I’m never one for holding back, so here it is - our economy is still a complete mess and no one really knows what is happening. As of August, unemployment is at 9.1%  Very few industries are showing increases in job creation - most are flat. Some are still reducing. Almost 50% of those unemployed have been without a job for more than 27 weeks. The number of “involuntary part-time workers” rose from 8.4M to 8.8M in August (what is an “Involuntary part-time worker”? For illustrative purposes, think “investment banker who can’t get a job in the financial industry and now works as a sales person at the Gap.” )

The Department of Labor’s Employment Situation Summary is pretty damn interesting, if you can avoid getting too depressed or too angry because our leaders seem to be floundering. 

I don’t have the time to panic every time Gloom and Doom takes over the NYT or the WSJ, but what’s a girl to do?

A girl can have a plan.  So while there are the basics - save a little more, don’t spend, blah blah blah - there are simple tactics you can put into play in your professional life too. Which, you should be doing anyway. 

The #1 thing to remember - finding a job if you need one or getting a new job if you want something different is going to be challenging.  The competition is going to be Sascha FIERCE.  So you need to be fiercer. 

1. Network. Go have lunch with people. Find out what they are doing, what they are interested in and ask them about it. People LOVE to talk about themselves. So let them. Seeing people will keep you top of mind and give you a much better chance of getting that job HR doesn’t even know about yet. Commit to lunch or coffee with at least 2-3 people per week who you either want to re-connect with or just get their thoughts on the “state of X”. 

2. The Brand of Me. For all of the time we spend building our clients’ brands, we forget one simple thing - you are the brand of you. So why wouldn’t you give your brand the same respect as your client’s brand? Plus, it allows you to create a real-time case study:

• Create a Facebook page. Connect it to your blog and your twitter feed (because I know you have a blog and twitter feed). Throw in your Flickr, Vimeo and Instagram channels too because people want to know you are human. This means you cannot post porn or pictures of yourself doing shots off of the ice luge at your cousins wedding. Unless you want a job at Scores. 
• A very good friend mentioned stalking your favorite companies or wish-list places to work on LinkedIn. You can learn a lot and you may be surprised at who you are already connected to. 
• Use About.Me to manage all of your profiles and pull them into one nice neat place. And use their analytics tool to see what works and what doesn’t. 
• Crowdbooster is another good tool. But you need that Facebook page (It won’t measure activity on your personal page). 
• Get your Klout score up. You can make fun of Klout as much as you want. But top VC’s are using Klout as a key criteria when reviewing applicants. And tossing anyone who doesn’t have one above 50. Some agencies set the minimum at 30. Regardless of what you think, it matters. 

3. Make pretty pictures. A CV on a piece of paper is fine. But everyone’s CV is on a piece of paper. You need pictures. Use Visual CV and you can add and manage audio, video and digital content for your CV. Or use QR codes to link to your digital content (if the person reviewing your CV does not know what a QR code is, you don’t want to work there). You can also create a really cool, infographic CV without much design background using templates provided at VizualResume. 

4. Maintenance. You don’t want to be stuck doing this all in one weekend. Do little bits at a time, keep things updated, take a look at your CV every month or so and make refinements.  Makes the entire process much easier and you can see progress. 

All simple and all kind of fun to do.  Let Washington grapple with the bigger issues. Or, um, maybe not.