My Personal Brand

I am using this time between consulting jobs to develop my message and brand. I have been getting a lot of emails about developer positions. Although I can assist in the development phase it is not something that is a primary skill set or passion.

Currently I am reading "The UX Career Handbook" by Cory Lebson. I attended a presentation of Cory's at the Triangle UXPA and that is where I purchased the book. Its a great resource and I am learning that regular blog and social networking activity is expected of a UX professional. One of the exercises that he gives in the book is to Google your name. I was pretty surprised with the results, because at first I searched with my full name, which returned a disappointing number of results. Then I searched with a shortened version which returned a much more promising number of results. My Twitter page was at the top of the list. It is good to Tweet as a professional that is looking for opportunities.

In the book Cory uses the acronym PAR to describe the projects in your resume. It stands for Problem, Action, Result. In my descriptions of past projects, I use an acronym that I was given by the HR staff at Mayo Clinic to prepare for an interview. It is SHARE, which stands for Situation, Hindrance, Approach, Results, Evaluation. In the past I tried to keep the word in my head to describe the projects in my resume, but I am in the process of creating a MS One note file with all of my talking points to use during an interview.