Managing LinkedIn Recommendations

July 6, 2012 by Marc Miller 2 Comments

My last post was about harvesting keywords from recommendations.

There was a comment by a colleague which stated:

“Hi Marc. I certainly agree with you about the importance of recommendations and share your philosophy of networking. I thnk this topic about recommendations and linkedin needs to go much deeper however. There are many people that are really “turned off” by people (candidates) with “too many” recommendations. Also, recommending each other can be seen as undesirable as well. Thoughts?”

Her last comment about recommendations where you give what I call a tit for tat recommendation is very true. This is where I give you a recommendation and you give one back. Some recruiters and hiring managers negate the value of these types of recommendations.

What many people do not understand is you have the power to display or hide recommendations, both the ones you give and the ones you receive. Watch the video below to see how to control your recommendations.

When I hide a recommendation it only affects my profile. If I hide a sent recommendation it does not appear in my profile but it does show up in the profile for whom I am giving a recommendation.

Do you have any tit for tat recommendations?

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The first iteration for the Cure for Career Insanity completed last week. Read what one of the first participants said

“This series helped me think about what it is that I want in a my next job and knowing that will help me narrow my search”

I am in the process of scheduling the next round of the Cure for Career Insanity. The first people who sign up will help pick the actual dates for the next session. Go the the Cure for Career Insanity page or just click here to put your name on the list for the next session.

Like what you read? Click here to subscribe to this blog!

Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Please check out my one on one coaching packages or the Cure for Career Insanity webinars

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: LinkedIn, NIA, Social Media Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media

Baby Boomers and Your Brand Story

June 27, 2012 by Marc Miller 4 Comments

If you had the opportunity to tell your unique value proposition and story in 5 or 6 short clear paragraphs could you do it?

This is not your elevator pitch but your Brand Story.

In my last post, I wrote about developing the vocabulary that you will use to define your personal brand.

Your Brand Story is about who you are and not what you have done or will do in the future.

As Baby Boomers we have years of experiences that have shaped who we are.

My Brand Story involves telling the story of my bicycle accident and how is shaped the rest of my life. If you have not read the post take a moment to read my story of hitting a car head on while riding my bicycle. That event and the adventures that followed tells you more about me than any elevator pitch. I sometimes refer to this as my Signature Story.

We all have had life events, both successes and failures that can be used to tell our story. The real challenge is writing the story.

First step is to do reflection on you life and career:

What were the significant successes in your life?
What were the significant failures that you recovered and learned from?
What significant events in your life caused you make changes?

What are you good at? What are your innate talents? What skills have you developed? More importantly, what skills do you want to carry forward? I have several very valuable skills that I do not want to use anymore!

Go write the story.

Go find a friend to help you. Go hire a writer! It is always good to get an outsider to write about you.

LinkedIn Summary

Your story should go in the LinkedIn summary section. You have 2,000 characters to tell your story. Let’s look at several examples of LinkedIn profiles with good summary sections. Click on each link and scroll down to the summary section:

Tonya Clement – What is the significant event in her life that she weaved into her story?
Carol Ross – Carol is a story teller and a career coach. Check out Carol’s self paced course called Discover Your Brand Story.
Marc Miller – Check out my summary section and give me some feedback.

Do you have a story you want to tell?

___________________________

I will be scheduling the next round of the Cure for Career Insanity very soon. The first people who sign up will help pick the actual dates for the next session. Go the the Cure for Career Insanity page or just click here to put your name on the list for the next session.

Like what you read? Click here to subscribe to this blog!

Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Please check out my one on one coaching packages or the Cure for Career Insanity webinars

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Baby Boomer, LinkedIn, NIA, Personal Brand Tagged With: baby boomer, LinkedIn, Personal Brand, Social Media

#1 Method to Find the Keywords I Should Be Using to Manage My Career

June 14, 2012 by Marc Miller 1 Comment

In my last post I told you that you needed to use keywords in your LinkedIn profile, personal website or your resume such that you are FOUND!

I have heard this from experts for the last few years and they never tell you how to find those keywords.

Those keywords are the vocabulary that hiring managers, recruiters and other HR professionals are using to find candidates. It is not the vocabulary that you think they are or should be using.

This about doing research into the language of corporations use to describe the people they are looking for. The easiest place is to look at job descriptions.

Job descriptions are often rich in keywords and what we want to do is find the most common words and see how they are used in context. Watch the video below on how I use the word cloud website Tagcrowd to assist me in determining keywords.

You should follow this same procedure on at least the top five words in each job description. Find at least five job descriptions for similar positions to see if there is a pattern within the industry.

