It’s that time of year again! Santa has his professional resume perfected, (click on picture to view), and is looking forward to flying out to his next assignment.

Ho Ho Ho!

The next step for most would be a job interview but Santa will be able to skip this step in the process as his expertise eliminates any potential competition. Even the Grinch was no match for Santa. And so it is with full confidence that Santa is

The infinite number of job search resources available can be overwhelming! Recognizing those that will be of benefit will save you a significant amount time and help you to succeed in driving your career in the right direction. A financial investment for  professional services and memberships, provided you’ve done your due diligence to ensure the company or organization is reputable will most certainly provide positive results throughout your career. However, there are also many free resources available that also warrant your attention!

Please take a look at your resume and ensure you have provided the necessary contact information. If you are not sure what the contact information should consist of, please consult a Certified Professional Resume Writer, (CPRW) before sending out your resume!

Establishing an online visibility utilizing social media is a basic requirement in managing a career or business. Once you have created your profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin as a professional or business or both, the next step is to enhance your presence and personal brand with a blog. Wikipedia provides further details regarding a blog, the name which is “a blend of the term web log”.

Your professional resume must be a fact-based, historical account of accomplishments. As the years pass, so should your qualifications continue to be enhanced by additional experiences, achievements and education. Your resume should clearly identify these ever increasing details which contribute to enhancing your qualifications and the ability to present an impressive resume.

Managing a successful executive career requires a continuous and conscious effort to seek out those initiatives that will contribute to enhancing your qualifications, maintaining a competitive edge as a potential candidate. Each position you hold will offer the opportunity to achieve results. Be sure to document all details of quantifiable accomplishments upon completion of tasks or projects. Do not wait until you need your resume written years down the road to test your ability to recall events! Reducing costs or increasing sales will not impress without corroborative numeric details.

professional@email.com

Are you using a professional email address for your job search? An email address that is not outdated? One which identifies who you are? An email address that is easily deciphered even when hand written?

I’m sure we can all agree that an email address such as sexykitten@, beerking@ or gonefishing@ lacks the professionalism expected from anyone who is serious about managing their career. Get rid of them or use them exclusively for the singles sites.

Dots, dashes, underscores: Unless you are an extremely neat printer, it is possible that you’ve added your email address to a list in the hopes of receiving some important correspondence that will never be sent. Is it a dash or an underscore or maybe that line was supposed to represent a dot? Don’t leave anyone struggling to decipher your email address. For those of us who require reading glasses, a neatly typed email could still present a problem with the use of symbols which are smaller than letters.

Do you have your online profiles established to gain access to the ever increasing number of job search resources that continue to flood the internet? Companies and organizations are online. Recruiters and HR professionals are online. Job boards, professional networking events, industry groups, and your competition…are all online! The news is also online and what better way to find out where the jobs are or where they will be!

Facebook partners with Labour Department to help job-seekers. Labour Secretary Hilda Solis also hopes to expand this initiative to Twitter Linkedin and other social media sites. 3 million job openings...

The reports, articles, blog posts and books will continue for many years to come with respect and admiration for an amazing man, Steve Jobs. Unlike many, Steve Jobs was revered as much in life as he has been in death. Acknowledged as a technological genius, Steve Jobs was that and so much more as seen by the outpouring of public comments since his death last month:

“brilliance, passion and energy revered as a hero visionary and creative genius

Visibility is key to establishing your brand in this highly competitive online market. Google has provided the ease of searching a single word to generate results in the millions. Searching for a product, place, data, professional, event, organization and more has never been easier.  To recognize the explosion of Internet use you need only note, Google Earth has been downloaded 1 Billion Times; a single app downloaded a billion times that provides the ability to search for satellite images from around the world, the population of Facebook users exceeds 700 million and over 80% of recruiters using Linkedin to search for potential candidates!

Securing a job interview can be as exciting as landing the job! Are you prepared? If you haven’t had a bad job interview you’ve heard from someone else who has. There is no guarantee that nothing will go wrong; accidents happen, personalities differ and expectations could be dashed on either side of the table. The best way to increase your chances for success in any job interview is simply to be prepared.