The Voice of Job Seekers

Mark Anthony Dyson ★ Career Writer ★ Speaker ★ Thinker ★ Award-winning Blog & Podcast! ★ "The Job Scam Report" on Substack! ★ I hack and reimagine the modern job search!

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by Mark Anthony Dyson

Be the Ultimate Prescription to the Company’s Job Description

Be the Ultimate Prescription to the Company’s Job Description

 

 

Many people want the resume dead – or they at least want to hold a funeral for it. It’s very sexy to proclaim the resume’s demise, bringing significant street cred.

The resume is still an essential part of your job search. The job description still tells you where to send or upload it. It’s a stimulant for conversations at every level.

But the rest is up to you. Resumes still matter, but they are no longer your primary tool for the job search. They only jump-start the process. A resume alone does not give cause for an employer to call you. Recruiters and hiring managers will Google you first for more information – which is all the more reason for you to make sure Google points to your best profiles and work.

And get this: You can start your job search without a perfect resume. Your resume is not a magic potion. Those who obsess over tweaking it are overthinking it and its value.

What job search tactics provide additional value than a resume alone?

Here are 10:

1. Build a Personal Brand That Has Global Appeal

Your skills can be taught – in the classroom, online, or through coaching. However, no one can learn your personality. Your life experiences, trials, victories, and outlook are unique. Once you understand how your skills and personality mesh to make a viable marketing unit, then you can confidently conquer what’s yours.

2. Know Your Market Value

Negotiation is a constant fact of the job hunt, and everything is about your total compensation package. Think about your investment of time, travel to learn your skills, the value of the opportunity, and the process of perfecting your craft, and then research.

There are many tools, articles, and books to help you determine your salary and market value.
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Read: Why Your Career Needs CPR

3. Keep Lifestyle and Values in Mind

Consider options like remote work. Stop treating life as it were the obstacle to your ideal career. The happiest people wrap their careers around what matters to them most. Recognize the nuances of your lifestyle; they will show you how to shape your career around life’s challenges.

4. Deliver Content Where It Is Needed and Wanted

Too many job seekers move from job to job. If you want to take control of your career, you must create quality opportunities by providing content. The more recruiters and employers know about you, the more likely they will contact you about open roles. Providing content lets you control the conversation by focusing on your strengths and expertise.

5. Make Sure You Deliver Content Through the Right Channels

How you deliver content matters. You want to be top of mind. Consider posting on a personal website or via LinkedIn Pulse. You could even offer instructional videos on YouTube, Instagram, or Snapchat. Podcasts also provide raw, informative, and personable content to create engagement and visibility.

How you deliver content depends on where decision-makers in your industry are active. Use the channels they use.

Listen to Personal Branding, Social Proof, and YouTern

6. Service Is the New Networking

You will be memorable when you offer genuine help to your network and meet people’s needs as best you can. The hardest part is doing that without expecting anything in return.

Remember that the people you are helping aren’t the only ones who benefit.

Consider depositing goodness in the bank of karma as a viable and long-term career strategy.
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7. Be Smart About Personal SEO

It is critical to be found on Google. One day, it will be essential to be known by AI if you want your work to be seen. Your social presence should trigger interest and intrigue in employers. You can use tools such as Google Alerts, Talkwalker, and Google Analytics (if you have a website) to tell who shares or links to your content. You can monitor your reputation and credibility to ensure your mentions are positive. If there were negative narratives about you (barring any crimes committed or unethical actions), positive things others say push down the negative. 

8. Be the Prescription to the Company’s Job Description

Job seekers with a “remedy” mindset know the industry challenges at large and the particular difficulties of potential employers.

Engaging your network, industry news, and professional organizations create growth.
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Let remedies and solutions dominate your social presence. It will make it easy to identify and stand out to anyone interested in working with you. 

Listen to 6 Hazardous Roads to an Unsuccessful Job Search

9. Set Up an Online Location to Serve as an ‘Epilogue’ to Your Resume

I am all for using LinkedIn for content creation, but the optimal place I recommend is a blog. LinkedIn could go away, taking your content with it. A blog is where you ultimately control what people see and how much they see.

10. Persuade Through Social Proof

Networking and researching are essential when preparing your career documents and for interviews. Before almost any interaction today, both parties will use Google and forms of social proof to check the authenticity of the other party. You will be searched by someone you’re meeting for coffee or an interview. Do you think they take your word when you say you’re a “guru”?

–

More and more, the Web is your resume. Your internet presence should expand on the skills and capabilities listed in your resume. The less employers see your work and know about you, the more you’re liable. It’s better to craft your social profiles to tell a career story so employers and recruiters will want to know more.

