What do employment trends mean for me?

The average length of time a person stays in a job in every sector of private business has decreased in the past few decades. The average American will have had 10 jobs between the ages of 18 and 38.

Gone is the day where individuals can rely on a single firm for a lifetime of employment and a comfortable retirement. Individuals who invest in their personal brand are better suited to cope with this new job market.

How can my personal brand help insulate me from these trends?

Having a strong online presence, demonstrates your value to your colleagues, employers, and “efficiency” consultants. The great part is that you don’t have to change anything about yourself or how you work- it’s just a matter of digitally broadcasting your accomplishments and value to others. This is a great insulation from layoffs, even if your particular project gets canceled.

Companies realize that people are a valuable asset- they just don’t always know which people. Make yourself known.

About 90% of firms already perform background checks on potential employees. According to research by technology writer Mike Elgan, “somewhere between 10 percent to 50 percent of the records on any given person contains errors.” These records can make or break job decisions.

Provide your accurate, professional information online through your online presence to give yourself both visibility and credibility. This will allow hiring managers to bypass incorrect, irrelevant, or negative information and get information right from the source.

Micronation is about helping professionals take advantage of all the tools currently offered online to truly differentiate yourself in your industry. No matter what your level of internet experience, you can have a powerful voice on the internet. Will you use it?

Why you need to proactively monitor your online brand.

The job application process has changed with technology in ways we often fail to address. Before your in-person or phone interview comes a digital interview, and you may never know it.

Recruiters sift through online information about you found through search engines and online networks as a method to research and eliminate candidates.

We all have an online presence- a digital self. If there is irrelevant or negative information about you online, your online presence can be damaging. If there is little or no information about you online, your online presence will appear weak.

Time and again employers sift through the Internet using search engines. You’d be surprised by how devastating a poor online presence can be in applying for jobs- and how enabling a strong presence can be.

Chances are there’s something out there about you. Public search engines such as Google or Yahoo contain information compiled from phone books, property records, court documents, government databases, company documents, blogs, and a multitude of other sources.

This information may be irrelevant or worse, completely inaccurate. But it routinely sets off red flags during job interview background checks and can make or break your hire.

Nearly one in four U.S. adults search online for information about individuals they work with before they meet in person. Digital first impressions are extremely important and your online presence plays a consistent roll in the strength of your work relations.

Your clients or customers will want to know your professional history such as your certifications and former jobs. That information is vital in conveying your level of experience and professionalism, and should be front and center when someone searches your name.

Your colleagues and supervisors will look too. Suppose they want to see how they stack up to the competition within the office—how will they think you compare? Perhaps they want to get to know you better before approaching you in the break room—what do you have in common?

Or maybe they’re looking for some “digital dirt” out of curiosity or sheer boredom—are you confident that what they find won’t embarrass you or tarnish your image? Each reason for someone to run a search on your name is a reason to build and maintain a strong online presence.

Micronation is about more than eclipsing digital dirt. It’s not just about covering your back. Rather, your online identity is an asset that can actually gain value as more people begin to view you as a brand. You may not have that large of a story to tell, but there is something authentic you have to say about yourself.

Micronation helps professionals at all career stages take advantage of all the tools currently offered online to truly differentiate yourself in your industry. No matter what your level of internet experience, you can have a powerful voice on the internet. Will you use it?

Kevin Colvin, intern at Anglo Irish Bank’s North American arm, told his manager he had to miss work due to what colleagues took to be a “family emergency.”

Photos soon surfaced Facebook from a Halloween party Colvin apparently missed work to attend.

After the email thread busting him was circulated around the office, it surfaced on the internet.

Now Kevin Colvin serves as a grim reminder of how fragile an internet presence can be. Even years later, this story and the many comments and responses still dominate his search results.

The word Kokomo evokes images of ‘bodies in the sand’ and perhaps the ‘tropical drink melting in your hand.’ That’s what the Beach Boys sung about in their 1988 #1 hit. For a refresher:

Funny thing is that Kokomo is actually the 13^th largest city in Indiana- not a tropical destination. No sand and not too many of their drinks come with those nifty toothpick umbrellas.

This is where the almighty idea kicks in. Some clever Bahamian beach house renters created a website www.kokomo1.com and invested in the Kokomo keyword. People searching for Kokomo are either looking for the lyrics or the place.

If a searcher is looking for the place, she is definitely in the mood to hear about a tropical beach house but most likely hasn’t yet done much research.

In fact, because somebody searching for a nonexistent tropical Kokomo hasn’t performed the requisite research, kokomo1 is better able to reach receptive potential vacationers at an influential stage in their decision making process—active information gathering.

