Category Archives: LinkedIn

Are You Ready for the Post-COVID Hiring Blitz?

In today’s competitive job market, the difference between advancing your executive career and spinning your wheels is leveraging the strength of technology to promote your professional brand.

You’ve embraced technology in nearly every other aspect of your life, so why not to advance your career ? New job search rules require new tools.

Executives need to be on LinkedIn too

As a group, executives have been resistant to the digital job search, but most are now finding that it cannot be ignored. Case in point: my client Ambrose, who was looking to make the jump from Sr. VP into the C-Suite. For nearly five years, he had been passed over for internal promotions and could not make any headway at his target company. After working with me for only three weeks, he was asked by his Board of Directors to consider a newly created leadership role and received a meeting invitation from the CEO he’d been pursuing at his company’s biggest competitor. We clarified his goal, mapped out a strategy to enhance his professional image and made it happen using a combination of LinkedIn and online industry resources.

Everybody and everything is online these days, including career management. From recruiters locating and screening candidates online to job seekers expanding their professional network using social media, finding your next opportunity is firmly entrenched in today’s technology. You know that exposure and reputation management are crucial to career advancement. Here’s how you can use technology to expand your reach beyond your immediate sphere of influence through strategic planning and consistent, intentional effort.

Technology and Your Job Search

Before online technology, a job search consisted of Continue reading →

How LinkedIn Can Help You Advance Your Career

With 740 million worldwide users, LinkedIn can help you establish a wide professional network. It is also a powerful marketing tool that can boost or derail your job search. A reported 93% of recruiters source passive job candidates on the social network for busy professionals.. So, if you are a jobseeker and not on LinkedIn – you are basically invisible.

The keys to leveraging the strength of LinkedIn? SEO, KLT and TOM

Continue reading →

How to Quickly Land a Job in a Tough Economy

I speak with job seekers every day who are frustrated and overwhelmed by today’s job search. I’ll share with you the strategy I have used successfully with hundreds of my clients who are now working at jobs they love.

While it is true that the job market has never been more competitive, when you break it down there are really only 2 steps to landing a great new job.

You need to:

Get in front of your target audience
Make yourself memorable

A networking strategy that combines face-to-face and online networking has been key to landing a job in recent years and is even more effective today. An increasing number of employers are abandoning the big paid-to-post job boards because they do not want to sort through the flood of resumes from hundreds, if not thousands, of anxious jobseekers, many of whom are not qualified.

So, if you don’t search online for job postings, what do you do? It’s easy: you create your own job opportunities by building a list of target companies and impressing the decision makers. It is not as difficult as it sounds. I can teach you how. Continue reading →

Your Online Activity Can Either Help or Hurt Your Job Search

Welcome to Part 2 of my summer 2015 blog series on what it takes to conduct a successful job search in today’s competitive job market. In my last post, I shared tips on writing a strong resume. Today’s segment: the importance of using social media in your job search.

Your online activity can either help or hurt your job search. It is not simply a matter of using social media; you have to use it the right way to find a job and impress employers. Employers use social media in their recruitment process two ways: Continue reading →

Are These Mistakes Preventing You From Landing a Job?

I recently met with a group of job seekers, many who had been out of work for quite some time. We discussed their current job search strategies and it quickly became apparent to me why they were having trouble landing interviews.

1. Their resumes were not selling them as the ideal candidate or contained elements that are not compatible with Applicant Tracking Systems.

2. They were spending hours upon hours every day in front of their computers searching for open positions on the large paid-for-post job boards, and quickly applying to as many jobs as they could find. One person told me that he had applied to more than 600 postings in the last few months!

3. They were either not a member of LinkedIn, or they were not using its full capabilities to accelerate their job search.

Fortunately, all these things are easily correctable!

Continue reading →

Overcoming Age Discrimination in the Job Search – Part I

As a career coach, I work with fresh college graduates looking to launch their professional career as well as baby boomers looking for a satisfying second career. While they have different obstacles – they have the same goal: they need to make their resumes “age-neutral” and convince the hiring manager that they are the ideal candidate for the job. Jobseekers with little experience need to sell themselves on their potential while more mature workers need to show they still have a lot to offer an employer. There are effective strategies for each to overcome age discrimination in the job search. This week I’ll offer a few tips for the new graduates, next week I will address the boomers.

