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Dream Job Networking Tips

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Yes, there are dream jobs still available, but you don’t see them advertised. They are secured through networking. Below are some tips you need to embrace to build a strong, professional network. The more people you know, the better it will be for you to generate leads.

Dream Job Networking Tips

1. Reach Out to Your Peers in The Industry

Don’t be intimidated by thinking that people won’t be willing to network or unable to respond. Yes, there will be people who ignore you, but there is collaboration within industry sectors wanting to help each other. Be proactive and even bold and brassy by connecting with peers at your level working for the competitors. You never know to whom they are connected and how they can initiate leads to help you move in a positive career direction.

2. Connect with Alumni

Working extensively with EMBA graduates and candidates, I am constantly amazed at the inability to want to connect with university or college alumni. In short, you are a member of an exclusive club that is open to sharing and having constructive dialogue. The relationship is already warm; make it hot by connecting with alumni who work at your targeted employers or who may be able to advance more leads for you. The alumni directory is a gold book not to be ignored. Also, use the alumni LinkedIn groups to introduce yourself to this exclusive club.

3. Join Professional LinkedIn and Facebook Groups

These two platforms are a gold mine for generating ideas and leads. Be astute in the groups you join; don’t join a woodworking group or knitting group that will bring you minimal value. Select groups pertinent to your career direction and goals, and be sure to create a generic introduction about who you are in MS Word. On joining these groups, introduce yourself. I know from experience with my many clients that the ROI is dramatic.

4. Attend Meetups

The last few years, Meetups.com has spread like wildfire across the world. Each major city now has an extensive Meetup network for people of different professions, interests and persuasions. These networking meetings can bring significant value. Generally, they are held in a fun setting and relaxed environment. This can be less intimidating than in a formal networking setting.

5. Volunteer

Volunteering is two-fold. Not only are you helping an organization or a population in need of help, but your peer volunteers also have a network. You never know who you might meet while volunteering. On a side note, volunteering is also good for your career management, as recruiters and HR professionals are looking for that section on your resume titled “Community Involvement” which shows you are willing to give your time for free and share your talents and skills. What message does that send to a future employer?

6. Attend Professional Events, Workshops and Conferences

There are events, workshops and conferences galore dedicated to enhancing your skills and building your network. Conferences tend to be attended by others with similar skills or interests, therefore, easing your introduction into conversation. Attending also allows you an opportunity to learn from your peers and external experts. Formal networking events could be regarded as dinners or breakfasts where again, you sit at a table and are forced to open up dialogue.

To wrap up, networking is not just about you, it’s about the others you meet. It’s a two-way street; give before you take. Above all, be genuine. Don’t give a false impression about yourself and don’t make promises you can’t meet. Grasp networking as a mainstay in working towards your dream job. Happy networking!

6 Social Media Tips to Increase your Presence

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How did we exist without social media? It is consuming copious amounts of our time and is now embraced by all generations including mine, the Baby Boomers. In the last few years social media has evolved and its presence has become stronger. It is very important to utilize various platforms in order to boost your ability to be found by search engines employed by career decision makers. Here are six tips to help you maximize your professionalism and impact.

1. Connect Purposefully

Only connect with a predetermined audience where you can bring value to them and they can bring value to you. Connections can be made within your industry, or with others who want to do business with you, or in your targeted list of employers where you would like to work. Check your LinkedIn profile daily to see who has viewed it and consider adding these as contacts.

2. Personal Connection

Always send a personalized message that includes information on the value you can bring to potential connections, highlighting your business and how you can help them. The acceptance rate is significantly increased with personal and courteous connection requests.

3. Honesty

Be open and be expressive when writing about who you are and what you can bring and what you can do for others. Every word online is public and reflects your reputation.

4. Manners

Be polite. Be considerate and avoid controversy, keeping within your personal brand. The raucous jokes and funny pictures can be saved for close friends. So too, can political and religious comments.

5. Consistency

Post and share as frequently as you can. If in career transition, you should be posting daily. If gainfully employed, once a week or every 10 days is fine. Create and maintain a positive presence to build interest, trust and recognition.

