Anyone who has been in the job search in the past knows how paralyzing it is to figure out where to start. In this article, I am going to walk you through the initial steps of how you can start your job search by compiling a targeted prospecting and networking list through LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com). You want to develop a list of your Tier A, Tier B, and Tier C companies, so you can better organize your job searching efforts. I’d suggest only including your top 10-20 in the Tier A list and then let the rest be categorized accordingly in the Tier B and C lists.

5 Steps for Developing Your Job Search Prospecting List via LinkedIn

1. Go to LinkedIn.com and sign in.
2. Click on the “Companies” Tab.
3. In the “Company Name or Keyword,” type in the Industry keyword. If you want to narrow your search, include the postal code. For example, I typed in “Healthcare” for the industry and my zip code to narrow my search results.
4. Click “Search Companies.”
5. On the left-hand side, you can modify your search results. For example, if you want to return results for companies who have job postings on LinkedIn, then click the last box on the left-hand side and click the “search” button.

LinkedIn provides some great, free information about company size, website URL, revenues, company description, and how you are connected with people who work at the company. You can follow companies of interest and receive e-mails when people leave the company, are hired into a position, or promoted into a new position. The interesting angle is you will also see the position vacated, thus giving you insight into a possible “hidden job market.”

On the company page, you can click, “Check Out Insightful Statistics About {Company’s Name} Employees.” Here, you will see where that company’s employees worked prior to being hired. Why is this helpful? You might discover other companies you never considered or knew about to include on your job searching prospecting list. The companies are generally hyperlinked, so you can learn more about a particular company on their company page.

Cast Your Networking Relationships Far and Wide

The second piece in your job search plan is to develop a targeted list of networking contacts within these companies that you’ve listed. An internal recommendation within a company facilitated by a networking contact is going to yield more results than a cold-call. Consider these facts regarding the competitive job market landscape: 98.3% of companies are defined as small businesses (100 employees or less) and less than .29% of companies have more than 500 employees. The know, like, and trust factor is going to be a critical component, especially in the small business sector.

Below, I’ve listed five steps for locating targeted networking contacts on LinkedIn:

1. Filter your search results on Company Search by using the following parameters: Location, single industry target, and second-degree connections. Hopefully, at this point, you have several first-degree connections so this will yield useful information.
2. You will arrive at your results page and for each result, you will see a hyperlink to the number of people who are in your network. These people will be second-degree connections since you selected it in your search parameters.
3. You can then click on the “19 people in your network,” for example, to get an expanded view of these connections from each company who are in your network.
4. On the expanded view of the second-degree connection, you will see “In Common: 1 (or more) shared connection(s).” It is a hyperlink and when you click it, you will discover exactly how you are connected with this person.
5. Review the person’s profile – do you have common interests, graduated from the same university, belong to the same LinkedIn groups, etc.? Before connecting, establish some common ground and include in your invitation to connect with the person. You might want to follow the person on Twitter, subscribe to their blog, join the LinkedIn groups to which they belong, and more.

Connect with people at your target companies with whom you will add value and remember networking’s number-one rule: G.I.V.E. Always looks for ways to connect people with other people who can facilitate opportunities, send articles that might interest them, provide resources for projects that you know would help streamline what they are doing, and more.

As long as you give, it will come full circle. Both times my husband was in a job search (one job was off-shored and the other company closed its doors two years after he was hired), it was a networking contact that facilitated the next job opportunity for him. Target your job search by developing a focused list on where you want to work and engage in connecting with networks.

Additional Information about LinkedIn

This article first appeared in the Atlantic City Weekly

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

In social media, it’s great to build your Google results by having profiles on social networking sites. I suggest to people that they pick 2-3 that they can update regularly. Which 2-3 should you pick? My general rule of thumb is to find out where your target audience (one we define through the personal branding process) “hangs out.” I am on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for that reason.

Next, you need to develop your OWN guidelines / policies on accepting invitations from people. I know people on LinkedIn who only accept invitations from people that they have met and spent time with in person. On the other end of the spectrum, I know people who accept all LinkedIn invitations. Then, there are people who are open to accepting invitations from people they don’t know as long as the person includes a personal note and not the standard, “I’d like to include you on my LinkedIn network. ~ Kristen”

Facebook is the same–develop a policy and stick with it. I have created a business page to redirect people to where I post items of interest related to social media, job searching, blogging, etc. However, my personal Facebook account is one I reserve for my personal friends, family, and close colleagues. My personal page is where I share about my kids and other tidbits of my life that I want to remain private.

