A career transition is no longer about getting your hands on a list of contacts, networking with headhunters, or going online to look for work. It's better than that. Decrease your competition, increase your visibility and stop looking for a job. That's how you'll shrink out most of your rivalry: Use these neutralizers:

• Create buzz and you'll multiply your exposure to decision makers
• Create need and you'll generate quality interviews, simultaneously
• Create solutions and you'll gain an opportunity to design your own position

Stir up the buzz and you'll stand out in a saturated market. Develop a reputation for being a subject-matter expert. This time you'll want to be the topic of the next water cooler gathering. There are five over-the-top ports to gain higher visibility:

• Blogs (industry trade associations, online publications, job boards)
• Discussion forums, roundtables, Ask-an-Expert content venues
• Teleseminars (trade association-sponsored, industry-oriented)
• High-profile volunteerism (civic, community, business projects)
• Newsletters, white papers (online and print)

Get employers drooling for your talents by demonstrating a consistency in your marketing message. Recruiters and decision makers routinely perform a Google, Yahoo, and Overture key word search to learn more about you. Put your name (and its variations) into these mega-search engines to find out what pops up. Does it stir anticipation or anguish?

If you've made disparaging comments about anyone or anything, either on or off record, these will harm your marketing message. Publicly, shut up. If what you want to say, or what you do or want to do communicate oddity, inappropriateness, or lack of civility and good taste then you become a liability to your industry's culture and you'll be blacklisted.

Branding is a yardstick that measures not just what you do, but who you are and the perception others have of you. Make sure that whatever you say or do (professionally and personally) sends a consistent positive message about your leadership, industry competency, ethics, maturity, and interpersonal relations. This constancy is your branding; an awareness of you which captures an employer's attention and interest in you.

Mastermind solutions and you'll improve the odds of a securing a customized job role. Employers look for people so inquisitive about the world that their career history is marked with innovation, adaptability, and cultural fit. Borderless thinking solves problems, particularly those deemed by others as too troublesome or impossible. You'll release yourself from dependency on open or publicly-known positions when you step up to the plate, fearless in pitching personalized remedies for an employer's toughest business challenges.

Annihilate your competition by doing the thing that they wouldn't dare to do…stop looking for a job. Concentrate on subterranean research to uncover patterns that would signal upcoming hiring activity. Yeah it's labor-intensive, but the pay-off is huge in terms of edging past Human Resource department screeners.

Classic market research involves S.W.O.T. Analysis. Successful marketing thrusts are achieved using a thorough analysis of Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats for Growth. Can you count the times on one hand, your buddies took the time to do this kind of extreme exploration when they were on a job hunting expedition?

The more you know about a targeted company, its industry, and the associated threats to its success, the stronger your posture. Instead of seeking a job, pursue opportunity to use your talents to better an organization's own branding before its employees, customers, and business relationships. Pitch directly to first-string decision makers.

Slamming a baseball out of the park isn't rocket science; it's about reading and reacting to the pitch — knowing what you have to do, and when to do it. It's also capitalizing on the bat's sweet spot to connect the raw capability of the bat to the sheer force of the batter's swing.

A professionally-run job search does the same things; you pitch your solutions to the right target, at the right time, using the right resource and strategy. The career marketing sweet spot is that critical moment where targeting and timing intersect. Goal sighted, energy harnessed, successful outcome achieved.