LinkedIn advice

How Are Recommendations Viewed on LinkedIn?

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY4nVlIkF48[/svp]
How are recommendations on Linkedin viewed by recruiters/prospective employers?

Given that there is no way to determine the authenticity or sincerity of a recommendation what trust value is assigned to the various recommendations while sourcing profiles?

HILVERSUM, NETHERLANDS - JANUARY 28, 2014: Linkedin is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. As of June 2013 more than 259 million users in more than 200 countries.

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How are recommendations on LinkedIn viewed by recruiters and prospective employers?  Given that there is no way to determine the authenticity or validity of the recommendation, what trust value is assigned to the various recommendations that appear on profiles?

Great question!

I want to start by pointing out references are really no different and how are references looked at?  They are looked at like a final verification.  References have the same issue that’s being questioned about LinkedIn recommendations. I have had people try to pass off bogus references to me and you can just smell them a mile away.

So how are recommendations viewed?  They may be looked at at several times during the process.

They can be looked at when people are sourcing on LinkedIn.  Personally, I will read some and know pretty quickly whether or not the person really knows them.  It’s pretty easy to spot. 1 of those, “Hey endorse me and I will endorse you” references that were prevalent a while back.  I get those requests all the time from India and, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not in India so I have no way of judging someone who is working there.  I don’t comply with those requests because, what am I going to say? She’s a really great person?  He’s a really good guy?  Those are really useless recommendations so why bother?  What good is it going to do?  Why would they believe me, in the US?  You can look at the recommendations and break them down to one’s work, whether someone really knows the person, whether what is said is very thin , or whether there is substance there

We ignore thin references.  The substantial ones provide a story in them about how you were the hero gets a higher weight in my mind.

Another way that they are look that is for quantity, as well as quality.  For example, I have hundreds of recommendations from people who had been kind enough to write about my work, whether as a headhunter, or now as a coach, videographer, podcast or and the like.  When you see hundreds of recommendations for someone verses 4, doesn’t that have a meaning for you? They look at it for quantity and, when they are pleasantly surprised by how many they find there, they will like that more.

How are LinkedIn recommendations look that? The same is references.

I mentioned that we would look at a couple of ways that they are look that. They are also look that when a company and its hiring manager are not sure.  Maybe they have done an interview and the just not sure about something , they will go back into the work recommendations and see if there is something that speaks to them to confirm the bias or opinion that they have.

Lastly, they may use them as a reference substitute. I don’t expect to have that happen very often.

Clearly, during the sourcing process, they are looking at the quality of your recommendations, as well as quantity.  During the process, to a lesser degree, they will look at them to confirm something or some opinion that they have about you and your work.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

A Creative Idea for Marketing Yourself on LinkedIn

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses a creative and clever idea for marketing yourself on LinkedIn.

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I just saw a great instance of a creative use of QR codes on LinkedIn. You know how you normally encouraged to put a photo in on your profile page? Someone used a QR code.

It could be in use a little bit better because what the person did is replicate the summary area of the LinkedIn profile but then they directed people to a page where the resume was. Very smart utilization! And it is something easy to do.

There are a lot of apps and services that will help you create a QR code. In another video, I suggest that everyone had their resume online using a service like wix.com.Wix is a free service; you can post anything that you want there. But your resume up there because they were recruiters out there who are trying to find resumes on line.

Give them a free vehicle to find it. This way they don’t have to contend with the job boards and the tens of thousands of dollars to find people. That is is about simply about third-party recruiters, that’s about corporate recruiters as well.

So create a page on wix.com for your resume; they use a QR code on LinkedIn that directs people to their resume from the LinkedIn profile.

I suspect (I haven’t looked at this carefully, yet) that instead of substituting for the picture, there are places where you can upload images onto your profile and then direct people to your resume homepage.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Finding More People on LinkedIn

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses how to find more people to network with on LinkedIn.

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A lot of people take a lazy approach to searching LinkedIn by using the search box in the top of their profile page or homepage. Frankly, it’s a waste. Here’s why.

Instead of using that search box, I want you click on the word, “Advanced,” to the right of that box. You will be taken to a page that has advanced search features.

The default seems to be first and second level connections plus group members for groups that you are part of. Click the, “third and everyone else,” option.

