The first contact of the year came from the brother of a friend of mine. My friendship with my friend had started some years ago when he had returned from overseas and was trying to find an executive role in the UK. Now his brother needed help. These are bright guys – excellent academic backgrounds…
Category: Employer Branding
Some of the world’s biggest companies use The Employer Brand Index to understand, improve and measure their employer brands.
I went to this networking event a few weeks ago featuring a good speaker named Andy Lopata. I hadn’t actually heard of him before but apparently he’s known as Mr Networker for those in the know. I liked what he went on about as it seemed very aligned my own thinking. The points outlined below…
[/url” class=”aligncenter”/>
Linkedin have offered premium accounts to the greater public for some time now, these have been popular with salespeople and others for years. Congratulations to all you job seekers out there, the time has cometh for to get your credit cards out.
Cashing in on job seekers
LinkedIn recently announced their new Job Seeker Premium Accounts, basically charging job seekers to use an enhanced version of LinkedIn. Have LinkedIn gone nasty and exploiting the people that need it most? Not really, they will still allow you to use it the basic version for free so no panic.
There is definitely an online trend to charge for services at the moment. LinkedIn are hopping on the same band wagon as The Ladders, CareerBuilder and other platforms aimed at job seekers. They have all noticed that there is no great shortage of cash out there, however definitely a shortage of jobs. This could very well be due to layoffs avec payoffs.
As long as the value you are getting from a paid account outweighs the cost, it could be worth considering paying a little to speed up your job search.
What are the benefits?
First off, you and your profile will be bumped up to the top of the pile when applying for a particular job. This is very much like a sponsored link on Google, your name will come up highlighted in the applicants list which is likely to get you some attention from the hiring manager (along with the other paying applicants of course).
You will also be able to send InMails straight to employers that aren’t in your network. This is particularly useful when you don’t have any contacts in common and it’s impossible to obtain emails for direct contact outside of LinkedIn.
On top of that, there’s the Profile Organizer feature which lets you track the contact you have with others, save favorites and even add your own notes to others profiles. A good old spreadsheet can probably do the same but this one is automated for you.
Finally, there are some webinars with Lindsey Pollak that act as video tutorials on how to use the new functions and how to search for jobs on Linkedin in general. Lindsey definitely knows her stuff so this could be useful.
What’s the damage?
Your brand new and shiny job seeker premium account comes in three versions; basic, job seeker and job seeker plus.
As you can tell from the image, they vary a bit on price, the only difference in service is the amount of ammunition you will have for each feature.
Basic: With this option you get five folders in your Profile Organizer and you get 100 profiles in your search results. You get 10 introductions to inside sources at companies.
Job Seeker: Here we get five InMails which you can use to contact any employer inside or outside your network. Your search results expand to 250 profiles, you get 10 folders for your Profile Organizer and you get 15 insider introductions.
Job Seeker Plus: The top of the line deal lets you send 10 InMails, 25 folders in your Profile Organizer and your search results of hiring mangers go up to 500 profiles.
Is it worth upgrading?
If you use LinkedIn daily and have hit a wall where you have run out of InMails, can’t seem to get yourself organized enough and think insider introductions will help you – go ahead and try it. As long as you get useful incremental results, stick with it until you get that new job. This is assuming that you have the money to spend, check your budget and ideally cut back on something else instead.
Personally I was never convinced of the ‘regular’ premium accounts, I can live through not having 500 people coming up in my search results (the more precise search, the better anyway). I don’t really see the need for InMails as I tend to get the proper emails of people, more often than not you can guess it.
I think it’s a shame there are no free trials for the job seeker premium account but I can understand why. Job seekers are not long-term customers for any business, as soon as they get a new job they no longer need the service. LinkedIn have decided to milk it from day one which is probably the right decision from a business perspective.
What do you think?
Do you use the premium account today and has it helped you at all? Are you going to try it out?
[/url” class=”aligncenter”/>Here is a list of common behavioral interview questions that you should answer using the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, and Result) model. Communication skills: What was the most challenging business presentation you have ever delivered? Give an example of when you had to put your foot down to assert a point that meant a great…
[/url” class=”aligncenter”/>
That’s right folks; I am going philosophical on you today. As great as the quote from Confucius is, the sad truth is that doing what you love is the dream of many, but the reality of few.
