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Do You Need a Resume in the LinkedIn Era?

Wednesday, March 29th, 2017

Now that LinkedIn (alongside numerous other online portals) has become the standard place to present your professional history and credentials — not to mention the fastest way to check somebody else’s — the humble resume has lost its once-hallowed position as the canonical version of your professional identity. Your LinkedIn profile should be the most-viewed and most current version of your professional life. But that has many people asking: Do I even need an old-fashioned resume anymore?

The answer is a highly qualified, but definite, “yes”.

The Value of LinkedIn

In the past, resumes have served several functions:

  1. Applying for a job: When you’re applying for an advertised position, you almost certainly need to submit a resume as part of the application process.
  2. Job hunting: Even if you’re not applying for a specific job, you may still use a resume as part of your search process, as a way of introducing yourself to people who may be interested in your skills.
  3. Professional credentialing: Resumes act as a way of establishing your professional credentials in many circumstances, like grant applications, requests for proposals, and conference or speaker submissions.
  4. Professional memory: Your resume is your own professional memory. Keeping it up-to-date is a way of ensuring you don’t forget the professional accomplishments or qualifications you may want to highlight during your next job hunt.

In the world of LinkedIn, blogs, and professional landing pages (a.k.a. “nameplate” sites), however, most of these functions can be better accomplished through your online presence. If you are job hunting, send people to your LinkedIn page instead of sending a PDF of your resume. (Unlike a resume, a solid LinkedIn profile includes not only your self-proclaimed qualifications, but testimonials from colleagues, clients, and employers.) If you need to establish your professional credentials, sending someone a link to your LinkedIn page will often be the most efficient way to convey your relevant experience. And for maintaining a professional memory, LinkedIn is unbeatable, precisely because it’s easy to update, and because you’re likely visiting the site on a regular basis.

To serve any of these purposes, however, your LinkedIn presence must be well-crafted and up-to-date. Even if you aren’t sending people to your LinkedIn page, it is likely to be one of the first results for anyone who Googles you to find out about your professional qualifications and experience. That’s why you need to ensure it’s accurate, compelling, and current; unless you’re updating your LinkedIn profile monthly or at least quarterly, you’re not putting your best foot forward. Setting up a memorable short URL for your LinkedIn profile, and including that URL in your email signature line, is a good way to remind yourself that this is something people are going to look at regularly.

Blogs, Websites, and Landing Pages

For all its merit, LinkedIn has limitations: you have to fit your career story into its structure, and you have only minimal control over formatting. That’s why many professionals use their own blog, personal website, or professional landing page to craft a more strategic online presence. For many professionals, the best bet is to maintain several presences, customized to different purposes, so that you can point people to the presence that is relevant to each specific scenario. For example, you might maintain:

  • A speaking profile: Professionals who do a lot of speaking or conference submissions would do well to create a specialized presence on a speaker directory like ExpertFile (formerly Speakerfile), a nameplate site like about.me, or even on Slideshare.
  • A services profile: If you offer services as a independent contractor, whether that’s as a web developer, a designer, a coach or an accountant, setting up a landing page for your contract work can be an efficient place to point potential clients.
  • An author profile: If you have a book, blog, or publication file, you will want to profile yourself for readers or future writing assignments with an author page on Amazon, a writing marketplace like MediaBistro, or a web presence for your book.

Why You Still Need a Resume

When you are actually applying for a job, however, neither LinkedIn nor a professional landing page can replace the resume. A strong resume is still the gateway to an interview, and with more and more employers relying on Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) — software that screens resumes to determine which applications warrant human review — you need a resume that you can upload to those systems. Nor can it be the same resume for every application; since an ATS typically screens for specific qualifications and keywords, you need to customize your resume for each job (or type of job) that you apply for, and optimize it for ATS screenings.

If anything, though, LinkedIn will be helpful at least as a reminder for keeping your resume as updated as possible. The standard wisdom — treat your resume as a living document that you update anytime you have a new accomplishment to record — applies to LinkedIn as well, and the two should be kept updated in parallel.

Technology and social media have transformed our daily lives in innumerable ways, with networking and job searching being just two areas where we regularly experience this constant change. But there are still ways in which the old-fashioned, the tried-and-true, remain relevant, and such it is with the humble resume. Don’t count it out yet.

Good luck!

Do You Need a Résumé in the LinkedIn Era? | Alexandra Samuel via Harvard Business Review.

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5 Strategies for LinkedIn Job Searching

Wednesday, April 27th, 2016

LinkedIn has been called the Facebook for professionals… or MySpace (dated reference) with ties. From humble origins, it has grown to become the premier professional networking site, par excellence, throughout the internet, and despite the company’s various attempts to hide its more useful features, especially for job seekers and recruiters, behind pay walls and “premium accounts”, for the most part it is still free and open and certainly one of the best tools a passive or active job seeker has available.

However, as anyone who has been a member for any length of time (and received the countless spam messages from sales and marketing professionals in India) will know, LinkedIn can be used properly and then it can be abused and what goodwill you might have generated may be quickly squandered. Nothing like putting your foot in it when thousands of people are watching. And the more connections you have collected, the more opportunities there are for that grand faux pas that has sunk the career of more than one actor, politician, sports star, and internet thug on Twitter or Facebook.

