An excellent post this morning over at the Brazen blog – check it out > http://blog.brazencareerist.com/2012/01/04/6-reasons-you-wont-get-a-better-job-in-2012/

What do you need to stay ahead of the curve and prepare yourself for the job market challenges in 2012?  Here is a summary of the top tech skills needed in 2012.  Read the entire list over at CIO INSIGHT.  Having gone through the post, I am not surprised by any of the items on the list.

HTML 5 was a no-brainer especially since Adobe has said is abandoning mobile Flash player.  Apple iOS and Android will remain in the top 10 for several more years since companies are working furiously to deliver iOS and Android apps for their customers.  While iOS remains strong, sales figures show that Android phones are selling just as well which means that companies will also develop for Android.  As well the Android App Store hit 10,000,000,000 (that’s 10 BILLION) download in December 2011.

1. HTML 5
2. MongoDB
3. Apple iOS
4. Android
5. Mobile App (development)
6. Puppet
7. Hadoop
8. jQuery
9. Platform-as-a-service
10. Social media

If you’re a developer and don’t know some of these, it’s time you did something about it.

I read an interesting article today from the folks over at Higher Bracket (a Canadian Job Board that advertises $100k + jobs) about cover letters.  Much of what they talked about is basic marketing – which is hook, pitch and call to action.

About 15-20 years ago you responded to a job posting by quoting the newspaper you saw the posting on, the date it was posted and the job title.

Things have changed.

You don’t see a lot of job postings in the news paper anymore, instead you will find them on job boards – but those are only a small percentage.  Many recruitment companies are using things like Twitter to find candidates.  Twitter is not the only option, as others even use FaceBook — in fact, job hunting has quickly become an adventure in social networking.

The job search has become an adventure, you can’t expect to throw your resume up anywhere and expect people to find you – you have to be found and one of the key methods is through social networking.  You make use of services like Twitter by following individuals and having others follow you; but also by interacting with others — and it’s not an easy task!

Yahoo! Research has published a study called “Who Says What to Whom on Twitter”, here is an bstract of that study:

“We study several longstanding questions in media communications research, in the context of the microblogging service Twitter, regarding the production, flow, and consumption of information. To do so, we exploit a recently introduced feature of Twitter—known as Twitter lists—to distinguish between elite users, by which we mean specifically celebrities, bloggers, and representatives of media outlets and other formal organizations, and ordinary users. Based on this classification, we find a striking concentration of attention on Twitter—roughly 50% of tweets consumed are generated by just 20K elite users—where the media produces the most information, but celebrities are the most followed. We also find significant homophily within categories: celebrities listen to celebrities, while bloggers listen to bloggers etc; however, bloggers in general rebroadcast more information than the other categories. Next we re-examine the classical “two-step flow” theory of communications, finding considerable support for it on Twitter, but also some interesting differences. Third, we find that URLs broadcast by different categories of users or containing different types of content exhibit systematically different lifespans. And finally, we examine the attention paid by the different user categories to different news topics.”

The study is pretty interesting, and worth reading – yes, it is a free download from the Yahoo! Research site.

I found another site where Tony@ThePopulation talked about segmentation of Twitter users.  He came up with this – keep this in perspective, as these are his thoughts from 2009 and his blog (on Blogger) has not been updated in several years:

1. The Replacements – Those twitterers who have replaced a more traditional form of communication called talking with 140 characters or less of every thought, comment or announcement that enters their mind. These twitterers tend to skew towards the @reply functionality.
2. The Giver’s – Those that are so fast to tweet a link to the latest piece of industry information published, that they can practically claim it as their own. Lots of tinyurl’s are seen in their tweets. Those that just miss being first to announce often use the RT function.
3. The Takers – Those that selfishly take more than they give from Twitter. These people (me included in this group!) like to follow the random thoughts of random people and send minimal & uninteresting tweets (usually after a few drinks!).
4. The Profilers – Twitter has become both a replacement and a nightmare for publicists amongst those that have a public profile. And we all now feel closer to the ones we look up to and know more about what’s going on in their heads. And if their tweets are missed online, you can usually catch them in the glossies or sunday gossip sections.
5. The Robots – The segment we all hate, but in the end they dont care because they are machines! I also put the fakes in this segment as they tend to be disliked as well.
6. The WTF’s – This segment skews to those who have no followers and only 1 update. They are not sure what the hell twitter is and why people think it’s great. And they are proud to publicly announce it.

