7. Many of you have heard about getting on the front page of a Google search. This is critical for someone in business or starting up a consulting practice needing referrals and contacts. Since most of you are only in the business of selling yourself, being on Google's front page isn't as critical unless someone is doing a Google search for someone having your skills in a certain area. If your network is large with many 2nd connections, and your profile is key word rich, you'll get on the front page of many searches but you'll still be one of maybe 100. Any time you update your LinkedIn profile, participate in a message from a group, or post status updates to your profile like boxnet files, blogs, etc. you get vacuumed up by the Search Engines (Google is the biggest vaccuum) and you gain SEO presence. To get to a top 5 position, you have to optimize you key word presence and maybe chase those key words that are not as popular. This goes beyond my expertise so contact an SEO guru. For me, getting to the top 5, you have to do your personal networking from your LinkedIn connections or from referrals from others. What happens to the promise of "getting on the front page when everyone has done the Search Engine Optimization suggested by consultants? It's kind of like the story about the person feeling good because he's always coming in 2nd place while everyone else is tied for first. Maybe it will be getting to the first chapter of Google if such a thing is foreseeable with many SEO consultants giving you a way to bump others off the first page or first chapter. I can foresee the message, bumping others off the front page. Or getting to be seen while on the first page. I find that there are some out there willing to sell you a dream when they themselves might have been unable to find that dream themselves. Beware of the promise and buy into the fad that anyone can get you a job in 6 weeks. It's generally not going to happen to the average person when we're experiencing 10% unemployment. Knowing your pain and frustration, these alleged helpers may try to capitalize on your frustration. However, learn as much as you need to about SEO as it applies to your career search and then your business intelligence once hired. There are LI groups that specialize in this. See later comment on LinkedIn Signal to know why connecting tweets and other internet traffic can be helpful.
8. LinkedIn metrics of success. First you want to be at 100% of your profile completion with key word rich skills, talents and certificates. Then you want visibility to your companies, recruiters and hiring managers via group and getting to a large network of 2nd connections. So look to join those people with robust networks. Generally you find these are persons who either comment on message boards or are selling some service - recruiters always have large networks because they do job searches among their networks. With 700+ contacts and over 35 recruiters you may want to connect to me. Other metrics of success are the number of times someone downloads your resume, reviews one of your boxnet files, or does a job search for you. But the real key metric of success is getting that dream job while always using LinkedIn for career search, for business intelligence and just getting back with contacts and friends.
9. Recommendations are powerful tools on LinkedIn. These are one of many powerful tools or messages we need to cultivate in our interview or networking package. While it is generally felt by power LI users that it is critical to have 5 or more recommendations, who even reads more than 5 or 6. Is 30 over the top? There is a LI group for those with more than 10 recommendations. There is even a website to help you write your own recommendation or a recommendation for another person: Google: Socialrecommendator.com. When I tried it on several examples, it came out so stilted and canned that I thought it would be easy to spot on a LI profile. However, if you are shy about preparing one for someone, it does give you a template. Save this template into Word and then adapt to meet your needs. The general rule is prepare one for someone you know well or worked with, even if using this social recommendation site, and forward it to them asking them to do likewise for you. Be careful about being too flowery, effusive or pompous because that is offputting to the reader, especially if all sound alike. However, you can offer a suggestion to your potential recommender what value propositional words or phrases you want to emphasize. I still don't know how to sort recommendations but it's more important to have quality than quantity. Make sure if you're in job transition, thay you have something positive to share about that experience.
10. Signal and other LI applications.
Update: Thanks for all your comments! LinkedIn Signal is now available at http://www.linkedin.com/signal. You can now find it on your home page. 4 months ago LI announced:
I’m glad to announce today the limited release of LinkedIn Signal, a beta product that gives you a whole new way to consume information and news that’s most relevant to you as a professional.
Signal is the first of many LinkedIn products aimed at making it really easy for all professionals to glean only the most relevant insights from the never-ending stream of status updates and news. In other words, Signal allows all professionals to make sense of the noise that surrounds them today.
1. Filter: Browse only relevant status updates from your stream
Hidden in the stream of status updates is information that’s valuable and helps you be better at your job. Signal allows you to hone in on information you’re most interested in for e.g. updates from your colleagues (even from folks on your same team) or audiences you’re most interested in researching and understanding.
LinkedIn Signal offers 8 dynamic filters to navigate the stream. You can narrow or expand your view of the stream based on the following filters: Network, Industry, Company, Time published, Geo / Region, School or just most popular hash tags.
How are you using or planning to use LinkedIn new KILLER feature 'Signal' to job hunt or recruit?
If you haven't heard about Signal yet it is supposed to be game changing. It combines the twitter feeds with LinkedIn network updates and makes everything highly searchable by numerous critieria.For example I could search for keywords "Hiring" or "jobs" and then narrow my search to just healthcare companies in my city or by other criteria.
I think once hiring companies figure out how to broadcast their openings into the stream Signal will be very powerful. The catch 22 right now is that there is a limited number of companies broadcasting so you don't get much return on searching with Signal yet.
The reverse of this also applies. Recruiters can search for people talking about job hunting and narrow it down by unlimited criteria. Savvy recruiters generally include 6-7 keywords so you have to make sure your profile is keyword rich. Remember they then look at the size of your network, your recommendations, the activity level and whether you're contributing to the business intelligence.
The cross-integration with Twitter makes "Signal" very powerful and potentially game changing in my opinion.
However with Signal there will be 2 big differences once the mass starts to use it.
1. We will also be able to search LinkedIn status updates so you will be getting access to a much different crowd than Twitter, plus you get Twitter search.
2. You can fine tune your search much better by many more criteria, including by company or industry. Twitter does not provide this data in its profiles.
Once more people start using SIGNAL and start using the Network Update Status more than SIGNAL will be very powerful in my opinion. Greg Wells' comments
I'll keep you posted on any new developments on Signal. Go to your home page and under the new section entitled search updates view the video and enter key word: "jobs, postings or hiring" among your network. You can narrow the search field to just your industry. Using Signal, you can also look at what others are saying or tweeting about a key business intelligence issue like a new application, product or feature.
11. Branding, Websites, Blogging and Tweeting were all new to me in 2010 but are becoming more SEO tools I need to master in 2011. I'm still not going to do Facebook yet, maybe in the future if I have to sell a product or service. I mentioned the use of Signal in the above section. However, having someone help you with your blog and/or website may be both time consuming and/or costly for the transitioning professional. One website tool I'm now exploring for the easiness of application is Moonfruit.com. I'll get back to you in a new blog post when I've mastered it. I'm already using BlogSpot but could have just as easily used Wordpress. I plan to attend the IT group free training on creating a website.
12. B12P4S or Be one to Partner for Success. While P4S is my Twitter account, I am looking for ways in 2011 to pay it forward. Whether its volunteering to help others at an employment center, managing a group or writing a blog, a wise Elder Rauch indicated to me that we should always look for ways to find success at least 3 times daily. A polished stone helped me think of this goal for 3 weeks until it became a habit. Some habits take longer than 3 weeks to master. Now each evening I recount those 3 individuals I've helped daily. Relationship building truly allows us to look for that P4S opportunity with each connection or contact we truly make (more than just a connection but a relationship). I hope to make my connections P4S relationships this coming year. How are you doing the same?
I may come back periodically to edit/update this post as I get more information and/or comments from you.
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