By Beverly Weinstein

There seems to be a steady stream of online tools, widgets and apps that are launched regularly. The challenge is sorting through the information and picking a few that will be genuinely beneficial, not only for your job search and personal branding but with social networking related to that search. Below are a few suggestions and tools worth checking out.

Online Resumes: Today’s Gimmick or Tomorrow’s Must Have?

Multiple Web sites are now offering tools to create a virtual resume.  While you still have to do the work of writing a compelling CV, design features and expanded content capabilities are what these sites are all about. Virtual resumes potentially allow you to stand out in a sea of job seekers.

Some of the sites charge a fee, but I liked the free one, VisualCV.com, which is growing at a monthly rate of 20%. Begin by importing your LinkedIn profile or upload the word or PDF resume you currently use. That’s just the beginning. What sets virtual resumes apart is the ability to feature videos, photos, a portfolio of your work, employment history, charts, graphs and more. Instead of sending an attached file, you send a URL to your online resume. For potential employers, that eliminates printing and computer memory usage — and it’s green.

Will virtual resumes be the new standard? That’s tough to say, but it’s worth some time and experimentation in its early stage.

Social Networking Made Simple

Social networking is now an acceptable job search tool. I’ve done a column on my favorites, which include LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, but the latest trend is simplification. Here’s a quick reference chart on some of the sites I’ve found useful in bringing multiple sites together with one app and saving time by not having to constantly log-in.

Online PR Free for 30 Days

If you’re looking to promote your business or brand during these tough times, take a look at PitchEngine.com. Create a press release online that gets pitched out to a collection of hungry writers and eager readers who subscribe to the site. It offers a more conversational approach to PR, and you can engage readers with multimedia content, instead of plain old text, that will be shared on GoogleNews. Your release is free for the first 30 days. After that, you have to pay a fee.

These are just a few of the applications out there and for now, may be useful in increasing your job search efficiency and digital presence.

Read the column on MediaPost.

Office supply giant Staples is offering 20 free copies of your resume and 40 free business cards in what they’re calling their Career Stimulus Program. It’s always fun to get free stuff, especially when you’re on the hunt for a job and have little dough to spare.  Hop into your local Staples before June 13 to take advantage of the offer. It’s a nice idea, though a slightly unsettling sign of the times.

The New York Times ran a piece on cinco de mayo about the millions of people that are being hired right now. All we tend to hear from the news media is bad news about the millions laid off, the millions out of jobs, the millions losing homes, the millions who will die of swine flu. (So, that last one is unrelated, but bad news nonethless!) Meanwhile, according to the Times, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says 4.3 million people were hired in February alone. Who knew?

“The best thing you can say about these numbers is it speaks to the dynamism of the U.S. economy, and the net negative number that we all traffic in masks that,” said Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at ITG, a research and trading firm. “Ninety out of 100 people who know the number — 650,000 were lost in February — think that means no one was hired and 650,000 were fired.”

In February — before the economy started to show the first faint signs of a possible recovery — there were three million job openings nationwide. And despite large new job losses likely to be announced Friday, there are still millions of job openings.”

Sure, the article goes on to talk about the availability of work at Wal-Mart and grocery stores, but they also mention hospitals, colleges, and technology big shot I.B.M. as places that are hiring. Basically, there’s hope! Even if it means reducing your salary like one man quoted in the article who makes half of what he used to, but says he is just happy to be working and could no longer stand to sit at home. The lesson here is to be flexible. Not many have the luxury to wait this recession out and hope to get their dream job back. It’s time to analyze what areas you’re willing to compromise on.

The down side, said the article, is that while jobs exist, there are four unemployed people for every one employment opportunity and that means competition. But as I’ve mentioned in columns before, it’s always during tough times where people are forced to be more innovative and more creative to get the job, to make the sale, to have success. So let’s enjoy this little bit of good news and see the competition that may be against you as a challenge to showcase your creativity and abilities and not another pot-hole in the road to employment.

CNBC also covered this bit of good news. Watch the clip which also mentions the issue of lowering your expectations and being overqualified (a topic I recently covered in my column.)

