It was in the last century a plain, simple, one-page resume would get you your next job if you weren’t wedded to a company until pension and retirement.

Now websites like visualcv.com are devoted to making it easy to present yourself in print, sound, photo and video, the bar is now officially raised.

Using blogs, podcasts and v-blogs as job search and career management tools is beyond unavoidable, as they’re a given.

Career competition in a global economy requires that an executive be well positioned and high profile to be considered for the best opportunities with a minimum expenditure of energy and dedication of resources.

With the rise of Web 2.0, professional branding, and self-marketing is enhanced using blogs, vlogs, podcasts, micro-blogs, and other tools.

This overview will give you the in’s and out’s of these tools to build professional recognition, subject matter expertise, visibility as a knowledge leader, and intellectual status in a specific sector or industry.

Facebook is just not a pretty face without substance for career growth. Facebook enables informal relationship building in Profiles, networking in Communities, and a professional brochure in Pages.

Twitter is instant messaging with its 140 character micro-blogging posts. But it is also a very powerful tool to update others, make announcements, and create connectivity among social networks. 

Its true possibilities are just beginning to be realized by job seekers and networkers in finding jobs, and key people in companies.

We market our companies, products, and services, but how are we when it comes to marketing ourselves?

Find out how to take a decent, bland resume and use branding techniques to make it into a great “talking paper” that differentiates you from others.

Find out how to stand out from the crowd.

Most people assume that if they build their resume profile on LinkedIn then recruiters and hiring managers will just come to them.

You can spend a long time waiting to be found in a down economy when recruiting slows. Anyways, this is actually not the optimal use of LinkedIn.

Beyond a litany of your work history and professional experience LinkedIn has other features to enhance networking and has added online applications enabling a robust, multi-faceted view of your professional abilities.

Where do you begin and how to you get a jump on maximizing the existing services and the nifty new tools?