0 Fake Amazon résumé proves the power of personal branding

Despite some one-star ratings, Dubost's online '"Amazon" CV has done wonders for his career.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Web product developer created online CV to look like Amazon page
• Résumé went viral and Dubost gained over 100 offers of work
• "I was so completely not expecting this," he says
• Proves the importance of personal branding in job-hunting

(CNN) -- A French job-seeker has "sold" himself with an online résumé made to look like an Amazon page, proving that some creativity and attention to personal branding can go a long way.

Philippe Dubost began his trawl for a new job as a web product manager in late December.

Depressed by the thought of sending a regular résumé into the ether as part of the usual job application process, he built his to look like an Amazon page, complete with product dimensions, five-star ratings, world-wide shipping and even a gift-wrap option.

"Amazon's pages just naturally fit the form of a résumé," he said. "I just thought that if a company thinks that this is fun, then that's a company I would like to work for."

I just thought that if a company thinks that this is fun, then that's a company I would like to work for.
Philippe Dubost

"At first I sent it out as a link with the normal job applications I was sending, but then sent an email to a popular French blog saying 'Hey guys, if you're bored and have nothing to look at...'"

That was the beginning of last week. From there its journey across blogs and social media has propelled it from around 500 hits a day to over 200,000, and the page has gained over 27,000 Facebook "likes".

But more than just being a fleeting Internet sensation, Dubost's Amazon résumé has also done what it was designed for.

From the 800 or so messages he has received over 100 have been work-related with job offers coming from across Asia and Europe.

"Quite a few are great and are really fit what I'm looking for," he said.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery and Dubost admits that Amazon is one of the companies he greatly admires and would like to work for. However he remains tight-lipped about how the company has responded, or even if it have contacted him at all.

As well as being a smart piece of design, the creative résumé also shows Dubost's personality, something he believes has helped it reach its target audience.

Personal packaging is absolutely vital.
Whitney Johnson, career and life advisor

"It made me realize how important personal branding is," he says.

Whitney Johnson, author and career and life advisor agrees: "Personal packaging is absolutely vital" she says.

"If you think about it, people don't buy products, they hire them to do a job. You have to figure out a way to make employers believe that you're the person who can get a job done. It is not the responsibility of any future employer to figure out how the employee can do the job, it's the employee's responsibility."

Dubost's advice to others is to do what you can to differentiate yourself from other would-be job-hunters and be creative with it.

"Although that doesn't apply for all industries; if I was an accountant it's not the same," he says. "But you can always do something that is relevant to the industry you work in."

The overwhelming response to Dubost's experiment did make him question if he shouldn't take his career in a different direction instead of just search for a new job.

"It occurred to me, and many friends said the same, that maybe I should (do something different). But in the end I did this for a job and it has opened up opportunities with companies I really want to work for. I was so completely not expecting this."

0 Why Queen Elizabeth isn't stepping down

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, left, her son Prince Willem-Alexander, right, and his wife Princess Maxima attend an event on a tour of Singapore on January 25. Beatrix is abdicating the throne to her son.

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, 75, is passing the crown to her 45-year-old son
• Queen Elizabeth shows no inclination to step down for Prince Charles or Prince William
• Arianne Chernock: Historically, British monarchs stay on their thrones until they die
• Chernock: Monarchy is about perseverance; princes might have a long wait

Editor's note: Arianne Chernock is an assisant professor of modern British history at Boston University at work on a book titled "The Queen and I: The Right to Reign and the Rights of Women in Victorian Britain."

(CNN) -- Queen Beatrix, 75, of the Netherlands will abdicate the throne this spring, passing the crown to her eldest son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, 45.

Explaining her decision to her Dutch subjects, she said, "It was not because the office was too heavy for me, but because the responsibility for this country should lie in the hands of a new generation."

Some wonder why Queen Elizabeth II, an octogenarian, hasn't made a similar concession to youth. But the modern British monarchy is founded on a different set of principles. As much as Britons might enjoy a change of pace at Windsor Castle, something faster and fresher, the monarchy in Britain is not about novelty. It's about staying the course, resolve and perseverance.

