This is an email I received from one of our members today and I wanted to share the response as it applies to so many people today. Many people who looked forward to a secure retirement have had to come up with alternatives because of the credit crunch and other things that have affected their pensions.

Dear Martin,
The package looks wonderful but, at 66, I believe I am too old to be
looking for a career. For various reasons, some my own fault, I have no
savings and only reduced pension and benefits for income. My main
priority, therefore, is to find any work that will produce a liveable
income and, maybe, some savings.

My work experience is pretty impressive but, after 15 months of
trying, I am coming to the conclusion that I have no future. If you saw
my full c.v, you would find this as terrible as I do!

Any feedback will be received gratefully.

Thanks,
Mike.

I’m not going to kid you, the truth is that traditional CV based recruitment has the odds stacked against you at 66. And yet at 66 you would still be among the youngest Presidents or Prime Ministers in history. From what you say you have a wealth of experience and an impressive CV. You can really make this work for you if you use the techniques described in “Land your Dream Job”.

From the course you will discover that establishing yourself as a specialist is paramount to your success. When you have as much experience as you have Mike, then this isn’t difficult.

The other critical factor is to be very clear about what problem you are fixing and for whom. I suspect you may be making the same mistake that every job seeker makes (CV based recruitment forces you into it), you are focusing on solving your problem (I need a job) and not on the employers problem (Sales are down, Quality is poor, staff turnover is too high, costs are to high, etc).

I would advise against retraining in general. Your lack of skills is unlikely to be preventing you from solving some significant problems that your sector is experiencing. If you are going to learn anything new then get brilliant at using linkedIn.com Get brilliant a using Social Media.

I hire developers from all over the world to help me with the vast array of development projects we are working on. I usually look for specialists. I have no idea how old any of them are, nor do I care. I never look at their CVs. I look at what they have presented about themselves online and from that, establish if they are equiped to solve my specific problem. I recently started working with a man of 56 as he is expert in his very narrow specialist field. I only know his age because he mentioned. I didn’t care.

You can start worrying when the world has no more problems left to fix. But given the state of things today, there have never been more problems. Until that time comes somebody somewhere is really needing your help. You owe it to them to put yourself in a place that they can find you. You need to “redecorate” yourself so that they recognise you when they find you and that you look like a solution to their problem.

Mike, I am so confident that the course will help you, that I would like to give you “Land Your Dream Job ” course for free. All I ask is that you share your experience with me and my audience. Perhaps your experience will inspire others and give them a bit of hope and advice.

Created to help you win more job interviews with a CV that truly stands out – and tips on how not to blow your interview when you get it – this free personality report gives you a peek into what an employer will be reading about you if they ask you to take a psychometric test.

And there is an increasing chance you will be asked to take a psychometric test – with a reported 60% of employers reportedly using personality measures for pre-screening. (PeopleMaps delivers personality reports to hundreds of employers – so we already know this to be the truth.)

Ten questions, five minutes and you’ll be presented with a report designed to give you more than just personality information. This report will give you an edge over other jobseekers.

You get access to not one, but two topics designed for employers to get to know you better. Use them to get a head start, and be fully prepared for those interview questions.

We’ve also included an extract from a video interview with Anne Ellis, PeopleMaps’ Director of Psychology to help you understand how personality profiling works.

- free personality test – instant report
- 10 questions – five minutes
- no credit card required – no obligation
Start Now!

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.

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.

The Guardian reports:

“Schools, universities and businesses should prepare young people for an era where CVs may well be obsolete, enabling them to manage their online reputation,” says the report.

Erm, is that time not already here?

And we’re not the only ones who think it. The CV is dying – but there IS another way. Martin wrote recently about how Seth Godin is using social media for his recruitment drives, and my last post talked about the importance of creating a professional online profile for yourself.

This morning the one and only Dave McClure tells it like it really is on his Master of 500 Hats blog. Before you do anything else this morning, read this post and find out what 4 things you need to land your Dream Job.

This is one of the best posts I’ve come across on this subject; Dave actually tells you what to do. He refers to himself as somewhat ‘lunatic’, and his style may not be yours – but it doesn’t have to be. Follow his advice and use the same principles whilst applying your personality – become a rock star in your own field, in your own way.

(And then go visit the Dream Job news page to find out about the contents of the PeopleMaps Land Your Dream Job Course – A Step-By-Step Programme to Finding Your Ideal Job : using your personality type and social media tools: Coming Soon!)

Happy Monday )

With my morning coffee, I was browsing Flickr for some images I can use in a presentation, when I came across a few fun and relevant photos, so I duly followed the link trail to find some fab t-shirt products you need to know about.

I’ve been encouraging jobseekers to get creative with their jobsearch for some time now, and have been especially impressed with the alternatives that social media platforms offer to the traditional CV/resume.

And what better form of social networking than this alternative use of your CV/resume by Blackbird Tees (tagline – put yourself out there).

It’s not going to fit for everyone, of course, but I’m thinking if I was attending a job fair or a conference and was looking for work, then I’d certainly put my prime real estate to work.

Thanks to SOCIALisBETTER for the pics.

The world is changing and changing fast. The Internet is here and upsetting everything that used to be sacred, including the CV.

The CV used to be treated like some sacred text, where candidates would spend hours refining it and employers would read over it judiciously.

But then people started telling fibs in their CVs (or at least employers started noticing that people were telling fibs. It is possible that they always told fibs and nobody noticed till recently) and employers started losing faith in CVs and they have become a little less sacred. Then the Internet started doing its thing and the CV is looking very outdated.

Social media has arrived and not only do candidates use it but employers do too. Employers are increasingly checking out your Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts. Don`t be surprised if an employer asks to be added to your friends list on Facebook, so that they can check you out. They are also using personality profiling to get a feel of who you are. Employers are still using CVs but they are not the only things they use.

Is the CV dying? Not quite yet but there are lots more tools in the box these days and employers are using them. Make sure you are too.