I’m leaving for 2 weeks of R&R in a warm, undisclosed location, i.e., very far from Minnesota.

Before I go, here’s a link to a great article on panic and why you need to lock it out of your job search.

It’s especially relevant now that the media are stuck on the story line of recession, recession and, oh, did you hear we might be in a RECESSION??!! (Never mind that certain economic Chicken Littles like columnist Paul Krugman have predicted 9 of the last 0 recessions.)

Panic is exciting. Panic sells newspapers and commercial time on TV. And panic will screw your life up into little knots if you pay it too much attention.

Anyway. Here are the key article excerpts:

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Just read an interesting article in The San Francisco Chronicle on networking, with good and bad advice on your job search.

Let’s start with the bad advice.

According to BJ Fogg, professor at Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, the close interactions between friends on Facebook can easily be leveraged for this purpose. “Post to your status update that you are actively looking for a job. Or create a short video where you let people know what kind of job you are looking for and how you qualify. Tag selected friends and ask them to leave comments about the video and forward it to relevant contacts,” explains the professor who also mentions the possibility of creating a group. “You could call it ‘find me a job’ and ask your friends to join it,” he suggests.

This qualifies as bad advice for two reasons.

First, as a rule of thumb, never listen to business tips (in general) or job-hunting tips (in particular) from a professor or other academic, unless they used to hire people or run a business in the real world. Because academia is not the real world. (The three words that make me run screaming from any business article are: “The professor suggests …”)

Second, I’ve seen plenty of video resumes and other attempts by job seekers to use the medium to find work. And I have yet to see a single video that made me want to meet anyone. Not one.

In fact, most job-search videos have the opposite effect.

That vast majority I’ve seen have given me many, many reasons NOT to call whoever filmed it, ranging from stilted delivery and cliched wording to shabby hair and poor sound.

For some reason, video resumes bring out my inner Simon, and I find myself thinking things like, “Oh, stop. You’re dreadful. You will never, ever, ever have a career in sales. Not in a billion years. There are only so many words in my vocabulary to say how awful that was.” (You, too?)

So, give the job search videos a pass for now.

Anyway. Among the good advice was this:

Robb Hecht, digital managing director with the media communications agency Universal McCann, found his current position through LinkedIn. A recruiter saw his profile which also linked to his blog, Media 2.0. “My LinkedIn profile is much more comprehensive than a traditional resume. One of the things I like to include is any media coverage or mentions that I have helped generate,” says Hecht who has integrated his LinkedIn profile with his Facebook profile. “This has a good cross-media effect in terms of building dialogue with the business professionals on LinkedIn as well as with non-business conversations on Facebook. As Facebook continually gains more usage among older professionals, it will actually be used as a job networking site,” he says. He currently sees Facebook as positioned between the “all fun” MySpace network and the “all work” LinkedIn network.

Get that?

It’s not just your LinkedIn profile that can get the attention of hiring managers. It’s the things you link to from your profile, including your blog, if you have one. (If not, why not?)

Below is an excerpt of an article by Bob Bly, one of America’s top advertising copywriters.

I read Bob’s material religiously because every successful job search is a successful sales and marketing campaign. That means, if you can sell on paper — like Bob — you can write better cover letters and resumes. Which gets you hired faster.

Here’s what Bob has to say about the hidden dangers of email. Replace the word “client” with “employer” in the article below, and I guarantee you’ll learn something powerful …

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Here’s a link to a great article from The Wall Street Journal that reveals some of the secret lingo of recruiters, including such inscrutable jargon as Noncom, Purple Squirrel and Search Virgin.

What you don’t know about what recruiters say about you can hurt you. Read and learn …