This article was originally published on Recruiter.com

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development. Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!" You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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Filed Under: Personal Branding Tagged With: Personal branding

by Mark Anthony Dyson

Practical and Thoughtful Personal Branding 2024 Looks Like This

Practical and Thoughtful Personal Branding 2024 Looks Like This

One. Original. Thought. This is the best personal branding advice you’ll receive for the rest of this year.

You can find a thousand articles saying to curate articles and share them on your timeline to show thought leadership. Personal branding is based partially on sharing, building relationships and partnerships, and bringing value to people you network with or your audience. I’ve been on Twitter since 2008 but active since 2009, and many users/entrepreneurs are still just sharing.

You chance disagreements. At some point, through diligence and personal growth, your brand will come to fruition—not in how many will follow, but in the quality of those who follow you. It will be in who engages you in deeper conversation, not how many engage you.

The competition between the unemployed, underemployed, and underappreciated is more fierce than ever. It’s time to employ your differentiating superpowers, which are critical in the new job search.

Your brand value

I once worked in an environment where everyone shared everything. People were most proud to share what he or she made from home. One person didn’t share what he or she had but enjoyed what everyone else had brought. One thing bothered everyone: the person invited other people outside of the group to participate in eating but not bringing.

Some wanted to contribute, but others just wanted to know when they could come back to eat. This annoyed most of those who brought things from home to share. I think eventually, in communities online and offline, get at least a bit annoyed when someone doesn’t bring something of their own. It’s also harder to get respect for your brand.

A thought. An original thought.

How will we know you’re unique? Do we know if you’re different? No one wants to follow a clone, and hearing from a clone is more painful.

It’s hard to be seen when you have original content, thoughts, or a video. It takes courage to be seen differently, or to say things no one may not resonate with at first. I know first-hand rejection hurts. And I’ve grown comfortable with discomfort.

Even if it’s slightly different than the next person, you can stand out by delivering it differently. The words can be different. The tone could be different. Changing the way it’s delivered can be seen as refreshing. Your stories are going to be different. That is the game changer and the difference maker. Then your brand will be YOUR brand.

Share. Be honest. Telling the parent the baby is ugly.

One of the best ways to brand yourself is by saying the things no one will say. With political correctness should come tact and thoughtfulness. At the same time, as you start to show the world originality, there will be ugliness. The way you deliver the news is how you may save someone.

And political incorrectness is personal branding at its finest when it costs something or someone. It’s better if it’s truthful, insightful, and sprinkled with a little respect.

I became friends with an executive last year after I told him his LinkedIn profile looked like a bad resume. Although my candor startled him, we have talked several times since. But my tactful way of telling him the baby is ugly resulted in his acceptance of the change in his profile. Good people are genuinely interested in you and will welcome your delivery.

Only art institutes are interested in career curators. Employers are interested in work. Just saying.

Personal branding lesson from Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington’s rehearsals with his big bands were intense as he led them. He incessantly yelled, “Personalize your part! Personalize your part!” At first, it didn’t make sense to me in a big band with several different sections and many layers of any composition.

Within a horn section, you have several horns playing the same note. Depending on the arrangement, some instruments will be louder than others. As I thought about the importance of standing out as a sign of a strong personal brand, I felt the power of Ellington’s statement. It is about personalizing your part in making it different, unique, and special. All of us “own it” in a different way.

Sure, we can do the same thing, share the same message, and play the same song, but we would do it differently.

Yes, find and share your own.

One. Original. Thought. Personalize your part.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development.

Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!"

You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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Filed Under: Personal Branding Tagged With: Personal brand, Personal branding

by Mark Anthony Dyson

How To Be Informed About Your Career Regrets By 40

How To Be Informed About Your Career Regrets By 40

How to Be Informed By Your Regrets Before 40 by Mark Anthony Dyson

Not all career decisions are amusing stories we can tell later, even if things turned out OK. We often lack foresight and insight when we’re in our early 20s. Sometimes our “yes” should have been “no”—and vice versa.

Setting career strategies and goals takes work. Yes, we want to take control of our careers by accepting full responsibility for our actions, creating opportunities for ourselves, and staying connected. There are those times when we put lots of food on our plates, but we will only eat some and often waste the food.

Some decisions seemed horrible then, but it was the right call. You may only appreciate those later, like when you’re over 40. I thought of a few, and perhaps you can spot them sooner than I did:

1. You said “no” and missed out

When you’re young, you value moving up the ladder and want life experiences with friends. You want both, but saying “no” to career opportunities (or a single one) leaves you with feelings of unrequited love. On the trip back to reality, your values mean more than status, and contentment means more than confinement in a career.