So how then does one effectively use LinkedIn for a job search without abusing it and without falling into the trap of trying to do “too much”, to the ire of connections and staff admins alike? Here are a few basic tactics to employ that don’t require a premium account or paying for InMails:

Follow a company. You will get updates on who in your network moved where. While it’s interesting to see who the “New Hires” are, more important is where they came from, as these might point toward openings at their old company. Also note what their new positions are to get an idea of a possible career path. And, of course, a company’s “Recent Departures” list also lets you know of openings.

Mine new contacts for even newer ones. Every time someone connects to you, look through his or her list of contacts. View the profiles of those that intrigue you, and reach out to a few of them, citing things like common interests, schools attended, and shared company experience, or even just mention photos they’ve posted… LinkedIn allows people to put up so much content — slide shows, groups, awards, reading lists, articles, blogs, Twitter streams — it’s very easy to find a common reason to connect.

Connect with highly visible people. Search on terms like “speaker,” “author,” “writer,” “coach,” “trainer” “evangelist,” “sales,” “keynote,” “award-winning,” or “expert.” These people are often uber-connectors with thousands of connections. When you find one in your field (or a related one), search for him or her on the Web to find something he or she has written, and send a thoughtful comment or compliment. Make sure it’s sincere. If you get a good response, follow up with an invitation to connect, but don’t pester the person if he or she ignores you. These well-connected types are very busy people. A visit to the person’s Website might reveal an upcoming speaking engagement in your area. Whatever you do, respect an uber-connector’s time. Recruiters are in their own category; they often have connections in the thousands and knowledge of job openings, but they are also overwhelmed. If you contact them, make sure you give them a good reason to link and try to be memorable.

Connect to “interesting” people. Search on an unusual interest of yours to see who else has it. You might get ideas about career direction, or a contact might be able to give you a job lead. Imagine you’re a medical assistant who likes dancing. A search on “flamenco dancer” brought up this title for one person: “Medical Doctor, Wellness Expert, International Speaker, Life Coach, Author & Flamenco Dancer.” You could reach out to say, “Wow, another person in health care who loves flamenco!” It’s a long shot, but life is made up of such coincidences.

Leverage even weak links. I once got an interview by sending a message through LinkedIn to one of my contacts, with whom, truthfully, I was only loosely connected. Not only was she someone I’d never met in real life, but I’d turned her down for an interview! (I got a job offer elsewhere.) A year after our initial connection, I was job searching again, and I noticed she was connected to someone I was targeting. It was gutsy of me to do, but I felt I had nothing to lose, so I contacted her. She forwarded my resume, and I got the interview.

Some people are keen to update their profiles to “Job Seeker” or put something rather desperate sounding in their current title or job description (like “Looking for the Next Great Opportunity!” or “THE Candidate You’ve Been Looking for!”). Always seems a little desperate and likely to attract the wrong sort of attention from recruiters and hiring managers. While it’s always good to be honest about your current job status, no need to wave around being unemployed like dirty underwear.

Get started on LinkedIn BEFORE you are out of work, so you have the resources in place beforehand and it doesn’t look like you’ve joined or become suddenly active only because you’re looking for a job. Then you’re free to use LinkedIn like your online resume for both passive and active opportunities that come up.

Good luck!

5 Tips for Using LinkedIn During Your Job Search | Maureen Nelson via Quint Careers

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Preparing Your Facebook For Your Job Search

Wednesday, March 30th, 2016

If you’re looking for a job and you haven’t taken a careful look at what’s public on your Facebook profile, you’re doing yourself a tremendous disservice. How you present yourself on Facebook can (and will) determine your chances of being hired.

Consider these numbers:

  • 91% of hiring agents use social networks to screen prospective employees
  • 76% of these agents (69% overall) check Facebook as part of their search
  • 42.8% of employees will check your Facebook after reviewing an application
  • 69% of HR officers have rejected job applications based on social media reviews
  • 68% have hired a candidate based on their social media presence

So what are these recruiters seeing? Log into Facebook and take a look at what they can see. Chances are there’s a few things there that are best left unseen. Which begs the argument:

Why Not Hide My Profile Entirely?

For one, recruiters expect you to have Facebook, and if they can’t find it, you may look suspicious to them.

Above that, what you have here is an opportunity to present yourself positively to your employers. Rather than locking down your profile (or deleting it), why not run a little maintenance? This is your chance to proactively impress your employer with your savvy, charismatic, and career-driven online persona. It’s a simple law of business — turn every weakness into a strength.

Takeaway: Instead of locking down your Facebook, set it up to look awesome when a hiring manager checks it out.

You should be able to whip that profile into shape in four simple steps:

Step 1: Gain Control Of Your Existing Posts

If you’ve been updating your Facebook profile daily since 2004, there’s simply too much to sort through. Instead, you can choose to automatically limit your old posts on Facebook (and by “old”, they seem to mean anything before this year). This leaves you with some recent activity to share, while saving you many hours/days in the archives. You can still go back and set individual posts back to public if you want.

Next, lock down your friends list. You have almost no control over their pages, and it’s safest to keep them away from prying eyes. Additionally, Facebook rolled out a feature called “Graph Search” that allows your friends and relatives to appear in searches associated with you. Locking down your friends list won’t protect you from those searches entirely, but it will help.

