Tag Archives: LinkedIn

Much has been written about fake LinkedIn profiles. There are folks who use LinkedIn to build marketing or contact lists and even worse, to gather information and intel on folks for nefarious reasons.

Many critics have commented that there are numerous fake LinkedIn profiles, and it will ruin LinkedIn if it’s not addressed.

However, LinkedIn is still a very effective tool for building your personal brand for finding a job, developing a business or attracting talent. Being part of a community allows you to build your brand and take advantage of the community watching out for you. Community policing is important only if…

One of the biggest goals on LinkedIn is to obtain recommendations from past supervisors, bosses, peers, and co-workers to enrich your profile. You can never have enough. Recruiters like recommendations because they provide information that typically isn’t found on a resume or in your profile.

If you are interviewing, future employers can connect with the recommenders and find out more about you. And, they can contact your referrals to get the ‘skinny’ on your past performance.

If you are not actively looking for a job but you are more of a passive careerist, what is the point of getting involved in the recommendation process? Exposure and branding. Did you catch…

A challenge for many who want to move onto social media, especially to support their job search, is how to “connect” or “link” or “friend” some requests, but not all requests. If you’re a cleared job seeker with very little online experience, this is especially true.

Building a social network should be strategic. It’s not a race to see who can have the most friends first. It takes time, research, and patience.

So how do you navigate not accepting connections?

Each social media platform has different options. As LinkedIn is the most common social network for a job search, let’s go over these options in the LinkedIn environment.

On LinkedIn,…

Do you need to make some sense of LinkedIn Skills and Endorsements?

Recently LinkedIn made several changes to profiles and profile features. Every job search should use multiple resources such as LinkedIn, networking, and job boards like ClearedJobs.Net, to research and leverage opportunities. And if you still don’t have a LinkedIn profile, you need to strongly consider creating one.

The “new” Skills & Expertise feature has been around for several years in beta. “Skills & Expertise” is a broad term as it can be an industry, topic, skill or even a branch of military service.

If you have not taken the time to update or edit your Skills & Expertise…

The holidays are a great time for connecting with targeted individuals for informational or networking interviews. Informational interviews are about learning, gathering information, and developing a relationship with the person you’re meeting with.

A 20-minute coffee or face-to-face meeting is your best bet. But if someone will only talk to you via phone, don’t turn down the opportunity. Some guidelines:

1. Be early if meeting in person. But not too early if you’re meeting at their office.

2. Offer to pay for the other person’s purchase.

3. Respect their limited time.

4. Do your homework ahead of time so you’re not asking…