Things To Take Note When Setting Up A Profile On LinkedIn

Update your picture

The first tip is to use common sense but it is always useful to remember to treat your profile picture on LinkedIn. Remember that LinkedIn is not Facebook. So avoid the pictures of your last vacation or your last evening in a nightclub, or that of your 20 years of age. Your picture must be professional. Avoid using blurry photo, a group photo, a photo with your boyfriend or child, a picture in which you are wearing an outfit that you would normally be not wearing to your workplace. 

Boost your skills list

Use the hottest skills to market yourself. The skills section is the best place where recruiters can find you easily. The "Skills" are buzzwords that change all the time. For that LinkedIn will help you find the right words and phrases most commonly used. Type competence in the search box of skills and will compare this term to a list of similar terms and offer all terms approaching your search. You can enter up to 35 skills, so enjoy!

It is now possible to put your non-professional skills. During your volunteer work, or when you indulge in your passion, you can develop skills that deserve to be on your professional profile such as writing, organizing the annual celebration of your town or your passion for biathlon.

Complete this field of all your skills because your profile will be found easily by your future business contacts.

Reveal your personality

You have a passion? You are hired and doing volunteer work for a humanitarian cause? Do it now! This will allow recruiters or professional contacts to know how you dedicate your spare time. That says a lot about your personality and can facilitate others. So do not neglect this part and keep it updated regularly!

Collect recommendations

Most people will seek new recommendations when seeking a new position. This is a serious mistake when you are having professional recommendations from your family or your friends over a condensed time. Residual and by inference, it will be easy to identify and ignore by recruiters.

So try to have good recommendations throughout your career. This will impress prospective recruiters to see that you have had positive recommendations on years and with different types of contacts: clients, employers, colleagues ... Please note that recruiters prefer above all the recommendations of senior sectors of you or your business.

Dust off your enrolment groups

You have joined a few groups during registration on LinkedIn or you have responded to invitations to join a group that you have accepted out of kindness or by automation. Note that groups can be one of the best ways to expand your network. Have a group in common with someone who gives you a good way to break the ice with professional contacts.

Do not prefer staying in the old groups that concern you more or that have become inactive. Join new groups that match your professional interests today! Do not feel limited to join the group of your business or that of your college friends, expand your horizons through professional groups LinkedIn! If you want to do personal branding, you must also devote time and avoid errors.

Small list of pitfalls to avoid

Too many friends

There is no harm to connect with your friends on LinkedIn, but too much praise, it is always a little suspect. A recommendation from the workplace is worth of being gold if it is sincere, but you can get that by providing excellent work but if your sincerity is in doubt if only once all your efforts fall by the wayside.  

Link with too personal website

LinkedIn is only for your professional life, links to Facebook and other sites where you chat with friends and acquaintances therefore have no place. However, if you keep a blog dedicated to your career, and a link with it is obviously very useful.

Give too much discretion to LinkedIn

This social network complete a lot of things automatically, without asking your opinion - for example your work description at the top of your profile. In some cases, this is fine, but you still do not let other people determine what to include on your card! So think about what needs to be in the tagline, because most users will decide whether to continue their visit or not.

Snubbing the groups

For each professional who is on LinkedIn, groups bring together people from the same branch. These groups are a great opportunity to show which capable persons are there in your area, so join them. However, there is no need to respond to each comment, but active members of a group are highly appreciated.

Twitter to excess

Send regular updates to the world is a great idea, but all tweets are not interesting for LinkedIn. Try to find the right balance between activity and hyperactivity on twitter, or you may irritate the members of your network.  

Branding and Positioning Yourself in LinkedIn to Land Yourself a Job

LinkedIn is a great tool for branding and positioning to land yourself a job… Here is what you need to do:

Be Personal 

This keyword today guides the strategies of anyone who wants to optimize his CV, improve his contacts, increase visibility, and let him be recognized for his expertise. Thanks to the new features, and millions of users, LinkedIn is a perfect tool for PersonalBranding and meets exactly this specific need, allowing you to manage more proactively through 360-degree career development. The profile now resembles mini-site staffs, which orchestrates actions that are more contemporary and let you choose how to promote yourself in a better way, to tell your stories and engage readers of the professional profile.

It is Your Brand!

