Here is the balance of the first 12 hours of the Great Blog Off Gina and I did on Friday June 20th. I apologize for the delay.

Here’s the list:

Hour 7: Video Instruction: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Smile - Check out this one minute video from collegegrad.com. People do prefer to meet pleasant people during the interview process. Your smile might be the one thing that separates you from the other strong candidates. But, watch the video.

Hour 8: Behavioral Interviewing: Assessing Customer Focus Skills - can’t think of a single organization or business that isn’t concerned with customer service. Customer service is not just important in retail where there are obvious customers. Where I work, our customers are patients and even doctors and nurses. Read more>>>

Hour 9: Enhance Your LinkedIn Profile for Job Seeking - In light of the fact that linkedin has become and looks to be a continued source of choice for people who love to hire passive job seekers (those who may not actually be seeking a new job), I thought it would be a good idea to remind readers to pay attention to your Linkedin profile! Read more>>>

Hour 10: How One Environmental Services Startup Uses Social Networking To Recruit - We don’t use traditional recruiting methods. Why would we when we are a non-traditional company? We find people to join our team via personal word of mouth. We network and market through social media, like blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our own www.brighterplanet.com. We have yet to use a search firm and don’t anticipate doing so any time soon. Read more>>>

Hour 11: Baby Boomers Face Hiring Hurdles - When Baby Boomers claim “experience” and “reliability” in interviews, they are reinforcing the hiring hurdles faced by older workers. There, instead, needs to be a new focus to interviews. Read more>>>

Hour 12: Behavioral Interviewing: Assessing Problem Solving and Analysis Skills - From my experience, the behavior interview questions around problem solving are the hardest for candidates to answer. Problem solving is tricky but even though candidates struggle with these questions, they can be the most important ones to ask, especially if you are interviewing candidates for leadership positions. Read more>>>

To see the remaining 12 hours. Click the this link! Thank you to all who participated and visited Interview Chatter!

Here is the first summary of the posts that Gina and I posted over the last 24 hours. Thank you to all of our guest bloggers! We appreciate your support and your help to assist us with our journey through The Great Blog Off.

If you missed the Blogging Marathon we did as a fundraiser for Accion International, I am going to post a summary over the next few days. I wanted to give you an opportunity to read them one spoonful at a time. Take some time to review these posts. There is lots of good stuff here.

Hour 1: The Great Blog Off - Fundraiser for Accion International - The Great Blog Off is an opportunity to do something good. The Business Channel will be supporting Accion International as our charity. Here is an opportunity for you to donate money to a great organization that is the business of helping people. Read more>>>

Hour 2: Thought For The Day - Words to Live By - An excerpt from No Glass Ceiling. Dream what you want to dream; Go where you want to go; Be what you want to be, Because you have only one life; And one chance to do all the things; You want to do. Read more>>>

Hour 3: 24 Hours of Interview Fun - Gina’s introduction to The Great Blog Off.

Hour 4: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Job Seekers - Web 2.0, according to Wikipedia technology and , is a term describing the sexy trend in the use of World Wide Web, web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. Read more>>>

Hour 5: Behavioral Interviewing: An Introduction - Behavioral Interviewing is an interviewing technique where the potential candidate is asked to tell the interviewer a story of a time in their career where they demonstrated a particular skill. The premise of this interviewing technique is that, it’s easy to tell an interviewer what they want to hear when responding to a particular question but it is much more difficult to do when the candidate is required to give a specific example of a time where they actually used the skill. The questions usually start out with “tell me about a time when you…” Read more>>>

Hour 6: Thinking of Adding A LinkedIn Link to Your Resume - I helped a client update his linkedin profile, and he now includes a link in email correspondence to employers. It may have been a coincidence, but the first employer he sent a link called him in for an interview the very next day! My client is convinced that linkedin played a role. Read more>>>

The Great Blog Off is over! 24 hours later and believe it or not we have stayed alert and posted for 24 hours. There have been a few speed bumps, but overall it has been great and I excited about the round-up coming tomorrow! Thank you!