Arianne Chernock

Indeed in a culture similar to ours that places a premium on youth and beauty, the British monarchy stands out as one of those rare institutions where aging, with all of its complications and humiliations, is allowed to -- and expected to -- take place in full public view.

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This is a far cry from the Netherlands, where abdication seems to be standard practice. Beatrix's mother, Queen Juliana, abdicated the throne in 1980 at the age of 70; Juliana's mother, Queen Wilhelmina, abdicated in 1948 at the age of 68. In Britain, Edward VIII's decision to abdicate in 1936 so he could marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson remains the exception in the House of Windsor rather than the rule.

Consider King George III, who reigned from 1760 until his death in 1820 at the age of 81. Beginning in 1788, the king suffered periodic bouts from what was likely porphyria, a metabolic disorder affecting the nervous system.

By 1810, he was permanently insane. Blind and infirm, George III spent the last 10 years of his reign doddering about in Windsor Castle. Admittedly, George's son, the future George IV, served as regent for most of this difficult period.

Queen Victoria, George III's granddaughter, similarly reigned from 1837 until her death, also at the age of 81, in 1901 -- despite suffering a host of ailments in later years, including failing eyesight, insomnia and rheumatism.

Yet both monarchs were perhaps more popular in their oldest age than ever before.

George III survived the loss of the American colonies and the scandals surrounding his alleged madness to win the intense loyalty of most of his subjects. Following his 1809 Golden Jubilee, a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of a monarch's rule, the London Times proudly proclaimed that the event had been "celebrated by all ranks of people in this great metropolis, in a manner worthy of an aged and venerable King, and a loyal and enlightened nation."

Dutch Queen Beatrix to abdicate throne

Queen Beatrix to give up Dutch throne

Danish queen reflects on 40-year reign

And Queen Victoria overcame early skepticism about her capabilities -- and a dramatic curtailment in support during the 1860s, when she retreated from public view to mourn the death of her husband, Prince Albert -- to become the "Great White Queen," and the "Grandmother of Europe."

At her 60th anniversary Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Victoria was feted like no sovereign before her. She may have only been able to offer a feeble wave from her carriage as she passed by throngs of well-wishers on her way to St. Paul's Cathedral, but her symbolic weight could not be overestimated.

The current British monarch follows in her predecessors' footsteps. When the young Elizabeth received word in February 1952, while traveling abroad in Kenya, that her father George VI had passed away, she rushed home knowing that the title she had just inherited would be hers until death.

"By the sudden death of my dear father I am called to assume the duties and responsibilities of sovereignty," the 25-year old queen explained to her privy councilors back in London.

"My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than I shall always work, as my father did throughout his reign, to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples, spread as they are all the world over."

When Elizabeth said "I shall always work," she meant it. Sixty years later, at the age of 86, the Queen maintains an active schedule and is the patron of more than 600 charities and organizations.

Add to this the fact that Elizabeth's reign, like those of her predecessors, has only seemed to improve with age, at least if measured by public approval ratings -- last May, shortly before the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the market research company Ipsos MORI determined that support for the monarchy among adults in Britain is at an all-time high -- and there's little reason to think that Elizabeth will leave her post anytime soon.

Much as Prince Charles and Prince William may grow tired of waiting in the wings, a Platinum Jubilee could well take place in 2022.

0 Why Queen Elizabeth isn't stepping down

From humble secretary to female king

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• For more than 30 years, Peggielene Bartels has worked as a secretary in the U.S.
• But then one day a phone call took her back to her Ghanaian roots
• She was chosen to be the king of Otuam, a fishing village in Ghana
• Her life journey has been documented in a book; a Hollywood film is expected next year.

(CNN) -- When Peggielene Bartels went to bed on a summer night in 2008, she was an ordinary administrative assistant living in a modest one-bedroom condo just outside Washington D.C.

But a few hours later, when a persistent ringing phone woke her up in the dead of the August night, the 55-year-old found out she was much more than simply a secretary.

At the other end of the line was Bartels's cousin, from Otuam, a small fishing village on the coast of Ghana. Excited and humble, he congratulated her on being the new king of Otuam.

"I said, 'listen, it's 4 o'clock in the morning in the U.S., I am very tired, let me sleep,'" remembers Bartels. "I thought he was trying to really play games with me."

