Your LinkedIn Profile can be your optimal DIGITAL aid to networking… like your GPS to guide you through all the necessary networking.

This week’s session: Your LinkedIn Primer–TASK#1  Your Profile

Thursday, January 29th, 8:45 AM at The Egg and I Restaurant in Addison

As I see it, there are two central functions that you must pay attention to, on a regular basis for the rest of your career… and a third when you are actively seeking work.

• TASK#1 Your Profile
• TASK#2 Developing your network
• TASK#3 Identifying jobs and other opportunities

You can ‘design’ your Profile to draw interested parties TO YOU… this is called a ‘pull marketing’ effort and is heavily dependent on your search engine optimization (SEO) score.  This is an over-simplification, but the name of that game is to find creative ways to stack your keywords, using every allowable boundary of LinkedIn.

The challenge is to create this heavy barrage of keywords in a less than obvious manner, so that your Profile is still reader-friendly to those potential contacts, recruiters, or hiring authorities.

On the other hand, you may elect to use your Profile to get your story out to potential interested contacts, recruiters, or hiring authorities.  This would be utilizing a ‘push marketing’ design and would integrate a more narrative approach, with all due grammar in place…making it much more reader-friendly.

The challenge is to create such a narrative ‘storyline’ which still has sufficiently high SEO score to rank you in the first several pages of a keyword search aimed at an individual like you… yet still narrative enough to be reader-friendly for those that take the time to read through “your story.”

I encourage the Candidates that I serve to get the best of BOTH marketing approaches—both push and pull marketing strategies.  Remember, the LinkedIn search algorithm looks for your activity level FIRST and your SEO score SECOND (a close second)… so let your desired results be your guide.

While your Profile page will detail your work history, don’t assume you can copy and paste your resume and be done with it. Your profile page should reflect your professional interests, passions, and ambitions at this point in your career.  It’s not a mistake to start with cutting and pasting from your resume.   It becomes the core of this high tech, written ‘personal marketing’ collateral.

…But then edit your storyline and personality back in to it.

How can one accomplish this critical element of your Personal Marketing Plan, your ‘digital footprint?’  Use the time you spend on LinkedIn to address your two critical tasks:

1.   Task #1 is to keep your profile as a dynamic reflection of what you learn from your networking experience, tweaking your way to better search page results.  This is worth more time in the beginning of your career transition, but regular time throughout.

2.   Task#2 is to be interactive by participating in appropriate Group discussions, ‘like-ing’ comments of your choice, private messaging the writers of those comments as potential new contacts, following targeted Companies, and regularly ‘updating your network by ‘share-ing’ articles or posting brief ‘white papers’ than express your knowledge and expertise.

Set your job search habits to take full advantage of LinkedIn’s ever-changing algorithm and functionality.  LinkedIn can be your ‘digital roadmap’ to finding new contacts and being found!

Your personal marketing COMMUNICATION STRATEGY, your story, must be built around keywords and phrases that best describe your unique value proposition. These words come from your concerted self-assessment process. The challenge is matching the words that best describe your next right employment with the words that best describe a potential new employer’s needs.

Thursday, January 21st… Evolving In Sync Personal Marketing Collaterals: Your resume, et al

A communication strategy that does not achieve that is doomed to otherwise controllable difficulties—and, worst…failure. So, understand that getting recruited involves two distinct elements…

• Being screened for meeting a JOB’s requirements… a subjective process created by the potential employers of the marketplace. They set the bar HIGH, defined by functional experience, skill set, and knowledge standards so they don’t have to interview every JOB applicant.
• Being selected by the hiring authority… another subjective process which now involves their assessment of a job-seeker’s FIT with their needs, including personality, work habits, and other ‘cultural’ standards. They cannot hire all qualified candidates. They must choose.

Are you challenged in finding the right words for your resume? LinkedIn can be a valuable tool for you to use in self-assessment. Access the LinkedIn Profiles of other professionals like you… experiment by searching for a person like you in LinkedIn. Modify and improve your Personal Marketing Plan’s implementation model as needed… “Listen” to the marketplace, learning from it and adjusting your PMP accordingly.As you move through your search, make adjustments as you would a business model.

Ask for input from people you respect. In order to market yourself, you must first know yourself. The job search process is essentially a highly personalized marketing process, consultative marketing, that is.

The process started with your candid self-assessment, often integrating feedback from colleagues and supervisors who know you best. Or consider ‘interviewing’ incumbent professionals, those who have positions and roles that are attractive to you.  This explorative step allows you to gain a thorough and workable understanding of who you are in product marketing terms. Especially if you are starting a resume “from scratch”, or if you are truly unsettled on next steps along your career path, this becomes a necessary first step in the process.

