It’s all about standing out from the crowd when you’re trying to get someone’s attention and get them to focus on you and your abilities.  What better way, then to show off some of your skills or your ingenuity and drive by presenting a more polished and graphic presentation of who you are.  Sharlyn Lauby writing in Mashable.com shows us several eye-catching ways to do that:

1. Give the Reader Your History

Michael Anderson’s infographic resume turns his employment and academic history into a colorful visual journey.

And, jumping ahead:

3. Make It Personal

Traditional resumes can be “humanized” by a well-written cover letter. Graphical resumes can add a whole new dimension by visually introducing the person behind the experience.

Federico Moral went with an anthropological theme, placing his skills into the timeline of human evolution.

Francis Homo turns his own silhouette into a frame for his achievements.

Brandon Kleinman adds a really creative twist by making a short presentation out of his Facebook photos.

You get the idea.  Make it interesting, make it compelling, make it fun. Show employers you are not only smart but creative and a bit driven, willing to go the extra mile.  That should at least take you a long way down the road to your next great opportunity.

For the complete article go to 9 Dynamic Digital Resumes that Stand Out From the Crowd

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“The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act is a response to a May 2007 Supreme Court ruling that made it tougher for employees to file pay discrimination claims.

It is the first bill Mr. Obama has signed into law, and effectively overturns the court’s ruling.

Lilly Ledbetter, a 19-year area manager for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Mobile, Ala., learned she was earning far less than male colleagues but was not able to file a claim because she had missed the 180-day time window because of learning about the disparity so long after the fact.

The law amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act to allow for claims within 180 days of each check considered discriminatory.

Ms. Ledbetter lost more than $200,000 in wages and benefits over her career, the president said.

“It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act — that it is upholding one of this nations first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness,” Mr. Obama said during a bill signing ceremony before a few hundred people in the White House’s East Room.

Joining him were Ms. Ledbetter, first lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and congressional leaders.

Mr. Obama signed the bill using several presidential pens, giving each to the congressional co-sponsors onstage. But he saved one for the law’s namesake: “This one is for Lilly,” he said, a line that earned a standing ovation.”

Of course, all of us dream of finding our passion and somehow shaping a career out of it. As Wax points out: “The problem is, a lot of passions don’t seem to offer any reasonable ability to make a living. That’s where Career Renegade comes in – in a nutshell, the book advises you to stop looking for the reasonable opportunities and start making unreasonable ones.

Getting from Here to There

Fields breaks the opportunities for career renegades into 7 categories:

1. Redeploying your passion in a hungrier market. That’s what Liv did. (A classically trained artist, she discovered ) there are already plenty of markets for the arts, and they’re hard to break into. Liv turned her passion loose in a market that hadn’t previously had much use for artists, the baking world.
2. Refocus and mine the most lucrative micro-markets. Produce a product aimed towards a small but wealthy audience, who will pay a premium for the distinction. Think Apple.
3. Exploit an information gap. Find out what people need to know about some activity and provide that information. That’s basically what Jonathan Fields did in writing Career Renegade; people want more meaningful careers but don’t know how to create them, so Jonathan shows how.
4. Exploit gaps in education. The world doesn’t just need information, it needs skilled teachers to convey that information effectively. If you can teach something there’s a demand for, you’ve got a great opportunity.
5. Exploit gaps in gear or merchandise. Invent or bring to market a product that doesn’t exist but will make a big difference to people pursuing some activity. Jonathan discusses a woman who invented a non-slip yoga mat for high-intensity styles of yoga (where people sweat a lot). Or think of the after-market in iPod products – a market that was invented out of thin air when the iPod became popular.
6. Exploit gaps in community. People are social animals in a society that more and more works against social behavior. Provide community and people will love you. Liz Strauss, for example, has built an incredibly popular forum for people to just talk at Successful (and Outstanding) Blog – which has grown into a very successful conference (SOBCon) and speaking engagements.
7. Exploit gaps in the way a service or product is provided. Make it easier or more compelling for people to use your products, by delivering them where everyone else ain’t. Think on-site car washes, online education, aerobics videotapes way back when, and so on.

