Successful Job Search Strategies For Mature Workers

As much as it bugs me to be called a "mature worker" it is an appropriate phrase for my north of fifty years old tribe. We live in the land of descriptive keywords and "mature worker" is a keyword Google can understand even if you and I do not :). Once I got over the pique and read this excellent article sent in an email from Ilyse Shapiro I wanted to share it.

There wasn't a "can't see this article" link at the top of this email. Remember to always include a "can't see this article" link because you never know how an ISP will step on your email. This article is mostly text so it came through clean, but the absence of the link meant I had to move the article to ScentTrail to easily share it across my social net. This moves the Google-juice to me, not something I wanted to do. I wanted to give the juice to Ilyse Shapiro et al., but the absence of the "can't see this article" link made that hard enough that copying the article to ScentTrail was the easiest way to move it out to my network. Remember to always think about how easy it is to move your content, any content especially great content like Successful Job Search Strategies for Mature Workers article, across other people's social nets (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook in that order). Here is Ilyse Shapiro's excellent email:

Missing View In Browser Link:

can't see this article, Click Here to view in a browser
(where Click Here is underlined, I don't like "click here" because it lacks keywords but economy is called for in email and there is a convention to these kinds of links that it makes sense to abide by)

4 SUCCESSFUL JOB SEARCH STRATEGIES FOR MATURE WORKERS
Career Coach, Speaker and Author Ford R. Myers Offers Practical Job Search
Strategies for Individuals of Any Age

Despite U.S. unemployment rates that hover around 10 percent, one segment of the population is not being hit as hard employees age 55-plus. At its peak in December 2009, the unemployment rate for this group was 7.2 percent. As of December, 2010, it was 6.9 percent. These statistics will no doubt come as a surprise to all the 55-plus job seekers who are still struggling to find work.

Ford R. Myers, Career Coach, Speaker and Author of "Get The Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring," (John Wiley & Sons, 2009, www.GetTheJobBook.com) finds that mature workers offer experience and skills that younger workers cannot offer employers. "They are more likely to stay put for longer than their younger counterparts, thus reducing turnover - which lowers the costs associated with hiring and training," says Myers.

Regardless of the benefits mature workers offer employers, many face age discrimination when searching for a new job. Myers suggests the following four
practical strategies that can increase the chance of landing a great job at any
age:

1. Energy level. Even if you're a mature worker, it's important to maintain a high level of energy and project real vitality. This allows you to take on challenging projects, keep up with the fast pace of business, and get things done efficiently. So show-up early, move fast throughout the day, and work hard.
2. Technology skills. As an older candidate, you didn't grow up in the computer age, but it's critical that you learn and practice technical skills. Employers are much more likely to hire mature workers who can demonstrate strong computer skills and possess a comfort level with technology in general. This is a great way to compete effectively with younger candidates.
3. Personal image. It's always important to look your best, and this is especially true when the mature worker is looking for a job. Pay close attention to your appearance. You can make a more positive impression by updating your hairstyle, eyeglasses, clothing and many other personal attributes. Your wardrobe may also need a "makeover" to look more stylish.
4. Company culture. Research the culture of your prospective employer. If everyone at the company is 20 to 30 years old, then the firm is not likely to hire an older candidate like you. On the other hand, there are companies that have a reputation for attracting and hiring mature workers. These firms actually like to have "adult supervision," and they'll pay a premium for your greater levels of experience and wisdom.
   

"You can't change your chronological age, so don't waste mental energy thinking
about it. Older workers who understand that their maturity and expertise are
assets are more likely to land the job they want in the long run," adds Myers.

For more information and other useful tips to help those in career transition achieve career success, visit http://www.getthejobbook.com.

Copyright (C) 2011, Career Potential, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to Reprint: This article may be reprinted, provided it includes the following attribution: Reprinted by permission of Ford R. Myers, a nationally-known Career Coach and author of "Get The Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring." Download your Free Special Report, "10 Vital Strategies to Maximize Your Career Success" at http://www.careerspecialreport.com.


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CONTACT:
Ilyse Shapiro, ilyse.shapiro@verizon.net, (610) 642-7427 (PA);
or Ford
R. Myers, contact@careerpotential.com; 610-649-1778 (PA), or here: http://www.careerpotential.com.

ABOUT:
Ford R. Myers is President of Career Potential, LLC. His firm helps clients take charge of their careers, create the work they love, and earn what they deserve! Ford has held senior consulting positions at three of the nation's largest career service firms. His articles and interviews have appeared in many national magazines and newspapers, and he has conducted presentations at numerous companies, associations and universities. In addition, Ford has been a frequent guest on television and radio programs across the country. He is author of Get the Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring. More information is available at: http://www.getthejobbook.com and http://www.careerpotential.com.

