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Before you make a big purchase, do you read product reviews? If you’re like many people these days, you do—and that’s a good thing. You can invest your hard-earned money in a product or service that you’ve already ascertained will best suit your needs. You’ve minimized risk and maximized your chances for success. Today’s employers do this as well.
Showing gratitude can pack a powerful wallop – in employee engagement, repeat customers and in producing business, prestige and praise. Study after study shows workers who feel appreciated and engaged are more likely to deliver great customer service and work harder. So why wait for a holiday like Thanksgiving to give a little thanks and appreciation? Here’s four approaches that work any day of the year.
If you have created a comprehensive LinkedIn profile, good for you! I see so many job seekers who have not fully utilized this valuable resource for networking. You may have a profile that is partially complete; here are a few simple things you can do to increase your exposure:
Compared to LinkedIn and Twitter, Facebook may be the most “social” of the social networks, since most people are connected there to actual friends rather than business acquaintances or people with shared professional interests. But Facebook can still be a valuable tool in your job search if you use it correctly.
“Networking and personal branding are perhaps the two most important skills a job seeker needs these days and Facebook is an excellent way to hone both,” says Hillary O’Keefe, a job search strategy expert and online marketing manager at Onward Search. Here are some ways to do that:
LinkedIn is one of the most blogged-about topics for job seekers and career futurists, and rightly so. It is high-value and low barrier to entry. More than 80 million members strong, this social networking site links job seekers, companies and service providers.
Getting the most out of your LinkedIn profile, however, is not just a one-two punch.
A dynamic environment, the value of LinkedIn’s many tools is in managing and expanding your contact relationships and research capabilities to achieve career propulsion. For example, LinkedIn’s JobsInsider application allows you to open job board postings from one of the major job boards and find the people in your network that work at the hiring company. The theory is that you will then be able to tap those network contacts to introduce yourself as a potential candidate for the position, giving you a leg-up.
Though LinkedIn memberships abound, the challenge is to create a robust profile and leverage it effectively to net the most you can from your initial time investment – as well, to differentiate yourself. Many LinkedIn profiles remain incomplete or inactive (or both), essentially abandoned career real estate that, with only a few initial hours and a few minutes per day thereafter could be refurbished and revived to play a critical, ongoing role in your career advancement.
To get the most out of LinkedIn, you must:
While seldom do two career paths end identically, there is certainly something to be said for looking at the career paths of others and using them as a map for your own career possibilities.
Up until recently it was hard to see the career paths of others who have the same educational background or experience. The sphere of visibility many times stopped at the exterior walls of your company or companies where you previously worked. It was hard to gain any advantage of pattern recognition with such a small sample size.
Dear Liz,
I’m revising my LinkedIn profile for the umpteenth time, and I want to avoid the common pitfalls. What do you see as the biggest mistakes LinkedIn users make in creating their profiles?
Thanks!
Cecilia
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