I’m On LinkedIn – Now What???

LinkedIn “Apply with LinkedIn Button” feedback

Nick Corcodilos, Mr. Ask the Headhunter, wrote a long post about this button.  He starts with:

I don’t know who I feel more sorry for: Job hunters or employers. LinkedIn has introduced a new button that lets you instantly apply for a job — no resume, no cover letter, no effort. It’s instantly dumber for everyone concerned.

What’s the problem with this idea?

We can now sit in our skivvies and thoughtlessly, tirelessly, effortlessly throw our hat in the ring.

Why not?

That’s the problem.

Candidates will get lazy (hey, I applied to 1,000 jobs today.  I don’t have time to network, or pick up the phone for anyone!).

Employers will get even more overwhelmed with unqualified mismatches for a posting.

Nick’s post is long, so I’ll make mine short.  Read his.  Then, read the comments.  Especially from Sherry Lynn, who disagrees, and then read the comments after hers.  Great stuff!

Posted in LinkedIn for Job Seekers, Using LinkedIn | 1 Comment »

Turbocharge Your LinkedIn Profile

My friend Chip Hartman sent me a 20 page slidedeck titled Turbocharge your LinkedIn Profile.  You can access it here.

It’s a solid read… you can flip through each slide and go back to your own LinkedIn Profile to beef it up.

This is an intentionally SHORT post because I want you to spend time reading Chip’s pdf… get it here – no cost.

Posted in LinkedIn for Job Seekers, LinkedIn Profiles | 1 Comment »

LinkedIn Profile: Do You Look Like a Spammer?

As a Group admin I get to approve requests to join my LinkedIn group.  Every time I do it I always skip a few … usually those that LinkedIn warns me about.

There are two things that jump out at me that make me think the person/account/Profile isn’t a real person… you can easily fix both… check it out:

The first thing is NO PICTURE.  I once heard a recruiter say “if you don’t have your picture up, I wonder what else you are hiding.”  Very interesting.

The second thing, which is something that sets off a LinkedIn alarm, is having 0 or 1 connection.  Get some contacts and you look less like a spammer!  I know many of you are just starting out, but get some contacts

Posted in LinkedIn Groups, LinkedIn Profiles | No Comments »

5 LinkedIn Tips You Didn’t Know (or did you?) – Fast Company

Amber Mac wrote a short article on Fast Company with the five LinkedIn tips you didn’ t know (see list here).

The good news?  If you’ve been reading this blog, my LinkedIn book, or my LinkedIn DVD, you did know about them!  Here they are (see her article for her thoughts on each):

1. Use “Signal” to discover relevant news and information. I kind of like Signal, but I think it just adds to the information overload issue most of us have. Having said that, I’ve found some cool information from Signal/News… so I won’t discount it.  But it’s not my go-to place for anything…
2. Export your connections. You already know about this – I’ve been preaching it for years and years
3. Create a resume. This is from a LinkedIn App, and could be useful, but if you write a Profile the way I like to see one, it will make for a poor resume.  Resumes and LI Profiles, imho, have different purposes, different audiences, and thus have different language.
4. Start and use groups. Yes, definitely!  But you already knew this, right?
5. Customize your URL. Definitely.  It is super easy, and valuable.  Check out a post from Walt Feigensen on customizing your URL here.  I talk about this in my DVD and book, of course, and think it’s low-hanging-fruit-must-do.

So there you go – five supposed secrets, but you already knew some

Posted in LinkedIn Applications, LinkedIn Groups, LinkedIn Maintenance, LinkedIn Profiles, Using LinkedIn | 1 Comment »

Mistakes When Sharing Your LinkedIn Profile (2 of 2)

Here’s the other problem I see when people think they are sharing a link to their LinkedIn Profile.  I see this about 40% of the time.

When you share your LinkedIn Profile URL with someone, many times you go into LinkedIn, click on Profile (top menu option) and then copy and paste the URL in the URL box to the person you are sending it to -this one:

‘

The problem is, that isn’t the right URL.  If you email that to someone, and they click on it, they should go to THEIR OWN profile.  Kind of funny, to send someone to THEIR OWN profile :p

If I mouse over PROFILE, and then click on View Profile, the link has some unique identifier (which so far has been what order you signed up – you can see in this account I’m member number 5,108,340).  That should take people to the right place.