Take full responsibility to promote yourself! Since you are communicating with yourself, so speak in the first person, maintain such consistency in all sections of the profile, and enter an E-mail or a telephone number in order for people to get in touch with you. 

Rather than highlighting, what is written in your Curriculum Vitae, Instead use LinkedIn to tell your professional story, choose words that express the passion and enthusiasm you put into what you care for. Take advantage of the Headlines, which is the most important section that most frequently appear in search results and market your brand in a positive way.

Furthermore, it clarifies your professionalism, even in different facets. The impact is certainly much more interesting if you add a short phrase guide that clarifies your job, your career goal, and what benefits you will provide to those who will work with you (e.g. Employer Branding Specialist, Marketing Specialist, Speaker, Trainer, Consultant, etc.)

Photos, Videos and Slides

Insert a professional photo that identifies you well and make you recognizable. Also note that the photo in headline combine one of those elements that will let you achieve 100% completion of the profile, letting you track down more frequently in searches!

Today it is possible to be even more proactive

In the section reserved for the professional experience, you can add more pictures that represent the highlights of your career (e.g., awards) or clarifying your activities (e.g. moments of classroom lectures), Slides (to present a couple of examples or projects that you have followed), and even videos. Personally, you can find video medium as a wonderful opportunity to introduce you to everyone who has the curiosity to read your profile. Why not then exploit them to be welcomed to your page "in your way" to tell your very own professional story.

Make others speak of you

The "endorser" you find in the section "Skills & expertise" and "recommendations "are two different options that are both useful to let others speak for you! The first is much faster and with a simple click of your contacts can validate some of the skills that you yourself have decided to include in the profile. 

It is a section of visual impact and quantity but the recommendations are more interesting. Why? Why would someone spend some time to write words for you? Why would someone take the time to tell a story of their professional relationship with you and the work experience he had with you? 

These are people who have known you professionally, and whose testimony is to operate on a qualitative dimension.  Among the functions with which you can search the profiles, one special function, filters only those people that contain recommendations.

Be consistent in ‘use of keywords’

The recruiter filters keywords when looking for a candidate.  Therefore, it is important to identify those that best represent you as a person and as a professional. Get the "Top Search Keywords" and refine your strategy, therefore, for your Personal Branding, choose the best synonyms that are more common in your industry or bookmarks to describe certain skills. 

Do not limit yourself and also include your keywords in the "Skills & expertise", and use them consistently to make your profile look credible especially in headlines (the section that appears most frequently in searches), in the Table of Contents, and between the Professional Experience.

Consider Keywords that are not just focused on the hard skills but also on the soft skills.

Everything can become a valuable source to help in finding you!

Appropriate use of the URL

Be personal in every detail! Edit with your first and last name the URL of the profile, by default it appears as a string of numeric characters. So you can insert into your documents, your business card and your resume.

Make your profile “live” and Active

The profile should not include a static picture only. It should be fed, promoted, and changed often. Make it an important medium to express the person behind it, i-e you. Think of it as a sweet quality, carefully prepared, beautifully packaged and displayed in the window. Keep your profile up to date and hijack traffic and valuable contacts.

Complete your profile 100% 

What is your current position? What were you doing before? What you are training? When you enter information in your profile, gauge shows you the score filling percentage. The LinkedIn profile is an online resume, which describe your career in a clear and concise manner. It should be explicit, using the right keywords. 

LinkedIn allows you to write a short summary about yourself. So its best to keep it short by saying the basics and brand yourself online through LinkedIn. 

What is LinkedIn - An Introduction to LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a platform for social network that aims to bring together its members in order to create job opportunities. Signing up for LinkedIn is free and quite easy, as after registering, getting ready in a few minutes with your own presentation page, you can start building your own network of contacts inviting colleagues, friends, suppliers and customers.

LinkedIn, however, is not limited to putting people in touch. Analyze their relationships and track routes with which you can apparently reach distant people. It offers powerful research tools and helps us to create a strong online persona and a good network of contacts, which we can use at any crossroad of our lives.

There is a theory called the "six degrees of separation", according to which each person may come into contact with any other person through a chain of knowledge composed of not more than five intermediaries. LinkedIn has not done anything but put this theory into practice. 

If you are looking for a person who can help you solve a problem, you can use the search function to locate a LinkedIn chain of contacts that can lead to the person sought. Now, you just take the chain from time to time by sending to each of its members a request for presentation to the next link in the chain, until you get the desired person.

