A friend recently told me a beautiful story about him and his mom. He fondly remembered meeting her after school daily when he was about seven years old at a store where she worked and sharing Hostess orange cupcakes with her while she worked so she could be with him before her shift was over.

The story stayed with me because I doubt my friend realizes his incredible story telling power. He just tells it like it is but his imagery is so strong and unforgettable that you can’t help but form a mental picture of the experience. Even though he never states this, the cupcakes are a metaphor for a connection, a bond, a relationship between him and his mom….one that obviously was very very strong. I have similar imagery that connects me to my father…football and salted peanuts, just to name a few.

People who make strong connections between tangible outcomes and feelings tend to make good interviewers. That’s because they can successfully leverage the connection between concrete evidence and the passion behind their accomplishments. How can you make better use of imagery when communicating strong stories of professional success? Consider these typical interview questions.

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. What is the accomplishment you are most proud of?
3. Describe a situation where you were under a very aggressive deadline.
4. What would your boss say about you?
5. What are your top strengths?

All of these common interview questions provide an opportunity to tell a powerful story about your work history. And powerful stories during interviews are the gateway to a connection with the interviewer. Don’t be afraid to talk about the hurdles you faced in past positions and how you overcame them. Consider explaining your feelings of pride over particular career accomplishments. Your passion for what you do will come through and can help the hiring manager conclude that you are a perfect match for their open position. The passion behind your stories of success is like the icing on the (orange) cupcake.

The dog in this picture, Jammy,  belonged to my friend’s mom before she passed away. Jammy remains a living connection to his mom and a daily reminder of her impact on his life. Today is Jammy’s birthday and he sent me this picture of her eating an orange cupcake to celebrate. The picture speaks volumes about my friend and his life stories. What stories can you tell during your interviews to speak volumes about yourself?

My daughter landed a plum internship this summer as an assistant to a musical director and casting director for the national tour of a very well known Broadway musical. On her first day she observed a typical theater audition, cattle-call style and in less than eight hours learned what it takes most people decades to learn about interviews. Here were her take-aways.

1. Having strong skills in multiple areas makes you a better candidate. For these auditions, the directors were looking for the triple threat…someone who can sing, dance, and act. Many of the people who auditioned could sing but not dance. They were quickly passed up for those candidates that had a diversity of skills and could perform at an expert level at each. The same is often true in today’s competitive job market. The candidate with a strong and diverse competency base may have an advantage over one with more siloed skills.
2. No one reads resumes. The casting directors saw a new applicant every 45 seconds. The resumes were collected the morning of the audition and reviewed just seconds before the auditions. The resumes weren’t read; they were quickly scanned to assess experience level and career highlights. While corporate interviews aren’t run like casting calls, hiring managers are still under pressure to sort through hundreds of resumes quickly and make split second decisions about who to call in for an interview.
3. Being original helps you stand out. At the auditions many applicants chose the same song to sing. After awhile, their auditions started blending together and it became difficult to differentiate who had sung the song the best. The candidates that chose less typical songs to sing were more memorable and there was less of a chance that their performance would be compared to ten other people who sang the same song. During a typical  interview, conversations about job tasks fall flat. What makes job seekers unique is not the tasks they do, but rather their success in these tasks and the impact  they had on the organization.
4. Looks can play a role in the interview process. My daughter observed that some people had great voices, but they just didn’t have the right look for the part. Fair or not, the way a person looks can influence hiring decisions. Retailers may expect their employees to dress a certain way. Professionals who look “too old” or “too young” to fit in with the team could be turned down for the job. Candidates with visible tattoos and piercings could get a thumbs down as well. Matching the corporate culture or “dressing for the part” is still part of the process.
5. The most talented applicant isn’t necessarily the one who lands the job. My daughter noticed that some of the people who made the audition cut got through not because they were the best, but because they had some indefinable characteristic that the people casting the show liked. Sometimes a hiring manager senses something about a candidate that makes them feel they are a good pick. It might be something about their enthusiasm or drive or their ability to converse during the interview process or be a good listener.
6. Interviewing is a subjective process. My daughter tried to figure out the system the casting directors were using to make their decisions. She soon realized that there is no formula and a part of interviewing comes from the gut. The intangible qualities still play a part in the process. In the world of entertainment, people have come to expect that there is a certain degree of subjectivity in the process and that many factors come into play when success is involved. So why should it be any different for the average Joe job seeker?

