Can A New Grad's LinkedIn Profile Help His Job Search?

Hello Liz,

I am a strategic communication student graduating in May from the University of
Michigan. As an entry-level job seeker, I want to ask some questions
about LinkedIn profiles.

Is it boring to include all job history and detail? What suggestions do you have
for using your LinkedIn profile as a resume supplement rather than duplicate?

Thank you for all your advice!

Best regards,
Paul Smith


NOTE FROM LIZ:-----------------------------------------------

Dear Paul,

Congratulations on your upcoming graduation! That is exciting. Hats off to you!
The first thing I'd tell you to do vis-a-vis your LinkedIn profile is to make
your "headline" (the line just under your name) part of your job-search message.
So, your LinkedIn "headline" might say

Paul Smith
May '09 Grad and Job Seeker in Communications

You get 120 characters including spaces for that "headline" field, so you want
to make sure to say that you're job-hunting! If you know the area of focus for
your job search (for instance, Chicagoland) you can throw that in there,
especially if your Location on LinkedIn is Ann Arbor right now. Then you could say
something like

Paul Smith
5/09 New Grad in Communications, ISO Entry-Level Job in Chicago

Those search terms will help you pop to the top of an employer's or headhunter's
search for candidates. The other thing that will help you pop to the top is
Endorsements a/k/a Recommendations on LinkedIn. If your professors, Career
Placement staff, and other working adults who know you can recommend you, that
will be wonderful!

You can definitely write your LinkedIn profile in a more conversational tone
than most of us use on our resumes. That won't be boring at all. So, as you
describe one of your jobs during school, you don't have to use bullets, you can
just say "I helped a local dairy create a unified voice for its employee
communication materials as a Senior Project. I did it by interviewing employees,
interviewing the owners to understand the firm's goals better, and accompanying
the milk-truck drivers on their delivery rounds to get a feel for the culture."
You can write the way you'd speak to a friend.

The last thing I'd say about your LI profile in your job search is that more
connections will be a good thing for you. Feel free to connect to me, if you
like, at liz@asklizryan.com -- and best of luck in your job search!

Liz

Top Five Resume Problems

Dear friends,

I write a lot of resumes. I have been writing my fingers to the bone lately
because a lot of people are not happy with their resumes. I read even more resumes than I write, in a resume-screening capacity and on campus and in other settings. Here are the top five resume problems I see:

1) Lots of resumes are really, really boring. You could fall asleep reading
them. A boring resume doesn't make the reader want to meet the resume's owner.
We can add more personality and life to our resumes.

2) Most resumes are too "list-y." Lists are resume-killers. The only kind of
list that makes sense for me in a resume is a list of certifications, or
programming languages or technical tools. Vague, say-nothing lists like "I'm
experienced in Sales, Marketing and Operations" are worse than a waste of space.
Leave them out.

3) Tons of resumes take too long to say what they want to say. "I was
instrumental in moving toward the establishment of a team of people tasked with
the job of...." is already way too long. We can say instead "Our team launched
the X-17 product on time; we generated $70M in sales the first year."

4) Resumes tend to be non-specific in a frustrating way. "I was an internal
champion for change" is not helpful. What kind of change? We can say "I
campaigned for six months to get our leaders excited about telework, and now
we've got 60 people working from home around the U.S." Got it!

5) Zillions of resumes list tasks and duties rather than accomplishments.
"Prepared General Ledger reports" does not belong on your resume unless you were
in a job where no one would expect you to have prepared those reports, and maybe
not even then. Don't use precious resume real estate to tell what your job title
already implies.

If you'd like my help with your resume, let me know - there's more info on that
here.

Thanks! Cheers -- Liz

Second-Interview Seriousness?

Dear Liz,

I am a weary job-seeker and I've been on more interviews than I care to remember
in my current job search. Last week, I had what seemed like a very promising
first interview for a Records Coordinator position in a bank. I have done this
type of work before. Last night, I got an email message from them inviting me
back for a second interview. I am sick of wasting time on jobs that don't pan
out and I'd like to ask them for them proof of seriousness before driving
another 40 miles for the second interview. How can I do that?

Thanks,

Todd


--------- LIZ REPLIES:--------------------------------------

Dear Todd,

You can establish that the salary will meet your needs, before schlepping back
to the bank again. You can call the person who sent you the second-interview
request, and say "Hi Jane, thanks for your email message. I'm excited at the
prospect of meeting more of your colleagues, but I'd hate for any of us to waste
our time, so let's make sure we're in synch on the compensation scheme before we
schedule that." Jane is not likely to tell you the salary range for the
position. She'll ask you to 'go first,' so you'll need to have a target salary
or range in mind.

You can use www.Payscale.com to zero in on a range for this Records Coordinator
job. You might say "I'm focusing on jobs in the mid-forties." If Jane doesn't
fall off her chair in a dead faint or slam the phone down on the cradle you're
probably in good shape. Apart from checking out the salary, there's not too much
we can do to establish a prospective employer's seriousness about us before
committing to a second (or third, or fourth) interview - the invitation for the
second interview is, of course, a statement of the employer's seriousness all by
itself. :-)

If you get Jane live on the phone you can ask her "What's the timeframe for
filling this position?" and "What does the selection process look like,
following the second interviews?"

