You’re on LinkedIn, of
course. But do you use it? Do you connect with people regularly, do you worry
about your profile, is it part of your routine? Engagement with LinkedIn seems
to be part generational, part whether you’re marketing-oriented or not. Despite
LinkedIn’s penetration of the professional market, there are still a lot of
skeptics who don’t believe it will help them enough to warrant spending time on
it.
As a career advisor who works
with both senior professionals and those just starting in their careers, I
deliver workshops on finding your right career and how to change your career.
As I speak with job seekers at both ends of the spectrum, I’m continuously
surprised that so many people still don’t use LinkedIn effectively. In fact, I
find that many active candidates don’t even have a LinkedIn profile.
I’ve had job seekers range from
dismissive to downright hostile when I’ve strongly suggested that having and
even more importantly, building out a LinkedIn profile, is key to finding a
good job. Since I believe that LinkedIn is pretty much ground zero for
discovering your right career as well as for a specific job search, I decided
to confirm that recruiters and retained search firms agreed with me.
Why be on LinkedIn in the first place?
Michelle Kedem, a partner at search firm On-Ramps, said there are two reasons:
“First of all, if you want to be found by recruiters and have recruiters know
who you are, you should be on LinkedIn. The flip side of this is if you don’t
want to be an active job-seeker but want recruiters to know who you are, then
you need to be the seeker and not the sought-after, which is tougher, especially
if you have a full-time job.”
“The
second reason is that if someone tells me I should talk to (x person), the
first thing I’m going to do is look them up on LinkedIn. Using LinkedIn, I can
quickly figure out whether someone is worth speaking to, which saves me a lot
of time.”
Everyone interviewed
confirmed that LinkedIn was frequently recruiters’ first point of entry to a
candidate. What if a candidate could not be found on LinkedIn? Kathleen Yazbak,
a partner at executive search firm the Bridgespan Group, said “For senior folks
I’m assuming they have a strong network, cultivate it, and are seen as a leader
in their field. Without a LinkedIn profile, I’m not sure how they can say
this.”
Cindy Stamer, who’s responsible for
recruitment for Bloomberg’s Media Group, told me, “I use LinkedIn continuously
to locate and screen candidates for positions. In addition, outside of my
recruiter role, I find that I use LinkedIn more and more personally to connect
with people I meet or know already.”
When
I asked whether Bloomberg would consider a candidate without a LinkedIn
profile, Stamer commented, “Yes – as our priority is hiring top talent, the
candidate is ultimately more important than the LinkedIn profile. However, most
business professionals we seek for Bloomberg typically have a LinkedIn
profile.”
Laura Lashbrook Colby,
Division Director of staffing agency Beacon Hill Associates, says LinkedIn is
an integral part of how they do business. “LinkedIn isn’t considered a
requirement for temp positions, but for permanent searches we find candidates
through referrals (often a direct result of LinkedIn connections), advertising
responses (resumes sent to us directly through our website or an online
posting) and LinkedIn (our recruiters call passive job seekers to discuss a
specific role that could be a match based on experience).”
All the experts say there
are certain roles where not being on LinkedIn is a deal-breaker. Lashbrook
Colby says, “If we are staffing for a recruiting or sales/marketing/business
development role, then it is a big red flag if a candidate has either no
profile or a limited profile with a low number of connections.”
Kedem agrees: “For any job that has an
interpersonal component and/or is client-facing, a LinkedIn profile is a must.”
When might it not be a good idea to
have a LinkedIn profile? I frequently hear the concern from employed job
seekers that having a LinkedIn profile is an automatic tip-off to an employer
that you’re looking. Kedem’s advice on this is: “Everyone should have an
existing LinkedIn profile, but if you update it, especially if you’re connected
to co-workers, it will be noticed. My advice is to be thoughtful when you
create your profile—don’t tinker too much. Make all the substantive changes at
once so it’s not a tip-off. Adding connections is a different story—that shows
that you’re a good networker, which is a positive thing.”
Yazbak sums up her comments
about being on LinkedIn by noting that “I think it’s important… and more than
that, using LinkedIn to be strategic about expanding your network is just plain
smart.”
Allison
Cheston
http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/05/11/recruiters-say-avoid-linkedin-at-your-peril/http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/05/11/recruiters-say-avoid-linkedin-at-your-peril/
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