6. Diversify Your Presence

Utilize a mix of your personal content with content generated by others. Sharing is to be applauded. But keep it specific, upbeat and professional to strengthen your brand awareness and your expertise.

LinkedIn is the prime platform for sharing content. However, Facebook is also becoming a major resource used by HR professionals and executive recruiters in finding talent. Have fun with social media. You will learn and others will learn from you.

Social Media: Personal vs. Professional

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You are actively managing your career and know that social media can be a great way to get noticed by hiring influencers. You want to establish your reputation as a professional, and as an industry expert. However, you already have accounts on platforms such as Facebook Social Media: Personal vs. Professionaland Twitter…and those profiles were established for personal use and you don’t want to lose that connection with friends and family. How do you balance personal vs. professional use of social media?

There are two ways to handle this online duality. You can preserve existing social media accounts as purely private and personal, and establish new profiles for your career and professional use. Or, you can start over with all new accounts that serve both purposes.

Limit access to the personal, and create new professional accounts.

There are three options here, and you should pick the one that seems best for you.

  • Change your name on your personal-use social media profiles. Use a nickname, maiden name, or an alias (Michael Smith could go by Mike Smith or Big Mike. As an alias, he could use Jane’s Mike. Or Mike-loves-Jane. There’s 1,001 possibilities.). Once you have changed the names on your old personal-use profiles, create new accounts for professional use under your full name. This is a great option if you’re just beginning your career or if you expect to change industries in the future, or don’t mind being a little silly on your personal profiles.). Invite business contacts to your professional-use accounts.
  • Leave your current name on your personal-use profiles, but open new professional profiles with your industry or profession after the name (Michael Smith could keep his old Facebook profile, and add “Michael Smith, Insurance” or “Michael Smith Actuary”). This option is for those who are sure they’ll stay in their field/industry for many years to come. Most social media platforms put a limit on how many times you can change or edit your name.
  • Decide that one platform is for personal use, and the rest are for professional use. Deflect professional contacts away from your “friends and family” platform and toward LinkedIn and any other “professional” platforms you choose to use for work. You’ll have to contact any colleagues in your friends list about your change in social media strategy if you want to transition them from the personal to the professional medium. This option is best for those who already choose not to add work contacts to one particular social media platform, as no matter how practical the strategy, it’s inescapably rude to move someone out of the friend-zone and into the professional-zone.

Note: With any of these 3 options, you’ll need to change your privacy settings on your personal social media accounts/profiles to the most private available, including changing the privacy settings on the photos. This prevents search engines from pointing to your personal-use profiles or platforms. After changing the privacy levels, search your name to find your own public posts and tags on other people’s photos of you. Decide whether to remove/change privacy on your posts and their tags. This limits what anyone who isn’t on your friends list can see. For Twitter, you can “protect” all your tweets and limit who can see them to friends-only (be aware, if you later change your privacy settings to public again, ALL tweets become public – from first to last).

Start over with all-new public accounts that work for both personal and professional use.    

This may be the simplest of options. Here’s how to make it as fast and simple as possible.

  1. Save your photos from your current personal account(s)/profile(s).
  2. Make a list of contacts you want to be sure to retain. A screen shot of each page of your contact list is an easy way to do this.
  3. Choose the name you’ll be using on your profile(s). Ideally, it should match your resume and your LinkedIn.
  4. Make an announcement of the changeover on your social media platforms. You may also want to use any “instant message” features to send every contact on your list that same announcement.
  5. Change the name on your existing profiles. Sometimes the software balks at letting two users have the same name, even if one deletes the old account first (which you don’t want to do.).
  6. Create new profile(s)/account(s) under your real name, see #3. Fill the profile(s) in as completely as possible, adding professional information wherever you can. Choose the personal information you upload very carefully.
  7. Use a professional headshot or a photo of you in your professional role.
  8. Load any photos which are appropriate for the new dual-use account(s). Save the rest for personal use on your computer or storage medium.
  9. Add your contacts, using your screenshots/list as a guide.
  10. Post another announcement about the impending closure on your old account(s), and a welcome on your new one(s).
  11. Delete the old account(s).
  12. Begin using the new one(s).

