Posts Tagged ‘career development’

LinkedIn And You

LinkedIn, Your Job Search, and You!

Some people say LinkedIn is a glorified job board.  Some say it’s where salespeople connect.  LinkedIn wants you to think of their site as a business search engine.  Of course, it’s a place to advance your career, a hub for job posting, a mecca for recruiters, and candidate sourcers.  The bottom line is this:  How can you leverage LinkedIn to meet your specific needs.

First you have to answer a few questions:

1)   Why are you on LinkedIn?

2)   What are your career goals?

3)   What are your business goals?

4)   How can you develop a strategy and tactics to help you reach your goals.

Any good project begins with clear goals.  If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?  All roads lead to nowhere.  So, know where you want to go.

Here’s some definite do’s to get your LinkedIn profile started:

1)   Make sure your profile is 100% complete

2)   Present a clear, professional picture

3)   Don’t use tired cliché’s and overused words

4)   Embed key words and phrases throughout your profile-this makes you findable

5)   Use the first person singular when creating in your introduction

6)   If you are an active job seeker, list it in your heading

7)   List the bullet points that precisely address the job you want

8)   Be honest-Make sure the dates on your LinkedIn profile match those on your resume

9)   Join groups, it’s a great place to hear about jobs, and connect with peers who can get you connected to people in their companies

10)                   Take advantage of the skills, and activities, again its one more place you can list the key words that will help you get found

11)                   Personalize each LinkedIn invite, it increases your chances of acceptance

12)                   Let the person know why you want to be connected and what’s in it for them

13)                   Don’t over email.  People consider it to be spam.  Pace yourself

14)                   Don’t update your status on LinkedIn more than once a day.

15)                   Gerry Crispin from Career XRoads recommends that you should only apply for jobs where you have a connection.  While this may seem impossible in some cases, it makes absolute perfect sense.  It might take a lot of research on your part, but when you apply for a job with a warm lead, the chances of you getting an interview increases exponentially.

Eric Jaquith, conference speaker, and nationally recognized recruiter thinks you should only update your status once a week.  The debate on that rages, but I say do it once a day because some people only check in on LinkedIn once a week.  If someone thinks you are updating too frequently, they can hide you from their stream.

I firmly believe the point of LinkedIn, or any social network for that matter is to meet people who can be helpful to your business, industry, or occupation,  connect with them, and then meet them.  Schedule a phone call, or a meeting.  Don’t be a connection hoarder.  Be generous with your information, and as Chris Brogan says, just be helpful.

Consider these best practices by Neal Schaeffer, author of Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging, And Maximizing your Presence On LinkedIn.

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Moderating HFChat is the highlight of my week.  I launched this Twitter chat in May, and have been having a blast ever since.

HFChat: Marketing Yourself! It's You & Company.

Do you know how to package your skills, knowledge, and abilities like a best selling product?  Career expert, William Bridges, wrote a phenomenal book entitled, “You & Company: Think Like The CEO of Your Own Career.” If you haven’t read this book, you might want to consider putting it on your reading list for 2011.  On 1/14  The HireFriday’s #HFChat will address the salient points of marketing & packaging you in the highest light possible. We want you to be able to utilize the best practices offered by the recruitment, executive coaching, and career development community.  Of course, each of you bring your own skills, and voice to the Twitter chat as well.  Won’t you please join us?  I offer the following questions for your consideration:

Questions:

1. How do you (or how should a job seeker) market their career campaign?  Follow up to this question-How is this different than marketing a product?
2. What commercial marketing techniques and tools do you employ (or should you employ) to promote your personal message?
3. How do you track, measure, and fine-tune the message for a successful job search?
4. What speed bumps have you encountered on the road to a successful hire, and how can they be overcome?
5. In general, how do you feel about the concept of “being the CEO of your own career?”   How does this fit into your job search strategy?  How is it different than what you are currently doing?

In my experience from facilitating and participating in Twitter chats, it is helpful to have guidelines for participation.  Here are my suggestions:

• Be respectful.  If you disagree, feel free to say so, and say why, but no personal attacks please.
• Engage, and encourage others to join in the conversation.  If you like what someone is saying, by all means feel free to retweet them.
• Chats are a great way to place to get to know your fellow job seekers, and professionals in our industry that can help you.
• The best strategy is to engage in a friendly and meaningful way.
• Add value to the conversation.  Share your experience.  Ask questions.  If possible, stay on topic, but if you have a question, by all means ask it.

