Avoid the Trash Can with Compelling Cover Letters

Cover Letters make a big difference determining whether your resume goes into the trash can or lands in the “call for phone interview” pile.

Jim Kukral, in a recent blog article mentioned he was reading an article in the June 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine where Jason Fried, the founder of 37 Signals – a popular software company, talked about their screening criteria. I also saw the article, but thought I would give Jim the credit since he’s the first I’ve seen mention it.

Jason mentioned that the company first looks to the cover letter that tells a story about the person much better than the traditional resume. Take a moment or two and read the whole article. More and more hiring managers are focusing on the importance of the cover letter.

This is a must read article RECONFIRMING what we’ve been saying all along that you’ve got to include a cover letter with your resume to GRAB the attention of a recruiter, HR pro, or hiring manager. Sending resumes without cover letters or using a standard form will net you the trash can.

Don’t be a trash can magnet.

Here a few other articles we’ve published on the importance of using a cover letter:

Cover Letter + Great Resume = Job Interview

Does anybody read or care about cover letters?

You can even download a FREE sample cover letter by clicking here. This has been one of our most popular downloads.

We provide a step-by-step cover letter tutorial in our job search workbook “This is NOT the Position I Accepted.” Discover how to construct a powerful cover letter that increases your selection for job interviews by 30%, 40%, or 50%.

The sequence goes like this for most recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers:

1. First and Primary Step: Attention is grabbed by cover letter
2. Second step is to take a quick look at your resume
3. Third step is a quick web search by googling your name
4. Fourth step is an invitation to a phone interview
5. Fifth Step is an invitation to a face-to-face interview.

How to interview is IRRELEVANT if you never captured their attention in the first place with your cover letter.

Once you have captured their attention, another one of our very popular downloads is the free chapter in our workbook, titled “Winning the Phone Interview”. Don’t get to the stage of being phone interviewed – only to hear the deadly phrase “don’t call us – we’ll call you if we’re interested.”

You can download the FREE Chapter on Phone Interviewing by clicking here.

Barry Deutsch

P.S. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group which is rapidly becoming one of the most vibrant and dynamic job search forums on the Internet.

Don’t Blame Me For Your Job Search Lack of Success

In one of my recent blog posts, I suggested that if your job search is now moving past one year, in most situations your job search is ineffective. You can read that post about job search failure by clicking here.

From my perch regarding ineffective job searches

I was deluged with hate mail.

It’s not my fault that your job search is taking so long.

I sit up on this perch and everyday talk to a lot of candidates and hiring managers. I’ve been doing it for 25 years. This is the 5th or 6th major recession and job market depression I’ve been through.

I’m sharing with you hard, quantifiable facts and information based on surveys, research, and talking to hundreds of unemployed candidates on a weekly basis.

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and suggest that if you’re still conducting a job search after one year, you’re not doing everything you could be doing to conduct an effective job search.

A number of candidates got indignant and upset that I could make such a suggestion.

Prove me wrong about your job search effectiveness

Then prove me wrong!

• Take our FREE Job Search Self-Assessment. Download the Job Search Self-Assessment by clicking here.
• Absolutely no obligation to buy a single thing.
• It’s FREE! Thousands have used this self-assessment to improve their job search.

If you’re not hitting 3’s (the top score) on almost every item, then you’ve still got a lot of room to improve. If you can honestly score yourself as 3’s on every item, I’ll stand corrected on whether you’re conducting an effective job search. I acknowledge that there are always “exceptions to the rule.”

However, in most situations, if 100 candidates were to complete the self-assessment, one out of ten – less than 10% – are conducting a job search that might be categorized as adequate or minimally effective.

In this job market – which has been compared to the Great Depression – and doesn’t seem to be getting any better – you can’t get by conducting an “adequate” or minimally effective” job search.

If you want to complete an executive or managerial job search in less than one year – you’ve got to take it into the top 10% NOT bottom 10%.

Once again, I’m going to go way out on a limb and suggest that the vast majority of unemployed candidates I’ve interviewed for executive search assignments in the last year and with whom I’ve conducted a brief survey – they are conducting at best barely adequate job searches and at worst completely ineffective job searches.

