Perfect Pitch: Creating YOUR Best Elevator Spech

Article first published as How to Give the Perfect Pitch on Technorati.

I’m in sales, so I’m always pitching something.  Whether it’s a brand, an idea, or a product or service, I’m comfortable with the process of creating a compelling pitch and persuading others to “buy in” with their support, budget, effort, or other resources.

As a job seeker, you should get equally comfortable with the notion that you’re selling yourself to potential employers, but also to any number of people along the way who can help you get connected to new opportunities, based on their perception of who you are, what you bring to the party, and where your passion lies.  Your ability to concisely articulate your unique value proposition might be the strongest weapon in your career arsenal and will exponentially improve your networking and job search results.   You can call this pitch a personal branding statement, elevator pitch, or individual value proposition, but whatever you call it, create one now.

So, grab some pencil and paper and start drafting the elements of your pitch.

1)     What’s your name?  Sounds obvious, right? You need to be clear about what name you want to use professionally.  Stay consistent.   This can be a challenge for those of us with maiden names, or for folks who prefer a shortened name or nickname.  Get clear on what you want to be called and use that name consistently.  Make sure that if you choose to use a nickname, it isn’t one that will negatively impact people’s perception of you. (For example, George W. Bush stopped encouraging people call him “Junior” and even Eminem dropped the name “Slim Shady”, right?)

2)     What do you do?  How do you see yourself?  What service or role do you do well or do you wish to do in your next role?  You can be creative here.  If you’re a salesperson for an HR outsourcing company, you can say that you help companies connect with experts to put HR best practices in place. If you’re a private chef, you could say that work with busy households to ensure that they always have delicious, healthful food available for family meals, snacks and special occasions.  You can also of course say what you are: nurse, teacher, or student. Be authentic!  Is your self-image tied to your title, or is it a specific facet of your job/career?  There’s no right answer here. You need to be accurate about your qualifications and core focus, but you can choose whether to say who you work for and what your title is, or focus more on what’s important to you about what you do and frame it in terms of where you want to go next.

3)     What’s your passion?  What truly compels you?  Is it an industry, platform, environmental concern, industry best practice, or some other focus?  If you’re passionate about some aspect of your current role or if a personal passion is driving a career change, you should communicate this. You’re much more interesting, credible, and persuasive if your passion shines through.  

4)     How do others benefit from working with you?  What unique value do you bring to the table?  What outcome or results can you help an organization achieve?  What accomplishment or trait do you possess that’s important for people to know about?  You don’t want to come across as a braggart, but you do need to toot your own horn!

5)     Where are you going? Do you have a clear vision or career aspiration?  Are you planning relocation or will you soon be earning additional certification or education?  If so, this needs to be part of your pitch, so that it’s forward-looking and enables the listener to help you.

Write ideas down for these categories.  Play around with options and narrow it down to your best answers to each question.  Now, take those concepts and create one paragraph that captures you.  Read it aloud.  Does it sound natural, like something you’d actually say?  If not, tweak it – you need to get really comfortable with this statement for conversational use. Make sure it’s not more than about 20 seconds – we’re a short attention span nation! Now, practice, practice, practice! Run it by your best friend, spouse, mentor, colleague or other confidant.  Get some feedback, then, retool and rehearse again.  Want some more ideas?  Look here: http://www.ehow.com/how_5450473_create-personal-elevator-pitch-interview.html.

 

Now that you have your Perfect Pitch, how should you use it?  Use it at networking events, in interviews, introductions, when you catch up with people from your past, or when you talk to a recruiter.  You can also use it to craft your career objective on your resume, or to create your Linked In profile statement (or any other Social Media profiles), and you can use a version of it in any cover letter you write.  Be sure you can both write and say it in a voice that is uniquely yours.

Now get to work, so you can get to work and tackle the 21^st century job market! 

