Many people come to me for help when they freeze up in interviews, which they attribute to panic and nerves. That’s true. Your nerves can make you freeze up under the spotlight of an interview. What you may not know, however, is that your nerves will make you do other strange things. So if you’ve…
Do you ever feel like you have lots of contact names from networking, your current job, and life in general, but you don’t know how to leverage them? It can be difficult to think of ways to approach them, or even what you want to approach them for. The chief thing for us to remember…
Getting a job through Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook sounds like a great idea. Job searching from the comfort of your own home instead of pounding the streets! In reality, it’s not as simple as it seems and there are a few things to think about if you’re going to make social networking sites part of…
LinkedIn started allowing their users to to rearrange the sections of their profile a few months back. I haven’t seen any statistics on this but I don’t think this has taken on at all. The reason for that could be that nobody knows why you should be rearranging the profile in the first place. As LinkedIn has shown the feature, I will try to give you the benefit.
Before we throw ourselves in the deep end of the rearranging pool, it’s important to be clear about why. Your LinkedIn profile is a billboard that markets you, or your personal brand if you will. I can think of three distinct reasons to do it, basically to highlight different parts of your personal brand to attract a new employer or more business. Here goes:
This reason presupposes that you have a good few glowing recommendations that will work their magic on any potential customer or employer. Let’s say you have five strong recommendations, instead of having them languishing down below the center of your profile you might want to bring them to the top. Perhaps not all the way but certainly before your work experience section which in most cases tends to be rather lengthy.
If you are a consultant, freelancer or in any other way trading in your own name, you’ll know how important recommendations are. If you have worked in this capacity for a number of years, your work history will not be made up of jobs but assignments. A list of short/medium term assignments doesn’t look great and that’s another reason you will want to put recommendations before work experience.
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Nobody works for a big name because they get a great salary, more influence or are being managed more humanely. It’s all about brand recognition so make the most of your work and let your personal brand benefit from your sweat equity on your LinkedIn profile.
Just be careful, some big corporates are not exactly the flavor of the month, if you are working for Goldman Sachs, BP or Monsanto you’re probably better off with the recommendation focus instead.
Just like any good resume of a fresh graduate should feature their education first, so should their LinkedIn profile. Nobody wants to see your summer jobs or recommendations from your pals at the student union. Demote both the work experience and the recommendations sections, so that employers get to see your sterling academic record and perhaps even be enticed by the title of your master’s thesis.
came out? Everyone had the same basic profile. Two years later, you could barely see that it was a MySpace profile anymore due to all the customizing they allowed on the profiles. By heavily altering a profile like that, you kind of lose the point of being on a social media network and you would be better off with a personal site/blog.
Don’t tinker too much with your profile, you want the reader to be able to size you up in a minute. LinkedIn is the most professional platform out there, so keep your profile neat and tidy so that professionals can find the information they need.
I had a client see me last week because she was concerned she would go off on a tangent in her job interview. She said she talked so much she was afraid she would lose the interviewer or shoot herself in the foot with something she said. She’d done it before and blown her chances.…
If your 401K has dwindled to a 201K and your real estate has gone soft, it’s possible that the most important thing you own right now is your resume. But if the flow of e-mails into my office is any indication, the number of people with bad resumes has reached epidemic proportions. Worse, they don’t understand why I’m…
Manners are not only important at the dinner table (use your napkin, please), on the telephone (listen as well as speak), in a theater (refrain from talking during the performance), but also during a job interview. Yet many job seekers forget the importance of being polite. They jingle the change in their pocket, click their…
How important is Twitter to you? Chances are you have more followers on Twitter than any other social media network, mainly because it’s less personal and acceptable to follow complete strangers. I would venture to say Twitter is as important to you as your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts. Some tech recruiters even say they won’t…
Today, I spoke to Craig Fisher, aka Fishdogs. He is a hot shot recruiter, social media strategist, speaker and founder of A-List Solutions based in Dallas, Texas.
What do you recruit for and what geography do you cover?
Our main business is IT staffing and executive search. We mainly cover the Dallas/Fort Worth area in Texas. But we have clients with offices nationwide that we service as well.
How’s business and outlook for the year?
Business has been brisk since December. Our projections are good. We’ll set records. But last year started strong and then fell off as unemployment rose.
What is the key to your success?
Our clients like us because we have a good combination of technical and business knowledge. So we get under the hood and discover what the client’s real needs are. This usually differs substantially from the given job description.
We also talk with current employees and try to develop a personality profile that will work long term. Then we are able to really target specific candidates vs. sending multiple resumes to see what sticks.
What are the trends you have spotted in your field?
Sourcing is a bigger and bigger deal. I have been a full desk recruiter and did all my own sourcing. But I have also employed dedicated sourcers for specific searches. It’s great to have someone who can just churn out skill-qualified candidates.
Unfortunately you still need a good recruiter to vet these candidates thoroughly. And that’s where the process often breaks down. We find more candidates, but they are not vetted, pre-closed, etc. So candidate to hire ratio is no better. Maybe worse. It is taking longer to hire overall.
How much do you use social media to find clients and candidates?
We use social media all the time to find clients and candidates. Most of our new clients come from social media. Many of our candidate or candidate referrals do too. For sourcing, Linkedin is by far the most effective. Linkedin is also good for creating groups of candidate and client communities.
Twitter is best for actual relationship building. You can have better conversations there than on any other platfform. I like to use Twitter to compliment my Linkedin and Facebook accounts. Facebook is becoming a better referral tool as I create more groups there for specific communities. But Twitter is still where the conversations take place.
How important are resumes and cover letters?
Resumes and cover letters are still very important. But they may begin to take more of an online or virtual form on sites designed to keep the information fluid and dynamic.
What are your best tips to jobseekers in a tough market?
Spread your digital footprint. Get your entire resume complete with keywords into Linkedin. Have a nice profile pic there too. Don’t just rely on submitting resumes to job boards. Grow your Linkedin network and reach out to people in the companies you want to work for. Contribute to the groups in which they participate.
Become a trusted resource of valuable information. Then ask to be referred in for positions with their organizations. Start a blog about the space in which you wish to be hired. Post good content and more information about yourself there. Occasionally refer your growing network to an article you have posted there. Position yourself as the expert.
Are job coaches, career coaches of any use to jobseekers?
Yes, certainly. Most good recruiters can help as well. But remember to use your head and speak to references before paying money to a coach.
Any other pearls of wisdom you would like to share?
A great way to grow your Linkedin network is to first follow those you wish to connect with on Twitter. Network with your targets there for a week or two before going back to Linkedin to ask them to join your network. Let them know you have been following them on Twitter and would like to connect on Linkedin as well. Remember to be a vaulable contributor on Twitter as well as Linkedin. Don’t just ask for help. Contribute first.
Related: Secrets of the Internal Recruiter, Interview with David Cherry from McAfee
is a founding partner of A-List solutions, blogger at www.fishdogs.com, and host of the TalentNet Live #TNL recruiter forum. As a 15 year recruiting industry veteran, Craig is a social recruiting & new media branding strategist for job seekers and employers. Follow Craig on Twitter [url=http://twitter.com/fishdogs”>@Fishdogs