New college graduates and other Millennials need to show prospective employers that they have transitioned from “college kid” to “young professional”. Continue reading →

How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile to Accelerate Your Job Search

LinkedIn is the largest professional networking platform and the #1 job search tool in the world. More than 130,000 recruiters use LinkedIn to search for potential candidates to fill job openings. Having an optimized profile and being an active participant on LinkedIn will increase your visibility and make it easier for recruiters to find you.

You must complete your profile to 100% to be considered a serious job seeker. Here are 5 tips based on best practices for optimizing your profile: Continue reading →

3 Tips to Master LinkedIn’s New Facebook-Style Tagging

Frequent visitors to my blog know that I am a huge fan of LinkedIn as a powerful job search tool. I am excited to share that LinkedIn has added a new feature to help you engage with your network – In-Status Mentions, which have been part of Facebook and Google+ for a long time.

You can now easily add links to your connections and companies in your status updates and in group conversations. LinkedIn will be rolling out this new feature over the next few weeks. You’ll know you have it when upon signing in you see a message inviting you to use this new feature. These tags will be especially useful for businesses to drive traffic to their LinkedIn company page. To help you stay up-to-date with LinkedIn, here are a few tips to help you use this new feature.

1. Start typing the name of a company or connection in your status update box or a comment field on the Homepage, and LinkedIn will show you a drop down in which you can select the profile you’re referencing.

2. Once you have selected the LinkedIn member or company, you will see that the linked profile has been highlighted in gray.

3. Finish writing your status update or comment and post it. Your connections will be able to click the hyperlink to be automatically directed to that member’s profile or company page you have mentioned.

Note: The person or company you mentioned will receive an email alerting them that they have been mentioned.

LinkedIn stated they will soon extend this new mention capability beyond the homepage, so look for the ability to use this new feature throughout the LinkedIn platform in the near future. Here is a link to a SlideShare presentation on this feature, should you like additional information.

http://www.slideshare.net/linkedin/linked-in-mentions-step-bystep

Happy hunting! Remember we are here to help when you are ready to improve your job search results.

Trish Thomas founded The Resume Resource in 2009 to help people advance their careers with rewarding jobs that provide more than just a paycheck. As a Career Coach and Resume Writer, she takes the time to get to know each of her clients and guides them through the job search process to make it less overwhelming and more successful.

College Grads Get Hired When They Show They Have Transitioned into Young Professionals

The biggest concern facing college grads is “Will I have a job when I graduate?” In today’s economy, the competition for entry-level jobs is at an all-time high. Not only are recent grads applying for these positions, but so are people who have been in the field and have years of experience. College seniors and new grads must show employers that they have progressed from college student to young professional before they even leave college.

Take advantage of resources available to you at your college to build your portfolio. Instead of just telling potential employers what you might be able to accomplish, show them what you have achieved during internships and other experiences. Recruiters and hiring managers are looking for experience as well as initiative, so take advantage of everything your college has to offer to show that you are driven and will be a great addition to their team.

Use your college years to build your network. Get to know your professors on a more personal level. Stop in to their office during office hours and discuss your career goals. They are experts in their fields; having them as a part of your network can open doors to internships and job opportunities. Not only do they see your performance in class, but taking that extra step proves to them that you are passionate and dedicated. They also may be able to introduce you to other experts in your field.

Utilize the power of LinkedIn to build your professional network. Create a LinkedIn account and use a personal message to invite face-to-face networking contacts to connect with you online. Let them know that you enjoyed meeting them and ask to schedule a short informational interview. This is how you leverage your network to advance your career. Contact them periodically so they will have you in mind when they hear of an opportunity that may be suitable for you. Finding a great career is all about “what you know and who you know.”

Having a college degree does not guarantee you a job, but if you take advantage of your resources and build your portfolio before it’s too late, you will stand out from the competition. Show potential employers that you are a young professional, not just a new college graduate. Good luck in your job search.

Trish Thomas founded The Resume Resource in 2009 to help people advance their careers with rewarding jobs that provide more than just a paycheck. As a Career Coach and Resume Writer, she takes the time to get to know each of her clients and guides them through the job search process to make it less overwhelming and more successful.

Where Do Recruiters Fit in Job Search?

Executives need to be on LinkedIn too

Technology and Your Job Search

The keys to leveraging the strength of LinkedIn? SEO, KLT and TOM