You are a busy executive. Strategically responding to seismic changes in your industry, in the country, in the world at large underpins your day-to-day. Transforming your enterprise, from culture to vision to overarching revenue and profit goals undergirds your brand. You initiate fundamental changes to the way consumers purchase, businesses interact and the world communicates.
Your Executive Image Is Malnourished
As such, with all your responsibility, you’ve invested little energy to nourish your executive career image. It is difficult to communicate meaningful LinkedIn or Twitter content strategies while negotiating multimillion-dollar deals and steering the corporate ship.
Is it no wonder, then, that you are not doing your career justice?
You may think your career image is all set, having dabbled with your internal corporate bio, slapped together a barebones LinkedIn profile or quickly signed up for Instagram. After breezing through these initiatives, however, your presence is disconnected, inauthentic and bland.
Your Profile Is Lethargic
Only when your resume is unexpectedly requested do you become aware. As a result, you suddenly feel “resume naked.” In a moment of humility, you realize your resume clothing needs ironing out; more likely, it needs re-made, from a new pattern–a custom-suit, if you will.
Embarrassed by your skeletal, lethargic LinkedIn profile, you scramble to clothe it, only to discover inadequate know-how to create a seamless narrative.
Or, you freeze when you realize how disconnected you are with the social networking world at large. You frantically dig in to see what conversations, information and newsworthy stories you’ve missed.
How to Embrace a Multi-Phase Approach
It’s an overwhelming task. Catching up to current is not a one-two punch. You want it to be easy as you stage an exit from your currently untenable work situation. You hope to tap into one of the latest job search apps or SEO wizards. They promise to reach hundreds of decision-makers on your behalf without much work. This is just one of many false easy-button solutions that many executives place their hopes on.
There is no one-stop shop, single database of recruiters, magical career management company or executive search firm that will court companies on your behalf while you simply dole out the dollars and keep your head in the sand.
How to Ramp Up Your Personal Brand
At this point, I pragmatically encourage all executives to consider how to ramp up your personal brand, career management and executive search. It may be tempting to seek a one-size-fits all organization that will walk you from career discovery to job offer. However, I would not recommend doing this.
Instead, consider executive career management as a multi-phase process involving several specialists. Each specialist you hire will really dig in to do the hard yards, and will expect the same commitment from you. For example, you may be clear on your target job, so you will head straight to your career resume strategist with which to partner on portfolio building: executive resume, executive cover letter suite, LinkedIn profile, elevator pitch, executive summary and executive biography.
Tap Experts to Deep-Dive Into Each Career Management Area
Or, you may desire a career pivot but are unclear where you want to pivot. So, before hiring a career writing strategist, you reach out to a career coach who specializes in supporting executive transitions. This coach has the experience and intellectual tools to guide you to the next decision and path.
Following up on your work with both of the above experts, you may now want to connect with an executive job search strategist. They will help you leverage your newly shaped and focused messaging to market to employers and exec recruiters.
In my experience, tapping into the expertise of individual, boutique firms helmed by masterful, experienced professionals who pride themselves in going deep is the optimal solution to a successful and high-performing executive job search.
Take That First Step
Bottom line is that I encourage you to “just start;’take that first step. Begin working with someone to get traction.
Start simple. Follow some people on social media who may encourage, inspire and point you in the right direction. To help you get traction, follow a few of my favorites:
Executive + Performance Coaches
Donna Schilder, Executive Coach | Leadership Coach | MasterCertified Coach, Glacier Point Solutions. Her focus is CEOS, COOs, CFOs, CTOs, etc., Follow her LinkedIn and Twitter feeds, where she shoots straight to her target audience, with compassion and knowledge. Her #LeadToEnergize posts are particularly resonating.
Tripp Braden, Performance Coach + FinTech Top 25 Global Influencer, Strategic Performance Partners. He’s also an IBM Futurist and Sage Global Business Expert. His deep, rich strategic leadership insights fuel his blogs and articles. His LinkedIn and Twitter streams are a must-watch.
Joe Jacobi, Olympic Gold Medalist + Owner, 5 With Joe Performance Coaching. Follow his LinkedIn and Twitter feeds for personalized stories of his work-life as experienced in La Seu d’Urgell, Catalunya, Spain. His in-the-moment, small-steps clarity and passion for work-life balance and exceptional performance add extensive value, daily.
Executive Recruiters + Talent Strategists
Dorothy Dalton, International Talent Management Strategist, Executive Search + Research and Career Transition Coach, DDTM + 3Plus International. Follow her LinkedIn and Twitter streams for a diversity of conversations around all things career, job search, networking and more. She is a go-getter recruitment strategist and coach as well as multi-preneur.
