LinkedIn Is the Key to Your Next Job

If you’re in transition and looking for a job or you contemplate changing jobs, there’s nothing more powerful than learning how to be efficient at using the power of LinkedIn. Being listed on LinkedIn is a must. A study by Microsoft revealed that 70 percent of employers have rejected job candidates because of information they found on those candidates online. Yet the same study suggests that 85 percent of employers say a positive online reputation influences their decision. Those are pretty convincing numbers.

Here are some facts:

• Recruiters and employers prefer dealing with applicants they can check out and trust.
• People spend more time on social media than on e-mail. LinkedIn is in the social media for business.
• The Internet can make or break your image.

The power of LinkedIn lies in the fact that you can connect with people who influence decision making regarding whom to hire. In turn, you, too, can research the company you’re targeting, the hiring manager there, and also the culture of the company. Sixty percent of the hiring decision is based on the candidate’s fit into the company’s culture.

By joining professional and alumni groups on LinkedIn, you can participate in online discussions as well as answer questions, thus becoming prominent—and even, possibly, viewed as an expert. Companies love hiring experts! Additionally, recruiters scour professional groups in search of experts. You should join active groups to become visible online.

When you’re in transition, it’s important to know the right people but also important that they know you and that they get reminded of what you’re looking for. Therefore, it’s advisable to invite people to connect with you on LinkedIn. When you send an invitation, personalize your message; don’t just use the default LinkedIn invitation. Address the person by name, include a reminder about the commonality between you or mention how you came across the person’s name, state your intent, and then ask whether the person would be willing to connect with you.

When looking for opportunities, go to the home page, and on the upper right-hand corner, click on the Advanced option. Then type in a keyword and customize the screen to your circumstances. From that list, select and invite the people you want to connect with.

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Finding a Job Is a Nonsport Competition

In principle, getting hired is a simple two-step process: creating an attractive enough resume to be invited for a job interview and then acing it. In practice, getting hired is significantly more difficult because many people are competing for the same single job opening.

Relative to the vast number of available résumés, only a minuscule fraction of them are good enough to compel the reader to further explore the individual’s candidacy. And then, once in the race, the candidate faces another competition by needing to outshine the others who interview for the same job. There are two filters to penetrate, and this is where the challenge comes in.

Very few people can write their own résumé at a level that is convincing enough to propel it to the second step, which is the job interview. The solution here is to identify an excellent professional résumé writer. Writing a results-producing résumé is not a hobby; it’s a profession that requires training, experience, various certifications, and, most important, a knack or aptitude for it. Not all certified résumé writers are good at it despite the fact that they practice. Such it is in all professions of course. So it’s up to you to find one who has a good reputation. Ask for the opinions of friends and other associates who’ve used them, and check them out on LinkedIn. Good résumé writers are busy and not cheap. You can expect to pay from $200 to $800 depending on the complexity, but most charge $400 to $500.

And then comes the crucial step: impressing the interviewer enough not only to cause him to want to hire you but also to want to sell you to his boss, his human resources contact person, and your future peers. To achieve the “sale,” you have to have not only the right set of accomplishments but also the right communication skills, personal presence, aura, and personality. Learning how to convey those right elements and to keep practicing them may land you the job.

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Why Employers Look for Fit

Your first goal when looking for a job is to get an interview. You offer your candidacy by submitting your résumé. The challenge is that you’re in competition with a large number of very qualified applicants. If you’re lucky, your résumé gets you an interview. The decision to invite you for this coveted meeting was based on the appearance of your résumé, its overall content, the skills it reflects you possess, and, mainly, the accomplishments you highlighted via a format of bulleted lists. But now the second competition starts. It consists in you versus the other candidates vying for the same job.

Look at the situation from the hiring manager’s vantage point: the manager needs to make a selection. Say there are five very qualified and handpicked applicants with great skills and with lists of appropriate accomplishments. So, what’s going to be the differentiator? The answer is the fit. The hiring manager who is the ultimate decision maker has a series of pertinent questions and is answering them subjectively. Some of those questions might be:

• What do we have in common?
  -- It is known that people like to hire others like themselves.
• Are we sharing the same values?
  -- For example, what’s your attitude toward customer service? Are you innovative when solving problems? Is cost cutting an important goal of yours?
• What is your work style?
  -- For example, are you in the habit of working long hours? Do you keep an open-door policy? Are you working well as part of a team? Are you competitive?
• What image did you leave behind after the interview?
  -- Did you carry yourself well during the interview? Were you dressed properly? Did you bathe yourself in perfume? What was your accent like? your speech pattern? your tone of voice? your speech volume? What about your walking pace? your posture? your air of confidence--or lack thereof?
• What kind of personality do you have?
  -- Are you confident? Would you fit in well with company team members? Would you get along?
• Can we afford you?
  -- Are your salary expectations aligned with the company’s budget for this position? Are you flexible about compensation? Can we make a deal that both parties will feel good about?

As you can see, the fit component of the hiring decision-making process is not only complex and driven by the psychological makeup of the hiring manager but also biased and subjective.

Good luck in your maneuvering through this maze. The best advice for winning the hiring manager over is to get input from a professional counselor who can offer you unbiased information based on factual knowledge and years of experience.

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2010-11-19 If You Like Surprises, Google Yourself

It’s unfortunate that most people in transition don’t understand the importance of their cyberspace profiles, and they therefore underestimate them. The following “From Tweet to Hired” quote puts the issue into perspective: “According to a recent CareerBuilder study, 43% of employers and 83% of executive recruiters admit to searching candidates online before making a hiring decision. Employers often turn down candidates based on negative content, and they solidify their decisions to hire based on positive content.” The October 2010 issue of Inc. magazine says, “Job seekers are especially at risk: Almost 80 percent of recruiters surveyed in a recent Microsoft study checked out applicants online, and 70 percent of them eliminated candidates based on what they found.”

