Guerrilla Marking for Job Hunters 2.0 - Jay Conrad Levinson [71]
From a personal branding perspective, your blog is a billboard on the Internet. Use it to get people to stop at your web site, read your resume, and call you for an interview. Blogging can help you find a job in the following ways:
• Increase your visibility because search engines love blogs.
• Demonstrate your critical thinking and communication skills, which employers look for.
• Establish and legitimize you as an expert in the field/function you want to be recruited into.
• Brand you as informed and savvy.
• Invite discussions and inquiries.
Being easy to find is the first step in securing your career future. If you do it correctly, you may never need to go looking for a job again because you’re making yourself easy to find. Being found is what you want; it enables you to market yourself 24 hours a day at little or no cost. Make certain to link your blog post to your web site, LinkedIn account, Facebook, and/or MySpace account. Type pad will do this automatically for you with the widgets (mini applications) available on its site.
Does this work? Adam Swift started a blog on mixed martial arts in his spare time while completing his law degree. Mark Cuban found him, bought the blog www.mmapayout.com, and acquired Adam in the process.
A WAR STORY
Adam Swift
During my second year of law school, I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I had always had a passion for sports business, particularly for the promotional aspects of professional wrestling as a child, and later mixed martial arts (MMA). Since I had entered law school, MMA had exploded into one of the fastest growing sports in the world. I decided to give it a shot and began mailing resumes and making phone calls to the leading companies in the industry. After months of frustrating cold calling, I realized that if I was going to land my dream job, it was going to take a more nonconventional approach.
I read Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters over the summer before my final year of law school. One of the strategies discussed was the use of blogging in order to demonstrate expertise and become more accessible to headhunters. I decided to implement this strategy by starting a blog dedicated to the business of MMA. I’ve always enjoyed writing and figured that at worst I would find a fun hobby.
MMAPayout.com was born in September of 2007. It didn’t take long for the blog to develop a following and start to produce networking opportunities. My timing couldn’t have been better because almost simultaneously a contract dispute broke out in the UFC, allowing me the chance to put my legal education to work. The exposure I gained covering that story generated some professional writing opportunities with magazines. I was able to parlay that into more networking opportunities and even a little side cash.
By the spring of 2008, I was being sought out by the New York Times and Washington Post for my expert opinion. I had also begun receiving feelers from various employers about potential job opportunities. The site even produced a fairly lucrative part-time consulting practice and I counted among my clients a billion-dollar public corporation.
Shortly before graduation, about 9 months after I started blogging, I accepted a position with Mark Cuban’s HDNet Fights as manager of Marketing Alliances. Mark and Andrew Simon, the CEO of the company, had become familiar with me by reading my blog.
Adam Swift is the manager of Marketing Alliances of HDNet Fights (www.hdnetfights.com), one of the leading MMA organizations in the country, founded by Mark Cuban.
GUERRILLA TIP
Don’t bad-mouth your current or former employers; it could cost you your current job, and it certainly could turn off prospective employers. The point of blogging is to get a job, not lose a future opportunity.
➤ MySpace and Facebook
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