But the link you normally should send people to is down below, in your Profile, called the Public Profile (URL):

This link looks cleaner, and it will take the person right to your URL (but they still have to click on the View Full Profile button to see it all, EVEN if they are logged in :s).

Posted in LinkedIn Profiles, Using LinkedIn | No Comments »

Mistakes When Sharing Your LinkedIn Profile (1 of 2)

There are two common mistakes people make when sharing their LinkedIn Profile.   One is that we share our “public profile” URL and assume people can see the entire profile.

How naive of us to think that’s how it would work, right?

Actually, this is one of my pet peeves that I hope LinkedIn changes.

Let me share what’s going on.  Yesterday I sent this tweet:

Some people said they could see my slideshare presentation, others said they couldn’t, and others said they saw the box but it wasn’t loading (which is a different problem).

The people who couldn’t see my slideshare presentation probably did this:

1. Went to my LinkedIn Profile, from the link I included in Twitter (www.LinkedIn.com/in/jasonalba)
2. Looked for it, didn’t find it.
3. Reported that it wasn’t there.

FAIL.

The people who COULD see the slideshare app probably did this:

1. Went to my LinkedIn Profile, from the link I included in Twitter (www.LinkedIn.com/in/jasonalba)
2. Clicked on the View Full Profile button (see below).
3. Were switched over from my non-full profile to the Full Profile view.

You have to be logged in to see the full profile.

I emailed LinkedIn customer service a few months ago asking why some people couldn’t see my Slideshare app and they said they changed something on my account so that everyone could see it… but perhaps this is just too new and they haven’t had enough complaints.

It’s unfortunate that people think they are sending their entire profile when they are only sending a portion.

If you send your link, you almost have to even say “make sure you click on the View Full Profile button so you can see everything.

Lame, huh?

Posted in LinkedIn Profiles, Using LinkedIn | 2 Comments »

COOL: People Search Trick on LinkedIn

Check this out…

On JibberJobber we did this little trick where you can filter down on your network contacts doing a search like this:

lastname:alba

I have been used to doing this for the last year, and when I was on LinkedIn I wasn’t thinking, and automatically did a search like this:

company:microsoft

Guess what?  IT WORKED!

What that means is you can use the main, general search up on the top right to filter your search, instead of clicking on the advanced link:

Note the yellow arrow… it defaults to current or past, which is something you might want to change.

(I haven’t played around with this much, so far it only works with “company:____” … name and last name didn’t work)

Posted in LinkedIn Companies, Using LinkedIn | No Comments »

New LinkedIn Spam – Pattern

Yesterday I posted about some spam I am getting – four by mid-afternoon yesterday – ugh!

Here’s something I noticed… since I have a somewhat zero-tolerance policy on slimeball spammers, I go in and look for the connection to “remove”… One was from Alex V. Lambert (my apologies to anyone named Alex Lambert – I’m sure this is a fake person / fake name, so if you know a real Alex Lambert this has nothing to do with them).

I go to the Remove Connections page, click on the L for Lambert, and … he isn’t there!!

I wonder, is this a first degree contact?  Indeed it is… I went back to the original message and it shows it is a real person.

What this spammer is doing is putting the middle initial as the last name… SO, I have to go the V section to find said spammer:

I’ve found this to be true with the four from yesterday.  Identitical messages, identital account setup. The end, by the way, is the link (which I haven’t/won’t click):

Be careful!

Posted in LinkedIn Connections, LinkedIn Maintenance, LinkedIn Spam, Using LinkedIn | 5 Comments »

More LinkedIn Spam

I’m getting more LinkedIn spam through direct messages. It’s dissappointing because it hasn’t been very common.

Here’s how this spammer started – it looks like they have a program to extract my title and other general information from my Profile, and marry it to a template message (the rest is as bad or worse):

There are two things that LinkedIn should do:

1. Attack this type of spam at their server level, instead of making each recipient try and figure out what this message is (most won’t). I think this would be hard to do for LinkedIn right now because the quantity is not as high as Facebook, who really should have it down to an art.  Perhaps as the spam grows LinkedIn will enforce stuff at the server level to keep it down.
2. Allow me to REMOVE this connection from the person’s Profile page.  Right now I have to go to Contacts, click on Remove Connections, and search for the person, and then remove them.  It’s really a pain, considering all I should have to do is simply click on a link that says “Remove Contact” right from their Profile page.