By Beverly Weinstein

Concerns about less staff to do the same, or sometimes more work, in the wake of major lay-offs is common place across media companies. Managers are also worried about burning out the staff they have left. To tackle this issue, I turned to Leadership Coach Gary Schuman for his advice.

“Sometimes it’s physically impossible for a reduced staff to take on the amount of work that may be required after major staff reductions,” said Schuman. “Let’s say there are 50 things the group was built to do but with less people now they can only do 40. What do you do about the last 10?”

Don’t start with your boss to solve the problem, although you may eventually end up in his or her office. Instead Schuman suggests the department manager along with his or her team take the first steps in tackling work load issues. “Being willing to go up the ladder to fight for your people is a big move, but don’t go unless you’re well prepared with specifics and suggestions,” advised Schuman. The following will give you some ideas about how to start the process.

Building a Map/Setting Priorities
1 – Bring everyone in your group together to map what the department is responsible for doing.

2 – Establish priorities from high to low.

3 – Examine work load distribution. Are some people super swamped and others able to take on more work? If so, consider redeploying work based on key priorities that have already been outlined in the mapping process.

4 – Is there any work that can be pushed to other departments?

5 – Are junior staff members and entry level assistants being fully utilized? Consider enriching their jobs and giving them more responsibility.

6 – Can you take on non-paid undergrad or grad school interns? (There’s even a movement afoot for “executive” interns, basically people that may be unemployed and willing to work for free in order to learn a new skill set.)

7 – Are there reports that are being done out of habit more than out of necessity? Can any of these be eliminated?

Process Improvement

Schuman also suggests that you may want to look at process improvement. Processes that have been around forever may be inefficient. Making them more efficient not only is an effective time saver but it makes people feel better about their job. GE’s Work Out Program is a great source of information on this topic, says Schuman. “Just try Googling “GE Work Out” and there are 700,001 entries. That’s more than enough to get you started.”

Once you’ve done your mapping, built your priority list and considered all of your options, there still may be too much work to do. Now it’s time to go to your boss for his or her advice, but you’ll be having the conversation armed with specifics. There’s a good chance you’ll not only come away with some much needed help but you will have earned respect from your staff and from your boss for undertaking the process.

Consequences of Burn Out

“You can only burn people out for so long,” Schuman said, as a final caution on what can happen if you don’t address the workload issue. “Yes, it’s a terrible economy and everybody is expected to do more, but if they hit burn out they become less efficient, get angry and lose their emotional commitment to the job. And once the economy improves, it’s always the best people that will leave you first if you haven’t dealt with the issues.”

Gary Schuman is president of New York based CDL Consulting, who works with senior executives at several of the major media companies.

Read the column on MediaPost.

This weekend’s New York Time’s featured an interview with Disney’s CEO, Robert Iger. His advice and career anecdotes proved helpful for executives of any level, whether you’re a manager struggling to motivate in these tough times or an entry level professional discouraged by poor management and few opportunities.

When asked what he tells his managers about leadership, Iger said:

“Most of it is by example. But when I get a chance to preach a bit, which I do to some extent, I talk about the importance of patience. I talk about the need to be direct with your people. I talk frequently about the need to be accessible — very important for a leader. You’ve got to get out there, and I exhort everyone who works for me to do just that.”

In terms of staying in touch with people throughout the company? Iger gave an answer similar to some tips featured in one my recent columns on leadership. Here’s what he had to say:

“It takes a lot of getting around. You have to see people, and not get too involved in too many extracurricular activities and all the other gravitational pulls that exist in the business world. When you meet people face to face, you’ve got to project an accessibility — that you can get on an elevator and actually have a conversation with someone or go to an employee cafeteria and talk with people, or stroll a floor of a building and connect with people. I make it part of my schedule to do that.

I was in Orlando recently, where we have over 60,000 people. I couldn’t touch every one of them, but many of them knew I was there, because I was out seeing people and getting around, and that’s a good thing. One, you show you care. Two, it gives you an ability to hear people. But I wouldn’t hear them if I stayed at Burbank in my office all the time.”

With over-worked staffs all across the media industry, it’s key that managers are getting leadership advice from the pro’s. Check back for this week’s upcoming Dear Bev column for more on leadership from Leadership Coach Dr. Gary Shuman.