Stanley F. Bronstein, the founder of the Achievement IQ® movement and the creator of the Laws of Positioning® has been a CPA for more than 21 years and an attorney for more than 16 years. His soon to be released third book, Achievement IQ Moments: 50 Extraordinary Stories About People Who Transformed Vision, Attraction, Readiness and Action Into Massive Success. Stanely is joining Gina and I as we participate in the The Great Blog Off. Enjoy!

________________________________
How To Differentiate Yourself From Other Applicants

by Stanley Bronstein

This article is going to focus on the point of view of the prospective employer. After all, doesn’t it make sense that you would have a better chance of being hired if you could “get inside the head” of your prospective employer and have a clear understanding of what they are looking for?

That’s what this article is about. I’m going to share with you what I look for when I am hiring, because I believe many employers would be “blown away” if you walked in and demonstrated the following four traits in your interview.

So, What Are These Four Traits?

Vision – Highly successful people have the ability to see things most others do not see. By that, I mean demonstrate your powers of observation and perception during the interview.

Notice items on the person’s desk and talk about them.

Do a little research in advance on the company and be able to talk about what you observed/perceived about the company during your research.

Ask questions about the company’s projects and then state your observations and perceptions about the company’s work.

Attraction – Highly successful people attract opportunities others do not attract. This is what you often hear referred to as the Law of Attraction. By that, I mean demonstrate, while in the interview, how you have been able to attract opportunities to you throughout your life.

Talk about times in your life when opportunities came your way and how grateful you were for having received those opportunities.

Talk about how you have a positive attitude and that you believe opportunities are all around each and every one of us. All we have to do is open ourselves up and allow these opportunities to come our way.

Readiness – Highly successful people position themselves so that they are ready to pounce upon opportunities once they come their way. While in the interview, you need to demonstrate that you perceive the job in question as an opportunity and then you need to demonstrate that you have done the necessary background work so that you are ready to act upon this opportunity, once it is given to you. This is what I refer to as the Laws of Positioning®, which is similar to the Law of Attraction, but it provides the missing component – READINESS.

Talk about the school courses you have taken and what you have learned from them.

Talk about the books you have read and what you have learned from them.

Talk about the people you have met and what you have learned from them.

Lastly, talk about how grateful you are for everything you have learned and how grateful you are that they are considering you for the wonderful opportunity that is before you.

Action – Highly successful people don’t just sit around like couch potatoes when opportunity comes their way. They seize upon those opportunities and act immediately. While in the interview, you need to demonstrate that you intend to act upon the opportunity before you, if they want to hire you.

Talk about past times in your life when you have acted upon opportunities when they came your way.
Talk about how excited you are about the present opportunity and that you can’t wait to get started.

Talk about how much you believe that passive people watch the world go by around them while active people are busy creating the world around them. Then tell them how you have been active in the past and intend to be active if they choose to hire you.

How Did I Arrive At These Four Traits?

I conducted a nationwide driving tour around most of the United States during a two month period. I interviewed more than 80 highly successful people and got them to share their stories with me. Over and over, I kept hearing these four traits repeated. Quite simply, these are the things highly successful people do, and if you want to be hired, they are the traits you need to demonstrate to your prospective employer.

After all, what type of person would you want to hire? A person who walks into your office and just responds to questions, OR a person who walks in and demonstrates that they possess the four traits of highly successful people; Vision, Attraction, Readiness and Action.

__________________________

Thank you for taking the time to join us for the The Great Blog Off. Feel free to donate to the Business Channel Charity Accion. Accion helps small businesses all over the world to become established through small, manageable loans and business advice. This concept of microlending is fabulous and their payback record is impressive. Click here to make a donation>>>

WOW! I’ve never even heard of a “blog-off” before this, let alone participated in one.  By the time Darlene and I are done, I think we’ll have posted 24 times in 24 hours.  We rock! Right?

Many of the b5media Business Channel blogs participated in the blog-off so be sure to drop by to read all the other great posts. 

I’d like to thank all my guest writers for their contributions.  I appreciate you all.  And a special thank you to taxgirl for keeping us on our toes and motivated over the last 24.

Here’s a list of my guest posts.  Please be sure to check them out.  There’s lots of great information in there.