In pictures: King Peggy

King Peggy shows off her crowns

Female king fights 'male chauvinism'

Click map to expand

But this was no time for games.

The previous king of Otuam, who was Bartels's uncle, had just died. The village elders, who remembered Bartels from the times she'd visited with her mother, had decided to anoint her as their new ruler.

In pictures: Africa's power women

After the initial shock, Bartels decided to accept the kingship. Over the course of a few days, she went from being plain old Peggielene Bartels, who had worked for nearly three decades at the Ghanaian Embassy in the United States, to becoming King Peggy -- the first female king of Otuam, reigning over approximately 7,000 people.

"It never ever occurred to me [that I'd be Otuam's king]," says Bartels, who's been living in the United States since her early 20s. "I realized that on this earth, we all have a calling. We have to be ready to accept it because helping my people has really helped me a lot to know that I can really touch their lives," she adds. "I would have really regretted it if I hadn't really accept this calling."

Although she still works at the Ghanaian Embassy, Bartels uses all her holiday every year to spend a month in Otuam.

King is the traditional title of Otuam's ruler, and Bartels says she's happy to be called a king, rather than queen, because it means she can achieve more.

"Most of the time, a king is the one who has all the executive power to do things, while the queen is mostly in charge of the children's affairs and reporting to the king," she says. "So I really love this."

Read more: The Lady King of Otuam

King Peggy was born in Takoradi, southern Ghana, in 1953. She studied in England before moving to the United States, where she became an American citizen in 1997.

But after inheriting the throne, Bartels has been living two very different lives in two different continents.

In Washington, her secretarial duties include typing letters, answering phone calls and booking appointments. In her little apartment her life is far removed from the luxuries of her royal roots.

"When I am in the United States I do everything by myself," she explains. "I do my own laundry, I do my own cooking, I do my own driving and I do my own bed when I wake up in the morning."

Read more: Secretary is still the top job for women

But back in Ghana, she stands out as a gold crown-wearing, scepter-holding king who lives in a refurbished palace. Otuam residents usually address her as "Nana" -- an honorary title given to royalty but also to women with grandchildren -- and bow when they see her.

"When I am back home they see me as their king and they want to pamper me," she says.

"They have to cook for me, they have to carry me around and they have to protect me from people. They want to do everything for me which I usually refuse ... Sometimes I say to them 'please, don't bow.' I just want them to be free and comfortable so that way we can really address issues."

Watch video: King Peggy shows off her crowns

I have to really work hard to help my people. I have to give myself to people to better their lives.
King Peggy

But beyond the bows, the royal attire and certain luxuries that come with her title, being a king in an impoverished place like Otuam is all about dealing with the pressing needs of the community and improving the lives of the people, says Bartels.

"To be a king in an African village or some places like this, it's not like European queens where everything is on a silver platter for them," she says. "I have to really work hard to help my people. I have to give myself to people to better their lives."

In the last few years, she's helped poor families pay school fees for their children and brought computers to classrooms. With the help of other Americans she's also provided Otuam with its first ambulance, as well as access to clean, running water. Her next priority, she says, is to bring state-of-the-art toilets to Otuam.

And even when she's not in Ghana, her royal duties do not stop; she wakes up at 1am every morning to call Otuam and be informed about what's happening in the community.

"I talk to my regent, I talk to my elders," Bartels says. "If there is something that I want to know, they tell me. If there is something that I want them to do, I tell them."

Last year, King Peggy's real-life fairy tale was documented in a book written by her and author Eleanor Herman. And now she says her amazing life journey from secretary to king will be told in a film, after Hollywood star Will Smith bought the rights to the book.

"Next year, God willing, we are going to have a movie out there," says King Peggy. "Queen Latifah is going to play me and I'm so happy to at least let the whole world know that a secretary can become a king and lead wisely and help the people."

0 Five big tech stories to watch for in 2013

We were dazzled by an array of smartphones. We were fascinated and then disappointed by Facebook's initial public offering. And we held our breaths as we awaited the verdict in the Apple v. Samsung trial.