As a final precaution, you may want to turn off search engine indexing to your Facebook profile. Many search engines cache your posts, which can make them stay visible in search for several months after you’ve removed them from the actual page.

Step 2: Prune Your Profile

A Facebook profile provides more recorded information about an individual — including where you’ve been, what you’ve eaten, who your friends are, etc — than any source in history. When sifting through that information, at least 12% of employers are going to specifically look for reasons NOT to hire you. Make sure your profile doesn’t have that reason.

Eliminate These Red Flags:

Takeaway: 12% of employers check your Facebook profile specifically to find reasons NOT to hire you.

It’s also a good idea to consider who, specifically, you’re applying to when cleaning out your profile. For example, if you’ve got your fingers crossed for that job at Apple, it probably wouldn’t hurt to unfan “Droid” for the time being. When clearing out your Facebook, be sure to delete the stories (as opposed to hiding them), as they will otherwise still be searchable through Graph Search.

Step 3: Clean Up Your Image(s)

When it comes to a job search, Facebook images are asking for trouble. Everyone’s seen your old photos already: this is a great time to get rid of those old beach photos from college, toss up a professional-looking profile and cover photo, and make most of your albums private. This is also a good time to check out your tagged photos and unlink yourself to those fabulously embarrassing photos your friends have so generously posted and tagged you in. Facebook’s privacy features make this easy to do — you can select multiple photos for untagging all at once.

It’s also worth being prepared for the next batch of draconian privacy changes that Facebook will unleash without notifying you (think: The Great Betrayal, where private photos suddenly went public). If you have anything on there that would be REALLY embarrassing/scandalous if it went public, just get rid of it.

Step 4: Be Mindful With Your Future Content

Using Facebook’s graph search feature to find people who live near you, whether friends of yours or not.The golden rule here is: “Think before you share.” I would take it one step farther: “Think before your friends share.” There’s nothing worse than having to explain your friend’s “Hey, were you able to get the day off for your interview tomorrow?” post to your boss. I suggest you turn off tag suggest for photos, restrict who posts on your timeline, and keep your e-mail notifications on.

One last thing: take the time to research what your Facebook apps are posting on your wall, and be careful with comments you’ve posted under your name in articles and news stories through your Facebook account. These apps and media outlets want to be found, and they will post publicly on your wall if you let them.

Once you’ve cleaned up your Facebook, it’s time to be a little proactive about what the hiring managers will be seeing.

Do This With Your Public Facebook Page:

  • Reflect a positive, charismatic, well-rounded personality
  • Demonstrate solid grammar and communication skills
  • Reflect your passion for your profession
  • Show off your professional accomplishments and awards

If your hiring agent checks your Facebook before calling you for an interview, this is your first chance to show your face and make a good impression. A little effort in cleaning up your image online can (and does) make all the difference between losing the opportunity and getting your foot in the door.

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6 Secrets of Great Resumes, Backed By Psychology

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015

After reviewing, analyzing, and writing many resumes over the years, I’ve come to the realization that most people don’t think like psychologists. And in doing so, they sell themselves short.

Here are six ways to change that:

1. Quantify Your Impact

Tip: Show your accomplishments in numbers, not just words. It’s such an easy way to standout since few people do this. Answer questions such as: how much money did you manage? How many people attended your last event? How many views did your promotional video have?

Examples:

  • Weak: Managed a budget to plan large-scale events for students
  • Strong: Managed $12,000 budget to plan large-scale events for 2,500 students
  • Weak: Compiled a pitch deck for buyout of automotive company
  • Strong: Compiled a 44-page pitch deck for buyout of $53 million automotive company
  • Weak: Wrote articles on entrepreneurship and technology
  • Strong: Wrote 8 articles on entrepreneurship and technology, generating 107,000 page views, 8,003 likes, and 3,723 tweets

Reason: Greek philosopher Aristotle taught three pillars of effective persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. He believed most in the power of logos, which means persuading others using logic, evidence, and facts. By quantifying your impact, you’re doing exactly that. You’re providing evidence to underscore the significance of your accomplishments.

2. Make Your Interests As Quirky As Possible

Tip: To quote Drake (another great philosopher), you need to “start from the bottom.” The last line of your resume is where many people list their interests, but don’t actually say anything interesting. You like movies, sports, and traveling? How original! If you’re going to use this section at all (and it’s becoming less common), say something that could strike an emotional chord or spark a memorable conversation mid-interview. At the very least, be highly specific.

Examples: Settlers of Catan, Quentin Tarantino films, Mediterranean cooking, Lego Star Wars collections.

Reason: In Give and Take, Wharton professor Adam Grant emphasizes that similarities matter most when they’re rare. “We bond when we share uncommon commonalities, which allow us to feel that we fit in and stand out at the same time,” he says. Your interests are a huge bonding opportunity with your resume reader. Don’t waste it.

3. Show The Competition

Tip: This one gets me every time. So many people win awards, get into selective programs, and do other impressive things but don’t convey the full amazingness of those accomplishments. It’s because they don’t show the competition; they don’t reveal how many other people were gunning for that very same spot.

