Five ‘must know’ things about LinkedIn

Five ‘must know’ things about LinkedIn

LinkedIn started in 2002 and is one of those vague social media platforms that  can do wonderful things for your career, but so far it hasn’t.   You have heard some people swear by it, but for you it’s solely the placeholder of your pseudo-resume. Perhaps your career is firing on all cylinders and you have no interest in new career opportunities . But even if you’re at the height of your career and things are so wonderful for you that you can’t imagine  your world ever getting any better you can still benefit from LinkedIn.

When I meet with people for business I like to do my homework in advance.  I want to know more about them than what’s on their business card.   I want to know how long they’ve been with the company, what they did before this job, and perhaps where they went to school.  Certainly I could ask these questions while in a meeting, but why take up valuable time with something I can look up online?   Often the first place I start doing my research is on LInkedIn.  

Another example?   Let’s say you are  promoted at work.  Your company is  going to backfill your position.  You swear that HR advertises the job listings on Craig's List and worry that not only will you have to learn the ropes of your new position but hold the hand of the backfill employee at the same time.  Instead of relying on fate why not take the initiative to help figure out who to hire?    Now you can help find a suitable replacement by snooping around in LinkedIn.  Perhaps you have some contacts you’ve made over the years that may be a good fit?  You can look over their LinkedIn profile  before you make the call.  You may help throw someone a bone and at the same time make the new career transition easier for yourself.

LinkedIn is more than a resume, or a thing to spruce up when you’re looking for work. LinkedIn is your home for your career profile.  Unfortunately the vast majority of people on LInkedIn don’t really understand the platform and simply don’t get out of it anywhere near  its potential.  For you, here are 5 must know things about LinkedIn.

#1.  LinkedIn isn’t Facebook.

There are many social media platforms.  Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn and Twitter are what I considered to be the big four. But, there are so many more.  Skype for example has social media aspects to it.  And there are dozens of specialized social media sites like Tumblr. Manta and Pinterest.  To make things a bit more difficult there is often crossover between platforms.  Facebook, Google +,  and LinkedIn have groups.  With groups you can find others with similar interests such as fellow CPAs.  

The key to social media is what you choose to share and where you choose to share it.

The key to social media is what you choose to share and where you choose to share it.  This means is that cute pictures of your kids and pets may find a better home on Facebook.  News about new certificates you’ve earned is better reported on LinkedIn.  Some people are more comfortable with Facebook and try to create professional groups in Facebook. However, this choice means that your key contacts in business will see all your posts about vacations, pets, kids, jokes and occasional political rants.  In LinkedIn you have a place to focus just on your career.  A clear separation from home and work is something that I have valued through the years.  Social media has blurred this a bit, but at least with LinkedIn you have a chance to keep your career profile very clean.  I have many contacts that are both connected with me on LInkedIn and Facebook.

#2 LinkedIn can be your resume on steroids

Today’s resumes look nothing like they did ten years ago. Thanks to Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) they are screened for keywords by a computer. There is a strategy of writing a resume that helps to push it past the computer gatekeeper and onto human eyes.   

The resume isn’t a portrait but a snapshot of who you are. It hits the highlights and key accomplishments of your career path. Today’s resume should have a direct link to your LinkedIn profile for the entire story.  

The LinkedIn Profile is your spot on the internet where people can get the rest of the story about you.  It can be a broader profile of your successes, interests, education, certificates, volunteer projects and other aspects of you.  Even if you never plan on finding another job for the rest of your life, your LinkedIn profile is important because it can be where your peers find out more about who you are.  If someone is writing an article in your industry they may be able to find you because of your profile.   If someone is interested in working for you they may look over your profile to find out more about you.

There  are a maximum amount of words available for each section of your LinkedIn profile.  You don’t need to reach the limits.  Keeping in mind that if people are going to read this profile it should be readable and hit key points.  There  many good videos and articles about writing a successful LinkedIn profile. The one  faiult that I’ve seen consistently is that people post very   sparse LinkedIn profiles which list little more information than what you would find on a business card.  To find the true power of LinkedIn you’ll need to put more time and effort into your profile.

#3.  Looking for work?  Start with LinkedIn.

Gone are the days where you would go to a company and the receptionist would hand you an application on a clipboard with a black Bic pen.  Nearly all job applications, especially to the larger corporations, are online. The good news is that many of these job applications  can be filled out quickly with information you provide on your resume or in your LinkedIn profile.   LinkedIn will populate the fields such as your name and work experience and college experience. You can quickly fill in the missing information such as your mailing addresses and pay history.  Often your computer can remember this in autofill mode, thus  once you’ve  filled out an application or two the next ones are even faster.