Connecting with potential customers in ways and places that competitors aren’t means reduced costs, less clutter, and a better chance to directly engage the customer.

It’s not about your budget; it’s about the ideas that make your budget work for you.

“Kokomo” is probably a cheaper keyword than “exotic beach house,” no?

What does a recessionary economy mean for the job market?

The headlines are clear: we have the highest initial jobless claims since September 2001 coupled with a continuing claims level not seen since 1983. This means people are not only losing jobs, but more importantly having a hard time finding new ones.

How are companies adapting to this economy?

Layoffs: Whether it’s called “corporate restructuring” or “re-engineering,” many companies are pursing layoffs as their first step. “For most employers there’s little cushion, because they already had very few employees for the work they were doing,” explains Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute.

“So, as the economy shrinks, we’re going to see large-scale cutbacks — not temporary lay-offs, but people permanently losing their jobs.” Wide scale job losses produces two major side effects: “highly trained workers will be laid-off and forced to accept jobs that require far less skill, or employ them for far fewer hours.”

Stricter Hiring Policies: Hiring practices are becoming increasingly stringent. In a 2004 survey of HR professionals, 61% said they “often” or “sometimes” find résumé inaccuracies when vetting prospective hires, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Executive candidates most frequently lie about reasons for leaving a previous post, results and accomplishments, and past job responsibilities.

A recent Wall Street Journal article warns that “the prevalence of résumé fraud may increase as the economy worsens.” As a result, hiring managers will increasingly be “on guard” to deal with these errors.

Career Distinction, the seminal personal branding book by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixon makes the case for investing in your personal brand. One story in particular stands out:

Perhaps your Google results don’t convey the image you want to share with the world. That was the case for Susan, a marketing executive who had been fired by the board of her company.

Her company posted the meeting minutes detailing her firing on the Web. When anyone performed a Google search using her name, the first item displayed was the summary of those meeting minutes.

She didn’t understand why she couldn’t get any job interviews- until an executive recruiter told her about her Google results. before that, she had no idea she had been “digitally dissed.”

The moral of the story? Google yourself regularly. To those who don’t know you personally, you are your Google results- no matter how inaccurate or unfair those results may be.

Within the industry, we have facts and figures on the prevalence and importance of personal branding using virtual environments. What we often lack, however, is the human element: a psychological, emotional, and social understanding of what our websites or profile pages on online networks truly mean.

The Book

Enter Dr. Sam Gosling, University of Texas professor, and author of Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You. Although Snoop primarily focuses on gleaning personality insights from physical locations such as cubicles, music collections, bookshelves, and dressing areas, Gosling also explores email monikers, personal websites and profile pages.The results of this inquiry confirm many deeply held assumptions and have important ramifications for Micronation and personal branding.

The Study

Gosling’s model divides an individual’s personality into five OCEAN traits including Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Study participants used this model to describe themselves both as they are (actual self-reports) and as they’d like to be (ideal self-reports).

Researchers then recruited judges who relied solely on a participant’s website to form impressions of the individual along the same OCEAN traits. The judges’ reports were compared to the individual’s actual and ideal self-reports to produce insights into how well our online presence truly represents us.

The Results

One of the major findings from the research indicates that “websites are extraordinarily good places to learn about people—perhaps the best of all places.” Website findings were “at least as accurate” as what was learned from the physical locations and accurate “across a much broader array of personality variables” with websites proving useful for learning about all five OCEAN traits.

Interestingly, the judges’ impressions “converged more strongly” with the individual’s actual self-reports than with their ideal self-reports- “suggesting once again that people want to be seen as they are, not as they’d like to be.” These findings are present “perhaps even more strongly” in network profile pages.

Further research on the accuracy of Facebook pages indicates that aside from extraversion levels, people typically have little understanding about the impressions their profiles convey. Gosling asks, “If you have no idea about how you are seen, how can you construct a phony self-portrait?”

Next, Gosling turned to usernames and email monikers. They can give us “clues” about how people see themselves, especially their “sense of competence.” Observers given only an email address and gender were “surprisingly accurate at judging the owner’s extraversion and, to a lesser extent, openness.”

The Implications

Gosling’s findings suggest that we are very much justified in our attempts to learn about our colleagues, clients and potential employees through digital resources. An online presence presents an “infinitely complex and fine grained portrait” of a person which may prove more accurate than we often assume. This online content provides insight that resumes and cover letters are simply unable to convey.

Given that many fail to proactively sculpt their online presence, our e is a unique opportunity to elicit more meaningful engagement in work relations, demonstrate higher perceived value through technology, and differentiate by broadcasting character insights.