Key to LinkedIn career success: LinkedIn Training

My feeling is that LinkedIn training and a robust LinkedIn profile is essential to job seekers. I see it as so essential that I don’t think job seekers in 2018 will be successful without a LinkedIn presence.

People often ask why LinkedIn training as well as LinkedIn profile writing is included in all three resume packages. The first of my packages is called Essential.

Why do you provide LinkedIn training?

If someone hands you a tool you have never seen and says go for it, you may use it. However, you may not use it well. One of the advantages of my LinkedIn training is that the job seeker better understands how to leverage LinkedIn in the job search.

On the other hand, I never leave my clients thinking that LinkedIn is a job search only tool. Too often, this misconception about LinkedIn leaves people thinking there is no other use for LinkedIn beyond job search. Examples of other uses for LinkedIn:

Prospect for candidates for your company.

• With LinkedIn’s powerful search engine you can find people with an skill you need to grow or improve your company. Working with human resource clients and executives who hire, I learn how they leverage LinkedIn to find the unique skills they seek.

Conduct Research

• Conduct research on your next client prior to a call or meeting to better leverage their background and make a connection that could lead to the sale.
• Research other conference or seminar participants so you can make connections at the conference. (Keith Ferrazzi details this in his book, “Never Eat Alone”)  Ferrazzi suggests:

A successful conference’s agenda is always created to maximize the participants’ time. My own goal at such conferences is to maximize the brief windows of opportunity I might get to become intimate with other interesting people I haven’t met before.

Ferrazzi, Keith. Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time (p. 72). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Find alumni you graduated with to help you connect to other people you want to meet.
• Check out vendor representatives before you meet with them.

Why do so many people have inadequate LinkedIn profiles?

If LinkedIn is so important, why do so many top professionals and executives have name, rank, serial number type LinkedIn profiles? This often confuses my Director level clients who want to emulate those people above them. They figure that the Vice President, Senior Director, and C-Suite executives should have the best LinkedIn profiles to model.

This would seem to be logical but this assumes that someone provided the executives with LinkedIn training to help them present themselves in the most ideal fashion. Sadly, many executives have never explored the value of LinkedIn so their own profiles are woefully inadequate.

How does marketing and LinkedIn training interconnect?

Another way to look at this is that marketing in general is perhaps the most misunderstood concept in business.

Think about it. In times of recession, businesses let the marketing departments go first. Marketing is seen as an extra rather than essential. However, anyone who brought a business back from failure recognizes the true value of quality marketing. In times of recession, more marketing and the right marketing is critical to retaining and growing your customer base.

Unfortunately, I have worked with enough marketing professionals to know that corporate America is still missing this critical message.

Linkedin training is critical to help you avoid these mistakes. Successful people understanding that marketing is essential to success both in business and in your career future.

Understanding networking is lifelong and you can’t depend on the 30-year job anymore will help you be prepared.

If you are ready to find your career happiness, explore career dreams, and stop putting off your future, let’s talk.