For those of you in transition and seeking a new opportunity, there are a few things at minimum that I think should be on the card:

• Name
• Title or a your main competencies
• Email address
• Valid current phone number(s)
• Web page (if you have a blog or web page you host yourself, you may want to put it on your card)
• Your social media site profile addresses (I’ve seen more recently on cards LinkedIn profiles in particular but if you’re on other sites such as twitter, or facebook  you can have that on your card as well)

I’m attaching an image of my current card for an example, I use Vistaprint but there are other printing services out there such as iPrint.com or a local print shop as well.

One thing that I got on my last order and it was only a couple more dollars was an electronic copy of my card, that I can attach to emails using Outlook, that is the representation that you see below, with the phone numbers blanked out.

I’ve found it gives a bit more professional touch than the card that’s created in an email when you click to add “Business Card” in Outlook. I delete the card pasted in the email by Outlook but leave my contact information .vcf file attached. This way someone I email will have my current contact information and can save it in their contacts.

You may notice the email address on the card being a bit different, and I will explain about that in another post.  I’ve had people question it thinking it was a mis-print or wrong, but it is correct.

One other tip for those in transition, if you happen to have business cards from your old employer -     do not use them when you are out networking and seeking a new position, having to write other contact information on an old card just doesn’t look right, and I feel you’d only  be hurting yourself by giving an old business card to someone new.  Spend  a few dollars and get new cards printed, even if you buy business card stock and print a simple card on your home computer.

What are some other items you would add to your card? How about the back of the card? Blank or some other information? Please comment below.

We are both currently looking for work. She made a new post to her blog regarding how to syndicate your blog/website that I found interesting, and wanted to add my own ideas here as well.

Her post is located here: How do you Syndicate a blog or website?

The first thing she mentions is posting it on Twitter 3 times in a 24 hour period at different times of the day.  Her blog also has a list of applications for twitter. I’ve used some of them on the list, it is extensive, and something I’d recommend taking a look at to help make your Twitter experience a little easier.

One of the applications is called TweetLater, which I have utilized to spread out messages during the day on Twitter, even when I’m not at the computer. With as busy as I have been lately, it has been something I’ve used a bit more often.  I compose messages I want to send, even referencing older blog posts I’ve written to get people to read content that may be helpful or related to my most recent post, and also a couple just saying “Check out my new blog post @ http://martinpiraino.com/” without making reference to the specific permalink to the new post, and I’ve noticed this gets people to read more of the site than just the new post.

Along with this, I also send direct messages to new followers I get on Twitter, thanking them for following me, and just making a simple statement as above, and the response to that has been positive as well.

Her second point is to post on Ping-o-matic, I actually utilize this through Google’s feedburner,  and go into further detail about that later in this post.

I have also used Digg on my own post before, I don’t think it it something you should do too often as she also states in her blog post.

There are plug-ins for WordPress where you can add links for readers to click on to help them syndicate your posts for you, if you look at the bottom of my posts, there is a section that says “Share and Enjoy” where you can click on those links and share it on the sites I’ve selected to share it on.

She also says that you should update status on your social networking sites, and I do this regularly, with LinkedIn, even adding a short comment about what I may be doing for that day (networking, interviews, meetings, etc.)

On Facebook I also added my own blog to my profile there, you can see it following this link: http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/martin_pirainos_blog/ I then invite users in my network on Facebook to come to my blog, I have 6 followers there (including myself).  For now have to manually update and add a notice that I posted something, but if I get enough followers there, it will be following my blog feed automatically, I only need a few more users to follow it to do that.

One thing that I did add was a RSS feed from Twitter on Facebook, so when I do send a message on Twitter, it actually gets posted to my Facebook, and Friendfeed sites as well, basically making it easy for me to post in one place and it to be syndicated to other social networking sites that other contacts read.