10 Ways To Put the WORK Into Your Network!

In my last post, I noted some optimism in corporate hiring as determined by the recent Manpower Employment Outlook survey.  This survey always has great insights for job seekers and employers alike; I strongly encourage you to check it out.  You can sort the data most relevant to you by geographical region, sector and other categories.  Here is a link: http://press.manpower.com/reports.  Okay, enough free advertising for my competition, here is today’s post…

One of the more interesting tidbits I gleaned from the most recent survey suggests that 84% of U.S. workers plan to look for a new position in 2011.  Wow, right?  While this number sounds intuitively high to me and we could debate the difference between “those who plan to look” and “those who will actually look”, I think its undeniable that 2011 will be an active market, both in terms of hires made by U.S. employers, and by the overall volume of job search activity we see. Competition in the job search market will definitely be high!  This is particularly true for executive-level roles, high paying technology jobs, and managerial positions where some statistics indicate that as many as 90% of the openings are never advertised and are filled by referrals and networking.  What does this mean for you?  You better get out there and WORK that network if you want to land a plum job in the near future!  Here are some 21^st century tips for putting the WORK into your network.  You don’t need to embrace them all immediately, but take steps every week to expand your network, visibility, and access to opportunity. 

1)     Link In.  If you are not on Linked In, you should be.  It is an invaluable tool for researching who you already know at firms that may be of interest to you and reconnecting with past colleagues.  It’s a great place to build your online professional reputation and define your personal brand.  Create a compelling profile and provide regular (but not constant) status updates, reminding your network that you are on the job market (if you are currently unemployed).  If you need to be a bit more stealth about your job search, promote yourself as an expert in your field by sharing articles and informative content relevant to your audience. Join some groups to further expand your network and learn about unlisted job opportunities.  Here is a link to a blogger I really respect who offers several great tips for how to make Linked In work for you.  It is geared primarily at Sales professionals, but you are selling yourself online, so start thinking like a salesperson! http://yoursalesplaybook.com/21-ways-to-master-linkedin/

2)     Friend someone.  If you’re comfortable with Facebook as a platform, get on there and use it to your advantage.  Make sure your profile has up to date professional information and add some of your close professional colleagues, work friends and past colleagues as friends.  Try to update your status and join the conversation, on at least a weekly basis, to stay relevant.  Be sure to “Like” the pages of prospective employers and/or recruiting firms that could help you.   If you’re actively and not confidentially looking for a job, make it known!  Idea: let’s say you have an interview coming up at Pfizer and you do not need not keep it confidential, update your status and let people know.  Ask your friends if they now anyone who works there.  You can even sort your friends into groups and update only the appropriate ones if you prefer.

3)     Branch Out.   Facebook has a professional networking app called Branch Out that you can launch and use to connect with your Facebook friends.  You can download your Linked In profile, so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel or spend a lot of time creating your online brand here. If you’re like me, your Facebook friends circle is not the same as your Linked In network, and learning more about where your friends work or have worked before can be a very helpful tool in you job search.

4)     Meet Up.  If you don’t know about this site, check it out: http://www.meetup.com/find/.  Meet up allows you to search out informal get-togethers and networking opportunities in your geographic area.  You could get together with other job seekers to share leads, or with individuals in your industry to share information about professional topics of interest.  You could even get together with fellow badminton aficionados, aspiring sommeliers, or iguana enthusiasts.  It does not have to be strictly work-related; the idea is to bond with new people you’ll have an affinity with and share your interest in finding a new opportunity.  You never know where it will come from! You can also use the “events” app on Linked In to find relevant networking opportunities, seminars and professional enrichment forums. Especially if you’re not working, it is a great time to do volunteer work, and attend charity functions.  This may give you a chance to keep your key skills in use while making new contacts and uncovering potential opportunities. You can still go old school here - get involved in professional networking and/or local Chamber of Commerce events and really dive in.  Volunteer to share your talents on a committee or speak on a panel.  This way, you’ll get great exposure, help others, and enhance your credibility as an expert – all great ways to find a new job!     

5)     Treat someone.  Ask someone in your network out for lunch or coffee or a drink.  Offer to treat!  Use the opportunity to pointedly discuss your career goals and how they could help you. Great choices would be a former co-worker, former manager, mentor or former subordinate.  Maybe you have a friend who worked 5 years ago at a company you’d like to know more about.  Find out what they are up to and offer ways you could possibly help them as well with introductions, information, or whatever you may have at your disposal.  Help others and they’ll help you back! 

6)     Befriend a Recruiter.  Good recruiters are experts at getting people hired, at reviewing resumes and at offering career advice.  Seek out and invest in building relationships with a couple in your geographic area, who focus on your chosen field.  Make yourself a valuable resource to them, by referring other job seeker/candidates to them, and/or letting them know about openings that aren’t right for you, but that they could potentially fill.  Most will be delighted to network with you – that’s a key component of their success.  They’ll be especially happy to help you if you help them by expanding their network too.

