JobJenny: Yes, especially since I launched JobJenny.  I guess I didn’t really realize that I was going to be creating pretty much a separate second company.

JobJenny: Another challenge, I find, is there’s so much to learn and to know that you could literally sit and research and study all day every day.  So my challenge is finding the balance between running a recruiting agency, running JobJenny, and researching social media topics and other things like that.  And – well, really trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing.  (she laughs.)

JobJenny: You know, it’s going very well.  Truly, I had no idea what to expect when I launched it back in April (2010).  One of the main reasons I launched it in the first place was, as a recruiter, I get calls with frequency from job seekers who are frustrated in their job search, they’re scared, and they want help.  As a recruiter I really only work in a couple of very focused market sectors.  So say someone calls me from an industry that’s completely outside of where my clients are.  You know, as a human being, I want to spend as much time as possible on the phone with them, helping them out, but as a business person, I can’t.  Because I could sit on the phone all day giving out advice but I would never close any recruiting deals.  So I thought, “there has got to be a way that I can help people on a regular basis without it taking up a whole day of phone time.”  And that was really one of the big reasons I started it – so I could kind of give people some ideas and hope that I can’t dish out on an individualized basis.

JobJenny: Well, the umbrella of what I think is so important is that I think people should have a much more active approach to their job search today.  Whether that is a personal blog that you can use as kind of a central point of your job search or being much more involved in social media – be it Facebook or Twitter or absolutely LinkedIn.

What I have found – especially if it is someone who hasn’t been in the job market for 5 or 10 years and suddenly they get laid off – their very first instinct (other than to panic) is to go back to the search methods they used 5 or 10 years ago with their last job.  And they sit and look at jobs on Monstor.com or sit and go to every website you can think of and search for jobs and blindly start applying to things.  Well, it doesn’t work in a lot of instances anymore or it takes a lot longer than you are comfortable waiting for a job.  The more proactive and creative a jobseeker can be today, the more they are going to stand out.  And that’s the name of the game today: you have to be the stand out among the hundreds of other people competing with for a relative few number of jobs.

Now I will go back to the whole topic of “personal website.”  A few reasons why that’s important really…

One reason, obviously, is that it’s a centralized place where you can showcase your resume, your skills, and accomplishments.  But also if you blog about your industry and your expertise within your market sector, clearly you are showing a potential employer when they Google you (and they all Google you) or you invite them into your personal website, you are not just saying, “Oh I love information technology and coding!”  You are actually writing articles about the skills or maybe you’re going to conventions or meetings about your industry.  You are clearly demonstrating that this isn’t just BS.  This is clearly what you do and what you’re good at and what’s important to you and that’s what helps make you a “stand out.”

Plus I think it gives people an opportunity to get to know you a little better beyond the resume pieces of paper.  You can put appropriate photos up there.  You can share some appropriate anecdotes that you’re not going to squeeze into a resume.  But it actually allows you to brand yourself.  Assuming that brand is great and beneficial and worth while through the eyes of the employer, it certainly could be your key to getting the job offer over the other 350 people applying for the same job.

JobJenny: If you haven’t need to search for a job in a handful of years, it is certainly understandable.  Even as short as 3 or 4 years ago, that actually worked.  It may take a few months but sooner or later it would have worked.  But since the economy tanked the last few years,  it’s a whole different ball game job search today.  It’s no surprise that someone who has been in a position for 5 years and gets laid off and suddenly they’re out looking – their first instinct is going to be “go back to the methods I first used.”  But the problem is again that they get so darn frustrated – especially when emotions are hot, you’re worried about your finances – it’s a very high pressure time in a person’s life.  Especially if they’re out there searching because they have to be, not because they want to be.

It can be very difficult to kind of screw your head back on and seek through the most effective plan.  That’s what Job Jenny is kind of about.  I want people to come in.  I want to cheer them up a bit.  Help them calm down.  And then send them off with some tools that will actually help them with the year 2010 job search.

JobJenny: The very most obvious is: recruiters use it all day long today! Me, as a recruiter, I go in and do keyword searches to find talent and profiles right there on LinkedIn.  Last year in 2009, my 3 top closing deals – and these are $200K+ positions – all three were people who I found on LinkedIn.  And these people were not necessarily job seekers but it is all the more important for people who are job seekers………..

JobJenny: We launched this about three months ago kind of as a trial because as a recruiter, I’m asked with frequency to help people with their resumes.  And again, I’m happy to do it.  There are a couple reasons that make it easy for me to provide this service.

One – Because I am a recruiter, I look at resumes all day long, every day, and present resumes to my clients.  So, I have direct feedback on an ongoing basis about what works well for a resume and what doesn’t work.

Two – I was a journalist for a few years after I graduated from college so I have the professional writing background and the recruiting background.  So it’s kind of a great combination for me to be able to offer a resume writing service.

Three – The third thing I noticed is that some of the professional resume writing services out there are extremely expensive.   They come with a lot of bells and whistles, and extras, and processes that are, you know – trademarked or whatever.  I actually think it’s a little over-kill in some cases.

Also, for those job seekers who are scared that they’re going to run out of money before they find a new job – they can’t spend $800 or $900 easily on a professional resume.  But I do firmly believe that a well done professional resume can carve weeks, if not months, out of a job search.  This is because most hiring managers spend about 10 to 20 seconds looking at your resume.  If you have a strong front end there – which is your resume, your marketing document – you win in those 10 to 20 seconds.  If you have something that looks like 90 percent of the resumes out there, maybe you’ll get a look, maybe it will just be lumped into that pile of these all look alike.