No doubt things have changed since this post was made, but I don’t imagine by much.

So how do you get noticed?

First off – if you are a professional; and depending on your level you probably want to be on LinkedIn.  It is the worlds largest social network for professionals, unfortunately it also attracts the newbie Internet Marketers who think that they’ve got an open invitation to spam you — but that’s another story.  By connecting to others on LinkedIn and participating in the various (hundreds or thousands) of groups and answering questions, you can rise to the top so that you are noticed — but this is never a guarantee that you’ll get calls out of the blue, but it certainly helps to strengthen your brand.

Next is Twitter.  Like LinkedIn, the key is to attract like minded Twitter users to follow you and also to follow like minded Twitter users — but it’s also important to not limit yourself to specific categories of users as you never know where your next opportunity will come from.  You should be smart about following and weed out the crap/spammers from those that genuinely give back to the Twitterverse.

Facebook is something nobody can be without, but in my opinion to make Facebook work you need to keep your personal profile separate from your professional profile.  The easiest way to do this?  Multiple accounts.  I do have a Facebook account that I share with friends, and family and have recently started a professional account but it is not yet ready for prime time.

The tough thing is to manage, and monitor multiple accounts — that’s where tools like HootSuite, and having a portable device like an iPad, iPhone, Samsung Galaxy Tab or other device can come in handy.  I won’t be talking about any applications in this post or devices.  I will save that for later.

As you contribute content to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn you do get noticed.  On LinkedIn your thoughtful responses to questions could earn you Expertise status in various categories.  As you also optimize your LinkedIn profile and target keywords for your industry you will also see an increase in who has viewed your profile.  The end result of more people viewing your profile, and your profile being found on search results is that the opportunities for HR firms to contact you increases.

On Twitter and Facebook it’s not as easy, you’re going to really have to work hard to get fans, likes and followers.  Again it all comes back to thoughtful and interesting tweets and information on Facebook.

Social media strategy is also much more than just Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – but these are the top three.

Reading an excellent article on CIO.COM a survey by Jobvite found that companies that use social networking to recruit use the following methods:

1. LinkedIn @ 78%
2. Facebook @ 54%
3. Twitter @ 44%
4. Blog @ 18%

The rest of the items in their list drop from 12% (YouTube) to 4% for MySpace.  There were 14% that said they will use none.  They are the minority.

You need to be on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  Having a blog also helps.

A link to the post is provided below.  You should also check out the JobVite site for some great career information.

Resources:

• http://mashable.com/2010/03/08/job-seeker-results/
• http://www.keppiecareers.com/2011/05/05/social-networking-advice-for-job-seekers-and-business-owners/
• http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Intelligence/10-Social-Networking-Tips-for-JobSeekers-762757/
• http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/social-networking-redefines-landscape-for-job-seekers-around-the-world-nasdaq-kelya-1510005.htm
• http://windmillnetworking.com/2011/02/25/tips-integrating-social-media-linkedin-job-search-2011/
• http://www.cio.com/article/598151/Social_Networking_Ever_More_Critical_to_Job_Search_Success

If you have any resources you would like to share – or one of your own, please comment on this post an we will love to link to you.

If you found this information useful, please consider RETWEETING it.  You can find the RETWEET button at the top of this post – thanks in advance!

