do that over and over again and make my list and check it twice.  More tomorrow and Friday about that list.

Day 31, The Holidays and The Job Search

Since we have a month left to Christmas, let’s start today with an assessment of where we are.  Forget about what you’ve done up until this point, focus on the moment.

If I called you this minute, yes right now, and said. “In 2 minutes, tell me who you are”, could you do it?  If I then hung up and went straight to your LinkedIn profile, would I get the same impression?  If I looked at your resume would it echo and reinforce what you just told me?

The couple of days before Thanksgiving are great days to use for aligning the stars as I like to say. Most people take an old resume, tack some new things on it, quickly throw together a LinkedIn profile and then build an “elevator” speech.  Each one is completed as a single task and they don’t always point in the same direction, let alone provide a crystal clear message of who you are.  Not a good way to communicate if you ask me….

A few links for you…

From my friends over at CareerRocketeer.com.

Your Elevator Speech: Keep It Simple Silly

My friend Jason Alba’s, I’m on LinkedIn, Now What? blog has everything you need to know about LinkedIn.

Another friend, Chris Brogan from Chrisbrogan.com

Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future,

and from my only other friend, Dan Schawbel over at PersonalBrandingBlog.com comes

10 Reasons Why YOU Should Care About Personal Branding.

This should keep you busy until tomorrow.

Fashion, Career and the News

Busy and interesting couple of days.

I’d be interested in hearing thoughts about this one.

Google Launches Personalized Fashion Shop Boutiques.com

Another great article from my friend Lisa Vaas.

Is Your Resume Old-fashioned?

I really have almost forgotten about yesterday.

The Beatles' iTunes Journey: From the 45 RPM Single to the iPod

Have a great Wednesday.

Your Job Search and Your Email Address

I read a good article today over at CNN.com titled

What your e-mail address says about you

written by Doug Gross.

The first thing I look at when someone sends me a resume or email is the email address.  I have some preconceived ideas about a persons email address and the article seems to pretty much ring true.

I know it sounds like common sense but when you are a job seeker, make sure your address is professional and memorable in a good way.

I have gotten resumes from hotkitty2, ilikespamalot, and names from the Hobbit.  They were real people, with real resumes and yet they didn’t think twice about the impression they made.

Just for the record, I have a email address with MSN, one for MyRetailCareer, a yahoo account and a gmail account. I don’t have an AOL address all though at one time, a long time ago, I did.