Silicon Valley star Guy Kawasaki did not intend for his chapter “The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy” in Reality Check to be job seeker’s advice; yet the main theme is vital for any job seeker’s success. The chapter outlines 8 steps to drive your competition crazy aimed at helping entrepreneurs and corporations understand how to win at the art of business.The most valuable theme and step is “Focus on the customer.” Guy outlines the irony that entrepreneurs and businesses should not take action against the competition–don’t do anything to them but everything for the customer.

Theme: Make the Hiring Manager Happy

The idea and theme here is to ignore your competition and focus completely on a hiring manager’s happiness. Ignore the millions who are out of work and competing for the same jobs, ignore the pundits who continue to fuel the panic, ignore the negative naysayers who continue to bring your spirit down.

Instead think about what makes hiring managers happy? How about taking the task of reading resumes off their plate. What about saving them time, energy, and focus by removing the screening process that entails resumes and cover letters. Why not remove the gray areas and guess work for a hiring manager by delivering a better more revealing resource than a resume which is simply a job seeker’s listing of their value? How about removing the issue of back checking aka background checks to validate claims on a resume? Why not attempt to reduce their time wasted recruiting and looking for the right candidate for the job when you are available?

Most Hiring Managers Dislike:

• Deluge of resumes create huge time crunch
• Lost productivity in their own jobs due to resume review process
• Tasking other people from their jobs to help in the review of resumes
• Guess work involved in hoping they choose the right candidate
• Decisions about new hires ultimately reflect upon the hiring manager’s own judgment
• Lack of information or verifiable proof that job seeker can deliver their listed values in their resume

Make a Hiring Manager Happy:

• Craft your value message of expertise, accomplishments, and experience
• Establish your “employment campaign” blog that delivers your value message
• Research how you can provide value to targeted hiring managers then deliver your value message
• Write a keyword rich, descriptive, and opportunity message Linkedin profile
• Utilize Twitter to broadcast and deliver your value message
• Research your target companies for their participation in Web 2.0 blogging, social media networking, and engage them through these channel

Careerbuilder.com ran a survey (Sept ‘08) of 31,000 employers about their use of social media in screening and finding job applicants. The results include:

• More than 1 in 5 employers use social media sites to screen job applicants
• 22% of the 31,000 employers said they use social media to find human capital
• 9% more said they would begin utilizing social media sites in 2009
• 31% or nearly 10,000 employers will focus on social media as a recruiting and screening tool in 2009

The writing, pardon the pun, is on the wall. If you want to make a hiring manager happy, and help yourself, you will adopt all of the steps outlined above to help you–stand apart from the competition.

The Web 2.0 Revolution, blogging, and social media tools like Linkedin and Twitter allow all of us to become our own marketing machine, brand identity, and valuable resource. The following are 10 New Year’s Resolutions and steps any job seeker can take to begin to differentiate themselves and stand apart from the rest of their competition.

10 New Year’s Career Resolutions for Job Seekers

1. Direction: You can not begin a job search with passion and intention if you do not know what you truly want to do. Without direction there is no forward progress. Assessment testing, research, and networking can help bring clarity.

2. Declare Your Intentions: Let the world know that you are open to new opportunities and you are actively seeking new opportunities. One of the biggest mistakes we see people make in their job search is to not declare their availability for new opportunities.

3. Clarify Your Message: Simply put if you are looking for a position in engineering, then make the focus of your message in your linkedin profile, on your blog, or on any other social media site your abilities as an engineer. Do NOT make the mistake of listing a “consulting” job or a job in a completely different field because you fear a gap in employment. Nothing hurts your ability to find new opportunities than the wrong message.

4. The Job of Finding a Job: Take the job of finding a job as serious as a job. Structure your day at home like a work day in an office setting. Create a routine, schedule and instill discipline in your day. Listing and creating structure provides a job seeker with the frame work to move forward. Without this structure, days float into weeks which can turn into months without results.

5. Research: You can’t find what you don’t understand. In order to find the job you desire it is necessary to research your industry of interest, the job market, the companies, and the hiring managers involved in your search. Compiling lists through your research becomes the “intelligence” that moves employment efforts forward; without research your efforts will stall.

6. Obsolete Methodology: Resumes are not a strategy or proactive method of finding a job. Resumes are simply a listing of your accomplishments meant as a “calling card” snapshot of your value to the potential employer. If you simply rely upon sending resumes, your efforts in finding a job will be nearly impossible in today’s job market.

7. Linkedin Profiles: Linkedin is the most important tool for job seekers today-yet very few truly understand how to utilize Linkedin. Your profile on linkedin is MORE IMPORTANT than your resume. It should be written so that anyone can understand you are open for new opportunities, you have value to give, and you have current skill sets that bring value. Updating your Linkedin profile must be a manditory once per week activity.

8. Blogging: Blogging is the most powerful marketing tool, broadcasting tool, and branding tool a job seeker can utilize. A blog is the centerpiece of any employment campaign designed to deliver your message of value to strategically targeted hiring managers, companies, and industry associations.

9. Understand the New Trend: Due to Web 2.0 social media tools now is the most amazing time in human history for communication, connectivity, networking, collaboration, and branding “you.” Tools such as Linkedin.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, and blogs support a global conversation. We now have the ability, as individuals, to create our message of value and deliver it to a global, national. local, or niche level. The mass media no longer controls the flow of information. We all have a chance to brand and deliver our message; simply put, this is the biggest development in job search in the last 50+ years. The tipping point for change is not far away.

10. First Adopter Rule: Is what you are doing now in trying to find a job working? If it is not then consider adopting social media tools, blogging, and employment campaigning as your new strategy in finding the right job for you.

A reduction in your income may impact many things, including how you perceive yourself, whether you are conscious of it or not. If you have prided yourself on financial success, your ability to feel good about yourself may be impacted as you battle a tough economy.

How to manage this challenge:

1. Remember that a successful life is not all about the money. Look for other non-monetary ways to define success.

• Are you helping people?

• Are you growing as an individual?

• What are you contributing to your community or to the world that does not involve money?

2. Look back on your life to periods when you weren’t making as much money as you are now. Believe that you have the capability to increase your income level once again.

• Is this an opportunity to start something new that could lead you to a better place?

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