Here is a guide for using LinkedIn to work for you if you are a contractor in search of employment.
If you are coming to the end of your contract then it's a good time to look at your LinkedIn and see how it is looking in the eyes of a would-be employer.
Here are some of the things we cover:
Making yourself visible on LinkedIn
Using Linkedin to find contract opportunities
Using Linkedin to research opportunities
Increasing your network of connections on LinkedIn
SJD Accountancy sponsored us to make a video that tackles what you should consider for your profile and how you use LinkedIn as a whole. I think there is a lot of content that is applicable for non-contractors also. Have a look and let us know what you think.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 10:37AMCormac Heron
Here is our second post about the Social Business workshop being hosted in London on November 17th. The workshop is being aimed at business people looking to harness Social Media and will address questions such as Should you get involved with this stuff? and, If so how? and, Where do I begin?
For more details of the workshop and how to book a place go to the Eventbrite page or contact us to discuss your situation and whether this workshop will be appropriate for you. You can read more details in our first blog post about it.
In this YouTube clip you can view Bright Beehive's Nick O'Doherty talking with Jean-Marc Le Tissier from Idea Space about how Social Media has changed the rules quite considerably.
The videos were recorded one sunny afternoon last week on balcony of the Royal Festival Hall. There will be more videos uploaded in a few days. If the event sounds like it would be of benefit to you please visit book you place on our Eventbrite page.
Bright Beehive have got together with Jean-Marc Le Tissier, a friend and colleague from Idea Space, to organise a workshop titled:
Social Business: Making sense of Social Media.
The workshop will cover amongst other things the business benefits, opportunities, risks and some case studies of Social Media. It will help you address questions such as Should you get involved with this stuff? and, If so how? and, Where do I begin? The event will take place on the morning of Tuesday 17th November, in London, just off of Tottenham Court Road.
The workshop is aimed at business people who are starting to engage in this area, or have already started and need some help. This post, and the next two, introduce the organisers and the topic and give a flavour of their views. For more details of the workshop and how to book a place go to the Eventbrite page or contact us to discuss your situation and whether this workshop will be appropriate for you.
This workshop will be different from most:
Before the workshop, we will seek engagement by phone and on the web, so that we can understand specific requirements, backgrounds and preferences, then we will tailor the workshop to the participants. The web based activity will be via a LinkedIn discussion group - if you haven't used Linkedin before we'll help you get set up.
On the day we will ensure a mix of factual presentation, discussion, pragmatic advice, case studies and theory bound together with a focus on ensuring that all walk away with tangible value from the morning
After the workshop we will continue to stay in touch and encourage discussion, so that we can help get answers to those questions that inevitably start the next day.
The workshop will be run by the following:
Cormac Heron: The Enthusiast.
Cormac has been blogging for 8 years and was the Social Media delivery man in PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
Nick is still asking about the business value, but is a ultimately a convert. Nick was instrumental in seeing the need and helping delivering change in this area in PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
A few years ago when looking at the growing number of social networks and tools I had the idea that I would compartmentalise my sharing. I would put business stuff in LinkedIn, personal stuff in Facebook, and maybe use Plaxo for crossover stuff as it enables you to categorise business colleagues, friends and family.
Since then I have realised that whilst this approach is not entirely wrong it was based on a false assumption that what is put somewhere stays there. The reality is, that once shared on the web, a nugget of information will eventually travel across all of your networks, finding its way like a fugitive seeking refuge with the furthest scattered potential recipient to whom the information will be of the slightest interest. Assume so anyway and you won’t be disappointed. The web has huge capacity to connect people, and we welcome the opportunities it provides for the few hundred people scattered around the world with an esoteric interest to find each other and share. We have to accept that another consequence is that all of the networks centred on you are seldom connected just by you, and the act of sharing some information can rarely be constrained to one network.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez famously said that every man has a public, a private and a secret life. Well the web means that the public life is gaining at the expense of the private.
It still makes sense to me to share in certain directions, but this has more to do with one of the modern day business courtesies, filtering what you send so that you do not overload your colleagues. I have been involved in more or less successful attempts to address email overload in organisations; and have found that much email overload is caused by copying in or cc’ing. There are many reasons for cc’ing some positive like wishing to be inclusive, some quite venal – like covering your ass; perhaps the biggest is lack of thinking and just because you can. So you might think that tools such as Twitter, or the Wall on Facebook where you can share with the whole world, and with your “friends” respectively would add considerably to this sense of overload. In the main they don’t. In part because no answer is expected, no sense of obligation is passed in the same way that occurs with receiving an email. Tweets and Wall status updates are floated out there for who-ever wants to pick up, they are not forced, like email, into your presence like a baton at a relay race.