I get asked to help people with their job searches, however some people haven’t got a clue what the next job should be, where they are heading and what the longer term plan is. They are currently doing one thing and would consider doing ten different others. This makes it near impossible for me or the person themselves to actually get anywhere with the job search, let alone accepting a job offer down the line when the doubts start kicking in.
Establishing clarity
Confucius, the über wise man himself, put the truth down in a nice quote that sounds easy enough. The question is, how do you actually go about finding out what you would love to do? Not even a career coach can tell you exactly what you should do; it has to come from you. I don’t claim to be an expert on people’s dream careers but there are three simple questions you can ask yourself today and the answers can give you some guidance. Take a few minutes out of your day to think this over and you will have better clarity as a result. Here we go:
• What is the passion in your life?
• What would you pay to do?
• How would you fill your days if you were a millionaire?
The answers to these three questions are hopefully somewhat similar and will give you a good indication of what your true calling is. Whatever it may be, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it is your childhood dream or what you set out to do before you stumbled upon an different path. Your dream will latently follow you for the rest of your life, your choice is whether to pursue it now or run the risk of having serious regrets later on.
Let’s say we press on. At this point it may seem like the dream activity is impossible to fill your days with unless you are idle rich. Assuming you don’t have that kind of money, your best bet will be to map out what others have done. By modeling others’ path to your dream job, you will have the roadmap ready. Ask yourself the three follow up questions:
• Does anybody get paid doing this?
• How could you get paid doing this?
• What is stopping you?
The answer to the final question is usually an amalgamation of excuses such as limiting beliefs, fear of failure, complacency and the all too cozy comfort zone. These objections can all be overcome with clear goals, hard work and belief in yourself.
Let’s take some action
When you have identified exactly what you want to do, the next step is to research the dream job. What companies or organizations do you target, where are the jobs located, do you need any qualifications, who can you contact that is already doing this? Speak to friends and family, professional contacts, scour Linkedin and the rest of the web for clues. The more research you do, the more fired up you will get.
Set some clear objectives and timescales and make sure you take an action every day to edge toward your goal. Get a big wall calendar to fill out your through goals and achievements. This change could be a long process but as long as you are willing to focus on where you are heading, you will get there.
Please note that while all great jobs out there are up for grabs, you have to do a reality check and make sure you are not delusional when pursuing your dream. There will be physical and other limitations that are out of your control. There could of course be very valid obstacles such as family situation or your finances; as a rule however, there is always a solution that can be worked out over time.
Bottom line
In my mind, as soon as you have identified the job you love you should go for it non-stop. Actually taking the decision to pursue your dream can sometimes be harder than achieving it. I say there are only two things you need to get any job; belief in yourself and desire. The rest will somehow take care of itself.
Are you doing the job you love? Why or why not?
You might want to check out How a Career Coach Can Help Your Job Search as well.
Image by Rob Web
[/url” class=”aligncenter”/>By following these Twitter accounts you will get jobs straight from the source and possibly quicker than anyone else. Click on the employer’s name and you will be taken to their Twitter page. 
Accenture
Apple
AstraZeneca
BT
CapitaSymonds
Edelman
GSK
HSBC
H&M
Mars Graduates
IBM
Intel
KFC
KPMG
Next
MTV Networks
PepsiCo
Royal Bank of Scotland
Siemens
Skanska
Surrey County Council
Tesco
Unilever Graduates
Warner Music
Yahoo
Yell
Follow all the British employers tweeting jobs here.
The list is short but growing so please let me know if you find any other tweeting UK employers!
Whether Twitter is useful or not has been hotly debated. One thing Twitter is very good at is shooting out snippets of information to a lot of people very quickly. In today’s job market, speed is of the essence, and announcing new openings on Twitter is a fast-growing phenomenon among employers and recruiters. As a…
How are the bad economic times affecting the way employers hire staff? There are a few clear trends that we can see and I have decided to look at the five main ways of hiring people; adverts, recruiters, internal recruiters, networking and referral schemes to see what’s hot and what’s not. Here we go: Advertising…