LinkedIn

Not on LinkedIn Yet? Here are 7 Reasons Why You Should Be

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What? You’re not on LinkedIn yet? What are you waiting for? While LinkedIn is de rigueur for the private sector, I see more and more federal agency managers using LinkedIn as well.

If you’re not already on LinkedIn these seven reasons outline why you should be on this critical professional social networking site.

  1. Because That’s Where The People Are. LinkedIn is the number one social network for professionals — and, arguably, the most important website for jobseekers — with more than 650M members worldwide. Not only are people you know already on the site (friends, family, co-workers, colleagues), but so are people you should get to know — recruiters, hiring managers, and your future co-workers.
  2. To “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty.” In his book of the same name, author Harvey Mackay advocates building your network before you need it — and joining LinkedIn now gives you time to build your network of connections.
  3. To Strengthen Your Offline Network. LinkedIn helps you keep track of people you know “in real life” — what they are doing, where they work now, and who they know.
  4. To Reconnect With Former Co-Workers. Sometimes it’s hard to stay in touch with the people you used to work with — making it difficult to find them when you need them (say, to use as a reference in your job search). LinkedIn allows you to search contacts by employer, so anyone who listed that company in their profile can potentially be found in the search.
  5. Because You Can Establish Yourself as an Expert. One of the ways to be seen as a thought leader in your industry is to increase your visibility. A great way to do this is to write articles using LinkedIn Publishing. Anytime you post articles or a status update, these updates will be available in your profile, so people looking for you can see that you are actively engaged in this online community.
  6. To Be Found as a Passive Candidate. Having a robust LinkedIn profile — filled with your accomplishments and strong keywords — will lead prospective employers to you, even if you are not actively looking for a job. Recruiters especially are always searching LinkedIn to find candidates to match their search assignments.
  7. Because Your Presence on LinkedIn Can Help You Be Found Elsewhere Online. It’s common practice for hiring managers and recruiters to “Google” job candidates, and your LinkedIn profile will likely appear high up in their Google search results. A strong LinkedIn profile can enhance your candidacy, especially if you have a solid network of contacts, at least a few Recommendations, and you’ve supplemented the basic profile information with things like lists of your certifications, languages you speak, honors and awards, and/or your professional portfolio.

Branding Yourself on LinkedIn

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It’s been over a year since I last wrote about LinkedIn. In that time, LinkedIn has grown even more important—not less. If you are not using LinkedIn to brand yourself to potential employers, you are missing a huge opportunity. And if you haven’t looked at your LinkedIn profile in while, it’s probably past time to do a refresh.

When someone searches for you on LinkedIn, they will see 3 things: Your name, your LinkedIn Headline, and your location. In many cases, hiring managers will make the decision to read your full LinkedIn profile based on just these three things. Consequently, your LinkedIn Headline acts like a newspaper or magazine title. It gives the reader an idea of what your profile will include. Being specific results in a much better headline—but your headline should be more than just your job title. Great headlines attract attention, and the more people who view your LinkedIn profile, the better your chances of connecting with the right person who can lead you to your dream job.

Keywords also play an important part for you in being found by people who don’t know you on LinkedIn — this is particularly true for jobseekers who are hoping for contacts from prospective employers and recruiters. Keywords are a list of words and phrases that are related to your work — they are the words that a prospective employer would search for when trying to find someone like you. LinkedIn Headlines are searchable fields using the “People Search” function when someone is looking for particular skills, interests, qualifications, or credentials.

You can also incorporate keywords throughout your LinkedIn profile, including:

  • Your LinkedIn Headline
  • Current and former work experience
  • LinkedIn summary section
  • Specialties or Skills section

The keywords that you select for your profile must fit two criteria:

  • They must speak to what makes you unique and what you want to be known for.
  • They must align with what employers value — that is, what they want.

Choose your words carefully. When possible, incorporate in keywords — nouns or phrases that can be picked up through online searches and are prominently used in applicant tracking systems.

Although you can create different targeted versions of your résumé to target different types of positions, you’re limited to one LinkedIn profile—so make it count. Be specific and single out the training, experience, and/or results that set you apart. Someone who is reading your profile should be able to recognize YOU in it; if what you wrote could apply to anyone with your job title, go back to the drawing board. You don’t have to come up with anything earth-shattering – but remember that differentiating yourself will help you be found.

A couple of key things that will help you stand out on LinkedIn:

  • Write your Summary in the first person (after all, you’re talking about yourself).
  • Profiles with pictures attract 50-70% more inquiries than profiles without pictures. Have a good headshot of yourself. At a minimum, your photo should include your head and shoulders, not just your face. And remember, no extra arms over your shoulder!

Consider publishing on LinkedIn and commenting on others’ posts to increase your profile and demonstrate your expertise. Offer your opinion and expertise on key issues, dissect obscure (but job-related) topics, and link to other articles and blogs of interest.

Don’t forget to customize your LinkedIn URL (see: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/87/customizing-your-public-profile-url?lang=en) and include the link on your resume!

Pro Tip: Don’t Copy Language from your Resume into LinkedIn

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LinkedIn is great for networking and job search but there are certain features you want to be careful with or avoid all together. One of the ones you want to avoid is actually controlled by a setting within Microsoft Office 356, allowing language from your LinkedIn profile to be used in Microsoft Word’s Resume Assistant feature – that is, for other MS Office users to access language from your LinkedIn profile.

Resume Assistant is available to Microsoft 365 users who are Office Insiders, and allows you to see work experience examples and skills descriptions from public LinkedIn Profiles. This means that the hard work you have done to create your unique profile may show up in Resume Assistant and become parts of other jobseekers’ resumes. In other words, Resume Assistant provides content from LinkedIn users to help you develop your resume. You will not be able to identify the names of the people whose content you are seeing. Resume Assistant It will also show you potential jobs that meet your criteria.