Regegade careers aren’t only about having ideas, though – they’re about implementing them, and to that end Career Renegade is packed with information about researching, launching, marketing, and running your own business. It also deals with getting support and mentors to help you on your path.”

If you want to read the whole post go to Build Your Renegade Career! A Review of “Career Renegade” by Jonathan Fields i

If you want to download the first chapter, go here.

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• Interview With Jonathan Fields, Career Renegade

Smart job strategies to avoid layoffs offers some suggestions and I’ve added some of my own thoughts in italics.

Strategy: Make sure higher-ups know you by solving problems and taking on high-profile projects.

Well this is an evergreen.  Don’t wait until a recession to practice this.  It should be your every day mantra.

Strategy: Share client leads or ideas to generate revenue even if that’s not part of your responsibilities.

No kidding, Watashi.  No one fires a money maker.

Strategy: Hang out with the people the boss respects most. The halo of their good reputation may extend to you.

Not too sure I’d waste my time hanging out with anyone when there’s work to be done.  But then I’m a recovering…but not much…workaholic.  And I’m not sure anyone fires a workaholic either, since they’re usually doing the work of 3 people.

Strategy. Keep on top of advances in your field and expand your expertise beyond your core area.

Another evergreen.  Don’t wait for a recession to do this.  Do it day in and day out, rain or shine.

Strategy. Look for problem spots that you can help fix. And pitch in whenever extra hands are needed.

No kidding.  Who wrote some of these?  The office slow poke?  ( No offense meant.  I know they gave some good examples which is worth a lot I guess.)

Strategy. Volunteering to take a pay cut during an industrywide downturn can make you look like a hero.

I am really not too sure of this one.  I’m not sure anyone should step up and devalue themselves.  If you’re the CEO or one of the top management of a company by all means, step up to the plate and ask for a pay cut.  You’re the responsible party.  But, for employees below that level, I think the better advice is to keep your salary the same and offer to take on more work.

These are my thoughts.  But if you want to compare them in detail, go to Smart job strategies to avoid layoffs and read the whole piece…lots of examples.

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Create An Interview Preparation List – AdvancingWomen.com Careers-Employment.

Here’s a quick way to compare your own job experience and qualifications with those that your prospective employer is looking for in a specific job position. Make an “Interview Preparation List”. When you prepare for a job interview, it’s good to have a quick reference of your past work experience that you can study ahead of time to help prepare you for the specific job you’re interviewing for.

Grab a sheet of paper and make three columns.

Column A will be “Position Requirements”;

Column B will be “Your Qualifications and Experience”; and

Column C will list “Your Stories”. For this exercise, you’ll be using the actual job description from the employer.

So, in Column A (Position Requirements) you’ll take one piece of the job description and write for example: “Ability to work well with others.” Ok. Now you’ll have to think about your own experiences while working well with others. What specific examples do you have that demonstrates this ability?

Great. You’ve thought of something. In this example, we’ll write under Column B (Your Qualifications and Experience) “Worked on the XYZ project team.”

Now you need to break it down even further and list a specific action-oriented example of “working well with others” on the XYZ project team.

In Column C (Your Stories) you write something like this: “Coordinated winning marketing campaign which resulted in a successful launch of new product.” See how successful that makes you look?

(And don’t forget personal branding: be sure to include those signature elements of your style, your talents and achievements which differentiate you from the crowd and make you stand out.)

Keep going until you’ve listed something for every part of the job description. Now, you’re ready for your close-up.

Author, Donna Monday of Get A Job Interview- Quick Tips

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Sometimes, when flocking to the big boards, job seekers overlook the niche job listings which might be a perfect fit and have just the right job for you. Niche job boards focus on a specific industry or demographic. Careers.AdvancingWomen.com, our job board, for example, is a diversity job board where employers seek women and minorities, the disabled or other diverse groups.  But there are plenty of niche job sites out there, one of which may be right for you.

