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Beyond.com in the News
Personal Marketing Basics: 5 Tips to Get Started 
Personal Branding Blog
By Pete Kistler October 21, 2009 Hunting for jobs? Here are five foundational tips to get started marketing yourself electronically: 1. Start with the basics. Better understand how to break into your field by reading up on your industry at WetFeet. Search the job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder, as well as niche job search sites like Beyond.com. Use Glassdoor to read interviews and reviews of companies posted anonymously by employees. Then hone your career development skills by reading top career blogs reading about your areas of weakness (interviews, resumes, etc.) on this blog and at Quintessential Careers, JobMob and CareerRocketeer. 2. Use LinkedIn's "Company Search" to find who works at your ideal company on LinkedIn. Then look through its employees and see if any of them are within 2 degrees of separation, i.e. if you both share a mutual contact. (You can also use the Job Search function to sort results by "degrees away from you"). Ask your mutual contact for a favorable introduction to bypass the usual "gatekeeper" at that organization and get your foot in the door with a personal reference. 3. Claim your Google profile. Google profiles show up high in Google searches for your name, so use it control what employers see when they look you up online (83% of recruiters use the web to research applicants). In your Google profile, include a short professional bio, a clean headshot, and a link to your LinkedIn account for more full professional information. 4. Create a Twitter account specifically for your job search. First, upload a clean headshot, include a short professional bio, and follow major players in your industry using (find them using Twellow). Then post interesting, helpful, useful, relevant links related to your field such as posts from industry blogs and content from newsletters. This adds value to your network, makes you a person worth following and attracts other careerists who share your interests. Once you've built a following, tap your network by periodically Tweeting about your job search (what you're looking for, where, and why you). Also follow Twitter Job Opening Feeds and organize them intro groups using TweetDeck. 5. Join relevant groups and discussions on LinkedIn. This is an excellent way to meet people in your industry and establish yourself as an active, passionate and knowledgeable player in your field. Use the search tool to find groups by industry, join the groups relevant to you, then start posting relevant articles, asking and answering thoughtful questions, and engaging others who might lead to new opportunities. Invite people to connect on LinkedIn who join in your conversation, then see if they know anybody at your ideal organization. Pete Kistler is a leading Online Reputation Management expert for Generation Y, a top 5 finalist for Entrepreneur Magazine's College Entrepreneur of 2009, one of the Top 30 Definitive Personal Branding Experts on Twitter, a widely read career development blogger, and a Judge for the 2009 Personal Brand Awards. Pete manages strategic vision for Brand‐Yourself.com, the first online reputation management platform for job applicants, named one of the Top 100 Most Innovative College Startups in the U.S.
Jobing.com Looks to Rebound in Tough Job Board Climate After several years of heady spending to raise its profile, the Phoenix-based job board is trying to put office closures and layoffs behind it. Is the addition of a high-profile blogger the answer? 
Workforce Management
By Michelle V. Rafter October 2009 Since the economy bottomed out and took scores of U.S. jobs with it, purveyors of job boards have seen corporate customers curb or cut contracts at the same time theyve dealt with an influx of rsum postings from the newly unemployed. More companies also are adding job postings and career centers to their Web sites, or are using social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for recruiting, which raises the possibility that they wont go back to previous levels of job board spending once the recession ends. The result: falling revenue and earnings, as evidenced by publicly traded job boards such as industry leader Monster Worldwide, which in the first half of 2009 lost $11.7 million on revenue of $477.4 million, a 34 percent drop from the same period last year. Peter Zollman, executive editor of Classified Intelligence, a consulting group that tracks the classified advertising and job board industries, says that while the job board industry has struggled in 2009, some privately held firms may be better positioned to weather the recession. One such firm, he noted, is Phoenix-based Jobing.com. Theyre smart, theyre nimble, they can do things some of the other boards cant, he says. The flip side is when nobodys spending, it doesnt matter how smart and nimble you are. Its a fact of life for every recruitment site. There are only a few in the world that are still growing. The recessions effects on privately held job boards such as Jobing.com are harder to pinpoint