It helps if you can use an RSS feed from one site to feed into another, or use applications on those sites that offer syndication, two sites I don’t utilize often but do pull my Twitter feed to are Plaxo, and Friendfeed. On LinkedIn they have a WordPress application and Bloglink appliction, so my network can see when I’ve either sent a twitter message or written a new blog post, even if I forget to update my status there.

Some people I know including Rachel and myself have also been in the news media in some form (News Print/TV) as some news media outlets turn to job searchers/bloggers to showcase their stories in regards to the current state of the economy.

I was actually contacted by the reporter for ABC15 a week after I wrote an email to him asking if I could link to a story he had on the job fair I attended. I never imagined that one email would get me the exposure I’d gotten, but I’m glad it happened.

I have links to the ABC15 story on my sidebar on my blog so that users don’t have to search for the blog post I wrote about it, and even now three weeks later I continue to get hits off that story directly, but for people reading my blog for the first time, I also direct traffic to the video interview and story on the ABC15 site, my being on a taped/televised interview, it gives people an idea of who I am and what I am passionate about with my blog as well.

When Rachel and I were speaking on Twitter on Monday March 9th, she asked for other ideas for syndication, Along with some of the ones I’d mentioned previously here, I thought of one that she hadn’t mentioned and that was to create a sitemap if she hadn’t already, I utilize the tools on my web hosting account to do just that, created in XML markup, and update it at least once a week, letting it find new URLs by my server logs or by what I post, update it, and push it out to Google.

The following is from a Google press release “Major Search Engines Unite to Support a Common Mechanism for Website Submission”

How Sitemaps Work
A Sitemap is an XML file that can be made available on a website and acts as a marker for search engines to crawl certain pages. It is an easy way for webmasters to make their sites more search engine friendly. It does this by conveniently allowing webmasters to list all of their URLs along with optional metadata, such as the last time the page changed, to improve how search engines crawl and index their websites.

There are also other things I’ve noticed in how traffic has come to my site through searches, people searching for particular tags or people I’ve mentioned in my blog posts. I’ve made it a habit to tag the names of people I talk about in my posts, and that too has brought some traffic to my site as well.  One of my last posts was indexed rather quickly on Google when I mentioned “Sean Connery” at “Austin’s Who’s Who in Arizona”, which pushed it to the top 2 pages in a search on Google.  It is worth it to pay attention to what search terms are bringing visitors to your site, and to work on different words to tag to help in that.

Another way to help syndicate your blog/website is to participate in other blogs, commenting on them, providing trackbacks to posts you reference in your own writing, as I’ve done here with two of Rachel’s posts.

I’ve also added google feedburner links on my site for the RSS feed, and the ability to subscribe to my feed by email, as someone had asked me about that recently, they preferred to be subscribed by email to my blog.

Another option in feedburner is under Publicize is called PingShot, where you can have it notify other services when you post a new message, the following is my list:

When I publish new content in my feed, notify these services…

• Technorati — Technorati is the authority on what is going on in the world of weblogs
• My Yahoo — a customizable web page with news stock quotes weather and many other features
• Bloglines — helps you subscribe to and manage lots of web information
• Ping-o-matic — Pinging lets dozens of services know you have updated your site and increases traffic to your blog
• Newsgator — tracks it all and brings the web pages to you

… plus up to five additional services.

• TailRank
• Blog Buzz Machine
• FeedBlitz
• Google Blog Search Pinging Service
• Alexa

Lastly, one other thing you can do to help get the word out, is to add your blog/website to your email signature, and have it on every message you send, my email signature consists of my name, email address, web site (this blog) and my LinkedIn public profile page.

While I’ve discussed ways to syndicate your blog online in this post, word of mouth is another very simple way to get more readership, adding your blog/website to a business or networking card is another way to get the word out with people you meet and network with face to face.

Happy Reading!