The Teacher Interview

The Nurse Interview

The Med School Interview

How Social Networking Helped One One Artist/Garden Designer.

The Online Interview

How One Environmental Services Group Uses Social Networking To Recruit

Also be sure to check out my Behavioral Interviewing series for tips on how to write and answer behavioral interview questions.

Darlene will be wrapping up our blog-off.  It’s been fun and I’m out!

Thank you for taking the time to join us for the The Great Blog Off. Feel free to donate to the Business Channel Charity Accion. Accion helps small businesses all over the world to become established through small, manageable loans and business advice. This concept of microlending is fabulous and their payback record is impressive. Click here to make a donation>>>

Shai Coggins ia professional blogger over at Just Make Money Online. She is also a published author, artist, geeky gadget girl, mum, and wife, with a Masters’ degree in Applied Psychology. She’s a big fan of living a full and passionate life. She is also a co-founder and Vice President of Community here at b5media.com, a global media network based in Toronto, Canada.

______________________________

3 Ideas for Job Hunters on the Web

by Shai Coggins

Job hunters make use of the internet in many ways. At Just Make Money Online, some of these ideas were explored:

1. Get Paid to be interviewed at The Applicant Tree or at Notchup: Get Paid to be Interviewed. And, if you do get an interview, do remember this Interview Tip:One Big No-No for Online Interviewees.

2. Get a Blogging Job at GhostBlogging.net Job Board, these List of Sources of Blogging Jobs, or these More Freelance and Blogging Job Sources.

3. Consider these Digital Employment: 7 Ways to Look for Online Jobs.

What about you? How do you use the web to help you with job hunting? Have you ever had success in finding jobs online?
_________________________
Thank you for taking the time to join us for the The Great Blog Off. Feel free to donate to the Business Channel Charity Accion. Accion helps small businesses all over the world to become established through small, manageable loans and business advice. This concept of microlending is fabulous and their payback record is impressive. Click here to make a donation>>>

Scot Herrick is Founder and Publisher of Cube Rules: Career Management for Cubicle Warriors. Scot provides online career management training for knowledge workers who typically work in a corporate cubicle. Scot is joining Gina and I as we participate in the The Great Blog Off. Enjoy!

_________________________________

Baby Boomers Face Hiring Hurdles

by: Scot Herrick

When Baby Boomers claim “experience” and “reliability” in interviews, they are reinforcing the hiring hurdles faced by older workers. There, instead, needs to be a new focus to interviews.

Outlining these hurdles is Older Staffers Get Uneasy Embrace:

Employers fear older workers “cost too much, lack current skills and don’t stick around long,” Ms. Munnell and co-author Steven Sass write. Wages tend to rise with seniority. Health costs for older workers are higher. Older workers are viewed, rightly or not, as less supple in dealing with new technologies.

Claiming experience and reliability in the interview misses the mark. There are three real issues in an interview and Baby Boomers need to nail each one to get over these hiring hurdles.

Job Skills

Identifying and showing current job skills are critical. Attacking the job skill hurdle early on is necessary to get the position. Addressing your current job skills, including technical skills, for the position will get you over one of the hurdles.

Job Performance

Saying you have current job skills is one thing, showing what you did with them is another. Tally your measurable accomplishments about the business need before going on the interview. Once in the interview, weave these accomplishments into your story during the interview.

Your “fit” with the group

Business is social. You have a manager. You have a team, whether for a special purpose or formal. Having the social skills to work with your prospective manager and team is critical to hiring you. This is especially true if there are multiple candidates with the skills and performance necessary for the position. Interestingly, the higher you go in an organization, the more critical the need for good social skills.

Baby Boomers should focus on these three areas to overcome the stereotypes that too often prevent getting the next job.