Interested in Anthropology / Archeology Jobs?  How about Dance Jobs, Environmental Jobs ,Equine Jobs (that’s horses)?  Yep, all of them have niche job boards.  Even Retirement Jobs, Winery Jobs ( sign me up!) and  Zoo Jobs have their own boards. How cool is that?

Want more niche job sites to pore over?  Look up Niche Job Sites Directory

Another source not to overlook is job aggregators like Indeed.com. Companies like Indeed.com scrape jobs from a variety of sources and describe themselves as “a search engine for jobs;  jobs that are listed on job boards, newspaper sites, and niche sites. In one simple search, you can find the very latest job listings throughout the web – one search. all jobs.”  Well, not quite.  Although job aggregators, like Indeed.com, are another tool in your job searching tool box, there are more.

Don’t forget the jobs sites of big corporations. Although they may be advertising in many job boards on the web and in news papers there, there’s a good chance they have three to ten times that many jobs advertised on their own corporate career site.

So, here’s the strategy.  Go to the big boards like Monster.  Go to the niche sites in your industry or your demographic. Identify some corporations you’d like to work for.  Then go to all of them, and, if you don’t see what you want on first visit, set up an rss feed or an alert so that you don’t go looking for the jobs, the jobs come to you.  And we invite you to go post your resume and get an alert from our diversity niche board, Careers.AdvancingWomen.com

You may wonder why I write so much about bootstrapping and entrepreneuring?

I’m passionate about jobs and careers as well.  But I think we can all agree, jobs are dependent on someone giving you one.  And also, keeping you in it.  What I want you to realize is that you can create a job for yourself that no one can take away from you.  You can start your own business and employ yourself.

We all have to agree the job news is bleak and appears to be darkening:

New York based Employment Trends Index reports:“The U.S. economy has lost 1.9 million job and the declines in the index suggest job losses could very well surpass 3 million by mid-2009.” Business Journal adds “The report comes on the heels of Friday’s report from the Labor Department that said the economy shed 533,000 jobs in November — the largest monthly decline since December 1974. That brought the year’s total job losses to 1.9 million.” Economists also predict a decline in job pay.

Given the state of the economy, we all know some things we should be doing or trying to do: paying down our credit card debt; building a cash cushion. Although, for some of us, stretched like a rubber band to the breaking point as it is, that may be easier said than done.

But there are other alternatives:  I’ve heard of some people taking on other, easier to get 2nd, part time jobs like delivery services or even throwing newspapers ( make that last a really short term fix as newspapers themselves are shrinking daily.)

Now, however, might be the perfect moment to start your own business.  It can be after hours, after your day job, to start out.  Think of it as a life raft, in case your boat ( your main day job) sinks.

We wrote about this cross roads before in A Fork In The Road: Career Path Or Entrepreneurship. One of the things we mentioned was how this could be such a wrenching decision, as you would be giving up so much security.  Forget that.  At this moment, everyone’s job outside of civil service, possibly teaching and a few other fields is about as stable as a slinky, headed down 5 flights of stairs…. you never know where it might land up, or when it will either cascade or fall to the bottom.  So there really may not be much holding you back from starting up a 2nd revenue producing machine, in the form of your own business.

We’ve already reviewed with you how you can do this.  I’ve done it.  Many times.  So can you.

How to Start an Online Business for $100 – Ramp Up As Needed Or Just For Surges

Start Your Own Small Business Using More Ingenuity, Less Cash

But, what I would like you to take away from this is that you have the power to create your own work situation, one that no one can take away from you.  You can do this in a way that you have several streams of income. ( This blog for example, and the website it’s on, have income from advertising, from a job board and from advising other companies and associations about setting up their websites and online businesses and helping them execute on them.)  That way, for example, if jobs are down, ads may be maintaining steady.  If both are down, and you’ve established an expertise, you can sell that as a service.  A going website has many potential ways to produce revenue.  And so does a going business.  You may have to take off the blinders, use your imagination and ingenuity, shift with the times and sell apple butter instead of apples, but that’s part of life as well as business.  At least you will have a platform from which to maintain your revenues, in one form or another.

