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6 new LinkedIn updates you need to know about

Before discussing the new, exciting changes coming from LinkedIn, let’s define what LinkedIn is:
LinkedIn is really a huge database of professionals. Unlike other social networks, like Twitter, which lacks profile depth, or Facebook, which is all over the place demographically and is also hard to find people, Linkedin standardizes information entered by users into predefined “Profile Headline”, “Summary”, “Education”, “Company”, etc. categories. In addition to this huge database of information, LinkedIn provides an awesome search tool to allow you to pinpoint the person you are looking for depending on a number of very specific factors.

I read an outstanding update about LinkedIn and 6 new LinkedIn updates and thought I would share

1. ‘LINKEDIN TODAY’ IS A NEW PAGE YOU SHOULD VISIT EVERY DAY: LinkedIn.com/today, a new mashup of LinkedIn and Twitter, is one of the most useful ways to start your mornings. As one of the new LinkedIn updates, it displays, in an easy-to-read, easy-to-share and easy-to-save manner, the most shared items among your LinkedIn contacts. It’s also broken up by industries you are interested in, which makes it even more useful professionally.

2. THE NEW RESUME BUILDER IS VERY USEFUL: One of my favorite new LinkedIn updates is the Resume Builder at resume.linkedinlabs.com. It takes your LinkedIn profile and creates an instant, customizable resume that you can save as a PDF or share on the web with privacy settings. There are several templates to choose from, including “classic,” “business,” “law” and more. Here’s my new resume, (which I haven’t done any editing or customization on yet); you can compare it to my LinkedIn profile at LinkedIn.com/in/sreenivasan. (A tip about the profile URL that I learned from LinkedIn’s Krista Canfield, who teaches journalists on using the service better: try to customize it with your full name, not just your last name — since that’s how LinkedIn’s search engine work. I need to fix mine).

3. LINKEDIN LABS HAS COOL FEATURES: LinkedIn’s experimental Labs page at LinkedInLabs.com, which hosts the Resume Builder, is filled with new things you’ll want to check out. Among them: InMaps at inmaps.linkedin.com, which makes visualizations of your network (see my wife’s above); Swarm at swarm.linkedinlabs.com, which shows you the most searched companies; Year In Review at yir.linkedinlabs.com, which shows you who among your connections changed jobs in a year; in 2009, 607 people in my network changed jobs; in 2010, 922 people did; so far 267 have done so in 2011).

Updates 4 - 6 and complete blackbox article

Job Hunting Secrets From A Top Recruiter

Jessica Stillman, BNET

As BNET’s sister site MoneyWatch pointed out recently, in a climate where it takes the average job hunter more than seven months to find their next position, big job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder are of only limited use.
The post’s author Eilene Zimmerman writes:

Forget CareerBuilder, HotJobs, and all the other mass job sites. While these boards seem like a good place to start, how many people do you know who actually found a job that way? Even hiring managers don’t want to sort through the hundreds and hundreds of resumes they get for each position they list on these sites, so they’re increasingly turning to industry-specific job portals, saysDebra Yergen, author of Creating Job Security.

And Zimmerman isn’t the only person pointing out that job boards are often a waste of time. Everyone from the WSJ to Ask the Headhunter’s Nick Corcodolis has written posts advising that there are probably more productive ways to spend most of your job search hours. But if job boards are on the wane, how are companies and recruiters finding people to hire? And how can you best position yourself to be found?

Writing on recruiting blog Fistful of Talent recently, Kelly Dingee, a “professional stalker” with Staffing Advisors, lets the cat out of the bag and offers up seven things employers should tell job seekers about how to get considered. Dingee isn’t convinced job boards are totally over saying, “there will be people looking for you on there.

