Rock the Vote: My New Site has Been Nominated for the CSS Design Awards

I am out-of-this-world excited to announce http://www.ShawnGraham.me (my new digital home) has been nominated for the CSS Design Awards—a contest recognizing the world’s greatest websites and an inspirational showcase celebrating emerging talent.

Check out my new site and, if you like what you see, show some love by casting your vote. Just click on the thumbnail of ShawnGraham.me to cast your official nod.

And if you would, please ask friends, family, your friends’ families and your family’s friends to vote as well. Winning this award would mean the world to Moly and I—over the past few months we put our heart and soul into bringing the site to life.

I hope you enjoy my new virtual digs as much as we enjoyed creating them.

I have a brand spanking new website.

For the past few months, I’ve been conspiring with a rock star designer on a complete overhaul of my virtual digs to coincide with the launch of my freelance career consulting and marketing communications business.

For the past few months, I’ve poured my heart and soul into every word of every page. And today I’m excited to announce that my new site is officially live and in living color.

So welcome! Please let me show you around…

I wanted my bio to be a little unique — I wanted to share my story: from the apple farm on which I grew up that was purchased by my grandparents in the early 1900s, to my first entrepreneurial venture at age 10 to today. Oh, and there are even a few pictures to look at.

Since consulting is at the heart of my business, I wanted to provide a menu of services for each of my focus areas brought to you in four snazzy buckets: career, higher education, entrepreneurs, and medium to large businesses. Along those same lines, I also thought it was important explain how I work with each client starting with our first conversation.

Next, you’ll find speaking which includes a real, live glamour shot from a recent presentation to a group of eager and highly-talented MBA students at Duquesne University. There you’ll also find an overview of presentation topics, a list of the organizations at which I’ve presented, and some good old-fashioned testimonials.

My blog includes a fresh new design, tighter categories, links to sites I like, and of course no blog would be complete without Twitter and RSS feeds. I also came up with a fancy new name—Creative Combustion.

The press page includes my media mentions in a few well-known publications and is meant to establish instant credibility as well as thoroughly impress my mom (pronounced “mum”).

Finally, I’ve added a fancy new contact form to make it easier for us to connect. So what are you waiting for? Drop me a line to let me know what you think of my new digs or so we can start to explore how we might be able to work together.

StartWire: Eliminating the resume “black hole”

No matter how hard you try to avoid it, at some point during your job search you will undoubtedly fall victim to the dreaded “resume black hole”—a mysterious place at hiring companies where hundreds of thousands of job applications go never to be seen or heard from again. And that means you, along with scores of other job seekers, will be left frustrated not knowing whether you’re still under consideration or if you were rejected weeks or even months earlier.

In my 10+ years working as a career consultant, I have to say there’s no more frustrating aspect for job seekers than not hearing back from companies to which they’ve applied—something StartWire, a new company focused on radically improving the job search, hopes to change.

“If you’re able to easily track an order from Amazon.com every step of the way, why shouldn’t you be able to do the same with your job applications?” asked Chris Forman, CEO of StartWire, as he was explaining the rationale behind his new business venture. And as luck would have it, the information needed to provide status updates to candidates is already available as part of the Applicant Tracking Software packages used by most large companies.

With StartWire’s new data aggregation engine, job seekers are able to view the status of their applications online through a customizable dashboard and/or receive daily text updates from a list of 1,000+ employers (a list they hope to grow to more than 4,000 employers within the next month).

According to Forman, initial response has been remarkable. “Companies need to start treating job seekers like customers—after all, the job search can be pretty darn emotional.”

Beyond their application update engine, they also offer an expanding assortment of tools designed to help you more effectively leverage your social networks to find a job.

Have you tried StartWire? If so, post a comment and share your thoughts on whether they’ve been able to make the “resume black hole” a little less dark.

Fast Company Blog: Customer Engagement – Why All Companies Could Use a Little MOO

What do you do to make your customers happy that they forked over their hard-earned cash to buy your product or service? I mean beyond the fancy marketing pitch and slick packaging that you used to encourage them to actually buy what you’re selling, what do you do after the sale to make them feel good (or even ecstatic) about their purchase?

Add a little punch to your communication process

MOO.com, producers of high quality ecofriendly business cards, took what would normally be a bland, matter-of-fact order confirmation email and made it fun–something that’s much more engaging for customers.

Read more...

Fast Company Blog: 7 Ways to Experience South by Southwest Without Actually Being There

Each year, thousands of people converge on Austin, Texas to make their annual pilgrimage to the South by South West (SXSW) Music and Film Interactive. And that leaves a huge void for those of us who aren’t able to attend. A never ending stream of Facebook status updates and Tweets from the moment they start packing their suitcases only serve as a constant reminder that 1) we’re not going and 2) we wish we were.

So what do you do if you’re not one of the lucky ones going to SXSW but you still want to keep up with that’s going on and feel like you’re part of the “in crowd?”

Read more.

[Photo via SXSW.com]