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Ten Viral Content Tips - How To Write Viral Content

Writing Viral Content
Marketing isn’t what it used to be. When I worked for P&G and M&M/Mars we battled for shelf space employing an army of boots on the ground sales reps to secure and hold position. Moore’s Law, Google and the Internet changed everything. Moore’s Law noted how transistor power doubles every few years even as cost decline. Computers become more powerful even as they get cheaper. Don’t have to look far to see Moore’s Law’s implications.

Google is one of Moore’s Law’s main implications. Google understood in a Moore’s Law universe content reaches toward infinity. A tool to manage billions and billions of web pages, a way to curate our lives (see Curation: The Next Web Revolution), was what was needed.

Moore’s Law and Google moved the game. Marketing’s obsession with shelf space became a battle for hearts, minds and advocacy. No company has a large enough marketing budget to push ideas and products alone anymore. Ideas must become viral memes, a paradigm able to be transported by others, to live, influence and sell. One of the most important implications of this game changing shift is we are all in the viral content creation business whether we realize it or not.

Viral content, content capable of sprouting legs and walking around, is a particular kind of content. Your grocery list isn’t viral. Your knitting secrets may be. This post builds on an excellent post by Adam Singer on his marketing blog The Future Buzz (linked below). Adam’s post explains how to write viral content. I worked as a Director of E-Commerce for seven years on multimillion-dollar web sites. My team searched high and low for viral content. Several ideas we created went viral, but most did not. This win sometimes fail most times led to this examination of what makes content viral.

Here is a list of content features that contribute to viral-ness. Don’t read this list as necessarily all inclusive. Any single characteristic outlined below can tweak a nerve and catapult content. While these ideas aren’t a checklist having more than one viral content characteristic is a good idea. Humor plus simple or story plus humor may be more viral than either humor or story alone.

How To Write Viral Content

• Humor
• Story
• Controversy
• Simple
• Influencers (a la Gladwell)
  
• Pull not Push
• Surf Pop Culture (relevant)
• Free
• Links
  
• Junk bonds not buy and hold
  

Humor
Ventriloquist comedian Jeff Dunham’s Achmed The Dead Terrorist has 127,587,762 YouTube views (as of this writing). Acmed’s video has 196,579 comments. The page has a Google PageRank of 7 probably from an insane number of high value inbound links.

Funny things get passed around, over and across the Internet. We’ve all received funny videos, jokes and stories from friends usually in emails when they are supposed to be working ☺. We are all always in need of a good laugh. If your content, video or text, is half as fun, funny and topical as Achmed you’ve created viral content. One quick caveat about humor – be careful. One person’s humor is another’s insult.

Story
What are the three most important, and most ignored, words to an e-commerce web site’s success? Story, Story and Story. Web sites must tell a story. Great web sites tell several stories including:

• Creation story (how the company behind the site was started)
• People (who are the people behind the site)
• Values (what do the people behind the site believe)
• Why (why is the site unique and valuable).

These stories form a web site’s muscle and sinew. Every piece of content on a site either reinforces the site's stories or creates conflict with them. Confused customers don’t participate. Confuse your customers enough and they become angry customers and may spend time calling your company / site a fraud. Can the stakes for story be higher? Can story be more important? Some examples of sites that understand the importance of story include:

http://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?assetid=2047&ln=140

http://www.rei.com/aboutrei/about_rei.html

http://www.etsy.com/about?ref=ft_about

Controversy
Love or hate Fox News they understand we live in an age of sound bite controversy. Nothing gets our Pavlov’s Dog attention as much as people screaming at each other. As much as I wish this wasn’t so controversy is online currency. Don’t stake out positions to be controversial because those seldom will be. You will be surprised at where controversy erupts. When a controversy fire starts you may choose to fan flames as controversy may increase links, PageRank, Google listings, traffic and money.

Beware being too controversial. Recently The New York Times related a story of a site owner courting negative comments and reviews to boost Google keyword rankings. Google shut this negative strategy down in no uncertain terms read: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html

Controversy may be healthy and helpful and it may bite your hand even as you attempt to feed it.

Simple & Short
Made To Stick by the Heath brothers is an excellent viral content bible. The Heath brothers examined common traits of “viral memes” and simplicity of transfer is high on the list. Ideas must be simple and catchy to move across any culture (think of the Internet as a “culture”). The Heath brothers’ publisher employed a brilliant meme. They included a simulated piece of duct tape on the book’s cover. Duct tape is sticky, Duct tape on the cover transfers all the power of a cultural meme, duct tape is sticky, to Made To Stick the book. Keep ideas simple and take advantage of existing cultural norms, stereotypes and definitions to help the heavy lifting of explaining ideas whenever possible.