Don’t be conducting a job search after 18 months

But don’t take my word for it – take the FREE Job Search Assessment yourself and discover whether there is room for personal improvement in your job search. If you don’t think we’ve covered all the bases on the assessment or some of the categories are not appropriate – fire off a comment.

We’re always looking to improve based on feedback. Would you make the same comment about your job search?

I don’t want to see you still conducting a job search after 18 months. Brad and I want to help you bring your job search to a close right now.

However, you’ve got to be willing to move past all the excuses and explanations and do the things required to kick your job search into a high state of effectiveness. Are you up for the challenge?

Doing the same thing for the next 6 months that you’ve been doing for the last 12 months will mean that we’ll be having this conversation again when your job search is at the 18 month point. Don’t let this happen to you.

Here’s my offer to you – if you’re at an executive level and you’ve been conducting a job search for at least one year, complete the Job Search Self-Assessment and send it back to me. I’ll review it and check out your activity level on-line (you have to send me an invite on LinkedIn to do this) and give you a quick assessment and recommendations of how you might improve your job search.

Are you game for a “check-up” OR would you rather make excuses and explanations for why your job search is not working?

Barry Deutsch

P.S. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Discussion Group. Discover all the best practices that combine to make an effective job search.

Why Are You Still Unemployed a Year Later?

You’re still unemployed because your job search is ineffective.

I don’t accept the excuse “it’s a bad economy and that’s why you’re still out of work.”

It’s not appealing when you play the victim and adopt a LOSER mentality.

Common Frustrations of Conducting a Job Search

Yes of course – the bad economy does make job search more difficult.

Yes of course – there are fewer jobs available than when it’s a thriving job market.

Yes of course – employers are taking longer to make a decision and slowing down the hiring process

Yes of course – most recruiters have nothing to work on – so your phone is not ringing.

Yes of course – in a down job market – most employers are box-checking waiting for the perfect candidate who fits every item on their job description: “You’ve only got 7 years of  food service distribution experience into Mexican Restaurants with greater than 50 rooftops in the NW region of the country – Gee whiz, we need someone with 8 years of experience selling to chains with more than 65 rooftops.” Many employers are nitpicking the details of your background – not focusing on whether you can achieve their desired results.

I know all these problems. I’ve seen candidates face them in 5-6 recessions over the last 25 years and not one of the issues related to job search frustrations is different today than it was in 1985.

However, the process of conducting a job search has changed dramatically and the vast majority of candidates DO NOT GET IT or are IN DENIAL over how to conduct an effective job search.

Allow me to share a few recent examples to drive this point home:

First Proof YOUR JOB SEARCH IS INEFFECTIVE

A few weeks ago, my partner, Brad Remillard, ran a survey on LinkedIn regarding length of time currently unemployed executives and managers have been unemployed. In an unscientific survey/poll of executive and managerial candidates, Brad discovered that over 75 percent of those currently unemployed had been unemployed for approximately one year.

Frightening. Unimaginable. Shocking. Frustrating. Incomprehensible.

I just cannot understand how anyone – unless they have a bottomless pit of money – or their spouse is the significant bread-winner – can survive for a year without working.

I hate to be the harbinger of bad news – but prepare yourself for a job market that’s close to crashing again – as if it couldn’t get any worse. We could be 18-24 months away from a job market recovery.

I digress – let’s come back to WHY YOUR JOB SEARCH IS INEFFECTIVE:

Second Proof YOUR JOB SEARCH IS INEFFECTIVE

I just finished an interview with a candidate for one of my National Account Sales Manager Searches. Before I started interviewing the candidate (let’s pretend his name is Bob to protect the innocent), I asked him some questions about his job search (an informal survey I am conducting with EVERY candidate whom I interview).

Little bit of background first: Bob has an outstanding proven track record of success for a position in area that I am recruiting for. I would suggest that there are probably at least 20-25 of these searches going on at any time. Some are being done directly by the company through traditional advertising, some are being conducted by recruiters (such as yours truly), and some are in the “hidden job market”– no recruiters and no advertising – just good old classic networking and referrals.

Every response that Bob gave me to my questions about what he was doing on his job search to find a new job was very similar to the candidates I’ve spoken to since the start of this year. Let’s peg that overall number at roughly 500 candidates based on 20-25 candidates a week.