At least for a little while longer.” But overall Dingee agrees with consensus opinion that too much time on job boards isn’t productive and offers tips to help you get hired in a post-job board world, including old standbys like networking — “Find someone who works at your targeted company who can pass your resume along” — as well as less well known advice:

Make yourself findable first. Google yourself right now. Did your LinkedIn profile come up? No? Build one, make it public. If you have a preferred method of contact, note it. Use inmails. Use a separate email.
Make yourself even more findable. Post your resume, or your bio, or whatever you want to call it. Use Posterous, use WordPress, use a .me site, use doctoc or slideshare… use something.

Top 10 Tips For Building A Strong LinkedIn Profile

Author Jay Markunas

Top ten tips for building a strong profile from LinkedIn:

1. Don’t cut-and-paste your resume. You wouldn’t hand out your resume before introducing yourself. Describe your experience and abilities as you would to someone you just met.

2. Borrow from the best marketers. Use specific adjectives, colorful verbs, active construction (ie..”managed project team” instead of “responsible for project team”).

3. Write a personal tagline. It’s the first thing people see in your profile. It follows your name in search hit lists.

4. Put your elevator pitch to work. The more meaningful your summary is, the more time visitors will spend on your profile.

5. Point out your skills. The Specialties field is your personal search engine optimizer when Recruiters are looking for candidates.

Tips 6 - 10 + Graphic + Complete Article

How a LinkedIn title created a qualified lead

This guest post is by Jeremy Epstein, founder and chief marketing navigator at Never Stop Marketing. According to LinkedIn, he is member #146,795 … out of 100,000,000.
Frank sent me an unsolicited e-mail inquiring about my consulting services.
I had no idea who he was at all.
Being the (hopefully) good marketer that I am, I asked, “How did you hear about me?”
The answer shocked me. “I liked your title on LinkedIn.”
As he explained:
I found you kind of randomly. Michael R. accepted my LinkedIn invitation (I have known Mike probably 10+ years) and your name was 1st on his list of friends with the words “Marketing Navigator” by your name.
I found the title intriguing – especially because if Marketing Navigator meant what I hoped it meant, it would be exactly what we need.
It sounds like you could potentially really help us, and if I understand correctly, as your many testimonials suggest, you not only consult, but manage implementation.
Did you read that? A unique title caught his eye … and led to a qualified lead. Pretty low-cost marketing via LinkedIn.
Unfortunately, nondescriptive titles that don’t grab attention and tell stories to would-be connections are just one of the many ways that LinkedIn is completely underutilized.
Another big one is when LinkedIn is not used for pro-active, focused networking.
This has two sides to it.

First, it reflects poorly on you.
Second, you miss opportunities to grow your network.

Let’s take the first scenario.
I am frequently surprised (and frankly, mildly irritated) when people send an e-mail asking “do you know anyone at Company X?”
What this note communicates is that the person is lazy. Pretty much my whole network (and probably a good chunk of yours) is on LinkedIn (here’s the network map) and the person didn’t even bother to look.
The second can be illustrated with a recent example from my trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil.
As a committed networker, I have two rules when I travel for business.

Always see something that is unique to that city.
Always meet at least one new person in that city for each day I will be there.

Here’s how I (and you) can use LinkedIn to leverage your network and narrow your search.

First, I turned to LinkedIn and clicked on Advanced People Search. I put in the keyword “Brazil.” (Note: I did this two months before I went there.)
When I got the results, I sorted by “relationship.” I was looking for all of the first level connections. In other words, I could approach them directly.
I found 15 people who met the criteria of having some connection to Brazil. This was my initial target market.

That was half the battle. The next part was LinkedIn outreach. So, short and sweet, I went with this approach:
It’s been a while, but your name came up in a keyword search on LinkedIn. The keyword was “Brazil.” I’m going to Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the end of January and am looking to meet/network with

Entrepreneurs
Marketers
Technologists (particularly around the sugar cane/ethanol, but also IT)

I’m going to be there for a wedding, but figured I’d also just grab 20 mins for coffee to expand my horizons (and hopefully), provide some value in return. Do you have any contacts down there who might fit the bill?