You may be wondering how my daughter landed this internship. She found out about it through an alumni connection at her school. Connections and your network are important. It took her even less than one day to learn that.

Everyone needs an elevator pitch which is a quick overview of who you are and the value you can bring to an organization. This overview of  your competencies was coined the elevator pitch because the message should be succinct enough to deliver to an important decision maker if you had the chance to ride up in an elevator with him or her.

The elevator pitch is also the perfect response to many interview questions including:

Tell me about yourself.

Walk me through your background.

Why should I hire you?

What can you do that the other 50 candidates cannot?

A strategically crafted elevator pitch will help you answer any of these questions. You should always be ready to deliver your elevator pitch in an exciting and memorable way. Ultimately, you want to be able to recite a message that is clear, targeted, and easy for anyone to understand. When the pitch is presented in this way, you are more likely to create an advocate for your candidacy who can refer your qualifications on to the next appropriate person in the hiring chain. Below are the five key components of an effective elevator pitch.

Create a professional identity.

Select an identity that best relates to your past experiences or future career direction. For some, professional identity is clear cut. For others it is harder to label. If your identity doesn’t exactly match a known profession, create an overall statement of the value you bring to an organization.

Showcase three strengths.

Highlight three areas of competency that show your value add and differentiate you from the competition. Chose traits that can easily be coupled with examples of how you have helped the organizations you have supported make money, save money, save time, maintain the business, or grow the business. For example, being proficient in Microsoft Project can position a project manager as a candidate that gets the job done expeditiously and in turn saves time, money, and resources.

Use accomplishment-focused, metrics-driven examples to support your strengths.

Just like the resume, the pitch must include proof that you have successfully completed job relevant tasks. A good strategy is to marry a strength with a specific example to prove that you are accomplished at what you do. Quantify accomplishments using numbers, percentages, and dollars whenever possible.

Discuss your background as it relates to the target function or industry.

Draw on your past experiences from several positions to solidify the scope of your skill set, show career progression, and build the business case for your candidacy. Also include relevant education such as a job-related or advanced degree, industry certifications, advanced technologies, or leadership roles within a professional organization to showcase the diversity of your experiences and position you as a unique contributor.

Make a match between your experience and the skills needed for a particular job function or industry.

Bring the conversation full circle by relating your traits back to the needs of the employer or the needs of a particular industry. By doing so you prove relevancy and demonstrate why your skills are a good fit for a certain type of position.

Try to craft one pitch that is under a minute and another that is more like a quick tagline. After all, you never know if your decision maker is taking a ride up to the 50th floor or the 5th floor.

Read more tips on interviewing from my colleagues at the Career Collective here.

• Sit Down and Panic. The Interview is Yours @GayleHoward
• How to Stand Out in a Job Interview @heathermundell
• Avoid These Reference Mistakes @DawnBugni
• Unspoken Secrets of Job Interviewing Prep: How Your Nonverbal Presentation and Behaviors Impact the Impression You Make @KatCareerGal
• Prep for Interviews Now: Snuff out the Elephant in the Room Later! @chandlee << not working yet
• What Should Job Seekers Do Now to Prepare for an Interview @erinkennedycprw
• Take a Ride in the Elevator Before You Interview @barbarasafani
• Are You Ready for the Elephant in the Room? @WorkWithIllness
• “Tell Me About Yourself” (Oh, Yikes!), @KCCareerCoach
• The job interview as a shared narrative @WalterAkana
• Prepare your references for job search success @Keppie_Careers
• No Pain No Gain In Job Search and Interview Prep @ValueIntoWords
• Job searching? Take a cue from the Boy Scouts @LaurieBerenson
• Preparing for Career Success Starts with Interviewing the Employers @JobHuntOrg

Last night I watched the story of mogul skier Alexandre Bilodeau who won the gold medal for Canada on Sunday. He credits his older brother who has cerebral palsy for inspiring him and keeping him driven and focused on his goal. Doctors told his family that his brother would no longer be able to walk past the age of ten, but at age 28 his brother can still walk. So each day when Bilodeau thinks about the training challenges in front of him, he pauses for a moment and thinks of the challenges his brother faces every day, how he has overcome them, and how he continues to beat the odds.