LinkedIn has a section for job listings, the majority of which seem to take simply your LinkedIn profile  Thus applying for jobs is  fast and easy. Still there are many more jobs that are not listed on LInkedIn that will read your resume, your LinkedIn profile or both.      I like this because it saves time filling out applications for places that may use the ATS software to screen you out.  My belief is that eventually LinkedIn will be the de facto mechanism for applying for work  There will be a common application that most companies will use to make applying for work as simple as answering the additional questions they may have.  An improvement on this would be to have a refined set of criteria set up on your LinkedIn profile.  You would select what your minimum pay requirements would be, what job titles you would be interested in,  how far you are willing to drive to work, if you are willing to relocate, and if so, where?   Employers can then use their ATS software to seek you out via this set of criteria and ask you to apply.  It would be like being ‘pre-qualified’ for a job.   Gone would be the days where you send out an application that ends up as roadkill on the Information Superhighway.

#4.  Smarter Networking

Have you ever tried to professionally network before?  If you do sales for industrial construction equipment you may find yourself sitting across from a guy that sells gym memberships, a guy who is a math tutor and a gal who is a makeup artist.  Perhaps out of the crowd there is someone you can interact with in your field, or perhaps not.  I always found this to be the problem with the Chamber of Commerce model of networking. These groups may be great if  you sell life insurance or real estate, where getting exposure to large amounts of people is important.  Perhaps not so much for an insurance underwriter or a school teacher.

LinkedIn is the perfect way to stay caught up with folks  whom you meet in industry conferences. Instead of retaining the pile of business cards that end up in a desk drawer, you simply link up with them on LinkedIn.  If you never stay in contact then yes, it’s a waste of time.   So, once in a white it may be good to drop them a quick two or  three sentence note in the LinkedIn mail application.  There are also  ‘groups’ you can join to network without having to go to a bar...    These groups run the gamut from excellent to worthless, so check them out carefully before joining.  This is an excellent place to bounce questions off of peers, such as the value of advertising in the  telephone directories.   You can also keep up with changes in your field and get a pulse of thing that are important.

#5 (The Best for last) Control and Position

"Its not about what you hide more  than it is about what you choose to share."

Part of my basic belief is that as people evolve so do their careers. Chance are that the career which you started in your 20s may not now interest you in your 40’s or 50’s,  You’ve picked up new skills and abilities.   The danger with resumes is that they are often scrapbooks of places you’ve been and things you’ve done, instead of road signs of where you’re going.  If  you aren’t careful, certain jobs that you’ve held in the past will bring out recruiters who are anxious to put you right back into them  Thus when it comes to your positioning of your career its not about what you hide more  than it is about what you choose to share.

A perfect example of what to do was seen by  one of my college buddies.  On his LinkedIn profile you can see he is a high power attorney, a partner is his law firm..  However when you look on his profile it says he graduated law school in 1992 and then lists his first job in the year 2002.  The most obvious question is what happened to most of the 1990s?   Perhaps he followed the Grateful Dead around the country and then Hootie and the Blowfish.  But in reality it was probably a decade of his taking the bar exam and then less than  stellar first jobs.  Since he is now a partner he really can’t afford to project anything but the best profile to prospective clients, thus the 90’s were mostly muted.  

The big question of course is omission of key information  considered dishonest?  When telling the story of your life to someone you just met do they need to know all the names of all the schools you attended?   You simply say  “I grew up in Dallas.”  Instead you take time telling them about college, your major, meeting your spouse and your kids.  This is how you construct a story.  They don’t want the two hour version, just the basic details. So, why should it be any different with your career? Positioning is all about who you are, what you’re about and where you want to go more so than where you’ve been.  Just like telling story of your life there are a few key years in your life, perhaps a decade or two ago, that you talk about.  I also find this in careers.  There are years where you got to the next level on sweat equity  These may be high growth years and they gave you a lot to talk about.  My strategy for dealing with this is to list core strengths and transferable skills up front on your profile.  If your greatest growth years were three jobs down on your profile people may never get to that part of the story.  Thus,  list it up front before they even get to your job descriptions.

Another  area in which  people tend to get bogged down  is  the  descriptions of their present company and the mundane tasks of their job.  They can find out more information on the internet about the company, and people can make assumptions about the tasks of your job.  So hit the highlights, use numbers and show effectiveness.  