7)      Practice Your Sales Pitch.  I know, you may not think of yourself as a salesperson and you may feel odd touting your accomplishments, but you need to craft a (30-second or less) pitch about yourself to use when you meet new people or reconnect with prior associates.  It just needs to be a couple of quick sentences about what you’re good at, what you’ve done, and what you’re looking to do next.  When people ask, “how are you doing?” or “what are you up to these days?” in social setting, haul it out!  People probably won’t look for opportunities for you if they don’t know what you do, what you want to do, and that you are potentially looking.  Write down a few options and try them on for size.  Practice in your car or in the shower – it’s okay – nobody will know!      

8)     Get Carded.  Make sure you have easy ways for all these new connections to find you.  Create business cards for yourself to distribute.  You can create your own in Word or go online and get free or very inexpensive ones made.  This site has some good options: http://tinyurl.com/4s83jnj.  Be sure to include a link to your Linked In profile, your phone numbers and a personal email address that’s work-friendly.  In other words, liveforcats@ymail.com or bigsexypapa@aol.com just will not cut it.  Go ahead and create a free email account with your first and last name and use that for all your job search/professional correspondence.   If you have a smartphone, download apps that allow you to easily exchange contact information with new people you meet.  Linked In for iPhone is great for this, as is the Bump iPhone app.  Cam Card Lite is another app available for multiple smart phones that makes it very easy to share your contact info, and store the data for the new people you meet. 

9)     Go Mining.  Take some time and really dig into your social networking sites to mine great info on companies you are interested in.  If there is a job at AOL for an IT Project Manager that interests you, look on Linked In and Facebook / BranchOut to see who you know that works there.  Most companies have employee referral bonus programs so if you are qualified for the role, your contacts will often be more than happy to refer you in and get the cash.  Maybe you’re a marketing professional and have decided that you really want to work for Proctor & Gamble, even though you don’t know of any specific openings appropriate for you.  Mine your networks for connections that work there and ask to treat them to coffee for an informational interview. Share your passion for marketing and what your unique skills are and pick your contact’s brain about the culture, who the movers and shakers are in the company and which units are growing.  It’s invaluable information to get.  Then, follow up with promoting yourself and of course, always with tremendous gratitude to those who helped you.

10)   Be the Best Version of Yourself!    Try to stay positive and encouraged about what YOU bring to the party!  If you are passionate about your brand, others will be too!  While you’re promoting yourself, promote and help others. Share information and really engage people in conversation.  Most of the skills that make people great networkers are really not that different than the ones we learned in Kindergarten to make friends: be respectful, treat others how you want to be treated, be helpful, let people know what you want in a polite way, and play nice! You’ll be rewarded. Most importantly though, do be yourself.  Remember, if you act like someone else to get a job, you may end up in the wrong role.

Now get out there and increase your visibility, promote your expertise and help others so that you can build a fabulous network that you can really make WORK for you and succeed in the 21^st century job market!   

          

Power Up Your Resume!

So first the good news: we’ve now seen 10 consecutive months of U.S. private sector employment gains.  College hiring is reportedly up 3% over prior year statistics, and according to the latest Manpower Annual Employment Outlook Survey, corporate America is “reporting the most optimistic hiring expectations in more than two years… The adjusted Outlook for Quarter 1 2011 is +9%, up from +5% during the same period last year and +5% during Quarter 4 2010. “ Sounds rosy, right?  If so, consider this; while some regions and individual sectors are showing signs of robust hiring agendas, many economists agree that the increase in newly created corporate roles does not yet outpace the amount of unemployed individuals actively seeking jobs.  Moreover, a more active hiring market will engage discouraged workers who had abandoned their job search, to again seek employment.  What does this mean to you if you are an active job seeker, or even an employed individual, considering a potential move?  It means that the job market is still uber-competitive and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.  You will clearly need to find a way to differentiate yourself from the pack if you want to land a great job in your chosen field.  You’ll need to build a strong personal brand and go to market with excellent marketing collateral…in the form of a Powered Up 21^st century resume.

I’ve been in Staffing, Human Capital Management and Consulting Management for more than 17 years and have reviewed literally tens of thousands of resumes.  I’ve hired hundreds of people myself, and placed thousands more with clients.  Frequently, people come to me for advice on their resumes and the number one suggestion I have is “Toot your own horn!” Seriously, a resume is NOT the place for humility or shyness.  You absolutely need to be your own champion, highlight all of your significant accomplishments, and make it very simple for the folks reading your resume (or software programs parsing it) to quickly see how you stand out in a crowd. You need to be honest in self-representation, but don’t be afraid to sing your praises from the mountaintops!  There is plenty of time for modesty and a low profile once you get the job (or even in the interview!).