-Martin

1. Get out and get noticed, a great local resource in Phoenix for networking events is networkingphoenix.com search the internet for local network groups for your own area
2. Set daily, weekly and monthly goals in your job search, make them realistic, not unattainable, you don’t want to set yourself up for defeat
3. Take constructive criticism gracefully.  I’ve learned from some very helpful people that if someone tells you something about how you handle an issue, that more than one person likely has seen the same thing, so don’t over-react.
   • These are more than likely people in your ‘inner-circle’ and noticed something, whatever it is.  Pause a moment and listen, they care and want to help you succeed in your life.
   • Use it to your advantage
   • Take time to reflect on it
   • Grow and learn from it
   • Thank the person for bringing it to your attention later
4. Find someone else who shares your story, and bounce ideas off each other.  Remember the saying, ‘there is no I in team’, and teamwork is something that will help out in the long run, so don’t try to go it alone, here are  some resources you can utilize:
   • Alumni association and/or career services office of colleges you attended
   • Your LinkedIn Network
   • People you previously worked with in your field

I came across the following message on twitter this morning from a buddy of mine who runs jobshouts.com, Mike Quale that was Retweeted from another couple of people.

So I had to go look at it, and just a quick overview of that article, I am doing 5 of these things, I will go over them here. The full article is located here if you don’t click on the short link above: http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-experts-8_little_known_tricks_for_the_job_hunt-79

1. Add a signature to your outgoing email messages
   • While I have almost always included my name and email address, since I’ve been searching for a job and since starting this blog, I have added a bit of additional information to my email signature, to include name, email address, blog site and LinkedIn profile URL and I do recommend everyone not currently doing something like this to add one, most webmail providers also include an option to add a signature.
2. Include your LinkedIn profile URL in that signature
   • This is something I started doing once I had my LinkedIn profile up and running, my LinkedIn profile mirrors my resume for the most part, but still does need some tweaking
3. Use Twitter to keep your fans in the loop
   • I’m making a point to connect with people, and I send relevant messages, also letting people know when I’ve made a new post here so they can read it and follow what I’m doing, not only do I do that but I have my twitter feed pulled in to facebook, and I utilize the LinkedIn “What are you working on?” status update as well
4. Make your Facebook page work for you – not against you
   • This one is the one that I’m not doing, I just need to figure out how to work this, if there is anyone out there that can help me with this, I’d appreciate it
5. Add a qoute to your resume
   • This is another that I’m not doing, I can think of several things, but if anyone has a format or idea on where and how to place it on the resume, I’d like some suggestions
6. Get a Moo card
   • I have a ‘network’ card, listing my contact information, this Moo card idea is a bit different and something I will be looking into
7. Put a voice on your job search profile
   • This is one that I plan on implementing in a different way, currently my ‘voice’ was the short news interview I had on ABC15 which there are links to from my sidebar here on my site, but I need to expand on that a bit more in my own video or audio
8. Rewrite your resume so it sounds human
   • Currently working on my resume with Christian Kaijser of Career Evolutions to retool my resume and take it to the next level.

Happy Reading!

Martin

Monday mornings I generally follow up with contacts and recruiters, to set up coffee or lunch meetings during the week, I  also let these contacts know of my networking schedule, so they can meet me face to face at the networking events as well.

This coming week I plan on attending a job fair hosted by National Career Fairs today from 11am-2pm, then a SJN meeting Tuesday morning, after that I’ll be meeting with a recruiter Tuesday afternoon to discuss an overnight position he’s got down in Tempe, it will be my first meeting with him.

Tuesday evening I’ll be attending a meeting of Austin J Feldman’s -  Austin’s “Who’s who” in Arizona, at Barcelona in Scottsdale. Tuesdays lately have been one of the busiest days of the week for face to face networking depending on the week.

On Wednesday evening from 7 to 9 PM, there is the St Patricks Employment Support Ministry network meeting I will be attending at St Patricks Church in Scottsdale.

I encourage anyone local reading this to come to these events, if you’re looking for work and we meet up there (or after the event) we can talk about how we can help one another, and if you want to contact me to find out more, my contact information is here.