Found these great links from Mashable:

• HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags to Boost Your Job Search
  Job postings. Resumes. Chats. Conferences. Career Advice. For all of the above… there’s a hashtag for that.
• 5 Ways to Get a Job Through YouTube
  With a little creativity, honesty, and hard work, YouTube can be more effective (and more interesting) than your plain old C.V.
• HOW TO: Score a Job Through Facebook
  While Facebook is known as a casual network of friends, with 500 million users, it has the potential to be one of the largest job hunting resources available — if used correctly.
• HOW TO: Start Developing for iOS, Android or Windows Phone 7
  We’ve traversed the web, the bookstore and bugged our developer friends to find some of the best resources — online and off — for the beginning mobile app developer.
• HOW TO: Land a Business Development Job
  Mashable interviewed six experts in business development to get their tips on what it takes to become a business development professional at technology companies and startups.
• 4 Job Search Tips for Aspiring SEO/SEM Specialists
  Want to score a job as an SEO/SEM specialist? We asked the people who hire SEO/SEM specialists how you can impress them.
• 6 Ways to Score a Job Through Twitter
  Twitter has become a great resource for just about anything, including jobs. From industry chats to dedicated accounts, there are a ton of ways to land a gig.

Enjoy!

Recently had my resume reviewed by a professional career management firm, and one of the things that I thought that I needed was an improvement to my online presence.  The firm said that I do need to build a career brand, but what I’d done with my website and Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/mohamedbhimji) plus LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/mohamedbhimji) was quite sufficient.

But how do you know how well you are (or are not doing)?

I received an excellent posting today from Six Figure Start about Three Online Tools to Better Manage Your Career.

The one tool that I tried from this post is called MyWebCareer.

Did you know:

70% have rejected candidates based on reputational data found online
75% have hiring policies that require the review of online reputational data
84% believe the use of online reputational data will increase in the next 5 years

MyWebCareer scores your professional online brand (career score), much like FICO scores your credit. It even uses the same scale as the credit score companies (up to 850). You allow MyWebCareer access to view your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and the behind-the-scenes algorithm uses these profiles plus other web data it retrieves (250 attributes in all) to calculate a social branding score and deliver recommendations for how to improve your score.  Founders Greg Coyle and Nip Zalavadia came up with the idea from their prior careers analyzing large data sets for law enforcement – how’s that for a career shift! Right now, the score is free. A premium version is in the works that will provide more recommendations for users who wish to raise their score, as well as more detail on the 250 attributes that go into your score. MyWebCareer could be the kick-in-the-pants you need to start actively managing your personal brand.

I went through the process of connecting my Facebook account (it is a personal account that I use to keep in touch with friends/family), my LinkedIn account and finally my Twitter account.  You have the ability to connect Quora (if you use it) as well.

Once it’s completed MyWebCareer gives you an career score – like your FICO score.

So how did I do?  Not bad, but some work to do to get my score into the 800′s.

According to MyWebCareer I career score pretty high in Your Network, and Your Profiles but apparently my Your Search Results is not good.

In addition to providing attractive graphs (don’t ALL business people love pretty graphs – LOL) you can get additional analysis done to see how you can improve your career score.

You can also drill into each area to see what’s right (or wrong there) by clicking on MyAnalysis.

This is probably quite accurate, since most of the people I connect with on Facebook are not business colleagues but family and friends as my Facebook account is used only for that.

MyWebCareer does not give you an analysis breakdown of YourProfiles as that is a paid feature – however paid features are not available yet.

The last area of analysis is Your Search Profiles which searches the web and looks for references to your positions based on LinkedIn and mine came up with some suggestions:

This is probably quite accurate, since I don’t really talk about my previous positions anywhere — including on my website.

MyData tab – pulls data from the various services you’ve connected your account to.  So if I click on Facebook and I can see my wall posts.  I can get additional analysis for LinkedIn and Facebook (again, nice pretty graphs done in Flash so they are animated).  The graphs breakdown your connections really nicely, so you can see for example what are the Top Industries you are connected to on LinkedIn:

I’m actually not all that surprised by this breakdown, as my background has been in Information Technology I seem to attract and get attracted to those types of individuals/profiles.

