Ask Your Friends to See Your Brand Attributes

 Personal branding is essential for survival now. To objectively identify your strengths and personality traits, asking your friends or colleagues may be better.

Exercise: Brand Attributes

Step One: Determine Your Brand Attributes

Identifying the attributes that define your brand involves understanding not only yourself but also how you are perceived by others. You might think you know what your greatest strengths and attributes are as a professional, but do you, really?

It can be challenging to objectively identify your own strengths and personality traits, but you can learn a lot about yourself by getting feed- back from the people who know you best.

To start, choose eight to ten trusted friends, peers, and mentors and ask or email them the following questions:

• How would you describe me in three words?
• If you had to introduce me to a new professional contact or colleague, what would you tell him or her about me?
• What traits do you most admire or enjoy about me?
• What makes me different from other people you've worked with in the past?

Listen and take notes. It can be helpful to do this with two different groups --- one made up of people who know you more intimately (such as close friends or family members) and one made up of more distant acquaintances (like former colleagues, mentors, professors, or bosses).

Now look again at all the descriptions you gathered. What are the three to five descriptors that people seemed to agree upon? Circle those that seem like strengths, and underline those that could have a negative connotation, so you have a better sense of the whole picture you're working with.

Now in your own words, write down the five words or phrases that you agree are accurate (try to be as objective as possible!) and ...

"THE NEW RULES OF WORK", page. 68

Skills You Can Use to Make Quick Money, Are Real

 If you need to make some money very quickly, what would you do? Your answer points to your skills and abilities. Here are some more options. They give you some measure of comfort, confidence and security during your job search.

Exercise: Gold Rush

TO FIND A GOLD RUSH, DON'T THINK DIFFERENT, THINK BORING

A lot of people get stuck in the search for a "big idea." But as you saw in Chapter 5, you don't necessarily need a big idea to make big profits. You need a helpful idea. Consider the guy who invented the cupholder. Granted, it's not as sexy as making the latest smartphone model. But if you're driving along with a beverage, that cupholder sure comes in handy.

Consider as well some of the examples you've seen in this chapter. Harry Campbell, the ride-share guy, provided profitable tips to new drivers seeking to be more effective. Mike Hallatt founded Pirate Joe's in Canada to import specialty groceries that he knew there was a market for. Again, being helpful is the highest value.

These qualities are good signs of a potential gold rush:

• A big, untapped market
• A new technology or advancement that a lot of people don't know how to use or participate in
• Confusion or uncertainty over how to participate in the new thing
• Something people want but can't get ("illegal" groceries from across the border)
• Something that is perceived as scarce or involves FOMO (the fear of missing out)

Remember, always strive to meet needs and solve problems. Also, when you find a possible gold rush, strike at once.

"BORN FOR THIS", page. 160

Skills You Can Mention In Your Resume

 Skills you picked up from volunteering, hobbies, public services, family duties, matter. You should value them as much as you would value a degree, diploma or certificate.

Exercise: Skills to Count in

How you can position volunteer work, unpaid extracurriculars, or self-taught skills. As we just spoke about in Step 2, all experience is legitimate, and you get to decide what's relevant. Just because you weren't on the payroll doesn't mean you don't get to 'count' what you learned or how you contributed. For the rest of your working life, your most valuable weapon will be the ability to understand and articulate why the experiences you had in one job are transferable to another. You get to start using that weapon right now, today.

My first portfolio featured, almost exclusively, work that shouldn't count. I was trying to score a junior social media management job, and the person who ultimately became my boss asked me if I had any experience running social media accounts. 'I run my own Facebook page, actually; I said in our initial meeting. 'I mean, it's a really tiny project, it's just for my music. I use it to promote my gigs, tell people about my new recordings, stuff like that.'

To my amazement, he said that sounded great and wanted to see examples. I went home, screenshotted the best of those Facebook posts, and put them up online next to the few pieces of work that I had to show from my one 'legitimate' internship. I screenshotted a couple of posts from my Twitter and my SoundCloud that felt relevant, too. I got the job.

Just because you're not getting paid doesn't mean you're not getting valuable experience. It's not against the rules to talk about this kind of work on your CV or during your job search. Relevant experience is always, always, always valid.

#ENTRYLEVELBOSS, STEP 2: HACK YOUR OWN SKILLSET, page. 88

What un-official skills can you count in, now?

Skills Catalogue

 Write down your skills. This list will harden your resolve, build your confidence as it reminds you of your value, worth and contributions. 

Exercise: Skills Catalogue

Skills catalogue in ten steps

Take a pad of paper. List your skills in the ten steps below. Make sure you write down skills (for example, organizing, planning, negotiating), not aspects of personality (for example, enthusiastic, reliable, calm).

1. Think of the most enjoyable job you have ever done. What skills were you using most of the time?
2. Remember projects which you found a stimulating challenge. What skills were you using?
3. Imagine it's Sunday night and you are looking forward to activities and projects in the week ahead. What skills do you see yourself using?
4. Think about a time when you surprised yourself by doing something you didn't know you were capable of doing. What was the skill you were engaging?
5. Imagine you're having a brilliant day at work. If someone was following you round with a video camera, what would the record- ing show you doing in terms of activity?
6. Think about times when you have received praise for your work performance. What skills were mentioned?
7. Remember a time when you went out of your way to help some- one or solve a problem. Again, what skills did you use?
8. Write down any other skills you are good at and you enjoy using.
9. Look at all the skills you have recorded in steps 1-8. If you could choose only one skill from this list, which skill energizes you most?
10. Finally, think about a day at work when you were entirely absorbed in what you were doing, time passed quickly, and you went home feeling a 'buzz'. Find someone to talk to about that day, and ask them to make a list, while you are talking of all the skills you were using. Add any new skills to your list.

