10 Ways to Wreck Your Personal Brand

10 Ways to Wreck Your Personal Brand10 Ways to Wreck Your Personal BrandThe Web makes it easy to spread your message. But if you make ansicht errors, exposure can hurt you professionally.Its so easy to get your name out behauptung days. But to what end? Just like all corporate-branding plans, your personal-branding activities need to be a part of a well-conceived strategy - one that will help you achieve your goals and increase your professional fulfillment.As I watch people build their personal brands on the Web, I see a lot of personal-branding disasters - efforts that detract from brand value rather than increase it. Here are the personal-branding mistakes I see repeated over and over. Avoid them to build a powerful and compelling presence that increases your brand equity.1. Be Fake.Personal branding is not about fabricating a persona strong personal brands are based in authenticity. You cant start building your brand until you understand who you are, what you want and what make s you exceptional. What are your superpowers? What do others think about you? Dont create an image be yourself - your best self. As writer/aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh once said, The most exhausting thing you can be is inauthentic.2. Be Wishy-washy.Trying to be all things to all people is the opposite of branding. Strong brands take a stand and often repel as many people as they attract. You need to know what you want to communicate and how that message differs from what your peers are communicating. Whats your area of thought leadership? Whats your position? How do you want to express your personality? Answer these questions, and stick to your guns.3. Act Before You Think.Thanks to the availability and ease of social media, you can increase your visibility very quickly. But visibility is not the same as effective personal branding. If you dont have a clear plan - a message that you want to communicate consistently along with a strategy for expressing yourself - you will create confusion rather than build a fan club. Personal branding requires thinking before acting. Whats your overall communications plan? Which communications vehicles are the best for you? How will you link your communications activities? Answer these questions before putting finger to key4. Talk Just for the Sake of It.I see some people tweet multiple times an hour - re-tweeting anything they see, reposting their own tweets - just to seem like they have a lot to say. And Ive seen similar misguided fervor on blogs. People can see through this. Its better to make a few high-quality posts to your blog or tweets that add value to your brand community than to be associated with content that is vapid, regurgitated or stale. Create content when you have something thoughtful to say that is valuable to your brand community and reinforces what you want people to know about you. Quality trumps quantity.5. Aim for as Many Contacts as Possible.Branding is not about fame its about selective fame. Th e only people who need to know you are those decision makers and influencers who can help you reach your goals. Trying to be everywhere with your message will exhaust you without adding much value to your brand. Think about your target audience, then research the best places on the Web to express yourself. The scattershot approach isnt very effective and it isnt very fulfilling, either.6. Switch Tools Often.Social media is attractive, so attractive that some people jump onto the latest social media tool with reckless abandon. I was speaking with an executive the other day who told me that he was a big fan of social media. When LinkedIn came along, he worked hard to connect with everyone he ever met. After time, he lost interest. Then Facebook gained prominence he began friending all his LinkedIn contacts, and he updated his position hourly. He became tired of this as well and switched his attention to Twitter. This approach will not only wear you out, it will do little to build bra nd value. Choose the social media tools you are going to use and commit to using them regularly.7. Forget Traditional Vehicles.The ubiquity of social media has convinced some that personal branding is an exclusively Web-based activity. Sure, social media has made it much easier to express yourself to a much larger audience, but it doesnt replace real-world relationships and communications.I started my personal-branding business, Reach, almost a decade ago - long before Facebook, blogs and Twitter existed. Before social media, personal branding was focused on real-world activities, like public speaking and publishing books. A lot has changed in the world of personal branding since I founded Reach, but the core principles remain the same.Those who are most effective at building their brands combine the real with the virtual. They continue to write and provide content for traditional media they speak publicly, attend professional association events, volunteer for professional organiza tions, sit on boards and so on. The trick is to connect the real and the virtual - expanding what you are doing locally by making it visible on the Web.8. Do It Yourself.If you think people who are making decisions about you are impressed by the photo your mother took of you at last years family picnic or the poor-quality video you posted to YouTube, youre fooling yourself. You need to invest in services and tools that will help you present your best self. The New York Times said it best in its article about video resumes A well-produced video can send the message that the applicant is both professional and on top of new technology, while something that looks like a home video can send the opposite message. If its really important to you, invest in the right resources - career coaches, resume-writing services, Web designers, video producers and more. Sure, there are costs involved in these services, but whats the cost to you of damaging your reputation with poor-quality copy, imag es and video?9. Talk About Yourself.Personal branding is about giving to your brand community - value, insights, feedback, recognition. I see so many people confusing social media with billboard advertising - blatantly promoting their services 24/7. As social media expert Chris Brogan says Use the 121 ratio - make 12 posts about your brand community for every one that is about you. Just as people use DVRs to skip TV ads, they will start to tune you out if you come across as an immodest self promoter.10. Dont Measure Your Efforts.Are you spending a lot of time implementing your personal-branding plan without asking yourself, How is this helping me reach my goals? I spent 20 years in corporate marketing and branding, and one of the most important parts of any campaign we launched was metrics. You need some way to evaluate your progress and see if your efforts are paying off. Decide on what metrics you will use upfront (onlineIDCalculator.com, Klout.com, etc.), and establish a basel ine. Then remember to measure progress along the way. Have you increased the volume and relevance of your Google results? Are you growing your brand community with the right people?If you avoid these brand busters and focus on being your best (high-quality) self, on- and offline, youll bolster your brand with everything you do.

