The days of just having a paper resume and cover letter are over. In today’s digital age that focuses on such sites as Linkedin, Twitter and blogs, executives need to be armed with an arsenal of information to get through the clutter. So let’s look at the career-growing tools that an executive should have in their bag.

Resumes have not gone away so you still need a powerful executive resume that communicates your value proposition, or personal branding statement, to potential employers. This document must be compelling and indicate your core skills, relevant experience and proof-of-skills statements that show your accomplishments in challenging situations.  Consider this your fairly traditional 2-3 page resume which, of course, is supported by a good cover letter.

However, when you are networking with recruiters and colleagues, you will also need a 1-page Synopsis, or mini-resume, that shows who you are at a glance. For example, if you are networking at an industry conference, then giving someone a 3-page resume is overkill if not just annoying. The 1-page Synopsis fills the gap between the business card and the full resume and is intended to whet someone’s appetite and get them to want to know more about you. The 1-page Synopsis fits perfectly in this blackberry, smart phone world.

 Now consider that recruiters and employers will seek candidates online, particularly through Linkedin. Over 80% of them, upon receiving your information, will search the net to gauge your online presence, BEFORE contacting you. That means you need a strong Linkedin Profile and should also be on ZoomInfo.  Here your Facebook, Twitter and blog entries (if you’ve done them) will appear. So smart executives manage their online presence by providing a compelling and theme-consistent profile in Linkedin, complemented by numerous recommendations from colleagues (so employers will see testimonial evidence of your prowess). Even better if you’ve been busy blogging and tweeting to show that you are an opinion-leader or specialist in your field. Needless to say, if there are negative statements out there, you need to deal with that digital dirt.

 There are other items in a good executive career toolkit, including letters/scripts to use when contacting people, project portfolios and so on, but the resume, synopsis and online presence is the bare minimum for today’s savvy job-seeking executive.

Dr. Randall Hansen of the highly acclaimed site Quintessential Careers (www.QuintCareers.com) has a terrific list of the top job boards for executives.  See http://tiny.cc/w3mya

Although it doesn’t feel good to be unemployed for over 60 days, new regulations actually makes it smart for employers to hire you.

The HIRE Act, or the ”Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act” signed by President Obama on March 18 offers benefits to employers on new hires recruitments up to Jan 1, 2011. It essentially says that for personnel who have been unemployed for 60 days or more, employers would be exempted from paying Social Security taxes which is equal to 6.2% of their wages. There is also an additional tax credit of $1000 if these employees are on the payroll for a year or longer. So, taking a salary of $50,000, the employer not only saves $3100 on social security taxes, they also get $1000 off of their tax bill.

That means that being jobless for the qualifying 60 days presents a significant incentive for the employer to recruit and retain a candidate.  It’s certainly not pleasant to be unemployed, but you can use this information to show employers how much they could save by hiring you. 

Although it doesn’t feel good to be unemployed for over 60 days, new regulations actually makes it smart for employers to hire you.

The HIRE Act, or the ”Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act” signed by President Obama on March 18 offers benefits to employers on new hires recruitments up to Jan 1, 2011. It essentially says that for personnel who have been unemployed for 60 days or more, employers would be exempted from paying Social Security taxes which is equal to 6.2% of their wages. There is also an additional tax credit of $1000 if these employees are on the payroll for a year or longer. So, taking a salary of $50,000, the employer not only saves $3100 on social security taxes, they also get $1000 off of their tax bill.

That means that being jobless for the qualifying 60 days presents a significant incentive for the employer to recruit and retain a candidate.  It’s certainly not pleasant to be unemployed, but you can use this information to show employers how much they could save by hiring you. 

A challenge that a lot of job seekers face is the fact that they have held a variety of non-related jobs. Take Susan for example. Susan started her career as an administrative assistant, moved into pharmaceutical sales, shifted to real estate during the boom and is now looking to re-launch her career as a medical assistant after having finished a training program. “How do I show all these different jobs on my resume and still make an impression?” she asks me.

