1. In the Twin Cities Metro there are 4K LinkedIn listings with “marketing communications” mentioned, 59K with “sales,” and 31K with “engineer.” 65% social media participants users use to stay in touch with friends, 47% use social media “for work” and but only 26-28% use it for “career search.” # That means you need to develop strategies to be appealing to all kinds of networkers who will find you there and you need a very well written profile and customized communications to rise above the clutter.
2. The average reader spends 8-10 seconds with a profile. Your full resume does NOT belong in LinkedIn. The correct profile is closer to an executive bio in a corporate website.
3. LinkedIn should not be viewed as a stand-alone tool especially by those of you who are uncomfortable pairing LinkedIn activities with networking done in-person or by phone. Using LinkedIn exclusively can actually damage your professional image if your best means of reaching out to someone is the pre-written and highly superficial messages available by default in the system. Aim for a small, high quality network of people you can vouch for and whom you can trust to recommend you effectively. Consider that you will be judged by the quality of relationships you exhibit there. When you suddenly need a strong recommendation, a large quantity of poor quality contacts in your network will dilute the credibility of someone who really has considerable knowledge of you, especially if they use the standard messaging and tools to recommend you.
4. Hide your contacts. You want to manage how, why, and when others are reaching out to your best contacts and clients. The social media are mechanical software tools that encourage use without much thought which may be good as a strategy for the company LinkedIn, but bad as yours. Approximately 1/3 of the requests I receive through electronic social media I consider inappropriate to someone else in the relationship. The sender did not think hard before sending the request because it was easy to do so. If they had to make the same request in person they would have thought about it a lot more carefully. I think it is also happening more because people are in a panic over job security.
5. Hiring managers prefer people who are currently employed and can buy access to all 40 million names. There are many ways to reach potential hirees without buying a job ad in LinkedIn and most hiring managers are not bothering to. Ads on the 2 big job boards declined 5-44% last year depending on industry.
6. You are judged in LinkedIn as much by your EQ as by your IQ. An ExecuNet study (12/08) showed:
   • 86% exec recruiters search online for information beyond resume
   • 70% say their opinion of job seeker improves if find positive info on internet
7. We know that being active and engaged in LinkedIn activities improves your rank in LinkedIn searches:
   • Include a picture
   • Participate in discussion groups and Q+A with others
   • Answer InMail queries from others and pass profiles onwards if and only if you can vouch for the recommendation
   • Give and get recommendations
   • Name corporate, academic awards, boards, associations, biz charities
8. Remember that what you post in social media is VERY public and available to be scrutinized and commented on by many critics. A recent survey by Career Builder and highlighted in the Wall St Journal stated that 35% of employers report they found content on social media sites that caused them not to hire a candidate. ##
   • Candidate showed poor communication skills – 29%
   • Candidate lied about qualifications – 24 %
   • Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer – 20 %
9. If you think about the experience of the person searching for a resource in LinkedIn, he/she is confronted with 100-500 profiles (depending on subscription level) with similar titles or search criteria. The first profile the seeker will reach out to will demonstrate:
   • Better accomplishments than their peers
   • Good communication skills, and transparency of skills
   • Candor, warmth, accessibility, and ethics
   • NO Political, racial, religious, marital status, or sexual preference mentions because Hiring Managers will avoid downloading it for fear of an EEO lawsuit

So, invest some time and effort into your LinkedIn strategies. Don’t use the software as your only means of networking. Don’t settle for its default messages. Think about the paradigm of the other people in the LinkedIn network and what they might want from you when they are looking at your profile. LinkedIn has huge potential but can be more damaging than helpful to your career image if used too casually.

#   http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Adult_social_networking_data_memo_FINAL.pdf
## http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20090819-902554.html

This is one if my favorite networking stories and it shows the power of enlisting family and friends to help.

A man I was counseling, we will call him Max, was on his way to a Hanukkah celebration where there would be 50 family members. He had been out of work for several months, working only part-time as a consultant, and his uncles were asking him whom they could call on his behalf. He was dreading the event because he was imagining aunts pinching him on the cheek and uncles having people call him with leads that would not be a close fit.

He had a problem, you see. He has been a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) for a custom machine shop and few of his relatives were likely to understand exactly what he had been doing for a living. So he called me before the event and asked my advice.

The family and friends resume

We created a half page resume in prose form in “plain English” that explained that a CFO not only makes sure that incoming bills and outgoing invoices are paid by his staff, but also figures out how a company will be able to raise money to build another factory 5 years into the future, etc… He then went on to explain that the custom machine shops he had been associated with did things like replace broken machinery parts that could not longer be bought from the original manufacturer.

On the day of the big event he had 40 copies of the “family resume” but not enough for everyone. His 88 year old Aunt Hattie said “I want one!” several times in a shrill voice and after a while he gave her one reluctantly, figuring he had just wasted a copy.

Aunt Hattie saves the day

The next morning Aunt Hattie calls him up at 6 a.m. and says: “So you are a CFO. That means you… ” She delivered a correct definition of what a CFO does. Then she says: “And Company X is your competitor, right?” Finally, she announced she had been reading the obituaries that morning and the CFO of his largest competitor had just died.

He called me up laughing very hard and asked me for advice. Obviously it would be very inappropriate to call up the company and tell its President: “Hey, I heard your CFO died.” What should he do?

After we spoke he called the President and asked this question: “I am working as a consultant with one of your competitors, Company Z. Would you be interested in sharing resources with us? When we can’t handle a particular job because of a scheduling conflict or because we don’t have the right machinery, we will ask if you can if you can help. And you could do the same in return. Does this interest you?

The moral of the story

The happy ending to the story is that he started work for the other custom machine shop a week later. And the moral of the story is to remember to empower friends and family to help you reach your goals.