communication

If you are looking for a job, and even if you’re not, it’s really, really important to have a very professional LinkedIn profile. At least twice a week in my own personal practice, which is placing IT salespeople, sales managers and VPs, I have at least two candidates get eliminated because of their poor LinkedIn profile. So, here are some pointers:

• Make sure your picture is a professional one. Pictures of you with your kids, your cat, your car, the latest fish you caught, bumming around on the beach are NOT professional. Pictures taken with your iPhone, or ones that are out of focus, blurry or with bad light will help you. Pictures taken with your Skype camera that make your head looked like an egg aren’t good either. P-R-O-F-E-S-S-I-O-N-A-L!! And by the way, if you don’t have a picture employers will think you are either very, very, very old or very lazy. They ask, “what’s wrong with this guy or gal that they don’t have a picture?”
• Make sure that the content of the jobs you had is consistent with your resume. 40% of the time… Yeah you read it right, 40% of the time people’s LinkedIn profile do not agree with their resume. You’re sitting there thinking “that’s stupid” and you are absolutely correct. It is first class stupid. Please don’t be stupid. Fix the damn thing.
• Quit with the 555 endorsements. Nobody cares about your endorsements. They care about what you have done and how well you have done it.
• As with your resume, make sure it is very, very, very clear what And how well you performed at each one. I can’t tell you the number of resumes and profiles I review where the candidate doesn’t even make it clear what the companies he or she has worked for do. It’s as though they think the whole world knows their company. There are 7.1 million businesses in the United States and 98% of them are known to very few people.

Don’t discount or pooh-pooh your LinkedIn profile. More and more employers are using the profiles to preview candidates. Make sure your profile is perfect.

At least three or four times a week in my own, personal practice of placing IT sales professionals and managers, I run into the problem of the hiring authority reviewing my candidate’s linkedin profile and eliminating my candidate, before they even interview them, because the candidate does not have a picture on the profile or the picture is unfocused, very unprofessional or just downright lousy.

When are job candidates going to catch on that no picture on their LinkedIn profile tells the perspective employer that they are either so embarrassed at their looks or they just don’t want to go to the trouble of having an appropriate picture taken and posting it to the profile. Either way, it’s not good for the candidate. Pictures of you with your dog, your cat, your pet snake, your parakeet, the last big fish you caught, your buddies in the bar ( where they can’t tell which one is you), on the golf course, at a restaurant, at a Cowboys game, at your wedding, at your funeral are not only in poor taste, but downright stupid. Anything other than a professional business picture is going to hurt your chances of getting an interview.

Remember, hiring authorities are looking for just as many reasons not to interview candidates as they are looking for reasons to interview candidates. When a person posts their picture on there profile they have to ask themselves, “How might I be judged by this picture?”Anything the least bit less-than-perfect will get a person eliminated.

…i’m often criticized for my fat finger typing and apparent abhorrent spelling…it is OK when you own the company,..

IT ISN’T OK ON YOUR RESUME..make sure you have your resume proofed and read by a few folks…it isn’t fair, but employers will often eliminate a candidate because of poor grammar and spelling mistakes..

Just this week we had a candidate for an administrative manager position eliminated by one of our clients because her resume was written so poorly… poor grammar, sentences that weren’t, and some glaring spelling errors.

Amazingly enough, she got mad at our client. She said she’d been using the resume for a month and nobody had complained about it. I can’t imagine why she was complaining, but she was. She still didn’t get hired.

