Why You Should Link Up with Linked In

Last week's post on networking made a passing mention of the importance of using social media for networking purposes, in particular Linked In. Since then I have happened on some useful slides about using Linked In (and Twitter) to develop professional contacts by a colleague at the University of Manchester, Helen Buzdugan  Duly inspired, what follows is an attempt to pass on some thoughts about the ways you can use Linked In to develop your own career network.  You may find it useful to open a Linked In account to follow some of the references, if you have not already done so.

While many careers advisers advocate the use of Linked In to students, repeated surveys show that student use and awareness of Linked In is at quite a low level.  This is a shame as Linked In - sometimes alluded to as "Facebook for suits" - is one of the key arenas that budding professionals can use to build up influential contacts.  The difference is that it lacks the frivolity and some of the less desirable aspects of Facebook as it centres on professional life.  It's all about the work you, not you the party animal.

Linked In does include job adverts which are filtered to match your Linked In profile, but much more subtle is the way that you can use it to find unadvertised opportunities and befriend new contacts in particular companies or industry sectors.

Finding People

Using the Linked In advanced search facility, you can look for people who are already in careers that interest you and approach them for advice, company or sector information or to request information interviews.  The Linked In Career Explorer facility allows you to check out profiles of other people who have been involved with the same colleges or companies as yourself so you have something in common straight away.

A bit more subtly still, you can look at people's past career profiles to see what route they took to get to where they are now, which can shed some useful light on the steps you could consider to get to a similar position yourself.

As per good networking practice, Linked In helps you tap in not just to your contacts but their contacts and their contacts' contacts, any of whom you can readily message on the system. An extra dimension is that people will look at your profile too, opening up at least the possibility of getting headhunted.

Searching For Companies

It's dead easy to find companies in a particular geographical area or of a particular kind.  Not all companies have a Linked In page of course and a tool like the Direct Marketing tool of Keynote is a more comprehensive way of producing company listings. But where Linked In scores is on the sheer amount of information you can access by viewing companies who have built a significant profile.

For example, looking at the BBC page straight away gives you details of their current vacancies, and the Insights section tells you of people who have made recent career moves into and out of the company. What astounded me was the fact that, even though I have made no great effort at extending my use of Linked In and have no special interest in broadcasting, their Careers section showed that I have 27 first or second level contacts within the Beeb, only two of whom I have ever met!

Joining Groups

For the would-be job applicant, there are two kinds of groups that can be worth investigating - regional and professional.  A very good example of the former is the Cumbrian link group, a meeting place for a large number of professionals and employers who engage in frequent discussions on local themes - a great way of finding out the key influencers and topical themes in the county.

If you are interested in finding teaching jobs in the UK, there is a Linked In professional group on exactly that theme. Observing and contributing to group discussions can be a great way of making contacts and getting yourself known.

Last of all...

Linked In isn't the only social network that is useful for developing your career.  Following the 'horses for courses motto', there may be others that will be more useful for specific career directions or companies. But Linked In has a very strong presence in the Business, Finance, Commerce and Law sectors to name just a few and as the lead professional network available online, is always worth checking before you look elsewhere.

University of Cumbria students who want to know more about Linked In will find information on the Blackboard Jobs&Careers tab.

Networking in a Nutshell

Two weeks ago (was it so long ago?)  I was delivering some sessions on networking as part of our Careers Fair in Carlisle.

The feedback we got on the sessions was pretty good, so here's a very brief summary of the key points that were covered:

• To give yourself a start, prepare a stock phrase you can use to introduce yourself - ideally something memorable.
• For formal events and one-off opportunities, consider an elevator pitch
• Prepare a list of key questions you want to get answers to.
• Think how you will end a contact and whether/how you will follow it up.
• Use a mind map to help you identify useful people you already know.
• People you meet will know other people who might be able to help.
• Arrange information interviews with experts in the field that interests you.
• Consider spontaeneous networking.  Some networking gurus keep contact details and make quick notes on everyone they meet!
• Business cards are highly useful (and often free) and CVs are pretty much expected at Careers Fairs.
• Social networking is vital - particularly LinkedIn
• It's a mutual process - working out what other people want will give you big clues about what you need to do.

Initially nerves are natural when meeting new people but basically networking is something we do all the time.  If you get the approach right, it becomes easy.

P.s. If you are a University of Cumbria student or graduate and would like to attend a group session on networking, please email us at careers@cumbria.ac.uk 

New Trends in CV Writing

A paper for careers professionals produced by a group calling itself the Career Thought Leaders Consortium has suggested amongst many other things some new developing trends in the use of CVs.

Apart from some interesting comments indicating for example that 50% of hiring managers no longer read covering letters and have an "almost-universal dislike" of functional CVs, there are some interesting tips that you may find useful when compiling your CV:

• It is still vital for the CV to make a strong impression "above the fold" i.e. in the first half page 
• 'Hybrid resumes that combine an amplified profile (the “functional” component) with abbreviated reverse-chronological detail on jobs can work for those with less experience, employment gaps, or other challenges.' Translated into more normal English, this basically means: Skills-based CVs can still work for the groupings mentioned.