There are of course the larger issues such as working at a company that you were laid off or fired from.   Talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael was fired 18 times in her life.  It’s  now a common story that people have had a great career, and then they  get a new boss or take a bad career path and are laid off or fired.  When you separate the emotion from the story there is usually still plenty to talk about, and your successes and accomplishments are still valid.   There is a difference between being a productive person on the losing end of a bad situation and someone who is truly unemployable.   There are more than ten NFL coaches who won Super Bowls (one of them five times) who later went on to be fired. Does being fired negate the winning of the Super Bowl?  

When looking at people’s profiles on LinkedIn the one thing that becomes very clear is that the vast majority of profiles I read are extremely lean on information.  It’s "garbage in, garbage out."  If your profile says nothing more than your business card does, then what do you really expect from it? This is your one opportunity to tell your story.  If you are truly more than the product of a sterile list of jobs you’ve held  then take the time to write a better profile.  Research how to write better a profile and tips about improving your profile. Include a nice photo of you in appropriate clothing for your career.   Actively add to your profile when you earn new certificates or have new achievements AS THEY HAPPEN. The LinkedIn profile shouldn’t be the thing you go back to when you’re between jobs.  As you build your network of associates it’s your way to help share with them your successes and keep up to date with theirs. If used successfully, LinkedIn can be one of the greatest weapons in your career’s arsenal.  

A simple 5 step action plan

1. Watch 3  Youtube Videos about writing LinkedIn profiles, or read more about it online. If you’re not looking for work consider writing one section at a time starting with your most current job first.
2. Get an updated professional photo of yourself in industry-appropriate attire.  Pay for good retouching.
3. Find others who have similar skills, experiences and job titles  to you on LinkedIn.  Read their profiles.  Find the ones that appeal to you and make note of their layout and presentation.  Copy text from them into a word processor  Collect as much as you like.  Use these text blocks to give you ideas how to write text for your profile, but use your own words, not theirs.  
4. Don’t waste time explaining the company or mundane tasks.  You want precise and accurate information hitting career highlights, successes and marketable skills  You’ll want about five brief, impactful text blocks for each job.
5. Have your profile proofread.  Be open to ideas from others on how to improve it. The best part about the LinkedIn profile is that you can change it at any time. If you get a promotion at work consider listing the new position like it was a new job at a different company.   

Chino Hills Teacher's Inspirational "Change Of Life"

Laura Schlerf, Chino Hills Teacher, Inland Empire Running Club Pace Leader

Every   time I bent over to tie my shoe I felt like I was underwater”  Laura   Schlerf recalls.  She saw her 50’s rapidly approaching and the weight   that she had been carrying around for years starting to affect her quality of   life. Laura, a long time resident of Chino and a well - respected senior    teacher at Butterfield Ranch Elementary School in Chino Hills    started to worry. Her older siblings starting to experience serious   health issues around this time.   She knew what the battle of excess   weight and family genetics  ultimately meant.. She vividly recalls    her father’s battles with heart disease and eventually losing him to a   stroke.  She couldn’t do that to her own children. As   a mother of 21 year old twins (son and daughter) and a 24 year old daughter,   she recalled what it meant to her to lose her father when she was in her 20s.      “I felt it was time to be a bit selfish.    I was always doing things for others but I needed to take care of   me.  I knew I was no good to anybody if I’m dead ,   ” she told herself.   She has a passion for life, for   teaching, for family and friends and for her church ministries  (St.   Margaret Mary in Chino). Her life wasn't slowing down and she decided she   needed a body that could keep up with it.

"I   wanted to get into better shape so I started a walking campaign  I got up   early and walked for 30 minutes each morning, over time I went further on   these brief walks. I kept pushing myself.  One day I saw a light pole   ahead of me and tried running to it." she said.   As her walks   progressed she kept pushing herself to run from one light pole to the next.    "One day I went to the local high school and ran one lap without   stopping I felt like I came in first place in a marathon.  I was   screaming with joy and others were cheering as well."   Together   with her running partner, Larry Haynes, they   eventually improved.  They kept going to the point where they were doing   5K runs.  "We would have been happy to do 5K runs for the rest of our   lives.  They are everywhere and happen all the time." But then she   happened to hear about the Inland Empire Running Club.  "They meet at   Buttermilk something, or Ranch dressing something, I forget" her friend told   her.  "Do you mean Butterfield Ranch?  I am a teacher at that   elementary school in Chino Hills. Laura mentioned.   It turned out   that the group meets every Saturday morning at her school's parking  lot.