Note: Some platforms resist closure or deletion of accounts. This is one of the reasons for the direction to change the name on the old account(s). If you run into this issue, simply change the privacy settings on your posts, photos, etc., to “Only Me” or “Friends Only” and delete your friends list.

Why not simply use existing accounts and profiles for both personal and professional contacts?

You can, but chances are, your casual personal style doesn’t match your consummate professional presentation. If it does, great! Go for it. It presents a certain amount of risk, but only you can decide if that risk is worthwhile. What risk? Cousin Jimmy may dig up that photo of you that should NEVER see the light of day again, and post it on one of your accounts as a joke. Or that angry post about Manulife 10 years ago may come back to haunt you during an interview for their Board. Recent accounts are easy to “clean up” by removing material that could look unprofessional. Older accounts may not be worth the amount of time it could take. Only you know how you want to manage your social media.

Prepare Your Social Media for Your Job Search

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Chances are, during a job search, you will be searched. Hiring influencers look online to get a feel for who you are and to see your personal branding to learn more about you. Yes, you DO have a personal brand, even if you don’t put energy into managing it.

Prepare Your Social Media for Your Job SearchSo how should you prepare your social media for a job search? Immediately, focus on the short-term urgent tasks: Make sure your information matches, use keywords across platforms, develop your profile fully, go public so you’re easily searchable, and link your accounts. In the long term: Update regularly, interact with your contacts, and join groups that feed into your brand.

Immediate tasks

Make sure they match. Your resume and social media profiles should match perfectly. Discrepancies may be accidental, but they cause hiring influencers to question your accuracy (if not your honesty).

Professional branding. Use the same astute business acumen in your own career management that you use for your company’s benefit. Sell yourself consistently across platforms. Use the same keywords and language from resume to social media and even in your applications. Make it easy to understand the message you are sending about your skills, experience, and value.

Fill out your profile. I see so many clients who have only partially filled out their LinkedIn profiles. This and other social media are places where hiring influencers are actively searching for candidates! Why would you make it harder for them to find you and learn about you?

Go public. Make sure your information is available to be searched. As with your profile, you WANT to be noticed and found by hiring influencers holding the key to your dream job. While your search is active, make your contact information available, too.

Link up. Link your social media accounts so that executive recruiters and other hiring influencers can find you easily.

Maintenance tasks

Update schedule. Set an update schedule so that you can work on the social media side of your personal brand regularly. This way, all of your professional achievements are available to hiring influencers and potential employers.

Interact. Share links and ideas that are relevant to your industry to establish a pattern of expertise and in-depth knowledge. Like and share posts from other industry experts and from your network contacts to strengthen your connections.

Join. Join groups relating to your career, your industry, and your interests so that you are even more visible online.

Top 3 LinkedIn Mistakes

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More and more hiring influencers are not only finding candidates on LinkedIn, but they also use the social media platform as part of their vetting process. Millions of people have joined, intending to establish their personal brand and network online. It’s an effective tool when used properly, but I see these 3 LinkedIn mistakes over and over again.

  1. Ghosting. If you’re invisible or only partially present, you are missing out. An astonishing number of clients and potential clients signed up with LinkedIn, filled out a small portion of their profile and then disappeared. If you haven’t completed or updated your profile in the last 6 months (or longer), that outdated or missing information is costing you. A full profile with a professional looking headshot and a current list of your skills, experience, and education is key to gaining not only more connections, but interest in you as a job candidate!
  2. Incoherence. Don’t simply paste your resume into LinkedIn. From your headline right through to the bottom of your page, you want to tell a coherent, interesting story about who you are, what you do best, and what you want from your career. Everything should point toward your career goals, presenting you as a perfect fit for your dream job in your ideal organization! If you’re unsure where you want to steer your career, consider consulting an Executive Coach to help you distill what you love about your current job and your aspirations, to create a career map for yourself.
  3. Flat.  Don’t just fill in your profile and stop. Write a few articles about your industry, solutions to common issues in your field, and what’s new in what you do. Add depth, show your ability to communicate effectively, and show off your expertise. You don’t have to become a part-time journalist, simply post something interesting and relevant to your career about once a month. It’s a great way to polish your personal brand AND to remind yourself to examine and update your LinkedIn information as your career evolves.