___________________________

Thank you for taking the time to join us for the The Great Blog Off. Feel free to donate to the Business Channel Charity Accion. Accion helps small businesses all over the world to become established through small, manageable loans and business advice. This concept of microlending is fabulous and their payback record is impressive. Click here to make a donation>>>

Miriam Salpeter founder of Keppie Careers, is a career coach with over 10 years of experience. She encourages, enlightens and empowers job seekers for success by writing top-notch resumes and providing a toolbox of practical tips and support. Learn more about Miriam and Keppie Careers at her career advice blog: www.keppiecareers.wordpress.com. Miriam is joining Gina and I as we participate in the Great Blog Off. Enjoy!
_____________________________

Enhance Your LinkedIn Profile for Job Seeking

By Miriam Salpeter

In light of the fact that linkedin has become and looks to be a continued source of choice for people who love to hire passive job seekers (those who may not actually be seeking a new job), I thought it would be a good idea to remind readers to pay attention to your linkedin profile!

First, a note on visibility….

If you use linkedin, you know that your visibility goes up the more connections you have. Your second- and third-degree connections help put your profile in front of more people. I am a 2nd degree connection to both candidates for President! (Yes, Obama, and McCain are on linkedin!)

There are several ways to increase your connections:

1. The preferred way is to link with friends and colleagues. When I started on linkedin, I convinced a friend who always sends mass emails to a g’zillion friends to join linkedin. In about a day, she had over 100 connections, all of which became my 2nd degree connections.

2. Another easy way to increase your visibility is to link with a LION (linkedin open networker). These LIONS have over 500 connections and welcome any invitation to link. You gain visibility to all of their connections with the click of a mouse.

Your profile…

First things first - Be sure that anything in your profile is spelled and punctuated correctly! Typos scream, “don’t hire me” to anyone with a critical eye. Have someone with an eagle eye proof your profile. (Keppie Careers will be happy to assist in revising or proofing your profile. Email us at results@keppiecareers.com for details.)

Especially if you are looking for a job, focus your profile to include skills and experiences that will be of interest to potential employers. As with a resume, don’t just list what you did - help the reader envision you working for them by highlighting your skills and accomplishments. As you would with your resume, use active and interesting language.

Unlike a resume, you can use mini paragraphs in your profile. Keep it short - large blocks of text are hard to read. It should be somewhat conversational to grab the reader’s attention. It is okay to use “I, me or my” in your profile, unlike in a resume. (Don’t overdo it, though. You don’t want to appear self-centered!)

Make use of the “HEADLINE” feature. It goes right under your name and is the first thing people see. If you are a marketing professional, you can say so! Maybe you are a “Skilled problem solver and community builder.” Think of a tag line that grabs attention and describes you.

I really like the “Summary” and “Specialties” sections. This is where you can briefly sum up what you offer. If you have a “Highlights of Qualifications” or an “Accomplishments Summary” section on your resume, it should be easy to transfer it to linkedin. The “Specialties” section is like a list of tags - keywords that describe you and your work.

If you have a website or blog, use the “other” category and name your site when you add the URL. Also, you can edit your linkedin URL in your profile to include your name. Ask colleagues and clients to “recommend” you on linkedin. They can say all of the flowery, fabulous things about you that you can’t say about yourself! Only ask those you know will write a quality review. Most people will discount a poorly written recommendation. Especially when you are job hunting, your linkedin profile may be your golden ticket. Make sure you keep it shiny!

Keppie Careers will help you with every aspect of your job search…Resume writing, linkedin summary editing, interview prep, career coaching…Contact us to see how we can take your job search up a few notches! www.keppiecareers.com

________________________________

Just something to think about as we begin The Great Blog Off. Thank you for taking the time to join us for the The Great Blog Off. Feel free to donate to the Business Channel Charity Accion. Accion helps small businesses all over the world to become established through small, manageable loans and business advice. This concept of microlending is fabulous and their payback record is impressive. Click here to make a donation>>>

Check out this one minute video from collegegrad.com. People do prefer to meet pleasant people during the interview process. Your smile might be the one thing that separates you from the other strong candidates. But, watch the video. Let me know what you think!

_________________________________________Thank you for taking the time to join us for the The Great Blog Off. Feel free to donate to the Business Channel Charity Accion. Accion helps small businesses all over the world to become established through small, manageable loans and business advice. This concept of microlending is fabulous and their payback record is impressive. Click here to make a donation>>>

Web 2.0, according to Wikipedia technology and , is a term describing the sexy trend in the use of World Wide Web, web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.

