The New Job Hunt – It’s Going to Take More Than Just a Simple LinkedIn Profile

Lots of people are proud to have made it through the process of setting up a basic LinkedIn account…but it is going to take a bit more to stand out from the crowd in today’s job market.  Let’s take a look at some of the things you could be doing with social media and your personal brand to stand out from the crowd.

LinkedIn Alumni – Accessing Your Powerful Alumni Network

If you’ve created your LinkedIn profile, have added connections and, most importantly, joined some of the alumni groups that have been created for your college, you now have a powerful tool at your disposal to further develop your valuable network or to even help you research and land your next job.  Back in 2011, LinkedIn introduced LinkedIn Classmates to pretty much a large collective yawn.  A few months ago, they quietly re-branded it to LinkedIn Alumni and opened up the search capability a bit…now we have something worth exploring!

Career Doldrums at Year-End? Don’t Coast; Use the Slow Period to Your Advantage!

The week between Christmas and New Years…depending on what you do for a living, this can be the slowest time of the year and you might be looking forward to catching up with your Facebook games or taking longer lunches for a more enjoyable workout.   It also is a time when those seeking a new job take time off from their search figuring that recruiters and decision-makers are doing the same.  But there are those who realize that this is a unique time to stand out from the crowd and use it as an opportunity for some career-climbing and to help shape your personal brand for a productive new year.  Let’s take a look at some things you should be doing over the next week.

Problem Solved: How to Easily Follow Your LinkedIn Connections on Twitter

It seems natural that you would want to follow any of your LinkedIn connections who also happen to use Twitter.  The challenge is how to easily identify them without individually checking each LinkedIn profile. That’s where the LinkedIn add-on application called Tweets comes in handy…you can now easily see a list of all your connections who use Twitter and from there easily follow them.

Getting Sales Reps to Use Social Media

While marketing people have been all over social media for quite a while now, sales professionals still seem to be lagging when it comes to adopting the medium.  Rather than try to understand why this is, let’s explore ways a sales person can achieve some immediate returns by investing just a few minutes a day with tools like Twitter.

Search Companies Based On Your LinkedIn Network

Using a recent enhancement to the Company Search feature on LinkedIn, users can now create results based on their relationships within the targets of the search.  This is actually a great resource for the job seeker or anyone needing to put their network to work….you just need to actually find the search panel first.  This piece will help you get there and provide some suggestions on how to put it to work for you.

Using the LinkedIn Skills Feature to Research and Be Found

Are you entering a new field or considering a change in direction?  LinkedIn Skills, a new feature currently in beta at LinkedIn, allows you to explore the ever-changing landscape of skills and expertise across the massive LinkedIn database.  Actually, if you haven’t added Skills to your profile, you might be missing out on the party.  Let’s take a look at the new search and how you can beef up your profile with Skills.

 

The Most Searched Companies on LinkedIn? Introducing LinkedIn Swarm.

LinkedIn is always looking for creative ways to report on the activities of their 85+million population of users.  On a January 25th blog entry, LinkedIn took the tag cloud one step further and released the LinkedIn Swarm, “something a bit more organic, fun and interactive than a static set of links.”

Epic Find! LinkedIn’s List of Overused Buzzwords Goes Viral

Hopefully you get a chuckle out of that title.  With their Analytics Team continually scouring through 85+ million profiles for all kinds of nuggets, LinkedIn recently announced a list of the most overused words and expressions.  The findings quickly went viral and made their way through everyone’s social networking feeds (I probably received about 20 Tweets on this in a single day).  For archival purposes, it is definitely worth adding to KazExchange as a reference for anyone getting started with LinkedIn.

New From LinkedIn – Promote Your Company’s Products and Services

As a business or independent consultant you probably have recommendations from your LinkedIn connections, but thanks to a new enhancement, you can update your company page to list your Products and Services.  Better yet, your clients can provide recommendations for them to help build up your brand throughout their networks.   Think about how powerful this will be for your marketing efforts as you leverage the valuable exposure driven by professionals in your target industries.

This piece will take a look at some of the new features announced by LinkedIn.