LinkedIn quickguide for job hunting and personal branding

Copyright 2014 Tom Laine, [email protected], Mob. +358 400 296 196

LinkedIn quickguide for

Job hunting and

Personal branding

Tom Laine, LinkedIn heavy user since 2004

[email protected]

LinkedIn is once again going through a change that is being rolled out to

users at different stages.

Some still have the older features,some have already the new ones.

In this document version you can see many of the new features.

Updated 29.9.2014

1/10 Personal profile – picture and header

• Picture builds credibility, most fake profiles don’t have a picture or the picture clearly doesn’t match the person described in the content (e.g. age, gender) or is a clear screenshot from an advertisement or a picture of a celebrity. No sunglasses, helmet, other people, pets, small figures at the top of a mountain, alcohol, cigarettes, etc. in the picture! Just a recognizable you!

• Profile header tells your current situation and core skills• Choose 3-5 keywords or phrases for your core skills and your next dream job• Use clear keywords repeatedly in the profile, starting from the header, which is the first place where the LinkedIn search algorithm looks for

keywords• Industry is not significant in job searching, in many cases you would have several reasonably good options for industry• Edit your public profile URL to something short and descriptive, easy to remember• Network actively, your ”reachability” is max. 3 network levels + groups• Most people don’t need the paid LinkedIn job searcher badges or other paid account• LinkedIn guides you in building a better, fuller profile

2/10 Personal profile - Summary

Update your status frequently, but remember, this is not Facebook!

Fill out the Summary-field with clear, short explanation of your situation;

- what, when, where, why, and how

Add your contact details already here!

Repeat your chosen keywords creatively

Simply put in french lines ”Specialities-/Keywords-/Skills-list” or other phrasing for

a longer list of keywords

English as primary language, but if your working language is something else, use

both languages. LI has added 23 language UIs, searches still often conducted in

English at first.

You can add pictures and presentations to Summary

Link your other specialist profiles, blogs or webpage to Summary

Fill out the profile like it was your resume, or even better and more widely

Webshop

Training materials from Slideshare

Pinterest board

Trainer profile from Slideshare

2/10 Personal profile - Summary

If you’re active in the job market, say it!

Use also groups to announce your availability

If you’ve been available for some time already, update the Summary with a date, announcing that you’re still looking. Tell why you’re good and qualified, and what you’re looking for.

Especially when in career transition to new skills and industry, state clearly what you’re looking for and what not, and why you should be considered, what you’d be willing to do to get a new start.

Searching for a new job may be a full time job, so if it lasts 6+ months, add it to your profile as a new current job. It’s better to tell about how actively you’re looking than to leave gaps in your resume - gaps are suspicious!

Network with HR, recruiters and hiring managers, tell them what you’re looking for and where.

Network actively, be proactive, outspoken, and tell them what you want, they’re not mindreaders!

3/10 Personal profile - Experience

Titles must show what you *really* did in each position, worst titles are ”Project/Account/KAM Manager” which are too common to be used in searching for potential new employees! They don’t reflect your skills!

Use names and numbers to describe each position.

Numbers; direct and indirect HR responsibilities, budget size, savings that you enabled, (over)achieved targets, comparison to others in your position, won/managed accounts (sizes). Numbers reflect seniority and enable comparison!

Names; technologies, SW/HW, programming languages, OS, frameworks, tools, end terminals, machines, methods/processes, certifications, clients, subcontractors, partners, etc.

You can add also pictures, logos, news, etc.

You could also add references letter, certification, etc.

Both title and description are part of the search algorithm, so repeat keywords as much as you can (within reason).

4/10 Personal profile - Education

At minimum latest and highest full degree

The more relevant to current skillset, the more you

need to tell details, and vice versa

Majors, minors, thesis, bigger course entities, honors,

level, certifications, corporate projects, alumni/student

council work, …

Link info from the school, news, pictures,

documentation

Instead of chronological order, you can also number

them to certain order (not best practice!)

When adding a school, choose the one that LinkedIn

proposes you as closest match when you start typing,

even when including typos, as the suggested one is

the most commonly used name for this school.

5/10 Personal profile – Additional info

Add your chosen keywords to Interests-field. Business interests are a must, personal interests are a plus.

No need to fill out personal details

Add to ”Advice for…” your contact details if not anywhere else in the profile! Preferably already at Summary, but here at least.

You can tell a lot about yourself through your network. Concerning your network one can wonder why someone should or should not be able to see who’s in it!

If you work in sales, marcomms or PR, a large personal network of skilled individuals (or potential clients) may be that one thing that lands you the job!

6/10 Personal profile - recommendations

LinkedIn-netiquette:If you’re recommended, consider writing one back if relevant!

Be proactive, write 1 first to receive 1 back!

It shouldn’t be embarassing to ask for a reference!

If your ex-boss won’t / can’t write you one, 3 colleagues are just as good

Best recommendation comes from a client, next best from business partner/subcontractor, only then from people in your own organisation!

