1. Steve Rogers
Systems Engineer
“Root Cause Analyst”
at Steve Rogers Independent Consulting
rogersjs@flash.net
10/18/2012 817-456-6123
2. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Is It Perfectly Clear You Are Searching For A Job?
A few Items Are Only Checked On Profile And Listed At The Bottom
Contact Steve For:
career opportunities
consulting offers
job inquiries
= Zero Points
“In Career Transition” Or Similar Words In Job Title Or At Top Of Profile
Systems Engineer (In Career Transition)
Systems Engineer (Seeking New Opportunities)
= 20 Points
3. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Is Your Job Title Or Job Focus Clear?
Multiple Job Titles Or Invalid Job Title
Senior Network Technology Manager Telecom IT Business Project Executive
Consultant Systems Engineer Planner Analyst Research Lead
= Zero Points (Maybe this one should be -20 points)
One Clear Valid Job Title
Senior Systems Engineer
= 20 Points
4. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Main Accomplishments Listed Up Front?
List From Strength Finders OR List Of Duties/Weak Accomplishments
MAXIMIZER Created new cost saving process
CONNECTEDNESS Drew up organizational charts
RESPONSIBILITY Supervised five people
ACHIEVER Learned new computer system
WOO
= Zero Points
Accomplishments With “So What”
PROCESS IMPROVER
Reduced data center weekly man hours from 240 to 0
INNOVATOR
Created new staffing model for 83 retail stores which saved over $5M annually
= 20 Points
5. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Contact Info Complete And Easy To Find?
No Contact Or Personal Information Shown In Profile
= Zero Points
Shown In Profile
Personal Information
Phone: 817-456-6123
Address: N. Richland Hills, TX 76180
IM: rogersjs@flash.net
= 20 Points
6. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Profile Picture?
Unprofessional Picture Or No Picture?
= Zero
Professional Picture
= 20 Points
7. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Where Do You Show Up During A Search?
Many Pages Down
= Zero Points
First Page
= 20 Points
8. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Add Up Your Points To See How Well Your Profile May
Work For You
Zero Points – You Really Need To Work On It; Or You Have Given Up Looking
20 Points – You May Not Really Want A Job
40 Points – You Want A Job, But Not Right Now
60 Points – Could Be A Lot Better
80 Points – Not Too Bad
100 Points – You’re Doing Your Part; Congratulations
120 Points – Wow, You Should Be Getting Some Attention
9. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Questions?
Comments?
10. What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?
Questions?
Comments?
Editor's Notes
I’m not a LinkedIn “expert”; just a user who has some observations about what may be done on LinkedIn to help job seekers land a job a little faster. A good reference to use when building your LinkedIn profile is the book “Finding a Job God’s Way” by David Rawles. Even though he does not address LinkedIn specifically, many of the tips in his book can really help your profile stand out from the rest. Promo text: What Is Your LinkedIn Grade?: A look at six very important items on your LinkedIn profile that may delay your search for a job. Make sure you don’t have any “red flags”, or things that may make someone looking at your profile go “hummm.” Rationale and tips on what to do to improve your profile are provided. A high score should boost your chances of getting a job quickly. Good news; you get to score your own profile and we don’t post your grades anywhere.
EVERYONE is interested in “career opportunities”, etc. so it is hard to tell if someone really wants a job. It is important that you make it easy for someone to tell if you are seeking a new job. “ Transition” and “Seeking” are “key words” that people search on to see who is job hunting, you may want to switch back and forth between these two words to see if your number of “hits” increases. You can also do searches on your job title to see what other job seekers are using.
Recruiters, Human Resource, and Hiring Managers want to know what you want to be when you grow up. They want to know “What is your real passion?” Having two or more job titles can be a problem, if you are qualified as an “Operations Manager” and a “Electrical Engineer” and you get hired as one of them, they may fear that you will leave that job to pursue your “real” passion, or to get more money. Make sure you also tell all of your contacts and friends what job you are looking for. They need to know your ONE specific job title; NOT just that you will “take anything” because you won’t.
Vague adjectives, a list of duties or weak accomplishments do not differentiate you from the rest of the herd, you need to stand out and be memorable. This is also a good place to put any “special” things that may set you apart from the crowd. Like “Secret Security Clearance” or special “Certifications” that apply to your job focus. The addition of “handles”, which are words used by you, or other people, to uniquely describe you may make you even more memorable. If you follow the CareerSolutions Workshop resume format, you can just copy and paste these from your resume. David Rawles covers many helpful hints like this in his book “Finding A Job God’s Way” and in his CareerSolutions Workshops. If you’re serious about finding a job, David’s workshops provide everything you need to know to shorten your job search. By the way, you need to attend more than just a few one hour seminars to be effective.
This may be causing a problem since people can’t contact you because it looks like you are “hiding” or like you may be in the “federal witness protection program.” This could also be a “red flag.” If you’re worried about email spam, viruses, etc, then create an email just for job seeking – don’t use “cute” names or numbers, just your first and last name if possible. You can always go back into hiding after you land a job.
You may want to check to make sure your picture is in focus, not to “busy” with many other things or people in it, tasteful, not 35 years old, not your dog, cat, horse, or flowers. If your friends can’t recognize you, it’s time for a change. Look at the foreground and background; I saw a beer on a coffee table on one profile. That may be okay for some, but it may not be “professional” for some careers. If you don’t have any picture, that could be a “red flag”; someone may think you are lazy, paranoid, wanted by the FBI, CIA, Police, or ex- someone. If you’re worried about being discriminated against due to age, sex, race, fat, skinny, pretty, ugly, short, tall, bald, or hairy, then STOP. The bottom line is that if the company discriminates, you don’t want to work there, period. Permission from Robin and Stephenie to use their profile pictures: Received Oct 23, 2012.