But all that's so 2012. Let's talk 2013. Will we still be paying attention to patents, smartphones, and IPOs? The answer is "yes, yes, and yes," but not in the way you might imagine. The great thing about writing about the high-tech industry is its constant march forward. New companies get built on the bones of old companies, and new faces emerge while others fade. It's what keeps us going and sitting on those hard, wooden courtroom benches.

So what can we expect next year? We've been talking and writing about it a lot here at CNET, and we're running reporters' predictions on their beats through the rest of the year. But here are some predictions on the big tech trends we'll be writing about next year:

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1. The competition reels in Apple

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

It was inevitable, and in a way it's amazing Apple dominated for as long as it did in high-growth markets. But Samsung finally overtook Apple for the lead in smartphone sales. While that could reverse with a full quarter of iPhone 5 sales, it's indicative of where the market is heading next year. Apple is one company, and it can't beat back forever an array of just-as-resourced competitors building off the Android mobile platform.

This isn't meant as a dig toward Apple. And I find myself grudgingly writing this on a MacBook, while listening to music on iTunes as an iPhone sits on my desk. Rather, it's an acknowledgement that the competition finally has its act together. We've seen challenges to the iPhone's dominance come and go. HTC looked strong for a while. But collectively, the Android collection (and maybe the companies building on Windows Phone 8) will be an overwhelming if profit-challenged mass. And, yes, by the end of 2013, we could be saying about the iPad what we're now saying about the iPhone.

"This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago -- Microsoft versus Apple,"Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. "We're winning that war pretty clearly now." Schmidt added: "The core strategy is to make a bigger pie," he said. "We will end up with a not perfectly controlled and not perfectly managed bigger pie by virtue of open systems."

In other words, as we wrote yesterday, Google is gleefully doing to Apple what Microsoft did two decades ago: Bit by bit, closing the quality gap and flooding the market with cheaper competitors. Courtroom dramas or not, that's only going to accelerate next year.

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2. The IPO market heats up again, but not for consumer tech
Facebook's less-than-dazzling entree into the public markets likely cooled Wall Street's enthusiasm for social media and consumer tech. It didn't help, of course, that overhyped companies like Zynga and Groupon (unlike underhyped companies such as LinkedIn and Yelp) looked so wobbly.

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET)

Does that mean Wall Street isn't hot for tech? Not at all. The big tech stars of the last decade have created big problems and opportunities for the next generation of tech startups. We're talking less gee-whiz apps and more behind-the-scenes types working on big data, cloud apps, and open source.

As they say, follow the money. And in tech, you follow the venture money. Acquia, a Massachusetts company that's building quick-to-deploy content management systems built on the Drupal open-source project, is one of those companies. It closed a $30 million investment round at the end of November, bringing its venture funding total to $68.5 million. It grew about 100 percent last year and should grow another 80 percent next year, topping out at 400 employees. Executives hope to go public within the next 12 to 24 months.

"In 2010 and 2009, it was almost impossible to get venture investors interested in enterprise software. Some of them said it was dead," said Acquia CEO Tom Erickson. "Now you've seen a reversal of that trend.

Acquia isn't alone. In Bellevue, Wash., SmartSheet, a company that's taking spreadsheets and other types of business collaboration into the era of cloud computing, landed a $26 million funding round last month. And just two weeks ago in Silicon Valley, Cloudera, which has built big-data analytics technology based on the Hadoop Apache open-source project, raised $65 million.

They may not be sexy, and the people who start them are probably the last who will ever have aBravo reality television show about them, but they're indicative of the future. The tech industry's fashion swings between consumer and business tech. Next year, expect it to swing a little further back toward the back office.

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3. Things get even more interesting at Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

2012 should have been the year we were talking about the big Microsoft comeback in consumer markets. Windows 8 was all lined up. So was Windows Phone 8. There was a nifty new tablet in the works. The gaming business was still going strong, and so was that vast enterprise-software business to which few pay much attention.

So what the heck happened? It's too early to grade sales of Windows 8. But early returns seem to indicate so-so. The same could be said for the Surface tablet, which has received mediocre reviews. Even more noticeable: Steven Sinofsky, the guy responsible for both, will be teaching at Harvard Business School next year instead of running the Windows division.