What if job seekers could adopt this Olympic-winner attitude and create internal “tapes” to motivate them and move past their challenges? Perhaps then the setbacks they face would seem manageable and the hope would stay alive. Here are some positive messages job seekers should be sending themselves on a regular basis.

1. I will maintain a healthy life style so I can manage my search at an optimal performance level.
2. I will challenge myself to reach out to new people who may be able to help me with my search.
3. I will accept the help of friends and family during this difficult time even if it makes me a bit uncomfortable.
4. I will seek out coaches and mentors who can help me move closer to my goal.
5. I will put in the time necessary to research potential employers and market myself directly to them.
6. I will examine my resume and other personal marketing collateral to make sure they are the best they can be.
7. I will celebrate the victory of landing an interview, even if I don’t ultimately get the job.
8. I will not blame external factors for my situation.
9. I will be a good team member and support others in their job search when I can.
10. I will regularly envision the end goal of landing my new job.

Some days it’s hard for an athlete to muster up the motivation for the grueling training session ahead of him. Likewise,  some days it’s hard for a job seeker to stay motivated in a challenging market. Positive self-talk can help. So does keeping your eye on the gold. Let the games begin!

Last year I went on multiple interviews for six different consulting assignments. It’s kind of strange to go on interviews when your profession revolves around teaching others how to interview. It’s often a humbling experience and sometimes I don’t even take my own advice. I thought I was perfect for each of these roles. But my definition of perfect didn’t always jive with the hiring manager’s. My skills were never in question, however, there are a lot of circumstances that affect the hiring manager’s decision besides competency. Sometimes I couldn’t see past those obstacles. Here are a few of the tapes that were playing in my head as I interviewed for different positions. Do any of these sound like you?

1. I should be a shoo-in. The first position sounded perfect. The organization was looking for someone to do job search training with a focus on social media tools. No one in their current organization had any knowledge on how to leverage these tools in a job search and I had many stories of success to prove my expertise in this area. I went though multiple interviews and everyone assured me that the final interview with the CEO was just a formality. And while I hit it off with everyone, the company decided to go in a different direction shortly thereafter and there never was an offer. I guess I didn’t fit in with the company’s rebranding strategy.
2. I’m a quick learner. This opportunity had me both excited and neurotic for a good month. The project was a huge undertaking and had the potential to catapult me to a new level professionally. My credentials and track record as a career professional moved me into the final round of interviews. But I had never done exactly what the employer wanted me to do and didn’t have an existing infrastructure to support it. And even though I’d mapped out every nuance of every operational scenario, in the end it wasn’t enough to convince the hiring authority that I was the right person to come in and hit the ground running.
3. I’m perfect for this role…with a few minor adjustments. Next I interviewed for a role that played to all of my strengths…resume writing, coaching, training…it looked like a “no brainer” to me. But the hiring manager was looking for a greater time commitment than I could offer. I tried to massage the position to give him what he needed in a compressed time frame but that just didn’t work with his company’s corporate culture.
4. Of course you’ll hire me…you really need me. The next opportunity was to do some operational consulting and service delivery for a firm that was branching out in a new direction that involved career services. The business model sounded perfect and I thought I was surely the right person to help bring the new service to fruition. But the sales team quickly realized that the sales cycle for the product will take much longer than their original predictions, so I’m still waiting for my first assignment to materialize.
5. I know I don’t look like what you are used to…so what’s the problem? Next I was interviewed by a CEO to deliver a fairly large service contract. At the same time he was interviewing professionals from Fortune 500 firms.  He couldn’t get past the fact that my business was a boutique firm and he decided he was more comfortable with a bigger name firm.
6. I can do this job and I can prove it to you. The last opportunity was to blog on jobs and careers for a major online site.  Sure, I had my standard resume to prove my knowledge base, but what won me the job was my blog. My blog was the most authentic example of what I can do. It proved I had the technical chops for the job but more importantly it proved my commitment and passion. I was a fit. I started blogging for AOL Jobs and Careers in December. It’s a good fit and I’m really enjoying it. It was well worth the wait.

It is rare these days to have an interview process that is straightforward and linear. What looks like a slam dunk often isn’t and what you thought was the gig of your dreams might not really be the right fit at the moment. View each interview as a learning experience and practice for the next interview. Forget about being liked by everyone…it’s not about being liked…it’s about fitting in. And if you don’t get the job, there may be a good reason why, even if you can’t see it right away. The right job will come…and both you and the employer will know it when it happens.