Shelly Goldman, National Sales + IT Executive Recruiter | Talent Acquisition Consultant, Goldman Group Advantage. Follow her LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, where she shares a blend of posts related to recruiting, career inspiration, job search, salary conversations and much more.
Executive Business Leaders | Communication Strategists
Pete Primeau, President, Primeau Furniture Sales. Follow his LinkedIn or Twitter feeds for a regular jolt of inspiration. He also presses you to do and be better through focus and commitment to your goals.
Klara J. Farkas, Chief Communications Officer, Klarity International. Follow her LinkedIn feed for consistent quality posts around the topics of leadership communication, personal branding and more. She knows that your success, and failure, both, are rooted in communication.
Jon Mertz, CEO, Activate World and Author, Activate Leadership. Follow his LinkedIn and Twitter feeds for robust content around a variety of career, leadership and business leader activism topics. He brings his personally developed insights from a unique perspective: early political experience blended with years of business experiences. He is able to understand current events + trends and how this applies to business leaders, which is fleshed out in many of his posts.
Jackie Yun, Integral Coach ®, Friend + Retired Executive. Follow her Twitter feed for energy and hope and all things leadership, career direction and life. Her big-island aloha attitude is enriched by intelligent and engaging discourse and content.
LinkedIn + Personal Branding Strategists
Kevin Turner, Brand Strategist + Managing Partner, TNT Brand Strategist, LLC. Follow his LinkedIn stream. He’s smart and passionate about brand strategy (personal and organizational) and quite engaging.
Andy Foote, Advanced LinkedIn Strategies Coach, LINKEDINSIGHTS.com. Follow his LinkedIn and Twitter feeds for a deep-dive into LinkedIn. He’s the LinkedIn expert of experts.
#MySummitFriends
Marianna Paulson, Stress Educator/Coach, Speaker and Writer. Follow her Twitter feed where she helps you undress the stress, personalizing her stories with her own journey. Her genuine interest is in helping individuals navigate challenges that are painful and possibly life-changing, but not impossible to overcome.
Dorlee Michaeli, Psychotherapist, Blogger, Consultant and Owner, SocialWork.Career. Follow her Twitter feed where you will find her consistently and regularly sharing content from her own meaty blog as well as generously sharing that of others. She reliably compiles and shares a monthly list of Free Webinars for Social Workers and Therapists.
New to Me But Whose Content Adds Rich Value
Wayne Yoshida, Technical Writer, Magazine Columnist, LinkedIn Writer, beBee Ambassador. Follow his LinkedIn feed. I’ve only recently met Wayne but am thoroughly impressed. He is value-driven and engaged–and, smart. He’s already had an influence on my 2019 blog marketing initiatives.
Career Blog Posts + Podcasts
Additionally, I recommend the imbibing in two recent blog posts that identify top career and job search resources and content. In each article, you will find links to a plethora of resume writers and career and job search coaches whom I admire:
Hannah Morgan’s post, “31 Tips for Your 2019 Job Search (from the pros)”
Jacob Share’s post, “Top Job Search Articles of 2018″
For inspiring meaty podcast material, I recommend listening to these three podcasts:
Mark Anthony Dyson’s, The Voice of Job Seekers, Mac Prichard’s, Mac’s List and Whitney Johnson’s, Disrupt Yourself.
Moreover, a group of five certified professional resume writers, who’ve amassed well over 100 years of business and executive resume writing and career coaching experience can be found blogging and sharing career-edifying videos here:
Certified Professional Resume Writers blog featuring content from Rosa Vargas, Dawn Bugni, August Cohen, Kris Plantrich and me.
To Begin Your Storied Journey
And, when you are ready to partner with a certified master resume writer for your storied portfolio (executive resume, executive biography, LinkedIn narrative, etc., as described earlier), click here, or simply email me at jacqui@careertrend.net. I’ll be delighted to learn more about your goals and how my experience may help you achieve your career vision.
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Images Credit: Unsplash.com
Excellent food for thought in the New Year. Thank you for the advice and suggestions and especially all the experts to follow. I was a bit shocked – and pleased – to see my name mentioned in your great post. I am looking forward to seeing more career management hints and advice Jacqui!
Thank you, Jacqui, for outstanding advice. I’m very interested in how CEO’s communicate their vision for the enterprise. Starting with the executive brand makes a lot of sense. I look forward to sharing your words with many of my colleagues.