I’ve got a dozen examples of why Bob’s job search is ineffective. It’s not one thing that’s leading to job search failure – it’s the fact that he’s not doing all 12 things effectively.

Here’s my small, itty-bitty, and trite example that is reflective of his overall job search failure:

I asked him what has he done on LinkedIn to create a compelling profile. He thought he had done a good job. I viewed his profile and it was far from compelling. In fact, I’d give it “D”. Obviously, he has not invested the time to create a compelling linkedin profile for job search.

I then asked him how many times does it show that his background has appeared in search results (about half of what the number should be weekly – he’s getting in 12-15 search results – should be 20-25).

I asked him how many times his profile had been viewed (again half the recommended volume – he’s at 5-7 and it should be 10-15). Obviously, he’s not optimized his LinkedIn Profile to appear in searches by recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers.

I asked him if he’s active in groups, Questions/Answers, status updates – his response was basically inactive. Obviously, he’s not using the multitude of FREE tools that LinkedIn provides for job seekers to enhance job search networking and referrals.

This is one small element of an overall effective job search – but indicative of all the other things he should be doing and is NOT doing. It’s unfortunate that he’s been out of work for almost a year – his job search should have been over in 4-6 months if he had conducted an effective job search.

Would You Like To Be Part of Our Research Study?

We are going to undertake a research study using the Key Elements of our Job Search Assessment Tool which follows the format of our Job Search Methodology. (You can download the Job Search Assessment Tool for FREE by clicking here).

One group will be those unsuspecting candidates that I interview and ask questions about their job search – we’ll correlate their length of unemployment with their job search effectiveness.

The second group – for which we need volunteers – are those executive level candidates (VP title and annual compensation of at least $150K) who would like to go through an intensive FREE course and coaching program of using our Job Search Success Methodology. We’ll track the time it takes you to find a new job using our approach.

FREE Job Search Course and Coaching Program

This FREE course and coaching program will be an abbreviated version of our formal executive job search coaching program.

My hypothesis is that those who are willing to invest the time and energy in our job search methodology will see a 50% reduction in the time it takes to find a new job.

If the average length of time to find a job in your given profession, industry, or geography is one year – you should be able to reduce that to 6 months or less using our methodology.

DON’T RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU’RE NOT SERIOUS ABOUT FINDING A GREAT JOB QUICKLY

This is an intensive, rigorous, focused approach to job search. You’ll probably spend 60-80 hours a week on the process. You’ll be held accountable for completing assignments and tasks or you’ll be dropped from the course if you cannot keep up with the pace OR you’re not motivated to find a great job quickly.

Not everyone will be accepted into this free course and coaching program. We will only take the first 25 applicants that can pass a rigorous screening interview with high standards for excellence, commitment, stick-to-it mentality, initiative, and focus.

If you’re interested in being part of this select group, write a comment to this blog post and I’ll follow-up with you.

Barry

If you would like to be considered for this FREE course and coaching program, there are a couple of homework assignments first (I’m already donning my professorial hat):

Download the Job Search Assessment by clicking here

Download the FREE Chapter on phone interviewing in our Career Success Methodology by clicking here.

Download some of the FREE Audio Programs in our extensive library by clicking here.

Then decide if you want to raise your hand and be considered for this exclusive and elite FREE coaching program.

Why Do Most Recruiter Interviews Set You Up for Failure?

Most 3rd-party recruiter interviews set you up for failure with hiring managers.

Before the entire recruiting profession jumps down my throat over that statement – let’s examine this statement in a little more depth.

Most (there are a few exceptions) recruiters conduct “box-checking” interviews. These sound like “Tell me about yourself.” “Have you done this?” “Do you have this skill?” Do you have this knowledge?” “What’s your biggest weakness?” and all the other 20 standard, stupid, inane canned interview questions that have been asked since the beginning of time.

We also published a couple of articles on some of the “other” reasons for shooting yourself in the foot when interviewing. Two of these articles you might be interested in are:

Candidate Interviewing Mistakes

You Can’t Interview Yourself Out of Wet Paper Bag

Most executives and managers tell me that the vast majority of the interviews they’ve gone through with 3rd-party recruiters are a joke. The believe that these sessions are nothing more than “meet-n-greets” where the recruiter is trying to determine if the candidate will embarrass them on the interview.