Getting your profile to show up on the first or second page during a search will take some work and may not even be possible, so don’t waste too much time trying to “get-er-done.” A clear “valid” job title and key words in your accomplishments, under each job you have listed, can go a long way to getting you listed up front on job searches. Have a friend do some searches, without using your name. Try a common job title or key words to see where you show up. Also, try to find someone who is not connected to you to pretend to be a recruiter and do a search to try to find you. You may find the results interesting. The goal is not just to get a huge number of hits, but meaningful job leads. From the LinkedIn Help: Search Relevance and Rank on LinkedIn Search Why doesn't my Profile rank at the top of LinkedIn search results? Last Updated: 09/07/2010 Below are some of the reasons search results may vary from user to user. There is no single rank for LinkedIn search. Unlike the standard search engines, LinkedIn people search generates its relevance score uniquely for each member. As a result, even though a query will return the same results for everyone, the order is determined in part by the Profile, activity, and connections of the person searching. Testing a query from a handful of users is not likely to reflect the overall rank any Profile has across the millions of queries that LinkedIn has every day. A better measure would be the number of views your Profile gets (check the "Who Viewed My Profile" module and statistics on your home page). Searcher relevance is based on a variety of factors. Relevance is a proprietary algorithm which we are constantly improving. Our goal is simple - optimize search results for the searcher. Before we return results, we consider the searcher's activity on LinkedIn, the Profiles returned by the query, and other members who have made similar searches in determining the sort order. These, along with other factors, combine to provide us with data to improve the overall quality of our members' search results. More keywords aren't always better. Our advice would be to only include the keywords (including repeated keywords) in your Profile that best reflect your expertise and experience. If you integrate an extended list of keywords into your Profile, you are likely showing up in a high number of searches. The question you need to ask yourself, however, is whether members consider your Profile relevant to their search. If not, their behavior as a collective group may be influencing the algorithm used to rank you in search results. Search Tips: Boolean searches - The site doesn't support wildcard searches, but you can use advanced search operators and Boolean logic. You can also use these Boolean search types to refine your results: Quoted searches - For an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks (e.g. "product manager"). NOT searches - To exclude a particular term, type that term with an uppercase NOT immediately before it (e.g. NOT computer). OR searches - To see results that include just 1 of 2 or more terms, separate those terms with an uppercase OR (e.g. sales OR marketing). AND searches - To get results that include 2 or more terms, you can use the upper-case word AND as a separator (e.g. manager AND director). Note: You don't need to use AND. If you search 2 or more terms, you'll automatically see results that include all of them. Parenthetical searches - To do a complex search, you can combine terms using parentheses. For example, to find people who have "VP" in their profiles, or have director AND division in their profiles, type: VP OR (director AND division).
You may notice that all of these items have the same point value. There are a lot of reasons for that, mostly: I don’t like math and it makes the math easy. All of these have “value”, but it is hard to say which one is most important to you and your job search.
Did anyone get 120 points? Note: This presentation is posted on-line and is “public” so you have my permission to use it as you see fit. Use this presentation at your own risk, check with your doctor and/or lawyer first, etc. If you see any errors or problems with this presentation, feel free to make corrections. If you let me know, I may or may incorporate them. If you present it to groups, it would be nice if you give me credit, if not, shame on you, but I won’t come after you. Jan 18, 2013 P.S. I have the following job hunting presentations available and may be able to present them to job seeker groups, free of charge, in the DFW area: Understanding The Job Hunting Gauntlet: Discusses the three most important people a job seeker needs to know about in order to shorten the job search. Helps clear up some of the confusion about what should be on a resume and personal marketing, especially with respect to a clear job focus. Provides information on what the Independent Recruiter, HR Recruiter, and Hiring Manager want to know and what their goals or metrics are and what the job seeker needs to do for each one. Resumes-Remove The Irrelevant: Describes a “process” to help remove things from resumes that the job seeker may love, but can cause “red flags” or get the job seeker removed from the “interview” list by HR or the Hiring Manager. This presentation works best if some of the job-seekers can send in resumes two or three days prior to the presentation so individual “real” examples can be used during the process demonstration. Job Hunting 101: A fast-paced, 911 approach to provide the basics to get the job seeker started on the right track to landing a job in today’s market. Covers the major items that have been proven to work in today’s job market. Also covers some of the don’ts that can lengthen one’s job search. Allow three hours for this presentation. LinkedIn-Blessing or Curse: A detailed look at what connections the job seeker may make and which ones may cause a delay, or prevent, the job seeker from landing a job. Tips are provided to help the job seeker find the right type of connections, use the ones they currently have to the best advantage, and to determine which connections are harmful. In addition, tips are provided to make using LinkedIn more effective such as finding target companies that require their skills. A “live” internet connection is desired and will provide a few job seekers to see real time results of how the tips can be used to build meaningful connections. Allow two to three hours for this presentation. Bad News: Discusses what the news media has been reporting recently about the job situation, specifically, that you can’t get a job unless you have a job. Information is presented to help encourage the job seeker and to not be discouraged by this and similar “news” stories. Puts the facts in context with what is going on in today’s job market. Tips are provided to help counteract what is going on in the job market and to help shorten the job search even in bad times. Each presentation is approximately one to two-hours long. A room and a projector screen or blank white wall should be available. Access to the internet via cable or wifi is desired for the LinkedIn presentation.