Are you challenged in finding the right words?  LinkedIn can be a valuable tool for you to use in self-assessment.  Access the LinkedIn Profiles of other professionals like you… experiment by searching for a person like you in LinkedIn.

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“WORDCRAFT” your resume and other collateral materials…Create a forward looking “story” of what YOU CAN DO. Target your accomplishments, such as increased sales and profits, reductions in costs, etc. Focus on achievements that support your qualifications for your job goal.

KEYWORDS become personalized phrases by incorporating adjectives and adverbs that uniquely FIT you…

Those phrases should be confirmed for the reader and listener with high-impact accomplishment statements (behavioral evidence, like the bulleted information in a well written resume)… a well-‘crafted’ accomplishment statement can trigger appropriate questions that allow you to expand on your strengths, with…

…positive, supportive examples, elements of your career story—PROOF of your value proposition.

To achieve a good “careerFIT” between you and any future opportunity, you have to ask yourself some basic questions about yourself and your prospective employers. The fit depends on how well the jobs meets your needs and how well your skills and abilities meet the employer’s needs.

To achieve a good “fit” between you and any future opportunity, you have to ask yourself some basic questions about yourself and your prospective employers. The fit depends on how well the jobs meets your needs and how well your skills and abilities meet the employer’s needs.

Next Week’s session: Thursday, January 14th… Achieving CareerFIT with Brian Allen facilitating

The employer will make a decision and extend an offer to you: now it is time for you to make your decision.  Write out the factors that are important to you in a job… actually write out your list.

You understand that managing your own career involves three key ingredients:

1. Confidence in knowing that your career is on the right path;
2. Continuous research and networking leading to awareness of potential “next steps…” to keep your career moving forward;
3. Competency with job-changing skills.

To manage your career wisely has you extending the same concept.  Consider some of the factors listed below … Examine each factor through the questions listed – and then ask “does this opportunity fit me?”

Work Requirements and Expectations: What is the next  appropriate work for you? Is the work process or project oriented?  If it’s process oriented, are the requirements and expectations clear?  What kinds of projects will you work on? Will you work on one project at a time, or multiple projects? Are the projects long term or short term? Will you work on a project long enough to see the end result? Is it important to you to be able to see the project as a whole, including the result? Or will you be content to do the work without a big picture understanding?

Work Environment: Will the work space be a source of comfort and confidence for you? How formal or informal is the environment? Hectic, fast paced? Will you have the opportunity to have flex time, or to tele-commute? How many hours a week does the employer expect you to work? Will you have the freedom to wear casual clothes? What is a typical day like at the company you are considering?  Would they allow a “trial visit” or at least a site visit?

Career Path: Is there a defined succession plan? What position(s) can you move to next? How long do new hires generally stay in the same job? How quickly do people get promoted? Are your opportunities for professional development well defined and available to you? Are mentors available?

Training and Personal Development: what kind of training will you get from the employer to do the job? What kind of training will you get to stay current in your area of interest? Are the answers to these two questions different? Does it matter to you if the answers are different?

And, what about YOU?

Ultimately, your goal is to secure the right employment for yourself… that must start with your identification of what right is.  THAT requires some exploration, identification of key elements of your Career FIT, and planning to pull it all together, create focus… make it happen.

Yes…. FIT Happens!  Creating an action plan, your Personal Market Plan, during career transition, will reap rewards during your implementation campaign. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  To achieve a good “careerFIT” between you and any future opportunity, you have to ask yourself some basic questions about yourself and your prospective employers.

The FIT depends on how well the jobs meets your needs and how well your skills and abilities meet the employer’s needs.  This is your value proposition and is reflected in your QUALIFICATION SUMMARY.

OFFER CRITERIA

Write out the factors that are important to you in a job…actually write out your list. During your career transition, you learn the value of setting your offer criteria.

1. Creates an objective target for your efforts ahead;
2. Gives you a meaningful set of questions to ask during research and networking;
3. Provides an objective way to analyze and react to offers as they occur.

To manage your career wisely has you extending the same concept.  Keep your “offer criteria” in that dynamic state of change that allows you to adapt to market conditions.  If your current goal is to find a new position, then you should prepare your search as a “business model”, manage it accordingly, be flexible, and be ready for the unexpected.

The Internet has spurred many new, employment related businesses to flourish in the past twenty years, some with great financial success  Small start-up HR and recruitment/placement technology firms are receiving two to three times (or more) their revenues in new investment from private sources. Many ask, “What gives?