None of the traditional interview questions get at real success and the ability to translate prior accomplishments to predicting future performance. Very few recruiters have ever been trained, coached, or learned how to measure true performance – or predict future performance based on past success.

So, let’s follow this process logically. The recruiter conducts an interview for their client by box-checking the job description. The candidate is now lulled into the belief that this will be a similar interview with the client.

Wrong.

Most sophisticated hiring executives/managers are going to talk about outcomes and results – the candidate is stunned to be talking about outcomes, results, deliverables, accomplishments, and achievements. The candidate is at a loss to provide 2-3 substantive examples with quantifiable details for each claim.

The candidate was expecting the traditional 20 stupid, inane, canned interview questions.

The recruiter did NOTHING to prepare the candidate for a more rigorous interview.

The best recruiters conduct more in-depth interviews of candidates than their clients will ever conduct. The best recruiters probe deeply and will continue digging until they get the details. The best recruiters triangulate your responses to validate, verify, and vet your claims.

These interviews act as preparation for the real thing.

Box-checking,  traditional, stupid, inane, and canned interview questions do you a disservice by lulling you into a false sense of security about the interview questions that will be asked by strong hiring managers and executives.

So, let’s take this to the logical conclusion:

• Assume most recruiters will not ask tough and insightful questions.
• Assume most recruiters cannot prepare you for an interview with a strong hiring manager or executive.
• Assume most recruiters don’t really understand how to probe accomplishments, achievements, outcomes, and results.
• Assume most recruiters don’t understand how to predict future performance.

What can you do to get ready for a “real” interview?

Here are a few proactive ideas:

• • Read the free popular chapter in our book, “This is NOT the Position I Accepted” titled “Winning the Phone Interview”
  • Practice your responses over and over – imagine this is the most important presentation of your life. Practice your responses in front of the mirror, with family, the dog, your cat, friends, neighbors, associates
  • Practice some more
  • Read item number 1 – master our technique of D.R.E.S.S.U.P. for the phone interview
  • Practice some more
  • Frame all your responses with as much quantifiable detail as possible, names, starting amounts, ending amounts, budget, savings, number of people on the project, length of time, etc
  • Read everything you can on how to interview more effectively
  • Practice some more

Don’t blow the interview just because a recruiter didn’t ask you the correct questions. Be proactive in preparing yourself for a more rigorous interview.

Download our FREE popular Phone Interviewing Chapter “Win the Phone Interview”

What’s your experience in working with recruiters?

What percentage of all the recruiters you’ve met – made you work really hard during the interview? How many of those sessions were “meet-n-greets?”

Barry

P.S. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Discussion Group where phone interviewing, recruiters, and everything else job search related is thoroughly discussed.

Ever Wonder Why No One Calls You Back After the Phone Interview?

The Myth of Phone Interviewing

Yesterday I phone interviewed a candidate for a search I was conducting for a National Accounts Manager position. The phone interview was with my client – the CEO.

I had already interviewed the candidate by myself for the job. The candidate passed with flying colors. He was specific, precise, gave good examples, was articulate, and provided good validation and verification of his accomplishments.

Here’s what happened: My client started the interview with more open-ended questions than I typically ask.

As a recruiter, my questions are laser-focused, drawing out every detail of an accomplishment and achievement like having blood withdrawn.

I don’t care if candidates are not prepared for my interviews – I’ll extract it out of them like they were sitting in the interrogation room at a local police station. Some of my candidates have indicated these interviews feel like a “soft deposition” (not sure if I could have come up with a better oxymoron).

Unfortunately, most hiring executives and managers don’t dig and probe as deep to validate, verify, and vet candidate accomplishments. Instead, they ask broad high level questions and wait for the candidate to prove how good they are at interviewing.

Yes – I know it’s a travesty for hiring managers to base their assessments on how well candidates interview rather than on the substance of what they have done and what they can do. It’s a fact of life.

We’re trying to change it one interview at a time – getting hiring managers to focus more on measuring whether the candidate can do the job vs. whether the candidate can interview well. Not sure this will happen in my lifetime.