Examples:

  • Weak: Won Granny Smith University’s Innovation Competition
  • Strong: Won $1,000 for Granny Smith University’s Innovation Competition (80+ entrepreneurs competed)
  • Weak: Accepted into Johnny Appleseed Management Program
  • Strong: Accepted into Johnny Appleseed Management Program (9% admit rate, Granny Smith University selects 50 students per year)

Reason: Social proof is one of the most powerful principles of influence, according to psychologist Robert Cialdini. By showing your competition, you emphasize how coveted your accomplishments are. Many people tried, but only you succeeded. By doing this, you safeguard yourself in case the recruiter hasn’t heard of your program, award, or honor – which they most likely haven’t and won’t bother looking up.

4. Ask An Employee For Feedback

Tip: Relationships are more important than resumes. Before applying to any company, always connect with an employee – whether through information sessions, introductions, or alumni outreach. If the conversation goes well, kindly ask for feedback on your resume before applying.

This accomplishes two things. First, it’s an extremely efficient way to customize your resume to different companies. Employees offer highly specific edits (“hey try using this buzz word, we love that”). Secondly, this is an awesome way to internally pass along your resume without even asking. If an employee finds you impressive, kind, and sincere, there’s a good chance they’ll put in a word with recruiters.

Example:

Hey Jeff,
Great chatting yesterday! I really enjoyed hearing about your experiences at [Company X] and I’m excited to apply for [Position Y].
I know you’re super busy, but could you spare 2 minutes to share any feedback on my resume before I submit? Even a quick gut reaction would mean a lot.
Best,
Jon

Reason: The Foot-In-The-Door Phenomenon refers to people’s tendency to more readily complete larger requests after they’ve already agreed to smaller ones. By asking for feedback, you’re doing just that. Requesting two minutes of their time is an easy starting point, especially if you’ve built rapport beforehand. Before you know it, they may help out in bigger ways by making referrals, brokering introductions, and more.

5. Associate Yourself With Big Brands

Tip: Build instant credibility by associating yourself with trusted institutions, even if you’ve never directly worked for one. Did any of your clients include Fortune 500 companies? If you worked at a startup, was it backed by notable venture capitalists? Were you featured in any major publications? Well-known brands shine when recruiters scan resumes so find a way to include them.

Examples:

  • Strengthened relationships with 7 strategic partners (including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble & Facebook) through follow-up meetings with senior leadership
  • Hired and managed 6 students from Penn and Yale including programmers, engineers, and graphic designers
  • Collaborated with Zagat’s “Restaurateur of the Year” Stephen Starr to run a Philadelphia-wide Restaurant Week at 8 different venues

Reason: Authority is another one of Cialdini’s principles of influence. If you don’t have it, the best way to convey authority is by associating yourself with those who do.

Bonus Tip: for college students, an easy way to do this is by becoming a campus ambassador for a notable company.

6. Follow The “Rule of Seven”

Tip: Great resumes send a consistent message. They convey a personal brand. They make recruiters think, “this kid has done this before. If we hire him, he’ll fit right in.” To accomplish this, follow the Rule of Seven. Find buzzwords (and their derivatives) on the company’s website and repeat them seven times in your resume. For instance, when applying for marketing jobs, use verbs like “marketed,” “advertised” and “promoted” to describe your accomplishments. When applying to a startup, use verbs like “built,” “created,” and “initiated.” And so forth. If you’re really crafty, you don’t have to change much when tailoring to different jobs.

Example:

  • For Marketing Job: “Marketed YouTube Campaign Video featuring CNN’s Larry King (9,400 views)”
  • For Startup Job: “Created YouTube Campaign Video featuring CNN’s Larry King (9,400 views)”

(by the way, notice the mention of CNN in there? Everyone knows Larry King but CNN is another recognized brand that recruiters gravitate towards. Tip 5 in action.)

Reason: The old adage says customers must see an advertisement seven times before they take action. Apply the same thinking here. After all, your resume is the ultimate personal marketing tool. Make sure you position yourself properly so recruiters know you’re a fit.

Bonus Tip: One of the biggest missed opportunities is when people write “summer intern” on resumes. Stop doing that! Specify your role (ex: “marketing intern”). It’s another branding opportunity. Another way to fulfill the Rule of Seven is through your “relevant coursework” section (if you have one). When applying for a finance job, for example, list statistics and quantitative classes first.

Original from Forbes

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What Were They Thinking? 30 Wacky Job Interview Behaviors

Wednesday, August 19th, 2015

As challenging as it is for most job seekers to “score” a job interview, the actions of many job seekers in job interviews raise questions about their understanding of what job interviews are or, perhaps, their true interests in the opportunities those job interviews provide.

A recent CareerBuilder study of over 2,200 hiring managers and human resources representatives across a wide range of industries and sizes showed some amazing behavior on the part of job seekers.

My suspicion is that most (not all, of course) people are not naturally this clueless. On some level, they must understand that they are blowing away the opportunity with their actions.

Among the strange actions in the CareerBuilder study:

  • Applicant crashed her car into the building.
  • Applicants dressing strangely – in a Star Wars costume or in their running gear.
  • Applicant kept iPod headphone on during the interview.
  • Applicant checked Facebook during the job interview.
  • Applicant asked for the receptionist’s name and phone number because he really liked her.

I’ve heard many other horror stories from recruiters and experienced a few myself as an interviewer. Please do NOT do any of these behaviors during a job interview:

Misusing cell phones:

  • Answering the cell phone.
  • Texting on the cell phone.
  • Playing a game on the smart phone while interviewing.
  • Asking to delay the start of the interview until composing an email was completed.

