Who can I connect YOU to today?

Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Time: 12:30 PM – 5 PM
Location: Norris Conference Center
Address: 2525 W. Anderson Lane
Austin, Texas 78757

Scott Ingram (www.networkinaustin.com) and I decided that we wanted to do something for all of the job seekers in Austin.  We wanted it to be high energy and highly motivational.  Thus, the idea for the “Get Hired – Job Seeker Strategies that Work” event was born. (www.budurl.com/gethired)

Things started with us securing Brian Massey – The Market for Me and Christine Lambden & Casey Conner – Extraordinary Interviews to be the other two keynotes (along with me) for the event. 

From that point we were able to secure several great experts to guide our tables:

Monica Carson – The Ginac Group
Catherine Jewell – The Career Passion Coach
Keith Quackenbush – HCI International
Donna Fox – Fox Career Mentors
Stan Tyler – Champions Edge
Julie Lara – Lara Executive Image

The idea was that we would have a keynote speech followed by a round table discussion with an expert of the job seeker’s choosing.  At the beginning of the event Job Seekers choose from sticky notes to identify which speaker they would talk to in each round.  During the round, the table (which contained 7 job seekers and an expert) would have a mini discussion on a variety of topics designed to help the job seeker.  This process was repeated with 2 more keynotes and 2 more round table discussions.

The topics at the table were:

Monica Carson – The Ginac Group: What’s Your Story? How to Define Your Brand
Catherine Jewell – The Career Passion Coach: New Resume, New Career
Donna Fox – Fox Career Mentors: What Should I Be When I Grow Up?
Keith Quackenbush – HCI International: What’s Your Product?
Julie Lara – Lara Executive Image: Appearance is Everything: Making a Great First Impression
Stan Tyler – Champions Edge: How to Expand the Value of Your Job Search
Brian Massey – Cardboard Resume: Using Cardboard Resume to find Your Champion
Kim Brushaber – BridgeATX: Effectively working with Staffing Agencies

If you’d like to hear Brian’s Discussion on “The Champion Strategy- Why didn’t I hear from you”  you can go to his blog at – http://marketformebook.com/job-seeker-why-havent-i-heard-from-you/ .  It’s a good lecture and well worth listening to.   As an extra bonus – at the bottom of the page you can click under my picture and hear me talk about “Networking your way to your next job” -  or click here to just pull the mp3 file.  Unfortunately we couldn’t record Casey and Christine’s lecture because there were two of them and only one mic for recording.  Oh well, next time we’ll plan better!

We received some great feedback from both the experts and the job seekers.  If you went I’d love to get your testimonials as comments on this blog.

All in all I think it was a great event and met all of our expectations.

Thank you to all of the job seekers who attended as well as all of the experts who were able to participate.  We couldn’t have had the event without you!

Of course, I also need to express my greatest appreciation to Scott Ingram – without whom I could have never pulled this event off.