because the firms dont have to disclose earnings and other financial data like publicly traded stocks. Jobing.com CEO Aaron Matos, a former HR manager who started the company in 2000 and successfully shepherded it through the dot-com industry bust, is tight-lipped about his operations. I like being private, he says. We enjoy the fact that its difficult to figure out what were doingas long as my customers dont have the same problem. But from outward appearances, all is not well with the business, a one-time highflier that in 2006 raised more than $50 million from venture financing firms Great Hills Partners and JMI Equity to fund its expansion. To boost its national visibility, Jobing.com in 2006 paid a reported $30 million for a 10-year naming rights contract on a Phoenix-area sports arena that is home to the National Hockey Leagues Phoenix Coyotes. The team, which is the arenas largest tenant, remains in bankruptcy and faces the possibility of moving. Jobing.com also spent lavishly on industry trade shows. Its national debut came at the Society for Human Resource Managements annual conference in 2007 in Las Vegas, where Jobing.coms massive booth staffed by dozens of employees cost an estimated $60,000. The company also hosted a multi-suite party at the Palms Casino Hotel for some 2,700 people. Jobing.com again shelled out large sums of cash at SHRMs 2008 conference in Chicago with a huge booth, dozens of staffers and a hosted party with thousands of invitees on Navy Pier. Buoyed by its performance until then, Jobing.com made the Inc. 500 list of fast-growing private companies from 2005 to 2007; in 2008, it ranked No. 558 on the Inc. 5,000 list, reporting revenue of $36.2 million and 386 employees. Yet during the past 12 months, the tough economic climate and companies growing use of social networks for recruiting in place of job boards have taken their toll. Jobing.com was absent from Inc.s 2009 list, published in August; the company didnt apply this year, according to an Inc.com official. Jobing.com also was missing from the SHRM exhibition hall this year at its annual conference in New Orleans. A SHRM spokeswoman confirmed Jobing.com had no booth at the 2009 convention following its prolific presence in 2007 and 2008. Matos agrees the past 12 months have been bad for all job boards, and that Jobing.com laid off an undisclosed number of employees in 2008. Everyone else has had layoffs, he says. Former employees and commenters on popular HR recruiting blogs report another, larger layoff took place in March. In two interviews, Matos declined to go into greater detail; the companys current profile on the LinkedIn business network Web site lists 400 employees. Matos also claims never to have shut down any of the local job boards the company operates in 38 cities throughout the country. Yet former employees maintain Jobing.com has shuttered offices in Riverside, California; Ft. Worth, Texas; St. Louis; and Baltimore, in some cases running job boards for those areas from an inside sales department at Jobings Phoenix headquarters. A call to Jobing.coms Riverside office was picked up in its Los Angeles office, where a representative said it moved out a month ago and relocated to the hub office in L.A. It was against this backdrop Matos announced in early September he had bought Joel Cheesmans influential HR blog, Cheezhead, along with two other businesses run by the Cleveland HR entrepreneur: HRSEO, a search engine optimization marketing firm, and HirePPC, an online advertising optimization firm. The deal calls for Cheesman to move to Phoenix to run Jobing.coms interactive marketing and community-building operations. The popular and often acerbic Cheezhead blog will be no more, replaced with a revamped site that covers broader employment issues of interest to companies and recruiters, Matos says. We wont be commenting on any of our competitors, positive or negative, he says. Employment stuff will be game. Some industry watchers see the deal as a step recruitment sites such as Jobing.com must take to transform themselves into career portals with expanded services, content and community interaction, a move they need to take to do battle with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Job boards making this transformation into career portals will co-opt social media sites by adopting professional networking on their own sites and providing a better value proposition, says Peter Weddle, a recruiting industry consultant based in Stamford, Connecticut. But not all job board executives think its the way to go. The experimenting weve done on MySpace and Facebook hasnt shown that people who are there performing social activities like uploading videos or talking to their friends are receptive to being recruited for their career, says Rich Milgram, CEO of Beyond.com, a job board in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Others maintain its a step in the wrong direction for Jobing.com, adding yet another service to an array of job fairs, magazines and video services it already offers and which, they argue, diluted the companys brand. There also were concerns that the deal was an extension of a working