Several companies--such as ReputationDefender, Naymz, and Brand-Yourself--specialize in helping people protect their reputations. For a fee, such a company provides a customer with a report showing every Web reference found for that customer. Knowing that potential employers and recruiters can find all sorts of information about you in virtual space can be helpful, although in some situations, it’s almost impossible to change or correct what’s out there, and in others there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. In my own case, for example, someone has exactly the same name as mine except that he’s a professional photographer specializing in nearly nude photography.

While LinkedIn is a more business-oriented social media site, Facebook is more inclined to attract younger people, who at their age do not understand how poor judgment in adolescence can irreparably damage their image for years and years to come. Those youngsters consider it cool and popular to post pictures showing themselves socializing with friends--sometimes inappropriately--and illegally drinking alcohol. Some people feel compelled to expose their unique personalities, but the Internet does not allow separation of professional image and business from one’s particular hobby. Such exposure could be very detrimental down the road. Younger people should be cautioned by parents and teachers about the potential damage. Mature people should know better; otherwise, they have to live with the consequences.

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Considerations before Accepting That Coveted New Job

The job market seems much better lately, and more and more offers are being extended to applicants. Some move into the new positions from other jobs, and others from being in transition. In both cases, those job seekers miss out if they don’t take a holistic approach to specific evaluation of the new opportunity.

Often, the excitement associated with receiving the offer of a new job and accepting it, plus the flattery expressed by that job offer, may lead to a too-quick decision. It’s advisable to first do some meticulous due diligence in order to avoid a possibly costly mistake, because numerous questions need clear answers before you become able to make a final decision. Here are a few. How important to you are the content and the level of responsibility in the new job? Does the new job fit your personality? Does your new boss’s management style align with yours? Are there future opportunities for promotion? Will the new job satisfy your work/life balance? Are the commuting time and distance acceptable? Is the amount of business travel expected in the new job acceptable? And finally, is the compensation--in the form of salary and bonuses--acceptable? How about employee benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans? This may not be a complete list, but it’s a good beginning.

People make life decisions based on their logic and their emotions. The outcomes are typically an aggregate of the two. Someone who’s been in transition for a while is more prone to make emotional decisions, and yet accepting a new job should be judged on the job’s merit and on logical reasoning. In such a situation as the acceptance of a job offer, it’s sometimes helpful to discuss the issue with a friend or, better yet, with a professional such as a career coach who deals with such matters frequently. The following might be a rhetorical question, but if you had a serious medical condition, would you seek a consultation with a friend or with a physician?

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How to Adapt to Being in Transition

I travel abroad on a regular basis, and invariably, the sensation during the first few days is the same: I feel a shock, a bit of confusion, a mild sense of insecurity, and a continuous mind-chatter that question everything. It’s an uncomfortable condition that, given a few days, dissipates, and then things get back to normal.

 

People who become in transition report very similar sensations till the brain accepts the new circumstance. For some it takes longer, while others recover rather quickly. Some become hugely energized by their new condition, while others remain in confusion for a while, exhibiting lethargy that at times borders on symptoms of depression. If a person had a tendency toward depression, the in-transition situation certainly could invoke such an illness.

 

The key to adapting quickly to the new reality and actually benefiting from the opportunity is simple. It’s a two-step approach: have a plan and don’t let emotions to derail you. Sounds easy, right? Yet very few can follow it. First, the plan has to be a dynamic one—namely, to keep learning what works for others in transition by networking with them and making sensible changes to the plan as appropriate. This doesn’t mean revamping it, or making changes 180 degrees from the original one, or restarting it over and over again. And second, don’t let emotions interfere, causing disruptive turmoil in your mind and upsetting you.

 

I’m a career coach and am in touch with people in transition every single day. Being in transition is a true opportunity to make significant life changes. Many people do and come out of it amazingly successful. I’ve seen people who are bordering on desperation. Given, unfortunately, a period of turmoil, they were able to transform into a new identity and a new profession and to excel. In my own case, I too went through a radical professional change, and there is no one happier with it than I am. Yes, it is possible. I am a living testimony to that.

 

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Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Get a Job

Don’t misunderstand the title of this blog. It’s not about sexual preference. It’s about networking. Every morning, when I take my walk, I observe groups of teenagers waiting at street corners for their school buses. Two things are common to these groups. The kids are not talking to each other, and the majority of them have their ears plugged with MP3 players. They choose to live in total isolation despite the fact that these are the same kids who mingle with each other every day.

Now, why is this? Because in the American culture—in contrast with other cultures—one is not to approach another person until the two have been introduced to each other by a third party. This cultural habit is practiced by adults, and therefore their kids perpetuate it. In many cases, even after being introduced to someone, the kids lack the confidence or skills to communicate, connect, and possibly be of mutual benefit. Plainly put, to network with each other.

For people in transition, such behavior amounts to a tactical hindrance to their advancement toward getting a job. It’s commonly known that 60 to 80 percent of job seekers get their next jobs via networking. However, if lack of communication is practiced from childhood and if communications skills never get developed or encouraged to improve on later on in life—especially in times of need such as being in transition and letting the world know about your availability—that’s of course a major obstacle.

More and more people nowadays are letting me know they have landed. This is a very encouraging sign, indicating that companies have started hiring again. I always ask what led to the job offer, and invariably, the answer proves two things: first, that the lead came through networking, and second, that the person had prepared extensively for the interview. After all, winning in a tough competition takes not only skills but lots of practice. Have you ever thought how many hours an Olympian practices before the competition?

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