Executive Resumes, Personal Branding & Executive Job Search

What My Alpha Dog Taught Me About Working - 5 Lessons

Posted by Tyrone Norwood

Apr 8, 2010 6:27:00 AM

 
 When our yellow lab died, I tried to live without a dog. But I found myself at one of our association conferences down in Florida going on the Internet searching for pictures of dogs in every spare moment instead of paying attention to the presentations! When I got home, I jumped on a small ad in the Boston Globe: high-performance black field lab – 18 months. We went out to visit and came home with Lili. The “high-performance” should have been a tip-off, along with the fact that two of her other families had returned her to the breeder, but I was blind with need for that which only a dog can give!

Now there are a lot of words I could use to describe Lili, and high-performance is definitely one, but another few are: highly dog aggressive, fearful of dogs, needing extraordinary amounts of exercise each day (even now at 8), out-of-control, and physically powerful!

So, a major problem: how to exercise her and survive encounters with other dogs so that they didn’t get hurt. From Lili I learned several valuable lessons about how to do my work.


1. Exercise Discipline. Without a full half-hour walk in morning and afternoon we get hyper dog who flips tennis balls at us all night. I realize, in my work, if I have a goal – such as wanting to extend my brand through social media - I have to devote a specified time EACH day to that task.


2. Be Resourceful. When I first started walking Lili, I thought a chain collar would be all I would need to keep her under control, since all the dogs around seem to be on leashes. It worked until we encountered one who wasn’t: a golden retriever. Anyone who knows the breed knows that coming up close to sniff at a snarling, maniacal, foaming-at-the-mouth, scary-as-hell animal isn’t out of character for a golden. I knew I had real trouble, that Lili could easily have savaged that dog. So – in addition to a chain collar – I put Lili in a muzzle. In my work, once I realized that my old pay-for-advertising methods weren’t working anymore for my business, I experimented and found a new marketing strategy that brings me great prospects.


3. Have Courage. Braving the civilized world with a killer dog – even in a muzzle – is daunting to someone who feels deeply that politeness is the general rule of social intercourse! In work, I have learned to risk putting my thoughts out there in an eBook and in blog posts and take a chance that other people’s reactions might be either positive or negative.


4. Play the Cards You’re Dealt. One day, as we were passing a man with a nice, calm, obedient dog, he took a look at Lili’s overwhelming aggression and said “That’s a problem.” So, right, I’ve got a problem and everyone sees it. But I knew that I had Lili under control with her muzzle and chain collar and that I could keep her head within inches of my knee. I did everything I could about our problem and would just have to put up any with criticism and negative reactions from others. In my work, as the recession hit and many of my target market were out of work and methods of finding work had changed, I needed to be sure that my executive resume clients knew how to be successful. I revised my eBook on strategy to include social networking and gave it a priority among my offerings. I did what I could to give my clients the strategies and tools they would need in the new environment, even though I wished job search could have been easier for them.


5. Be Grateful for the Good Stuff. Have I told you that when Lili is in the house and well-exercised she is devoted, affectionate, smart and sweet? It’s true. Once we knew her problems, we knew that we would simply have to deal with them as best we could. We tried one-on-one training from 2 different trainers, going to a dog shrink, and trying many other techniques, all to no avail. We felt that we had made a commitment to Lili and that we couldn’t return her to her breeder for her to face another loss and an uncertain future. So we try to remember the good with the bad and appreciate her good and special qualities. At work, when I am feeling pressured, frustrated, pulled in too many directions, or uncertain about marketing in a recessionary economy, I try to remember that I am so happy to be running my own business, that I love to write resumes that help people get jobs, that I love having control over my time and my working destiny, and that I truly feel I am doing what I am meant to be doing in the universe at this time.


If any of you out there have learned things from your creatures, your "familiars," I’d love to hear them. (And if you have a magic bullet that cures dog aggression, let me know about that too!). Peaceful, happy holidays to you all.

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Topics: executive resumes, career management, Jobs, Working

What Are You Doing Now?

Posted by Tyrone Norwood

Apr 8, 2010 6:12:00 AM

 
Twitter, with its tiny tweets (140 character limit), has quickly morphed from being a site where you can announce what you had for lunch into a professional forum. Twitter can do a lot more than blather on about inconsequential events. Twitter can establish you as a player in your field, either as a thought leader or as an involved contributor. In fact, in my opinion, Twitter eats Facebook’s lunch in terms of job search.
Twitter allows you to search for the content that’s relevant to your industry and/or function as well as to search for jobs, recruiters, and job search advice. You can follow just a few tweeters or thousands to find out what’s happening. People will ask permission to follow you.
Although you just have 140 characters, you will have the opportunity to communicate valuable information by leveraging the links within your tweets. You can link to online articles, blog postings, and other sites that you think would be useful to your followers.
Recruiters and hiring managers watch Twitter. You want to be sure your participation is professional in content, because anything that is in poor taste (!) can rule you out, just as a consistently professional brand can rule you in.
If you want to proactively search for jobs advertised on Twitter, you can do that. You can also go to websites that aggregate job openings found on Twitter. Sample tweet: “Go towww.TwitterJobSearch.comwww.twithire.com, or www.tweetmyjobs.com to see if there is a job for you.”
Make Twitter part of your daily diet to build your brand and find job leads.
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Topics: job search, personal branding, executive resumes, career services, reputation management

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Tyrone Norwood