Managing Your Personal Brand with LinkedIn
Everyone knows resumes serve as the quantification of who you are, what you’ve accomplished, and what expertise you can bring to your next employer. A professionally written resume is a necessity in today’s business world that no savvy business person would forego.
But today’s business people also need actively managed profiles on the social media sites that recruiters and others are using to find and learn more about potential hires.
LinkedIn is the most popular of these sites. While many people think of it as a Web-based contact management system, it’s so much more. In fact, it’s really a 24/7 personal branding machine.
The first step to fully leveraging LinkedIn is to think about your “positioning.” Since most people will not remember a lot about you, you want to give them one or two nuggets of information to associate with your personal brand. Let’s say you’re a salesperson who specializes in selling widgets to emerging bio-tech companies. Your profile should be constructed around reinforcing that bit of information so anyone reading it knows that’s what you are about: selling bio-tech widgets.
You’ll want to populate your profile with keywords that someone looking for a person with your expertise would use when they search LinkedIn for job candidates. This helps LinkedIn serve your profile to them as an option.
Once your profile is configured, you’ll want to proactively cultivate your image as an expert. An easy way to start is to join LinkedIn Groups where people with similar interests congregate. Resist the temptation to jump into the conversations you find posted there. Rather, sit back and observe for a week or so, getting a feel for the ways people communicate, then start participating in discussions. Eventually you will want to begin new discussions for others to join too.
These are just a few of the ways you can make better use of LinkedIn for business networking. For more on using LinkedIn and Facebook for business networking, order Jump Start Social Media’s reference guides. And if you’d like expert help in setting up your profiles and LinkedIn and/or Facebook, order the professional set-up services which include the guides. You’ll be networking like the pro you are in no time.
Tell Me Exactly Why You Deserve This Job?
That’s the question consciously or unconsciously running through the mind of someone looking through a stack of resumes. That person will often not find the answer if there’s no cover letter from you. Resumes list the information about your skills and experience. Cover letters pinpoint why you should receive serious consideration for a particular job. A cover letter helps readers see how your experience relates specifically to what they are looking for in an employee. Instead of making readers interpret your resume, your cover letter does the work for them. A cover letter says, “I know your company and what it does. Here’s why you should take notice of my qualifications.”
The general manager of a water and power agency who does the hiring sums it up: “Outstanding letters summarize authors’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and specifically why they are interested in my organization. They summarize an understanding of how my recruitment process works and references their attached resumes, identifying sections that are responsive to a specific request for information that may have been included in my job announcement.”
A planning advisor for a huge oil corporation who scans hundreds of resumes a week looks at it this way: “The more someone can tell me what attracted him or her to my company, the better. I try to get a feel for whether the applicant is interested in our industry, which is sometimes clear in the resume and sometimes not. That is where a cover letter can make a difference. If I get 10 resumes with similar experience and skills, the cover letter prioritizes who I need to speak to. If the resume is strong, then I don’t need the cover letter, but lots of times resumes don’t answer the questions I have.”
Keep in mind that the people who read resumes and cover letters spend mere seconds on them. You could meet every requirement of the job you’re going for but unfortunately, your qualifications might be buried somewhere in your resume. The people who are considering you for a job don’t like to dig. Readers don’t want to search for your abilities among the various jobs you have held or experiences you list.
Resumes are a record of your past and current experience. A well thought-out cover letter selects only those skills and experiences that apply to a job description and company. It summarizes your qualifications for that particular job so the hiring manager doesn’t have to search for them on your resume. If your cover letter doesn’t showcase the main points of your resume that match their requirements, the hiring manager is more likely to move on to the next candidate. And in this job market, you don’t want that to happen.
Your Final Go-Thru
It is astonishing how many recruiters say they receive resumes and cover letters filled with spelling errors. A spelling slip-up, even a minor one, says more about you than the most articulate choice of words. For instance, is it “too” or “to”? Did you write “it’s” or “its”? Just those two words alone count for a lot of mistakes.
Get as many people to proof and edit your resume and cover letter as possible. You can never have too many eyes. The corporate content manager of a large instrument company says she sees a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. Once she sees a mistake she won’t read any further. She is not alone. When asked about the worst resumes and cover letters they have ever received, those that read them can come up with some hilarious shockers. How about the person applying to work at ExxonMobil? Nice resume, great cover letter, but he spelled the company’s name Exxon Mobile. There goes that job prospect.
While such big blunders are not that common, many people do make simple mistakes that could be easily avoided.
The top four common mistakes are:
Spelling and grammar are at the top of the list, probably because people rely too much on spell check. Spell check is a useful tool, but you also need several sets of eyeballs to catch everything. Spell check doesn’t check the context and use of words—your or you’re, four or for?
Repeating verbatim what’s in your resume on your cover letter
Forgetting to replace a company name when cutting and pasting parts of a letter
Carelessness—”I’d like to work for your company” (and the organization is a non-profit or government agency) or “I read your ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer” and it was run in another publication.
To make your way through the maze of errors that inevitably pop up, follow these simple steps:
Find people who will critically read each resume and cover letter you write for the content as well as the details. You might not notice that a period is missing from a sentence or an indentation that should be there isn’t. A reader hunting for errors will find them.
Read your resume and cover letter backwards from the bottom up, word by word. It sounds silly, but doing so allows you to see errors you would probably gloss over reading it from the top down.
Read the resume and cover letter aloud to find words that don’t make sense or aren’t meaningful.
If you send a resume or cover letter to several companies, highlight each specific change so you make sure not to send Company A’s letter to Company B.
Finally, if you send a resume and cover letter via e-mail, stick it in the draft folder for an hour and then read it again before actually sending it.
Advice for New Graduates to Compete Successfully: Be Realistic
by Julie Luongo, ResumeEdge.com Editor, CPRW
You’ve heard the hype. The economy is bad. There aren’t any jobs to be had. Things are tough all over, kid. But since when do you listen to the naysayers?
Sure, you’re not going to step out of college and into a CFO position. But you’re also not stepping into a part-time job selling hot dogs on the side of the road. Being realistic about your opportunities goes both ways, and the most fatal mistake job seekers make is selling themselves short.
Be Confident
Congratulations, you have a college degree! Maybe you weren’t in the top of your class with a full academic scholarship, but you have a higher education and that means something to hiring managers. What it means exactly is that you have the latest information about your field of study. You’ve most likely worked with cutting-edge technology. And you’re not so set in your ways that you can’t be trained. This gives you a distinct advantage over people who aren’t fresh out of school. When you go to interviews, remember this.
Be Enthusiastic
College graduates have something many other job applicants don’t have. Enthusiasm! All things being equal, someone with a positive attitude will get the job over someone who is jaded, indifferent, or world weary. It’s not all about what you know. It’s also about who you are. Show hiring managers that you’re someone other people would want to work with.
Be Strategic
Employers are looking for long term investments and are hopeful that you will be loyal to their company. When they ask you what your five year plan is, don’t tell them that you hope to be traveling in Europe. Nor should you point to the company president and say, “I want to be there.” Consider your audience.
Be Persistent
Don’t be so confident that you think everyone should want you. Always tailor your resume and cover letter for each position. Follow up with a phone call. If you don’t hear from the employer in 4 weeks, send another letter with another resume. Call again. Don’t give up until you’ve heard a definitive answer. If it’s a “no” send a thank you letter anyway to ask that they keep you in mind for any future positions. Repeat for each job search. If you want an employer to see you’re willing to go the extra mile, show them up front.
Being a realist when it comes to job searching is hard work. Sure, it takes work to get work. But landing a job and putting yourself on the road to a successful career is worth it.
