I am a fan of Lisa Irby’s blog 2 Create a Website, and frequently check her site to see what she’s got to say.

In her post Lazy People, she shares her thoughts on laziness and it really, really struck a chord for me.

I must tell you, I have a pet peeve; poorly written or form letters. Sending the wrong letter in haste can do more harm than good. Don’t be lazy.

Be sure to check the appropriateness of your letter to its recipient. It appears that many individuals wishing to obtain employment in the executive protection field are failing to conduct due diligence. “Due diligence” means conducting the advance work and investigation required to craft a suitable cover letter to a particular individual or firm. The cover letter is the very first impression that you are making on an individual who is doing the hiring. If you cannot provide an appropriate and suitable cover letter, you have already failed your first detail. You simply will not be contacted for an interview.

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Click Here For Instant Access To Over 55,000 Verified Celebrity Addresses!

One of the most important things you need to do for your career is make people aware of who you are. As Professor Leonard Holifield suggests in his recent interview, one way is to create a website to promote yourself and your skills.

Another useful method is sending out resumes to as many potential employers as possible. Who needs bodyguards? Celebrities! One of the most powerful informational tools you can obtain is The Celebrity Black Book

2008: Over 55,000 Accurate Celebrity Addresses. This book can significantly expand your database of contacts.

A great feature of the Celebrity Black Book is that you can pay a small fee and have online access to the latest information–actors, musicians, sports figures and the like are often changing agents, business managers, and public relations people. A free 30 day test-drive of Contact Any Celebrity’s membership Web site and online database is available (just mail or fax the coupon included with the Celebrity Black Book).

It is important to understand that you may never hear from these individuals. The success of your endeavors depend on a number of issues: (more…)

Many Executive Protection candidates make an extremely positive impression on paper, but lose the job race just crossing the finish line. Why?

The Interview.

Ask yourself if you are an interviewee who makes the mistake of thinking one of these two things:

1. That The Interview is just to reiterate what’s on the resume –OR–

2. That the interviewer is your BFF (Best Friend Forever)

Let’s take the first point: They have already read your resume, that’s why they want to meet you! They certainly may review items on the resume, but what they’re really listening for and watching is how you talk about your role in the positions you’ve held. They’re listening for inconsistencies between what you state on the resume and whether or not your skills match that statement. It’s offering more detail on the work than is on the resume. They want to sense your leadership skills, your ability to take direction, your behavior in the face of adversity. They want to know if you are serious about your work. They want to know what you take pride in.

They want to know who you are and exactly how it is that you are going to make their lives easier/better/safer and that you will be worth every penny they plan to spend on filling that important position.

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Next week visitors to BODYGUARDCAREERS will be treated to an interview with Bruce Alexander. One of the crucial statements he makes is about the importance of “marketing” yourself.

What exactly does marketing mean, you may be asking.

Marketing means how you package and present yourself. Have you ever noticed how when you go to the store you find yourself drawn more to a certain item simply because of the way it LOOKS-well, that principle needs to be applied to your employment tools: The Resume and The Cover Letter.

Most people think their tools are great. They’ve used a template from a book for their cover letter, copied someone else’s resume format, and think they’re good to go. Not true. Template cover letters are painfully apparent and mark you as a rookie. The resume format you’ve copied may be dated, or badly done to begin with!

The resume is more than just a list of your past jobs and duties while on the job. You can use your resume as part of your strategy to obtain the interview. The resume must be formatted correctly, free from grammatical or spelling errors. Margins, fonts, bullets, type size, as well as the layout of the resume are all very important things to consider.

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Most of us in the working world have always assumed that after a certain age, it is a “reward” for many long years of work to retire. The vision of retirement that many people ascribe to is dropping out of the “rat-race,”

and lying on a beach in the Caribbean doing nothing. Well, that might be interesting and even fun for a little while, but the reality is that it will probably get old quickly.

We need to be busy. People thrive on creative thinking, social interaction, and making plans to get things done. Individuals in the Executive Protection business may have shorter careers in the field–depending upon their mental and physical fortitude. A well-seasoned EPS is extremely employable, but (especially in the celebrity work) the assignments when you’re 45 are not as appealing as they may be to an individual in his/her 20’s.

An EPS with a family finds that priorities change…so it is important to remember when you are young and single, making the big dollars (assuming you’ve worked your way up in this industry to earn the big dollars) that this career won’t stretch on forever. Put away some money for the future. That way, when you reach an age where either by choice or because of diminishing skills you decide to transition out of the field, you can do so with less financial stress. A good number of people in Executive Protection switch gears and take part-time security guard details, or manage security teams. They may do undercover work for department stores, or they may decide to become consultants for the industry.

I think it’s important to think about the future, and to understand that there is a limit to the amount of time a bodyguard will be able to perform at peak capacity. And just like any job, you may find that your passion for it subsides, and in this line of work, the moment you stop really enjoying it, is the time to leave it.