Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

Talk about dumb headlines. I did it purposely to point up the importance of creatively marketing yourself into technology jobs.

It's no secret that "marketing" is one of hundreds of boring words lifted from the business lexicon and applied to job hunting. If products are marketed, job hunters can similarly market themselves into interviews. Basic, right?

Most job seekers try to market themselves, and many more give lip service to the idea. But the majority of techies, on the other hand, don't bother or don't have a clue how it's done. And there is an elite minority who think they're above it.

Get real. Techies--all of them: CTOs, CIOs, project managers, software developers, systems analysts, security specialists--must learn how to market themselves. The economy is stronger than it was last year, but conquering technical jobs is still tough.

Companies are still looking for the best technical people they can find. But many mid-size and large companies searching for programmers or developers are not so quick to phone headhunters. They're more likely to consider recruiting squadrons of Chinese or Russian programmers at a fraction of the price they'd pay American techies.

It's tough beating companies that are heavy into offshoring, especially if they've been doing it a while and it's making them a ton of money. But you…

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