Demonstrating bad manners:

  • Arriving late.
  • Yawning.
  • Bad breath.
  • Bad body odor or too much perfume or cologne.
  • Cursing during the interview.
  • Arriving too early (more than 10 minutes).
  • Parking in the employee parking spaces.
  • Smelling like cigarette or cigar smoke.
  • Being rude to the elevator operator, receptionist, secretary, or other “unimportant” staff members.
  • Coughing and sneezing, obviously coming down with a cold.

Being unprepared for job interviews:

  • Not knowing which job you’re being interviewed for.
  • Not remembering the title and requirements of the job being interviewed for.
  • Not having copies of the resume ready to give to interviewers.
  • Not having a good answer to, “What do you know about us?”
  • Not having good questions about the job and the organization ready to ask (questions that couldn’t be answered by a Google search or pre-interview preparation).

Acting very oddly in job interviews:

  • Bringing parents and children.
  • Attempting to include relatives in the interview.
  • Bringing a sandwich and soft drink (or coffee and a bagel) and eating during the interview that was not intended to be a meal.
  • Appearing tipsy or drugged.
  • Avoiding eye contact.
  • Dressing inappropriately – usually too informally, but sometimes apparently “in costume”

If you really aren’t interested in the job, don’t waste your time applying for it. The applicants in the incidents above wasted everyone’s time. Save your time and energy for the jobs you really want so you can bring your “’A’ Game” to the whole process.

Original from WorkCoachCafe

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What To Do If Your Network Isn’t Helping You Get A Job

Thursday, March 12th, 2015

When you’re an active job seeker, well-wishing people will be ever so quick to tell you, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Or, “It all boils down to networking.”

And they’re right. It’s so critical to leverage your professional network when looking for a new position. But what do you do if you’re finding your current network marginally helpful at best?

Surely, you could consider branching out to new people (and you should always—throughout your entire career—look for ways to continue building strong ties with people who may be influential to your professional life), but what about now? What can you do now—with your existing network—if you feel like you’re getting nowhere fast?

Here are four quick ideas that may help you better leverage the people you already know:

1. Send Out a Networking Letter

It’s astounding to me how many people just assume that their people understand with any clarity what it is they do, and how (specifically) they may be able to help out. When you call or email your contacts and ask them to “keep an ear out” for opportunities, they may be more than willing to do just that—but confused about what, exactly, you do for a living.

A networking letter is a simple note that you send to your closest people, outlining that you’re actively searching and sharing what specific types of roles would be great for you and what skills you’d like to put to use. If you paint a picture of the company or job at which you’d be the best fit, your people will have a much easier time considering how they might be of specific assistance.

2. Have Your People Introduce You to Their People

If you zip on over to LinkedIn and see that you don’t have a single first-degree connection at a company of interest, don’t fret. You may well have a second-degree connection. How do you use this to your advantage? Here’s how: Take a look at the person with whom you share the connection. Do you know that person pretty well? If so, get ahold of her and say, “Hey, Sarah. I noticed that you’re connected to Jerry Johnson at XYZ Company. How well do you know him, and would you be willing to introduce me?”

Assuming Sarah knows Jerry pretty well, you could be chatting with someone on the inside of a company of interest within less than a day. Not bad for someone who thought you had no “in,” right?

3. Offer to Help Them

Something that bugs people about networking is that it feels very ambush-y. “Give me this!” “Help me with that!” “Could you walk my resume over to your manager, stat?!” If this is how you’re going about networking, it’s no wonder that your people aren’t being helpful.

Consider instead a strategy that asks your contact for something small (say, “May I ask you two quick questions about your experience at XYZ Company?”) before you ask for a larger favor. Build rapport. Be genuine and interested. And most definitely, when you say thank you, ask if there is anything that you may do to help that person out. Reciprocity is a magnificent thing. Look into it.

4. Consider Facebook

We’ve all pretty much bum-rushed LinkedIn for career networking, and that’s not at all a bad thing. LinkedIn is, far and away, our best online resource for job search and professional networking. However, Facebook can also be supremely helpful to your cause. Think about it: Your Facebook network probably consists of your closest friends. In theory, these are the people most likely to “have your back” when you need something, like a new job. But if you never alert them that you’re looking, how can they possibly be of service? They cannot be.

Use your Facebook status update—selectively—to alert your people of what you’re doing and what you need. On your way to an interview? Let ’em know. Looking for a contact at a company of interest? Ask. You definitely want to avoid being a big, giant downer (“Stilllll no job, people”), but using Facebook strategically for networking can be a very good thing.

Certainly, if your network isn’t being particularly helpful, you may want to also think about ways to expand your professional connections, stat. But more often than not, there are so many ways you can better utilize your existing people. Try these first.

Original from the Daily Muse

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The Biggest Resume Lies — and How Job Seekers Get Caught

Thursday, October 16th, 2014

Why You Shouldn’t Fudge Facts — and How to Make the Truth Sound Better

Desperate times often call for desperate measures — and in a brutal employment market, some job seekers may be tempted to falsify their work or education history in order to make themselves more attractive to potential employers. HireRight.com, a provider of on-demand employment background screening, found that 34 percent of job applicants lie on resumes.

But job seekers who stretch the truth are playing an ever-riskier game. Background checks are much easier now. It’s all pretty open on the Internet. And many companies and recruiters now employ background-check providers who specialize in sniffing out untruths.