How to Blow the Phone Interview

The candidate choked up. He blew it. He stuttered through the interview. He was disjointed. His thoughts were jumbled. He would get sidetracked and lose the focus on his point. Here was a candidate who made hundreds, if not thousands of presentations to clients. Here was someone with a great track record of success. But he still blew the phone interview.

Why? How could this happen?

It happened because he did not prepare adequately for the phone interview. He never got a chance to get to the first stage of a physical interview. He can ill afford to miss an opportunity like this job after having been out of work for more than a year.

I’m convinced that one of the major reasons a lot of candidates are still looking for a job after 12 months is that they are not prepared for phone interviewing.

He didn’t review his accomplishments. He didn’t rehearse his answers. He didn’t organize his thoughts related to the potential company’s needs.

The interviewer didn’t guide him through the interview – question by question probing for success. Instead, the interviewer conducted a typical interview at 40,000 ft. and the candidate wasn’t prepared for a typical interview of standard, inane, common, and canned interviewed questions. These were the same 20 questions, hundreds of other managers had asked him prior to this interview.

Shame on him.

Death by Phone Interviewing

He tried to “wing it”.

I’ve seen this “death by phone interviewing” over and over again.

Many candidates think that their accomplishments listed in their resume should “stand on their own”. This myth of phone interviewing couldn’t be further from the truth. Keep in mind that you’re primarily being interviewed for how well you make it through the phone interview – not necessarily how good you are as a potential candidate.

If you can’t navigate the dangerous waters of a phone interview, forget about ever getting a job offer – since you’ll not even make it to the face-to-face stage.

Raise Your Chance of Winning the Phone Interview

If you’d like to learn more about how to win in a phone interview, download for FREE the most popular chapter, “Winning the Phone Interview”,  of our Job Search Workbook, “This Is NOT the Position I Accepted”.

Barry

Can You Be Fired From Your Job Over On-Line Comments?

I was reading an interesting blog post, titled “You Can Lose Your Job Over Blog Comments, Too” by a well-known author, Daniel Scocco, who writes about blogging on his DailyBloggingTips.com site. Below is partial reprint of the article:

In the past we have seen people losing their jobs for bad mouthing their companies on Twitter and on blog posts. It turns out that the same can happen with blog comments, even if you are not the one writing the comments!

Confusing? Well, here is what happened. Around one month ago Skype hired Madhu Yarlagadda, a former Yahoo! employee, to be the new Chief Development Officer. Once the news got out, TechCrunch wrote a post reporting the news.

Once the post was a live a bunch of people started leaving comments criticizing and openly insulting Madhu Yarlagadda. These were presumably people who had worked with or for him in the past, and they were claiming he was “dishonest,” “political” and things like that. You’ll still find some of the comments on the post, but the heaviest ones were deleted by TechCrunch, since Madhu threatened to take legal action.

Long story short, the thing blew out of proportions, and as the NY Times reported today, “the comments caught the attention of Skype executives who became concerned about their new hire, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.”

The result? Madhu left the company just one month after joining.

The takeaway message? I am guessing there are many. For one, people are reading blogs, including the comments! Another one would be: be careful with what you put on the Internet.

Here are my comments on this blog post:

As an executive recruiter, I don’t see a lot of this public bashing going on (yet). I do perceive that the increasing ability for individuals to communicate through social media will increase “haters” comments. However, most people will only post “hater” comments when they’ve been mistreated, abused, and wronged.

Imagine all those employees out there who’ve been mistreated, abused, wronged, stomped on, screwed over, back-stabbed, lied to, and humiliated by former bosses. Imagine the ability of these folks to go on-line and vent – just like in this case.

I’m a firm believer of “what goes around – comes around”. You mistreat people – it will come back to bite you.

Here’s a good example: I’m a high school basketball coach. Our former varsity coach left to go to another school. Before he left, he gave an “unfavorable” comment in a published interview about our parents, administration, and players. Some of our parents and players also felt he had wronged them over time.

