If you're like most people, you've never written a press release to call attention to a success you've had.

And rightly so.

But some of you should be sending out press releases or encouraging your company to promote things that you and your group are doing because they are significant.

And most of you can be doing the next best thing to a press release:

The periodic note

An old friend of mine would mail a note to all of her friends bring them up-to-date on the things that were going on in her life, her professional successes, accomplishments and, occasionally, the frustrations. It allowed her to stay in contact with lot of people who would offer her advice, suggestions and jobs.

Today, with email, it is much easier than before.

Every 6 months, send an email to all of your friends, acquaintances and former colleagues to bring them up-to-date. Skip the complaints about your boss. Former colleagues may be in contact with them and you don't want to generate problems.

It's easy to add people to Outlook and other products like it; you can also use services like Plaxo (www.plaxo.com) that host your rolodex online and allow others to connect with you, too.

Any way you look at it, since only 22% of positions are filled by recruiters and fewer than 6% via job boards, your connects and their ability to think of you will go a long way to helping jobs land in your lap.

©2006, 2010 all rights reserved.

 

"Look Me Up: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Social Networking Your Way to Job Search Success" will teach you how to incorporate those services, blogs, website, Google Buzz, Wave and other services into your job search strategy. After all, recruiters, both third party and corporate believe that job applicants who are "found" are superior ones they find on job boards.

You can take advantage of their foolishness and position yourself as superior to your competition.

It is available as a PDF, for Kindle, and for other eReaders including iPhone, iPod Touch, Nook, Blackberry, Android devices, iPad, Nook, Sony eReader, Palm, Stanza and other devices

We don't do print.