You can choose which recommendations are public and which private

7/10 Personal profile – add-ons

LinkedIn’s big update in 2012 removed the old Applications and Sections as such.

Some of the Sections are now ”just” additional parts for your profile, you can see them in your profile sidebar. New ones have since then been added.

Skills (previously Skills and Expertise) section is now the most active part of all LinkedIn profiles around the world.

Other additional parts incl. Projects, Languages, Test Scores, Courses, Patents, Certifications, Publications, Volunteer Experience and Causes, Honors and Awards, and Organisations.

Projects: add a couple of your best projects highlighting your skills. Projects allows adding team members to the project.

Languages: (In Finland) Finnish-Swedish-English –combination is considered normal, add only languages outside of these with proficient business level, unless applying for jobs in Swedish speaking parts of Finland or abroad.

Test Scores: Language tests, GMAT, etc. Not very commonly used

Courses: Courses with well-known organisations/trainers, are part of e.g. eMBA, are for widely used technologies, methods, part of certification, or SW key/super user courses, etc.

Not used for tailored internal solution trainings, etc.

Patents, Certifications, Publications: highly recommended to add. Publications are similarly to Projects a section where one can add other people.

Honors and Awards, Volunteer Causes, Organisations: good in adding understanding of your skills and interests Volunteer Causes and Organisations are allegedly part of the new feature now tested in the U.S. for targeted job advertising for 3rd sector organisations.

7/10 Personal profile – add-ons

Add widely your skills to this section. Add the maximum 50 skills, tools and technologies! If you don’t add all 50, LinkedIn uses your friends to find new ones to add to the list!

Your network will judge your skills, endorsing them for you, even suggesting/adding new ones.

Endorsements are comparable to Facebook Likes, they’re not really recommendations, but something less. Recruiters don’t take these seriously, only pointing to a direction!

LinkedIn suggests your network 5 skills to endorse, often 1-2 being a mismatch – a good guess at what you might be skilled with.

Max. 50 skills are shown, and max. 99 endorsers in numbers, but skill can be clicked open to see who and how many have endorsed you.

8/10 Personal profile - modularity

In the new LinkedIn profile you may notice the lesser

importance of groups, better ability to add external

material like links, logos and pictures, and that the

profile is even more modular than before! You can

even change order of current jobs or schools.

Modularity means that you can drag and drop parts

to change the order of content within your profile with

the arrows highlighted here right

You can choose to highlight your experience over

education or skills and expertise over experience,

choose wisely what are your strongest points!

The higher the part is in your profile, the more

importance it should have to your current skills and

situation! Don’t trust the reader will scroll your profile

to the very end.

9/10Groups

Plenty of groups available, usually several around the same topic and focus area or target group.

Special job searching/advertising groups (in Finland), e.g. Talent Pool Finland, ejobs.fi, Uratärpit

Each group has a special Jobs-page

At the group Jobs-page you can see targeted job advertising for this particular group, same jobs can be found in the topbar Jobs-section

Job Discussions –section is for free job ads, only available for group members to post and read!

These jobs may not have that much competition due to limited access to them

Ask smart, answer smart, get positive attention, see who’s talking, then get in touch directly

Talent Pool Finland is the biggest job searching/advertising group for Finns, already c. 35.000 Finns enrolled!

10/10 Following

Following-section tells people that you are up-to-date with the current trends, news and visionaries, that you are as well in touch with your industry as anyone!

Company profiles

9500+ organisations from Finland already at LinkedIn, globally over 4 million organisations represented, but many still not with full / own profiles

- Some active, most still passive

Follow companies, the changes happening in them, who might you know in these companies that you’re interested in or applying with?!

Who left, who’s new, which role they’re changing to, how does that effect your chances to apply? Anyone you could use as internal reference?

Did someone just slip out news about a new product, project, BU, plant, or something else interesting, something effecting your application possibilities or other reasons to get in touch with them asap?

Follow trends between companies, who’s hiring, who’s loosing key people- Sense the changes in companies and markets, follow LinkedIn’s analysis about the companies and its competitors

Company profiles

Jobs-section

Lots of search criteria

Change search criteria on the go

Narrow your search to only certain companies, industries, location

Much cheaper to advertise jobs at LinkedIn than in Monster and other traditional digital media channels. Still, it’s not free in this section either!

Remember to check the Job Discussions in your groups, where the advertising is free of charge!

Save the search results and get them in your Inbox!

Save a maximum of 10 saved searches that are sent daily, weekly or monthly to your inbox.

Jobs-section

c. 500 jobs open in Finland these days per day

Try also changing the Location-category to ”anywhere”, see how many jobs for Finns there are abroad, you’ll be amazed! You can also choose to find International opportunities just matching your skills. For all jobs open in Finland and for Finns abroad use search string ”Finland OR Finnish OR Suomi”. Same rule applies with all nationalities.

Use your network to find contact persons and references, who can refer you, ask him/her what is it like to work there, what’s happening with competition, how to apply better, who to apply with.