I still haven’t quite worked out the details of how best to float things in certain directions. I am more confident of status updates in LinkedIn or Facebook. But with Twitter, where my tweets cover beekeeping, social networking, personal observations, bits of news etc and I am sure that the Spanish beekeeper who has an active interest in my attempts to enter the mysteries of beekeeping is less interested in knowing I am at Reboot Britain. I not only tolerate but enjoy wide ranging tweets from people I know, or think I know, even when their twittering becomes close to wittering, but I am less forgiving when people I have classified as an xyz guru wanders into the problems of travelling to towns I have never visited.
Do you see this increasing public-ness of life, particularly if you engage on the web as an issue? Do you try to use different channels for different interests? If this increased public life educed private life is true for individuals, what does it portend for organisations?
Image by greenkozi Whilst Nick is writing his posts about using LinkedIn to get back into work I would just like to slip in a quick post about how you can use it to assist you in your current job. Websites are arguably more powerful when used in the character in which they operate. In other words Facebook is a less formal platform so you can be less formal with your activity. LinkedIn is an employment-based network so once you conduct yourself in a professional way you will get the professional response you are after. There are many things which you can use as a 'crowdsourcing' tool in LinkedIn. When I began to write this list I thought I should ask LinkedIn "In what way does LinkedIn help you do your day to day job?". Below are the replies
“The breaks I spend on LinkedIn provide me with a much needed relief from the daily insanity... thereby it provides me with... sanity.”
“Looking through the Answers has provided some interesting solutions. Some of these have been immediately useful; some have been filed for sometime in the future.”
“I'd just add that it makes me realise that there is a lot of business out there and lots of people going through the same challenges. All you need to do is reach out and ask and someone will help or answer.”
“Linkedin gets me introduced to new clients everyday... ”
“We may get some new ideas at free of cost.”
“My job is to get a job. I am getting referrals and talking to recruiters on LinkedIn. Looking for work is hard. Sometimes it is stressful, serious business. There are some kind folks here that crack me up. I try to get a good belly laugh or three in every single day.”
Image by eszter What this highlights is all the different ways in which LinkedIn can be used whether it is asking people individually (in any level of their networks), to posing a question to their group to the more open ended Q&A section. You can also post polls and even use the update status to find help. Further to this, as Ricardo Sueiras posted in response to the blog post Using LinkedIn To Get Back Into Work (1) "One of the ways that linkedIn can help a candidate differentiate themselves is by allowing them to build up their social capital via the Q&A." This is by no means a complete list of the ways in which LinkedIn can be used for the purposes of assisting you in your day job. I would be very interested in learning more. Feel free to post your thoughts.
Image by: timlings Some jobs are advertised on LinkedIn first. In some cases jobs are advertised on LinkedIn only, as organisations feel that in this market they do not need to pay for ads in papers or agencies. You can search for these within the LinkedIn site, from the Jobs tab at the top of the page. You may also find jobs advertised on some of the groups. Whether you find an ad on LinkedIn, or from a newspaper, trade paper, website or agency, you may wish to research the organisation before applying, a) to check whether you really want to work for this organisation and b) to find out more that will help your application or interview. LinkedIn can help here as well but the larger your network, the more powerful the techniques below become. Use Company Search on LinkedIn to find out about the organisation. Along with the company summary, comes some great people information. Company Search tells you how many people in your network work in that organisation and who they are. Perhaps more interestingly, it also tells you who in your network have recently left the organisation. If you want accurate information on the organisation – ask someone who has left and someone who is still there. By “someone in your network” I mean all of the following:
a direct contact, in which case you probably knew that they worked there
someone who is a direct contact of your direct contact i.e. a 2nd level contact
a 3rd level contact – someone you probably don’t know and it may be difficult to get introduced to quickly
It is easy enough to approach a 2nd level contact either with or without an introduction from the intermediary in question. It requires the confidence of a gregarious person to approach a 3rd level contact without introductions but it is surprising how helpful people will be if approached directly. The larger your set of direct contacts the more likely you will have a 2nd level contact in an organisation. Another use of LinkedIn is to research and target markets or companies. If you are working in HR in the financial services sector and have decided, say, to move to the retail sector, look at who in your network is there in something like the role that you want. Check out their profile, it is obviously a bonus, if they have moved there from the financial services sector. Approach them and ask for a meeting over coffee, “Because I’d like your advice on which of my skills are transferrable”. Most people will be gratified to be approached in this way. How would you react if a colleague of someone you knew and rated, from a different organisation, approached you and asked for advice over coffee on the market that you were in? Image by: cloudzilla
Do not turn this information gathering meeting into a request for a job – stick to the reason you gave. Use this information to tailor your approach to your target organisations and contacts. Thank your information contact by email a few weeks later and keep them informed of progress. This approach is referred to as the speculative approach and LinkedIn makes it both possible and effective. If this approach seems pushy to you, rethink. Speculative approaches for job opportunities succeed more often than might be imagined. Most positions in the UK are filled without recourse to advertisements or agencies. If you get the timing right and approach someone with a request for a position, at the time they are considering advertising, then you are doing them a favour and potentially saving them money and, more importantly, time in getting a vacancy filled. Finally, consider updating your current position to “Available for work”, or something conveying the same message but more upbeat. For some it is not acceptable to admit that you are out of work. But in many industries it is a frequent occurrence and regarded as just a temporary phase to be got through.
