Emmy Winner's Advice: How to Be an Expert

Recently, I had the good fortune to meet Rob Blatt of Blattcave Productions. Rob is an audio engineer extraordinaire. He shares three Emmys, an Academy Award, and a Peabody Award with former colleagues. I asked Rob to share advice for job seekers who want to establish themselves as an expert. Given his background, it's not surprising that his first piece of advice is:

1. Start a Podcast that Shows Your Interest and Expertise

Talk about topics you know and have a passion for discussing about it. "When you share your knowledge and passion, your voice will give away your enthusiasm. That's an audience draw."

2. Don't Just Talk About It, Write About It

"Any proper podcast needs to be associated with a blog," Rob explains. "Between episodes of your podcast, you should share content related to your show...and advertise your podcast on your blog."

3. Don't Just Talk About Your Ideas: Share

Rob is a big believer in promoting other people; he says being magnanimous has side benefits.

Sharing ideas of others allows you to show that you are comfortable with your area of expertise.

It shows that you are an expert and know how to cultivate knowledge sharing and that you are not afraid to show that other people have knowledge as well. You need to build trust with your audience.

A special shout-out to Rob for sharing his expertise with us. If you'd like to learn how to sound better or are interested in learning more about Rob's work, visit his website.

The 30 Minute Online Resume Workout

As you can imagine, it's a busy time to be a career coach and resume writer: given the climate on Wall Street and the ensuing trickle-down in Manhattan, the phone lines are buzzing.

In the process I've been reviewing resumes of many talented people who never expected that a job hunt would be in the cards right now.

Given the prevalence of Blackberries and cell phones, the notion of "doing more with less" has clearly stretched beyond fiscal frugality and extended to personal time (quite simply, there's less available as there are fewer people available to help with work). Frequently, I'm contacted by clients who say, "I'd do this myself, but I don't have the time" and don't know how to get started. Here are three suggested strategies to get started on a resume rewrite in 30 minutes or less.

1. Consider hiring someone to help you, or review tips from the pros. I strongly recommend Career Hub's free e-books on resume writing, networking, and interviewing.

2. Read job listings and position descriptions to develop a sense of what employers want. Do a "Google" search on yourself to know what you look like "online." Then develop a strategy for how you want to be known.

As an increasing number of employers are using LinkedIn and other social networking tools to find candidates and make hiring decisions, help them find you. I particularly recommend Chris Brogan's Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future for this purpose.

3. Revise your resume by starting with your LinkedIn Profile. LinkedIn has a strong search engine ranking and offers you a substantial but a controlled amount of space in your profile section.

Because LinkedIn limits the number of characters you can use in your work, it is a great site to write a resume draft: you can search for people who work in similar roles to your own (and make observations on what works and what doesn't). If you put together your profile carefully, you'll have a concise summary of skills and experiences that you can then use as a base for your resume. An added bonus: your voice will sound consistent across both your LinkedIn and your resume since you'll be speaking in the same language.

To your success!

Buying Time for Free: 3 Strategies to Optimize Your Effectiveness

Professional organizers often cite the omnipresent statistic that the "average American" will spend the equivalent of one year of life in search of lost items.

As I write this, I think of a childhood visit to my grandmother, also known as "GB". She greeted us at her door, notably flustered, "I can't find my glasses anywhere." I ended her search as tactfully as I could: "that's because they are on your head!"

My grandmother was full of irreverence; she sent me out to the backyard to play and said, "Now, go find our relatives--the pink bottomed hairy baboons." When I told her I couldn't find them, she told me that perhaps they'd all gone to the zoo--and to say hello the next time I visited.

It was years before I connected the dots at school and realized that she was passing along two life lessons: 1. her belief in evolution, and 2. her enduring philosophy that we all descended from primates and shouldn't think too much of ourselves...


I digress, but my intentions are good: The purpose of this posting is to share three online resources that can increase efficiency and allow you to spend more time enjoying life outside your job search...


1. JibberJobber (http://www.jibberjobber.com/)

A CRM for your job search, this site enables you to store contact information--and positions of interests--and provides you with career management tips and resources to boot. The origins of the site have become Internet legend: it was designed by Jason Alba, an out-of-work software programmer who has since gone on to write bestselling books on using Facebook and LinkedIn.

2. Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/)

A social bookmarking system that allows you to save your bookmarks by "tags" so that you can find them easily, and access them easily on your site. Once you've created account, you can click on the del.icio.us icon on many websites and easily mark new items that you've read.

3. Google News Alerts (http://news.google.com/)

Google News Alerts are one of my favorite tools of all times, you plug in keywords for search terminology, allow Google to do a "news scan" for your keywords on your behalf, and tell Google how frequently to alert you of the findings.

Given that employers, friends and casual acquaintances frequently "Google" each other, I recommend that you monitor your online presence by setting a "Google Alert" on your name. While it may seem a little funny to "stalk yourself," by monitoring your web presence you can help maintain the integrity of your online profile: i.e. the only time I want to be able to find "Chandlee Bryan" and "hairy baboon" on the internet is through this particular post!

When It's Best to Tweet

Several weeks ago, I wrote a piece on "when not to tweet" using the social networking site, Twitter.

Today, I am pleased to share a link on how Twitter can be useful to you with respect to your career. This article was written by my friend Deb Dib (aka "The CEO Coach"):

http://tinyurl.com/4bhjdk

I've pulled five nuggets of wisdom from Deb's tips for exploring the "Twitterverse":

#1: Provide useful information at about a 4 to 1 ratio--share a link or timely fact at least every 4th post.

#4: Use TinyURL or Snurl to shorten long links and keep more of your 140 characters free for your words.

#5: Be giving, not "salesy"--keep posts conversational and be a human; don't hound your followers.

#7: Consider having separate business and personal Twitter accounts if you want to keep your personal life personal.

#12: Follow experts of interest to you and comment on their tweets where appropriate even if they are high-profile leaders you don't know personally.

I highly recommend reading the full article, and would love to hear your thoughts!

To Twitter or Not To Twitter? (Or When It's Best Not to Tweet)

There's been a great deal of discussion recently about the impact of Twitter, the social networking tool in which users answer a perennial question "What are you doing right now?" in 140 characters or less.

1. In March, audience tweeting at the South by Southwest Festival led to a collective uprising against a moderator interviewing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

2. In April, an arrested student twittered his way out of an Egyptian jail.

3. And today, an Australian postulated that Twitter would hasten the end of the "bad boss" as employees could share their experiences quickly, thus potentially ending their supervisor's tyranny: http://tinyurl.com/5rl66n

I think it's great that Twitter allowed the student to "get out of jail free," but it's never a good idea to bad mouth one's colleagues. In my opinion, given social networking tools and the ease of forwarding messages, e-mail and Twitter messages are as private as postcards. Use with care and the assumption that your thoughts are public knowledge.

I'd love to hear your experiences in "tweeting." Drop me a line.