Thursday, January 7th… FIRST Session of 2016… Embracing The OTHER Job Market… A terrific way to ramp up your efforts in the New Year as this is the session where we cover basic philosophies and run through the entire 12-Step Process.

Placement numbers have barely budged in relative terms, and the job seeking public has become disenchanted and frustrated by this new digitized process that has created a huge ‘black hole’ from their perspective.”

Much is prophesized by the many investors who represent huge sources of capital, and the conversation inevitably leads to “Why can’t real technology do to EMPLOYMENT what it has done to so many other businesses?”

Why can’t the capital and the smarts of Wall Street and Silicon Valley figure out how to disrupt traditional approaches to sourcing, recruitment, and the on-boarding of new employees and drive huge valuations for their efforts? After all, it has worked almost everywhere else.

Corporate recruitment and hiring is a transaction that is infrequent, complex, and fraught with downside when things go wrong—driving consumers to use someone who knows how to reduce their fears, doubts, and threats and help them get a result they want: the smoothest employment transaction possible.

However, the process, itself is flawed and dysfunctional.

That’s it: a great $multi-billion business, an oversupply of money, and investors who want to disrupt an industry and hopefully make a fortune doing it. Who knows, these smart investors may be right, and one of them will find the key to take the middleman out of this business and make a fortune.

Or, they may be one of many who have come before and not quite found a way to do so. Just don’t get hung up on the efficiencies promised in today’s market… they too will pass.

There will be NO SCHEDULED SESSIONS for the rest of 2015.  While the ol’ Careerpilot re-energizes and updates this website, now is the time for jobseekers to enjoy the Holidaze and make sure they are prepared to fully Embrace The OTHER Job Market in the New Year ahead.

Thursday, January 7th… FIRST Session of 2016… Embracing The OTHER Job Market… A terrific way to ramp up your efforts in the New Year as this is the session where we cover basic philosophies and run through the entire 12-Step Process.

The notion of an “unpublished or hidden” job market is far from new.  However, knowledge of “The OTHER” job market, and your ability to execute your Personal Market Plan in it, will create both focus and productivity in your career transition.  The definition, strategies and tactics of this other market go well beyond those of the “unpublished or hidden” job market that gave birth to a whole industry, “Career Consulting,” both retail –and- Corporate sponsored outplacement services–career decision making and job search assistance.

My ‘APPROACH’ hasn’t changed in 30 + years of both many years in Corporate recruiting -and, more recently- many years of providing career consulting and job search assistance in the digital age of social media and ATS…

Simply stated, the traditional ‘job market’ is dysfunctional in many ways, loaded with traps for the normal job seeker:

• Applying on-line along with your competition, increasing the odds of rejection and causing a premature, YES-NO-MAYBE judgment…
• The digital HR screen that judges you by keywords instead of value proposition… and, by the way, what ARE the ‘right’ keywords?

Rather, learn to “Embrace The OTHER Job Market,” the one driven by hiring authorities who seek the most qualified and affordable candidates (would you expect less?)… The ONE job market driven by the choice of pre-qualified candidates who have already established a relationship with appropriate professionals–with and surrounding the hiring authority!  A job seeker can ‘stand out’ because there is much less rejection (less competition) and controllable yes-no-maybe judgments.

You see, in every marketplace, there are buyers and sellers.  In the traditional job market, the one that our Department of Labor “analyzes,” job seekers are the sellers and their potential employers are the buyers.  The commodity is JOBS and the competition is fierce.

In the OTHER Job Market, buyers and sellers hold equal responsibility for the recruitment process.  When employers have a need for someone to fulfill a specific role, often the most desired candidates are employed individuals with the credentials they seek.  Thus the employer must sell their Company to potential employees in the marketplace in order to attract the best of the lot.  Once identified, they simply select their choice and buy their services.

In other words, the commodity is productive WORK being assigned to the most qualified individual who ‘fits’ the employers needs.  Often, this WORK has not been clearly defined yet and the employer has not approved an open job requisition.  The following might explain this conceptual, but very powerful nature of the OTHER Job Market… 

You see it all the time—they dash in from the parking lot with no particular plan on how to engage their potential employer. Or they relentlessly work the phones only to discover that they’ve offered nothing more than hollow chitchat.Be prepared!  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  After all, the Boy Scouts have been teaching this idea to kids for almost 100 years.  So why in the world would most job seekers show up for an interview unprepared?

