7/30/2019 Think Titles...

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Think Titles

Sandra Campin,CEO of Resume Consulting, is a CPRW & Personal Branding Strategist. She helpsher clients to achieve their career goals and does so by honing in on where they excel. Having worked

in the recruitment industry, she have been successful in placing job seekers in front of hiring managers.

Creator of the Walk-Through Resume, she favours working live with her clients to profile them

optimally in todays ever-evolving, increasingly complex job market. To obtain a free critique of your

resume, send your resume to: sandra@resume-consulting.com. Connect with Sandra at:

http://ie.linkedin.com/in/scampin.

1-Understand The Rule of Find-ability/Visibility on LinkedIn, which I call The Rule of 5.

The rule of 5 is essentially as follows:

Whatever your desired job title is, you want:

1-your current job title to match

2- your 2nd

most current job title to match,

3-the headline (under your name) to match

As well as for this title to appear 4-in your summary and 5-in your skills section.

In other words, you actually want the desired job title to appear at least 5x and in the right places.

[Note: This rule is explained in more detail in the LinkedIn Rank #1 doc.]

2- To ensure you are found, you want to think from the perspective of what titles are hiring managers

likely to look for, and to use multiple titles

Hiring managers refer to the same function by multiple titles. For example, a Sales Executive can be called an

Account Mgr, Business Developer, Account Director, Client Mgr, etc... If a hiring mgr searches for Sr Business

Developer, they will not see the profiles for Sales Executives in LinkedIn, and vice versa.

So the way around this is, once again, to list multiple titles, eg. Sr Sales Executive / Business Development Mgr

Note: You do want to keep the title on your employment contract, however you may wish to list alternative

titles alongside your assigned title.

3-Using multiple titles requires a person to breakout of the titles you were assigned...

By this I mean that most people cannot rebrand themselves to their full potentially if they use only the titles

they have been officially given.

You absolutely do not want to lie on a resume.

This said, too often professionals, and even senior professionals, have job titles which do not serve them well

For example, lets take the example of the Office Administrator who helps out with Business Development

tasks, eg. preparing proposals, calling clients, etc...

If he/she records that he is an Office Administrator, then:

1-At a glance he/she will be perceived as Office Administrator and only that because this is what is listed as a

title

2-It will sound a little odd to emphasize the sales aspects of the role

My global message is that we want to make sure that we are using titles that accurately reflect our actual role,all the while reflecting the actual tasks we performed.

4-Test Your Rank-ability & Visit with Your Neighbours

Once you have found the titles you like, you want to search for yourself by title, and make sure you appear in

the top 100 matches

If you are not in the top 100, revisit Rank #1 and the Rule of 5.

If you are in the top 100, view your neighbours..., you may find that the job title you have chosen is actually a

mis-match because you suddenly find yourself in the wrong crowd, eg. A Business Developer can maybe be

called a Lead Developer but if you call yourself a Lead Developer do you find yourself appearing side-by-side

call centre operators.

5-Know that if you change a title, this will have a domino effect on the tasks/responsibilities/achievementsyou list

A common mistake is that a jobseeker prepares a solid resume, then decided to update their LinkedIn profile,

and at some stage, they learn the rule of 5 and then they start being creative with their job titles.

The problem here is that the bullets need to match the title, and so what often happens is that the individual

then reorganizes/reprioritizes their bullets, etc... And suddenly they find they have a LinkedIn profile which

does not look anything like the resume they may have already put out in circulation. This step wants/needs to

be done before a resume is sent out...