You can use this same process on:

Corporate web pages
Marketing collateral
White Papers
Facebook pages
Corporate LinkedIn pages

You are looking for the language that your target audience is using. You should come up with a list of keywords and keyword phrases that you can now use in your Social Media platforms.

Have you looked for keywords before? Have you looked for keyword phrases? Will you now?

I will be scheduling the next round of the Cure for Career Insanity very soon. The first people who sign up will help pick the actual dates for the next session. Go the the Cure for Career Insanity page or just click here to put your name on the list for the next session.

Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBookpage daily for interesting articles.

Please check out my one on one coaching packages or the Cure for Career Insanity webinars

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Career, NIA, Social Media Tagged With: career, keywords, Social Media

Baby Boomers – Is Your Career Search Engine Optimized?

June 13, 2012 by Marc Miller 1 Comment

Search Engine Optimization

Are you using the keywords in your LinkedIn profile, personal website or your resume such that you are FOUND!

The words and the language you use is absolutely critical to managing your career.

Go type your name into google and see the search results. Did your LinkedIn profile come up first? It should.

How often has someone looked at your LinkedIn profile in the last month? How often has your LinkedIn profile appeared in a search in the last month?

Why should you care?

Managing your career is all about being found. Most Baby Boomer were brought up not to promote ourselves. That simply does not work anymore.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be writing about how to find the keywords that recruiters and other HR professionals are using to find talent. Once you are armed with those keywords we will discuss where and how to use them in your social media profiles AND in your resume, even though we know it will be obsolete shortly!

Have you thought about how Search Engine Optimization has changed career management?

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Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below. You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page. Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Please check out my one on one coaching packages or the Cure for Career Insanity webinars

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Baby Boomer, Career, NIA, Social Media Tagged With: baby boomer, career, Social Security

Baby Boomers and Your Picture in Social Media

May 25, 2012 by Marc Miller 6 Comments

Do you have to have your picture in your various Social Media profiles?

In my opinion — YES! I find a lot of Baby Boomers like their privacy and do not want to post pictures of themselves.

I was getting ready to write this post and I spotted a Forbes article titled The 8 Things You Do Wrong On LinkedIn,

Number 6 was the following:

“6) You don’t post a picture. No, it’s not a beauty contest (and actually, if you use a glamour shot-esque photo, you may get laughed off the interwebs). But a picture is definitely worth a thousand words. We’re not going to judge you, we just want transparency from you. If visuals weren’t important in the business world, you would get every job by simply going through a telephone interview (wouldn’t that be nice?). LinkedIn is very much the same way. Because it has the photo feature, you should be using it. We want to see who we’re working with, networking with and introducing ourselves to – we are visual creatures.”

Marc’s Comment: The picture to the right is my good friend Shelly Kochhar. It is her glamour shot picture. Shelly is an incredibly talented lady who has started her own business. However, she is a little bit….older in real life. Shelly did give me permission to pick on her and now maybe she will let me or someone with a good eye and taste, take a picture of her.

“The Fix: Ask a talented amateur photographer friend to snap a few pictures of you. Trust me, they’ll be more than willing and you’ll reap the rewards. While you’re at it, go ahead and use those pictures to create an About.me page. It’s a lesser-known site, but one where you can make some great connections while also showing off a bit more personal flair than LinkedIn will allow.”

The picture to the left is Amy Persaud (check out her LinkedIn profile) who is an HR specialist who I have worked with. I always use her picture when speaking on this topic because it is an excellent picture of her and it was taken with a smart phone. You do not need to spend a lot of money but you do need to find someone with a good eye and …..taste. Something I do not have!!

If you are the creative type you should take a look at my good friend Nando Cabán-Méndez’s picture. Nando is an extremely creative guy and you need to check out his Creative Journeyman website.

I show you this because it shows his flair and when you meet him in person you will recognize him!

In my opinion, you have to have a good photograph of yourself. It should be current. I should not be heavily modified with photoshop. A little is okay but a lot is not. I have to be able to recognize you from the photograph.

By the way there is a setting in LinkedIn where you control who sees your picture! This is in the main LinkedIn settings under the title of Change your profile photo & visibility ».

Do you have a photograph on your LinkedIn profile? If not, why?

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Marc Miller Career Design Specialist

Filed Under: Baby Boomer, LinkedIn, NIA, Social Media Tagged With: career, LinkedIn, Social Media

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Baby Boomers and Your Brand Story

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#1 Method to Find the Keywords I Should Be Using to Manage My Career

Baby Boomers – Is Your Career Search Engine Optimized?

Search Engine Optimization

Why should you care?

Baby Boomers and Your Picture in Social Media

Do you have to have your picture in your various Social Media profiles?

#1 Setting on LinkedIn to make sure your LinkedIn profile is found by Google

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