When the local paper published their announcement of his new position, parents commented on the on-line version of the article – it was a nasty, drag through the mud, public dogfight. The varsity coach almost lost his new job. At a minimum, he goes into this new job with a huge cloud over his head and is now under the microscope from parents, school administration, and players. His reputation is damaged and those “comments” are indexed forever on-line. Probably not the way anyone would like to start a new job.

Moral of the story – be careful how you treat others. “What goes around – truly does come around.” And with the rising trend of people engaging in social media, including blog reading, you run the danger of having your “mistakes” come back and bite you – or at the very least – haunt you!

Are you at risk in your job search of negative comments and information following you around?

Is your reputation being damaged without your knowledge?

Have you done something to encourage people to post angry and negative comments about yourself?

Did you know that more and more employers are checking out your on-line reputation before hiring you?

When was the last time you conducted a check-up on your on-line reputation for your job search?

Barry

P.S. Conducting an assessment of your job search preparation might help to highlight potentially damaging or negative information that could impact your job search. Click here to take our Job Search Self-Assessment yet?

Job Search Success: Can Targeting Make a Difference?

Don’t even think about trying this technique unless you’re prepared for an employer to offer you a job.

I was speaking with a client a few days ago and he told me a story about a candidate he had just hired for a sales position. She had lost her job at a company who was not a direct competitor, but was providing services at a different distribution level in a tangential industry. (I amaze myself sometimes with my ambiguity).

She had sent her resume to the CEO requesting an interview. He blew her off – wrong skill set – wrong industry – wrong level in the distribution/supply chain. And to top it off – he didn’t have a current opening.

She was persistent. She began an aggressive campaign of sending him letters detailing why he needed to hire her in his sales department.

She had conducted extensive research on the company, talked with their suppliers, talked with their customers, and found people within the company (using LinkedIn of course).

She described in “precise” detail the problems she perceived, the steps that needed to be taken, and where she could help to resolve those problems.

Over the course of a few interviews, she became more and more specific about how she could make a difference – through fact-finding in the interviewing, she collected great information.

The company was still undecided (hard to believe). Finally, she sealed the deal by preparing a plan of action of what she would do in her first 90 days. She convinced the company to allow her to present her plan at a meeting. Upon hearing exactly how she would translate her prior experience into actionable steps in this new company, they hired her.

That’s how targeted job search works.

What’s the alternative? The alternative is the shotgun scatter method to job search used by many job seekers. Under the shotgun scatter model, you send out hundreds of standard cover letters and resumes to every company that remotely includes a keyword of interest in their ads. 99.99% of these end up in the trash can. You just wasted 20 hours of your week responding to job ads for which you had no chance of ever making it to the stage of an interview.

Wouldn’t your time be spent more productively targeting jobs, opportunities, and companies – rather than wasting time on the shotgun scatter model of job search?

Discover if you’re job search is effective by downloading our FREE Job Search Plan Self-Assessment. Discover if you’ve got all the elements in place to target the perfect job.

Barry

Job Search Booster Shot – Is LinkedIn Working for You?

A lot of candidates have given up on LinkedIn.

I probably speak with 20-30 executive candidates a week who’ve been out of work over a year. When I ask about their thoughts of using LinkedIn to find a job – I can almost hear the frowns and sour expressions over the phone.

Have you given up?

Are you getting job leads and referrals through LinkedIn?

If you are getting an adequate level of job leads and referrals – STOP now – No need to read further.

If on the other hand – you’re not getting enough job leads and referrals, let’s discuss how you can give a “booster shot” to your use of LinkedIn as a powerful tool in your job search.

Before we delve deeper into this amazing tool – I would like to suggest you download our FREE LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment. Thousands of candidates have taken the LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment and have dramatically improved their chances of being identified in a search.

LinkedIn Job Search Metrics

Let’s define some metrics related to your LinkedIn activities. In surveys and informal research (speaking to thousands of executive candidates over the last 12-18 months), here are some average metrics:

• 25 new connections (relevant to your search) per week
• 30-40 searches weekly of which your profile was included in the search
• 15-20 direct views of your profile weekly off of searches
• 5-7 direct inquiries per week from recruiters, hiring managers, or HR staff.
• 2-3 phone interviews per week based on recruiters/HR finding your resume on LinkedIn.

if you could obtain these metrics for investing 10-12 hours per week on LinkedIn, would the investment be a good use of your time?