In other contexts (see: SEO Writing http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2009/01/seo-writing.html ) I’ve described web writing as more Hemingway than Faulkner. Short, punchy sentences work better online than long rambling ones. Many frequent, short posts produce more Google-juice than few long ones (this is a “do as I say not as I do” situation LOL).

Influencers
Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point noted different kinds of viral agents: salesmen, mavens and connectors. Each agent has different characteristics and each plays a role in helping ideas go viral. Sales people help craft story. Mavens create legitimacy. Connectors help fill out a new tribe’s rolls. Ask how any content you create will appeal to sales people, mavens and connectors AND read Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

Pull Before Push
Marketers are used to pushing ideas up hills with advertising and noise. There is so much noise now pushing ideas up anything is almost impossible. Advertising and ideas adhere to a Pareto Distribution, also known as the old 80/20 rule. 20% of almost any set of numbers produces all the good stuff. We saw this in our sales numbers when I was a Director of E-Commerce. Every category had a Pareto Distribution, sometimes called a long tail, with a handful of products contributing a majority of sales. Your ideas, company or web site wants to be in the 20% of web sites people visit and buy from. As Anderson noted in his important and influential book The Long Tail, the tail is increasingly important thanks to Moore’s Law, but still better to aim for as large an audience as your ideas can muster. Advertising is an adjunct, a supplement, to viral content creation. Advertising is not, and may never be, dead, but it must be combined with engaging, relevant and true ideas. Here are some example great recent pull marketing:

Pepsi Refresh http://www.refresheverything.com/

Inspiration Café (winners of True North Snacks video contest) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3AOzj7mVNQ

Surf Pop Culture
Trying to create a wave in the idea ocean is difficult to impossible, much easier to surf an existing wave. When FoundObjects.com, the first company I founded now defunct, worked with poet David Kapel to launch Magnetic Poetry Kit in the 1990’s we were surfing powerful pop cultural waves. Magnetic Poetry Kit played on and with: the Internet’s explosion making words valuable and ubiquitous, the kitchen becoming a common family and entertaining gathering place (Magnetic Poetry Kit is usually placed on a refrigerator thus prompting questions and then play from visitors) and power of word-of-mouth advertising as customers went into gift stores asking for Magnetic Poetry Kit helping MPK defeat several upstart competitors. It is easier to create word-of-mouth advertising when your ideas or products surf a popular pop culture wave.

Free
Free may be the most powerful marketing words especially knee deep in a recession. More than our current economic climate, Free is what we expect. We expect to trade time for free stuff. Free information, free recommendations, free content helps makes sense of our fast, furious and flat world. Seth Godin gave away Permission Marketing, on of his first books, creating viral content capable of spreading fast and furious. What can you give away today?

Linkage
Links may be the most important web currency. Google’s algorithm is built on understanding links represent votes, proxies for what is important. Google borrowed this idea from academia where more references to a paper equals more importance. Links bring traffic, PageRank and commerce. Writing content to garner links is hard and too manipulative, but understanding topics likely to be valued and so linked is smart content creation.

Junk Bonds Strategy Not Buy And Hold
If you or I could predict viral content we would be on a beach somewhere sipping large cool drinks with little umbrellas. I like to use baseball as a viral content creation benchmark. If four out of ten or your ideas go viral you are in the hall of viral content creation fame. A more typical batting average will be two to three ideas per ten.

There is a relationship between how many ideas you create and how many go viral. If you create one or two ideas chances of going viral are reduced. You are putting a lot of pressure on those two ideas. It is possible to step up to the viral content creation plate and hit your first pitch out of the park, but we suggest taking tons of batting practice. Launch as many ideas as possible. Web votes are immediate and resounding. If you’ve created viral content gold you will know quickly. If viral content falls flat pick yourself up, dust yourself (and your team) off and step up to the viral content creation plate again.

Helpful References

Adam Singer's Viral Content post: http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/02/26/viral-content/

Adam Singer's Future Buzz site: http://thefuturebuzz.com/

Future Buzz on Twitter

Adam Singer on Twitter

Wikipedia

Long Tail book by Chris Anderson

Made To Stick by Heath Brothers on Wikipedia: Made To Stick

Moore’s Law

Meme

Pareto Distribution

Story by McKee (this book is about script writing but I love it)

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Viral Marketing

Martin

SEO Writing (on ScentTrail Marketing)

Content Marketing Network (on SlideShare)

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/martysmith1980vc

ScentTrail on Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/ScentTrail

Personal Blog: http://www.MartinMartySmith.com

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User Generated Content - 1.10.89 Rule

Magic 1%, Voting 10%, Needed 89%

Reading Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe I came across an “emerging rule of participatory media” that builds nicely on Ben McConnel and Jackie Huba’s book Citizen Marketer. The 1:10:89 rule explains who will do what on a web site:

• 1% will contribute (I call this the magic 1%)
• 10% will vote on what the 1% created
• 89% will quietly consume content
  

Bradley Horowitz, VP of Advanced Development at Yahoo created the 1:10:89 rule after observing the way people used Yahoo groups. This rule expanded Citizen Marketer’s “magic 1%” concept. Here is how Horowitz explains:

The activity of the 10 percent – who vote and rate submissions, start and contribute to online discussion, and generally police a site is as valuable to any online community as the actions of the ‘supercontributors” that make up the 1%.

