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#JobSearch : Customizing Your LinkedIn Profile to Communicate Your Unique Expertise. Are you in a Job Search or Looking at a Potential Position with your Current Employer?

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Are you in a job search or looking at a potential position with your current employer? You never know when an opportunity is going to present itself, so you need to be prepared!  One way to do so is to optimize your online presence, and LinkedIn is the site to showcase your experience, achievements, skills, and leadership acumen on a global scale.

Your LinkedIn profile should be one of the most utilized tools in your job search tool chest, so you need to ensure that it is sharp, fully optimized, and maintained well during your job search and beyond.

Depending on what type of device your profile is being viewed on (PC or mobile), the reader will only be able to see a fraction of your profile. That fraction has to be creative and appealing enough to make the reader want to continue to learn more about you. Don’t know where to start? Right from the top!

Banner Photo:

  • LinkedIn automatically places a blue banner when you open an account. Get rid of it!  This is the first place you have the opportunity to pull the reader in – be creative!  You can personalize the banner to show a little bit about yourself with keywords to help communicate your brand.  Have a special saying or motto that motivates you?  It can easily be included here. Use a website like Canva to design your own banner or hire someone to do it – either way – don’t use the default banner! #lame

Name/Credentials:

  • Your LinkedIn profile should have the same name that is on your resume, so that your name is consistently known by anyone who views your resume or online profile. Add any relevant credentials after your name, and try to ensure that you don’t use a nickname.

Profile Photo:

  • We all know that a lot of us don’t like advertising pictures of ourselves on social media – but on LinkedIn, people want to see YOU! Be sure to include a profile picture that is professional looking and done at a level that matches the position you’re seeking.  Executives should have a photo that looks like an executive and an entry level photo could probably be a more casual photo.

Stay away from photos where you have cropped yourself out of a group, at a bar/party, or have a lot of distractions in the background.  Again – people want to see YOU – not a backdrop from your trip to the Grand Canyon (unless you are a travel blogger – lol).

 

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What Skill Sets Do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Did you know?  First Sun Consulting, LLc (FSC) is celebrating over 30 years in the delivery of corporate & individual outplacement services & programs to over 1200 of our corporate clients in the U.S., Canada, UK, & Mexico!  

We here at FSC want to thank each of corporate partners in the opportunity in serving & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment !

Article continued …

 

Headline:

  • When you sign up with LinkedIn, your current job title automatically defaults to this section. Change it as soon as you can. Your headline gives you 220 characters to share your value, expertise, and skills.  Done effectively, your headline can attract ATS systems and recruiters who are looking for candidates in your industry and is a very easy way to quickly tell people what you have to offer in your field. I like to add keywords and branding to it as well.

About:

  • Take some time to reflect about what you really want to communicate in this section. Don’t just add a one-liner, and certainly do not make yourself sound desperate to find a job (even if you really are).  Like your headline, this is a great place to share your brand – so make it strategic, appealing, and value-added! As with your resume, the summary at the beginning of your LinkedIn profile should be strategically written, compelling, and a quick synopsis of the best you have to offer, your highlights, and even some of your skills.  Using bullets and color in this section will make it stand out more than just including paragraphs of text.

Consider adding a “call to action” at the end of the summary to let people know you are available for interviews or are actively looking for a new position. You have 2,600 characters in this section, but only the first few lines may show up when people are viewing your profile, and the key is getting the reader to click on the “more” to read the rest. Make your first few lines appealing, inviting, and clear.

Skills:

  • The skills section is great but can also be a bit subjective. You need to add the skills that are the most relevant to your industry and position, whenever possible. Use strong keywords in this section, and make sure you are focusing on unique terms that make you stand out. “Staff Leadership & Development” sounds a lot better than “Leadership” and “Global Sales Operations Management” sounds way better than “Sales”.

As for the endorsements, this is where the section gets a little subjective. LI automatically puts the skills with the most endorsements at the top of the section; however, the top 3 skills are something you can…and should change, so that they are your strongest skills and the ones that are most relevant to your job search, regardless of the number of endorsements.

You have the option of including 50 terms in this list and that fills up pretty quickly – use the best fit and stay away from “fluff” terms that are expected in today’s professional world, like “Time Management” or “Team Player”.

These sections are just the tip of the iceberg in creating an amazing, optimized LinkedIn profile – but they are so important if you want to be “found” on LinkedIn, so you need to ensure that the content is unique to your job goals, industry-specific, and an effective marketing tool for your job search!