Let’s tackle the first element on the assessment – your complete work history. I’m probably sounding like a broken record – you’ve heard me say it over and over again – LinkedIn is one of the greatest tools ever created for Job Search.

The problem is like most tools – you’ve got to practice using it, you’ve got to have the skill to use it properly, and it takes time to truly master how it can help your job search.

Let’s step through line-by-line the various elements on our LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment. Upon finishing this blog series, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to master LinkedIn to drive the type of job search metrics listed above.

LinkedIn Profile – Work History

Do you have your full work history described in detail under your profile? Does it match up with your resume. Many employers are now verifying that your LinkedIn Profile is consistent with your resume.

Have you benchmarked your career trajectory with other top talent in your industry – functional area? If you network with other people just like you – how do their profiles compare with your profile? Are there people within your functional area or industry that are considered top talent – what do their profiles look like?

When recruiters, hiring managers, or human resource staff are conducting searches on LinkedIn for people just like you – what words and phrases are they using? How would you find out? ASK THEM!

What is the most impressive element of your work history? What’s the one or two things a potential employer/recruiter might say “WOW” if they saw it on your profile? What gave you a “WOW” jolt when you looked at other comparable profiles? Do you highlight these “WOW” factors to stand out.

LinkedIn Profile – Job Lead Generation

Are you searching for everyone at your former companies that are either currently employed at that company or are alumni of the company? This is a group that would be more than willing to help you. You’re part of their village. You’re one of the clan. When learning of your alumni status, most people would go out of their way to help you. Are you searching their connections for leads/connections to potential hiring managers, recruiters, or HR staff?

Are you elaborating upon your background by creating blog posts, Slideshare presentations, and box.net documents? Have you added video and audio elements to your profile to expand upon your work history? Are you sharing this additional content. You should be thinking content marketing and distribution to grab the attention of potential hiring managers, recruiters and HR staff? Are any of your peers using  content to improve their exposure and visibility?

When you hear of an job opportunity, do you search your extensive network on LinkedIn to see if someone is connected that might help you. If you’ve focused your efforts on connecting with appropriate job search contacts, after a year I would think your network should be in the 1,500-2,000 contact range with a potential reach in the 250,000 contact range through 2nd level contacts.

LinkedIn Profile – Optimizing for Searches

The final step in leveraging your LinkedIn profile is to optimize it so that you can be “found high in the search results”. My partner, Brad Remillard, just completed a webinar on this topic. You can still buy the presentation and slide deck. It doesn’t do you any good if you come up in  a search results on page 14 or 15.

Is your profile embedded in the right places with the right keywords so that when hiring managers, recruiters, and HR staff are conducting searches – you pop up in the first few pages of search results. If you’re profile is not optimized for search on LinkedIn, you’re probably never going to be called or contacted since most individuals in the hiring profession will not bother to view search results 9 pages deep.

A quick and dirty method to determine if your profile is optimized for search is to look at the ratio between total searches done in which your profile appears compared to the total number of direct profile views. If this ratio is less than 50%, your profile is probably not effectively optimized.

In our next blog post, we’ll focus on how to properly convey your accomplishments and achievements in your LinkedIn Profile.

Barry Deutsch

P.S. Don’t forget to download the LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment so that you can determine your starting point and what is needed to improve your profile so that you stand out to hiring managers, recruiters, and HR staff.

How Can You Find the Best Job Search Content?

Who are your favorite bloggers that you read regularly to discover how to improve your job search?

Oh wait – let’s take a giant step backwards before we try to answer that question.

Are you searching, reading, devouring the content about effective job search put out by some extraordinary individuals who offer tons of golden nuggets in every post?

Could you rattle off the top ten bloggers on job search who are at the top of their profession? Who are the most respected on the Internet for publishing how-to articles, helpful hints, case studies, and step-by-step tactics to improve your job search?

You might respond back by saying “Barry – I just don’t have the time to search these blogs, follow the various authors, and digest all the information I can on a daily basis – it borders on overwhelming.”

If you’re that person – we have a solution for you.