The Gray Area Between Fact and Fiction

Almost all career experts advise job seekers to customize their resumes to individual jobs they apply for. So where’s the line between self-promotion and falsehood? Some experts say it can be hard to define. The dictionary says that ’embellish’ means ‘to make beautiful,’ which is when a candidate is great at self-promotion. The difference between that and a damaging lie varies by industry and profession.

For instance, financial executives are subject to more intense scrutiny than many people going into entry-level positions that don’t involve money.

But at any point in your career, stretching the truth is risky — especially on official job applications. Any uncovered fib is liable to severely damage your reputation in the workplace.

Most Common Resume Lies

According to Forbes.com, some of the most common resume lies concern:

  • Education
  • Employment dates
  • Job titles
  • Technical skills

These are the same resume areas that, if you fudge them, can cause problems — the Internet has made it much easier to verify a person’s claims about education, for instance.

And some recruiting firms are sleuthing far beyond a candidate’s given references to corroborate his claims — for instance, finding and contacting the candidate’s former colleagues via LinkedIn.

People think that they can make up and embellish details about companies that have been sold or gone out of business. But LinkedIn, Facebook and our wide-ranging networks will put a quick stop to most efforts to change history in our favor.

Truth or Consequences

And even if false credentials get you the job, those untruths may come back to haunt you. You’re subject to immediate dismissal if it turns out you misrepresented something.

If your company is acquired, for instance, the acquirer’s HR department may perform an audit of its new employees. Or your background may be checked when you apply for a promotion. Former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, former Notre Dame football coach George O’Leary and celebrity chef Robert Irvine are just three of the people who made news when false background information cost them high-profile jobs.

Keeping It Real

Career experts have practical advice on how to deal truthfully with some of the problems that may cause people to lie — follow it, and you’ll be able to sleep more easily at night.

  • Employment Gaps: Just because you weren’t getting paid for something doesn’t mean you weren’t being productive and gaining skills. If you volunteered or worked on your own projects, say, you should speak to those things on your resume, in a cover letter or in an interview.
  • Misrepresentative Titles: Job seekers need to lay claim to projects and results that may not have been in their formal job descriptions. Here’s an example: An office manager took on HR in her company after the HR coordinator left. The office manager’s title was never changed, but she took on responsibility for payroll, benefits, and so on. She put all of that on her resume, and changed her title to ‘Office Manager (with HR responsibilities).’ That’s a perfectly good way for her to brand herself, because she hasn’t changed the title to something her old employer wouldn’t recognize or support.
  • Past Salaries: If you feel you were underpaid, you should arm yourself with information about the salary you should be earning.
  • Skills: If you’re tempted to lie about having a technical skill, for instance, the right thing to do is clear: Gain that skill by enrolling in a class (or committing to learning it on your own). Then you’ll be able to explain to potential employers truthfully that you’re working on getting up-to-speed in that area.

    Original from Monster.

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Top 10 Personal Branding Blunders To Avoid

Thursday, July 10th, 2014

The world of personal branding has certainly changed over the past decade or so, especially with the impact of social media. It’s no longer enough to make an impression in person or on the phone; now you have to be sure your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and numerous other online presences are all coordinated and professional, to avoid presenting the wrong image to potential employers and clients who might be snooping around.

In this somewhat more complicated branding landscape, there are countless possible brand blunders one can make that detract from brand value rather than building it. Below are ten of the most egregious errors so you can steer clear of them, keeping the brand called you on a smooth path to success.

1. Be fake. Effective personal branding is based in authenticity. You need to be yourself – your best self. You’ll be found out if you try to fool people by imitating something you’re not or lying to your target audience. Just think about Milli Vanilli, Rosie Ruiz, and Lance Armstrong. Faking it is also a waste of energy. Anne Morrow Lindbergh once said, “The most exhausting thing you can be is inauthentic.”

2. Be wishy-washy. Strong brands express an opinion and take a stand. If you are trying to please all the people, you usually please none. Want to inspire people and connect with them on a deep level? Get clear about your point of view and make it public. Be willing to repel some people – all strong brands do. Know your message and be willing to stick your neck out and express yourself.

3. Act first. Think later. When it comes to personal branding, I see people building Blogs, using social media, and joining associations without any strategic plan for how it will help them build their brand and achieve their goals. Successful branding requires having a plan. Don’t act until you think – and make your decisions based on your brand strategy. Start by identifying your goals. Then get to know yourself, understand your differentiation, and discern what makes you compelling. You have to establish your brand promise before you can start to build the brand itself with your target audience.

4. Shoot for quantity. It’s not about the quantity of random LinkedIn connections or the number of articles you write or the number of tweets you post. Don’t seek quantity at the expense of quality. Quality is what will make your communications stand out and attract those whom you need to influence. Quality will get you noticed and help you build the right following. There’s tremendous pressure to be constantly visible in lots of social media, so our instinct is to just post, post, post without regard to the message we are sending or the suitability of our audience. Avoid this trap by focusing on quality.

5. Seek fame and glory. Branding is not about you, it’s about serving others. Fame is difficult to achieve, and if you make it your goal, you’ll focus too much on the attention you crave instead of focusing on the value you can deliver. You only need to be known to the people who are making decisions about you and those who influence them. I call it selective fame. Work to be known by decision-makers and influencers who will help you reach your goals.

