Use LinkedIn to position yourself and make great connections.
LinkedIn is a powerful personal branding tool. Never forget: You are a product and it’s up to you to champion your brand.
If your LinkedIn profile is just another version of your resume, it needs a makeover.
When you hire me to makeover your LinkedIn profile, I’ll spend about half an hour with you on the phone, asking questions, interview-style, to learn what makes you unique in your field.
Your new LinkedIn profile will be more strategic, more effective, and more comprehensive.
But, wait, there’s more…
All LinkedIn Makeover clients will get a free copy of the chapter “You’re on LinkedIn…But Are You REALLY USING It?” from my eBook, Resume to Payday: Online Secrets to Find and Land Your Dream Job. In this chapter, I share more than 15 specific, effective strategies for accelerating your job search with LinkedIn.
Here’s a sneak-peek of what you’ll learn:
- Why resumes and cover letters love LinkedIn
- Do you know how to find jobs on LinkedIn?
- 2 ways to get “insider information” about a company
- 2 rules for updating your LinkedIn status
- The secret to making new contacts with LinkedIn
- Are you building cred?
- 10 things you should never do on LinkedIn
Not convinced that joining and using LinkedIn is worth the time and effort? Not sure you need a LinkedIn makeover? Keep reading…
Why I Recommend LinkedIn to My Clients
Reason #1: Hiring managers and HR reps use it. This may be the biggest reason of all for you to spend a decent proportion of your job search time and energy creating your LinkedIn profile, building a healthy network of connections, and staying active on the site.
More and more employers are using LinkedIn to find talent. According to the 2011 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey,[1] LinkedIn has led in recruiting usage each year and now almost all of those surveyed (87 percent) use the professional network, up from 78 percent in 2010.
In addition, employers are also using LinkedIn as a passive recruiting tool to find talented people and woo them away from their current positions. Companies are valuing talent and ability over a “perfect match” in job experience, so the person they hire may actually be someone who doesn’t have the exact job titles, skills sets, and experience that the company was initially looking for.
To take this kind of risk, these employers are going to be relying heavily on the recommendations of people they trust and the ability of the candidate to communicate his or her value in a compelling and persuasive way. LinkedIn can help in both instances.
Reason #2: You can advertise your availability. You can quickly let everyone in your professional network know that you are looking for a new position. You can do this by posting a “Status Update,” a new feature that LinkedIn recently added (works like a status update on your Facebook wall).
Reason #3: You can easily collect recommendations. LinkedIn makes it easy to request recommendations. Mouse over “Profile,” and click on “Recommendations.” Then click on “Request Recommendations.” LinkedIn gives you verbiage you can customize if you like, or leave as is.
If you list your LinkedIn profile page on your resume—and you should—hiring managers can easily read these recommendations. These recommendations can be a very effective way to “sell” softer skills that sound like fluff when you say them about yourself: That you’re an expert communicator, that you handle business meetings well, that you’re an engaging presenter, that you’re a good collaborator, or a creative problem-solver. If you self-assess that you are a “team player,” hiring managers have to take that with a grain of salt, but if your last manager says that, well, now it carries a bit more weight.
There’s no stigma to asking for a recommendation; people do it all the time. And if someone recommends you, definitely consider returning the favor.
Reason #4: You can present yourself in a much more well-rounded way on LinkedIn than you can in a resume. At the most basic level, just having a picture of yourself adds a dimension of who you are that your resume can’t. But there’s so much more. With LinkedIn, you can be witty or funny, you can convey a sense of what you’re passionate about and what “gets you up in the morning,” and you can include all sorts of multi-media and social-media extras to help show what you do well.
Reason #5: You can use LinkedIn to find out which professional associations you should join. What groups do the industry experts and thought leaders in your field belong to? Are there local chapters in your area? If you can afford to join one or more of these groups (sometimes annual membership fees can be quite expensive), you may get access to members-only job boards, networking events, and professional development publications and workshops. Attend any monthly meetings, sponsored workshops, or networking lunches; these are great places to do face-to-face networking.
Reason #6: You can stay in contact with former co-workers and managers. Perhaps better than anyone else, your former colleagues and managers know your professional skills, interests, and abilities. If they’ve moved on to greener pastures since you both worked for the same organization, they may be in a position to help you find a job with their new employer. Remember, about 30 percent of external hires come through referrals[2]—to say nothing of unadvertised positions. Stay connected with these people. Recommend them on LinkedIn, stay informed about where they are and what they’re working on, and otherwise nurture those relationships.
Need a Makeover?
Now’s the time to reinvent your LinkedIn presence. I’ll make your profile more search engine friendly, more reflective of your personality and what you uniquely have to offer, and more appealing to prospective employers. Since most LinkedIn profiles are ho-hum, yours will positively sparkle. Here’s how to get started.
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[1] http://web.jobvite.com/rs/jobvite/images/Jobvite-SRP-2011.pdf