At the end of the day, the only real leverage a job-seeker has is the existence
of other offers. If you got to the bank for that second interview and said
(either based on fact or a jolt of moxie you got somehow - let's say, by sipping
a Jamba Juice on your way to the interview) "I have some irons in the fire that
could take me off the job market by this weekend, so I want to mention that if
there's a serious interest in having me join the bank, we should act quickly"
the bank folks would be likely to pay attention to that. (Or call your bluff, of
course.)

Best -- Liz

Ask Liz: Confused About Job References

Dear Liz,

What is the story with job references? How many do I need, and how recent must they be? Do they all have to be past bosses? Thanks, Craig

Dear Craig,

You'll need at least three references per 'shift,' so if you expect to have several job opportunities going at once, you may want to accumulate six or eight reference-givers for your list. That way, you won't burn out the same three people with calls and email messages.

The best references are accessible, credible and knowledgeable about you. That means that the lofty CEO of your last company might not be a great choice, if he spends ninety percent of his time in the Caribbean and away from phones and email. The reference-giver should be credible; that means your slacker friends from the landscaping firm might not be great choices, either. You need someone who can speak knowledgeably about you. I have made reference-checking calls in the past and had the reference-giver ask "Now, let's see, Mandy...blonde girl? Curly hair?" That's not good.

Because it's not so easy to instantly assemble six or eight references on the spot, reference-cultivation is a career-long exercise. Leave no stone unturned when it comes to getting your references ready to go. A bad reference - that means not just a negative report, but an unavailable reference, or one whose contact info has changed since you checked in last, or one who doesn't quite remember you - can tank your opportunity for a job, so it pays to take this piece of the puzzle seriously.

Don't provide personal references unless the employer asks you to. If you're strapped for work-related references, go back in time, or look to former co-workers, vendors and customers. You can have references from fifteen years ago on your list (along with more recent ones; it wouldn't be great to have your most recent reference a person who worked with you five or six years ago). Your references don't have to be supervisors. At least one boss is imperative, and two or three are even better, if they're all card-carrying members of your fan club.

If you're in doubt at all about that last point, get someone to call and check references for you. I have been appalled more than once by a left-handed compliment given by a trusted reference ("Well, Joe is a great guy - really great guy, I love him like a brother - but he's not all that business-savvy.") It is unethical to agree to be a reference for a person and not to tell the person that you intend to slime him, but folks do it anyway, so you don't want to take chances.

Best -- Liz

"I" in your resume Summary?

Hi Liz,

I was trained to train others not to use "I" in their summary statements (purely
for the purpose of brevity). However, I see in your spruce-up you did just
that. Can you say a bit about your perspective on switching to "I"?

Thanks,

Chris

NOTE FROM LIZ:

Hi Chris!

I like the first person Summary style because it personalizes a resume. I've
always hated the Summary format "A results-oriented professional..." (whatever
the actual words) because it's neither first nor third person exactly - it's a
kind of anonymous subject-less weird military/industrial jargon-y yuckspeak. I'm
fine with the third person, a la "Jane is a research-happy Marketer who..." but
as soon as I write something like that, I think, "Isn't it arch to write about
ourselves in the third person, in general? When, in life, would we ever do
that?"

We typically write about ourselves in the third person in only one place that I
know of, and that's a professional bio, because those are meant for publication.
There's no me-to-you correspondence involved. We read the actors' bios in
Playbill and we don't expect a personal greeting from the actors, but when we're
sending a resume from one person to another, why the formality?

There's a kind of distance that comes from writing about ourselves as though we
aren't speaking to the reader directly, and for me, that distance is
off-putting. A lot of people commented on the third-person thing when Roland
Burris recently joined the Senate, because Burris reportedly speaks about
himself in the third person all the time. If you hear me do that, please knock
me over and kick me.

Compare these two mini-Summaries:

A savvy Marketing Research professional with background in healthcare, finance
and apparel.

I'm a Market Researcher who's fascinated by the study of why people buy and why
they don't.

We can achieve a Summary of whatever length we want with or without "I," so
brevity shouldn't be a factor. Cheers! Liz

The Human-Voiced Resume

Dear friends,

Here's a Summary Spruce-Up for the benefit of our members who are in resume-writing mode:

OLD SUMMARY

Seasoned Human Resources Manager with twenty years of progressively more responsible positions in Compensation, Benefits, HRIS, Employee Relations, Succession Planning and Organizational Development. Strategic Business Partner perspective and focus on bottom-line productivity enhancement. Ability to work with all functions and levels of associate.

NEW SUMMARY

I started out as a Labor Relations rep before taking on a Plant HR Manager job and ultimately running HR for a $2B manufacturer of electronic controls. I'm equally at home creating an HR strategic plan and budget or untangling thorny performance and interpersonal issues in real time on the shop floor. My view is that carefully-selected employees, given tough goals in transparent and well-led organizations, will beat their targets every time. I'm seeking a new HR challenge with an organization whose leaders rely on the connection between top-notch 'people' practices and competitive success.

=====
Cheers! Liz