Through LinkedIn you can also find old acquaintances who do not feel for a long time and be updated on the progress of the career of old friends. Currently the network LinkedIn has over 150 million registered professionals and is growing rapidly.

Linkedin, what it is and what is it for

When it comes to professional social networks related to "seek and offer jobs," no wonder that LinkedIn is to become the main protagonist. The well-known network, active since May 2003, and developed in 19 languages is the 23rd most visited website world.

Among the marketing tools available online, for the real estate agent is essential to use the services that LinkedIn provides . LinkedIn is the digital alternative to the paper resume or business card: it is an online space where professionals can publish education, current position and professional experiences. And there's even more!

As reported by Wikipedia "the main purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of persons known and deemed reliable in the workplace." The people in the list are called "connections" and can be enhanced by inviting the contact.

The objectives offered by LinkedIn are many: 

●        Find jobs, people, business opportunities with the support of someone inside of your contact list or network

●        Get to be introduced to someone you want to know through contacts

●        Employers can post offers and search for potential candidates 

●        People looking for work can read the profiles of recruiters and finds out someone to put them in direct contact with them

LinkedIn does not just put people in touch. It offers powerful research tools and help to create a good network of contacts as well.

Once registered, you must identify and focus your profile according to your employment status.
From your address book, you can invite your knowledge in your network.  Consequently, each opens his book contacts to other relationships.  It is interesting to see how easy it is to search and discover other interesting people in your network. Though sharing may bring many misgivings, LinkedIn offers a well thought out system suggestions and non-intrusive. 

Indeed, it is impossible to get in touch with someone you do not know personally. It is necessary to go through a direct intermediary (e.g. A common connection) so that it decides whether to forward the request. LinkedIn is then used to discover new business, to expand its influence, organizing  current work profiles and inform its activities to a wider network.

It is certainly a resource that we cannot afford to ignore. Even companies that follow you on LinkedIn could all be potential customers or partners. Hence if your employees are using LinkedIn, your company will be present in the database. Targeted businesses listed on LinkedIn now have the opportunity to distribute relevant content to the right audience. This means that messages will be targeted to users based on specific criteria: company size, industry, function, age, or geographic location.

The statistics of Followers enable companies to examine and evaluate those who follow their updates, and the relative degree of engagement. It will be easier to identify an opinion leader who may serve as evangelists for your brand, and expand the company on the basis of population. So why not make your presence online through Linkedin, the most popular business social network available today? In this book, we’ll provide you with some basic tips and ideas to help you make the most of this brilliant social network.

Creating a Linkedin Profile - The Basic

If you don’t have an account on Linkedin, then its time to get started. Given below are some tips with the help of which you can create a fully functional social professional profile for yourself, to be contacted by millions of all such talent holders from all around the world.

Step 1 . Do not confuse it with that of other social uses. Your LinkedIn profile has its own characteristics that you must use to the fullest. Enter all the personal information that allows people to contact you and find you easily (can also be useful to add the mobile phone number) with a photo.

Step 2 . Fill in all the fields in a precise way, describing dates and roles, work experience, achievements and future goals. One interesting thing that lets this social network is, to highlight the roles that you are covering at the same time. 

Step 3. Invest your time

Invest as much time as you need to complete the profile with all possible details of your career. Just think that your profile is your business card, therefore, it is often essential to revise and update your profile. Once the traditional confirmation email is received, you will have access to different modules that allow you to add your knowledge already on the network (do it, it lets you expand your contact list).

You can visit different profiles and create a good profile for your company. These profiles are usually professional, and are updated regularly. Hence no room of error is available. If you do not have the expertise or the time to spend, do not hesitate to hire someone to do it for you. This is like a gateway to your business door. It must be clean, clear, and customers and employees must show their desire to enter your profile.

Step 4. CV

You are trying to present your CV to someone and thus preferably describing your experiences and expertise clearly. To do this, adjust your editorial to your screen size in the form of short paragraphs and points of visual cues and customize your profile in the most authentic way.

Use verbs and constructions of dynamic phrases as "I led the team on the project" instead of "responsible for the management of the project team." Stay natural and never write in the third person! Adopt a personal signature, which appears in the first line of the text that serves as a brand signature.

