Tag Archives: Productivity

Hire My Husband

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Although Michael Stearns earned an MBA from Georgetown University in 2008, the recession’s dented his attempts to land a Bay Area marketing job.

To stand out from the crowd, he (and/or his wife) have turned to the online world – and put up the site, myhusbandneedsajob.com (Oct 2011 update: link appears to be broken.)

michael-stearns-job

Five Things I like about his site:

  • 1- Simple and easy to navigate

  • 2- Resume and contact info very visible

  • 3- Social media access to Mike via the business site, LinkedIn.com

  • 4- Interesting marketing angle with ‘my husband needs a job..’

  • 5- We see and hear him speak via a YouTube clip.

Mid-career changers can learn a lot from Mike’s use of the Internet to get noticed – and even if you are ‘computing challenged’, you could have a 5 page web site (or blog) online within a week or so by outsourcing the work to someone on elance.com.

This assumes that you are OK with elements of your personal and work life being online for ever more. Not everyone is.

What I’d also recommend in Mike’s situation:

  • Start tweeting about the ups and downs of the job search (he’s a marketer after all!)
  • Make a longer YouTube clip (max 2 mins) – 8 seconds is too short (IMHO)
  • Put out an online press release and offer to speak to the media about his goal anytime, anywhere.

He’s going to catch some flack from the jealous and the ignorant about his wife fronting the show (it’s already started, see the YouTube comments) – but as a good marketer, I imagine he’ll be able to sell the power of getting noticed first, alongside the strong and loving marital story that’s embedded into the site (and the domain name.)

Remember, his first goal is to get noticed among gazillions of other job-searchers and this site can help do that. Once he’s got a potential employer’s attention, a well-written resume will have a chance of getting him the interview.

Good job, Marketer Mike!

- Mark McClure

PS – I emailed Mike today and offered to write him a 400 word press release pro bono. Hey, all successful writers are marketers first! If you’ve a small business (on or offline), weaving a newsworthy story into an element of your company’s vision, purpose or service can reap dividends.

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If At First You Mess Up… Fess up!

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Well, first let’s get my apology out of the way.

If you came here looking for two posts with ‘article writing and ‘samurai writer’ in their respective titles, then sorry, but I’ve deleted them. If you want to read them in their rightful place- go visit my Samurai Writer’s blog. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Mess #1

By mistake, I posted them late last night to this blog and to my new ghostwriting & copywriting blog – as it turns out, an unintended test of whatever duplicate content policies the big ‘G’ search engine might be enforcing haha!

Mess #2

Remember the mid-life moving overseas report I wrote about on Friday? Continue reading →

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LinkedIn Locked and Loaded

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Linkedin-mark-mcclure

I wrote last month about plans to update my LinkedIn profile.

I just spent a couple of hours doing that – following the guidelines laid down by Krishna De.

In addition to a contact-focussed ‘summary’ section, I’ve also added connection request guidelines, my blog’s feed and some Amazon book recommendations – 2 new ‘widget’ apps released by the LinkedIn team.
All seems to be working.

As things currently stand I don’t have a single, specific brand I want to stamp around the virtual world – my emphasis is on mid-career transition.

(Actually, it’s a form of ‘slash’ (/) mid-career transition, made up of coaching / writing / consulting / teaching. If you’re curious, Marci Alboher has a book – One Person / Multiple Careers – which I haven’t yet read but looks very similar to what I am about. BTW, Marci’s describing her current roles as journalist /author/ speaker. I think she was a lawyer before that.)

Since some of my target mid-career coaching prospects are within the LinkedIn universe – and possibly also future ghostwriting and copywriting clients – I consider it worthwhile to display multiple hats there.

Next task is to get some peeps who knew me to write up glowing recommendations, and I’m all set.

- Mark McClure

PS – How the mind works always amazes me. Look at the top of the image in this blog post. Notice anything naughty? ;-) Funny, how I made a Dec 9th blog post titled “Losing My LinkedIn Virginity” and then, almost a month later, I accidentally craft something a tad embarassing on my LI profile ;-) Don’t worry, I’ve fixed the actual Summary text in the real LI profile!!

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(Career) Management Tips And The 1-3-6 Exercise

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I recently discovered the “management wisdom” work of Nick McCormick and am looking forward to reading his book, “Lead Well and Prosper”.

In the meantime I checked out Nick’s interesting 6 minute management tips podcast with Dan Coughlin, intriguingly titled “The 1-3-6-Exercise“.

And although the focus of Nick’s site is on management, after listening I was struck by how relevant this 1-3-6 exercise is to almost any personal or career growth plan.

The kicker to Dan’s exercise is that the “6″ component took me beyond the (often valid) “let’s roll” approach to goal setting and action taking. Much as I love to do that (and encourage my coaching clients in similar endeavours) we remain mortal and timebound creatures of creativity and habit ;-)

I’m going to apply this exercise in a specific business category of my life over at least the next month – and I’ll write a future post on what happens. I also encourage you to test it out and let me know how you get on.

(And I will definitely be adding this one to my coaching toolkit – kudos to Dan, and to Nick for bringing it to my attention).

- Mark McClure

PS – For those who prefer the written word check out an article on “The 1-3-6 Exercise” linked from management consultant Dan Coughlin’s site (see “Use the 1-3-6 Exercise, Association of Home-Based Women Entrepreneurs”)

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Personal Productivity By Doing One Thing At a Time

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Occasionally my coaching clients have a problem with staying on task.

Oh, they have goals, plans and even the best of intentions but alas, there’s always some crazy, unexpected interruption that derails their progress.

And, naturally enough, they want me to help.

(Well, if truth be told, I too have similar problems from time to time – and that’s where having my own coach adds value.)

There are 3 general approaches I recommend clients to work with in such cases:

Continue reading →

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