In my last blog entry, I offered tips on writing a resume that incorporated enough job description key words to be successfully recognized by Applicant Tracking Software.  By the way, if you somehow missed this extraordinarily witty, insightful and helpful read, please feel free to check it out here:  http://wotherspoonswords.blogspot.com/2011/01/creating-winning-resume-in-era-of.html

      

You should absolutely heed this advice and use the keywords you find time and again in job descriptions for your particular area of specialty throughout your resume.  You should also craft a credible, targeted career objective to open the resume – consider it your elevator pitch.  It is the first thing someone will read when they receive your resume so it should state who you are, why you are right for that particular job, and what you bring to the table that is unique to you.  However, beyond peppering your resume with job description key words and writing a great opening statement, there is a lot more to creating an engaging resume that will grab peoples’ attention, help them connect the dots on why you’ll help them accomplish their objectives in hiring for this role, and get you an interview.  So, here it is…

Tip #2: Power Up your resume!

Take a look at your current resume.  What does it say about you? Does it capture what you’ve really accomplished over the course of your career?  Does it speak clearly to your sense of pride and what you’ve done to drive positive and measurable business outcomes for your employer?    If it is just a ho-hum re-wording of your job description, technical skills, work history, blah blah blah…I assure you it will not get you noticed.  You must be accurate and honest about what you did, and its imperative to clearly demonstrate your key tasks and responsibilities, but that alone won’t get you noticed in today’s job safari. Following are some examples of how you can Power Up your resume in a few easy steps.

First remove all personal pronouns and identifiers from your resume; those are for amateurs.  You’re not writing an article about yourself in the society pages! Next, add a relevant level of detail to your key tasks and responsibilities that will really help employers understand how you spent your time and what your full range of competencies are.  As an example, instead of “I led a team of sales personnel”, consider “Selected, trained, mentored and managed the daily activities and ongoing metrics of a high performance sales team”.    Rather than, “I was responsible for keeping all accounting records”, try the Powered Up version:  “Managed and maintained a portfolio of 500+ accounts payable and receivable records and ensured fiscal reconciliation in support of corporate objectives”.

Think about each line on your resume as a chance to tell your story, to make the most of what you specifically did to benefit your employer, and to best highlight what skills and experience you bring to the party.  As you do this, consider not only the job that you had, but also the role to which you aspire.  Perhaps you are a successful sales professional applying for sales management roles.  You’d want to specifically highlight what you have done in your role as a superstar individual producer to select, train, mentor, and/or assist others on the sales team. If you are a software tester and are going for QA Manager roles, be sure to highlight your experience as a test lead, or even informal leadership tasks that you completed in your prior roles.   

Another key way to Power Up your resume is to quantify your results!  Everyone is interested in measurable business benefit and what you’ll be able to do for the organization if they hire you. So, instead of the ho-hum  “executed process improvements”, Power It Up!  Go with, “identified and implemented a major process improvement project increasing the firm’s targetable account base by 150,000 customers with expected annual value of $40M”. Rather than “opened new accounts and sold into an existing customer base”, how about “Developed a new business target pipeline of $3M in revenue and secured 8 new clients.  Managed a high value legacy customer and increased sales and margin by 25% in year over year performance. ”  Power Up the boring “oversaw collections and aging reports” and change it to “managed an aging portfolio of nearly 250 individual clients and reduced bad debt reserves by 75% while improving DSO metrics from average of Net 65 days to Net 40, improving corporate cash flow dramatically.” No matter what your role or industry, there are clear ways for you to spell out exactly what you set out to do, what you accomplished, and how your employer benefited from these accomplishments. 

These are just a few examples of how to Power Up your resume using action words and results-focused content that WILL get you noticed.  Take the time to really work on the resume and have someone you trust review it and provide candid feedback.  You’ll be glad that you did!  Resume writing is like almost everything else in life, the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it! Uh oh, I sound like my mother hauling out that old adage, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all, right?  Now, get to work and start job hunting the smart way! And, don’t forget to check out my next blog; I’ll share some wisdom on how to use your network effectively to find the best jobs out there…stay tuned!!