The answer is to showcase the transferable skills from all of her jobs that are relevant to the position. You start by listing the 3-5 core skills that employers want for the desired job. Don’t know what they are? Just go to Indeed.com and read a number of ads and see what employers are asking for and you will be able to quickly build this list.

In this case a good list would be:

-          Excellent interpersonal skills in working with a variety of patients and personnel

-          Strong attention to detail

-          Accuracy in verbal and written communications

-          Ability to multi-task in a fast-paced environment

-          Medical knowledge, skills and abilities which can include injections, operating EKG and other devices, and medical coding techniques.

Now the last skill she should have from her recent training, but the others are things she clearly demonstrated in her past jobs. So instead of focusing on her sales abilities as a real estate agent, she can focus on her ability to ensure compliance in a highly regulated environment by paying strict attention and accurately filling out the copious paperwork involved in real estate transactions. This translates to a bullet on the resume as follows:

-          Noted for attention to detail and accuracy in completing over 75 applications and achieving 100% approval.

-          Demonstrated the ability to allay clients’ fears, confusion and trepidation.

-          Recognized for ability to build rapport with a variety of multi-cultural and demographically diverse clients.

Get the picture? The key is to identify the top skills that an employer is seeking, and using that as a theme, highlight these same skills in your diverse jobs.

A challenge that a lot of job seekers face is the fact that they have held a variety of non-related jobs. Take Susan for example. Susan started her career as an administrative assistant, moved into pharmaceutical sales, shifted to real estate during the boom and is now looking to re-launch her career as a medical assistant after having finished a training program. “How do I show all these different jobs on my resume and still make an impression?” she asks me.

The answer is to showcase the transferable skills from all of her jobs that are relevant to the position. You start by listing the 3-5 core skills that employers want for the desired job. Don’t know what they are? Just go to Indeed.com and read a number of ads and see what employers are asking for and you will be able to quickly build this list.

In this case a good list would be:

-          Excellent interpersonal skills in working with a variety of patients and personnel

-          Strong attention to detail

-          Accuracy in verbal and written communications

-          Ability to multi-task in a fast-paced environment

-          Medical knowledge, skills and abilities which can include injections, operating EKG and other devices, and medical coding techniques.

Now the last skill she should have from her recent training, but the others are things she clearly demonstrated in her past jobs. So instead of focusing on her sales abilities as a real estate agent, she can focus on her ability to ensure compliance in a highly regulated environment by paying strict attention and accurately filling out the copious paperwork involved in real estate transactions. This translates to a bullet on the resume as follows:

-          Noted for attention to detail and accuracy in completing over 75 applications and achieving 100% approval.

-          Demonstrated the ability to allay clients’ fears, confusion and trepidation.

-          Recognized for ability to build rapport with a variety of multi-cultural and demographically diverse clients.

Get the picture? The key is to identify the top skills that an employer is seeking, and using that as a theme, highlight these same skills in your diverse jobs.

Every day I hear from people who tell me that they have sent out dozens of resumes and are not getting calls.  Some of these people have very good resumes so what’s the problem here?

The problem is simply that the job boards have a 3-5% effectiveness rate and although it is very exciting to see a position that matches your skills, having job boards as the heart of your search strategy can lead to a lot of frustration. Let’s look at how positions come to appear on job boards.

You’ve seen this yourself in your own organization.  A position is open and announced to all employees where they can post for it themselves or refer someone they know to be considered.  If this referred candidate is hired, they will usually receive a bonus (and who in this market doesn’t know someone to recommend for a job)? So by the time the job is advertised on the job boards, they are already interviewing people who have been referred to them by trusted sources.  And you are now competing with hundreds of other people who have also applied for the job. That’s why you often hear that a position was filled internally or by an employee referral.