The Results? Find out the results and read the complete article

How To Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Profile For Recruiting

Sharlyn Lauby

(Mashable)

LinkedIn offers companies the ability to provide more information about their organization via their company pages. On a company page, you can include information about your products and services along with information about job opportunities.

This is a relatively new feature, relaunched back in November 2010. Several Fortune 500 companies were part of the launch of this new feature including Dell, Eastman Kodak, JetBlue and Microsoft. But company pages are not exclusive to only large businesses—Harvard Business School, Rypple, Squarespace and other well-known, successful organizations have LinkedIn company pages.

Since one of the primary purposes of LinkedIn is career networking, it only seems logical to make sure your company profile is being leveraged as much for recruiting as it is for marketing. Here are five things to consider including in your LinkedIn company profile to attract candidates.

1. List job openings

This might sound very obvious but sometimes the obvious gets overlooked. Candidates expect job openings to be listed under the “Careers” tab on your LinkedIn company profile. Job openings should be current and link to information regarding how to apply. Here’s a great example from CVS Caremark Corporation.

As an example, if you select the first position, it takes you to a page with a job description, desired skills and company description. It also indicates how to apply, whether it’s via the company website or an introduction from a connection.

If the position selected doesn’t look like a good match, a candidate’s time has not been wasted—similar positions are listed at the bottom of the screen.

2. Employee profiles provide information

Eve Mayer Orsburn, CEO of Social Media Delivered, an international social media optimization firm that offers consulting, training and marketing services, says “90 percent of information in a LinkedIn Company Page comes from employee personal profiles.” As such, it only benefits a company to make sure its employees know how to use LinkedIn properly.

One of the places that information is aggregated is in the statistics section located at the bottom of the “How you’re connected” box on the Overview page.

This section offers some very valuable information, as reported by employees. For example, it includes annual company growth, years of company experience, as well as highest degree attained.

Orsburn adds, “If your company really wants to rule the LinkedIn universe and recruit top-notch talent, make sure all employees have completed and fully-optimized personal profiles to improve content and effectiveness of the company page.”

3. Let employees tell your story Read Tips 3 - 5 and Complete Article

How to Create a LinkedIn Company Page

by Neicole Crepeau

If you have a small or medium-sized business, you should take the time to create a basic presence on LinkedIn. 36.5 million people visit LinkedIn every month, and LinkedIn results appear in Search, one more opportunity for your business to get seen.
To build your LinkedIn presence, take the following steps:

Create your company page
Optimize each employee’s personal profile to promote the company
Have each employee “link” to the corporate page

Create Your LinkedIn Business Page

To create your page, log into LinkedIn. Then, in the menu bar, under Search, enter your company name and select Company from the dropdown. Click the Search icon to search for your company.
Hopefully, your company page isn’t already taken. If it is, you’ve got a problem and you’ll need to contact LinkedIn if you should rightfully own that name. Or use a variation for your company name, “Inc” versus “Corp” and so on. When you have a unique name, click the Add a Company link to create your corporate page.
On the Add a Company page, enter the company name and an email associated with it. Check the box to verify you are a representative of the company. You’ll be sent an email and will need to open it and click the link to verify the account. Then, you can enter information about your company. To create your profile, you’ll need:

A list of company specialties (keywords for which you want to be found)
The blog or feed URL for the company
The corporate website’s URL
The Twitter handle for the company or the employee whose tweets you want to appear (if you’re on Twitter)
Basic information about the company: number of employees, address, founding year, etc.
A logo graphic to upload

When you receive your email, click teh link to go to your page. Enter the information you’ve gathered and upload your logo.

Adding Products & Services

You can create separate pages for each of your products or services, describing them. For each product or service, you’ll need:

A paragraph description of each product/service
An image for each one
A bulleted list of features or differentiators
A URL to link to for each particular product or service
If you have a promotional (such as a discount or free service), you’ll need a description and a URL for it
If you have a YouTube video for this product/service, grab the URL for it
Any disclaimer for this product/service

To create a product or service page, go to your company page and follow these steps:

In the tabs, select Products & Services.
Click the Add a product & service button.
Use the wizard-like form to add your product or service.
On the right, add the URL of the landing page for this product/service.
Add contact information—who in your company to contact about it.
Add any special promotions, and any videos.