Jobs-section

Applying a job in LinkedIn

”Apply on company website” forwards you to the actual (company) system or ATS where the application process takes place.

”Apply now” allows you to apply with your LinkedIn profile with just 2 clicks of a button.

Applying a job in LinkedIn

After clicking the Apply now – button a pop-up window opens, from where you can update your profile, change contact details, add cover letter or a shorter (more tailored) version of your resume.

The application is registered to LinkedIn to your Jobs-page.

Clicking the Submit-button sends your LinkedIn profile in PDF format to the recipients directly.

Apply With LinkedIn

Use the ”Apply with LinkedIn” –button to apply jobs without additional documents or resume, just your LinkedIn profile. You can find the button often at Monster, blogs, company webpages, Facebook, etc.

Some companies accept LinkedIn profile applications even without the button, just asking you to send a link to your profile!

Add your LinkedIn profile link to your resume, give the recruiter a chance to check your references, network and additional experience!

Networking

Your visibility and ”foundability” is about as large as your network! Remember, when you hide parts of your LinkedIn profile (public profile settings), you start seeing less in

other’s profiles, and you narrow down the possibilities of being found! Most recruiters don’t have paid LinkedIn accounts, add your contact details to your profile to be better and

more easily reached

If you spend all your invitations, ask LinkedIn for more, and if you’ve behaved well, you’ll be granted more. Originally you have 3000 invitations you can send out.

Network especially with potential recruiters, HR, hiring managers!

Network with people you currently deal with, later it may be too late Network now, not when you have to or need to for some reason! After some time, people don’t recognize you, don’t care about you anymore, or you can’t reach them

anymore – network now!

Through Groups you can identify people with similar interests

You may let LinkedIn check your address book, efficient way to find old contacts (not recommended!)

Add your LinkedIn profile URL to your email signature

Are you an open networker? Why would you decline an invitation?

Adding OpenLink-status to your profile increases the number of incoming invitations.

Changes in the new LinkedIn interface

The new LinkedIn blog platform



The new LinkedIn blog platform follower statistics (equals almost 100% to your network statistics).


New topbar, less options, re-arranging the order New logic, no significant changes effecting job search


Changes to search options


New Alumni- and reference- searches


Re-thinking the networking!


New LinkedIn Today Channels


New LinkedIn Today Influencers


New LinkedIn Today. Period.


UI coming in chosen languages, likely to be removing language versions in profiles!

Polls-feature removed 30.6.2013

Profile Organizer changed to be part of your connections-feature.

Look who’s talking - Tom Laine in short!

CEO, Innopinion Ltd, crowdsourcing and co-creation service for employee and customer engagement

Social media consultancy HC Services Oy, Founder (http://www.somehow.fi/somehow/)

Serial entrepreneur, social media startups since 1999. The most networked Finn at LinkedIn.

Recruitment background, specialized in leveraging social media in recruitment and branding

Templeton & Partners UK, IT Recruiter

Huntress Search UK, Senior Consultant

Executive Net UK/FIN, Principal Consultant

ElanIT Resource/Manpower Group, Nordic Resource Mngmt

BI-IT Solutions/VMP Group Finland, CEO (Founder, sold to VMP Group)

Social media publications, e.g. Social media recruitment guide Suhteellinen rekrytointiteoria (MIF 2012), and social media job hunting guide Työnhakuopas (Talentum 2014)

Clients incl. Microsoft, Nokia, NSN, Agco Sisu Power, UPM, Digia, Elektrobit, Nice Business Solutions, Newsec, Universities, public offices, cities, SMEs, NGOs, unemployment offices, etc.

Speaking in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, U.K., Ireland, etc. Over 200 organisations consulted in 3 years + employees of over 200 other organisations have attended open trainings.

In Russia: Ikea, Mercedes Benz, MetLife Alico, Louie Vuitton, Bell Equipment, PPG Industries, Servier, SEB, Laydings, Antal, Marketvisio/Gartner, Rödl & Partner, Start CBS, Rulo Havi Global Logistics, Gowlings, Cluttons

Ask for more!

Tom Laine

Mob. +358 400 296 196

Skype: tomlaine

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomlaine

Twitter @lainetom

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/lainetom

More materials available at:

Slideshare.net/tomlaine

Pinterest.com/tomlaine

Over 330 million professionals are using LinkedIn. Are you?

Over 230 million professionals at LinkedIn. Are you?

Here’s a brief look into using LinkedIn for job hunting and personal branding, the profile optimization secrets are not shared in written.

LinkedIn is changing constantly, thus this quickguide is also being updated accordingly!

We train various corporates, schools and other organisations to using social media effectively for a number of purposes, personally I’m focusing on recruitment / job

searching, branding, LinkedIn specialism & crowdsourcing. Ask for more info at

Tom Lainehttp://www.linkedin.com/in/tomlaine

Mob. +358 400 296 [email protected]

http://www.somehow.fi/somehow/

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LinkedIn quickguide for job hunting and personal branding