And you can’t say, “Well tony beshara doesn’t spell very well either”… tony beshara has a good job that he loves…not a good excuse..

p.s. don’t write your resume late at night when you are tired and get it proofed by many people

we hear this almost daily…sometimes even about oursleves…people send a resume…have an interview..or even two…then don’t hear from the employer or interviewing authority…..ever…not even a “buzz off”…”you suck”…”wouldn’t hire you if you were the last candidate on earth”…nothing…nada…even after they say, “we’ll be in touch”…(i have had employers tell my candidates that they were going to call them with a job offer, then never do it)

we shouldn’t excuse rude behavior, but your getting mad or upset about this kind of treatment simply won’t help you get  a job…

it is almost impossible for hiring or interviewing authorities to get back to every candidate whose resume they review or they interview…simply impossible

lesson: pray for them…they are covered up with work..maybe they are rude…maybe even mean…maybe insensative…we could go on and on…but it won’t do any good… they have tons of candidates to choose from and to speak with…and besides, they are running a business too

they are, as Teilhard de Chardin stated, “spiritual beings acting human”…forgive and dismiss …spend your energy finding another interview

will social networks help get you a job???…too early to tell

it is the rage..plaxo, linkedin, facebook…and now twitter??? ..folks publishing books on how these things will find you a job…oh, brother..

i’m old enough to remember when the fax machine was gonna revolutionize the world..(i placed a sale guy with burroughs one time who was  hire to sell fax machines…for $100,000 a machine…)

and the world was gonna go “paperless” with the advent of the internet…and we use more paper than we ever have..

hey, look..i’m in  the trenches every day helpng people find jobs..one person at a time..i really don’t have time to care if you twitter me that you have to go to the bathroom…and neither do our clients or your future employer..in fact, it may get quite annoying

but, if any of these things help you get face-to-face interviews…have at it..but don’t hold your breath and think that they are going to revolutionize your job search..or above all, make you a better candiadate..

one of these books about getting hired via the internet never even mentioned being interviewed or how to do it…

don’t be suprised if all these things go the way of the job boards…simply so much information it is overwhelming…

again, use this stuff if it helps you feel good or helps you get an interview…but don’t expect it to be the “answer”

interesting…one of my candidates invited me to join his connections on linkedin…i did..

his boss, also in my candidate’s connections, saw that my candidate added me…his boss confronted him as to why he would all of a sudden invite a well known recruiter into his connections…i.e…”you looking for a job?”

my candidate was a bit stunned…his boss had a point..

so, best think about who is in your connections..or maybe, when you add them..

i know things may not be going so well for you…in a lousy job..not making enough…or out of work for a long time…having to file bankruptcy…can’t even get good interviews…

along with being grateful, praying and listening to positive stuff try doing something for someone less fortunate than you…and yes, there is someone…probably lots of “someones” who are less fortunate than you…

find ’em…do something for them..completely outside of yourself..listen, really listen to their problems and, for a moment, forget your own..

volunteer …and if you don’t think you have time for that..you really do and you know it…you can go to the soup kitchen and feed the hungry one hour a week..

clean up the alley…there are thousands of things you can do…the more you do for those less fortunate, the more will come back to you in other ways

when the news sucks, like it does, and you are either out of work or anxiously looking for a job while you have one, it is easy to get down…some even get depressed

so many folks today have never had to look for a job or haven’t seen such a difficult job market..

the first thing to do is to take massive action toward looking for a new job…but one of the most important things you can do is to read motivational books, listen to motivational tapes and CD’s, pray, feed the spirit and stay around positive people..

the world is a negative place…blame adam and eve or anyone you wish, but the world is simply negative…there is much joy, beauty and awe, but life on this earth is plain old difficult…even in the best of times…we are born crying and childbirth is painful

we have to be constantly “overlaying” the negative…one of the downsides to “job search groups” is the principle of “confirmation bias”…we look for things to confirm our bias…so if we are sad and poor we look for others that are sad and poor, then justify our thoughts and feelings by saying, “see, everyone is sad and poor”..

so, constantly overlay the negative…your car radio should be loaded with tapes and CD’s…quit listening to the (bad) news.. be reading tons of positive books…be around positive, up beat people…stay motivated, emotionally, physically, spiritually and mentally…this takes a lot of work to do, but it really makes a difference