Everyone’s starting to talk about their New Year’s resolutions…lose weight, exercise more, quit smoking, get out of debt, and find a new job are the ones I hear most frequently. And while I think that New Year’s resolutions are a great idea in theory, I think that a lot of people fail to keep their New Year’s resolutions because often the only criteria motivating the person to make the resolution is the time of year.

This year I made several really big changes in my life. Yet none of them happened overnight. Some took months to make, others took years, and one took more than a decade to come to terms with. But none of them were motivated by the time of year. They were motivated by a feeling that I could no longer continue in a situation under the current circumstances or by the fact that I wanted something and I wanted it sooner rather than later. Basically, my desire to change a situation was greater than my desire not to change it. There really wasn’t an “aha moment” or even a calculated plan in many cases…the changes happened because in my mind, they had to at one point or another.

The other thing about my changes was that few of them went smoothly and most had a “one step forward, two steps back” feel to them. But I was able to persevere because I didn’t link the changes to a time frame. With New Year’s resolutions, people often link them to a time frame and if the person can’t follow the timeline, they frequently abandon the new behavior before they can see the true results of their efforts.

So if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to find a new job, here are some suggestions for forgetting about the time of year and instead focusing on the long term change.

1. Don’t declare a New Year’s resolution; instead set a long-term goal with some interim milestones. If you know you would like to change jobs at some point in time or land a job as quickly as possible, commit to 5 things you could do over the next month to move towards that goal. That may mean setting up informational interviews, joining a professional association, becoming more active on social media sites, or starting your own job search group. Do something to move you closer to your goal.
2. Don’t create a defined time frame for achieving the goal. Forget the formulas about how long a typical job search lasts. There is no such thing as a typical job search. Think about nurturing existing relationships and building new ones to gather information, extend your professional visibility, and secure more interviews. Build relationships whenever you can…graciously accept a meeting whether it will occur next week or next month.
3. Don’t reset the clock when your progress towards your goal feels stagnant. Some weeks your search will feel like you are slogging through mud or sinking in quicksand. Other weeks will be more fruitful. A slow week doesn’t mean the market has tanked or everyone must be on vacation. Don’t give up during the slow times; instead use the downtime to focus on other aspects of your search such as improving your resume or creating a target list of companies to explore…keep on keeping on.
4. Don’t blame external factors for your inability to change; look inward to figure out why you can’t change just yet. It’s easy to blame a bad economy for your lack of progress. But often it’s our own insecurities that hold us back. Even when people want to find a new job or land a job when they don’t have one, it can still be hard. Maybe it’s fear of rejection, apprehension about taking a risk, or a feeling that maybe the grass really isn’t greener on the other side. It’s ok (and normal) to have these feelings. Explore them, deal with them and make decisions as to whether your desire to change exceeds these feelings at this point in time.
5. Cut yourself some slack if you don’t reach your goal as quickly as you would like to. We are all impatient at times. Yet the job market often doesn’t take this into account. In an employer’s market, searches tend to last a long time and it’s not unusual to go through several rounds of interviews over several months before a hiring decision is made. You can’t control every aspect of your search. Focus on what you can control and recognize that things might take longer than you would like.

Forget the one time resolution on January 1. Instead focus on contributing something towards your career each and every day…that’s what career management is all about. To your success in 2010 and beyond!

My son is getting braces. In order to prepare for the braces, he first needs to wear a special “appliance” to realign his jaw. When you look in his mouth it looks like he has four giant screws in the back, all in different places. Each time he closes his mouth he must push his jaw forward in order to have the desired effect. As you can imagine, this makes chewing quite cumbersome. On the first day he could only eat soup and jello. Today he has moved on to mashed potatoes. And by the end of the week we are told that he will have figured out how to chew more solid foods.

I think that when people find themselves in a job search after many years of being comfortable in a job, they have a similar relearning process and nothing comes easy at first. The old methods of job search don’t work the same way anymore and job seekers need to work around more obstacles to find the right leads. Here are some ideas to chew on (pun intended) as you create a direction for your job search.