If you need my help in your career search process, send me your resume, and I’ll be happy to give a referral to someone in my contact network.  In addition, if you have derived value from HireFriday, or HFChat would you please consider helping us out by giving us a testimonial?  We are also looking for guest posts by both job seekers, human resource professionals, executive coaches, leadership consultants, and most of all recruiters.  Thank you in advance for being a part of the HireFriday & #HFChat team.

OUR GOAL IN 2011: TO BUILD THE HIREFRIDAY COMMUNITY TO ONE MILLION STRONG BY THE END OF THE YEAR! You can help us reach this goal by:

• Telling your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, colleagues in professional associations, job seekers, and career development professionals to join our community, and get involved.
• You’ll derive value by expanding your contact network.
• You’ll receive the good feeling that only comes from being helpful, and generous in spirit.
• You’ll increase your networking equity.
• You’ll make new friends (and in some cases, really good friends)
• You’ll create, and build deep and meaningful relationships with people who will support you, and be your sounding board.
• You’ll come to realize that most people genuinely want to help you.  All you have to do is politely tell them how.
• You’ll get new business.
• You’ll get a job.
• You’ll find out about free resources.
• You’ll learn out to put together a strategic marketing campaign for your career search.
• You’ll be able to take all the skills you learn in our community, and apply them to your life, and your career.
• You’ll find gratitude, and an emotional paycheck.  You’ll come to realize that the emotional paycheck pays great dividends in (heaven) or if you are an atheist, right here on earth.
• You might just discover your true purpose in life…follow your dream…manifest your passion into a business…and empower your heart to do the next right thing.

These are the values I hold dear.  Yes, I believe in HireFriday.  More importantly I believe in you.  I believe in our community.  I affirm your worth, and honor your path.  I value your contribution to our community.  I appreciate you positive thinking, and energy.  I also believe that we can be 1 million strong by the end of 2011.  All we need are people who have a lot of followers to retweet something nice about HireFriday, and we’ll be there in no time.  It’s about team work.  It’s about community.  We are here for you.

I’d like to personally thank my co-moderator, Tom Bolt for helping me with #HFChat, and Steve Levy, my mentor, who worked with me to refine this topic.  Most of all, thank you so much for participating in HireFriday.

Sincerely,

HR Margo Rose

Founder & CEO of HireFriday

@HRMargo on Twitter: Follow Me Please

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Start The New Year Off Right With HFChat and HireFriday

It’s New Years Eve, and time to make those resolutions.  Whether or not you believe in making resolutions, it’s a great time to tune in to #HFChat and discuss what you learned this year, and what you plan to do differently in 2011.  Here’s our questions for your consideration:

1. What have you learned from your job search in 2010?
2. If you have not had success with past endeavors in your search what will you discontinue or just re-focus with different priorities?
3. What is your competitive advantage-how will you package it? (Career Development Professionals, what advice do you have)
4. What is your professional plan to grow in your Career in 2011?
5. What tips do you have to keep a positive focus in the coming year?

So it is in the spirit of new beginnings that we embark on this year’s experiences.  Let us know how we can help move your search forward.

Sincerely,

Margo Rose

CEO & Founder of HFChat and HireFriday

Happy New Year From Margo Rose

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Power posturing during an interview: should you do it? That all depends where you are in the recruitment process. Most applicant systems, and telephone screeners want to know if you are in the salary ballpark. Does that mean you should blurt out a number when a recruiter asks you what’s your salary range? Just say: nothing. A moment of silence say it all, often it prompts the telephone screener to give you a range first. The safe answer is: I expect that your organization pays a fair wage commensurate the the duties the position require. Some still choose to say: I’m negotiable, and leave it at that.

Chances are the person on the other end of the phone wants you to speak first. Sometimes answering a question with a question can work in your favor, such as, “how about if we wait until the second or third interview until be begin discussing salary? I’d much rather be assured that we have established that we are a mutual fit for one another.” Isn’t it smarter to be sure you are a fit for the position, and have an offer on the table before launching into salary discussions? Let’s not let our phone screeners put the cart before the horse. Remember, it’s up to you to hold your salary cards close to your chest.