Optimize Employee Profiles - to read the rest of the article

10 Differences Between the Job Search of Today and of Yesterday

By careerealism

Modified from the forthcoming book, “Job Searching With Social Media for Dummies.”

1. Google Has Replaced the Resume
Recruiters are now using Google and LinkedIn searches to find talent, instead of paying for job-board or talent databases, like they used to do. In fact, many companies are even mandating every new application go through a Google screening process. So that means the first page of your Google results matter more than they ever did before during a job search.

2. A Summary is Enough
Today, the resume is used mostly in the screening process while actual decisions are made after interviews. And because there are so many candidates competing for each job, HR people (or hiring managers if they are tasked with recruitment) often scan resumes very briefly. In fact, the average time on a resume is 30 seconds.

3. Social Proof is a Must
Social proof, testimonials or recommendations seriously reduce the perceived risk of you as a candidate. The most costly mistake a hiring manager can make is to hire the wrong person. Some say that if a new-hire leaves within three months, it costs the organization one and half that person’s annual salary. And with the economy as tight as it is, you can understand why hiring managers are so risk averse.

4. Resumes and Cover Letters Are Not Read on Paper Anymore
Most organizations are not receiving paper resumes and when they get them via email or their application system, they don’t print them. So expect your resume and cover letter to be read on a computer screen. This means you have to format your documents in a way that makes screen-scanning easy.

5. Relationships First, Resume’s Second
Resumes are not used as introductory documents much these days. In fact, “send me your resume” is often an after thought after an introduction is made. And if an introduction is made online, then your online profile offers much more information than a resume. So shift your priorities from, “Oh crap, I have to get my resume done!” to, “Oh crap, where can I meet some more people today?”

Read differences 5 -10 and more: http://www.ibtimes.com/blogs/articles/25216/20110324/10-differences-between-the-job-search-of.htm#ixzz1HrLq05lT

Special thanks to the following people for their valuable insights for this post:
Sean Harry, career coach and author of Careers 2.0
Vicky Lind, career counselor and marketing coach
J.T. O’Donnell, founder of CAREEREALISM.com and career coach
Joshua Waldman is the founder of Career Enlightenment and specializes in helping job seekers leverage social media to find work quickly.

Using Twitter For Career Networking

Evan Britton, ResourceWebs

There is an enormous amount of activity happening on Twitter each minute. This activity opens up endless opportunities for businesses, marketers, and individuals. One rarely talked about strategy for utilizing Twitter’s widespread popularity is the seeking out of career connections on Twitter.

Many career experts discuss how to get hired from LinkedIn and how to find a job on Facebook; and while these continue to be solid job searching options, countless job seekers are already doing this. One advantage of taking to Twitter for your career networking and job search quest is that you will be differentiating yourself and potentially giving yourself a chance to stand out from the crowd.

The first thing you should do is clean up your Twitter profile. Make sure that your Twitter profile picture is a good head shot of yourself and also make sure your Twitter user name is professional. You can easily change your Twitter user name if you don't feel it is appropriate for potential employers. Lastly, make sure your bio talks about the sector for which you are seeking work.

Your Twitter updates should include relevant Tweets about your industry. It is of course ok if some of your Tweets are personal, but it is wise to Tweet about your industry and job sector as it will show your passion and interest in your craft. You should also Retweet others who post updates about your niche.

Read The Rest Of The Article and more: http://www.businessinsider.com/using-twitter-for-career-networking-2011-4#ixzz1IZYzV41w

10 Differences Between the Job Search of Today and of Yesterday

Read differences 5 -10 and more: http://www.ibtimes.com/blogs/articles/25216/20110324/10-differences-between-the-job-search-of.htm#ixzz1HrLq05lT