Merry Christmas

My prayer for this Christmas season, is that you find what you are seeking.

-- Andy

How to Ensure Your LinkedIn Profile Is Effective

Original Post: Here

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Is your LinkedIn profile as effective as it could be? While you can see your “profile completeness” score on your profile page, it doesn’t measure profile effectiveness — how good your profile is at attracting contacts, generating leads and showing off your skills. Use this checklist to ensure your profile is thorough, effective and updated.

1. Use the name you’re known by. Perhaps your name is Robert, but most people know you as Rob or Bob. Or, for women, perhaps you worked under a maiden name for years. Use the name that most people know you by professionally. Cover all your bases by using your main name in your basic information and mention any other names elsewhere such as in the “Professional Headline” field, or in your recommendations.


2. Upload a professional photo. It’s worth the price to use a professional photographer.


3. Create an effective Professional Headline. Add a “Professional Headline” in the “Edit My Profile” page. This is a short bio that sums up what you do. Mine says, “Content Maven aka writer and editor behind meryl.net.”


4. Pick the industry that best represents what you do. Alternatively, you could use your clients’ industry if they all come from the same one.


5. Enter details for current and past positions. Highlight the activities that represent what you do or want to do by mentioning them first.


6. Write a summary that highlights your most important business information. Keep your summary clear and to the point. Remember you can list details under “Current Position.” The point of a summary is to give people instant information on what you do. I’ve looked at various summaries, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. I used to have a bulleted list, but switched to a short paragraph. When I come across long paragraphs in the summary, I find them hard to read and follow. The shorter ones hold my attention and get the point across fast.


7. List your web sites and blog. Rather than using the name of your web site and blog, use keywords that describe what you do. For example, I use “Writer for hire and blog” instead of “meryl’s notes,” the name of the blog.


8. Add your Twitter ID. If you haven’t already, add your Twitter name.


9. Request recommendations. It’s OK to ask people to recommend you, but make sure you ask the right people.


10. Write recommendations. Writing recommendations can lead to receiving recommendations.


11. Add applications to enhance your profile. If you have a blog, feed your blog entries into your LinkedIn account with one of LinkedIn’s applications. You can also turn LinkedIn into an online document collaboration platform.


12. Send selected Twitter tweets to LinkedIn. While you can connect your Twitter account to your LinedIn profile, many of us tweet too often or tweet about things that would be irrelevant to our LinkedIn contacts. Instead, select just the tweets you want to show up in your LinkedIn profile by adding the hashtag “#in” to the tweet. You can turn on this feature in Twitter Settings.


13. Select what to display in your public profile. People not connected to you can only see what you allow them to see by setting your Public Profile options. The more you reveal, the easier it is for people to know if they have the right person. Here, you can also set up your Public Profile URL, which shows up as to http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname.
    
    
    
    
    LinkedIn Settings
    
    
    
    
    


14. Review your settings. Though I’ve been on LinkedIn for a long time, I still run into new features and settings. Settings cover everything from profile views and email notifications to personal information and privacy settings. You can provide advice on how people should contact you on the Contact Settings page. Mine says, “Email is the best way to reach me.”

The Funniest Article About Job Interview Tips Ever

Originally Posted Here: [The Funniest Article About Job Interview Tips Ever]

Steinar Skipsness created a fake office so he could understand how to succeed in job interviews. He filmed the whole thing, and the funny results led to 20 great job interview tips that are true anywhere in the world.