MyData tab does a good breakdown of information so you can see your profiles, connections visually using different data sets — all built from your profile and connections.

I really liked the MyNetwork tab.  This is what I started out with:

You can move the various data points around, drill into them to see how you are connected to others.  I think this is a great feature on MyWebCareer.

So for example, I can double-click on Saville Systems (where I worked as a Team Leader, and Product Release Manager – Saville Systems was a IT company that built billing software for the Telecommunications industry) and see my connections.  Then I can drill into those connections to see what companies those individuals are connected to.

The UserProfiles tab allows you to see ALL the other users who are on MyWebCareer whose profiles are public.  Though I was impressed with my career score, there are many others that are at 850 or very close to it.  The nice thing with this information is that you can click on the individuals names to see where they are scoring high.

Seeing this information (User Profiles) also gives you the ability to connect to those people on LinkedIn, if you so desire but also since you can see how they are connected on the greater WWW by querying their names on Yahoo!, Bing or Google.  Also you have the ability to look at their profiles directly on LinkedIn when you view their profile on MyWebCareer.

My looking at the public profiles, drilling into them you learn a great deal about different individuals and in the process learn how you can better build your online presence.

I took a look at one profile – Mr. Sanford Dickert (http://www.sanforddickert.com), by looking at his website (which is very nice, BTW) you can easily see exactly why his online presence is rated at 850 by MyWebCareer and by analyzing what others are doing you can use this information to better position yourself in the online universe.

You can see my public profile by visiting here: http://www.mywebcareer.com/profile/mohamedbhimji

I really enjoyed using MyWebCareer, it gives you a great visual view of your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Quora profiles.

Getting in and setting up your account and connections is a breeze and completing everything to get your Online Presence Score (career score) won’t take more than 20 minutes — in fact, I did most of it on my iPad and had to use my PC to view the Flash graphs.

You should take a look at MyWebCareer – visit the site at http://www.mywebcareer.com.  Forgot to point out that they have a blog as well at http://blog.mywebcareer.com/what-does-your-career-score-mean/ – read the post about What Your Career Score Means.

Here is an excellent post from Six Figure Starts BLOG entitled Top 10 Ways To Succeed In Business.

I especially liked #7

Lead whatever initiatives you can: United Way Campaigns, Corporate Responsibility Taskforces, Softball team organizers … this allows you to get to know a lot of folks and putting on quality initiatives are always a good way to shine.

In every company I’ve worked I’ve always tried to participate in or lead initiatives – take for example in the last company I was with, I had volunteered to do first-round interviews of university students that would complete their one-year work experience with us.  Most of the people we interviewed and that were selected for a 2nd interview ended up being offered jobs after they graduated.  I cannot remember anyone that was hired that did not work out.

Getting involved shows pride in what you do and what your company does.  It also allows you to network with those within the company that you may not normally work with directly. 

In fact, #3 on the list talks about just that – networking.

Here is the link to the post – http://sixfigurestart.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/top-10-ways-to-succeed-in-business/.

There are a few services that I subscribe to, one is called OPSLadder – aimed at individuals that are looking for executive or $100k + positions.  They provide some valuable information, including this e-mail that was sent out recently. 

Visit their site at http://www.theladders.com/career-advice and read the Career Advice and if you are looking for change, subscribe to their service.  You may balk at paying to see $100k jobs – but you probably will not see these types of jobs posted on your favourite job board.

Now as you go through this it should be common sense not to ask for perks until you the offer letter – but it appears that these mistakes are still being made.  I remember an interview I conducted where I was told by the applicant that they couldn’t work certain days of the week, and that they had to take leave during a certain time period.  It is difficult to hire someone under these conditions even if you would be willing to accomodate – I mean, if they make demands even before the offer is given what demands will be made later on?

The following was sent by Marc Cenedella the Founder & CEO of TheLadders.com, Inc.

While back, I shared a list I called the Seven Deadly Sins of Interviewing – seven traits that can kill your chances with a recruiter or hiring manager.