I will be making time early in the week to speak with Jim McVeigh, who I’ve met at a couple of networking meetings in the last month or so, he’s in the marketing and PR field. I want to discuss some opportunities that have come across my plate in the last few weeks as possible business opportunities.

I will also be making some phone time early in the week to speak with Charee Klimek who is Volunteer CMO and COO for JobAngels. I met her on Twitter last week and connected with her on LinkedIn, told her about my job search, and how I stress networking as a very important part of the job search. She wanted to make some phone time to talk with me, I’ll be emailing her to find out when she can get some time to talk.

I may have what I will call ‘piece’ work during the next week as well. After I’d made some connections last week, a couple of them saw that I was blogging and were interested in starting it themselves, and wanted to talk with me about what’s necessary to get it set up on their own domain host.  I also had a couple of hardware problem requests emailed to me over the weekend from people I’d met in the last couple of weeks.

A few tips for the job search for this week:

1. Find and attend at least one or if possible two network meetings a week some resources for are listed below:
   • networkingphoenix.com (login is required to view details on the calendar which is extensive)
   • meetup.com (search for ‘networking’ and this is a national site, so you can look in your local area)
   • networkingeventfinders.com (is national so it can be searched by each state as well)
2. Bring the following with you to any network event or job fair:
   • Pens/Pencils, a small notepad, or portfolio
   • Business cards (I call it a ‘networking’ card) – things I recommend including on the card for job seekers:
     • Name
     • Phone Number
     • Email address and web site address if you have one
     • LinkedIn profile address
     • 2 or 3 items in your area of expertise or what you’re looking for
       • Don’t use old business cards from previous employers if you’re unemployed and looking for work
         1. print your own on your home computer
         2. purchase business card stock from a printing place like Kinko’s and print them on-site
         3. vistaprint.com is another resource for printing busines cards
   • A cheerful attitude
   • A firm handshake
3. Set up alerts on key words from various job boards
   • monitor and change keywords if you’re not getting the results you expect or no results at all
   • utilize your RSS reader and subscribe to feeds of your search terms if the job site has that capability
   • make sure your resume is updated on the job board, and attach a cover letter with specific information related to the job you’re applying for
4. Work your personal network
   • Talk with family/friends and let them know what’s going on
   • Make contact or reconnect with old coworkers, even if they themselves moved companies
   • Make several coffee or lunch dates
     • Have specific questions or an agenda in mind
     • make it brief, unless more time is needed,  30 minutes is fine, you can always extend as needed
   • Don’t be afraid to ask for help from those in your network, you won’t know until you ask

More tips coming up soon!

Happy reading!

-Martin

The hosts of the meeting are Kenneth von Hopf and Sandy Rogers I got there around 2, and while the schedule said it would be over by 4 I was actually there till almost 6 pm.

Here are a couple of pictures from the meetup, sorry if quality isn’t that great they were taken with my cell phone:

I met a couple of guys and one of the discussions I joined in on was how people don’t have a good follow through when you offer assistance or say ‘call me later’, I admit to being guilty of it myself at times but I’ve gotten better at calling or emailing back after making a contact. Michael Castillo was one of the guys who was talking about it, his business PostalMax is in the Scottsdale Airpark, and is a member of Associated Professionals Resource Organization

I had heard about APRO from a couple of other networking groups I’d been attending, and will follow up to find out more about that organization.

My story about follow through goes back to the job fair a week and a half ago.  I’d given out my ‘network’ card with my contact information on it to about 15-20 people while networking, telling them to call or email me later, and no one has followed up with me.

We also discussed social media, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  Several people including myself had their laptops with them, and one of the guys remembered me from the news story on ABC15 from Wednesday night. I shared with them how I connected with Chris Sign and ended up getting contacted a week later to do the interview.