	1) Where did you get the idea for the project?
	The idea sparked from seeing a friend of mind go on a few unsuccessful interviews. I consider him a really outgoing sharp guy, he was getting interviews, which is half the battle, but for whatever reason he wasn’t getting hired. It made me curious to what makes certain candidates stand out. I thought, if I could experience the interview from the other side of table, I’d have the ultimate perspective to what makes a candidate an attractive hire. I could then take that knowledge and cater my behavior in any future job interview to give myself the best chance of getting hired.
	2) How much did it all cost?
	It cost roughly $2000 to execute everything, (renting office space by the hour, having a lawyer write up a waiver, the cameras, and other little things… like taking my friend out to a few dinners as compensation for being involved) well worth the money in my book. The knowledge I learned from this experience and the doors that have and I believe will continue to open, I’ll take with me for the rest of my life and I know it will pay me 100x more dividends then if I’d taken the money and bought a few share of company whoever… call it self investing.
	3) What was the hardest part in executing such a project?
	It takes time… more then you think when you start out. Particularly since I had no experience with video editing, and granted I wasn’t making a feature film but it still took some time to get things figured out… but now I know how, and it will come in handy in the future.
	4) What was the funniest moment?
	Overall, I’d have to say the “lack of responsibility guy” [above clip]. I honestly don’t think there’s much worse of a thing you can say in a job interview, then what you like best about your current job is the lack of responsibility. I even cut the footage short. He goes on to say people say it’s so much better being higher up in a company but they forget to realize that there is more responsibility up there. Are you serious? That statement just blow me away.
	5) What did you learn about yourself by doing this project?
	You need to be flexible. What I mean by that is… when I started this out I envisioned it a bit differently but as you get deeper into it, and start peeling back the layers, certain things turn out the way you anticipated and other things don’t… and you need to be flexible to go in the direction that is going to make your piece of work the best. For example, my initial thought was to have the interviewer do something strange to get a reaction out of the interviewer. I thought that was what was going to make for the entertaining videos that I wanted to associate with this project…. it turned out what the actual interviewer said was strange/funnier, then I could have dream up saying. But before I went that route… there was one time when the interviewer in most of the videos is asking a girl some questions and as he’s asking a question, he brings out a flask, opens it, pours some in his coffee cup then puts the flask back in the drawer. I thought the reaction of the interviewee would be priceless… and it was.. but I didn’t upload it because I wanted all the videos to focus on things the interviewee said…. and of course it wasn’t real alcohol… just water.
	6) Did the project help you find a job or freelancing clients as you were hoping?
	Yes, it opened some doors for sure. I’ve had people contact me that would have nevered responded to 1 email from me if I had sent them a 100. I’ve been doing some consulting and have a couple projects in the works.
	7) What comes next for you?
	I’d love to talk about what I’m working on but I got to keep that under wraps for now…. but follow me on twitter at @skipsness or subscribe to my blog and you’ll be the first to know…

Steinar’s funny, must-read article of terrific job interview tips can be found here:

How To Nail An Interview (20 Tips)



Subscribe to JobMob via RSS or email and follow me on Twitter to learn about the most inspiring job seekers in the world.

-- Jacob Share, Job Search Expert and Professional Blogging Consultant

How To Best Explain Being Unemployed To Children

Original Post: Here

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A group of experts discuss the best ways to tell your family about your unemployment. Here are some of their insightful replies.

My own layoff story

I was last laid off in early 2006.
At that time, I had 2 kids aged 3 and 2. To me they seemed too young for the layoff to have much meaning in their eyes, but I was wrong.
Before the layoff, my kids barely saw me each weekday. I would leave for work early and come home as they were getting ready for bed, or later.
After the layoff, they saw me all the time. My new job - the job search - gave me the flexibility to take the kids to school and pick them up afterward while still networking, getting interviewed, etc.
My wife and I didn’t make a big deal of the change, and to be honest, we didn’t really spend much time thinking about whether that was the best way to react. We just told the kids that I would working from home from now on and they took it in stride. Or “Yay!” as they put it.
Looking back recently, I was curious to hear what child experts would say.

Be honest and patient

Russell Friedman, Executive Director of
The Grief Recovery Institute Educational Foundation, blogger for
Psychology Today and co-author of 3 books including
When Children Grieve, suggests:

• Adults—you go first. Telling the truth about your own feelings about your work situation will make it safe for your child to open up about his or her feelings.
• Remember that each of your children is unique and each has a unique relationship to the loss event or situation.
• Be patient. Don’t force them to talk about it.
• Never say “Don’t feel sad” or Don’t feel scared.” Sadness or fear are the two most normal feelings in reaction to loss or change of any kind. They are also essential feelings to being human.
• When they do talk, listed with your heart not your head. Allow all emotions to be expressed without judgment, criticism, or analysis.

React carefully

Dr. Elizabeth R. Lombardo, Ph.D., M.S., P.T. and author of “
A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription to Happiness,” says:

We often assume that children will be so worried if Daddy is not working, but that is not the case. What causes them stress is parents’ reaction to Daddy’s unemployment.

Unlike parents, children are not calculating the cost of the mortgage and monthly bills, stressed that they cannot be paid. They are not tormented by fears that they may never get another job, or at least not before they lose their home. Children are much more in the here and now. So what is important to them is (1) Daddy is now home to play with me and (2) how Mommy and Daddy are feeling.

Children can be incredibly intuitive. They may not understand why parents are stressed but they can sense something is wrong if you are.

So, how do you tell your young child that their father is unemployed? Try something like “Daddy is not working right now. He will be getting another job soon. Now he is going to focus spending some time playing with you.” You can even highlight some things they might do together (read book, go to the park, play ball…)

More importantly than what you say, though, is your reaction. Try to address your stress level- what you outwardly say and do as well as how you feel inside. Again, children can sense your stress, which then can cause anxiety for them.