 

Shhh! Whisper Your Unemployment on LinkedIn

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Whisper Your Unemployment on LinkedInIf you’ve left your most recent position or been downsized, it might seem like announcing your unemployed status on LinkedIn would be an obvious first step. Perhaps it shouldn’t be. What you do and don’t do on LinkedIn can hurt your job search. Here are a couple of sound reasons to whisper rather than shout your lack of employment on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s search algorithms penalize the unemployed. In simple English, this means that when hiring influencers search for candidates on LinkedIn, your name will rank lower in the search results if you leave your current position blank or choose to put “unemployed” as their current position or their current organization. I cannot recommend leaving a past employer in the current space, as hiring influencers view false information very unfavorably.

Highlighting unemployment places a reader’s focus on your status, not you. When you are trying to attract the attention of recruiters and HR professionals, you want to sell them on your skills and experience. You don’t want the focus to be on your availability, or cause too much interest in why you’re unemployed. You want to be seen first and foremost as a desirable candidate.

So, with two great reasons to whisper rather than shout about your unemployment, how do you handle your LinkedIn profile around the issue? Give a descriptive of your ideal role in the headline field, making sure it’s a title you are qualified to hold and select the appropriate industry. For example, here are two headline options for a real estate development executive:

Senior Level Real Estate Development Leader – All Real Estate Classes

or

Creative Deal Maker – All Real Estate Classes

You can indicate your availability on LinkedIn without highlighting your unemployment. Make sure your profile is up to date showing the end of your last position, and customized to boost your google ranking and filled with quantifiable achievements, not a laundry list of duties and responsibilities. The key is to shine the spotlight on your skills  experience and value-add first, then whisper or suggest your job search in your Summary section, instead of shouting it out and drawing attention to your unemployment as the most important fact about you at the top of your profile.

Customize your LinkedIn Profile for Greater Success

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customize-your-linkedin-profile-for-greater-successHere are 21 tips for a customized LinkedIn profile that will help you stand out and be noticed by hiring influencers, build your reputation as an industry leader, and will help you develop and polish your personal brand. The first four tips are how to build a basic social media profile that works for you instead of against you. The rest? Key tips to refining your message and branding so that you can use LinkedIn as a career-building tool!

The basics:

  1. Fill it out. Surprisingly, this may be the biggest stumbling block for many LinkedIn users. Every blank in your profile should be filled out, adding all work experience, relevant information, and including a professional photo that shows you as a business leader.
  2. Contact! Make certain your contact information is correct, up to date, and that you want to be reached in every way you list. If you don’t want recruiting calls on your office line, don’t list it.
  3. Make it match. Be sure your dates, job titles, and key words match your resume. Hiring influencers DO notice.
  4. Spell check. Check your spelling, your math, double check your details. Making sure you have no errors is important. Ask a spouse, friend, or colleague to take a look, too, a second set of eyes can help spot those sneaky little errors that creep in, unnoticed.

Refine your message and polish your branding:

  1. Headliner. Your headline should be a strongly worded value proposition.
  2. Interests. Your Interests section may have some personal details, but it should still portray you as a professional and steer away from being over-casual. When listing interests, pay close attention to those which are career related. Do include volunteer or charity work.
  3. Key to success. Build a list of key words that point to your career goals. Insert some of those key words in each Experience description to show relevance and build interest.
  4. Order those skills! Start with at least 10 skills and order them by their relevance to your career goals. If you find that only your top few skills are being endorsed, re-order them for a week or two to generate endorsements for all of your skills. Then replace them in order of relevance.
  5. Summary selection. Your Summary should contain a strong statement of who you are as a professional, and of your career goals. Use those key words, keep it positive, results-oriented, and focused.
  6. Volunteering Experience. Do add any work you have done with non-profits. Whether a volunteer or a Board member, LinkedIn reports a significant number of hiring influencers reference a candidate’s volunteer efforts as a factor in their choice of candidate.
  7. Customize your URL in the website section to your first and last name to make yourself more visible online. Customize the anchor text with your first and last name, preferably matching your email, to build and promote your personal brand.
  8. Make it interactive. Add links to publications written by you or about you. Add links to projects you’ve worked on or charity events you’ve chaired.
  9. Original content. Post news about your industry, solutions to common issues in your profession, and post about your career successes. Updating content puts your contacts on notice that there is something to see, and shows hiring influencers that you are proactive, involved, and serious about your career.
  10. Make contact! Send invitations to all of your colleagues, network connections, friends and neighbors who might be able to help you make other great connections. Don’t forget to look through LinkedIn’s suggested contacts, too. They’re often a degree or two from a mutual friend or colleague and a great networking contact.
  11. Make it personal. When you send an invitation to someone you don’t already know, personalize the invitation with a short introduction to you and your value to them as a connection.
  12. Where to look? Your chamber of commerce, professional association, alumnae group, any site that has the names of movers and shakers in your industry will have contacts you’d like to make. Look those people up on LinkedIn and issue personalized invitations. Add anyone you think might be valuable as a connection in the future. The point isn’t to curate your contacts too closely, but to expand your network and your reach!
  13. Delete invites. Has your invitation been ignored for a few weeks? Every month or so, go into your LinkedIn account and delete the lingering unanswered invitations. You are allowed a limited number of invitations at a time, so deleting the old, unused invitations frees you up to make more meaningful connections with those who DO want to connect.
  14. Endorsement time. You then need to make the effort to visit your new connections’ pages and endorse the skills you know they have. This prompts your connections to visit your page and reciprocally endorse your skills.
  15. Network connections. When you are at a networking event or simply meet a new contact, as well as trading business cards, it’s also acceptable to suggest connecting on LinkedIn. Click on the app, when it loads, click the triple dots on the top right, then click on “personalize invite” and send the invitation right then and there. Don’t have the time? Send personalized invitations to those who offered you a business card and reference meeting them at the event.
  16. Join up! Join groups relevant to your industry, job, or expertise. Introduce yourself and make contributions or ask questions. Be active.
  17. Go around again. Once you have updated your profile, made connections, endorsed skills, been endorsed, posted original content, and followed all these tips, do them all again. It keeps your profile updated, your content fresh, and your connections expanding.

Are You Behind the Social Media Curve?

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Recently I read about a 2016 study of the top 100 Canadian CEOs showing that over half are using at least one social media platform, such as LinkedIn, but only half of those proactive business leaders are using their social media presence effectively. That means only 25% of the most effective business leaders in Canada are reaping the benefits of their social media. Imagine what they could do with greater online visibility, a stronger and faster network of colleagues and mentors, and a polished, professional personal brand at the fingertips of the hiring influencers at the highest levels of business. Are you behind the social media curve, too?social media curve
I was not surprised to read that even the most successful business leaders have missed out on social media. Many of my own clients come to me with little or no social media presence. They may have signed up for a LinkedIn or Twitter account, but have never uploaded a photo, filled out the profile, and rarely network, post, or tweet.

Why is social media important in business today? In an era when many executive and C-level openings are never even advertised, networking is key to advancement. Social media began as a social networking tool, and has grown into an effective, useful business networking tool as well. By promoting your personal brand on social media, you become more visible, more searchable, and more attractive to hiring influencers. Don’t leave those advantages on the table!

As an Executive Career Coach, I advise my clients to develop not only a career plan, but a personal brand and social media strategy. A few simple steps and a minimal investment of time and energy can put the power of social media to work for you!

