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linkedin

Pimp Your LinkedIn Profile – Tips On How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out

Improving your LinkedIn profile is relatively easy and not time-consuming. It just might make the difference between your employment and continued unemployment. LinkedIn has become the first place employers fish for recruits. Unfortunately, a lot of people have a LinkedIn profile with poor or limited information on it. This works greatly to their disadvantage.

You can use these 5 tips to make a quick improvement.

  1. Use a professional photo.

According to LinkedIn, adding a profile photo makes your profile seven times more likely to be found in searches. The importance of your LinkedIn profile photo is to show you confidence and professionalism. Profiles with no photo are perceived as incomplete and/or dormant and have little chance of being viewed. Try as much as possible to avoid using the wrong type of photos. Remove that cropped photo of yourself at a party even though you look really good there. Photos with pets, kids, and partners are inappropriate in the depiction of professionalism.

Remember, LinkedIn is a professional networking site for businesses, so use a photo that reflects a professional business image.

  1. Create an informative headline and include your industry and location.

Your headline is most likely the very first thing people study when viewing your profile for the first time. First impressions last a lifetime, so you don’t want to mishandle this.

You have 120 characters available to you in your headline to tell potential employers what you do, and most importantly, who you are. So don’t use just your job title, add your area of specialization as well. If for example you are a Project Manager who works primarily in construction, you would agree that “Project Manager with 10+ years in Construction” would have a more powerful effect than “Project Manager”.

Inclusion of your current location is also of vital importance. Always remember to update after relocation.

  1. Add your current position and previous work history.

LinkedIn states that adding your two most recent job positions makes your profile twelve times more likely to be found. You’ve probably learned that you wouldn’t rank in a LinkedIn search result without a current job. There’s no need to panic. Although adding ‘unemployed’ or ‘in transmission’ to your profile can work against you, an apt description of your previously held positions is still pertinent and can go a long way. It explains to your potential employer, your level of ability.

Remember this is not a resume, so don’t go overboard with previous work details. If you must mention your accolades, do so subtly unless you are a recent graduate with very little experience. Avoid adding jobs you had as an undergraduate in this regard. If you’ve been out of college or the university for a while, listing internships is probably unnecessary.

You might also include any board or volunteer position that may be of interest to you.

  1. Get Connected.

LinkedIn requires you to have at least fifty connections in order to achieve a complete profile. LinkedIn has made it very easy to find people to add to your network. Seeing that it is a professional network, it is important that you use it to your advantage to keep up with colleagues at work, colleagues from previous work, as well as college or university classmates. Depending on your company size, you can connect with just your department or to other departments of the organization as well. Another way of connecting is to upload contacts from Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, etc., by logging into your personal email and seeing who has a LinkedIn profile.

One piece of often-ignored advice you should follow is to be sure to write a personal message when you send out invitations for connection. Try to give some context to the association as well.

  1. Customize your LinkedIn URL

Exactly like any other social network, you are given a long (and impersonal) URL link after registration. There is no harm in keeping this URL, but it isn’t exactly helpful either. Which looks more business-like or professional between these two: Roberts129076 or AndrewRoberts?

In these simple steps, change your current URL to better reflect your professionalism:

  1. Click the “Me” icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage
  2. Click “View profile”
  3. On your profile page, click “Edit public profile & URL” on the right rail
  4. Under “Edit URL” in the right rail, click the “Edit” icon next to your public profile URL. It’ll be an address that looks likewww.linkedin.com/in/yourname.
  5. Type the last part of your new custom URL in the text box
  6. Click save

Work through these ideas, building from one to the other, and you’ll find that you can make progress quickly. Flex the full advantages of your LinkedIn profile, and you’ll be amazed how much of a difference it can make to you and your business.

Good luck!

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Social Media 4 Business

Pimp Your Resume – Tips on How to Make Your Resume Stand Out

So you’ve seen your dream job vacancy, but you’re dreaded because you might end up sending your CV into a black hole. So how do you make your CV stand out to command attention? It might quirk you to learn that a few simple things can make or mar your CV’s appeal. These include:

Typeface:

The sans-serif font choices including Verdana, Aerial, Trebuchet, and Tahoma have become the norm for appealing CVs these days. These fonts, which are popularly known to have no “feet”, are the sleekest, clearest font choices today. But the serif fonts aren’t total taboos either, as they still find favor among very traditional employers who still prefer these fonts because they find wide use in traditional prints and newspapers.