So what should you do to get the maximum benefit from job board postings?  There are 2 key tricks here and in both, you DO NOT SEND YOUR RESUME over the internet. First, go to Linkedin.com and search for the company.  You will see the people who work there and their respective titles, so find the folks that manage or work in your desired area.

Now the most effective approach is to see if you can get into that magic circle of people who have been recommended by insiders. You do this by asking yourself “Who do I know who might know someone who works there?”. Do this by simply reaching out to your contacts and say, “I am interested in a position at XYZ.  Do you know anyone there who can share some insights about the company?”.

Linkedin will also show you people who used to work there and you can contact them and ASK FOR ADVICE (not a job referral). Here you can find out who the hiring forces are, the real challenges they are facing and what they are looking for in a candidate.

Remember that the more you know about the company, the more effective your search will be. The goal here is to network your way into a meeting with the people in the firm so you can be perceived as someone recommended as opposed to a faceless piece of paper in a large pile of resumes in human resources.

If that doesn’t work, and after you’ve learned all you can about the company and the challenges, then just call the hiring manager and say something like: “A friend told me you might be interested in someone with my background. I offer (insert your 2-sentence pitch), and I have just a few questions for you.”

Then ask them some questions that show you’ve done some homework on their company. Be very friendly, down to earth and personable and get into a conversation with them to build some rapport (remember that people hire people they like). At some point they will ask you for your resume at which point your resume is now at the top of the decision maker’s pile. They will probably still want you to send the resume to human resources in order to comply with internal protocols, but you are still in the decision maker’s mind.

Job boards are not the most effective way to find a position so you should augment your search with networking which has over a 50% effectiveness rate. Nonetheless, use these tips can more than double the success rate of job boards in securing a position.

If you are using Word 2007, then you should be careful about what format you use to send out your resume.  Consider Mike’s story.

Mike is a very successful sales executive who truly has an impressive background. After 30 days of submitting his resume for well-matched jobs, he was getting no responses and contacted us. We quickly realized he was sending his resume out in Word 2007’s .docx format which many companies do not support, so we showed him how to change the default settings to save documents in an earlier version.  The result: within 1 week he was getting calls for interviews.

I have to say that I am not a fan of web-based resumes and portfolios.  Although some services push these, I do not see the sense in having them. 

The purpose of a resume is to get the employer to call you to schedule an interview.  Why then, would you want to give them an extra step to take before calling you?  If they are interested enough in you to look at a web portfolio, then they are interested enough to call you and find out more which is the preferred outcome. Web resumes and portfolios are appropriate for certain marketing and web development folks, but even then, I would save the url’s for the interview.

There is a lot of noise regarding the state of the labor market.  Here are some promising statistics.

First, remember that unemployment is what is called a trailing indicator meaning it is one of the last things that will be affected as the economy improves.  When bad times occur, employers will quickly react by cutting staff and then try to get the most they can out of their existing workers,  until they just can’t get any more.  Then they will start hiring on a cautious basis, often starting with temporary workers first before they commit to full-time employees. So let’s see where we are.

Ø        US productivity in the third quarter rose to 9.5%, the fastest surge in 40 years. Normal productivity growth is about 3.0% so this shows that employers have reached the limit of what they can get out of their existing staff.

Ø        There were only 11,000 jobs lost in November, the lowest rate in 2 years.

Ø        Hiring of temporary workers grew by over 52,400 personnel in November, the highest surge in 3 years. .

Ø        In October, companies announced they plan to hire 57,250 new workers which is the highest level since July 2007.

Ø        For executives, job postings on ExecuNet are up 30% since the summer, and last week postings were up 26% from the week before. Executive recruiters and hiring decision makers state that they expect 2010 to be much brighter than 2009. And there has been a 50% rise in new jobs obtained since September 2009.

Remember that February is the biggest hiring month of the year so be prepared.  Make sure your resume presents you well and build a job search plan that includes recruiters, job board postings and networking.