Think about it.  Think of it as a life raft which you can build in your after hours time. You may need it sooner than you hope.

If you have work survival stories you’ve like to share, we’d love to hear them. Comment, please.

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• America loses 1.9 million jobs in 11 months
• Job outlook gets gloomier
• Grim Report on Jobs Not Showing Full Picture
• Jobless rate bolts to 14-year high of 6.5 percent

It is true, unfortunately, that the United States needs its roads and bridges rebuilt before any more disasters befall families just trying to get from one side of a river to another.  But it is equally true that infants and toddlers need care and nurturing; children’s hearts and minds need to be developed in schools so they can become responsible and innovative adults who can create and contribute to a green economy, while, at the same time, having the good sense to maintain their roads and bridges.

In the NYTimes.com piece, Where Are the New Jobs for Women? , Linda R. Hirshman examines the Obama administration’s proposed stimulus package and women’s place in it:

“BARACK OBAMA has announced a plan to stimulate the economy by creating 2.5 million jobs over the next two years…but there are almost no women on this road to recovery.

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.

It turns out that green jobs are almost entirely male as well, especially in the alternative energy area…Fortunately, jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital. In 2007, women were 83 percent of social workers, 94 percent of child care workers, 74 percent of education, training and library workers (including 98 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers and 92 percent of teachers’ assistants).

Obama’s Campaign Promised Jobs Which Include Women

Women are teachers, and the campaign promised to provide support for families with children up to the age of 5, increase Head Start financing and quadruple the money spent on Early Head Start to include a quarter-million infants and toddlers. Special education, including arts education, is heavily female as well. Mr. Obama promised to increase financing for arts education and for the National Endowment for the Arts, which supports many school programs.

.. Mr. Obama also promised that the first part of his plan to combat urban poverty would be to replicate a nonprofit organization in New York called the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities across the country. The group, which works to improve the quality of life for children and families in the Harlem neighborhood, employs several hundred people in full- and part-time jobs. By making good on this promise, Mr. Obama could create thousands of jobs for women in social work, teaching and child care.

Women represent almost half the work force — not exactly a marginal special interest group. By adding a program for jobs in libraries, schools and children’s programs, the new administration can create jobs for them, too.”

It is unfortunate that this blind spot about women is so ancient and systemic that many, and certainly those in Obama’s job stimulus planning team, seem to be unaware of it. Ive mentioned before that during the Clinton administration, I went to a conference at the White House where the focus was about creating work for women in the Americas.  The consensus was that if you want to help a country, help the women in it. The result of that thinking was that, through training and micro-loans, a woman who was ebabled to buy an industrial strength sewing machine, grew her tiny business into a small factory that employed most of a village. That is only one of countless stories of what women in remote Latin American villages achieved with some intelligent intervention and support.

Women, in fact, have the drive and ability to change the entire social and economic ecosystem around them, if given some support.  Let us hope that Obama’s team recognizes their oversight and has the political courage to reconfigure their job stimulus proposal accordingly.

Linda R. Hirshman, author of the NY Times article is also author of “Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.”

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• A public works push

Image by via CrunchBase

Rita Ashley, technology recruiting veteran who has an insider’s view of how hiring gets done, believes LinkedIn is a powerful tool for job search and she has written an  ebook, LinkedIn for Job Search to make her point. Anne Fisher of Fortune Magazine wrote this about Ashley’s ebook”

“I use LinkedIn all the time but I learned things I didn’t know that are really useful.”
“My search isn’t in full swing but I sure wouldn’t say no if someone approached me.  Using the LinkedIn white paper, I know they can find me.”
“The screen shots helped me a lot because I haven’t used LinkedIn much.”
“I was blocked from getting new connections with people I don’t know.  The examples really helped me fix the problem.”
“Love the White Paper. Sure glad I didn’t have to sit through a whole class to get this information.  Keep them coming.”
“Do HR people really vet people before they decide to contact them?  I now know how to fix my profile.”

