If you haven’t figured out that you are being Googled in your job search just as frequently as you are Googling your business contacts, then it is time to enter the world of modern career management. Whether you want to or not, you must develop and maintain some kind of professional online profile and recognize that people are forming opinions about you based on what they find after typing your name into a search engine.

Along with a little humility, there are three important 'ilities' that are critical to your candidature. These traits will ensure that you get noticed by hiring managers and executive recruiters.

No matter how much you want -- or how right you may be for -- a position or a promotion, if you are unable to set yourself apart from your competition, you will lose to the candidate who does. So, how do you "dazzle" the person making the decision regarding your next advancement?

Many individuals approach their work with a need-the-job-to-pay-my-bills attitude -- not a winner's strategy. Adhering to employer-laborer dynamics, reminiscent of the nineteenth century, provides very little motivation to the workforce. Work becomes a forced endeavor with such a mindset and there is no desire to make a difference or to go the extra mile. The end results of this approach are minimal professional growth and a lack of satisfaction. However, what if the perspective were reprogrammed?

However humbled you've been by a layoff, whatever savings you've lost in your portfolio and regardless of the size of your home's equity value - you're still the one with all the power. When, as now, headlines hammer home what you cannot control, remind yourself of the one thing you do control: You.

Simply put, personal branding can be defined as the initial and authentic lasting impression you want to give people. True career entrepreneurs understand that personal brands should be built during times of career comfort.

If you’re trying to stand out among the multitudes of job hunters today, you’ve certainly found some stiff competition. Gone are the days when you could toss your skills and job responsibilities onto a resume, and expect to get nearly immediate calls for interviews.

Remember all the talk in the late 90s of the “brand called you?” Well, much has changed in the past 10 years – including the way we conduct a job search and the way we network with each other. But the original concept of branding yourself, especially in today’s competitive marketplace for plum roles and positions, is more relevant than ever.

In the past 14 months I’ve given 70 presentations including keynotes, luncheon speeches, after–dinner speeches and seminars in virtually every market in the U.S. and mainly for corporate groups of CEOs, key executives, and entrepreneurs. But the most memorable group I spoke to was the May 2008 graduating class of J.E.T. (Jobs and Employment Training) at St. Patrick’s Center on May 30th in my hometown of St. Louis.

When clients retain us as an executive search firm, they expect us to recruit stellar candidates. Stellar candidates are typically the ones who have a job and aren’t proactively seeking new opportunities (this does not mean that someone who might not be in a job currently isn’t fabulous).