Daphne Wotherspoon is an expert at getting the right people hired into the right jobs.  She has nearly 20 years of experience in the staffing, consulting, recruiting, and human capital management industries.  An industry leading sales professional, entrepreneur, general manager, and recruiter, Daphne has hired and placed more than 2000 job seekers at Fortune 500 and mid-market companies, not for profit institutions, and government agencies.  Currently, Daphne is a founding partner of Aligned360, a Talent on Demand Solutions firm located in Northern Virginia.  She is also a mother of two, an avid blogger, social media enthusiast, and an aspiring TV chef.  She has been featured in Staffing Industry Review, and the Washington Business Journal, and in 2009, she was selected to be a contestant on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, a nationally-televised game show (which did not unfortunately result in millionaire status!).  For more information and helpful suggestions, tips and notations on business trends, follow Daphne on Twitter @dspoon1 or check out Aligned360 on Facebook.

Creating a Winning Resume in the Era of Automated Applicant Tracking

The U.S. Commerce Department reported today that Gross Domestic Product, the broadest measure of economic activity, rose at a 3.2 percent annual rate in the October through December 2010 quarter, representing a potential shift in the dynamics of the job market. Many sectors have already recovered and have a robust hiring agenda for 2011. This means that if your career was hi-jacked by the recent economic downturn and you are either unemployed, or unhappy in your current role, the next few months are a great time for you to evaluate new opportunities. So, is it time to dust off that 4-year old resume and add your latest and greatest job title, accomplishments and tweaks to your objective? Not so fast! To get noticed in today’s hiring climate, you need to embrace some updated resume writing and job seeking strategies that capitalize on key business trends.

I’ve been in Staffing, Human Capital Management and Consulting Management for more than 17 years and have seen many changes to the business process utilized by recruiters. When I started in this business, we all had 1-2 page resumes painstakingly typed out on our IBM Selectrics. We then waited for the Sunday classifieds to come out so that we could write a detailed cover letter, mail that together with our resume in an envelope, (or if we were lucky, and really cutting edge fax it over!) to hiring managers who then individually reviewed each resume and selected the best candidates for interview. Things have changed a bit I’d say! I’ve never seen a bigger shift in how things get done than over the last decade as the internet, online job boards, social media, and the prevalence of Applicant Tracking Systems have come to dominate the hiring process. This blog entry and those that follow will help you better understand how to write a resume in the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century, what happens to it once you apply for a job, and how to better control your own destiny throughout the application, interview and selection process. Whether you are actively looking for a job, or considering a career change in the next 18 months, keeping these tips in mind can make you more productive and help you to better achieve your career goals.

An overarching change in the employment world is the wide-ranging use of automated Applicant Tracking Systems to drive talent acquisition. Nearly all of the Fortune 500 have ATS’ in place, as do nearly every staffing company, consulting firm, and direct placement agency. The Software as a Service model that now predominates the ATS market, means that even mid-market and smaller firms can adopt ATS at a fairly low cost of entry. What does this mean for you, the job seeker? It means that in all likelihood, unless your resume has a 90% match to the stated job criteria, no human being will physically touch nor directly view your resume if you apply via the web, which is the leading point of entry for today’s job applicants. Ouch, right? This is the infamous black hole we’re all too familiar with. The good news is that knowing that ATS’ are in place and how they work can help you with a keen advantage as you embark on your own job safari.

Today’s Tip: Keywords – Learn to recognize and use them!

Almost every job description or online posting you see will have keywords embedded throughout the narrative. You need to learn to recognize those terms used often in your career field or desired role and pepper them throughout your resume. Moreover, placing as many of these keywords as possible near the top of your resume will improve your match criteria (or, how the ATS sees you as matching up to the job). Think of the ATS as an online matchmaker! In fact, the technology that drives these systems is very similar to how many online dating services select potential mates for their members. It is also what drives many SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools and techiques. It’s all about speaking the same language!

Check out the following excerpt from a current online job posting for a Project Manager with a leading healthcare provider; what keywords do you see?

Essential Functions:


- Deliver on-time, on-budget projects to meet or exceed customer expectations.

- Manage supply and demand to ensure adequate resources are available and delivery commitments are met.


- Act as the primary interface to the business partners and interface with the IT Business Segment Partners for issue resolution and project initiation.


- Manage project financials, estimates, timelines, status reports, issue logs and remediation plans.