• For online CVs it is becoming important to ensure a good match of keywords between any person specification and the CV text, e.g. by using software like Wordle
• It can be useful to include endorsements in the form of brief testimonial statements. LinkedIn recommendations can provide a useful source of quotes for testimonials.

If you are looking to try some more innovative approaches to CV writing, there are some emerging ideas suggested in the full report. You could look at producing a CV in a series of ten 140 character tweets as a #twesume on Twitter, an infographic CV in the form of a diagram, a popup CV that appears on your website, or a pocket resume that you can leave at networking meetings and careers fairs on the back of a business card.

Perhaps what needs to be added at this point is that many of the Career Thought Leaders Consortium are US-based and it may take some time for the likes of twesumes to establish themselves this side of the pond.  But in a situation where candidates are routinely urged to put out large numbers of CVs, it is easy to see that there may be a need to go for more innovative approaches.

Please let us know whether you have heard of any of them being used in the UK (and with what result) by adding a comment below.

Using Social Media To Find Jobs - Start Now!

Recent articles in "Graduate Recruiter" magazine emphasise that it's never to early for students to start sussing out possible employers using social networks.

Employers are actively seeking to meet potential employees through the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in increasing numbers and increasingly early in your academic career.  There is even a new buzzword for this trend - Recruitment 4.0.

Statistics quoted in "Graduate Recruiter" show that:

• 89% of employers surveyed plan to recruit staff via social media - up massively from the current 8.2% who already do.
• 55% will increase spending on social recruiting while a third will cut back spending on more traditional methods (jobs boards, agencies, etc).

Fascinatingly, a separate survey indicates that 25% of employers using social media to find employees want to make contact with first year students and 14% even look to contact students who are still at school.

It's not quite a case of apply as soon as you start your studies, but clearly digging for employers on Facebook and elsewhere and following their tweets is a strategy that could pay off later on down the line.

Using Social Networks to Advance Your Career

Here you can find some information about using LinkedIn, Delicious and Twitter, the main social networks Careers Advisers at the University of Cumbria have found useful for careers purposes.

We don't currently use Facebook. Although Facebook can be used for careers purposes, we tend to feel that Facebook is more of a leisure facility. There are also reports that employers sometimes reject candidates on the basis of their Facebook profiles.

On the other hand My Space and YouTube have been successfully used by musicians and performers trying to make themselves better known.

LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com is becoming the most important social networking site for students and graduates who want to advance their career opportunities. A recent survey at the London School of Economics showed that, although students were initially more aware of Facebook, many have turned to LinkedIn as the main way of extending their career and professional network.

LinkedIn is a sort of Facebook for professionals but as such there are some major differences:

• Because of the professional context, there is no place for the frivolity that can be found on Facebook, such as drunken photos or dating activities
• You cannot link to any other LinkedIn subscriber unless you do actually know them, or know someone who knows them
• You can however look for jobs, research company details and the career progression of the people that work for them. You can also ask for personal recommendations from people you have worked with.

A helpful introductory video is available at: http://learn.linkedin.com/students as well as a number of pdfs which our students can access on the Blackboard virtual learning environment.

You’ll see that much of the above material is heavily US influenced, but there are already 24 million LinkedIn accounts in Europe and there are plenty of people from the University of Cumbria you may find it useful to link to when you create your account.

Delicious.com

http://delicious.com is the ultimate resource for “useful links”. Following the massive rise in the number of careers websites over the past decade it has become very popular with University Careers Services looking to organise weblinks that are likely to be useful for their students.

The University of Cumbria is no exception and we have collected the links we feel may be useful to you at http://delicious.com/skillzone

http://delicious.com/skillzone/nursing will bring up all the sites that are likely to be relevant to potential nurses, while http://delicious.com/skillzone/cv will bring up all the sites that have been tagged “CV”.

Of course this is just the start of the story. You can also look for more links on Delicious outwith our skillzone area. You can open your own Delicious account and use it to start storing your own favourite “useful links”. There are a number of tutorials on www.youtube.com that will help you do this. Another similar resource is www.careerstagged.co.uk from Careers Group London.

Twitter

Twitter isn't just about celebrity gossip. As well as telling us what Stephen Fry just had for breakfast, Twitter has become a very important source of information about job vacancies and careers information.

Examples of some currently active job feeds are http://twitter.com/EducationJobUK or http://twitter.com/charities_jobs

University of Cumbria LISS-Careers follows a number of useful job and information feeds at http://twitter.com/uoccareers We also subscribe to an automatic daily newspaper, the LISS-Careers Daily at http://paper.li/uoccareers The result is a "mash-up" of stories produced from our tweets and those we follow, including items tweeted from this blog.

You don't have to follow any twitter feeds to be able to view them all on http://twitter.com Twitter can get complicated but it's easy enough to start up your own account so you can follow tweets and tweet yourself. www.youtube.com contains plenty of beginners' and advanced tutorials on using twitter for those who want to get more involved.