Still Struggling to Make LinkedIn Effective for You?

 
If you are, trust me when I say that you are not alone.

LinkedIn has been, and most likely will continue to be, an ineffective albeit "neat" Rolodex tool for most professionals. For awhile, it was the "thing" just to have an LI profile and to connect with all your colleagues past and former. Then it was the "thing" to join groups and find some like-minded souls. And now it seems to be the "thing" to turn LI into this career branding tool, where you are assessed based on the strength of your LinkedIn finesse.

But like so many of these "things," it all takes time to cultivate, learn, and sift through the hype and misinformation to get at what really matters.

(Nevertheless, if LinkedIn has its way, pretty soon careers will be launched or doomed all within the confines of its network.)

Here's the deal: LinkedIn is becoming increasingly more important not just during a job search but as part of your employee brand "ambassadorship." We network through it, we read up on one another, and we size each other up through it. (Maybe you don't...but many others do...that's the point.)  

So it is worth the effort to make sure you present well and are optimized on LinkedIn.

Despite all that, however, it doesn't mean you must become a LinkedIn guru or spend countless hours on it to make it effective for you. Instead, you need to understand a few things:

1. What your short-term and long-term career strategies are (yikes...I bet that scares many of you)
2. You need to stay in control of your branding (don't let your company write your LI profile for you or tell you what it must say outside of confidentiality info)
3. You don't have time to stay on top of it all, and that's OK

It's impossible in today's job market to be an expert at the modern-day job search. It doesn't matter what level you get to or how many years you have in. Things like LinkedIn, internal corporate hiring practices, and recruiting oddities all make for a job market "zoo" that seems to be in some constant state of flux.

Last year, my team and I realized that too many professionals were out there going it alone. So we decided to do something about it. We launched our concierge job search solutions that now include "crash courses." One of them is our LinkedIn crash course. It's designed for those who want to improve their effectiveness on LinkedIn, whether or not they are in job search mode, and who want something 1-1 and customized to them. So if that is you, check it out!    

--About Stephen----

Stephen Van Vreede is not your average IT/technical résumé writer. He provides career strategy and concierge job search solutions for senior (15+ years) (ITtechExec) and up-and-coming (NoddlePlace) (5-15 years) tech and technical operations leaders. Stephen and his team focus on building simplified, targeted, and certain career move campaigns, be it an external search or an internal promotion. He is co-author of UNcommon with career development leader Brian Tracy (out June 11, 2015). Contact Stephen directly at Stephen@ittechexec.com or send him an invite at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenvanvreede. To see whether Stephen and his team are a good fit for you, take their free (and anonymous) 1-minute compatibility quiz, Is the ITtechExec Approach a Good Match for You? Also, feel free to take his complimentary resume self-assessment quiz, How Certain Can You Be About Your Technical Resume? You might be surprised by what you find out!