Every week I take a call or two from someone who found themselves in the job market, sometimes for the first time in twenty years. Here is what I tell them to prepare for a job search:

1. Create a ‘personal brand’. Creating a story line of who you are and what you can do for an employer is key–no one has the desire or interest to spend time figuring that out for you.

2. Create a stellar resume. Not ‘good enough’, not ‘good’, not ‘pretty good’. Stellar.

3. If you are a Director or above, consider creating a bio as well.

4. Create a detailed Linked In bio. Linked In, with 40M profiles, is becoming a great tool to find talent.

5. Make yourself identifiable. Use tools like Plaxo, Spoke, FaceBook to allow yourself to be found. And yes, put an email address on those.

6. Make sure your resume is in as many recruiting databases, company databases, etc. as possible. Don’t worry about over exposure, everyone is or should be, identifiable these days.

7. Network. Statistically, most people find their next job from a connection of a connection.

8. Be upbeat. No one cares about how you got screwed in your last job or how mean or political your last boss was.

9. On that note, be sure you have a well thought out answer to why you were let go and if your job history is spotty, address that out the shoot.

10. Landing an new job is a full time job. The people who tend to land quickly are the ones who put 40-60 hours in a job search. Luck plays a factor but generally speaking, the more effort you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it. Like most things.