Dating and job searching are two activities everyone has experienced. Owens, the lead college recruiter for AOL, shares her years of experience by communicating the similarities between these common, frustrating and unpredictable experiences in a new language job seekers are surely to understand.

The 99-page book highlights the basics in the job search process – resumes, networking and interviewing – by offering many examples and illustrations to follow. Each chapter ends with “Deal Breakers” every seeker should avoid like do not make repeat calls or emails to recruiters asking if your resume has been received.

Her commentary also mentions recruiter truths such as: recruiters normally do not read cover letters, and touches on recruiter’s volume of applications and workloads and one can stand out from the rest.

Job seekers neglecting the insight from this book are receiving a career kiss of death.

It appears that content no longer matters. It is a commodity. It’s not unique. Anyone can do it and it has a short shelf life – real short.

The move is to the importance of syndicating, distributing or sharing the content. That is where the action is. How good are you at this? Your syndication effectiveness is going to determine the relevance of your content.

With content overload, we must screen it to stay focused. However, we must scan content to stay innovative. It is a tricky balance.

Moving forward, we must focus on fewer content topics and give more time to syndication – repeat this process periodically with slightly updated versions of content – so that the content actually becomes relevant over time.

There is just too much content.

I was recently called out by @Handshake20 regarding my whereabouts – online and offline. Offline, you do not see me attending as many events. Online, as you can read from my blog, there have not been as many posts. Partially because of a self-imposed fast on all media on the Sabbath, which has been sporadic and hard to do, but very helpful.

My role with the City of Roanoke was very public and I interacted with a lot of people – all of whom I am grateful to have served. After a stint with Rackspace and now the Director of Undergraduate Career Services for the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech, I have tried to be more laser focused and am trying to learn the word “No”.

I read a great post by Seth Godin and he asked where do great ideas come from. One of his answers was “not from watching TV” and from “reading books”. Here are some books/ideas that have influenced me and may be helpful to others:

• 80/20 Principle – Focus on the 20% that yield 80% of your results. It applies to many aspects of your life.
• 7 Habits – Focus on Quadrant 2 activities like relationship building. Slow is fast and fast is slow.
• Strength Finders – Focus on developing strengths (mine are Activator, Responsibility, Connectedness, Belief and Command). Yours?
• Purple Cow – Focus on the remarkable. It is your most effective marketing strategy.
• Purpose Driven Life – Focus on personal faith and serving others. It’s not about you!
• Next Generation Leader - Focus on leading others and not on the 2% you will unintentionally intimidate and threaten.

Therefore, I am behind on new technologies and the details of social media and out of the loop on local issues. What have I missed? It is more about what I have gained. Thanks for asking @Handshake20.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, there was an article highlighting the importance of college graduates to a region. The article suggests that the more college graduates in a region also provides more employment opportunities for high-school graduate population.

This further illustrates the importance of attracting and retaining the skilled and college-educated workforce of younger professionals as has been chronicled on this blog for several years.

The talent of these individuals drive regional economies and create opportunities for individuals with lesser educational attainment. Unfortunately, strategies and public sector funding continues to focus more on helping create and generate hourly jobs for people who are less likely to grow a regional economy.

That is why the strategy of job seekers acquiring new skills through continuing education continues to be the best alternative at addressing complex regional economic issues.

81 Reasons to Connect a sub-group of the Richard Florida Creative Community Leadership Project unveiled its promotional video of the region last night at the Fall Gala of the NCTC. The purpose of the video is to showcase the Roanoke and New River Valley regions of Virginia and target creative class individuals. Enjoy.