 

Five Ways to get Followers

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So you’re aware that you need to use social media as a part of your personal branding, your LinkedIn profile is polished, but now you’re looking at your Twitter account and stalling out. If you feel like you’ve somehow missed the point or lost out on the forward wave of the twitterverse, it’s not too late. It’s not too late to pick up terms like twitterverse, either, but first concentrate on the basics that allow you to grow your following and put Twitter to work for your brand!

  1. You, on Twitter. Fill out your profile in full so that anyone seeking more information about you can find it easily. I emphasize including this because so many clients come to me with a Twitter account and a username, but haven’t done anything else. At the very least, be clear about who you are and what you’re an expert in. Include a professional head shot and your elevator pitch as your bio. Everything about Twitter is short, concise, and to-the-point, so be prepared; you may have to tweak your bio to keep the important buzz-words and lose the fillers! When you have completed your profile and you are easily found on Twitter, add your handle to your business cards, LinkedIn, Facebook, and anywhere else you offer your contact information…there’s no point in joining if you don’t tell anyone!
  2. The basics. You probably already know that Twitter is a micro-blog platform where posts are 140 characters or less (yes, including spaces and punctuation). com and Mashable.com both have a Twitter primer that’s easy to read and can help you get started. After brushing up on what a tweet is, and a little about what it can do for you…you’re ready to start.
  3. Follow before you lead. Before we talk about what or how to tweet, one of the best ways to get a feel for Twitter is to follow someone else and read their tweets and also see what they re-tweet. Choose a business leader or author you admire, a few colleagues, and even a few companies you may be interested in. Spend a week or so looking not just at the content, but the links they share, and the re-tweets from others they promote. Once you’ve begun tweeting (that’s next), scroll through your contacts and follow your network contacts. Encourage them to follow you back.
  4. Follow me Start tweeting. Perhaps the easiest first tweet is a re-tweet of content you enjoyed from someone else. Stick to business, stay away from entertainment, pop-culture, and political tweets. You’re tweeting to enhance your personal brand, remaining neutral or silent on hot topics is smart.
  5. Tweet strategically. Keep your purpose, polishing and enhancing your personal brand, in mind. Tweeting should spark an interest in you as an expert in your field, as a potential employee, and as a network connection for others. Offer commentary, encouragement, or insights about issues and topics common to your industry. Definitely tweet your successes and triumphs! Design your tweets to highlight your expertise and value. Time your tweets around the lunch hour or end-of-work-day when people are checking in on social media.

Once you’ve mastered the Twitter basics, it’s time to learn more about Twitter chats, Twitter lists, and even look into social media management software so that you can write the tweets ahead of time and have them posted automatically for you.

Get the Right Type of Attention on Social Media

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social-media-symbols-textSocial media allows introverts and extroverts an equal platform to broadcast their personal industry and functional expertise. From the comfortable environment of your own home or office, a café, or with your peers at an industry event, you can optimize your expertise and strengthen your personal brand.

It’s up to you how you go about this; you own your own rights to your social media activity. You can be overt. You can be passive. You can be rigorous. You can be fearless. You can author your own messages. You can share valuable information written by others. You can be engaging. You can make constructive comments. But you can also ruin your personal brand.

Right now in November 2015, I am observing someone in my own network who is making very controversial and ill-informed comments, which I know will come back to bite him in the years to come. This is not the kind of attention anyone wants.

If you have a significant social media presence, you have in front of you a wealth of connections whose posts you can share and make comments on. Alternatively, you can author your own posts on the LinkedIn Pulse platform, which instantly gives you a potential audience of 400 million.

You can also get attention in a quieter way that is less time consuming. Social media engagement can be simply a “Like.” Twitter’s new “Like” button is in the shape of a heart, while Facebook and LinkedIn both use the “thumbs up” icon.

Even a quick and simple “Like” shows the other person that you’ve seen and appreciated their words, and reminds them you’re there. They may even choose to click on your profile to see what you’re up to, and who knows where that could lead?

Whatever you post on social media, be mindful of the audience and the message you are sending. One negative or ill-thought comment can come back to haunt you, and it can take tremendous effort to clean up this digital dirt and rebuild a positive web presence.