Hello Bob,
It is my great pleasure to share content, and even more so, when the content I write helps connect me with new and likeminded corporate communications experts as yourself. I am honored by your kind remarks and invitation to connect on LinkedIn.
And, your remark about ‘starting with the executive brand’ as a part of how CEOs communicate their enterprise-wide vision is resonating. Thank you very much for that!
Good afternoon, Wayne,
Thank you so much for taking a few moments to comment here at the blog itself. As I mentioned on LinkedIn, I went with my instincts, and while we only recently met, it made natural sense to include you in this resource list.
I admire your exceptional style of engagement + community-building and the immense value of your content!
Looking forward to a mellifluous New Year, reading and sharing your good words!
Jacqui
Thank you for another valuable post for careerists, Jacqui.
I love your advice to “Follow some people on social media who may encourage, inspire and point you in the right direction,” as well as all the experts whom you recommended we follow and learn from. I’ve been blessed to learn so much from you and many of the people on your list!
Also, thank you so much for your kind shoutout!
Warmly,
Dorlee
It was my pleasure to recommend careerists follow your wisdom, Dorlee. I’ve learned so much from you over the years; your deep, rich perspective on a variety of topics is laced with humanity and pragmatism.
“Only when your resume is unexpectedly requested do you become aware.”
So true, it’s a classic wake-up call. And then people scramble because they weren’t ready but they think it’s better to react quickly as if they were ready. As a result, they send out a CV that’s far from optimized and all too often, it underwhelms and the result is the same as if they hadn’t reacted in the first place.
Thanks for the inclusion, Jacqui 👏
Yes, a ‘classic wake-up call’ (so well put), that I only wish we could eliminate the need for, Jacob. And how you described the effects of scrambling is worthy of quoting in a future article.
It was my great pleasure including you, Jacob. You’ve always been a prolific careers blogger at https://jobmob.co.il/blog, and a generous supporter of your colleagues. I’m pleased to be able to ‘give back,’ in any small way I can.
Jacqui, thank you for your kind words about my LinkedIn posts and “Lead to Energize” campaign on LinkedIn and Twitter, and for listing me on this illustrious list! I am honored.
And, you are so very skilled at providing the emperor with “new clothes”, i.e., a well crafted executive resume, executive biography, LinkedIn narrative, and executive cover letter. Executives would do well to engage you.
In addition, this Post, and the resources recommended in it are an excellent resource for Executives (CEOs, COOs, CFOs CTOs, CIOs) to support them in managing their Executive Image and Personal Brand. There are many moving parts to one’s personal marketing collateral these days (too much for one to manage alone)!
I would add, that Executives need to manage their personal presentation of themselves (while interviewing and in their day-to-day), which are additional aspects of their Executive Presence, including their interviewing skills, their verbal introduction of themselves for meetings and presentations (verbal bio), how they talk about their successes, poise, physical presence, how they enter a room, their voice tone, their word choice, the stories they tell, presentations skills, meeting facilitation skills, how they dress, how they present the company vision.
And, underneath that, their vision of personal success, their mindset, their belief in themselves, and their patterns of thinking.
Their personal presence, and what is underneath it, are great areas to work on in Executive Coaching.
Hi Donna,
I AGREE that there are many moving parts in a C-level exec’s personal marketing portfolio.
As well, your extending the conversation not only to interviewing but also to an executive’s day-to-day personal presentation is so important. Indeed, these are additional aspects of their executive presence–love the example of the ‘verbal bio’ for meetings + presentations.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with an executive client of mine, an expat from Texas working in Saudi Arabia, who remarked that I was more than a resume strategist, that I was his Executive Image Consultant supporting his conversations in a multiplicity of venues.
Donna, I know you do the same. Thank you so much for taking time to parse through the thought processes alongside what we both do. Your expanding on the ‘how they talk about their successes, poise, how they enter a room, voice tone,’ and much more was spot on.
And, the underneath part about ‘vision of personal success.’ <= yes yes.
I feel we have another blog post brewing through this conversation.
Deep thanks for your thoughtful comment!
~Jacqui
Dear Jacqui,
This post serves as an ideal navigation tool to help careerists prepare for varying conditions along their professional journey. Regardless which way the winds blow, your words serve as a safe harbour from which to get nourishment (learning), hire crew (make connections) and plot the next leg of the journey (reminder to strategize one’s career).
I have great admiration for your captivating, creative and effervescent style of writing that sets just the right tone!
Thank you for placing me in such fine company.
Your metaphors make my heart sing, Marianna! So creative and personalized.
I’m just so pleased to have a venue with which to share YOUR content with more people who will reap extensive value!
Warmly,
Jacqui