Your Online Presence Must Be Professional

Networking is an ingrained habit, and it isn’t something that is easily put on paper. If you were asked to write an article called “How to Drive a Car,” you would most likely focus on safety and the rules of the road. But, if the reader had never been in the driver’s seat, that advice would not suffice. What would be needed is an article describing the actual hands-on-the-wheel process—a list of “to do’s” in numerical order, starting with “Get into the driver’s seat and put your hands on the wheel.”

While it is easy enough to write up a protocol for driving, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere on the road near the person who learned to drive in this manner. Similarly, if you are just getting out there to network, you’ll find that this is an activity with a mind of its own. You might crash and burn on an attempt or two. How it will fare for you depends on many outside factors, as well as a significant amount of determination and persistence on your part.

Networking should be a habit for you. It is my goal this month to get you as comfortable as possible with all the elements of your developing habit. Like driving a car, networking should become such a part of your life that you don’t even need to think about it. You may consciously put a campaign into motion when you need a job, but good networking is so much more than just a job seeker’s tool.

Develop Your Contact Database

Actually, I don’t like the word “networking.” I think it is one of the most overused words in articles of this sort. It gets thrown at you by every person you ask for advice during a job search. But there is no getting around the fact that it’s the single most important activity for any job seeker. Done right, networking means the difference between a year-long job search and one that produces job offers in a month or two.

For years, I’ve been a proponent of the hands-on job search instead of focusing only on LinkedIn or some job search engine. I’m still an advocate. Rather than hiding behind a computer screen, get out there, talk to others about their roles and their own personal career transitions, and learn from other people’s experiences.

Developing a strong LinkedIn presence can and should be a part of your overall job-seeking plan, but it isn’t being done to prevent you from going out and meeting people in the real—not digital—world. You will use LinkedIn to help optimize your chances of being “found” by those who, like me, use the LinkedIn pages in developing the traction that fills positions.

Degrees of Separation

As you probably know, the philosophy at work behind LinkedIn is that everyone is connected via just a few degrees of separation. Each one of your contacts has their own contacts that you can tap into via LinkedIn, allowing you to advance your career by transforming those online leads into assets. That’s the key. What may begin as an internet contacts list should end up benefiting you in a very real way. Someone you’d love to meet, who could prove very important in your job hunt, is just one or two degrees away from you, connected to people you already know. The first step, if you want to get the most out of other people’s connections, is to ensure that your connections are meaningful.

The best connections are with people you know well, people who can provide a positive reference about you when they receive a connection request. It isn’t the total number of connections you show on your LinkedIn profile that advances your job search, it’s the quality of those connections. Once you are connected to work mates and close friends, branch out from there—but do it methodically.

The overriding rule of the LinkedIn (LI) world is that both parties should sense a kind of real connection. If you’ve met, even briefly, or share a common interest that you can call upon in a well-written introduction, it’s fine to approach that person for a connection. Perhaps you’ve noticed that some folks just blindly send LI invitations out in bulk. That’s just sad. I accept them because I’m a headhunter, but I’d far prefer to receive a note as well along with 2-3 lines about the connection or common interests we share. All I want to see is a statement that doesn’t have the “bulk” feel, something about our ties or what I’ve been interested in.

When you approach, don’t use the site’s boilerplate “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” as many people consider that spam. Instead, send a personal note in the field that LinkedIn offers you for this purpose.

Use social media Like a Headhunter

You may have just 300 people on your LinkedIn roster, but that gives you access to many more who are still two degrees of separation away from you. And by the way that LinkedIn works, those second degree contacts are still available for you to view and write. Those 300 contacts of yours might yield access to more than 300,000 connections!

For a recruiter like me it’s a great resource, but an employer would be crazy to pay me a recruiter’s fee if all I did was search an internet site. I like LinkedIn because it allows me to ask those “Who do you know?” questions that headhunters are known for. You, the job seeker, can use the site in the exact same way, with people who will share their experiences in a career transition, or by seeking information on the type of job of interest. Did you find an interesting person with similar experience who is in an ideal job? Chances are, if approached politely, you may have the opportunity to meet by phone and get a few “How did you pull it off?” questions answered. People don’t mind talking about themselves a bit, if you don’t overstay your welcome. Keep communications short and sweet until you see how they go.

Just as in real-world networking, the focus of a contact at LinkedIn is to find mutual areas of interest, not to overtly seek job leads. Leads will come once you start growing your field of contacts, so do not ask your LI contacts “Do you have any openings?” right out of the chute. It’s Rule #1 for in-person networking and for internet networking as well. . . you are on a search for information and the experiences of others. Do not go around “networking” by asking people if they have open positions—that’s the kiss of death. If there's an opening, you'll hear about it.

Help the Search Engines

When you set up your profile, do so in a way that increases your likelihood of being found. Set up your public profile on LinkedIn or other social media so that it is available to someone who comes across it via a search engine, and use your real name for the public-profile URL on LinkedIn. I think it’s a big mistake to (as some are doing) put up only an initial for the last name. Talk about a short-cut to fewer quality contacts!

Avoid texting abbreviations in your LinkedIn profile, and write in your best “business English.” While many profiles simply list the current job affiliation, it is far better to show all your relevant prior work experiences (you can leave out that McDonalds stint during high school). A wider world of networking opportunities will arise when you list each of the locations at which you’ve worked or trained professionally, with enough detail on the specifics so that viewers can sense what you were doing in that job.

Job Seeker Success

LinkedIn differs from social networking sites where considerable damage can be done to one’s career if you aren’t careful. Photos of beer bongs and bachelorette parties can turn off hiring managers. Keep an eye open for stuff you’ve posted elsewhere and ensure you have a cohesive, professional online presence.

But will LinkedIn or any internet networking land you a job? I can’t promise you that, but I can tell you without a doubt that it will introduce you to more hiring managers and recruiters. I wouldn’t have said this a few years ago, but it is possible to find fertile job-seeking turf on the internet after all. Just don’t let the ‘net get out of balance with real, live networking!

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David G. Jensen
Founder and Managing Director of CTI Executive Search
davejensen@careertrax.com
928-274-2266
www.careertrax.com
 
David Jensen is the founder and managing director of CTI Executive Search, a unit of CareerTrax Inc, a leading search firm working in the life sciences. Previously, he had been a managing director at Kincannon & Reed, a 30-year retained executive search firm where his company, CareerTrax, had been a contractor. In 1985, Jensen founded and was CEO at Search Masters International (SMI), a top executive search practice working with biotechnology companies, which was sold in 2001 to a $4.4B human resources service firm. Prior to 1985, Jensen had established a life sciences practice for Govig and Associates (Phoenix, AZ).