Emphasis should be on skills. The areas of "skills" should be considered as a search engine optimizer, a tool to increase the chances of being found. It is in this section that it is advisable to put all the keywords specific to your industry and your areas of expertise. Not to mention your interests, values ​​or recent job.

The opportunity here to add a little humor or passion to your profile! Hence a reader must be helped to understand the key elements of your career. It is therefore necessary to briefly explain the business activity in which you have gained some experience. Again, imagine yourself in a client meeting and ask yourself how you can describe yourself and what you are doing. For ease of reading, consider using short and clear sentences. If you want to express more, then "More Information" section is quite interesting to complete your profile centers of relevant interests. You can also add sites that show your skills and your passions.

Step 5. Develop your network

Once your profile page is completed, it is time to start building contacts to expand your visibility on LinkedIn. The idea is to reach as many users as possible on LinkedIn. Contacts give you more chances of finding customers and people interested in your business.

Accept any connection request, even if you do not know the person who sent you. Never refuse a connection, do you refuse someone who lends you his business card? Add all relationships equals in case you think, people with whom you have worked in the past, those with whom you are currently working. Do not overlook the People You may not know! Soon, your network will consist of influential people in your field.

Your network is one of the most important aspects of your profile. The value of the community works in both directions. If you have multiple connections, cultivate them! It is advisable to apply, to answer questions about your areas of expertise and share with the people in your network.

And it does not stop here! It is not enough to add connections and wait for the opportunities to arrive. Participate in discussions on your expanded business area, join groups, create if necessary. By participating in discussions, you will be displayed as an influential person in your field, and you'll soon become a reference. People will trust you and want to do business with you and recommend you.

A final tip: Once done with everything as a good advice I would recommend you to just make sure your profile is consistent, well-structured and easy to find and mediate, for example by adding it to your blog, creating a link from your web site, or by placing it in your email signature.

Some Basic Tips to Take Note When Setting Up A Profile On LinkedIn

Update your picture

The first tip is to use common sense but it is always useful to remember to treat your profile picture on LinkedIn. Remember that LinkedIn is not Facebook. So avoid the pictures of your last vacation or your last evening in a nightclub, or that of your 20 years of age. Your picture must be professional. Avoid using blurry photo, a group photo, a photo with your boyfriend or child, a picture in which you are wearing an outfit that you would normally be not wearing to your workplace. 

Boost your skills list

Use the hottest skills to market yourself. The skills section is the best place where recruiters can find you easily. The "Skills" are buzzwords that change all the time. For that LinkedIn will help you find the right words and phrases most commonly used. Type competence in the search box of skills and will compare this term to a list of similar terms and offer all terms approaching your search. You can enter up to 35 skills, so enjoy!

It is now possible to put your non-professional skills. During your volunteer work, or when you indulge in your passion, you can develop skills that deserve to be on your professional profile such as writing, organizing the annual celebration of your town or your passion for biathlon.

Complete this field of all your skills because your profile will be found easily by your future business contacts.

Reveal your personality

You have a passion? You are hired and doing volunteer work for a humanitarian cause? Do it now! This will allow recruiters or professional contacts to know how you dedicate your spare time. That says a lot about your personality and can facilitate others. So do not neglect this part and keep it updated regularly!

Collect recommendations

Most people will seek new recommendations when seeking a new position. This is a serious mistake when you are having professional recommendations from your family or your friends over a condensed time. Residual and by inference, it will be easy to identify and ignore by recruiters.

So try to have good recommendations throughout your career. This will impress prospective recruiters to see that you have had positive recommendations on years and with different types of contacts: clients, employers, colleagues ... Please note that recruiters prefer above all the recommendations of senior sectors of you or your business.

Dust off your enrollment groups

You have joined a few groups during registration on LinkedIn or you have responded to invitations to join a group that you have accepted out of kindness or by automation. Note that groups can be one of the best ways to expand your network. Have a group in common with someone who gives you a good way to break the ice with professional contacts.

Do not prefer staying in the old groups that concern you more or that have become inactive. Join new groups that match your professional interests today! Do not feel limited to join the group of your business or that of your college friends, expand your horizons through professional groups LinkedIn! If you want to do personal branding, you must also devote time and avoid errors.

Small list of pitfalls to avoid

Too many friends

There is no harm to connect with your friends on LinkedIn, but too much praise, it is always a little suspect. A recommendation from the workplace is worth of being gold if it is sincere, but you can get that by providing excellent work but if your sincerity is in doubt if only once all your efforts fall by the wayside.  