FSC Career Blog Author:  Erin Kennedy, MCD, CMRW, CPRW, CERW, CEMC, is a Certified Professional Resume Writer/Career Consultant, and the President of Professional Resume Services, named one of Forbes “Top 100 Career Websites”. Considered an influencer, she is consistently listed as a “Top Career Expert to Follow” on Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

FSC Career Blog – November 9, 2021

 

 

Follow these 5 Tips If you Want to Make a Career Pivot.

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Pivoting mid-career to a different profession is far from straightforward. Though I began my career in academia as a Classics PhD, I then pivoted to a job as a digital media specialist at a digital marketing agency. After that, I moved on to marketing at an industrial copper wire manufacturer.

At a time when millennials are hopping jobs more frequently than ever before, career pivots will become more common in the years ahead. Right now, there isn’t a simple path to make that transition, but as I learned from experience—following these maneuvers can help make the change less daunting.

1. SKIRT HR AND AVOID RECRUITERS. DISCOVER A WAY TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY WITH THE HIRING MANAGER

Most job applicants for any given job will check off certain boxes. If they meet the specific skill sets and experience required for a listing, an applicant tracking system (ATS) will flag them and notify the recruiter.

But career pivoters tend to be light on the listed job requirements, so HR personnel and recruiters are fundamentally disincentivized from even thinking about forwarding their application to the hiring manager. Their job is to filter out high-risk applicants and discover the applicants that—on paper—most align with the particular attributes a hiring manager is seeking. Yet the most highly skilled applicants may be a costly disaster for an organization if they lack the fundamental soft skills.

Whether through an email, phone call, or handwritten letter (you don’t hear about those much anymore), find out who the hiring manager is and then reach out. They’re not being solicited every day. This is your chance to get in front of the audience that matters the most.

 

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Question: Want the ‘the best/current articles/blogs on the web’ on Job Search, Resume, Advancing/Changing your Career, or simply Managing People?

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What Skill Sets do You have to be ‘Sharpened’ ?

Continue of the article:

2. NO MATTER YOUR AGE, CONSIDER AN INTERNSHIP AS AN ENTRY POINT

Organizations might see career pivoters as high risk. Therefore, the onus is on them to find ways to minimize that risk for the prospective organization.

The pivoters can prove their worth by mitigating the risk for the new organization by persuading a manager to create a six-month trial period internship. If the pivoter demonstrates his/her/their worth, it can potentially lead to a long-term position.

Career-pivoting applicants need to come up with creative ways to craft their skill sets as transferable and then articulate what they may look like in an internship. Even if the internship doesn’t lead to a full-time position, at the very least the candidate has some actual new career experience that they can parlay elsewhere.

3. DON’T SUBMIT YOUR RÉSUMÉ TO A WEBSITE. CALL OR APPEAR IN PERSON AT THE COMPANY TO SPEAK WITH THE MANAGER WHERE YOU HOPE TO PIVOT

An extraordinary, gifted individual doesn’t always translate into an email or a résumé. Résumés are fundamentally two-dimensional documents attempting to capture the rich complexity of individuals.

Consider an interview transcript. You lose so much of the texture and the conversation. Résumés are no different. They can’t capture the whole person.

So once the candidate knows who the hiring decision-maker is, they should show up in person. If they can capture the decision-maker’s attention, they can make an impression that lasts much longer than even the most impressive résumé.

4. UNLESS YOU ARE COMMITTED TO A CAREER THAT DEMANDS FULL-BLOWN RE-SCHOOLING, AVOID JOBS THAT REQUIRE YEARS OF TRAINING AND ACCREDITATION

Certain positions such as medical doctors, electrical engineers, and lawyers require extensive training and degrees—for obvious reasons. Know the time limits of what you are willing to commit to training. This way, you’ll avoid wasting your time on a pointless job hunt.

5. CRAFT A COMPELLING NARRATIVE ON WHY YOU ARE LOOKING TO GO FROM X TO Y

Humans think in stories, not in facts. Any hiring manager will want to know “what’s your story, and why you’re seeking to make this change?” Craft an unforgettable answer to that inevitable question. This is an opportunity to articulate how past interests and goals have brought you to this point, and how your core values, soft skills, and hard skills will be valuable to this new organization.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Undoubtedly, some are more helpful to extroverted personalities. Current HR systems are fundamentally not suited to screen for highly talented candidates but who do not align with the traditional skill sets outlined by the hiring manager. Yet the reality is that there are many job listings where the skilled candidates will fall outside this filtering system. In the current hiring system, career pivoters will have to discover creative solutions to get hired for jobs that don’t align with what’s on their résumés.

Author: Mike Zimm received his PhD in Classics from Yale University. He is currently the director of marketing at Kris-Tech Wire, a copper wire manufacturer.

 

FastCompany.com |  January 20, 2020