relationship Matos and Cheesman had for some time, albeit one that was never publicly disclosed. Posts to news stories and blogs covering the deal accused Cheesman of giving preferential treatment to Jobing.com on his Cheezhead blog while frequently chastising its competitors. Cheesman confirms he didnt write about Jobing.com for the two to three months it took to negotiate selling his company; a search of the blog shows only six mentions of Jobing.com in 2009 compared with 111 for Monster and 103 for CareerBuilder. As for letting Jobing.com off more lightly than its competitors: Joel doesnt write about a lot of things, Matos said in an interview the day the deal was announced. Acquisitions like the purchase of Cheesmans company are nothing new to Matos. Though Jobing.com started out building city-centric job boards from scratch, the company grew to its current size through acquisitionsnine in all from 2004 to 2008, including smaller job boards with strong community ties in Colorado, California and Canada. Through the economic turmoil of the past year, some Jobing.com customers say theyre happy with the results they get for the money they spend. Cruz Melendez, HR director at Family Resources, a Pinellas Park, Florida, counseling and social services nonprofit, pays $600 a month, or about $7,000 a year to post up to five listings at a time on Jobing.coms central Florida job board. That compares with $45,000 to $50,000 a year he once spent on newspaper classified ads. I put my job on the line when he made the switch, Melendez says, but it paid off, much to all of our surprise. Yvonne Aragon, an Albuquerque, New Mexico, group HR recruiting manager for Enterprise Holdings, which operates Enterprise, National and Alamo rental car businesses, has used Jobing.com since 2007 to fill customer service and entry-level management positions. She attends the companys local job fairs and relies on her local Jobing.com account manager for advice on employment trends and recruiting strategies. Even so, she uses Monster and CareerBuilder too. Its never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, she says. She has also become a fan of Facebook for recruiting not in lieu of, but to supplement the job boards were using.
The Site Stuff Our picks for whats new, notable and work-related on the Web 
NY Post
By BRIAN MOORE and CHRIS ERIKSON September 28, 2009 By now we all know Monster.com and LinkedIn, but practically every day new Web sites launch that aim to help you find jobs, stay on top of your industry, improve your career prospects or otherwise help you along in your work life. We sifted through the latest offerings and compiled the following list of sites that are worth a click. Brazen Careerist Imagine a slam mix of LinkedIn and Facebook catering to the professional networking needs of Gen Yers, and youve imagined Brazen Careerist. The idea behind the site is to combine the professional foundation of the former with the interactive, social features of the latter so younger workers can actively create a professional network. Careerist profiles focus on ideas rather than the job experience that LinkedIn emphasizes, says CEO Penelope Trunk. Theres a reason why the average age of a LinkedIn user is 40, she says. Brazen Careerist levels the playing field. Careerist takes its Gen Y mandate seriously in other ways, as well its blog is filled with how-to videos which spare young up-and-comers the trouble of reading, you know, words and stuff. brazencareerist.com Bintro Bintro is a job-search site that uses inferential matching rather than keyword-based matching. So if a trapeze artist is looking for a job, Bintro wont simply search for trapeze artist openings but for all job listings that come under the broader rubric of performer. Were looking at the [general] definition of what you told us, says CEO Richard Stanton. Bintro has some other notable features. Every 3.5 seconds, it re-searches its database for matches. Its free to both potential employees and employers. And it allows potential matches to communicate anonymously, so you can keep your job search on the DL if, say, youre currently employed. bintro.com Jobulous Manhattan-based Jobulous is the latest in a series of sites designed to give the inside scoop on working at a given company, direct from anonymous employees. Founder Ross Siegel launched it after he graduated from business school at NYU and going to work for a new media company that had a great rep but proved a disappointment. Having had more info before taking the job would have spared him the trouble, he figured. Hence, Jobulous, where visitors post job reviews that cover how much they earn, what the workplace culture is like, how their bosses treat them, and so forth. Then they can peruse others ratings, which can be searched in various ways. Given the newness of the site, it has yet to generate a meaningful database of responses, but its smartly put together. Jobulous.com Tweet My Jobs Twitter is nothing if not fast, and Tweet My Jobs is a free job search engine that puts that idea into play for job seekers. The process is simple: post your resume and a brief tweet about yourself and the type