Have the right attitude going forward

Vicki Hoefle, 20 Year Parent Educator, Mother of 5 teens and creator of
Parenting On Track™, recommends:

• Children follow their parents lead so attitude is everything. You convey your confidence or lack their off with not only your words, but your voice, tone, body language and eye contact.
• Children can feel a parents’ confidence and take their cues from this.
• As you explain the “change” in employment, the details will not be as important as your attitude about this change.
• Most children can not comprehend the idea of work, let alone the idea of unemployment. Narrow this down and talk about it from the child’s perspective. Think about how this might impact the child’s life. Maybe you will be home in the morning to take them to school. Maybe you will be home at night to have dinner with the family. It isn’t as important to talk about the fact that you may have less money to spend on eating out, kids don’t pay attention to that. Talk about the tangible changes your children will notice.
• Children do not need updates. They only require that when a significant change, like another job, or moving because you have to sell the house, is explained to the extend that they can assimilate the information. Again, your attitude of “things will be fine, I know what I am doing” is the only thing that matters to young children.
• So curb the desire to tell the kids everything. Use discernment and community a sense of confidence and security to your children during this transitional time.

Involve children at their level

Heather Davis Richards, VP of Public Affairs for financial education company
Essential Knowledge, tells:

Little kids are very resilient to change. They can actually be a huge asset to the family, with their eagerness to be involved. We have seen children all over the world work to raise money for cancer victims, animal rights, and other topics that seem overwhelming. So when it comes to a layoff in the family, it’s best to get them involved at a level they can understand.

First, discuss with your spouse privately, how you both intend to deal with the situation. What budget cuts will need to be made? What changes will that mean? We planned in advance, what the job loss would mean to the family, and how we would cope with the situation. In our family, when my husband was laid off, we decided to cancel after school childcare to save money.

The two biggest questions that children have with this type of situation are, “how will this impact me?” and “should I be scared about this?”

When we discussed it with our seven-year-old, we made sure to stress that everything was going to be fine. There would be changes for awhile, and we made sure to state upfront how that might impact her. She was actually overjoyed at some of the decisions. She was thrilled to be able to ride the bus after school, for instance.

We also asked for her help. We asked for her to help us to look for ways to save money while looking for a new position. She offered to forfeit her allowance, and had many creative ways that we could have inexpensive fun on the weekends. When her birthday rolled around, she came up with the idea for a party at home to cut costs. Don’t be afraid to enlist your children’s help, it empowers them that they are a part of the solution.

Margaret Shaw recommended a special 1-hour edition of Sesame Street that was dedicated to helping both parents and kids deal with unemployment.
You can watch the whole show at
Sesame Street’s Families Stand Together or by clicking the image here on the right.

Takeaway lessons

• Decide with your spouse how the family should cope with the post-layoff situation
• Tell your family about the layoff without going into details
• Assure your children that everything will be ok (easier said than believed, I know)
• Involve your children in any lifestyle changes, like cost-cutting

If you enjoyed this read, you’ll also enjoy my article
Recently Laid Off? Here’s A Quick Job Search Refresher Guide.

What about you? How have you dealt with unemployment in your family?

-- Jacob Share, Job Search Expert and Professional Blogging Consultant

Why You Should Have a Social Media Calendar

Original Post: Here

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When I hear about the processes companies are using to engage in social media-based conversations and communities, I’m a bit surprised that many lack any kind of strategy or written plan. While I’m a firm believer in the need for both spontaneity and frequency in social media-enabled communications, I also believe that whenever a company decides to adopt new communications tools, they need to start with the basics of Marketing and Communications 101:

• What are your business objectives?
• Who is your audience (target market)?
• What do you hope this communication will help your company achieve?
• How will you measure your efforts?

Once you think through the business basics, the next steps are identifying the right tools to reach the right audience(s) in the right ways, and then determining what your company is going to do once you stick start participating in social networks, on blogs, and in other online communities.


Editorial Calendars for Blogs

My company uses what we refer to as “editorial calendars” for social media engagement, but that term is a bit of a misnomer. The term “editorial calendar” implies that social media communications is then based solely around “editorial” content like magazine articles. Social media editorial calendars are not about planning all of your tweets, status updates on Facebook, etc., but you do need to create some kind of framework that fits into an overall plan for engagement.

For blogs, we always develop an actual editorial calendar that is similar to a magazine editorial calendar. That calendar, however, should never lock the blogger or bloggers into publishing specific posts on specific dates without any flexibility. Blog editorial calendars should be considered strategic planning tools as well as resources for content ideas when there isn’t something topical or time-sensitive that needs to be posted.


Social Media Calendars

You shouldn’t be tweeting and updating entirely in a vacuum. For my company, our social media calendars start with a blog editorial calendar as a starting point. From those specific topics and post references, we then branch out, looking for other people’s tweets or posts that we can reference that are relevant to our client’s focus, objectives, and brand.