Yes, Microsoft finds itself in an unaccustomed role: It's the undisputed leader of a market that's not expected to grow, PCs. Yet it's the upstart in two fast-growing markets, smartphones and tablets.

And since Sinofsky left, Microsoft is climbing up this hill without a clear leader of Windows development. Don't be surprised if Microsoft's center of gravity shifts further toward Xbox and Skype, which seems underutilized by Ballmer & Co. since it was acquired in 2011. Could that be more deeply integrated into other Microsoft products without scaring away longtime Microsoft users?

Most of all, you can expect pressure to mount on Ballmer to prove his company is more than a middle-aged titan looking more and more like a slightly smaller version of IBM. And you can expect investors to start asking if, with Sinofsky gone (and it's doubtful he was ever a realistic alternative), there's any sort of management succession plan.

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4. Facebook will continue to tick us off and we will continue to love it

Perhaps this is what a difficult love affair looks like: A company upsets its users, they lash out and swear they'll never use the company's product again. The company apologizes (sometimes it says it was just misunderstood), and everyone forgets about it a few days later.

Welcome to Facebook's sometimes dysfunctional relationship with its users. I say "users" rather than "customers" because, as CNET's Nathan Bransford wrote two days ago, Facebook's users are its product. It's real customers are the advertisers. The latest dustup was over what exactly Facebook's Instagram unit could or would do with users' (not customers') photos. Facebookended its community voting system because of anemic turnout. In a case of cyberlife imitating real life, it seems we like to complain but we don't like to do much about it.

Here's a bet: There will be at least three more of these confrontations in the coming year. Facebook is a publicly traded company now. Wall Street expects growth, and once you've topped 1 billion users, the law of numbers is bound to catch up with you. So Facebook will continue to tweak and sometimes tick off as it searches for more profits. And why shouldn't it? We'll keep coming back.

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5. Patents will still plague us, but solutions will emerge

Tuesday afternoon, I finished a year-in-review piece that said patents were the big story of 2012. Wednesday morning, I helped write a story about how a consortium of companies ranging from Intellectual Ventures and RPX to Apple, Google, and Microsoft was spending $525 million to acquire Kodak's imaging patent portfolio. Do you see a trend here?

There's little reason to expect anything different next year. Apple and Samsung have another trial scheduled for 2014. Lawsuits involving called nonpracticing entities (that's a nice way to describe a patent troll) will continue to increase, and big tech outfits will continue to spend billions to acquire patent portfolios. There is nothing on the radar that indicates this will change. Heck, the outgoing head of the U.S. Patent Office even thinks all these lawsuits indicate the system is working just fine.

It would be easy to complain about the patent system and how it needs reform. But here's the reality: It was reformed last year, and by the time years of negotiations became law, the solution was a watered-down compromise that didn't make much of a difference. The conundrum facing patent reformists is pretty simple: There are "twin sisters" of tech. One is high tech and the other is biotech/pharmaceuticals. On the high-tech side, allowing a patent owner to sit on a patent without doing anything with it doesn't make much sense.

Related stories:

• 2012: A year of patents, mobile fights, and one big IPO
• Finally, the iPhone we've always wanted
• Samsung Galaxy S III

But on the biotech side, it makes perfect sense. High-tech folks often forget, in their rush to keep up with product cycles that rarely last more than three years, that biotech product cycles can be measured in decades. Moving an invention through regulatory approval and testing is a long, expensive process, and patents are often the way to offer hope of a return on that big investment.

Should software and Internet concepts be unpatentable? Interesting idea, but unlikely to happen, and do you then disallow the many software and Internet patents that have already been granted? Regardless, any regulatory change will take years.

There is, however, a market solution any techie libertarian would love. You may have noticed in the Kodak sale announcement that a company called RPX was mentioned. RPX, in San Francisco, is trying to act as a clearinghouse for patents. Yes, like Intellectual Ventures, it acquires patents. But unlike Intellectual Ventures, it promises not to sue. Companies subscribe to RPX and pay a rate based on their size and income. Big companies pay more than little ones. Seems fair, right?

By the end of next year, we can hope that RPX and companies like it start bringing some sanity to the state of tech patents. It's a classic tech opportunity: A problem in need of a solution. And no one should expect the government to solve it.