of job youre looking for. When a job match appears, youll receive instant notification perfect for Twitter obsessives who constantly check their cellphones for updates. To keep you from being buried under an avalanche of other tweeting job seekers, the site allows you to retweet your resume every 24 hours so you can stay at the top of the list. Tweet My Jobs looks to be a killer ap, at least until someone comes up with Pwicter.com, where people send messages using only 25 or fewer emoticons. Give it six months. Guaranteed. Tweetmyjobs.com CoWorkers This brand-new site follows the model of Ed Koch, who as mayor famously queried constituents with Howm I doin? The concept is to aim that question at work colleagues, requesting feedback by forwarding various review forms for them to fill out. In addition to general reviews of your job performance, you can request feedback on your interpersonal skills or core values, as well as on a specific achievement such as a report or a presentation. The site which calls itself a career development and reputation management tool offers a dizzying number of options. Feedback can be made anonymously or not, it can be requested or offered unprompted. Results can be kept private or made public for bosses and recruiters to see, and can be viewed in various formats, such as graphs and pie charts. So it takes some navigating, but it may be worth it to see how you stack up in your colleagues eyes. Coworkers.com FiredUp Network In spite of its name, the Manhattan-based FiredUpNetwork.com is primarily a resource site and secondarily a networking site. Expanding the range of possibilities for the unemployed beyond simply outlining resources for finding work, the site lets visitors research opportunities such as starting a new business, potential business investors, post-graduate degrees and buying or selling a business. Its kind of like Linked-In meets Wikipedia, says founder Matthew Pizzi. I basically created a foundation of starting points, of resources. Now its up to the community to use them and add to them. Firedupnetwork.com Zoosa For those of the do-gooder persuasion, zoosa.org is the site to visit. It lists jobs and volunteer positions in the clean-tech, education and non-profit arenas. Its a perfect destination for those who cant find a job but would like to keep their skills hot by volunteering for a nonprofit, a move that networking experts say can often lead to a paying gig. zoosa.org How I Got Laid Off Its no surprise that not all employers handle layoffs gracefully. HowI-GotLaidOff.com is a blog that calls these reprobates on the carpet, allowing victims to chronicle their horrific tales of getting the boot. And horrific they are, from a p.r. exec who was fired by her alcoholic boss after her abusive husband attacked her at work to a nonprofit worker in Kenya who got canned after witnessing the misappropriation of funds. (Naturally, his boss waited until after he finished a seven-day stint laid up in a rural Kenyan hospital before letting him go.) Visitors can submit their own tales of woe or spend hours reading about the misery of others. The blog wont land you a job, but itll make you feel better about not having one. HowIGotLaidOff.com Path 101 Path 101 is for job seekers wrestling with the ultimate question of what they really want to do. It has a personality test, career advice and a fancy resume analysis service that helps users pinpoint, among other things, where their skills are valued and what skills they need if they want to make a career switch. All you have to do is upload your resume. Rather than finding specific jobs, Were more focused on helping people figure out what they want to do and where they might fit, says CEO Charlie ODonnell. In a couple of weeks, Path 101 will add a search function to its resume database, allowing employers and others to take a gander. Beyond Beyond.com compiles job listings and resumes from about 15,000 niche job sites from around the country broken down by industry (e.g., accounting) and geography (e.g., Miami). The result is a more targeted approach to the job-seeking process which eliminates much of the dross, particularly for employers seeking candidates. Just for laughs, we searched for shoemaker, figuring the career is about as niche as you could get, and actually found a listing, for a shoe-designing job at Oakley, the sunglasses firm. Then again, the search also yielded an accounting professorship in Nebraska, with resumes submitted to a certain Dr. Shoemaker. beyond.com The Office Here at @work were attuned to what wage slaves really need, so to that end this list wouldnt be complete without a Web site that offers cube jocks nothing more useful than a prime way to waste time. At The Office home page, you can indulge in the great workplace tragicomedy with archived episodes as well as games and other extras. nbc.com/The_Office
How To Get Fired Here are five surefire ways to become a target during job cuts 
Network World