Basic Qualifications:


- Minimum of 6 years experience managing IT projects including creating and maintaining project budgets along with cost accounting of resources.


- Minimum of 4 years experience as the primary project manager on highly complex and large scale IT Development projects.


- Experience driving projects with a strong customer focus



- Proven expertise to build, track and monitor project plan(s) using either MS Project or Clarity Resource Management to ensure that the project remains on track with regard to schedule and budget

While there are many possibilities in this excerpt for keywords that the recruiter or hiring manager may select to use in their search criteria, here are a few definite words and phrases likely to be a part of the search string:

“IT Development Projects”, “Project Management”, “Manage Project Financials”, “MS Project or Clarity”, “Project Budgets”

Take the time to browse several job openings for your particular desired job and take note of the keywords that come up repeatedly. You can do this easily on www.monster.com by searching on your desired job title, or on an aggregation site like www.indeed.com, which pulls open jobs in a defined regional area based on your own keyword searches. I’ll give you a hint – you are going to see a LOT of the same words used repeatedly. We recruiters are NOT that always that creative by nature and we sometimes use cut and paste or boiler plate descriptions quite a bit! What you’ll notice is several keywords that pop up in almost every job opening for your skill set, which you can incorporate liberally into your own resume template. Then, you can further customize each individual resume you send out to reflect keywords for more specific selection criteria associated with that particular job. Back to our prior example, here is a further excerpt from the Healthcare IT Project Manager job description above:

Preferred Qualifications:


- Healthcare experience either in health plan operations or care delivery


- Technical background is highly preferred as projects are geared towards technical integration and the building of SOA services.

Spot any keywords? How about “Healthcare” or “health plan operations” or “SOA”? If in fact you have this experience, definitely incorporate it into your resume in a very visible and targeted manner, ideally in the career objective or summary of qualifications at the top of the document to improve your odds of becoming a “searchable match” for the job. Obviously, if you do not have these preferred qualifications, you cannot and should not fabricate them, but don’t miss the chance to really highlight these skills if you do possess them. Maybe you have SOA experience, but you’ve called it “Service Oriented Architecture”? If so, change your term (or add it parenthetically) to match their term, “SOA”. Perhaps you are not a Healthcare PM, but you are an IT PM with good integration experience and operations experience. Use all of these words frequently to improve your match criteria and increase your chances of getting selected for review. Maybe you have been a consultant and worked across multiple industries, if healthcare was one of them, by all means, make that clear. Even if you do not have healthcare experience adding your desire to move into that high growth field in your career objective will dramatically improve your match results. Here is some sample verbiage to incorporate into an “ATS-optimized career summary” for a Project Manager applying for the above role:

“Customer-focused Project Manager seeking new opportunities in the growing Healthcare IT field, leveraging ten years of experience successfully delivering high value software development, integration, and technology infrastructure projects, on time and on budget, while exceeding client expectations. Specific expertise includes leading a collaborative team of IT peers and business partners to drive a high visibility SOA Services implementation project for a major financial institution.”

With this career objective alone, you’ve now successfully matched many of the keywords and critical job criteria, which will enhance your chances of getting your resume seen by an actual human! You’ve also made it very easy for that individual to quickly determine why you are a fit for their opening – BINGO!

The truth is that you have to do a lot of work up front to ensure your resume gets seen in the age of automation, but doing so has a huge payoff and is ultimately much less time-consuming than spending weeks or months sending resumes into the infamous black hole, with no response. Now, get to work and start job hunting the smart way! And, don’t forget to check out my next blog; I’ll share more tips on resume content that will get you noticed….stay tuned!!

Daphne Wotherspoon is an expert at getting the right people hired into the right jobs. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the staffing, consulting, recruiting, and human capital management industries. An industry leading sales professional, entrepreneur, general manager, and recruiter, Daphne has hired and placed more than 2000 job seekers at Fortune 500 and mid-market companies, not for profit institutions, and government agencies. Currently, Daphne is a founding partner of Aligned360, a Talent on Demand Solutions firm located in Northern Virginia. She is also a mother of two, an avid blogger, social media enthusiast, and an aspiring TV chef. She has been featured in Staffing Industry Review, and the Washington Business Journal, and in 2009, she was selected to be a contestant on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, a nationally-televised game show (which did not unfortunately result in millionaire status!). For more information and helpful suggestions, tips and notations on business trends, follow Daphne on Twitter @dspoon1 or check out Aligned360 on Facebook.