Having been unemployed now for about a month, I’ve not been doing much of anything lately except submitting resumes and trying to improve my brand image.

Thankfully I’m part of the minority of unemployed who are actually getting phone and face-to-face interviews as a result of my efforts, but as yet I have not found a job that will truly satisfy me, though it’s certainly helping me to keep positive!

One job for which I recently interviewed would have required me to travel upwards of 60, even 70% of the time. To me, this is not conducive to a pleasurable working experience. I know many people are lovers of business travel, and I’ll of course do it to some extent – after all, I did love going to trade shows and such when I was with my former companies - but being away from home that often really doesn’t make for a great work-life balance, wouldn’t you think?

Similarly, I have received calls from companies that are over sixty miles from my house. I was, at my last job, what the U.S. Census Bureau calls an “extreme commuter.” By definition, that includes the 3% of Americans that drive more than ninety minutes each way to get to work. My commute was 152 miles round-trip, a three-hour journey that usually ended up being upwards of four to four-and-a-half hours each day due to construction, summer traffic, or accidents. It was, in all honesty, brutal. Do I think it affected the way I worked? Absolutely. I would have to get up exceptionally early to even make it to work on time, and by the time I got home at night, I had little to no time to focus on everyday things that needed to be done, such as household chores, much less any of my hobbies or personal activities.

And for those of you who wish to stress the concept of using public transport: don’t get me wrong, I would absolutely have done that. Except the job in question was in an area of New Jersey that would have required a train, then a bus, then a walk, which would have added an additional hour to my trip, so that was out of the question.

Let’s face it: according to Alois Stutzer of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich, “Commuting is a stress that doesn’t pay off.” Let’s look at the drawbacks to a long commute:

• One must earn considerably more money to make up for the wear and tear on one’s car, not to mention the constantly escalating gas prices.
• The human body is susceptible to aches, pains, and trauma from sitting in the same position for a long period of time, including high blood pressure … and of course contributes to weight gain.
• Traveling for so long is tiring, and the commuting experience is rarely pleasurable for anyone, so employees arrive at work tired and/or irritable. Employee morale suffers, and when that is affected, so is productivity.

Was telecommuting an option? It was at first, for at least a day a week, but my contract was altered two weeks in to the job. The benefits of telecommuting are numerous to both employees and employers, but I will focus on that in a future post.

What are the other downfalls to a long commute? Are there any benefits? At what point would you say a commute is too long?

I recently joined the ranks of the unemployed, and have been forging ahead with my search for the next exciting opportunity. Let’s face it: I hate being unemployed. Unlike a lot of people I know, who have recently recommended that I live off the state for awhile and spend a summer off, I actually enjoy having a job, and miss having something to do every day.

Back in 2005 and early 2006, when I was last doing a full-time job search, my primary venues for advertising myself were the standards: Monster.com and Yahoo! HotJobs. Am I utilizing these tools again? Absolutely. But so much has changed in the last five years that I have started using other methods of reaching potential employers. From that, I have learned a few valuable lessons to employ when conducting one’s online job search.

Google yourself. The Internet never forgets. I did a recent search on my name and ended up with 3,670 results. I’m actually astonished. On the upside, my top four hits were the places I would most prefer employers to visit:

• My website
• This blog
• My LinkedIn profile
• My Twitter account
• My Facebook profile

Many of the other links were mentions of the blog on other sites, comments that I’ve posted elsewhere, and things related to some of my past jobs. It’s always a good idea to check and see what kind of things are listed in Google under your own name, because you never really know what you’re going to find.

Make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete. A lot of recruiters look to find discrepancies between your resume and the information that you put on your LinkedIn profile. Make sure the information – including dates, title, responsibilities, and so forth – match up. Also, it’s always a good thing to have recommendations. I was lucky enough to be recommended by five people so far, three of whom were my managers. Recruiters are more impressed to see recommendations from managers than from co-workers, so if you don’t yet have any, request them! You never know who might come up to bat for you.

For additional information, Jessica Simko over at Brand-Yourself has an excellent post entitled “Build A Social Media Resume – How You Use LinkedIn Can Impact Your Job Search.” Read the full article.

Apply to companies directly. I had a long discussion with a recruiter last week who informed me that, because Monster.com and sites like that make it very easy for people to apply to jobs, HR departments tend to be overwhelmed with resumes from potentially under-qualified people. That is not to say that these job sites don’t work – I actually had an interview today with one to whom I’d applied on Monster – but by going directly through a company, you have more of a chance of your resume getting to the hiring managers, rather than being discarded early on by an HR assistant.

