Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is a post contributed by this week’s coach Cindy Kraft, The CFO Coach.
How critical is LinkedIn? That was one of the many great questions asked during Monday’s Ask the Coach call. My response was, “It’s so critical that it is part of every package I sell and we spend at least one coaching session around how to leverage the power of that Web 2.0 technology.” While you are launching a proactive job search effort, LinkedIn is an ongoing, powerful, portable, 24/7 strategy.
In order to understand how important LinkedIn is to my clients’ career management strategy, I talk with recruiters. I have yet to talk with one who does not use LinkedIn as a primary tool to identify passive candidates. In fact, the recruiters’ blog“A Recruiters Guide to the Universe” ranks LinkedIn and LinkedIn Groups as the two primary ways to connect job seekers and recruiters. Networking accounts for 40-70 percent of all opportunities. Being active on LinkedIn is networking.
So what’s “most important” about your LinkedIn profile? I’ve come up with five things:
1. Create a Powerful Branded Summary. This is not your daddy’s boring bio either. This summary, limited to 2,000 characters, is your opportunity to showcase how you do what you do (your brand) that is different and unique from others who do the same or similar things.
2. More is Better. It is great to have your employers and job titles, past and present, listed as part of your profile. But that is not enough. In the world of key searches, more is better. The amount of information online acts as a pre-qualifier and gives both you and a prospective employer a framework to begin establishing a relationship.
3. Create Your Vanity URL. LinkedIn allows you to create vanity URLs, and it is a great way to increase your Google rankings, assuming, of course, that you have also made your stellar profile available for public viewing, which I highly recommend.
4. Join Groups. The “big fish in a small pond” analogy definitely applies here. Joining special interest groups on LinkedIn allows you to mingle with like-minded folks and gain access to their contact information, even if they are not 1st degree contacts in your network. Be sure to set your contact information option to open so others can contact you as well.
5. And finally, Solicit Recommendations. Third-party recommendations are extremely important on LinkedIn. These are very powerful endorsements that add credibility to the statements in your profile and employment history, and they are critical to your positioning.
