Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Personal Branding in a Social Media World

Reblogged from ITtechExec WordPress Blog

Social Media Stats

A recent article by Talent HQ indicates the following social media statistics from Spring 2012:

Users
  • Facebook – 850 million
  • Twitter – 500 million
  • LinkedIn – 161 million
  • Google+ – 90 million
  • Foursquare – 23 million
  • Pinterest – 10.4 million
Daily Stats
  • Facebook – 31% of users check-in daily for an average of 20 minutes
  • Twitter – 175 million tweets per day
  • LinkedIn – 11.5 million searches per day
  • Google+ – 5 billion g+ buttons served each day (served, not clicked)
  • YouTube – 4 billion video views per day

Personal Branding: Why These Stats Make It Relevant

“So what,” you say? “What do these social media statistics have to do with my personal brand, my IT resume or technical resume, and my job search?” It’s simple. Companies are going to expect to find you on one or more of these sites when considering you as a candidate for a job opening. As such, it opens the door for opportunity.

I suppose you could try to be like everybody else out there is SoMe (social media) land. That’s easy enough. Just sign up for a few of these services and write the standard description of yourself that makes people reading it fall asleep within 3 seconds.

The alternative is to craft a strong, compelling personal brand statement that is real to who you are, what you do, and what you want to do. Then put some creative messaging in place to effectively communicate this brand across all of the social media forums you’re a part of. Just keep in mind that these forums are all different, and the demographics are distinct for each…so the style you use to communicate your brand message should correlate with the site you’re on.

The ITtechExec Way

To arm yourself with more tools in your technical job search arsenal, we offer a FREE Technical Jobs Report & Online Brand Assessment to our followers. We also offer a 10% discount to those that give us the full social media endorsement (FB, Twitter, Blog, Pinterest, LI). Take advantage of our offer just by signing up to follow this blog or go to our website ITtechExec (be sure to indicate in the “How did you hear about us?” box that you found us through our blog).

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

IT: 10 Reasons IT Gets a Bad Reputation

A May 5th article in TechRepublic.com (10 Reasons IT Pros Get a Bad Rap) provides a list of reasons why there is such a negative perception of the IT department in general and IT workers specifically.

Three of the ten reasons listed I don’t agree with whole-heartedly. #1 :”We’re considered too well-paid;” #8: “We suffer from the Golden Boy syndrome;” and #9: “We are indispensable” are not really true anymore…although they were about a decade ago.

With all of the IT outsourcing happening, IT is no longer the hot and happening place it used to be. It’s more of a commodity field now, and nearly any IT job is “dispensable”…meaning it can be outsourced.

The rest of the items on the list can be solved and remedied with the right touch. All it takes is a dedication and focus in one particular area to turn the tide. That area is “Engagement.” Of course, to make the transition complete, the IT group has to effectively execute on the promises it makes. But it all starts with engagement.

Last month, we posted a blog focused on the IT group and how they struggle effectively engaging the rest of the business. You can read that post here.

The ITtechExec Way


To arm yourself with more tools in your technical job search arsenal, we offer a free Technical Jobs report & Online Identity Assessment to our followers. We also offer a 10% discount to our followers. Take advantage of our offer just by signing up to follow this blog or go to our website ITtechExec (be sure to indicate in the “How did you hear about us?” box that you found us through our blog).

As a leader in the Tech Career Forum, ITtechExec will again be hosting the weekly Twitter Chat on Wednesday at 3pm Eastern for IT and tech pros to get great advice on resumes, personal branding, career management, and the job search process. Join and follow the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #TCFchat.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Tech Career Forum Group Launched

Stephen Van Vreede (http://www.ittechexec.com/) and Jennifer Hay (http://www.itresumeservice.com/) have joined forces to launch Tech Career Forum.

Tech Career Forum is designed to provide advice to IT and technical professionals in all career areas, particularly those related to personal branding, the technical resume, and the job search process. Tech Career Forum also assists resume writers and career services professionals in expanding their knowledge base to enhance their engagements with IT and technical clients.

Tech Career Forum has initiated a LinkedIn group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Tech-Career-Forum-4395590) with interactive discussions, which is available for all members. Tech Career Forum will be hosting live Twitter chats on Wednesdays at 3pm Eastern, with the first in the series beginning Wednesday 5/2. To view or join in the discussion, follow or post tweets at #TCFchat.