1. Take a bite out of that old resume. Examine the content of your resume closely. If there is information on it that is dated or irrelevant to your target audience, get rid of it.
2. Sink your teeth into networking. Building relationships takes time. Do something for your network everyday so the task is less overwhelming and more productive. Set attainable goals to schedule coffee with a colleague or lunch with an old friend. Be consistent and purposeful and remember to approach networking with a “give more than you get” attitude.
3. Get a taste of social media. Dabble in LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and create profiles on Google and Zoom Info. Be part of the conversation and share expertise, ideas, musings, and your experiences.
4. Explore the different flavors of interview questions. Practice responses to behavior based interview questions such as tell me about yourself, tell me about a time when you had to make a difficult decision, or tell me about a project that failed and what you learned from it. Interview questions come in all flavors…some are about positive experiences and some are about difficult situations you faced…learn how to answer all of them with confidence.

The “appliance” in my son’s mouth is an obstacle right now. But he will overcome it…the kid’s gotta eat! Job seekers face obstacles everyday. But with some thought, preparation, and a commitment to do things differently they can overcome these obstacles and savor the taste of a sweet new job.

This weekend I attended a workshop on story telling facilitated by a company called Narativ. During the workshop, I learned how to tell a better story and be a better listener.

One of the most memorable exercises of the day was when each person in the group was asked to tell a story about one of their grandparents, told through the voice of that grandparent. It was somewhat challenging at first…having to piece together memories that are somewhat hazy now that these people are no longer with me. We were asked to speak for several minutes and I wasn’t sure I would have enough to say. I’m sure others in the group felt the same way. But I think we were all surprised by how vivid our memories were and the strong emotions that came out when we told our stories.

There were fascinating stories about grandparents who were immigrants and others impacted by the Great Depression. There were stories of incredible opportunity and incredible loss. And in each story there was humor, intrigue, and drama…every story was moving and memorable.

What I gleaned from these stories is that what made them memorable were the details. Some storytellers used descriptive words or imagery to make a certain fact stand out; others used quotes that the grandparent had actually coined, and still others referenced historical events, religion, geography, and favorite family foods to help the listeners feel that they were truly in the presence of these grandparents.

I started thinking about how job seekers can learn to tell more compelling interview stories by drawing parallels between their family stories and their work stories. A person’s family history is unique, compelling, and often something people communicate about with passion. Career stories can be equally unique, compelling, and passionate. Here are a few things to consider when creating your stories for answering interview questions.

1. Personalization equals passion. A great story of success to showcase during an interview is one that proves your passion. To simply state that you are passionate about building strong sales teams or creating technology infrastructures would sound cliche. But communicating a story about a time that you put your blood, sweat, and tears into a project to get it done on time and on budget would be an authentic and more interesting way to tell your story and make hiring managers feel confident that you could create similar experiences in their organization.
2. Everyone has a story. So many job seekers think they have nothing unique to say. “I just did my job; I didn’t do anything special” is one of the statements I hear most frequently from job seekers trying to prove the impact of their work. But like your family history, your work history is unique to you. Try to focus on how you did your job effectively and what you do differently than your colleagues or your predecessors in the position.
3. The specifics of the story are more important than the general facts. I don’t remember all the facts or the time line of every grandparent story I heard this weekend. But for each story I heard, I remember several snippets that best describe that grandparent  and even offer clues to their values and way of life. In interviews, most people think they should talk about their skills in general terms, but it is the specific examples of success and the specific metrics behind those stories that prove your impact that the interviewer will remember.
4. A personal story can represent a universal feeling or experience. All the grandparent stories I heard were quite different. Yet there were common themes of family, community, love, and loss that everyone could relate to. When you interview, you are attempting to find common ground with the interviewer. You are trying to develop rapport by proving that the things you have achieved in your past positions will help improve their current work environment.

My grandparent story was about my maternal grandfather, Pat. He and my grandmother were married for 60 years and were first generation Americans living in a small town in Pennsylvania famous for its busy train station, Horseshoe Curve, and Malamar cookies. My grandfather taught me how to hit a baseball. He wrote the letter “e” in a special way that I had never seen before that I copied and still use to this day. He loved watermelon with salt (yuck!) and my grandmother’s apple pies. There is a lot more to his story, but you can see how the little details can make the story memorable. So what’s your story and how can you be memorable to employers?