My personal Facebook page still is a great networking opportunity and as I have discussed in other blog posts, gave me a chance to reconnect with people from high school and college whom I might have never seen again. People there are able to read my profile and know what I do, however, I don’t “sell” and generally don’t promote things on my personal page unless I think that those people in my network would be interested.

Remember when you are “friending” someone on these websites to always include a personal note and let them know why you want to connect. If you don’t, chances are greater that the person will ignore the request. Develop your policies on social networking sites and use them in a way that best expresses your brand in the social media environments.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

Image via CrunchBase

On March 22, 2011, LinkedIn revealed that they had achieved a major milestone – 100 million professionals worldwide were registered as LinkedIn members. Equally as important, they are growing at approximately one million new LinkedIn members every week! In the past year, not only has membership grown exponentially, but also new features.

Top 5 New LinkedIn Features for People in a Job Search

1) Company Pages: In April 2010, LinkedIn released the Company Profiles with the ability for you to follow companies where you are interested in working. The unique feature of following companies is that you are now able to see developments at these companies as they unfold. The events could be business development opportunities, job openings, and many key company insights. A new “Career Tab” on company profiles was added in September 2010 that enables you to view a range of professional opportunities at a company as well as facilitating your connections with recruiters at the company. More than 2 million companies have profiles on LinkedIn.

How do I follow companies on LinkedIn? From your member profile page, simply click, “Companies” on the toolbar and when the drop down box appears, select “Search Companies.” Type in the company’s name in the search box. You arrive at a page listing the companies that match your search query. To begin following a company, simply click the company’s name (hyperlinked text) and on the right-side of the company’s page, you will see a “Follow Company” button.

2) LinkedIn Today (www.linkedin.com/today): One of my favorite new features that launched in March 2011 is the LinkedIn Today. As anyone in a job search realizes, you need to be on top of industry news to be competitive for job interviews in today’s job market. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that there are 5.5 unemployed people for every one job opening. LinkedIn Today is tailored based on what your connections and industry peers are reading and sharing. Probably the most interesting aspect is your ability to drill down and find out what professional, industry, or company is sharing this information. By the way, there is an iPhone app for this feature as well.

3) Revamped Jobs Experience in LinkedIn Groups: Joining like-minded professionals in LinkedIn Groups is a great way to forge networking contacts. In March 2011, LinkedIn unveiled new features in LinkedIn Groups that make it easier to discover quality, relevant career opportunities within their groups. When you go to your Group’s page, you will now see tabs across the top that include: “Discussions,” “Members,” “Promotions,” “Jobs,” “Search,” “Manage,” and more. Click on the “Jobs” tab and you will see a box on the top, left-hand side that gives you the options for “Jobs,” “Career Discussions,” or “Search All Jobs.”

4) Skills and Expertise – beta: The Skills and Expertise feature launched in February 2011. On your profile page, you can click the tab at the top called, “More” and from the drop down box, select “Skills.” The Skills feature is still in beta, but already offers some great features for someone in a job search. I can enter my skills in the “Search Skills & Expertise” box and select the keyword that matches it. I can then “Add Skill” to my profile by clicking the box and can see, at a glance, the trends in this skill set. For example, I searched “Online Identity” and found that this professional training and coaching industry is experiencing a 15% year over year growth. In the right-hand sidebar, I can find potential job openings in my industry. I can also discover related companies and begin to follow those companies from this page. In the middle column, you will find like-minded professionals with whom you can connect as well as networking groups that you can join.

5) PYMK (also know as People You May Know): In May 2010, LinkedIn took the “People You May Know” feature and merged it with another powerful feature called faceted search. Estimates show that of jobs secured, up to 70% state that they secured their job via a networking contact. Faceted search makes it simple to filter list of peoples you may know by companies and schools. To use this faceted search feature, click on the “See More” link on the PYMK box. You can add connections on this page and send those people an invitation to connect with you.

If you haven’t visited your LinkedIn website, you will be amazed at all of the robust and multi-faceted features that now exist. With exclusive job postings and opportunities to network with people at companies where you’d like to work, LinkedIn offers a person in a job search great possibilities.

What is LinkedIn? According to LinkedIn’s “About” page, they “operate the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories.”

How can I sign up? Go to http://www.linkedin.com to sign up for a member account.

Who uses LinkedIn? According to LinkedIn’s “About” page, “LinkedIn counts executives from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies as members; its hiring solutions were used by 73 of the Fortune 100 companies as of March 22, 2011.”