I met a photographer by the name of Darren Stevenson, and we struck up a conversation because my niece Kayleen is a photographer herself who has started her own business. His website is at www.stevenson-photography.com.

I also met a woman by the name of Annette Griswold, who is a life coach,  we sat for a while talking, and she mentioned that she was recently laid off, and was looking for some contacts for her business, she designs and prints affirmations on t-shirts, she showed me some of her work. The  business is called Affirm-a-Tees, etc.

She relayed a story to me about the starfish, I’d never heard it before until now but it was inspirational. Also a bit funny at one point, but if you want to know the whole story you will just have to ask her about it, the story she relayed to me was more than just ‘the starfish story’ but the how and why she came into the business she is in. I asked her if she’d mind sending a picture to include on my blog here, and she did send me one as shown below:

Annette Griswold

We were both curious and so we Googled ‘starfish story’ and up it came.  I was curious so just a few minutes ago I treid to find the author, as most of the references online were unattributed, but I came up with Loren Eiseley.

A version of that story is below:

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of
walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a child, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The child was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”

“I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” asked the somewhat startled wise man. To this, the child replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, “But do you not realise that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”

At this, the child bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, “It made a difference for that one.”

I had to chuckle a little when she finished telling the story, but I was also thinking about the organizations I’d been involved with recently, including JobAngels, and their idea to have each person help one other person.  SJN, the non-profit I’ve started volunteering for.  The network groups I attend that are roundtable format, where people give their ‘elevator speech’ and people in the room respond with advice/contacts and other resources they may have available to help that person, and I know one person can make a difference in the life of another in a positive and powerful way.

Happy reading!

-Martin

For those of you that came to my site from that link initially, thank you But for those of you just coming across this now, it’s a link to a story and video clip of my job search and networking.

I started a dialog through email with Chris Sign last week after the Jobing.com Career Expo, because I wanted to link my blog post about my experience at the job fair to a story he wrote about it.

I sent him an email and asked him if I could use the link to pictures and the story in my blog post.  He responded, and said yes, and I told him I’d let him know when I posted the story I was writing.  I shot him a quick email after that, letting him know I’d published my blog post.

I never imagined a week later I’d get an email from him saying:

‘I would like to do a story about your blog and experiences involving the job search’

I got the email  about an hour after after he sent it as I hadn’t been checking my email often, I thought about emailing him back, and asking more information, but he did give me his cell # in the email, so instead picked up the phone and called him and I am glad I didn’t miss out on the opportunity.  Chris said they were doing a quick interview in North Scottsdale, and he would like to come over after that to interview me.

I figured I was one of many they were interviewing for this story, and it would be fun to get out there, to have a little clip or comment on the news.

He asked me a question during the interview which I’m paraphrasing here as I don’t recall his exact words, “What would you say to people who may be afraid of or unfamiliar with the technology?”, and my comment about “You can choose to embrace it and go with it.” was part of my comment that made it on the air.

There was of course things that didn’t make it to the edited version which runs a little bit longer than a minute 30 seconds, I mentioned several other important groups and sites in the unedited interview that are a part of my job search efforts:

1. Scottsdale Job Network – SJN (www.scottsdalejobnet.com)
2. St Patricks Employment Support Ministry (www.stpatrickscottsdale.org/W2/ministries/)
3. Health care network group meeting (currently no active website, but hope I can help with that soon)
4. Jobshouts  (jobshouts.com) @jobshouts on twitter
5. JobAngels (www.jobangels.org) @jobangels on twitter

There are other resources I also didn’t mention in the interview and off camera that I will be sharing as I start to write more, as well as sharing more of my experiences since the story aired.

I will be adding a page to my blog with contact information soon, so anyone wanting to contact me off the blog can do so, but please feel free to post comments to my posts.

I have also tagged names of people who are part of the above mentioned groups and will write about the people and their relationship to each group at a later time.

Look for more coming in the next few days.

Happy reading!

-Martin