- What it lacks in design appeal, it makes up for in numbers: LinkedIn has over 65million registered users making it the leading social networking site for professionals. If you are looking to build a business, a readership or find your next assignment; your competition, clients and customers are on LinkedIn – this means you should be too.
- Make it easy for people to find and connect with you. Complete your profile: include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities. Don’t be shy! This is about giving your audience information about you that you can control; put on your best frock! Ask for recommendations. Upload a photo. Proof-read everything before making it public.
- LinkedIn is an online channel, its not just cut and paste of your CV. You can make the content much more compelling by thinking about your audience: share presentations and video files, run polls, upload your reading list and embed a feed of your blog posts. Check out the Applications Directory as more are being added all the time.
- These days, every employer or recruitment agency who has access to the interwebs will Google your name before short-listing you. Make it easier for your professional details to be found by claiming your name as your personal URL, e.g. http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sarahlockey. Publicise your LinkedIn profile by including a link on your CV, email signature and website (this will also increase your page ranking on Google).
- If you are using LinkedIn for job search, think about what a recruiter might be looking for. Use a job title and keywords that are easily recognisable; if your current role is ‘Minister of Intel’ and you are more commonly known as an Accountant, make it obvious that you have a brain for numbers (though why anyone would want to leave a company with such awesome job titles is a complete mystery to me); rather than just cut and paste your CV, use short bullet style fragments and provide a first person summary; don’t just list what you did, focus on your achievements.
- Conduct stealth research on organisations you want to work for. Do an advanced search for company name and uncheck the ‘Current Companies Only’ box. This will enable you to have a look at the rate of turnover and whether key people are abandoning ship. Former employees usually give more candid opinions about a company’s prospects than someone who’s still on board. Equally if you’re thinking of investing or working in a sector, use LinkedIn to find people who worked for competitors or companies that have failed – make contact and ask questions – priceless real-world experience is at the end of a mouse click.
- LinkedIn makes it easy to expand your network: You can join up to 50 groups and once a member, you can connect to anyone in the group. Ask your network questions on anything. Start the conversation.
- Make your profile dynamic: use the status update field to tell people what you are working on, an event you are attending or presenting at, a significant accomplishment, a blog post or article you have published (hot tip: use bit.ly to shorten the link so you can stay within the 140 character limit). If you have a twitter account, using the #in tag will automatically publish a tweet to your status field.
- It’s more like online dating than Facebook. LinkedIn is great for keeping in touch with old workmates and professional acquaintances but its real power is in connections with future employers, customers and colleagues. You can use LinkedIn to find the people that will be interviewing you for your next role or the client you are about to meet; knowing that you went to the same school, play table-tennis, or share acquaintances is the best kind of ice-breaker.
4 August, 2010
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http://www.geoCognita.com Dr. Edward Wallington
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http://projectcentric.co.uk/how_to_manage_a_camel/ Lindsay