We have been talking about Social Networking all month and I thought this list from Phil Rosenberg would be a great add to the discussion.

Here is a list of Phil’s Top 50 Favorite sites for Job Seekers:

1. LinkedIN – Social Network, primarily business www.linkedin.com
2. FaceBook – Social Network, business and personal www.facebook.com
3. MySpace – Social network, primarily personal www.myspace.com
4. Ning – Private Social networks www.ning.com
5. Plaxo – Contact synchronizer www.plaxo.com
6. ZoomInfo – Business directory www.zoominfo.com
7. Spoke – Business Directory & Social network www.spoke.com
8. Jigsaw – Business Directory & Social Network www.jigsaw.com
9. YouTube – User generated video www.youtube.com
10. Twitter – Text-like social network www.twitter.com
11. Pownce – File Sharing social network www.pownce.com
12. Flickr – User Generated Photo sharing www.flickr.com
13. Zooomr – User generated photo sharing and text for mobile www.zooomr.com
14. Yahoo Answers – User generated questions and answers www.answers.yahoo.com/
15. LinkedIN Answers – User generated questions and answers www.linkedin.com
16. Google Answers – User generated questions and answers www.answers.google.com/answers/
17. FaceBook Groups – Common interest based groups www.facebook.com
18. Yahoo Groups – Common interest based groups www.groups.yahoo.com
19. Google Groups – Common interest based groups www.groups.google.com
20. Grou.ps – Common interest based groups www.grou.ps
21. Blogger – Blog platform www.blogger.com
22. Wordpress – Blog platform www.wordpress.org
23. Typepad – Blog platform www.typepad.com
24. Del.icio.us – Social bookmarking www.del.icio.us
25. Ma.gnolia – Social bookmarking www.ma.gnolia
26. Furl – Social Bookmarking www.furl.com
27. Reddit – Submit, vote on, and rank news wwww.reddit.com
28. Digg – User submitted reviews of websites, services, blogs www.digg.com
29. Technorati – User reviews of what’s happening on the live web www.technorati.com
30. StumbleUpon – User reviews and web channel surfing www.stumbleupon.com
31. Pandora – User defined internet radio www.pandora.com
32. Last.fm – User defined Internet radio www.last.fm
33. Skype – Social network, IM, and VOIP www.skype.com
34. Jaxtr – VOIP linked to websites, blogs and social networks www.jaxtr.com
35. Fon – By, sell, and share wifi connections www.fon.com
36. Meebo – Web based multi platform IM www.meebo.com
37. Google Maps – Mashup maps with other data www.maps.google.com
38. Yahoo Maps – Mashup maps with other data www.maps.yahoo.com
39. Google Calendar – Shared and mashup calendars www.google.com/calendar
40. Evite – User generated invitations and events www.evite.com
41. Meetup – User generated special interest group meeting listings www.meetup.com
42. Eventful – Create and share events www.eventful.com
43. Favorville – People helping people www.favorville.com
44. Prosper – Peer to Peer lending www.prosper.com
45. Indeed – Job listing aggregator www.indeed.com
46. SimplyHired – Job listing aggregator, also on LinkedIN www.simplyhired.com
47. FeedDeamon – Manage RSS feeds www.feeddeamon.com
48. Wikipedia – User created encyclopedia www.wikipedia.com
49. Razume – User submitted resumes, professional community review & Feedback www.Razume.com
50. Clusty – Cluster Search results in folders www.clusty.com

Check out Phil Rosenberg at reCareered. reCareered, helps job seekers gain an unfair advantage in their career search. reCareered implements Resume Search Optimization, and Web 2.0 tools to help job changers get noticed, get interviews, and get great jobs. In the past, Phil has been a top recruiter, with 25+ years of experience with Robert Half, technology and finance companies. Now he’s working for career changers instead of corporate clients.

____________________________

Just something to think about as we begin The Great Blog Off. Thank you for taking the time to join us for the The Great Blog Off. Feel free to donate to the Business Channel Charity Accion. Accion helps small businesses all over the world to become established through small, manageable loans and business advice. This concept of microlending is fabulous and their payback record is impressive. Click here to make a donation>>>