“It’s my age, that’s what it is”, Joan lamented. “I need to come to terms with the fact that I’m just of ‘that age’. No-one wants a person of my age in the workplace!”

Joan is wrong. Sure, if she wants to be an actress in a teen comedy, yes that’s probably true. If she wants to be a top-level fashion model, it’s probably true too. But a retail manager of a fashion store? A real estate agent? Just about any supervisory or management role in a range of industries for which she is highly qualified? Of course she has the same chance as anyone else with equal skills and knowledge.

It’s not so much Joan’s age that’s holding her back from securing a new job, it’s her outdated way of thinking.

Using antiquated job search methods, believing in truisms that were outdated thirty years ago, and then complaining of age discrimination when you’ve done everything possible to reinforce people’s ideas about what it means to be “old” is an exercise in self sabotage.

Let’s look at some outdated job-search beliefs that may be holding you back.

Outdated Language. Reinforcing your age by talking about “the young girls in the office” or “of course, back then we used to use [insert antiquated piece of technology], or “in my day…” is going to widen the divide between you and younger people with whom you may work. Just as you no longer wear leg warmers, a headband or do Jane Fonda workout videos, don’t live in the past in the way you communicate either.

Pouring over the classified job ads. Spending hours examining classified job advertisements is old-fashioned and one of the most difficult ways to get a job. Hours can be wasted while you find a job and prepare an application only to find you’re one of hundreds who have applied. Sure you have a chance, but putting yourself in that pool of candidates means you’re fighting a losing battle from the start. Of course job boards and classifieds have their place, but your professional network can influence and fast track these engagements if you nurture it well. Don’t scoff at social media; it’s not a young person’s game. It can be a savvy candidate’s ticket to a job offer. Ignore it to your detriment.

Resumes must be [insert number] pages. At some point you heard some sage advice and it stuck with you and now you believe it. It may have been true when you first started looking to join the workforce, but it’s no longer true now. By sticking to this outdated piece of your own advice, you’re limiting your potential for scoring an interview. Just how many of your achievements and experience do you want to sacrifice so you can reach an arbitrary number of pages? I’m not giving you carte blanch to create a 50-page resume, but adding half a page to a two-page resume to tell your whole story and create a compelling value proposition for your services, needs to be considered.

Mature job seekers don’t need to put on the fake persona. No-one likes someone trying to recapture their youth by wearing inappropriate clothing and hairstyles or trying to be “cool”. In fact, it can be downright embarrassing for everyone in the workplace. But reinforcing your age by stubbornly clinging to outdated ideas and methods of the past, may very well have potential employers re-thinking your candidacy. After all, will you show those same antiquated ideas in a young and vital workplace?

It’s not your age that gives people pause for thought, it’s your inability to move with the times.

I’m thrilled to be part of the Career Collective, a group of professionals who meet monthly to blog about a certain topic. Please return in the next couple of days to read some other articles on this theme and look for #careercollective on Twitter.

• Juice Up Your Job Search, @debrawheatman
• Want a Job? Ignore these outdated job search beliefs @erinkennedycprw
• Job Search Then and Now, @MartinBuckland @EliteResumes
• Break the Rules or Change the Game? @WalterAkana
• The New: From The Employer’s-Eye View, @ResumeService
• Job Search: Breakable Rules and Outdated Beliefs, @KatCareerGal
• Job Hunting Rules to Break (Or Why and How to Crowd Your Shadow), @chandlee @StartWire,
• Shades of Gray, @DawnBugni
• 3 Rules That Are Worth Your Push-Back, @WorkWithIllness
• Your Photo on LinkedIn – Breaking a Cardinal Job Search Rule? @KCCareerCoach
• How to find a job: stop competing and start excelling, @Keppie_Careers
• Be You-Nique: Resume Writing Rules to Break, @ValueIntoWords
• Modernizing Your Job Search, @LaurieBerenson
• Don’t Get Caught With an Old School Resume, @barbarasafani
• How Breaking the Rules Will Help You in Your Job Search, @expatcoachmegan
• Beat the Job-Search-Is-a-Numbers-Game Myth, @JobHuntOrg
• 25 Habits to Break if You Want a Job, @CareerSherpa

Your reputation is one thing you can’t buy, beg, borrow or steal. Your reputation is yours alone, built by your actions–how well you perform, how you treat those around you up-and-down the ladder, your intelligence and your ethics.

Today, more than at any other time, your actions and deeds can be widely communicated through co-worker complaints on Facebook, Twitter or blogs, through a forwarded email from a disgruntled colleague, or just simply by those who come across you every day and who have friends industry-wide.

Let’s look at a couple of reputation killers that despite some short-term gain on your part, may end up being long-term personal PR disasters.

• Cultivating a competing offer of employment to leverage extra money or responsibilities where you are.

It may be quite clever to pull this off and you may pat yourself on the back if you managed to secure a “counter offer” to stay with your current employer. Ethically and as far as your long-term reputation is concerned, it’s a different story. You have used and abused your employer’s goodwill and you have wasted the time of recruiters and the resources of another employer to solidify your existing position.

Short-term as far as you are concerned, you’re smiling. You have either more money or a more prestigious role. How your current employer feels about being manipulated and forced into making a quick decision is anyone’s guess, although frankly if you’re still in that position 12 months from now, consider yourself lucky. From the recruiter’s and potential employer’s perspective–well your reputation has taken a big hit. If you think this is going to be forgotten and it isn’t really a big deal anyway, try applying for a job with the same recruiting firm or employer six months down the track and hope against hope you’re not unemployed when you’re doing so.