Creating community is one of the hardest things any web developer attempts. There are many potholes and pitfalls. Every group in the 1:10:89 rule plays an important part. The magic 1% contributes new content and search engines love current “new” content. The voting 10% police, vote and generally make your web site’s community theater a pleasant place to watch the play. The consuming 89% may seem like free loaders, but what is any art without an audience? If a painting falls in the desert and there is no one there to hear it does it matter?

We could have an intense conversation about art, artists and audience, but let’s not and say we did. Instead let’s agree, especially in our growing digital age, audience is an important part of any art. Some modern art requires direct involvement by 11% of its audience along with appreciation by the consuming and needed 89%.

Curation The Next Web Revolution examined the content chaos that billions and billions of web pages and user generated content create. Curation is the next web revolution. The good news is we won’t curate alone. We will have help from the magical 1%, the Voting 10% and the Needed and consuming 89%.

Curation - The Next Web Revolution

Reading Steve Rosenbaum’s 4 Promising Curation Tools That Help Make Sense of the Web helped confirm a sneaking suspicion – curation will be the next web revolution. If Web 1.0 was about online access and Web 2.0 is about social nets Web 3.0 will be coring down to content that really matters. We don’t go back to the halcyon days of newspaper editors making decisions about what we need to know, but we will employ new tools to organize, search, sort and query the living organic thing that is the web.

The web is beyond elastic. The web, like artist Jonathan Brofosky, is counting to infinity. Amazon has over 400,000,000 pages in Google. The strange alchemy that is search engine marketing (SEM) means pages that cost pennies to create often return dollars. You don't have to be an investment banker to understand the web's positive return-on-investment. Amazon is on its way to a billion pages begging the question, "How do you create a billion web pages?"

Can’t answer this question in the old way. This content creation journey doesn’t proceed one step at a time. This journey requires steps taken every second of every day all over the world by an army of people, by an empowered and zealous crowd. Amazon’s need for more content on top of more content reminds me of a conversation with Bazaar Voice’s management team about reviews. “Why,” I asked, “does someone write the 300th review of a widget?” After 299 reviews there is little new information to share in the 300th review so I was confused about why someone would take time to add something already covered by twenty or a hundred other reviews.

“Reviewers join a tribe at least as much as they contribute product information,” explained my Bazaar Voice contact. Yes, I remember thinking as Faith Popcorn’s, “People don’t buy brands they join them,” quote flashed like large cue cards. We want to gather near the fire on a cold winter’s night, extend our palms, rub our shoulders and feel what it means to be in this place and time together.

The 300th review and Amazon’s quest to reach a billion web pages brings a problem. As we gather huddled against a winter night’s cold we process and parse information quickly, intuitively and with practiced predictable paths. We know what fire is. We sense our friends and pull our coats up against the cold. Now imagine a million people huddled on a small field looking for a winter night's fire. Moving our mental model from a few friends passing a jug to a million campers makes the scene unreasonably hectic. We can’t organize all the information headed in our direction.

So one of the problems with the cult of the amateur and democratization of content creation tools is an unbelievable shit storm of content headed across the prairie taking aim at our houses, brains and limited attention spans. Think you are overwhelmed now just wait until you act as curator of every piece of culture you consume. I’ve seen tornadoes roar up on dusty Texas plains. I’ve run from a black storm’s vengeance, furry and terror. No Texas tornado has anything over the content storm heading at each and every one of us.

The good news is content is being created by new wizards at an increasingly fast rate. The bad news is content is being created by new wizards at an increasingly fast rate. Curation, the process of separating content wheat from chafe, will be the next web revolution. We are too idiosyncratically individual to care much what our fellow lemmings are doing. We will demand curation tools that wrap the web around us like comfortable blankets. We will place our arms through our snuggly's holes and pull the "blanket with arms" tight against our chest like armor.

The next web revolution will be a "less is more" revolution since our love of bulk will cave our fragile shoulders under a load even the most sturdy sherpa couldn't bear. We will employ new "less is more" tools to cut down the storm's size, furry and toll. We will grow comfortable with a million fellow travelers huddled next to an electronic fire spitting warmth, culture and fart jokes. We will curate our lives like the fine art every moment is and should be. Curation is the next web revolution.

Read Curation The Next Web Revolution II on Technorati.

Tornado Photo (c) Jmos Flickr

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