Size:

There is more freedom of choice for this parameter, as any text size between 9pts and 12pts is suitable for a standard CV. Note here that the choice font also determines the appropriate text size. 10pts or 11point fits most fonts. Headings must come in font sizes larger than that of the rest of the texts so they can stand out and guide the reader appropriately.

Style:

Write certain parts of your resume in bold or italics to highlight their greater significance. These parts might include job titles, years of experience, as well as the various subheadings. However, one way to get it all wrong is to apply the style changes inconsistently, like using UPPERCASE lettering for just one or only some of the subheadings. The spacing and punctuation must also be consistent throughout.

Margins:

Like the above-mentioned parameters, margins can have a huge impact on your CV’s readability. The margin determines the size of the white space bordering the body of the text, and can therefore determine the length of the copy. By choosing the right font-size, you can avoid extending the text by just one or two lines into another page. Use a margin size of anything between 0.5” and 1”, and maintain consistency in size choice for all four sides.

Indents:
You don’t have to struggle with getting it right with indents, even if you’ve not quite gotten the hangs of the tab settings. The trick is to ensure that all indents are properly vertically aligned down the page. Also ensure that if indents are applied on bullets lists, they are applied consistently throughout.

Conclusion

By paying attention appropriately to the parameters outlined above while composing your CV, you can make your CV stand out from a sea of entries. The catch here is to make the CV as readable as possible so employees can easily spot and read through your CV from a pile of CVs. It’s also advisable to use hyperlinks that lead to relevant web pages like your social media accounts and website. Also, you must ensure that every word counts.

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cv resume

7 Tips for Creating a Resume That Stands Out

Job recruiters are assessing hundreds of resumes at the same time, and in some cases, thousands. So you shouldn’t expect them to spend much time on your resume. In fact, it has been noticed that they only spend about 25 seconds on each resume. This means that you must make a great and instant impression on your recruiter with your resume. To make a great impression, you must provide the right content, and to make an instant positive impression, you must have an attractive layout.

  1. Keep it simple. Having an attractive layout is not necessarily making over-the-top designs. Even if you’re a graphic designer and applying for a job in the design field, you must still make your resume simple. Save your fancy formatting for your portfolio. The reason why a simple format is crucial is that it is easier for the ATS (Application Tracking System) to screen your resume and easier for recruiters to read it.
  2. Use a basic font. The best fonts to use are simple fonts like Time New Roman, San Serif, Arial, or Calibri. Be sure to use a readable font, ideally a font having a size between 10 to 12 points. Use bold and italics to highlight employers and job titles.
  3. Send tailored resume. Don’t send the same resume for all applications! Different jobs require different contents no matter how related they are. So, you must tailor your resume to each job listing. No matter how patiently your recruiter views your default resume, it will feel off, because you’ve not have reflected the job-specific skills highlighted in the job posting.
  4. Focus on your accomplishments. Focus your resume on what you achieved in each job, not the office you occupied. Your employer wants to know what you accomplished and how they might benefit from your experience, not just what you did.
  5. Include your most relevant skills. Sometimes when you’re applying for a job, the position is not a perfect fit but an interesting option. In this case, include as many as possible relevant skills and as less as possible irrelevant skills. Include keywords, that is, those skills and attributes that have been listed on your employer’s posting.
  6. Save it as PDF. Saving your resume after editing as PDF is crucial to preventing such errors as funky formatting or recruiters seeing a garbled mess. Microsoft Words of different years particularly have a way of disorganizing contents. If you created your content on a Microsoft Word of a particular year, and your recruiter used a Microsoft Word of a different year for the review, they’ll likely see a garbled mess.
  7. Add a cover letter. Always add a cover letter along with your resume. Your cover letter communicates to your employer that you have a certain level of education. It is also where you get to communicate with your employer on a personal level. Your employer wants to be communicated to, particularly to listen to you tell them why you’re a good fit.

 

All in all, in addition to your resume containing the right information, it must be appealing to the eye. If you apply the suggestions above carefully, you’ll stand a better chance of landing your next job application.