Where are members located on LinkedIn? LinkedIn’s About page lists the following statistics:

•   20M+ members in Europe

•   5M+ members in the UK

•   1M+ members in France

•   2M+ members in the Netherlands

•   1M+ members in Italy

•   1M+ members in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland)

•   1M+ members in Spain

•   9M+ members in India

•   3M+ members in Canada

•   3M+ members in Brazil

•   2M+ members in Australia

Why LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a powerful way for you to build an online identity so that when an employer or recruiter Googles you, they will find relevant, on-brand information about you. LinkedIn is a powerful tool that will facilitate you to re-connect, establish, and maintain key networking relationships and provide value to them through recommendations, answering questions, and more.

This article first appeared in The Atlantic City Weekly

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

Are you wanting to find an automation tool to manage all your social networks. I’m going to discuss five such tools to help you streamline your time on social media.

1. Hellotxt (http://hellotxt.com/) is what I term as a social networking aggregator. Hellotxt posts your status updates from web, mobile, SMS, email, or other 3rd party applications through their API to more than 50 social networks. So, when I feel there is something I’d like to post to my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts, I’ll update my status at this one website. It only takes me a few seconds to do and I’ve pinged all three of my networking websites.
2. Ping.fm (http://ping.fm/) works much the same way as HelloTxt, posting your messages wherever you want to more than 30 social networking sites.
3. You can also add this application (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2231777543) to your Facebook page so when you update your Twitter status, you’ll update your Facebook status. You will want to decide, though, if the people who are Facebook will want to read your tweets-especially if you tweet several times per day. I personally do not use this application anymore because my Facebook personal page is for friends and family. My Twitter account is more for expressing my personal brand for my business. To install it, you will click the “Go to Application” button and follow the instructions.
4. If you are on Twitter and want to ping Facebook and LinkedIn, simply use the hashtag #fb (Facebook) and #li (LinkedIn) at the end of your tweet. You can also check the Twitter box by your status update on LinkedIn so you can ping your Twitter account with the same status update (see picture to the right).
5. Hootsuite is another tool I use to schedule tweets (adding the #li and #fb hashtags) – see my previous blog post on Hootsuite for more information.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

With approximately 4.6 unemployed people per one job opening, it is critical to know your personal brand. How are you different than all of the people applying for job? Are you expressing and exuding your personal brand in all your offline and online communications?

Researching the company prior to an interview is key. Where can you find research information? LinkedIn, Hoovers, ZoomInfo, etc. are all great starting places. Did you know that when you search on LinkedIn for a company name you can find out really powerful information for your job search?

For example, I searched on Sun Microsystems. Most people know you are able to find out who you are connected to on LinkedIn who works for the company. However, did you know that you can find out about mergers and acquisitions, career path for employees before and after their employment with Sun, and so on? You can also scroll down and discover recent promotion and changes. Think about this one—you are looking at possible openings that may or may not have been published as opportunities within the company. So, this is a great way to tap the hidden job market.

Conduct a SWOT analysis to find out the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. As you delve into this research, find out if the company is in a period of growth or a period of decline. For example, here’s one possible area where you might leverage your personal brand. Are you known for being a turnaround architect, growth catalyst, start-up accelerator, etc.? If you are a turnaround architect, for example, pursuing a job in a company in a period of decline may be something to which you are attracted.

In your Reach Personal Brand assessment and consulting / coaching process, you will uncover your top personas, your team role, strengths, and your leadership role. You will use this information to define your personal brand and paint a consistent story about who you are and how you can uniquely deliver your promise of value to a company. The information will help you create a branded resume’, a branded online and offline identity, and give you confidence in an interview because you know how you stand apart from your peers.

Ready to start? You can take a free, 15-day assessment at http://www.reachcc.com/360v4register.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

Today, I wanted to give you a starting point for your job search. You can research industries and the companies on many different search type engines, but one of my favorites is LinkedIn (if you are just getting started on LinkedIn, read “Does Your LinkedIn Profile Get a Passing Grade? 5 Tips for a Captivating Profile”). I am going to walk you through the initial steps of how you can start your job search by compiling a prospecting list. You want to develop a list of your Tier A, Tier B, and Tier C companies, so you can better organize your job searching efforts.

5 Steps for Developing Your Job Search Prospecting List via LinkedIn

1) Go to LinkedIn.com and sign in.

2) Click on the “Companies” Tab.

3) In the “Company Name or Keyword,” type in the Industry keyword. If you want to narrow your search, include the postal code. For example, I typed in “Aerospace” for the industry and my zip code to narrow my search results.

4) Click “Search Companies.”