6. Be binary. Branding requires a steady and steadfast approach. Being binary means that you divide your attention and run a two-track career, perhaps even thinking of branding as an activity that is separate from your career. Personal branding is not something you do occasionally with bursts of activity – like at the beginning of the year when you begin to work on your resolutions. Have a single, focused plan and act on it daily. Don’t let yourself run out of steam; slow, consistent actions will sustain you for the long haul.

7. Be exclusively virtual. Personal branding actually went mainstream when social media came onto the scene. This left many people thinking that personal branding is an online activity. It’s not – at least not exclusively. Sure, having a digital strategy for your brand is critical, but your actions every day and the things you can do in the real world matter. Shaking hands and scheduling face time (and I’m not talking about an online video meeting) bring your brand to life. You must put your personal stamp on everything you do. Think of your brand holistically, and you’re on your way to achieving your goals.

8. Go solo. Personal branding sounds like it should be an individual activity, and it is “personal,” but it’s not solo. The Lone Ranger syndrome will work against you. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. Much of the personal branding process has to do with being part of a community and contributing to that community. This is the key to building your personal brand network. Have a mentor, hire a coach, and reach out to colleagues and friends for their opinions. Don’t go it alone.

9. Be selfish. Personal branding is not about you. It’s about what you’re able to give to others. Generosity is one of the best strategies for personal branding. When you give to your network, you remind them you are there through actions that also demonstrate how grateful you are for your success. When you give to your team, you show them you care. When you give away your services, you let people discover firsthand what you’re great at.

10. Forget to measure. You could be spinning your wheels, but you won’t know unless you measure. That means setting up-front goals for your personal branding activities. Your goals might be the number of thought-leaders in your area of expertise who know you, or the influence you create internally, or being recognized by a relevant professional association. Whatever your goals, document them. Focus on them. And measure your momentum as you strive towards them. Regularly – say quarterly or monthly – evaluate your progress against your goals – and refine your strategy accordingly.

If you avoid these personal branding don’ts, you can make a name for yourself that fuels your success for years to come.

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Some Job Search Advice You’re Taking Too Far

Thursday, June 12th, 2014

As a job searcher, you’re doing everything right. You have your interview answers perfectly scripted out, you tailor each and every resume you send in, and your LinkedIn connections far outnumber your Facebook friends. Every piece of job hunt advice that you’ve ever heard or read, you’ve put into practice.

But that ever-elusive job offer still hasn’t crossed your desk. What gives?

While the job search advice you’re following may be on point, the way you’re using it may not be helping your cause as much as you think. For a lot of tips, there’s a fine line between using it correctly and going a bit overboard (or even in the wrong direction).

Read on for a few great job search tips—and how they may be working against you.

Good Advice: Make Connections on LinkedIn

LinkedIn can be a job searcher’s dream. Through your connections, you may find that you have a link—and an immediate in—to your dream company. So, creating and cultivating new connections is extremely beneficial.

Taking it Too Far

Blindly clicking “connect” on hundreds of profiles and sending the generic invitation might land you a few extra connections, but it won’t get your profile a second glance.

Instead, you should first search for contacts from your email address book. Then invite them—but make it personal. LinkedIn will give you the option of sending a default ‘connect with me, please’ message, but don’t use it—sending a personal note will set you apart right from the start.

Casting a wide net is beneficial, but only if you truly have some sort of link to those target connections. This is where LinkedIn’s “People You Might Know” feature comes in handy—to suggest classmates, colleagues, and former co-workers that you might not have previously thought of.

Good Advice: Explain That You’re the Best Candidate for the Job

Obviously, you want your potential employer to fully understand that you’re a great candidate; that you have all the skills you need to succeed in the position and that you’re the best man or woman for the job. So, it’s important to convey confidence in those abilities at every step in the process, from your cover letter to your interview questions.

Taking it Too Far

Overconfidence can actually be a downfall, as I learned from a hiring manager recently. I was in his office, talking about my writing experience. He asked me if I’m dissatisfied with my writing. “Of course,” I told him. “Sometimes I look back at things I wrote and wonder what in the world I was thinking.”

He chuckled knowingly and explained that he’d just interviewed a young man, fresh out of college, who answered the same question by asserting that he never wrote anything he didn’t like. And for the recruiter, that was actually a bad thing. You see, he wanted someone who not only had a realistic idea of the job (in this situation, that you’d have to write a lot of copy—quickly—and probably wouldn’t have time to make each piece perfect), but also had the desire and capacity to learn and grow. In the end, the somewhat over-confident graduate wasn’t deemed a good fit for the job.

While you shouldn’t discount your abilities (and you should certainly make a convincing case for yourself), there’s a big difference between showing confidence that you can do the job and conveying so much confidence that you end up coming across as arrogant or naïve.

Good Advice: Practice with Mock Interviews

Interviews are tough—and you want to make sure you’re prepared. So, asking a friend to help you run through practice questions is a great way to help you organize your thoughts, learn how to structure standout answers, and prepare yourself for the potentially stressful and awkward environment.

Taking it Too Far
Believe it or not, over-preparing for interviews can actually be detrimental to your chances of landing the job. It’s just as bad (or worse) to over-rehearse than it is to fly entirely by the seat of your pants.