Link with too personal website

LinkedIn is only for your professional life, links to Facebook and other sites where you chat with friends and acquaintances therefore have no place. However, if you keep a blog dedicated to your career, and a link with it is obviously very useful.

Give too much discretion to LinkedIn

This social network complete a lot of things automatically, without asking your opinion - for example your work description at the top of your profile. In some cases, this is fine, but you still do not let other people determine what to include on your card! So think about what needs to be in the tagline, because most users will decide whether to continue their visit or not.

Snubbing the groups

For each professional who is on LinkedIn, groups bring together people from the same branch. These groups are a great opportunity to show which capable persons are there in your area, so join them. However, there is no need to respond to each comment, but active members of a group are highly appreciated.

Twitter to excess

Send regular updates to the world is a great idea, but all tweets are not interesting for LinkedIn. Try to find the right balance between activity and hyperactivity on twitter, or you may irritate the members of your network.  

The 7 Factors You Need to Be Successful for Headhunter in Singapore

Becoming a Singapore headhunter in Singapore is fairly easy, as long as you have you necessary qualification, a fairly good communication skill, There will be many existing headhunting company willing to hire you. 

There is always headcount available for most headhunting companies as this is considered a “Sales” role, which means that you are like a Salesmen serving two types of clients: The companies and the candidates. 

Interestingly the lifespan of most of the headhunters in Singapore to stay in one company is usually quite short, a range from 3 months to 8 months on average and after which the same headhunter will be moving to another company. Well I will not touch base on why they moved to another company as this is not the topic I want to talk about hence I will touch on what are the key factors you need to be successful to become a great headhunter. Our definition of successful headhunter is : Ability to close at least 2-3 high level position every month continuously for at least 12 months.

1) Understanding the market – Whether you are a local or foreigner doing headhunting in Singapore, you MUST know the culture, the industry, the pricing and the sentiment of being a headhunter. Read plenty of magazines, go to trade shows and exhibitions. Research who are the competitors, the different types of sector within the industry you want to focus on and not forgetting the “Lingo” the people use. Failure to make preparation will show to your clients and candidates that you are an absolute novice in the industry.

2) A fairly older age – This is debatable and many will argued about it, but you see, if you are a 25 years old chap and you are expecting to work on a headhunting assignment to look for a Managing Director, the fact that the potential Managing Director will not even entertain you at all. Please do not argue that you have some years of experience, yes you may have but the fact is that it usually does not happen that way. As a general guide, put 10-12 years on top of your age on the type of position you want to do. If you are 35 years old, you can work on position that are about 47 years old.

3) A good company brand  – If you join a new company, your chances of surviving will not be high unless the company has a realistic understanding that they will not make profit in the next 12 months and you will be given ample time to perform. However, most new headhunting company will give you only 3-6 months to perform, sometime even shorter,,,If the company is not putting any budget on their branding, you will not be successful.

4) Your own branding – Make an effort to create your own website using your own name such as mine which is at www.dougleschan.com, put your face, put all your social network, write about things within that industry and show to the public you are the expert, after some time, you will start to have your own personal fame and branding and you will start get more clients and secure more deals.

5) Good office address: If the company is not located in prime area, you will be judge below par at the first impression, new clients will not give you the business. Period.

6) Excellent communication skills: I stressed to all the students when I was teaching them that communication skills is number one. Without that, you will not be able to get new clients and candidates. What I have done is that I rehearse them with VIDEOS and spot their weakness and work on their strong point, from there, going through at least 20-30 rounds, they will be able to see a great difference compared to the first time they had done the presentation.

7) A never say die attitude – Headhunting is TOUGH, I repeat that, it is VERY TOUGH, many people will fail and only the tough one will survive, after they survived, they will start to gain momentum and eventually become a great headhunter. Hence, no matter what happen, never gives up and let go. Sometime success is just a few inch away.

Good luck in your journey to become a successful Singapore headhunter!

An article by Dougles Chan. The Recruitment Business Guru, A Master Headhunter Singapore. Author of Financial Success in Recruitment Industry & Job Seekers Power Manual. Creator of C-Marketing, V-Marketing, T-Marketing, Market Tumour, and the exclusive training program Recruitment Apprentice.