How to Get a Job You Love, page.82-83

Strengths for Jobs

 If you know your signature strengths, your super powers, you will look, sound and feel like a winner to your future employers.

Exercise: Strengths

So, ask yourself the following questions and come up with a list of your top five to ten strengths:

What am I the best at?

What do others say I'm good at? (In a lot of ways, this is more important than what you think of yourself.)

What does my job require me to be good at?

What matters at the job and do I have the right skills to excel?

What skills do I need to have to get me my next promotion or raise -- whether it's where I'm working now or somewhere else?

What else do I need to know to get to the next level in a career here or at any other company?

Am I playing to my strengths in team settings and making my team more successful?

Do my co-workers and managers know what my strengths are and do they see them as contributing to the team's success?

Are my strengths being underutilized? If so, why, and what can I do about it?

PROMOTE YOURSELF, page. 34

Now answer each question as completely as possible.

How to Uncover Your Skills?

 Such scenes always reveal your value, worth and contributions.

Exercise: Skill Movie Clips

If your life is a movie, when you talk about yourself in a job search you've got to decide on just a few frames. Movies are promoted through trailers --- the whole plot condensed into 3 minutes. The skill clips exercise sends you back to the cutting room to create a condensed, all-action version of you.

In the movie of your life, what are the key moments? Your best action scenes are the ones where you're doing things, getting results, interacting with people, starting or finishing projects.

Home movie rules for editing and composing your skill clips

1. Zoom in as tight as possible --- avoid long sequences. One day is good. One hour is better. Keep it concise. Like a movie clip, it's got to convey a lot in a short space of time.

2. Use slow motion --- reveal the action as it happens by thinking about what you did and how you did it.

3. Use a good screenplay --- does this scene convey a message about skills, about overcoming obstacles?

4. Keep the star in shot --- make sure this scene is about the hero: you.

5. Make sure the clip has a happy ending --- an achievement or a skill revelation.

Fix on one event. Start with an occasion when you felt a great sense of success or achievement. Picture your 'clip', and give it a title. Then ask yourself the following skill discovery questions:

What obstacles did | have to overcome?
What did | have to do to achieve this?

What was the task or challenge?
How did | work with others?

What planning did | need to do?
What was my best moment?

What skills did | see myself use?
How did | surprise myself or others?

What skills did others see me use?
What did | do personally?

Some prompts for your skill clips:

Think of times when you achieved something you are proud of. This doesn't need to be a work-related achievement. How did you do it? What difference did you make? Turn the event over in your mind until you see skills, particularly those you don't normally claim for yourself.

Now look at your achievements from your non-working life. Times in the past when you overcame the odds, did something that surprised you.

Think about work-related clips that demonstrate the full range of skills: things, people, information, concepts, etc.

Keep drawing up these skill clips, either alone or, even better, with a fellow career developer. If you show a series of movie clips from the work of famous film director Alfred Hitchcock, you see similarities of style and content. After five or six skill clips you'll start to notice a pattern of skills, or a set of master skills, and you'll get a strong sense of what you are really good at and enjoy doing.

How to Get a Job You Love, page.92-93

A Job Search Tip: Overcoming Neediness and Desperation

 Are you freaking out? You cannot will or wish your fears away. Reframe the situation. Sincerely see that it is in their best interest to hire you.

Exercise: Alchemy/ Transformation

The Eureka Moment!

You can reverse engineer the same search techniques to be found or to find employers who have problems you can solve and create a job for yourself.

What's your takeaway?

1. The economy has changed and every organization has had to change the way it does business, and that means changing how it hires.
2. Looking for problems you can solve is easier than looking for a job --- one implies value (employers will pay to have a problem resolved), the other simply implies a payroll cost.

The audience quickly figured out that an "opportunity" was a chance to solve a problem and that's what engineers do best. This is the most competitive job market we've ever seen, but there are jobs out there, lots of them. They're still aren't enough jobs for everyone though, so it is no longer good enough for you to just be the most qualified. That's not who gets the job. And you probably already know that. The person who gets the job is the one who can find the job to begin with and then maneuver the job search process.

Finding and maneuvering to the offer stage are a Guerrilla Job Hunter's competitive advantage.

....

Your brand and marketing strategy will determine not only whether you get an interview but also where you fit in that band. If you market your skills as a commodity, you'll be lucky to land the job and you will be paid at the bottom end. However, if you market and present yourself as a "you-can't-do- without-me" solution to the employer, you will start near the top or over their salary band. Over the course of your lifetime earnings, this can easily amount to an extra $800,000 to $1 million in salary. Now you see why you need a personal branding strategy. Next, I show you how to create it.

---

You Are Changing the Rules

While ordinary job seekers are crying out, "Please give me a job!" your resume will convey a simpler, more appealing message: "Hiring me is like buying money at a discount." While other job seekers will come across as supplicants, begging for work, you will come across as a superhero minus the cape.

Put another way, you will put an immediate halt to the "apples versus apples" comparison that employers make when considering ordinary job seekers. It's now "apples versus oranges" -- and you're the only orange. A big, fat, juicy one.

You're changing the rules of the game and slanting them in your favor. It's kind of like picking up a Monopoly board and tipping all the money, hotels, and houses into your lap.

"Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0: How to Stand Out"