When you have too many memorized answers packed in your brain, you’re more likely to spend the interview trying to remember each scripted answer, rather than engaging in the conversation. The back-and-forth will seem unnatural and forced, and you’ll likely come across as insincere.

Instead, spend the majority of your prep time thinking over your career experience to date, jotting down a few bullet points about specifics you want to hit on. Think about what you’re most proud of, what you struggled with, what you learned from the struggles, where you developed management skills, how you got to be so good at problem solving, and so on. When you’re confident with the specifics of your story, you’ll have a much easier time drawing from your experiences and articulating your worth, no matter what you’re asked.

Good Advice: Use the Job Description to Tailor Your Cover Letter and Resume

When a hiring manager reads your application, you want him or her to immediately recognize how your background and experience make you the perfect candidate for the job. So, use the job description as a guide to fill your resume and cover letter with the right skills and experiences.

Taking it Too Far

Pulling keywords from the job listing and slapping them on your application materials probably won’t have the effect you’re going for. When you include every phrase from the job description, including generic staples like “hard worker,” “fast learner,” and “excellent communicator,” you’ll take up a lot of valuable space—but you won’t actually convey to the recruiter that you’re any of those things.

Instead, pull skill- and experience-based qualities from the job description (e.g., “hands-on experience with Google Analytics” or “experience with Object Relational Mapping frameworks”), and then show how (by using your past accomplishments and responsibilities) you meet those requirements.

Then, in the interview phase, you’ll have more opportunities to showcase those soft skills (like having a thirst for knowledge or being a quick learner) by telling anecdotes of how you’ve displayed those qualities in your past jobs.

As you can see, good job search tips can turn into bad advice pretty quickly. But by taking a step back and reevaluating your approach, you can get back on track in no time.

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Why Won’t They Hire Me?

Thursday, March 6th, 2014

You’ve applied for every job out there, and no one is getting back to you. Why? Who cursed you with this jobless existence?

It may actually be you. Yes, for all your activities, your strategies, and your button clicking, at the heart of it all, you might be the cause of your own job search fail. How can you be sure? I’ve compiled a list of the most common mistakes people make when applying for a job. Make sure you’re not falling for one of these classic job search blunders:

1: Typos!

The number one biggest mistake people make (and one of the easiest to avoid) when applying for jobs is having typos on their resumé. No matter what the job is, no one wants to hire someone who doesn’t even use spell check. Or even worse, if you’ve made a grammatical error that leads to a humorous misunderstanding (example: occupation – internet booger instead of blogger); that’s just awful. It’s not the end of the world, of course, if you spell your own name wrong on your C.V. It is if you then send it out to everyone, however. Just spend two or three minutes proofreading what you’ve written. If you’re unsure, get a friend to look at it for you or leave it to the professionals.

2: Not having an online presence or having a bad one.

If you’re applying for high-end jobs, potential employers are going to want to know as much about you as possible. If they make a quick search on Google and they can’t find you, it won’t look good. They want to see for themselves the work you have done in the past and what you’re capable of. Some ideas for getting your online presence rolling: set up a LinkedIn account and create profiles on freelance and industry websites.

On the other hand, if your potential employer looks you up and finds a picture of you hitting a bong, it’s going to be even worse than having no presence at all. By all means, post your social life online, but make sure it’s private. It should be just for your close friends. Facebook allows you to view your profile as a member of the public would see it. You should definitely try this out, so you can see what potential employers see and make sure you’re not revealing more about yourself to them than you might want.

3: Using an informal email address.

No matter the situation, you should always have a professional email address for use on your resumé. If you were hiring, would you pick “John.Doe” or “iLikeCars93” or “fluffybunnies”? Choose something with your name in it and if you need to include numbers, select the year of your birth or graduation from college (i.e., george.hamilton1990@gmail.com).

4: Not following instructions.

When you’re reading so many job descriptions because you’re busy applying for everything on the internet, you probably don’t read each of them thoroughly; you’re likely just skimming before applying. However, you should always read each description all the way to the end. Often there will be instructions included, sometimes just to check to be sure you’ve actually read it! Employers won’t want to hire someone for a job who can’t even follow the simple instructions to apply for it.

5: Focusing solely on jobs posted online.

It’s incredibly convenient having all those jobs available there on one page (whether Monster or CareerBuilder or one of the aggregate search engines like Indeed), saving you the effort of wandering from place to place just to be rejected. However, it isn’t perfect. There are plenty of places hiring that don’t put their jobs up on the internet: some prefer face-to-face interviews straight away; some just don’t want the hassle of receiving and sorting through thousands of random responses like yours. You might be missing some great opportunities if you stick only to the online job boards. Branch out: seek referrals from people already working at a company or reach out to hiring managers directly at places that don’t seem to be hiring… you may be surprised by the roles on offer.

6: Failing to ask questions in an interview.

We’ve all been there: they ask if you have any questions at the end of the interview and you have no idea what to say. Or you just don’t want to make a fool of yourself by asking a stupid question. So you wing it: “no, I don’t have any questions”. The problem here is that you seem uninterested and uninformed. You want your future employer to be interested in you, and yet you don’t seem to be interested enough in the job or the company to ask questions about them! Have a few good questions prepared in advance about the role, the company, etc. so they know you’ve been doing your homework.

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