By Denise Dubie September 8, 2009 IT professionals can do a lot to avoid layoffs, but they may be unwittingly doing even more to make themselves a target for downsizing. No one can get too comfortable in their position right now. If you get complacent and have no intentions of improving upon yourself, you will lose your job to that person and there is always at least one who is constantly looking for ways to better himself and add more value to the business, says Colt Mercer, a network engineer at Citigroup in Dallas and a Network World Google Subnet blogger. Here IT professionals and career experts point out five ways high-tech workers could earn themselves a spot in the unemployment ranks. 1. Be invisible
Now is not the time to go unnoticed. Its not the time to shrivel and try to be invisible to management. Many people tend to default to hide-and-retreat mode when layoffs come up, but that could call more attention to you and make it appear you arent contributing enough to be kept around, says Adam Lawrence, vice president of service delivery at talent and outsourcing service provider Yoh. Even those working hard could unknowingly be at risk due to their in-office time. Some IT workers who operate from a home office might need to make a few extra trips into work to remind managers, in person, of all that they do. Being visible during downtime is a big deal. If you are always remote and people at the office dont see you as part of the team, that could cause problems, says Bryan Sullins, principal tech trainer at New Horizons in Hartford, Conn., and a Network World blogger covering Microsoft certifications and training. Often it can be a case of out of sight, out of mind, and remote workers could unwittingly become a target to be cut. 2. Let skills stagnate
There may be no training dollars, but that doesnt mean managers wont be considering IT pros lack of updated skills when making layoff decisions. Regardless of the current economic trouble, high-workers should always be looking for ways to advance their knowledge. IT staffers that dont maintain their certifications and stay trained show poor strategic thinking and will very quickly find themselves behind the curve, says Chris Silva, senior analyst at Forrester Research. Turning a blind eye to new technology and thinking it can wait will wear thin in a down economy. Managers dont want staff that add to the cant do list in times like these. And the employee who uses the excuse about lack of dollars wont make points when it comes to cutting staff. A pet peeve of mine is people asking companies for more than they are willing to give, says Rich Milgram, CEO of Beyond.com, an online job board. There has to be some level of mutual understanding about what contributions can feasibly be made on both the employer and employees side. There are low- and no-cost training options if the employee is willing to make the effort. 3. Snoop in systems
It goes without saying that IT workers shouldnt abuse their access to company confidential systems, but industry watchers warn that if layoffs are going to happen, those high-tech pros with questionable practices will be the first to go. It is really easy for an IT person to see what others are doing and to look at confidential data, without being caught, says Beth Carvin, CEO of Nobscot Corp., a maker of employee retention and other HR-related software based on Kailua, Hawaii. But if you are suspected of some shady stuff, that would be reason enough to bring your name to the top of the layoff list. And even if the practices arent breaking corporate policies, IT professionals need to be on their best behavior. Try to avoid abusing a flexible schedule with long lunches and dont use your high-tech position as a reason to spend too much time on the Internet for non-work-related activities. If you are the person viewed as someone just logging their hours to collect a paycheck and dont plan to contribute more than the minimum, management will see that and you will become vulnerable, says John Reed, district president with Robert Half Technology. 4. Make demands
Pay cuts, hiring freezes, layoffs none of these factors suggest its an appropriate time to ask for a raise. Yet experts say some will use their ongoing service to a company during a recession as a reason to demand more money and other benefits. Now is not the time to ask for a raise; now is not the time to complain about needing more time off, Sullins says. In these cases, the squeaky wheel will get the shaft. While it may seem to IT pros they are going above and beyond and deserve compensation for their efforts, those in the position to fire staff might not want to hear it. Right now, employees should be nodding their heads a lot, not being surly or pushing back on responsibility, says Sean Ebner, regional managing director for IT staffing and recruiting firm Technisource 5. Spew negativity
Employers now more than ever want positive attitudes on staff, and those spewing negativity will be weeded out. The truth is that everybody from a technical standpoint is replaceable. I notice more than anything the negativity an employee displays. Negativity is contagious, and once an employee goes that route, it is nearly impossible to turn them back, says Michael Kirven, principal and co-founder of IT resourcing firm Bluewolf.
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