webinar

Last week I attended a LinkedIn webinar that took place on Tuesday April 8th, 2014 at 9AM PST and was presented by Lindsey Pollak. The purpose of this webinar was to educate LinkedIn users and provide tips on how to enhance their online image, maximize the “job seeker premium” for members subscribed to the service, leverage and expand their network to land that coveted “dream job.”

ENHANCE YOUR ONLINE IMAGE

The presenter talked about how more and more employers are turning to the Internet to perform background searches on prospective employee candidates. Based on a study conducted by Microsoft, approximately 70% of employers have rejected a job candidate based on the information they discovered about them online. On the other hand, 85% of employers say that positive online reputation has influenced their hiring decision.

These statistics helped make the case for building and maintaining a strong professional presence on LinkedIn. That way, when companies decide to perform research on a job seeker, one of the first results they will see is a well-crafted and informative LinkedIn profile. This will make a positive impression on employers and hopefully lead to being contacted for an interview.

The presenter then proceeded to do a live walk through section-by-section demonstration on an existing LinkedIn member, Frank Kruller (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kruller). These are the sections of his profile that she placed an emphasis on:

HEADLINE

A strong, keyword-rich headline is recommended. If you want, you can try matching your headline to job titles you are interested in.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Try to collect at least one recommendation for each position listed. If possible, ask your managers to write it for you as their word carries more weight than co-worker’s. Also, avoid having multiple generic recommendations.

PROFILE FEATURE ADDITIONS

If you speak more than one language, belong to an organization, earned honors at your school, etc., use the profile feature additions to include this information on your profile.

VOLUNTEERISM

If you have any volunteering experience, it would helpful to include this on your profile as it shows employers that you keep your skills sharp and that you are active in your community.

VISUAL EXAMPLES OF YOUR WORK

Try to upload or link to visual examples of your work (i.e. presentations, videos, podcasts). This way, you can show employers examples of your work, not just tell them about it. She went over another profile example of LinkedIn member, Paul Maloney (CEC, Personal Chef/Estate Manager).

PERSONALIZED LINKEDIN URL

Take the time to personalize your LinkedIn URL and make sure to include it in your e-mail signature and professional Twitter account.

JOB SEEKER PREMIUM

Most of you (including myself) are not subscribed to LinkedIn’s job seeker premium, so I will only highlight the most important points/tips given:

Click on the “Feature my Application” check box to assist recruiters in locating your account.
Next to the briefcase icon, the open link feature allows profiles to be seen by anyone, most importantly, job recruiters.
The “Job Seeker Badge” (briefcase icon) needs to be enabled or turned on in order to broadcast to your network that you are currently seeking employment. This feature does not need to be enabled, especially if you want to job seek in private.
Job seeker premium also lets you use InMail to contact other LinkedIn members, even if you are not connected to that person. This feature really helps one stand out from the crowd.
You can sort out jobs by salary.
The “View Applicant Insights” feature lets you compare your skills with other job applicants.

More information can found at: http://premium.linkedin.com/jobsearch/features.html

LEVERAGE YOUR NETWORK

Another statistic was shown from a finding made by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 70% of jobs were found through networking. It is not enough to have connections, you need to be proactive in your networking in order for it to lead to job opportunities. Here are the three steps outlined in the webinar:

1.) Reach Out to Everyone You Know – For most people, this is the most obvious step, but is surprisingly the most often overlooked. It is recommended that you reach out to each person individually instead of what is termed as “blast messaging” everyone in your contacts list.

2.) Maximize Group Affiliations -When visiting a group page on LinkedIn, try focusing on these three sections: Manager’s Choice, Jobs, and Search Tab. Try being active in the group by sharing any expertise you may have on any topics of interest to that group.

3.) Reach Out to New Connections – Review the people you may know section or use the find new contacts search feature. When reaching out to people that you have never met and want to connect with, make sure to send them an individualized connection request. Do your homework and revise their profile to find any common interest and then carefully compose a message specifically tailored for them.

Also, make sure to reach out to your profile visitors. Job recruiters, peers in your field, leaders in your field, friends, co-workers, and contacts from your past.

FINAL TIPS

The presenter gave two final tips before ending the presentation and fielding questions from the audience:

Discover connections you may have in companies you have an interest in.
You can now use the LinkedIn app to apply to jobs on the go.

All in all, it was an eye-opening, well-structured, and very informative webinar that gave me some good ideas on how I could go about revising and optimizing my LinkedIn profile. They mentioned that there is an upcoming part II of this webinar, which I will likely attend.

If you want to watch the webinar for yourself, there is a recorded version of it on Ustream available here.