I hope the spam is just something we’ll see for a few weeks, but something tells me we’re going to se a lot more, with the growth and expansion in international areas.

Posted in LinkedIn Connections, LinkedIn Maintenance, LinkedIn Profiles, LinkedIn Spam, Using LinkedIn | No Comments »

Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn by Guy Kawasaki: Updated for 2011

One of the most famous references on how to use LinkedIn is Guy Kawasaki’s Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn.  I still see people point to this post, today, more than four years later (LinkedIn was almost 4 years old when it was written).

I wanted to revisit Guy’s post and speak about each of the points:

1. Increase your visibility. More true than four years ago.  Many professionals are seeing their LinkedIn Profile in the first few search results on Google.  And, with LinkedIn’s growth since then (they had just a few million signups), now it seems like everyone is on LinkedIn (they aren’t, but it seems like they are).  It has become more important than what it was four years ago… definitely being on LinkedIn (and hopefully having a strong profile) will help you increase your visibility.
2. Improve your connectability. Guy says to put your past employers in your Profile also, so people will be able to find you if you worked for them.  Definitely true.  Lonny Gulden, a recruiter in Minneapolis, says to also include old names from past employers (because of an acquisition, merger, etc.).  Another trick is for people to put in the maiden name, so if someone who knew you from pre-marriage is looking for you, they can find you.
3. Improve your Google PageRank. PageRank is not the same now as what it was four years ago, but the idea is to be found in the search results.  LinkedIn carries weight with search engines… you can tie into that.
4. Enhance your search engine results. It seems like #1, #3 and #4 are saying pretty much the same thing… it’s all good.
5. Perform blind, “reverse,” and company reference checks. The point here is to use LinkedIn as a research tool to learn about the people you think you want to work with (based on their Recommendations).  Definitely a good idea.  Not only can you learn more about them, you’ll see who they are connected to, determine if they are good networkers, etc.
6. Increase the relevancy of your job search. An interesting idea posed here is to search for your skills and see where the people who come up work.  Not a bad idea… it should give you ideas on how to make your own Profile better (comparing it to theirs), what companies they work at (which you might not have known about), see what Groups they are members of, etc.
7. Make your interview go smoother. He suggests knowing more about the person can give you stuff to talk about… where did they go to school, etc.  Learn stuff about them from their Profile, and then you can easily say “I saw on your LinkedIn Profile that you ________.”  It’s a good idea to research a bit on who you are going to talk with, whether it’s a networking interview, a job interview, or whatever.
8. Gauge the health of a company. He suggests talking to people at your target company, or better, talking to people who have left the company, since they might divulge more/better information about their former employer.
9. Gauge the health of an industry. Find people who are in the industry you want to get into and talk to them.  Find people who have failed in that industry and talk to them (to see what they learned, what they would do differently, etc.). #8 and #9 are excellent ideas leading to informational interviews, where you want to (a) get information, (b) brand yourself, and (c) ask for introductions to new contacts.
10. Track startups. Guy is the startup guy, so of course this goes on his list.  It’s funny he suggests to search for “stealth” to see who’s trying to be, well, stealth.  LOL.  It worked though, I just tried it and found over 7,oo0 results of people who have “stealth” in their Profile, many in their title.
11. Ask for advice. Guy says “LinkedIn’s newest product, LinkedIn Answers”… COOL.  So they launched this sometime in Dec/Jan 2011?  I tried to find an announcement on their blog but I couldn’t.  Anyway, yes, use answers.  He says to use it to get advice… but I have other, more important, reasons to use Answers.
12. Integrate into a new job. As suggested by Vincent Wright, who taught me a lot about LinkedIn and networking, he says to study Profiles of your new coworkers.  Great idea…. don’t stop networking once you land a new job!
13. Scope out the competition, customers, partners, etc. Do competitive intelligence research on your competition… definitely a good idea, if you pay attention to your competition.

So there you go – all 13 points are still relevant… and good reasons to use LinkedIn.  I hear people say “LinkedIn doesn’t work for me,” but what they are really saying is “I didn’t do anything, and got nothing in return.  So it’s broken, right?”

I won’t appease them… they need to understand the tool, use the tool, and then they will get value out of the tool.

What value?

Any of the 13 things above.

Posted in LinkedIn for Job Seekers, social networking, Using LinkedIn | 2 Comments »