I’m having a piano delivered to my house. Arranging for a piano delivery is no small feat.  Besides making arrangements with the showroom, I had to coordinate the insurance with my apartment building’s managing agent and figure out if the piano would fit in my elevator. Delivering a baby seemed to be much easier than this ordeal.

The delivery was scheduled for tomorrow, yet the piano showed up at my house today. It seems that the employee from the piano showroom missed one minor detail…recording and communicating the correct delivery date to the movers. The piano arrived just as I was leaving my house for a meeting, so I had to refuse delivery and send the piano back to the showroom.

Ok, we’re all human and we all make mistakes. But in some situations you are going to be judged more harshly than others. If a delivery of new sheets or towels showed up on the wrong day, I might not have given it a second thought. But it’s hard to shrug off the fact that a 450 lb piano showed up on my doorstep unannounced. And even if the employee at the showroom is the employee of the year every year and is frequently praised for her attention to detail, to me she will always be “the lady who delivered a piano to my house on the wrong day.”

Job search is a situation where your actions are under a microscope. Errors that might be passed over in your day to day work are scrutinized much more diligently when hiring managers are reviewing applicants. When you start the job search process, an employer doesn’t know you and they don’t trust you yet. They don’t know if you are competent to do the job so each of your interactions with them either builds that trust or destroys it. Here are a few errors that job seekers often make and are frequently judged by.

• Resume typos…It’s very rare that I receive an email without a typo. And I see typos on websites and blogs all the time. And it doesn’t really color my opinion of that person. But in job search, typos on the resume make a red flag go up for many hiring managers. The concern is that if the applicant wasn’t detail-oriented enough to catch the typos in their resume, they may make other, more costly errors for the company.
• Fashion Faux-pas…Everyone has showed up at work at some point in time in some outfit that was far from flattering, too casual, inconsistent with the company’s corporate culture, or even offensive. In most cases the fashion faux-pas becomes fodder for the water cooler for a day or two and then just goes away. But on an interview, the candidate quickly turns into “the applicant in the fishnet stockings” or “the guy with the really bad tie” and again a judgement is passed. The concern is that based on the applicant’s dress they won’t fit in with the company’s culture or perhaps lack sound judgement in other areas.
• Arriving late to the interview… Just about everyone has been late to work at one time or another.  And unless it becomes a chronic issue, it is generally accepted and not a big deal. But on an interview, arriving late can signal to a hiring manager that you are not reliable or dependable or that you don’t manage your time well.
• Electronic whoops…We’ve all been in situations where someone’s cell phone rings during a presentation or important meeting. And maybe it’s a bit embarrassing but it’s quickly forgotten. However, if your phone rings during an interview, the interviewer notices and may pass a judgement about you or even your consideration of others.

When you apply for a job, you are a lot like a 450 lb piano. Everything you do is obvious. Everything you do gets noticed. And little errors in your job search strategy can quickly turn into detrimental ones. The person who arranged for my piano delivery should have checked and double checked the delivery date…because it’s a piano. Job seekers need to check and recheck all the little details that go into an effective job search…because it’s your career. Both are really big things that you don’t want to screw up.

I’m excited to announce that my second book, #JobSearchTweet will be released shortly. The book delivers 140 tweet-like tips on just about every aspect of job search. It’s a book that you can read quickly but continue to reference for the duration of your career. Resumes, cover letters, thank you letters, references, recruiters, networking, social media, interviewing, and salary negotiation are all addressed. Here’s a sneak peak at a few of the tweets.

• When writing a resume, include graduation dates; omitting them raises suspicion and calls more attention to the very thing you are trying to hide.
• Half of hiring managers read cover letters and the other half do not; but you never know which half you are dealing with so always send one when applying for an open position.
• Have a phone interview? Sit in front of a mirror to anchor you during the conversation and make you feel like you are talking to someone (even if that someone is yourself!)
• When networking, ask people you meet a lot of questions about themselves. People think you are a great conversationalist when you let them do most of the talking.
• With traditional networking you can only be in one place at a time; with online networking you can be interacting in multiple communities simultaneously.
• The negotiation process begins the moment you submit your resume and continues until the offer is finalized. You can’t position yourself at one level on the resume and expect to be compensated at a higher level later on.

Interested in the other 134 tweets? Learn more about the book here and for more job search tips follow the #jobsearchtweet hashtag on Twitter.