What about recruiters who disagree with my strategy? To them I suggest that it is in the candidates best interest to allow the recruiter for the position be the first to discuss salary ranges. If it’s that important of a screening tool recruiters, put your cards on the table first. The candidate will decide if the range is acceptable or not. The strategy I’m suggesting works. I used it all the time during my own transition.

What about applicant tracking systems where companies make a salary range mandatory, or fields that require you to input your current salary? This is a conundrum that confounds, and frustrates career development professionals. There’s no easy answer. This requirement can hurt if you had to take a cut in pay due to the recent downturn in the economy. I suggest finding someone in your linkedin network immediately, and asking for an introduction to the hiring manager or recruiter. You can either input what you made input negotiable. If it requires a number you can take a risk and put in $1.00. That will surely flag someone’s attention and make them smile. It might make them mad, but either way you are making a point. Applicant tracking systems are looking for buzz words, key words that match the industry.

The best way to identify the tag cloud for the given job is to go to google, bing and search key word, search industry, job title, and see what pops up. An excellent tool is visit tagcrowd.com. Chandlee Bryan wrote an excellent blog post about how to make your resume shoot to the top of applicant tracking systems. Read her post here.

Once you’ve identified the key words prevalent in your industry, pepper them in your linkedin profile and resume. It is also important to search several different companies for job descriptions to discover what your job title, cluster, and job family is called in different organizations. This way you can strengthen you positioning in applicant tracking systems, and with recruiters.

I want to leave you with one last thought: make sure the photo on your twitter and linkedin profile is appropriate for your career search. Read this article posted on recruitingblogs today for great suggestions by recruiter, Hung Lee.

I now offer today’s theme song: Don’t Stop Believing-Keep Believing In Yourself, and Others Will Believe In You. Know this, I will keep believing in you until you believe in yourself!

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You're a Shining HireFriday All Star: That's What You Are!

The people who participate are the heart and soul of the HireFriday Community. I am a mere moderator, a community manager, and founder, but it’s the job seekers, and my career development colleagues who make HireFriday the special community that it is.

HireFriday is a way to reach out to one another’s followers. It’s as Chris Brogan says, “a way to connect job seekers to jobs, people and resources.” While we don’t fancy jobs in the twitter stream, we welcome them on our facebook page, and linkedin group. Tonight’s HireFriday All-Stars Show on blogtalkradio will feature some of my favorite colleagues, volunteer leaders, and job seekers. All the lines will be open, and I expect a free for all discussion, rather than the structured interview format that I typically employ for Compassionate HR.

There are so many career development experts who are going to be on, and rather than name drop, I’d prefer you tune in tonight, or catch the show free on ITunes, or in the blogtalkradio archives. Soon, I will have a new website completely devoted to HireFriday. It will be a place where we will have both structured, and unstructured discussions. There will be premium benefits for HireFriday website members. I plan on offering my book, e-book, and training module materials that will move your job search forward. I will interview the best and brightest career development professionals, and it will be the launch pad for my videos, and webinars. I wanted to give you a glimpse as to where the HireFriday Community is going.

All I want to do is make an honest living Obviously, I’m not going to get rich doing this work. That’s not the point. I am 52 years old. I had to make an executive decision how I want to spend the rest of my life. All signals led to this: helping job seekers accelerate their re-employment by providing leading edge tools, skills, and innovative ways to harness the web for their online job search. In addition, I will offer my boots on the ground approach to a strategic job search for real-life networking encounters. I’ll be like the ad-agency for job seekers, extolling their strengths, knowledge, and abilities to the HR and Recruitment Community.

Every now and then, a woman has to stand up for what she believes in, and follow her path. This is the path of my heart, and I trust I will help put a lot of people back to work, and empower them to follow their dream. This is my quest. I actually don’t care how much money I make. So long as I can put a roof over my head, and help others while doing so, I will be happy.

Thank you for being a part of my career journey. I pray that I may be a part of yours.

Sincerely,

HR Margo Rosefeel free to get linkedin with me.
Founder & CEO of HireFriday

Now for your theme song: You’re A Shining Star

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