And remember: Confession is good for the soul. If you have interview horror stories to share, we’d like to hear about them. (We promise not to use any of them without your permission, of course.)

Without further ado, here are the Seven Deadly Sins of Interviewing:

Pride: An excessive love of self

You have years of experience, you’ve earned respect and accolades in your field, but don’t get cocky — any arrogance will come back to bite you. Remember that seemingly insignificant person you barked at this morning for snagging that prime parking space? Yep, that’s the boss’ assistant. Getting the brush off after what seemed to be a great interview? Right. It’s that assistant again, this time with payback.

Once you’re within a mile of an interview, treat every person you come in contact with as though someday, they’ll be your boss or you’ll be theirs. Take time to warmly greet the receptionist, thank the assistant for that glass of water, and put your best foot forward to anybody who conceivably could weigh in on your candidacy.

Sloth: Laziness, idleness and wastefulness

Winging it is never good, particularly in an interview. Be able to show knowledge of your potential employer, awareness of the industry, and the company’s business strategy. The level of detail in your questions should match your experience. If you’re an old industry hand, questions about how last year’s reorganization is affecting the European subsidiary will seem smart and informed. If you’re a newcomer, no need to over-prepare, but do have in mind intelligent questions that show you’ve thought about the industry … “Who are your best / worst customers and why” or “How does this trend impact your business.” Do your homework!

Greed: An excessive quest for money and power

You’re interviewing because you want a higher salary, a company car, or three weeks of vacation. But don’t start off by asking about a new set of wheels or taking off next August. Set aside those questions for later … much later.

Remember, first you have to get the offer. Then, you can negotiate the terms. In the first interview rounds, you’re being judged on your experience and abilities. If you make it clear you’re mainly focused on money and perks, the interviewer’s perception of your priorities will suffer.

After you get the offer, you’ll have a better idea of where you stand, and more power to negotiate since you already know the job is yours.

Gluttony: The desire to consume more than you need

Scarfing down that onion bagel before your interview is a bad idea, but gluttony doesn’t always center on food. A good interview depends on the rapport you build with the employer. The interviewer is trying to learn about your skills, talents, experiences, and most of all, your ability to succeed in the job. She’s not trying to learn your whole life story.

Spare her the details of the great Peterson account win of ’95. Take a reasonable amount of time to answer questions. Be thoughtful and complete, but don’t go on and on; or else your job search may do the same.

Wrath: Feelings of hatred, revenge or denial

Sure, your old boss was a disorganized, credit-hogging, incompetent jerk. That said, the person sitting across from you – who could be your next boss – identifies more with your past bosses than she does with you. She wants to see how you’ll handle yourself in her organization. If you shoot down your old colleagues, won’t she fear being the next person in your crosshairs?

Instead of criticizing people from your past work experiences, find common ground with the interviewer by addressing issues common to all companies, like poor communication or ineffective meetings. Let her know how you’ve attacked these problems in the past, and what you can do to help now.

Lust: The desire to do what you want, not do what you should

We’re talking dress code here. Obviously, provocative clothing is out, and showing too much skin is a terrible idea; but there’s more to it than that. Don’t dress for your comfort, dress for the situation.

Always wear a suit to an interview, even if the dress code is business casual. You might stick out like a sore thumb while you’re in the lobby, but you’ll never lose points for being dressed professionally.

Envy: The desire for what you don’t have now

Maybe you secretly wish to chuck it all and cruise around the Caymans, or take your ZZ Top cover band on the road. Now’s not the time to bring it up. Although discussing your personal interests or passions may humanize you, expressing too much enthusiasm for your outside interests could dash your chances.

When a potential employer asks where you see yourself in five years, mention a loftier position in the industry. If it’s clear you really want to do something else, it’s tough for an interviewer to believe that you’ll bring all your capabilities and focus to the demands of this job.

Link to the story – http://www.theladders.com/career-advice/Are-you-a-job-search-sinner–