Be creative! Last month, I read a fascinating article about a young copywriter who managed to land himself a job using Google AdWords. Essentially, he purchased ads using the names of certain creative directors at companies for which he wanted to work as the keywords. He ultimately received calls from most of them and landed two job offers while spending approximately six dollars in total. A number of people have also had success hunting for jobs via Twitter, whether it was by hearing about a job from one of their connections or using a tool like TwitJobSearch. Simply by tweeting about my job search, I’ve gotten about six leads for jobs in the NYC tri-state area so far.

The job hunt is tough, especially with the current economic climate, but I’m keeping positive and chugging right along. The interviews keep getting set up, and I am confident that I will land an exciting, stimulating job soon. Fingers crossed, and best of luck to all of you who are out there with me!

Two days ago, I returned from the RILA Loss Prevention, Auditing, and Safety Conference in Dallas. As far as trade shows go, this one was a completely new format for me; at my previous company, which develops a database, we would attend and exhibit at shows such as (the now-defunct) LinuxWorld or JavaOne, wherein the exhibit halls were open the entire day and thus our booth had to be staffed accordingly. At the RILA show, however, the exhibit hall was only open about two hours per day, which left a lot of open time slots for us.

In an effort to continue my education of the industry for which I now work, I decided to use this time by attending a number of sessions that were being held throughout the days there. One of them, entitled “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Social Media and LP,” appealed to me, of course, because of my passion for social media in general. I would guess that approximately 750 to 800 people attended this session, most of these being loss prevention managers in their 30s and 40s.

The presentation was delivered by Cynthia Hetherington of The Hetherington Group and Ruth Kinzey of The Kinzey Company, a personable and riveting duo. The pair discussed some of the advantages and disadvantages of social media to loss prevention managers and executives.  According to them, LP professionals can leverage social media in a number of ways:

• loss prevention
• asset recovery
• due dilligence
• investigations
• brand and executive protection

I was fascinated to find, through an audience poll, that while 86% of the attendees have at least one of the big three (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), just 10.8% are using all three. I guess social media is still not used to its full potential in this sector as yet; in fact, as I was leaving the banquet hall, I overheard a 30-something gentlemen ask his college, “What’s LinkedIn?”

Probably the meatiest part of the presentation occurred when it was revealed that 74% of employees believe it’s very easy to damage a company’s reputation on social media, while only 49% of executives believe that. Quite the disparity, no? It’s like Warren Buffett once said:

“It takes twenty years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it.”

And that led to the big question: for those of us who use social media outlets on a daily basis, do we excuse the ethical consequences of what we post via social media? And do we, when posting personal information, opinions, and commentary, simply push our employers to the backs of our minds? “Oh, I may have said that I dislike ABC product, but that has nothing to do with my company.”

Let’s be honest: your employees have the potential to make or break your company’s brand and reputation. Does your company have a social media policy to try and control this? If you don’t, but are interested in setting one up, Healthcare IT News has a number of tips and rules for creating one.

Given that in four days I will have officially been at my current job for three years – god, has it really been that long? – I feel it’s only appropriate to start ramping up this blog again after almost a year of neglect.

And let me tell you, a lot has happened in this past year.  For starters, my company is almost entirely under new management.  Most important to me was the induction of a new VP of marketing back in, oh, May of this year, and from that, the creation of a proper marketing “team,” the likes of which I hadn’t seen in quite some time.  With others handling the stuff that used to take up much of my time – organizing trade shows, for example – I was free to nestle into my role as the company’s Online Marketing Manager.

Some of you might recall a few of the posts I wrote last fall (1 | 2 | 3) that dealt with the ever-present problem of companies not taking advantage of all that social media has to offer.  Quite frankly, while back then I was definitely pushing for the creation of a social media plan, I found myself falling into the same scenario to which Paul Chaney alludes in his post yesterday, entitled “Social Media in Organizations: What Happens When You’re the Only One Talking?“  That is to say, my social media efforts did more to boost my own personal brand than my company’s.

Buuut … things have changed now.  Our VP of marketing is very, very open to the use of social media as a marketing tool, and I presented him with a plan for the next six months that includes, among other venues, current statistics, strategy going forward, and metrics for our company website and blog (yes, we finally have a blog after months of me yipping about it!), Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and so forth.

Look for a string of posts to appear in the next few weeks regarding social media marketing best practices.  I’m looking forward to getting this show back on the road!