In launching your job search and career campaign, it has become increasingly important to meet the demands of a digital age. Professional resume writers will coach you to understand that the resume and profile-building process is not just an exercise in exploring your career accomplishments and history, but it is also a personal branding strategy. Tawana Wood, the chief resume writer, personal brand strategist, and owner/director of Country’s Best Resumes says, “A resume is a marketing document and not a list of your responsibilities over the years. A LinkedIn profile is your opportunity to deliver this marketing message to the world.”
Within the past few years, LinkedIn has evolved into the number one personal branding tool available. Over the years, it has metamorphosed from an online resume and networking portal to an extensive branding resource. With more than 225 million members, LinkedIn is the largest and most active professional network in the world. According to Ziggy Soto, a professional resume writer for Rise Smart, you will not be taken seriously as a career-minded executive in today’s marketplace without a LinkedIn profile. She goes on to say, “Brand-conscious leaders don’t turn their backs on two hundred million prospects.”
As a certified professional resume writer for Country’s Best Resumes, I find clients who are novice users of LinkedIn ask about the importance of LinkedIn all of the time. My number one response is that it is not only a vital networking tool, but it enables you to have a strong and personally controlled online presence.
Quite often, prospective employers will Google your name when your resume comes across their desk. Thus, you will obviously want an accurate and impressive representation of yourself to appear in their search results. By updating and maintaining an active presence on LinkedIn, your profile will most likely appear in the first or second spots of a Google search! And not only will prospective employers be Googling your name, but so will employees, managers, clients, competitors, and other prospects. Regardless of what scandalous exploits you may have in your history, LinkedIn is your opportunity to clean up your image and to present to the world your greatest strengths, accomplishments, unique value, and competitive edge.
Not only is LinkedIn the ultimate catalyst to enhancing your visibility and credibility online, but you can also showcase your personal brand in a three-dimensional light by sharing images and videos in your summary, projects, and experience fields. This approach resonates with the Visual CV phenomenon, which is making job candidates more accessible to prospective employers with a multimedia approach to highlighting your accomplishments and to conveying the reasons why an employer should hire you. It also demonstrates innovation and passion for the value-added contributions you have to offer an enterprise. Check out VisualizeMe.com, Vizify.com, Re.vu, and ResumUp.com to enhance the text-based content you create in LinkedIn with color, images, and video. Not only will you find LinkedIn to be helpful in your job search, but it will become more vital and even enjoyable for your professional and personal activities.
Another reason why LinkedIn is so preeminent to your job search is that it is the most efficient method of managing your personal network. Thanks to tags, you can arrange your contacts into groups that are intuitive and helpful to you. LinkedIn basically becomes your perpetual contact database, as you can separate alumni, former employers, clients, and colleagues into separate groups. You no longer need to utilize your email as the only method to manage your contacts; LinkedIn is your own CRM system for effective and efficient organization of your personal network.
You will also find that LinkedIn enables you to stay on top of leading-edge industry trends. By following thought leaders and companies on LinkedIn, you can be more attractive to hiring managers due to staying abreast of cutting-edge practices in your industry and/or job function. Also, through brand association, you make a statement about yourself whenever you follow a company or leader. Those names influence the people who are viewing your profile.
Lastly, LinkedIn enables you to expand your success by offering opportunities for competitor research, opening doors with new clients and/or partners, locating subject matter experts in your field, identifying resources to externally solve internal problems, and even to peek into a prospective client’s network. The options are limitless and the results are powerful.
With Kavaliro, you can apply to any job postings simply with your LinkedIn profile. Because of Kavaliro’s distinctive technology partnership with the professional networking site, all it takes is one click to apply to a job posting!
Due to the mission-critical importance of LinkedIn for your job search, it is highly recommended that you allow a professional resume writer to design and develop your LinkedIn profile. By entrusting a professional, your LinkedIn will be rich with keywords related to your career campaign, thought leadership, and future job targets. By architecting a profile that is rich with keywords, you will become highly visible to both clients and employers who are seeking the exact services you have to offer. It has even been proposed that there may not be any job listings or even job boards in the future and that hiring managers will only use their social networks and tools like LinkedIn to locate the perfect candidate!
Now that you are fired up and ready to launch and/or improve your LinkedIn profile, review a few professionals with phenomenal profiles:
Join the digital age and develop your LinkedIn profile today for optimal job search results!
By Guest Blogger, Victoria Andrew, Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) with Country’s Best Resumes. Owned and Operated by Chief Resume Writer and Personal Brand Strategist, Tawana Wood.
Kavaliro Employment Agency has offices in Tampa, Fla., Charlotte, N.C., Orlando, Fla., Washington, D.C., and Jacksonville, Fla. and can make sure you find the right people for this important role. We are ready and waiting to help you anytime and look forward to hearing from you.