This series of three posts is being written with a very specific audience in mind. Too many of my friends and colleagues have been made redundant recently. In some cases I have looked at their LinkedIn profiles and felt compelled to make suggestions that will hopefully help them get their next job, if that is their chosen next step. So if you joined LinkedIn one quiet Friday afternoon because there was nothing better to do and you wondered what the fuss was about, and haven’t really done anything since apart from accept a few invites, this is for you, whether you are in employment or not. For others you have three choices: skip this post; read it and see if it is relevant to anyone else you know and forward or link them to it; read this and improve on or add to it by comment. I have pulled together advice and guidance from several sources and structured the material as follows:
Making your profile work for you, with minimal effort.
How to use LinkedIn to proactively to look for work.
How to extend your network
Making your profile work for you
The advice below is not about writing a compelling resume. It is about the mechanics of LinkedIn and how to make your LinkedIn profile work for you.Image by: Tambako the Jaguar
If you apply for a role most organisations now will look to see if you have a LinkedIn profile and whether it contradicts your CV. Make sure it does not.
If people are looking for, say, IT Project Managers, and that is your core capability say so. Say so in the roles you’ve undertaken and in the Summary and Specialities sections. Think of other ways it can be said and say it in those ways as well IS Project Manager, Systems Project Manager, Computing Project Manager etc.
Make sure your profile is complete, if it is not, then when a potential recruiter looks for “IT Project Managers” you will be listed below all of the IT Project Managers with a complete profile. They probably won’t find you. LinkedIn tells you when your profile is incomplete and what next step you need to undertake to complete your profile. To check this out got to Edit My Profile, and look towards the top of the right hand column, you will see a bar with a completeness % indicator and suggestions on what you should do next.
When you have completed all the profile sections it will tell you that you need 3 references to be 100% complete. Ask for references.Some people are loath to ask for references. It is vaguely un-British; potentially a cause of toe curling embarrassment to think about let alone do. But it must be done. Don’t just ask for references from friends. Maybe practice asking on them. Think about which of the people who you might ask for a reference would look most impressive to a potential recruiter. Then make it easy for them, detail what you are looking for and why and give them a few reminders of what you did, preferably in a form where they could cut and paste a recommendation quickly. “Jo, I am looking for a recommendation on LinkedIn, for that time when I worked for you on the Tufty project. I am applying for roles as a team leader so if you wouldn’t mind focussing on my people management skills. You might recall I took over the demoralised implementation team and got them back up to speed and we recovered to meet our milestones”. Call them or email them first, then use the LinkedIn recommendation request form, as a reminder.
If you have had three roles in the last ten years it seems more balanced to have 2-3 recommendations for each role than 5 for one role. If you have 2-3 recommendations for a role spread them around, someone more senior, someone more junior, an internal or external client or supplier.
Don’t go over-board. It looks odd to have 15 recommendations for a 2 year period. But if you have asked ten people assuming some won’t respond and they all do, it’s no problem. You don’t have to publish all of your recommendations at the same time. Keep most hidden. Explain to your recommender what you doing. “I am saving yours for a few months”. And there is good reason to do this. Each week, unless they have turned off the notification, your contacts get an update on changes to your status e.g. each time you add contacts, change your profile or get recommended. In a quiet spell change your recommendations around and your contacts are reminded of you.
Image by: quinn.anya
Returning to the first point, most recruiters will check out your profile and your recommendations. They may look to get some independent view of you. Probably the easiest way, if they have some connection to you is to see who they know who also knows you. Another option for them is to do a LinkedIn company search on your current company and then look to see who in their network works for or has worked for your current organisation and ask them about you. Whichever approach they take, if someone who knows you works for the organisation you are applying to, there is a good chance they will be asked about you. Just bear it in mind.
Being on LinkedIn has some downsides but a lot of potential advantages. You need to know how it works to turn the potential into reality. Making sure your profile stands out, and being aware of how it can be used is the first step.
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 2:14PM 