* Slacking off after giving notice.

Congratulations, you’ve found another job and you are currently serving out your notice with your existing company. Resist the temptation of tarnishing your reputation by slacking off, rubbishing the company to other employees and being an overall fun-loving distraction. Instead, continue to be a good employee; stay focused and work hard to the end. Your ethics, your ability to remain businesslike and earn the money that is being paid to you to do just that, will be the way you will be remembered. If you think that nobody will talk of how you confronted long-term enemies or “spilled the beans” by providing inside information to customers or suppliers, you are deluding yourself. Your reputation can be irrevocably damaged in serving out your remaining time.

Remember too, sometimes reference checks continue to be done after a job offer is made. Your reputation will be expanded upon through the eyes of others. Who will speak for you from the last job and what on earth will they say? A job offer can be rescinded right up to the day you start work if new and damaging information about you is uncovered.

Sustaining a successful career from teens to retirement takes more than being in the right place at the right time. Your reputation and your professional network are assets that will be most valuable to your career. It is in your interest to invest time and energy into both.

You’re big boys and girls. I really, really shouldn’t have to tell you this but before you go to put on that aftershave or perfume prior to your job interview, please don’t! Or at the very least if you’re going to give yourself a bath in the stuff, wash it off your hands.

Seriously there’s only one thing worse than wasting a search consultant or HR person’s time with overblown and non-existent skills, and that is have to smell your aftershave or perfume transference on their hands long after you’ve met. Frankly it doesn’t matter whether it’s the cheapest Pepe La Pew Deluxe from the local $2 store or Chanel No. 5. If you’re wearing it and your interviewer ends up choking on it, you have done nothing for your candidacy.

Let’s face it, you’re not there to get a date. You’re there to get a job and impress professionals. If you think the search consultant is going to swoon at your Deep Chocolate Lynx body spray and progress your application due to your manly magnetism, you need a definite rethink. Oh and by the way… that cigarette you had to calm your nerves just before interview? You have presented in a cloud of smoke, just like a mobile personal incinerator. (Sorry, you need to know that).

Respect your interviewers. They may have asthma or any type of allergy set off by strong perfumes. Even if they don’t they may just not like breathing in and tasting your scent.

Don’t leave your interviewers wilting in your wake!

Ever tried to create a custom name for your Linkedin profile and found it was taken? Here’s an idea, use your position title with your name. It helps differentiate you and stamps your brand at the same time. Instead of say, Linkedin/John Smith, try JohnSmith-CEO, or JohnSmith, Operations Manager, or JohnSmith, General Manager (Telco Multinationals).

The Reach Online Brand Calculator has assessed me (Gayle Howard), as being on the top of the “Digitally Distinct” tree. This is the nirvana of online identity meaning the first three pages of Google provide 80% on-brand, positive information.

So what about you? Before you are interviewed you can assume that recruiters and/or employers will Google your name.

What will they see? Digital Dirt such as an image on Flickr of you sleeping, dancing with a lampshade on your head or wearing an offensive t-shirt? Perhaps your next employer will find an insensitive comment about your past employer on an association forum?

Then again, you could be Digitally Disastrous: There could be nothing about you on the web; not a solitary piece of information about who you are. Depending on your level of experience, this could be a significant problem. Imagine a Chief Executive Officer who has never made a statement, spoken at a public event, or who has never been quoted in a magazine!

As a jobseeker there is a 90% chance you will be searched for digital dirt or information about you online. Whether you are digitally disastrous, digitally dabbling (sporadic pieces of information that do not provide a consistent picture of you) or digitally dissed somewhere, the idea now is to over-ride the negative with the positive. Lessen and counter negative perceptions with the new on-brand you.

Creating a new professional Linkedin Profile (along with Ziggs, Naymz, e-Cademy, Plaxo and more) has many advantages:

• Profiles are rapidly indexed by Google. When someone Googles your name the likelihood is that the social media profiles will pop up before anything else. It will be the presence you want people to see.
• Linkedin Profiles provide a definitive outline of what you stand for and what your current situation is. By letting people know you are available and looking for your next opportunity, you’ll reach recruiters and headhunters scouring the site for new talent.
• Linkedin Profiles allow you to re-connect or establish relationships with business professionals who are in the position to make something happen for you.

Linked-in Versus Traditional Résumés
The Linkedin profile is an online gallery of your experience and a powerful networking tool. It is shorter and uses different marketing and communication techniques. The Linkedin profile complements your job search through online identity raising and branding, but it is not used in place of a traditional résumé and cover letter.

Our solution to your needs:

OnBrand-ID Programs.

• UltraLink-ID: We create a Linked-in profile for you using a combination of your responses to our Linkedin worksheet and your existing resume.

• ID-Link: We strategise your presentation and produce a Linkedin presence for you from the resume we have already created. The result: a compelling online advertisement for your services.

• Cyber-ID: Your complete social media package includes the development of a Linkedin Profile and establishment of identities at the leading social media sites: Ziggs, Naymz and Twitter. We’ll even set you up on Twitter so you can follow recruiters, job search sites, human resources companies and job boards. Start “twittering” and build your band of followers too. You never know what connections you can make.

We are really excited about our solutions as they use the immediacy of technology and networking and provide a middle pricing structure for individuals with needs separate to the full-service resume development and personal branding programs. Check the details out now at www.topmargin.com/catalogue.html