5) On the left-hand side, you can modify your search results. For example, if you want to return results for companies who have job postings on LinkedIn, then click the last box on the left-hand side and click the “search” button.

LinkedIn provides some great, free information about company size, website URL, revenues, company description, and how you are connected with people who work at the company. You can follow companies of interest and receive emails when people leave the company, are hired into a position, or promoted into a new position. The interesting angle is you will also see the position vacated, thus giving you insight into a possible “hidden job market.”

On the company page, you can click, “Check Out Insightful Statistics About {Company’s Name} Employees.” Here, you will see where that company’s employees worked prior to being hired. Why is this helpful? You might discover other companies you never considered or knew about to include on your job searching prospecting list. The companies are generally hyperlinked, so you can learn more about a particular company on their company page.

In conclusion, develop your prospecting list by utilizing this relatively new LinkedIn feature and then categorize the companies by priority (A, B, or C). In the next article, I’m going to give you tips to connect to networking resources via Twitter and how to utilize one of Twitter’s tools to facilitate your job searching efforts.

This article first appeared on Classroom to Cubicle.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

One of my colleagues, Maria Duron, posted information on Facebook about Wisestamp. You can go to http://www.wisestamp.com and download a free version for your Firefox browser. At this writing, it is not supported on all email platforms, but is supported on many of the major platforms (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, and Hotmail).

3 Reasons to Use WiseStamp in Your Email Signatures

1.     You can include links to your social media platforms where you are active (they have 40+ social media platforms) and IM profiles.

2.     You can enter your blog’s RSS feed. As you see below, my signature includes the four social media platforms where I have an active presence. The “Career Design Coach’s Blog” includes a link to read the most current blog post. When I publish a new blog post, the link is automatically changed to the new URL and title.

3.     WiseStamp now offers an Email Apps Gallery that includes Twitter, StumbleUpon, Disclaimer, and more. The Twitter app shows your latest tweet, StumbleUpon lets you share your recent stumbled web page, and the Disclaimer app lets you add a disclaimer at the bottom of your sent emails.

As you are building your personal brand across social media, Wisestamp provides an excellent tool to brand your email signature. It supports HTML, so you can use a tool such as www.mylivesignature.com and “sign” your email with either your own signature (fee for this option) or with a font that you choose that most closely resembles your signature. I also use the “My Live Signature” to “sign” my blog posts. You can see in the picture below how my email signature currently appears. I use the signature HTML at the end of my blog posts on Career Design Coach to sign my name.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

In my first article, I discussed how the Department of Labor has estimated that by a time a person is 38 years old, they will have had between 10 and 14 jobs on average. For some people, they will follow the same career path, but others might choose to go in a different direction for a myriad of reasons: industry has offshored or downsized, want to pursue something new, and more.

Did you know that LinkedIn is a great resource for helping you to find job titles in an area of interest? This video shows that if you are passionate about baseball, but don’t know the various job possibilities in that industry, you can run a keyword search and find like-minded people in that industry. You will be able to see their job titles, LinkedIn groups to which they belong, companies where they’ve worked, and have an opportunity to reach out to network.

The video additionally points out the research you can do on a company. LinkedIn incorporated the ability to “follow” companies a few months ago. If you are targeting certain companies for which you may see as part of your long-term career objective, this information is very valuable. You will not only find out what’s newsworthy, but you will also see when a person is promoted or has left the company and the job title they have just vacated. Ever wonder about how to “tap the hidden job market?” Well, here you have that access.

LinkedIn has so many features in addition to the professional networking aspect for people in career transition or management. Remember to define your long-term goal and determine the steps you will need to take to reach those goals. What are the job titles in-between Marketing Assistant/Intern to Chief Marketing Officer? Unleash the power of LinkedIn to discover the career titles and network you will need to achieve your ultimate vision.

This article first appeared on Classroom to Cubicle and can be found at http://classroomtocubicle.com/

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

The overwhelming majority of employers and recruiters Google potential candidates and the more I poll audiences to see if they realize this possibility, the more I find that at least half of the attendees never considered this probability. Have you Googled your name? If not, put your name in quotations (e.g.  “Kristen Jacoway”) and see the results you obtain on the first 3 pages. Why only 3 pages? iProspect did a study that found that 92% of respondents do not click past page 3 of a Google search result.

Three Tools for Evaluating Your Own Online Brand

1.     Online ID Calculator: The online identity calculator was developed by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson who wrote Career Distinction. You will enter some data about yourself plus the results you receive when you Google your name. The calculator will score this information and rank you as Digitally Disguised, Digitally Dissed (means you have unfavorable results), Digitally Dabbling, and Digitally Distinct.

