Your professional reputation will be affected by other’s opinions of you and your accomplishments. Your work relationships will be important to your short and long term success while you are employed, and when you are searching for work.
Don’t wait until you are in a crunch situation to line up recommendations that will enhance your opportunities. Collect written recommendations as references throughout your career. Here are a few tips:
• The best recommendations and references come from people who have their own professional credibility. Who do you know well, whom you admire? (Google them to make sure they have a positive online presence.)
• Don’t be afraid to ask. Most people are flattered to be asked to provide a reference – as long as you are sure they know your work and respect you for it.
• You can suggest the points on which you would like the recommendation to focus. For example, “It would be great if you could comment on how successfully I managed that big project last year."
• Ask superiors, peers, former employees (whose careers have blossomed), and even clients and service providers with whom you have developed positive relationships.
• Select the best recommendations you receive to actually use. When read serially, they should give a well-rounded and impressive picture of who you are professionally.
• Keep your file of recommendations fresh and current. That nice letter you got 15 years ago will have lost its punch by now.
Special hints for LinkedIn recommendations:
• They should be brief; no more than 2 to 4 sentences.
• Target your requests to people who have good LinkedIn profiles and lots of connections.
• LinkedIn provides a means not only to approve recommendations you receive, but to ask for them to be edited. Ask for an edit if content, grammar, or spelling isn’t correct.
• Return the favor when you can. Write thoughtful recommendations for people you admire. (It’s another way to get visibility on LinkedIn and enhance your network.)
• If you get a recommendation that falls flat with you, or is too much like another you already have, you can choose not to show it on your profile.
Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
07 December 2009
Looking for a Job? Don't Panic - 10 Things to Do Instead
With the unemployment rate hovering around 10% nationwide, probably every one of us knows people who have recently lost their jobs. Companies are trying to remain profitable (or at least lose less money) during a serious recession. Salaries are a big part of overhead. To the executives, it’s business. To those directly affected, it’s their career and their life.
First and foremost, DO NOT panic. Panic tends to hamper the ability to act with purpose, and it is a time for focused action. If you didn’t see your job loss coming, you may not have been well-prepared for a job hunt. So get prepared now, and fast.
1. ASSESS YOUR FINANCIAL SITIATION: How long will your savings last? Depending on the type of job you seek, you could need 6 to 8 months of money to pay living expenses while you are unemployed. (For senior executives, 1 to 2 years is more realistic.)
2. POLISH YOUR RESUME: Be sure it’s current, complete, professional, attractive, compelling, and error-free. Get help from your friends or an expert to make sure it’s the best it can be. Once you have your base resume, it can be easily tweaked when applying for specific opportunities.
3. UPDATE LINKEDIN: Be sure the information on LinkedIn is consistent with your resume.
4. FILE FOR UNEMPLOYMENT: The best case scenario is that you won’t need it – but it’s there to help you through exactly this type of transition.
5. NETWORK RELENTLESSLY: Let your personal and professional contacts know that you are available for a new opportunity, and that your contact information has changed. Most positions are acquired through networking – not advertisements or public job postings. Get involved in community and professional organizations, where you can meet new people and learn new things. The bigger your network, the more chance you will be in contact with someone who can help you.
6. PURSUE ADDITIONAL TRAINING AND/OR CERTIFICATIONS: You have time now that you can use to enhance your skills and make you more attractive to potential employers. That sort of initiative makes a good impression.
7. CONTACT YOUR COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION: Some schools have Career Services departments that help alumni as well as students. Ask for help and get involved.
8. PRACTICE YOUR INTERVIEWING SKILLS: Ask a friend or mentor who has hiring experience to conduct a mock interview and give you honest feedback on your “performance”. If you get your foot in the door for a real interview, you want to be poised and prepared.
9. RESEARCH PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYERS: If you know what company you would like to work for, do your homework. Scour their web site, read their annual report, be familiar with related recent news and current events. Your obvious interest will be apparent in an interview.
10. ASSESS YOUR APPEARANCE: While we’d like to think people don’t judge us by our looks, that’s not entirely true. Do you need to drop a few pounds, get a good haircut, buy a new suit, have your nails manicured? Whenever you go out networking, make sure you take pains to look your best.
There are jobs out there, but you need to do more than passively sending out your resume. Keep taking positive action, and opportunities will appear.
15 June 2009
10 Ways to Screw-Up Your LinkedIn Presence
Social networking is great – I am a devotee of LinkedIn and Facebook. I haven’t Tweeted yet, but will probably have to go there sometime. If you participate on LinkedIn, you have to be consistent in your participation, or your online presence (so important in a today’s professional world) will have negative impact instead of positive impact. Here are 10 ways I most often see people screw up their LinkedIn presence:
- “CURRENT" EMPLOYMENT INFORMATION IS OUTDATED. You wouldn’t stretch the truth on your resume. Don’t do it on LinkedIn either. It’s inaccurate and shows people that you are lackadaisical about your employment status.
- EMAIL ADDRESS IS OUTDATED. LinkedIn updates and notifications are emailed to you. You will not receive them if your email address is incorrect.
- PROFILE LACKS DETAIL about your employment experience. This is what LinkedIn is all about. People will be interested in who you are and what you have done. That’s the whole point of being on LinkedIn.
- INDISCRIMINANT INVITATIONS to connect to people you don’t really know, just to raise your Connections count. Before sending an invitation to connect, think about WHY a connection to that person will be valuable (to you and to them), and include verbiage about that in your invitation to personalize it.
- UNFORTUNATE OR UNPROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPH. If you choose to upload a photograph (which is not required), it should be reflective of the professional impression you want to impart. Avoid use of a mug shot or a mobile snapshot taken at a drinking party.
- ABSENCE OF RECOMMENDATIONS. Professional recommendations/endorsements are an important aspect of rounding out your profile. Don’t be afraid to ask people with whom you have had good working relationships to provide a recommendation.
- POORLY WRITTEN RECOMMENDATIONS. Following up on the previous point, it will not reflect well on you if someone writes an inarticulate or poorly edited recommendation for you. Do not hesitate to ask for a revision, or do not publish a recommendation that does not suit your needs.
- JOINING FRIVOLOUS GROUPS. Remember, this is a professional community. Join groups that will provide professional updates and growth to enhance your career and network connections.
- FLIPPANT OR RUDE POSTINGS to Discussions or Questions posted by other members. If you don’t have anything of value to add, then pass it by. You don’t do your reputation any favors by providing unprofessional input.
- TAKING WITHOUT GIVING. LinkedIn members are a generous group, on the whole. If you ask for a recommendation, be prepared to offer one in return. If you submit a question and receive helpful answers/advice, be sure to thank respondents and to rate Good or Best Answers. LinkedIn is a community, and the benefits received should be gratefully accepted.
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