Download your free step by step guide for examples, screen shots and advice to use all the power of LinkedIn for your Job Search.

Click here to download your free guide to becoming a power user of Linkedin for your job seach.

Create a Plan and Lay Out Milestones

Rule #1: Set your own goals.

Don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do. Analyze your company carefully, and try to understand what you can do which will make a significant difference. Get a handle on the problem, develop a solution, and a consensus around it, lobby for approval, then execute better and faster than anyone else.

This is accomplished most effectively by breaking down big projects into small, realistic and manageable daily goals. When you focus on your career, think in terms of concrete, realistic steps: gaining experience in a different area by taking on a new assignment; taking short courses or attending seminars in cutting edge topics; improving your performance by 20%; decreasing by 20% the time it takes you to accomplish a task.

From those incremental improvements, you can begin to lay out significant milestones, such as moving from middle to upper management.

Develop an “Advisory Board”

To keep your career going strong and achieving its full potential, you will need a sounding board, someone who can provide you with an objective judgment of how you’re performing. This can be a trusted mentor, or a group of professional friends, who are willing to meet with you occasionally and review the milestones you’ve set for your career. And don’t forget your significant other. A spouse or partner will usually give you an honest appraisal…mine does….of whether you’re setting your goals too high or too low.

Frequently, changes take place in an industry or pay scales change, and, if you been putting in long hours, you can miss them or fail to realize their significance or how they can impact your own career. To gain perspective and an objective viewpoint, it’s invaluable to be able to turn to trusted advisers.

Take on Public Speaking

It’s impossible to overemphasize the value of being a good communicator. What all leaders share is the ability to articulate and communicate their goals with such passion or eloquence that others are motivated to share those goals and join together to achieve them.

Regardless of whether you are an eloquent speaker, you can at least bring interesting news to an audience, in a fresh and organized way. Since most people in a general audience are not as up to date on your field as you are, you should be able to convey something to them which is of interest and which they didn’t know before.

If you are able to display a mastery of a subject, and keep your presentation brief and to the point, you will make an impression. And public speaking is one of the best ways to raise your profile in the community and in your professional circle.

Create A Skills Inventory and Continue to Expand

Whether your skills are based on your ability with graphics, or your talent for getting an office organized or inspiring people to join your project, you have a set of skills to track and build on. Create your own “portfolio” which identifies and documents those areas you have developed the most and have the greatest competitive advantage in, as measured against your peers, and make its continuous expansion an ongoing priority.

Remember – It’s Still About People: Develop A System to Leverage Your Contacts

Take a hard look at how you are networking and make some basic decisions about how to develop a system to make personal contacts and extended networks work better to advance your career.  Sometimes it takes a little effort.  In the web business, I am finding that I can meet as many influential decision makers and thought leaders at the right tech networking event in Austin as I can in…. let’s say a month of Sundays… in my city.  The downside: It’s an hour and 15 minute drive.  The upside: the contacts and business potential, not to mention the learning experience are well worth it.

To extract and build on the value of your contact, it is important that you be able to recall the details of your meeting and the specifics of the other person’s job and your conversation. My tech buddy drives up to Austin with me and we both collect business cards, sometimes jotting notes on the back of them about details we particularly want to recall.  When we get back we scan them and exchange them by email.  Voila! Twice the new leads, prospects and contacts, and, at the same time, someone to share the drive and dish about industry trends or whatever projects we’re working on.

Once you have developed a system to track your contacts, and all your contact information is recorded and organized, then you should develop a system for communicating on a regular basis with people you’ve met. Communication can be something as simple as sending an email with a web reference or a reminder of an upcoming meeting or a Facebook notice about a new project. Do this regularly and you will build a network which will be there when you need them.

Creating a career plan with milestones, gathering support, continuing to expand both our career skills and our networks, if executed faithfully,  is not only energizing and enjoyable in and of itself, but definitely will  lead to success