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Linking Up with LinkedIn Career Advice RSS Feed

Griffin Hammond close up
The most common mistake made by job seekers in today's fiercely competitive market is the failure to properly network and market yourself. Just like big companies use marketing to sell products or services, today's job seekers should heavily market themselves and use technology to their advantage. Griffin Hammond is a Hearltand alum who launched State Farm into social media.  He now works for a Google-operated Youtube channel teaching video producers how to make their content more appealing and he recently presented a great seminar called Linking Up with LinkedIn in which he provided some great reasons why you should have a LinkedIn profile and how you can maximize the benefits.

Why you need a LinkedIn profile:

Hammond told nearly 40 people in attendance at our Alumni-Career Services seminar, that LinkedIn is a nine year-old website for professional networking, and the third most poular social network in the U.S. with 28 million unique visitors per month.  With 150 million registered users worldwide, two new users sign up every second.

Why it's valuable for you:

  • SEP (search engine optimizaation)
  • Simply creating a profile will elevate positive information about yourself to the top of search results.
  • Career Potential
  • 82 of the Fortune 100 companies use LinkedIn for recruiting.  Do you want to be in their search pool?
  • Network of Connections
  • The average LinkedIn user has 9,000 second-degree connections at 6,000 companies. LinkedIn opens up a lot of opportunities for connecting.

 

Profile Tips:

Explain your experience clearly and concisely. You never know who might read your profile and why, so it should make sense to those outside your industry.
Recruiters spend six seconds making a "fit-or-no-fit" decision about each resume. They'll likely scan your name, current and previous jobs, and education. Is that profile information complete? Every word on your profile is searchable for recruiters. Are you using the same language they will?

Communication on LinkedIn:

  • Recruiters post job on LinkedIn, and you can search through them.  Also, join groups where recruiters might be looking for ideal candidates.  You can learn about your industry through group conversations, and possibly discover new opportunities.
  • Turn in-person networking into LinkedIn connections. (send a friendly invitation message!)
  • You can message your connections on LinkedIn for free, but InMail (messages to people you don't know) costs $10 per message! So, you mght want to include external contact info on your profile.
  • Before you ask for a recommendation, have you considered writing one for someone?

Privacy on LinkedIn:

 You can control which profile information is available to the public, or for connections only.

  • You can limit who you receive InMail and invitations from, but would you want to?
  • LinkedIn provides "Who's Viewed Your Profile?"information to users.  In settings, you can adjust how you appear on these lists.


You can e-mail Griffin Hammond: hi@griffinhammond.com