2.     Addictomatic: You can search many different types of platforms to get a clearer picture of what the Internet says about you. Addictomatic shows tweets, posts through FriendFeed, videos on YouTube, Truveo Video Search, blogs, Wikio, Bing, Yahoo, Flickr, and more.

3.     Klout: Klout is becoming a standard to measure your social influence online. Scores range from 1 to 100 using more than 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure the following factors: True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

In December 2009, research commissioned by Microsoft found that 79% of U.S. hiring managers and job recruiters reviewed online information about potential job candidates. If someone Googled you, are they likely to find information that supports that personal brand for which you want to be known or not? Consider this-in this same study, they found that 70% of U.S. hiring managers have rejected candidates based on what they found online about that person.

Tips to Protect Your Online Reputation

• Be mindful of what you tweet or comment on Facebook: Companies have employed the utilization of social media listening tools like Radian6, TweetBeep, Google Alerts, Company Buzz, and more. The majority will “hear” if you use their name.  Likewise, be careful of what you say in general. I had a client that made a negative comment on a Facebook Fan Page and the comment ended up being on page 1 of her Google results. If you wouldn’t want a potential employer to read it, then don’t type it!

• Set Your Privacy Settings: Most social networking sites offer privacy settings. If you are using a social network strictly for personal use, then set high privacy controls. Think about your objective for using the site—is it to establish your thought leadership and expertise? If so, you will not want high privacy settings so that you can be found.

• Be careful of what you are doing AT ALL TIMES: Not to increase paranoia, but be mindful of what you are doing. With the rise of people having cameras and video cameras on their phones, all it takes is a couple of clicks for a compromising picture or video to be uploaded to the Internet with your name tagged (making it a searchable result). The very nature of the Internet is viral and can be spread very quickly causing it to be difficult to remove.

• Sign-up for Google Alerts for Your Name: Go to Google.com/alerts and sign-up to receive an email when your name appears on the Internet. Again, put your name in quotation marks to receive clean results. Monitor your online brand so that you can be proactive in managing your reputation.

How to Deal with Digital Dirt

• Contact the owner of the website or administrator of the page and ask nicely for the content to be removed.

• Contract with a company such as Reputation Defender if your attempts to get content removed are not successful.

• Hire an Online Identity Strategist who can consult with you on ways to build a stellar online presence. Reach Communications certifies people worldwide as online identity strategists.

• Develop relevant, on-brand results for the Internet via articles, book reviews, blogging, and more to try to push the results past page 3 of a Google search.

To summarize, be proactive about your personal brand both offline and online. At one point statistics showed that for every job opening, there were approximately seven qualified people on the candidate list. Monitoring your online brand is more critical today than ever in this tight job market.

This article first appeared on Career Rocketeer

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

We discussed ways to develop a captivating LinkedIn profile, however, there are some extra things that you can do (as discussed in this 1-minute video) to give your profile a more polished, searchable result.

Top 4 Tips to Take Your LinkedIn Profile from Good to Great

1) Select “edit profile” and click on “website.” LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to enter up to three websites. Many people overlook the possibilities within this area, however, this can provide you the opportunity to give your top three results of what you want a potential person to know about you.

2) When editing the website information, select “Other.” This allows you to actually give a name to the link you are providing in this area. I’ve labelled mine, “Career Design Coach,” “I’m in a Job Search-Now What???,” and “Facebook Fan Page.” Think outside the box and take advantage of using all three of these links. You could point to your Visual CV, a blog, an article you’ve written, or anything else that establishes your thought leadership in this area.

3) In your profile area, you also can enter names of associations to which you belong. Remember, keywords are important to your profile and I recommend that not only do you spell it out, but also include the abbreviation. You never know how someone may run a keyword search to find potential contacts. For example, if you are a member of the American Marketing Association, spell it out and include the abbreviation “A.M.A.”

4) Include any honors or awards in the Honors/Awards section. I’d also recommend, though, that you include it as an achievement in the employment section under the position/company where it occurred. People like seeing where honors and awards were received in context, too because it provides a frame of reference.

Again, think strategically about your LinkedIn objective and only place information that supports your objective. Keywords are very important in LinkedIn profile to facilitate connections with like-minded industry professionals. In the upcoming articles, we’ll be exploring other LinkedIn tools to build your networking group and keep in the process of continual networking to breed your ultimate career success!

This article first appeared on Classroom to Cubicle and can be found at http://classroomtocubicle.com/

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.