With the launch of the PeopleMaps Dream Job sequence of personality reports and home study course, we’re always on the look out for more ideas about how you can use the Internet to help you land your dream job. And since it’s Monday and you might be feeling a bit anxious about being back in the office after the weekend, I thought now would be a perfect time to share one new idea with you.

SquidWho People Search

Last week one of my Twitter friends Stephen Smith sent me a link to SquidWho. I know what you’re thinking – who is SquidWho? What is SquidWho? And why do you need to know about it? Me too. So, I asked Stephen for a wee bit more info and did some research of my own.

SquidWho has been built by those smart folks over at Squidoo. No surprises there then, with that name. It’s so new it’s not even in real Beta testing yet!

At it’s most basic, it is a people directory – SquidWho calls itself a “people-built who’s who”. Type in the name of someone famous into the home page, and you’ll be taken to a Fan Page all about that person. The Fan pages are built by Squidoo Lensmasters – people with a passion about their subject. In actual fact, SquidWho is just another way into the huge Squidoo database of Lenses about people.

How can it help you as a jobseeker? Well, you can build a SquidWho page all about yourself. Become your own Fan. And make yourself as interesting as you like. You can increase your online profile and make yourself more visible to employers and other influential people in your dream job field.

Stephen Smith is a productivity consultant. He is leveraging social media tools to expand his network and increase his client base. Stephen built his own page on Squidwho – and shared it with me last week. After reviewing it (and rating it, and leaving a comment) here are my two major observations:

  • Activity-based networks like Twitter and Facebook and blog sites are great places to engage on a broad range of subjects. However, because they effectively represent snippets in time, over a long period of time, in many layers, it takes a while to get a full picture of someone. Stephen’s SquidWho page told me more about him in ten minutes than I’d garnered in months of following each other’s Tweets.
  • Unlike Stephen’s LinkedIn profile, which is fairly static and concentrates on work history, Stephen’s SquidWho page is alive and allows me to understand what he’s about now, with links to a range of information including his recomended reading choices, his standard resume PDF, his most popular blog posts and a Flickr photo set.

I’m thinking that SquidWho is definitely a place you want to be to increase your online presence – and give your contacts a lively and interesting place to learn the important things about you that you want to share.

It’s a great place for you to host your ‘online resume/CV’ – particularly if you’re looking to change careers and your work history is not so relevant to potential future employers, or indeed if you are new to the workplace and have no work history. I know I will be creating my own page – just as soon as I can. It’ll be a lot of work, but one of the best things about Squidoo Lenses, and SquidWho pages is you can keep visiting and updating them all the time – and in fact, you should – to increase your ranking and give yourself the highest chance of being found if someone else searches for you and or your keywords.

The one thing I will recommend to Stephen – and to you – is to include a snippet from your personality profile information on your SquidWho page. Adding in an objective personality statement from a professional provider about you, and how you interact with others in a work environment will add instant credibility.

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