We’ve created a site that aggregates ALL THE TOP BLOGGERS on job search in one place. No longer do you need to type various search strings into Google, try to remember which blogs you visited, and how to stay current on best practices.

This resource – our IMPACT Hiring Solutions FREE Job Search Resources Blog –  pulls the best bloggers into one place, allows you to subscribe by RSS or email, features reviews by Brad and I, and incorporates articles/links from our various job search archives and libraries.

Take a look – subscribe by RSS – and never worry again about being up-to-date on the latest best practices and trends in conducting an effective job search.

The site is http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/freesearchjobresources

Barry

P.S. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Discussion Group where we discuss many of the best practice topics related to conducting an effective job search.

Job Search Firestorm of Controversy

As many of our loyal readers know – I’m not shy about vocalizing (can you do that on a blog?) my thoughts related to job search.

In fact, I’m probably one of the more (along with my partner Brad Remillard) controversial figures in job search blogging. Brad and I give “straight talk” (better known as ‘”tough love” by the girls on my high school basketball team) about why most job seekers conduct ineffective job hunts and why it takes so darn long to find a job.

We’re also two of the most prolific publishers of FREE and inexpensive job search content on the Internet. If you can’t find the answer to your job search question in our extensive library and archives, then it probably doesn’t exist.

We can make this bold statement since we’ve got the credentials to back it up through real experience of over 250,000 candidate interviews, over 1,000 search assignments, training over 5,000 recruiters, and 30,000 hiring executives and managers over the last 30 years.

Now to the real purpose of this blog post – why have I just generated a firestorm of controversy surrounding one of our most recent blog posts?

I put forth the idea in my last blog post that most candidates are NOT effectively using all the FREE job search tools that LinkedIn provides – and as a result – their job search is ineffective and taking far too long.

It’s not the only reason your job search is ineffective (there are hundreds of reasons), but it is a significant reason.

Oh my! You’d think I had just refuted a major law of universal physics.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many candidates weigh in with their opinions.

We can divide the opinions by those writing comments into two main camps:

Group 1: You’re right – I’m ineffective and need to get my act together to learn how to more use LinkedIn to improve my job search

Group 2: I already know everything there is to know in how to use LinkedIn and it’s useless. Being on LinkedIn has not helped my job search and I cannot see any value spending more time on LinkedIn.

To the first group, I applaud you for trying to learn everything you can that might help you in your job search. There are literally hundreds – perhaps even thousands of things you can be doing in your job search to make it more effective.

In coaching high school basketball, we have a saying “It’s the little things that make a difference”. Success doesn’t come from huge or amazing changes, it comes from all the little things someone does that their peers are not willing to do, such as diving on the floor for loose balls, boxing out, saving a ball from going out of bounds, sprinting back on defense (interesting parallel to job search).

Al Pacino, in his role as the Coach in “Any Given Sunday” talks about the success that comes from doing the little things in his locker room talk about “inches’. Again, interesting parallel – metaphor – for job search. The Coach talks about the “inches” (read: opportunities) that are all around us – yet most never reach for the extra inch. The inference is that unless you reach for the extra inch – success becomes elusive.

To the second group, I would say shame on you for thinking you’ve cornered the market on how to leverage LinkedIn. There is such a wealth of knowledge to be gained from reading books on LinkedIn, testing different ideas, experimenting with the tools, checking out how others do it, reading the blogs dedicated to LinkedIn, or taking one of the myriad of courses/classes/webinars on leveraging LinkedIn.

Can someone answer this question:

Why do most candidates not take advantage of the wealth of information, tools, resources, and techniques to improve their job search?

Is the reason most candidates don’t know what information, tools, resources, and techniques are available?

Or maybe the reason is that most candidates just don’t want to grab those extra “inches” that are everywhere around us.

Here are two examples from our own library/archive and resources:

How many of our readers have downloaded our FREE LinkedIn Profile Self-Assessment Tool to improve their chances of being picked by a recruiter or HR manager?

How many of our readers signed up for the webinar my partner, Brad Remillard, just taught on how to use SEO techniques on your LinkedIn Profile to improve where you appear in a search of candidates by hiring managers, recruiters, and HR professionals?

Why do you think most candidates do not take advantage of the myriad of resources available to help improve their job search?

Barry