Emergency and Critical Care Veterinarian

Emergency and Critical Care VeterinarianEmergency and Critical Care VeterinarianEmergency and critical care veterinarians are specialists with advanced training in emergency medicine. Duties Emergency and critical care veterinarians are hauptplatine certified to perform emergency procedures and monitor the recovery process. Routine duties for an emergency and critical care veterinarian in private practice include evaluating traumatic injuries, performing surgical procedures, evaluating diagnostic tests, compiling detailed case reports, supervising intensive care units, overseeing veterinary technicians or other support staff, and providing specialty consultations on referral cases. These board-certified veterinary specialists routinely deal with animals that are suffering the effects of physical trauma, shock, respiratory problems, cardiac problems, neurological issues, or other severe injuries that require immediate and intensive veterinary care. Emergency vets may be required t o work nights, weekends, and holidays due to the constant need for emergency animal care. Many emergency clinics operate on a 24-hour basis and schedule their vets accordingly. Emergency work brings vets into contact with animals that are under an extremely high level of stress, so it is imperative that proper safety precautions are maintained at all times to minimize the risk of injury to the veterinary staff. Career Options Emergency and critical care medicine is one of the many specialties in which veterinarians can achieve board certification. Emergency and critical care vets may choose to narrow their focus further by choosing to work with one particular species or a category of interest such as small animal, large animal, equine, or exotics. Education Training Emergency and critical care veterinarians must first be accepted into veterinary school to complete their Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree. After passing their qualifying exams and becoming licensed to pract ice medicine, a vet can begin the path of study that will lead to board certification in the specialty field of emergency and critical care. In order to qualify to sit for the board certification exam, a candidate must meet a variety of educational and experiential requirements. The first step is to undertake a 3-year residency in the field under the supervision of a board-certified emergency and critical care diplomate. A variety of hands-on clinical work allows the candidate to complete a checklist of necessary skills and clinical experiences. Residents must also attend seminars and read veterinary literature during their residencies. After the residency has been completed, a vet is eligible to sit for the board certification exam. The exam is administered by the American College of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care (ACVECC). After successfully completing the exam, a veterinarian is granted diplomate status in the veterinary specialty of emergency and critical care. According to the ACVECC, there were 384 active emergency and critical care diplomats in practice during the December 2011 survey. Diplomates must also meet continuing education requirements each year to maintain their board-certified status. These requirements are fulfilled by attending lectures, participating in labs, and attending specialty related seminars. The continuing education credit requirement ensures that specialists keep abreast of recent advances and innovations in the field. Salary The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported a median annual wage of $82,900 for the broader category of all veterinarians in the May 2010 survey. The lowest paid ten percent of all veterinarians earned a salary of less than $50,480 each year while the highest paid ten percent of all veterinarians earned a salary of over $141,680 each year. Board certified specialists tend to be in that top tier of the compensation scale, though the BLS does not separate specific salary data for each of the indi vidual veterinary specialties. Residents do earn a salary while completing their residency requirements, though the level of compensation is much less than the resident would be able to earn in clinical private practice. Residency salaries generally range in the ballpark of $25,000 to $35,000 per year depending on the program. A list of ACVECC approved residencies is available on their website. Career Outlook The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey results project that the entire veterinary profession will have a very strong rate of growth, nearly 36 percent, over the decade from 2010 to 2020. This rate of growth for veterinary medicine is much faster than the average for all professions. The extremely difficult nature of the specialty training programs and board certification exams ensure that only a small number of professionals will be successful in their attempts to become board certified. The extremely limited supply of board-certified professionals in the specialty of emergency and critical care will ensure a high demand for diplomats in this field.

Internships with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Internships with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)Internships with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)The Central Intelligence Agency has always had a certain mystique about it. Mention the CIA, and spies and international intrigue come to mind. Do you want to be a part of that? Consider interning with the CIA. Internshipswithin the US government intelligence community bring competition to a new level. Not only are such positions hard to get, but the application process can also be time-consuming and difficult. Follow all directions carefully and apply well in advance. The hiring process is intense, but that should come as no surprise. Pay, Benefits, and Accommodations The CIA internship program is located in Washington DC. Youll get paid, and its a quite decent salary that increases incrementally with inflation. Compensation includes health insurance coverage. The CIA will pay for your transportation costs to arrive in the nations capital and will help you find housing, bu t youll have to pay for your housing yourself. Deadlines and zeiteinteilung CIA internships operate on something of a first-come-first-served basis. Positions arent limitless, and applications are given consideration as theyre submitted. The deadline for a general internship for the summer of 2018 was August 14, 2017, but you can expect that available positions may very well be filled by that date. TheDirectorate of Operations Undergraduate Internship Programis open only to college freshman, and the deadline for this program for the summers of 2018 and 2019 was March 17, 2017. Information regarding 2019 and 2020 internships will be available in December 2017. You must also pass through a clearance process before you can begin- another reason to allow plenty of time to apply well before your targeted start date. The CIA recommends that you apply nine to 12 months in advance. Materials Required You must attach a cover letter, an essay, and a copy of your transcripts with your application. About the Programs CIA interns operate within the covert arm of the CIA. They work with foreign intelligence, national security, defense, and foreign policy. The CIA encourages young people who wish to work for the CIA after college to apply. A majority of students apply during their freshman year of college for future summers. Youll serve a minimum of two work tours, typically 90 days each, but this can vary by student and internship. Program Requirements The undergraduate internship program is open to students in a wide variety of majors, ranging from engineering and computer science to human resources, finance, and even graphic design. Other requirements include US citizenship. Dual US citizens are welcome, but you must live in the US.A grade point average of 3.0 or better.You must be enrolled as a full-time student.You must be interested in pursuing a careerwith the CIA.You must not have used illegal drugs in the last 12 months. Foreign language skills are e ncouraged but not required. Likewise, the previous residency in another country is a plus, but its not a requirement. Application Information You can apply for an internship and learn more about the requirements, the various programs, and what to expect at the Central Intelligence Agency website. The CIA also offers graduate and undergraduate scholarship programs, as well as a graduate studies program.?