My Career is MY Business

mycareerismybusiness

This is the write-up for a talk I am giving in February 2004

In the syndicated comic strip "Sally Forth"(0), Sally's husband Ted, a middle management drone, types his name into Google and there is no mention of him. He is greatly disappointed and mentions his "absence of presence" to Sally. Sally responds saying that she will hire a programmer to build a website for Ted.

What's wrong and what's right with this scenario?

What's right with this scenario is Ted, a corporate employee, can no longer hide in his cubicle and expect promotions and projects to come to him. The 21st century is the dawn of the "Free Agent Nation"(1) and every white collar professional must manage his/her own career...not only is lifetime employment disappearing but many forms of employment are being replaced by contractors and consultants. No matter what you do, you need to accept this and learn how to market yourself as a business and manage your career. So, Ted needs to get himself visible on the web, because an executive recruiter might at this very moment be typing the keywords into Google that will bring up Ted...i.e. "tax accountant corporate merger" (I have no idea what Ted "does"(3), this is just an example).

What's wrong with this scenario is that Sally thinks she has to get a programmer to build a website for Ted's professional presence. Having someone build a website for you is the worst possible path because who will maintain it? There's a better solution which is....

...the ResumeBlog(TM)!(4) -- a professional web presence that is easy to create and maintain . Additionally, your ResumeBlog is not a lonely island in the vast sea of internet webpages; it is tightly linked with other people in your industry your professional guild, which makes you findable thru traversable links and a higher pagerank(5).

We will discuss all of the above including going thru the very simple steps to create your ResumeBlog so that when you leave this seminar you can go home and in 10 minutes be findable for that next great opportunity! This talk is appropriate whether you are a professional seeking to expand your opportunities, or if you are seeking talent.

Fortune Magazine's columnist/recruiter "Ask Annie"(6) and "Sally Forth" agree -- you gotta have a web presence in the 21st century!

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(0) the comic strip is here: http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/sforth/aboutMaina.php, go to Nov 16, 2003
(1) see Dan Pink's website: www.freeagentnation.com
(2) read the first two articles by Prof Tom Malone, MIT: http://www.typaldos.blogspot.com/2003_11_18_typaldos_archive.html#106919390880564685
(3) actually comic strip characters don't do anything in between their daily appearance in the newspaper
(4) check out the ResumeBlog instructions! www.resumeblog.com
(5) Google's pagerank algorithm measures the ranking of a page in a search results partly by how many other pages link to it
(6) http://www.fortune.com/fortune/annie/0,15704,539758,00.html Ask Annie: Secrets of an Executive Recruiter, 11/10/03