KNOW THYSELF: PACKAGE THYSELF

My final comment for 2007 is that bioblogs make sense simply for no other reason than good packaging, an art that has been lost in tradtional resumes. When I first got into the resume designing and writing and editing and printing business back in the 70s, it was still a form of "packaging," mostly for VIPs and certainly management-level types. The choice of the typewriter was important (there were all IBM Executive typewriters with proportional spacing), and the paper was as well (parchment being the "bond-like" favorite). Cover letters, hand-signed in blue ink, were the outer layer of the packaging, introducing the "product" (the resume); a proper strategy called for matching envelopes and letterhead. The point was to impress first of all the decision maker's secretary so she would take the package seriously enough to forward it to her boss (rather than the trash can where the sloppy stuff went), and then to be sufficiently packaged—sophisticated, convincing, attractive, important—that the boss would want to know more. To achieve this you had to spend, to package with proof of your sincerity, implying your willingness to invest in reaching out to them and that a mutual reaching back to you would be a sensible financial transaction. It was, is, and will always be about money; thus, packaging. Whether you are selling perfume or your potential, you want to upscale your brand to make it look and smell like money, the opposite end of the spectrum from the job-obits known as chronological and functional resumes.

Packaging, with graphics, is the way to set yourself above the generic brands.

17 February 2008

CHARACTER QUESTIONS

What kind of person are you, character-wise? Do you know? What kind of job do you want? What kind of job will you settle for? How well do your character traits line up with that job or that company's culture? Do you know who you are and who you are becoming well enough to foresee how good a fit you will be with the company? What are you going to do to get their initial 2 seconds of attention? What is the bait you plan to use to make them notice you in their stack of stuff? What magic words in the English language are you going to employ to make your character more appealing, to stand out as a face in the crowd? What particular action verbs and keywords are in your personal arsenal to slay the beast of blandness? How can you write a job description or experience history or workplace chronology that pretends to tell even half the real story, the one that you know is (or was) played out in the dynamics of character interactions, with other workers at many levels? If you learn that a company is seeking a "resourceful coordinator" how do you demonstrate that you possess and exhibit those traits naturally--even though you've never had a chance to demonstrate, prove or document them in one of your (good or lousy) jobs due to the nature of the managers or organizational structure? How do you lead a stranger to interpolate your present and past experience into an accurate picture of who you will be a year from now? How do you bait the hook to get them to consider investing in you and your/their mutual future?

03 December 2007

COMMUNICATION ARTS & BIOBLOGS

This site offers many views of bioblogs in both black & white and color. Just click and you shall quickly see and understand the potential power of your own custom bioblog. For this reason, I am deleting the majority of the posts because the words are distracting. The graphic power of bioblogs is what bioblogs are all about.

MY WEB SITE

Global Biobloggers

Blog powered by TypePad
Member since 10/2006
AddThis Social Bookmark Button