To utilize social media tools effectively and properly, you must absolutely generate spontaneous communications in direct response to what others are saying or to what is happening in that moment. Be yourself. Be conversational. Be engaged.

Then, at regular intervals, circle back to your objectives; the audience you want to attract and connect with; and the actions you’d like to drive through your outreach. Are you on track? If you are using social media to encourage others to give you feedback, to take a poll, to refer a friend to your site, to hire you, to purchase a product, whatever your goal or goals may be — is it working? If not, what are you doing wrong?


Social Media Planning

Maybe this sounds a little too formulaic to you. Maybe you see social media as being all about organic conversation. Well, yes, that is exactly what it is, but organic conversation doesn’t work for companies that are trying to achieve specific business objectives. That doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be in social networks and online communities if they do things in appropriate, valuable and thoughtful ways.

So be smart about it. Don’t deny that you are a business with business objectives. Be transparent about it. There’s a place for everyone in the playground as long as everyone places nicely. And if you stick to a plan — with a lot of common sense, generosity and kindness thrown in — your company can foster new levels of consumer loyalty from genuine engagement, while still achieving measurable business goals.

Once More With Feeling Or Should I Just Stick To The Script? - RecruitingBlogs.com

Original Post:Here

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Once More With Feeling Or Should I Just Stick To The Script?

• Posted by James Seetoo on December 21, 2009 at 4:22pm
• View James Seetoo's blog

Isn’t it great when an interview goes according to the script? The interviewer asks the list of question he has and the candidate feeds back the perfect answers. Everyone comes away from the encounter happy and the right candidate gets the right job. That’s of course, when the everything goes right.

Whether you know it or not, if you’re preparing for an interview – whether you’re the interviewer or the candidate, you’re scripting. You’re going over the questions in your mind and preparing the answers you want. It’s a great tool as long as you don’t get too tied up in it. Remember, it’s your script and you haven’t exactly passed it out to all concerned.

How many of you have ever gotten a phone call with someone reading a script trying to sell you something? No matter what you say, they just seem to keep going because they’re more concerned about reading through their script than in having a conversation. Perhaps you’ve had recruiters call you doing the same thing. It’s definitely not something that inspires confidence.

The worst example of poor scripting I’ve ever come across was when I was serving on jury duty. The defendant’s lawyer was pretty much going through the motions. BTW, the defendant was caught red handed but still, there are standards. The defense lawyer cross examined a witness by reading a list of questions, not looking up to engage the person he was supposed to be questioning and barely waited for the witness to answer before asking his next question.

I’ve seen some very junior recruiters doing this when they’re just starting out, more worried about what they’re going to say than the candidate’s answers. But it’s even worse when a candidate does it – and I charitably call that being “overprepared”.

So where’s the balance? Should we just “wing it?”

Well, if you’re used to doing improv, I suppose you could but I think it’s important to remember that the map is not the terrain. It’s the same thing as doing a Karate form. The form is not fighting, it’s an exercise and that’s exactly what scripting should be, an exercise, something to get you used to speaking about yourself or about a job. It’s a map to give you an idea of where you’re going but you still have to flexible in case you need to change directions.

If there are specific points that require a lot of detail, then you should definitely script out what you want to say. But I would say they should be more like talking points that would act as a lead-in to further conversation. And that’s the point of great scripts isn’t it? In movies it’s dialogue that sounds real (Quentin Tarantino does this brilliantly).

So yes, by all means use a script but use it to keep the dialogue flowing. You’ll find that your interviews will be much more interesting for it.

Remember, your skills are your job security.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

James Seetoo

The problem with cable news thinking

Original Post from Seth Godin: The problem with cable news thinking

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Uploaded on July 21, 2009 by artour_a

Not only the networks of all political persuasions that come to mind, but the mindset they represent...
When I was growing up, Eyewitness News always found a house on fire in South Buffalo. 'Tonight's top story,' Irv Weinstein would intone, '...a fire in South Buffalo.' Every single night. If you watched the news from out of town, you were sure that the city must have completely burned to the ground.
Cable news thinking has nothing to do with fires or with politics. Instead, it amplifies the worst elements of emotional reaction:

1. Focus on the urgent instead of the important.
2. Vivid emotions and the visuals that go with them as a selector for what's important.
3. Emphasis on noise over thoughtful analysis.
4. Unwillingness to reverse course and change one's mind.
5. Xenophobic and jingoistic reactions (fear of outsiders).
6. Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform.
7. Things become important merely because others have decided they are important.
8. Top down messaging encourages an echo chamber (agree with this edict or change the channel).
9. Ill-informed about history and this particular issue.
10. Confusing opinion with the truth.
11. Revising facts to fit a point of view.
12. Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time.

If I wanted to hobble an organization or even a country, I'd wish these twelve traits on them. I wonder if this sounds like the last board meeting you went to...