NEXT Week’s session:  Thursday, December 17th… LAST Session of 2015…Closing The Deal II: Interview tactics, including POST-Offer negotiation.

Here are ten keys that you can use to create your own successful pre-interview habits:

1. Learn about their business—their products/services, customers, industry trends, key initiatives, financial status, and competition.
2. Discover something about the person you are meeting with. Google them, talk to their colleagues, or call others in the industry who have insights. Use a targeted organization networking approach.
3. Identify the benefits of your value to this potential employer. The benefits need to be clear, concise, credible and compelling!
4. Prepare ideas that hold value for your ‘next employer.’ Your language needs to reflect a focus on solutions…meeting their needs!
5. Plan questions that establish your expertise and get them to think in new ways. The more thought provoking your questions are, the more your prospective employers will respect and remember you!
6. Communicate an outline of your meeting prior to the actual interview. Ask them to review and provide you with feedback.
7. Getting their buy-in before you walk in the door is critical, and it demonstrates your commitment to delivering value.
8. Identify the resistance that you are most likely to encounter and prepare ideas, case studies, testimonials or expert opinions to help reduce their reluctance to move forward.
9. Plan how you will close the interview appointment and decide what agreements you need to ask for.
10. Remind yourself to be warm, friendly and courteous to everyone that you encounter. Your potential employer is constantly deciding how much they like you, how much they believe you, how much they trust you and how much confidence they have in you. It takes time—often a long time—to build your personal brand. And it takes only a few seconds for it to be destroyed.

Social media is a great place to learn about and create a digital conversation with your market. Potential employers do not want to be talked-to, or worse yet sold-to on these platforms. Your “followers” want to know they have a place to come learn, to ask questions about things THEY care about, and to know they are being heard.

Here are some things I’ve learned from listening to those I’ve served since the advent of LinkedIn, the preferred place for professional level job seekers to leave their “digital footprint.”

Listen MORE than you TALK

In the Groups that you choose to join and participate in, start with treating them as a place to listen.  Getting followers to your Profile and white papers is the start – not the end. You can learn so much more about your market if you are careful to read what Group participants are posting and commenting on. See what things they “like” and look for trends that can direct your future efforts. This is also a great place for ideas you can use to refine your positioning and targeting approaches in other personal marketing formats like your resume, value proposition, and various verbal pitches.

Engage your colleagues in digital conversation

The goal is to get other professionals with similar interests to engage in the conversation by posting intriguing content that connects to your audience and engages them to “talk.” Once you get people talking with you, you can learn about what matters to them, and then provide more of this type of content to build into your “story.”  This inter-action is the front end of high-quality relationship building… pathways to your next work.

Know your Market

You should know your market BEFORE you start applying for jobs and posting things in Social Media of any kind…and listening first to your market will accomplish this.

Once you DO post something, look to see how it’s received and use this to direct future personal marketing efforts.  The response you get from people in your various Groups of choice can tell you things about your potential employers that you can use to direct your future communication efforts.

“PUSH” without being Pushy

In “PUSH Marketing,” you need to take a low-key approach and offer 90% of insights and education to your market, with only 10% of things that would be seen as a sales pitch. Of course, ALL your social media content is “selling” in one way or another, but your market will be turned off if it comes across as a hard sell.

On the other side, don’t just post silly photos or motivation quotes. Position yourself as a subject matter expert and a source of real help to your followers, by sharing valuable information your market cares about (using UPDATES to post white papers).

Listen to what your colleagues and potential employers are talking about and then provide information, links, stories, and examples that connect them to what they care about. This makes you a trusted advocate and when you DO begin to request info and referral activity, they will be more willing to accept it because they like and trust you.

Move Toward the Next Step

Make sure to ask questions or lead them to further activity with your postings.  Direct people on opportunities to engage with you… your call to action.   Recall WAYPOINT #2: Always communicate yourself in a positive, future oriented manner!

Answer EVERYTHING

You need to monitor your presence on all your social media sites, and, during active job search, specifically LinkedIn.  Potential new contacts, potential employers, and others may be evaluating you based on how responsive you are to comments, so you need a plan to find and respond to these postings in a timely and professional manner.

Often recruitment and selection decisions are influenced by what others have said about you, so you need to work hard to direct the conversation, or the market will.

Your digital footprints are all over LinkedIn and other social media platforms, whether you put them there or not, and you need to commit to keeping up with them or suffer the consequences in the court of customer opinions.  LinkedIn is a powerful tool to assit you in both PUSH and PULL Marketing of your branded “value proposition… YOUR Digital Footprint.