It’s bittersweet, but those relationships you built through your experiences were too valuable. Now you understand these relationships start the process way before any crisis.

You gain intelligence from coffee conversations, networking events, and a few informational interviews.

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Only after a few interactions, your resume will take a relevant shape.

2. You were fired, and afterward, your career stalledHow does it feel when you realize being “fired” was either a great new beginning or a shareable life lesson? Being “let go” was not judgment day, but it felt like it. It feels as if Satan, in the form of disappointment, is stalking you. It took years to get over the sting. The needles and pins of pain. The cloudy and stormy feelings of shame.

Some people need help in understanding why it happened, but others discover freedom and relief quickly is what was supposed to happen. You lost a job for reasons not uncommon to man. If you haven’t reframed it positively, now is the time to do so for the rest of your career.

3. You chose life over money.

Our parents told us to have fun and work hard in our 20s. Some of us were underemployed but refused to go home because we loved our freedom. We ate Spam or Ramen noodles to survive because we decided to immerse ourselves in our lives. The sting remained for years, but we can go to that place when challenges cloud our vision.

Sometimes we gain wisdom from there; other times, clarity or novocaine. You can see the ending to your story clearer, so now you save. Even better, happiness used to have a different cash value. Your ability to career management brings a smile and not a competitive smirk.

4. You lost track of tech and professional relationships.

Certain technologies can become old-school in a short time. Your career path can become irrelevant quickly if you are not on top of trends in your industry. Your friends indirectly challenged you to keep up because they were moving, and you knew you had to keep up.

Somewhere along the way, relationships changed, priorities rearranged, and we feel we should start over again. Tech is infused with life now, so you have to catch up. It will take a little while if you work on it daily.

5. You couldn’t accept “no” from a potential employer.

Rejection makes us more robust, and boy, is it painful at the time.

You spent more time over “what could have been” and less on what you have.

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Sometimes it turned out great, and then you’re grateful for the “trial.”

Remember those who benefited from your path and how it turned out because they are not better without you. Whether you just started a new job yesterday or 20 years ago, you can list 20 ways you’re valuable to your next employer. And do yourself a favor: Keep adding to the list.

6. The lousy boss had value, after all.

We may not like the messenger, but the message was on point. Sometimes our jagged little life-saving pill was brought by an ugly carrier pigeon, and we reject the message for the wrong reasons. In our late 30s or early 40s, we realize when a more acceptable package our ugly acting boss was right. We hated the message and the messenger. 

Don’t worry, most of us have been there, but it would have saved us or someone else much heartache if we had looked much deeper at the message. The diamond isn’t in the delivery but in the package.

We get to where we realize what’s most useful and valuable lessons are only sometimes recognizable at first. We may have reached a more straightforward space before 40. But the one thing we do know is upon arrival. We appreciate our career journey more because clarity is an irreplaceable part of our experience.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers!" I offer compassionate career and job search advice as I hack and re-imagine the job search process. You need to be "the prescription to an employer's job description." You must be solution-oriented and work in positions in companies where you are the remedy. Your job search must be a lifestyle, and your career must be in front of you constantly. You can no longer shed your aspirations at the change seasons. There are strengths you have that need constant use and development.

Be sure you sign up to download my E-Book, "421 Modern Job Search Tips 2021!"

You can find my career advice and work in media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Glassdoor, and many other outlets.

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Filed Under: careers, Networking, Personal Branding Tagged With: Career Advice, Careers

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I moderated a panel on Wealth Management for executives by Black Enterprise Magazine in October 2023 in Miami.

I was interviewed on Scripps News show, “The Why!” 4/13/2023

I talked with John Tarnoff and Kerry Hannon of “The Second Act” podcast about job searching after 50 in October 2022.

I was on “The Career Confidante” podcast to talk about “boomerang employees” and “job fishing” in June 2022.

Making Job Search a Lifestyle With “Dr. Dawn Graham on Careers,” SiriusXM Ch. 132, Wharton School of Business May 2021

In May 2020, I talked with LinkedIn’s Senior News Editor Andrew Seaman on “#GetHired” Live.”

Beverly Jones, host of the NPR podcast “Jazzed About Work,” invited me back to talk job scams, job search trends, and AI tools in April 2024

WOUB Digital · Episode 183 : Job search expert Mark Dyson says beware of scams, know AI & keep learning

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