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

Fast facts:

1. 70-80% of jobs are filled through referrals and networking where the client is familiar with the reputation of the job applicant before receiving the actual resume. Those resumes are read very differently than the resumes of total strangers. (Read my blog posting The “Hidden Job Market.”)
2. When a hiring manager reviews resumes for people he (or she) has not had referred to him, he reads them looking for cues that will maximize his ROI (return on investment) for the available budget. Therefore, the first applicants to be called for an interview will be closest to an ideal fit. If and only if one of these candidates does not work, will the hiring manager widen the search to applicants who offer a less perfect fit.
3. Hiring managers don’t always put everything they are looking for in the job ad, just the “minimums.” And they usually make the ads broader than the ideal to widen the net and catch more fish in case the ideal candidate does NOT show up in the narrow definition of the specs.
4. A job ad for a JAVA programmer when posted in a big database like www.monster.com will generate 300-400 applicant resumes after about a week. A job ad for a Director of Marketing will generate 25-75 applicants.
5. At least 50% of the people who send a resume to any job posted in a public place will not actually be qualified for the role. Responding to ads for which you are not a close fit is a poor use of your job hunting efforts. It also may annoy a hiring manger who has limited time available.

Are you the best candidate?

You should do homework on what might be important to the client beyond what the job ad says. You can research this through:

• Annual reports
• Informational interviews
• Former employees of that company
• Trade press
• Internet
• Networking
• Reading other jobs ad from the company

If your homework reveals you are a strong candidate, make sure you add content to your resume to demonstrate you are an excellent risk. Instead of applying to 100 companies for which you are a long shot, send tailored resumes to the 15-20 clients where you are most likely to be the preferred candidate.

How to show you are the best applicant

This is done through case histories, testimonials, and details in the resume that show your strategic leadership. If possible, you should show you made the company money, saved the company money, or made it more efficient.

The introduction

70% of hiring managers don’t read beyond the first half of the first page of the resume or spend more than 30 seconds reading before they decide whether or not to opt out. This means that you need a powerful introduction to your resume that makes builds the reader’s expectation that you are a relevant and exciting candidate. This will keep him reading longer so he is more likely to be sold on you.

Beyond the resume

If you think about it, you need to be ready to use similar strategies in networking, cover letters, interviews, in every contact with a potential hiring manager. Your objective is to reinforce repeatedly that you are the best of possible candidates for the job.

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.

If you dread the thought of networking, you are not alone. Most of us can describe networking that is not effective:

Good networking is not a three martini lunch.

Good networking is not standing up in a crowd of strangers and announcing you are a sales manager looking for a contact at company X.

Networking should have two elements:

First, networking should be a long-term campaign to establish your value in the business community. It is about defining and establishing your brand – what makes you unique or different amongst people with somewhat similar backgrounds. It is about building awareness for your brand with an ever-larger audience. It is about keeping your value proposition top of mind over the long-term so that when someone in the community has need of your services, he/she remembers you are out there and reaches out to you. Your objective is to craft your message so that the right listener hears it and is appropriately impressed by it. If you do this well, someone will be eager to reach out to you when there is a problem for which you are the best solution.

The second element of networking is to provide the impetus to get someone to take action on your behalf such as calling someone up about you, or giving you an informational interview. That is easy if the listener understands your value and helping you makes him a hero with his boss. If you are not at that stage of the relationship yet, you can encourage support through quid pro quo. That means you offer to help the other person multiple times until the recipient of your largesse wants to do a favor for you in return. (This is called the Theory of Reciprocity.) In fact we know that the most effective offers of help are (in rank order):

1. Making your listener money or smarter (most effective)
2. Saving him/her money
3. Making him/her more efficient
4. Doing a favor for someone like a family member

My favorite networking activities:

• Discussing ideas of interest to both parties: Reach out to someone who is knowledgeable in your field and tell him/her you are writing a white paper or doing a study on best practices to do ______. An example would be spend time with someone whom is also interested in companies which have grown their businesses by making “green” products, things good for the environment. Tell him/her you will be interviewing a number of people on the subject. If he can give you 30 minutes over a cup of coffee, when you are finished talking to others with the same expertise, you will share back a summary of the conversations. A good professional will be very interested in learning something that makes him smarter or makes him money. Be careful not to share proprietary information or the process may backfire.
• Collect articles from the trade press, internet, and books that show you are up on the cutting-edge issues in your industry. Consider these “currency” with which you can open doors and influence people. Send an article every other month or so to your networking contacts by email. Even if they have already read the article, it establishes that you are knowledgeable and someone to stay in touch with.
• Call someone up on the phone to ask if he/she has heard that Company A bought Company B. You want to vary the methods which you reach out to people to keep it fresh and authentic. A phone call or in-person conversation builds the relationship most effectively. It helps you discover common interests like sports or children. Be careful to stay out of opinionated conversations about politics or religion which may become awkward. You want to build bridges with the listener, not put up barriers.
• Another valuable resource for networking is professional associations. One way to make connections in such an organization is to volunteer (no one will ever turn you down, and you may have the opportunity to create work products and try new directions that will enhance your resume and portfolio). Working side-by-side with people in your industry also helps establish your credibility and credentials while you gain valuable information. Offer to give a speech or write a newsletter article.
• Offer to open up your network of contacts to someone else to solve his/her problem. For instance, offer to help someone find the resource he needs in the professional associations you belong to.
• If you are very junior in rank to the person you are targeting, you still can be of value. I know an executive administrative assistant who offered to research the Internet for information for a Mexican vacation spot for a former boss. In exchange, the boss offered to call a CEO at another company on her behalf.

Now that you have done favors

Once you have established your value it is easier to say “By the way, I am looking for companies in need of a sales executive like me. Do you know any companies looking for someone with those skills? Do you know anyone I might call to ask the same question?” If you do not receive useful information back today, you may in the future. Note that you should not ask that person if HE will pass your name on, you are giving him some wiggle room. If you call on a regular basis to “check in” with good information (ideally 3-6 times a year,) you will develop a life-long exchange of information flow with that contact.

Be sure to add all new contacts to your database. Also keep notes of topics you discussed, when you met, and potential future networking possibilities. Some people set a goal of five or ten new contacts per week. Networking is all about numbers and quality of resources. You need to think of all networking opportunities as steps in a journey that will last for the rest of your life. If you do, you will find that those relationships grow and thrive. The contacts will be as useful when you are working as when you are not.