You want to make sure your searching groups, you want to search by keyword… You can search by company, the school the person attended, you can search by location by using the function in the left-hand column, “lives in or near.” Within the US, you can narrow that to ZIP Code.

There are a lot of ways that you can target people using the advanced search features.

What language was the profile written in? It may seem idiotic to you but I will screen out the person from Burma.

Who they currently work for. Industry they are in. There are a whole host of functions that are far more useful if you try to reach out to people on the advanced search function of LinkedIn then there is on the standard search.

So don’t take the shortcut because you will be eliminating a lot of people who you could be networking with by doing so.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Minimize How Recruiters Use Your Data

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyJTQH459LI[/svp]
Did you know that recruiters are using your LinkedIn data to find people to place in new jobs? Here’s how to minimize that from happening.

 

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There are a lot of different ways that recruiters are able to use people’s data to their own advantage. I’m going to walk you through a few things that you can do to minimize that from happening and save yourself some aggravation.

I say, “save yourself some aggravation,” because, while they are looking at your profile they are able to decide to never call you. Here’s how it works.

Who can see your connections? You can find this in the privacy and help settings by going to the top ribbon, all the way to the right where your photo or icon would be, you’ll find the drop down menu with that is an option. Once you are in the privacy and settings area, you’ll click, “Manage It.”

From there, you want to go to the privacy tab. They are, you can edit your public profile, who can see your connections (interesting! Do you want everyone to see your connections? Probably not. Change that you only you).

How you rank. If you’re someone like me you want everyone to see how you rank. If you are average Jane or Joe, you may be 1 million down from the top and not want to show that. Next is the fun one – – “viewers of this profile also viewed.”

If you look at your home LinkedIn page, you’ll see in the right column that there are other people appearing there with similar kinds of backgrounds to yours.

What recruiters, in effect, are doing is looking at a number of people have profiles at the same time without a lot of effort.

Good for recruiters. Bad for you. Why? Because a lot of you can’t stand up to competition. I also want to say that there is a different level of competition when job hunting in smaller cities versus larger ones (in smaller towns, there are fewer people competing for these jobs). The numbers in a large city make it less desirable to do this kind of stuff because “Look at this profile! There are 1000 more like it.”).

So when you look at, “viewers of this profile also looked at,” you want to change it to, “No,”and reduce your competition.

Followers. Choose who can view your public updates. Everyone! Opened up so people can find out more about you and create a brand impression.

This is a nice feature that allows you to communicate more openly with businesses and with people that you are connected with.

One last thing with regard to LinkedIn and networking. Be involved with groups. I’m sure that you’ve heard this before, LinkedIn advantages people who post regularly in four or more groups.

This may be hard for you to do unless you have community where you use public transportation. Then you have time to do something constructive for your career while you’re commuting.

Hear that message – – LinkedIn advantages people who actively participate in four or more groups.

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Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter

Finding Alumni on Linkedin

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains how to find and connect with alumni from your school on LinkedIn.

 

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There is a little used tool on LinkedIn I want to bring to your attention. If you go to network, there is a drop down there, they will be several choices including, “Find Alumni.”

On Facebook, many of your early connections may have been people you went to school with. On LinkedIn, we only tend to think of professional connections yet there are people you went to school with who could be very helpful to you.

Once you get to the page for it, what you’ll find are three categories: where they live, where they work and what they do. You can also specify when those alumni went to school. The default for me was 1994-1998 (when I returned to scholl and received my Masters). If I want to, I conclude people with no dates. Obviously, you can make it more recent or older as you see fit.

Think of people you went to school with or alumni from the University, particularly if you are younger, as a great resource. If you are younger, you can contact older ones; if you are older, you might want to hire some of the younger ones.

No matter, don’t ignore alumni from some of the universities you attended, even if you didn’t graduate from there. These are people who know people who can help you find work.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Is Engaging in LinkedIn Groups Worth The Hassle?

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[svp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_SEd7w2CcI[/svp]
My answer may surprise you . . . but, then again, I give No BS advice.

 

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Is engaging with LinkedIn groups worth the hassle?

The answer is… Not if you go into it with that attitude.

LinkedIn groups unlike your relationship, not a one trick pony. It’s not like you’re going to spend five minutes to get instant results.