The   Inland Empire Running Club has the ability to do the unthinkable.  They   can take out of shape people, people who couldn't run a mile to save their   lives and train them to run the LA Marathon.  That’s 26.2 miles of   running!   Of course these are people who have rationalized their   position in life.  "I can't do it."   "It will never happen."   It was with their help and support that Laura moved up from 5K runs ( 3.1   miles) to half marathons (13.1 miles) then up to full marathons. 

 Ten   years ago I recall Mrs. Schlerf  as a very jovial first  grade   teacher of one of my twin daughters.  My daughter adored her, and so did   the other kids and their parents.  She has this infectious smile with a   set of bright blue eyes.  She   had an  enthusiastic spirit that made the transition to public school   easy for my daughter, If you were to suggest that a dozen years later she   would be running marathons I would have scolded you for making insensitive   comments about such a wonderful person who obviously had a weight problem. So   you can imagine my shock when I found her standing in front of a group of   runners in her red shirt, a leader of the group, and now 50 pounds lighter   than I recalled. After not seeing her for the past 8 years she actually looks   younger.   Overall she just seems abundantly happy. 

The   year Laura  turned 50 she did three half marathons and the Los Angeles   marathon.  Recently the unthinkable happened, the club asked her to   be a pace coach.  "I'm not a coach, the first year I ran a marathon I did   it in six hours and 19 minutes, the next year I was in better shape but hit   the wall at mile 17 so I only improved by ten minutes.. I do run but I run   slow.  I told them that they can fire me, I won't be offended."     But it wasn't about her being in better shape than other runners,   it was about her infectious personality that  inspires  others to   try harder. They can relate to her because she has been in their   shoes.

The   American Heart Association’s (AHA) "Life's Simple 7 (http://mylifecheck.heart.org/)   recommends seven simple steps to improve one’s cardiovascular health.    The AHA believes that even small, simple steps can make a huge difference when   it comes to heart and brain health.

One   of the Simple 7 is "Get Active" and the first thing Mrs. Schlerf did was to   make the time and start with something as easy as walking. With the exercise   program she lost 50 pounds.  "Lose Weight" is another step.     Combining an exercise plan with eating better (a third Simple 7)   improves one’s chances of feeling good and staying healthy.  Being   active, maintaining a healthy weight and a healthy diet help keep cholesterol,   blood pressure and blood sugar numbers in check, which also make up Life’s   Simple 7. Stop smoking is the last but equally important step in Life’s Simple   7.   These steps are important because heart disease and strokes   kill one out of every three women.

Diet   and exercise worked for Laura.   “I  used to stop by the drive   through and get a burger all the time.  Now I can’t recall the last time   I’ve done that.”  She never had any intention to run marathons. Her goal   was to get into better shape to prolong life.   But as the weight   came off she ate better and felt better.  Her blood pressure improved and    her attitude toward life improved.  When it came to exercise she   sometimes pushed herself a bit too far and had to stop. But it gave her a   target to strive for the next time. “My kids thought this was a phase I was   going through.  They came to the first L.A. Marathon  and held up   signs.  But the next year they were surprised I was doing it again.    This isn’t a phase it’s a change of life.”  Laura speaks passionately   about the Inland Empire Running Club. I didn’t want to be around negative   people nor complainers.  The people in the group have such positive   attitudes.  I’ve only been with them a few years but it feels like I’ve   known them longer.  I can tell some of these people will be lifelong   friends.”

Along   her journey Laura found new goals. "If I can't run the L.A. County Marathon in   under 6 hours this year I don't know what to do." I said, "Try again next   year?" Her partner Larry laughed because to Laura there's never a destination,   just new goals that seem like one light pole too far. 

  

This article was written in support of the American Heart Association Inland Empire. Please follow the #AHAIE on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AHAInlandEmpire). Thank you also to the Inland Empire Running Club (https://www.facebook.com/ierunningclub) #IERunningClub and the good people of Chino Hills #ChinoHills for keeping an eye out for the running club every Saturday morning. Thanks also to Butterfield Ranch Elementary School of Chino Hills.

Keywords: #Health #Running #Diet #Weightloss #AHA #Catholic #Stroke #HeartDisease #Walking #Family #Goal #5K #HalfMarathon #Marathon #Aging