While this might not bother you if you’re trying to create a resume, if you are job hunting and have spent time, effort, and perhaps money to develop your resume, you may not want other people stealing / using that content for free. And if the content is used often enough, your content might become boilerplate language for other resumes.

Bottom line: Be aware that LinkedIn now has a feature where your profile can be extracted into a Word document by other LinkedIn users.

Here is how to make sure this setting is turned off:

  • Go to your “Settings” section.
  • Click on “Privacy.”
  • You will see the option for “Microsoft Word.” Click on that.
  • Make sure the setting is then changed to “No.”

Further, you should never copy and paste your resume into your LinkedIn profile where that language could be copied. Let lots of people see your LinkedIn profile, but only give your resume to people you target.

8 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Develop Leads

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By now, we have all heard of LinkedIn and how it can help you with your job search. If you have been following articles in this series, by now have an account and a robust profile. So what’s next? Developing leads! Here are 9 ways to use LinkedIn to help you in your job search:

Find people on LinkedIn that you know or want to know. Grow your connections list. Every time you reach out to someone to connect, create a customized connection request rather than using the default. The goal is to establish and nurture relationships that go both ways (it shouldn’t be just about you). Tell the person what it is that attracted you to them—perhaps a recent article that you liked or an award you want to congratulate them for. There are many people who do not accept connection requests from people who do not include a personalized note.

Look at jobs on LinkedIn. You can search for jobs under the “jobs” category; your search can be by key word, zip code, and more. Use advanced search to further refine your search. You can even let recruiters know that you’re interested. I even see federal government jobs posted on LinkedIn; LinkedIn is not just for the private sector anymore. Learn more at: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/157/searching-for-jobs-on-linkedin?lang=en.

Once you find potential jobs, use your connections to find out more. Find 1st level connections to people you know at the company/organization you’re targeting and reach out. Ask them about the organization and the job.

Use Company Profiles on LinkedIn to research the organizations you have targeted. You will see your connections at the organization, jobs posted, and more. You can follow the company too, so it will show up in your feed. And you can use this information to help you prepare for an interview.

Look at the profiles of your interviewers on LinkedIn. If you are called for an interview, you want to be as prepared a possible. Looking at the profiles of the people you’re interesting with is a great way to get a feel for them. You might find some connections or interests you have in common; knowing this information may help calm your nerves before the big day!

Leverage referrals and recommendations. If the job is listed on LinkedIn you can request a recommendation or referral from someone who works there. Most employers are more likely to hire someone they “know” or knows someone they know, so having a recommendation or referral from someone inhouse could be a real plus.

Take advantage of LinkedIn Premium. LinkedIn offers a free trial of its premium service. Try it and see if its features work for you. Transitioning military members get free LinkedIn premium for one year. Make sure to take advantage!

Make others take notice. Establish and reinforce your credibility as an expert in your field by publishing articles on LinkedIn Pulse. You can also upload recent white papers you have written or PowerPoint presentations you have made. Be sure to get clearance from your manager first…you don’t want to get in trouble for sharing what they might see as proprietary or confidential information!

7 Things You Can Do to Finally Get Started with LinkedIn

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LinkedIn is used more in the private sector but there are many federal agencies (the US Department of the Army is the largest LinkedIn user in the world) that won’t interview you for a job if they can’t find you on LinkedIn. Instant pass.

I often encounter federal employees that still haven’t heard of LinkedIn or who don’t have profiles; so whether you’re actively looking for a job or not, there is no excuse for not getting started.

Here are 7 quick things you can do to get going:

Create a profile and customize your LinkedIn URL. Here’s how: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/87?lang=en. Having a custom URL is a great differentiator.

Include a photo. People want to know what you look like. Please make your photo professional. Your photo should show your face (rather than your whole body). No extra arms hanging over your shoulder or beer cans in your hand. And if you are transitioning from the military, your photo should be a civilian one—don’t forget to smile; you want to look approachable and friendly.

Put together a strong Headline. This is the line under your name. LinkedIn will provide a default headline (your job title) but this can (and should) be edited to be more representative of who you are. You can make this your branding statement or use it to target jobs you’re interested in. You can even separate thoughts or concepts by using symbols such as: ► or * or │ or ▪. Be sure to use symbols that are common across Word. You are allotted 120 characters for your LinkedIn Headline. Here’s my LinkedIn Headline as an example: Federal Human Resources Training & Job Search Expert. Here’s another: Program/Project Management ► Business Development ► Operations ► Aviation /Air Advisor ► Pilot ► Trainer.

Create a strong summary. You have 2000 characters to create a strong statement about who you are. Don’t just copy and paste your Skills Summary from your resume. Show some personality but be sure to include your qualifications and experience so that your profile will “pop up” in the algorithms. If you are transitioning military, be sure to translate your military experience into “civilian-speak”.

Populate the Experience section. Include your jobs from the last 10 or so years (going back 30 years not required or recommended). Again, this should not be a copy and paste of your resume. Show quantifiable results and use the key words from the industry you are targeting. And military transitioners: don’t forget to translate!!

Include skills on your LinkedIn; again, this is a great way to be seen in the algorithms. Only include skills that are associated with your target position(s). And make sure to capture them all. If you’re not sure what skills are appropriate, take a look your ideal job postings and identify the common words across them. Wordle may help: www.wordle.net.

Create connections. Reach out to people you know to up your connections. Show you’re an active user. And, when you connect with people, send them a personalized (not the default) connection request. Aim for 300+ connections.

We can fight the growth of social media, or we can use it to our advantage. LinkedIn a targeted toward professionals who want to find a way to stay in touch and keep up with colleagues and trends in their industry. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this free, powerful tool?