If you think of your career has only your current job search. What you need to think of getting involved with LinkedIn groups as being is the opportunity to develop relationships that each of you can benefit over the course of time.

Your attended your attitude about this is like, “(whine) Oh I have to take medicine that tastes bad . . . Yada yada yada.” You are a whiner about it. LinkedIn groups is about creating the relationships where you can both benefit over the course of time.

Now you make it nothing out of it, but like many investments, you get more as of some than others and you don’t know until you start investing it’s the same with LinkedIn groups.

LinkedIn groups are an opportunity to create relationships with people and organizations outside of your current sphere. Anything wrong with that? No!

As every relationship that you’ve been involved with they worth your time in the past? No. You still got involved with, right? Why is this any different?

I’ll simply say if you go into it with this added to of, “it’s a hassle,” “it’s a problem,” whining all the time, it will be worth the time you invest in it. However, if you go into an open heart and the willingness to care for others, instead of with this resentment about having to waste YOUR TIME, doing THIS KIND OF THING, don’t bother.

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Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn http://bit.ly/thebiggamehunter

An Advanced LinkedIn Strategy

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses and advanced LinkedIn strategy you should be using.

 

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Here’s a great strategy for your networking on LinkedIn, for you to be able to target organizations that you would work for.

Let’s say a firm that shoes identified that you want to be involved with, and, yes, you know people on LinkedIn who you can network with.

Here’s the funny thing. Go to the company page and, yes, you’re going to find out a lot of information about that firm. Now look in the right-hand column, scroll down, and look at this section called, “people also viewed.”

What you’re going to find are firms that are similar to it who might be able to use skills like yours. When you click that page, going to be able to find individuals who were in your network who already work for that firm. These are people who you can network with in order to find out more about the company, get entrée into that organization and target that firm.

When all is said and done, people only have, you only have, I know I only probably half a finite amount of knowledge about conscious relationships I have with in particular firms. To expand that knowledge, I need to go to people beyond the ones I can to consciously think of all the time. That’s where this particular function works so well.

That’s what this particular function works so well. It takes you to firm similar to the ones you already know, shows you who you already know at those organizations and lets you do networking.

So, again, go to the company page of the firm. In the right-hand column, and look for, “people who looked at this company also looked at,” and go to those firms and see who you’re connected with at those organizations.

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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Only Ask for LinkedIn Recommendations from People You Know

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter encourages you to only ask for recommendations from people you know.

Have you ever received a message from someone overseas who asks you to recommend them on LinkedIn?

I have and I receive them all the time. For me, it is infuriating and for you, you should be embarrassed.

Do use a recent example, what do I know about your work as a shipping clerk in Pakistan that would cause me to recommend you? Do you think people can figure out pretty quickly that this is a phony recommendation?

I do.

I will not help game the LinkedIn system by giving fake recommendations and it says a lot about you that you have to reach out to someone like me and others to get recommendations from us.

Only asked for LinkedIn recommendations from people you know. They are the ones who could write textured and detailed and nuanced recommendations that will reveal something about you that an employer will care about.

What can I say about this person in Pakistan?

“He’s a really good guy!”

Do you think that would be helpful or, do you think someone reading it with think of you and me as being liars?

I know the answer that and so do you.

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Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different and complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to jobhunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Job Search Radio – How to LinkedIn

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As big and popular as LinkedIn is, I am always amazed by how poorly people use it. They underutilize it in many ways that we address in my interview with Ron Nash.
Ron Nash is a returning to Job Search Radio after 18 months and offers solid advice for you about using LinkedIn in ways that will make it a more effective service for you.
Listen to the Podcast
Also in iTunes, Stitcher and other podcast services
Watch the Video of the Actual Interview
Receive a complementary subscription to No B.S. Job Search Advice Ezine by subscribing in the right column of my website.
Rather than struggle through your job search, let me help you. This special offer reduces the price of my coaching to less than half. This is a link to the offer.

Another LinkedIn Tip That People Should Do (And is Easy to Implement)

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This tip will take 1 minute or less and make a difference in your views.

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

Follow him at The Big Game Hunter, Inc. on LinkedIn for more articles, videos and podcasts than what are offered here and jobs he is recruiting for.

Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us. There’s a lot more advice there.

Email me if your firm is trying to hire someone.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

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