What NOT to Do On Your Facebook (& Twitter) Page

I am friends with lots of careers industry folks on Facebook. Some of them (Barbara Safani, Jason Alba, Dawn Bugni, Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, etc.) do a fabulous job with their online brand.

Others, not so much. The screen shot on the left is from MJW Careers. I'm not sure who the resume writer behind this page is, but I do know that they write resumes for $50.

I am amazed they have 308 friends, since the majority of their posts are ... for lack of a better term ... spam.

For the past week or so, once or twice a day, they blast 3-4 posts on Twitter (that are automatically reposted on their Facebook page) about their cheap resume writing services. If you go back through the history, though, you find that they also apparently provide recruiting services. It actually was more interesting when they were posting "people needed" status updates for various *specific* positions versus the basic, blanket posts.

Some keys for resume writers to keep in mind with Facebook:

1) Remember the 80/20 ratio. Eighty percent of your posts should be content (resources, opinions, encouragement, links to good articles) etc. Only 20% should be promotional. And don't just rely on Twitter to update your status. Because of the way it's tagged, we can tell when it's a Twitter repost. Give us something original on Facebook every once in a while.

2) Think about your brand. For most resume writers, it's a good idea to set up a Facebook page for your resume writing business. While you can use your personal page to promote resume-related items, you're better off getting "Fans" (or "Likes") for your business page than to add friends to your personal page. You can then drive traffic to your business page by linking to items on your personal page.

3) Don't forget to have a personality. If you link to an article, provide some brief commentary. I always like hearing about resume writers whose clients are having success. But remember that -- like we advise clients -- anything you post online is totally public (even if you have your Facebook privacy settings locked down, there's nothing to prevent one of your "friends" from taking a screen shot of it.)

Seth Godin Says Folks Shouldn't Write Their Own Resumes

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog

While he doesn't suggest having your resume written by a professional, he does suggest job seekers don't write it themselves. See his post (dated 10/2/10) here.

Career Management Alliance Offers Discounted SelectRecruiters Subscription

Careers industry professionals who are members of the Career Management Alliance can receive a significant discount on a subscription to SelectRecruiters, a searchable database of professional recruiters.

About Career Management Alliance
Founded in 1999, Career Management Alliance is trusted as the world's leading professional association dedicated to linking all divisions within the careers industry. A distinctive community that values the strength of diverse knowledge, the Alliance attracts members from assorted career backgrounds, such as resume writing, career coaching, career counseling, college and university career development, government and military career transition, outplacement, recruiting, and HR.

About SelectRecruiters
SelectRecruiters gives you a powerful tool in your arsenal of professional services — an up-to-the-minute way to connect all of your clients with:

• A comprehensive database of thousands of recruiter profiles that allows you to help your clients quickly identify the recruiters best suited to help meet their career objectives. You can search by geography, industry, function, fee structure, and pay range.
• Tools they will need to create a custom email campaign, allowing your clients to interface with a broad scope of recruiters, instantly — without the added cost of postage.
• Exclusive access to recruiting firms' physical addresses, making it easy to create custom direct (snail) mail campaigns — including mailing label templates and a spreadsheet for creating the merge!

Regularly priced at $649 per year, Standard CMA Members pay only $399 for a one-year subscription to SelectRecruiters — and Professional CMA Members pay only $225. That's a maximum savings of $424.

To join Career Management Alliance and take advantage of this exclusive offer, please contact CMA Executive Director, Liz Sumner, directly at 603.924.0900, ext. 640 or via email at liz@careermanagementalliance.com.

Resume Partnerships: All-Day Coverage

I'm working on a new special report (tentatively titled: "Developing Subcontracting and Referral Relationships") and was reminded of a cool concept I first heard about a few years ago:

A few years ago, I was at a resume writing conference with a pair of resume writers who lived on opposite ends of the U.S. They operated a joint website and shared projects so they could answer the phones from 7 a.m. Eastern time to 7 p.m. Pacific time (which was really 10 p.m. Eastern). The one on the East Coast worked from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern time and the one on the West Coast worked from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Pacific.


These two writers would have been competitors if they lived in the same town, but by working together, they served more clients and offered more responsive service than a solopreneur could.


I think that's a neat idea.

What's even cooler would be using a service like Grasshopper with it -- so you could seamlessly transfer calls to whichever resume writer was on duty. (Grasshopper was recommended to me by a client and I signed up as an affiliate because I think it's a great way for resume writers to manage incoming calls and information.)