How to Use Your LinkedIn Profile to Power a Career Transition
Are you raring to change careers? Break into a whole new line of work that makes you leap out of bed, happy to go to work every day? Parlay personal passions into professional endeavors? Or focus on a different clientele, type of product, or service?
We all know the power of LinkedIn for job hunting and networking. But how do we use it to help change careers—to make sure we’re found by the right recruiters, hiring managers, colleagues—not ones from our past, but from our future careers?
It’s tempting to create an “everything under the sink” profile that makes you look qualified for both the job you have and the one you want or for a variety of new functions, industries, or roles. But that’ll just confuse your readers and send them running—to others’ LinkedIn pages.
Instead, focus your profile on your new career direction, just as you’ve tailored your resume to specific jobs. In both cases, you highlight your most relevant experiences and minimize or omit the rest. Here’s how to do that on LinkedIn:
Headline. Focus first on your headline. LinkedIn auto-populates this field with your current position, but don’t let it. Instead, use the 120 characters to write your own eye-catching headline.
Why is this so important? If I’m searching for someone like you on LinkedIn, my search results will reveal only your name and headline — and I could easily overlook you. But if you write an irresistible headline, I’ll take the time to click to your entire profile.
Let’s look at how one mid-careerist uses her distinctive headline to attract the right people and opportunities.
Kristi Sullivan’s been a successful marketing executive for over 15 years. While still very committed to her current Marketing VP role, she also wants to add a new direction to her career path: marketing small businesses in the health and wellness industry. And she’s a devoted yoga practitioner and instructor. So this is her two-part headline:
Holistic health/yoga instructor, consultant, connecter * Marketing executive for small businesses & nonprofits
She immediately distinguishes herself from other marketers by putting health and yoga first. And she attracts people needing help with their holistic health and yoga businesses.
Check to see how distinctive your headline is by searching LinkedIn for people like you. Kristi found lots of “marketing executives” but no one else with holistic health and yoga in their headlines—a very good sign.
Summary. Now that your headline has attracted the right people, keep them reading. Tell a compelling story and write it in the first person. Unlike resumes, your LinkedIn summary gives you much more space (up to 2000 characters) to highlight past accomplishments and connect them to what you want to do next.
This is especially important if you’ve changed careers before. Craft a cohesive narrative that pulls together what might otherwise appear to be fragmented pieces of your professional past. This will avoid leaving your profile reader wondering what the heck you’re trying to do now—or why you appear scattered and unfocused.
Here’s how Kristi accomplishes this. She stitches together three areas of her professional and personal endeavors: marketing small businesses/nonprofits; women’s business success; and holistic health/yoga instruction and business consultation.
She immediately hooks her profile readers with this opening statement:
I am devoted to and excel in three areas—each area strengthening the others: marketing small businesses and nonprofits; women’s business success; and holistic health and yoga. Let me expand a bit on each:
She makes it easy for readers to quickly skim her summary by including headers that call out each of the three areas. And she introduces each area with a sentence that ties it to the others. For example, in the Women’s Business Success section, she connects to her 15 years of marketing at the economic development resource center where she’s been working:
Because I’m passionate about enabling women to make positive differences in the workplace and the economy at large, I launched the Farmington Valley chapter of B.I.G. (Believe, Inspire, Grow).
And then in the Holistic Health/Yoga Instructor and Consultant section, she makes connections to her work in economic development and women’s business by noting:
I see holistic health as a critical component of individuals’, organizations’, and communities’ wellbeing.
Finally, she ends her summary with an invitation to specific types of people:
I’m always interested in hearing from holistic health business owners and women entrepreneurs, as well as economic development professionals. Please contact me via InMail.
Experience. Once you’ve nailed your headline and summary, tailor each of the positions in your experience section. Here’s how:
- Continue to write in the first person—to provide continuity with your first-person summary.
- Focus on accomplishments, not responsibilities, as you would in any resume or profile. But highlight only the accomplishments most relevant to the new type of work you’re seeking. Make those accomplishments concrete by noting the problem you solved, how, and the specific results you generated.
Here’s an example of how Kristi focuses on some of her most relevant accomplishments—fund raising, client acquisition, and social media:
I’ve brought in $.75M in new funding and over 20 new clients… I established this Connecticut nonprofit’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, growing its followers by 150% in the first year. I also conceived an e-newsletter, blog and vlog to enhance our social media presence and website…
Recommendations. As with any LinkedIn profile, sparingly add recommendations to selected positions — the ones most relevant to the new type of work you’re seeking. Invite one or two people to recommend you. And don’t hesitate to direct their testimonials; you’ll make it easier and faster for them, and more effective for you. Tell them exactly the type of positions you’re now targeting and the skills you’d like them to highlight.
Images and Media Samples. Again, as with any LinkedIn profile, use images and media samples to draw attention to your most impressive accomplishments. Add them only to the positions you want your new profile readers to focus on. For example, Kristi added her colorful business card to her summary section, a video screen shot and link to her presentation about internal social media strategies, and a photo of her teaching yoga on a stand-up paddleboard.
When you’re trying to get into a new line of work you have to prove that you have skills in a new area when you’ve always focused your career elsewhere. With a targeted profile that catches readers’ attention you’ll position yourself well to make that change.
(Source: https://hbr.org/2015/05/how-to-use-your-linkedin-profile-to-power-a-career-transition)
Job loss or setback left you feeling defeated? How to pull yourself up
When you face a career challenge, it is common to experience a painful loss of identity — if you aren’t the successful professional you once were, who are you? A loser?
Of course not.
You are still the same successful person you always were — with a new challenge. These challenges do not negate your previous work and success. You have the choice to wallow in your misfortune or find a deeper, human identity.
I find strength and inspiration from the “famous failures” that made unbelievable comebacks. For example, Elvis Presley got a C in high school music class and was told he couldn’t sing. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper because he “lacked imagination” and “had no original ideas.” Lucille Ball was told to give up on acting because she had “no talent.” And Oprah Winfrey was demoted from her job as an anchorwoman and told she was “not fit for television.”
This list goes on and on. Those superstars prevailed because they took their knocks and fought back. They did not let others define them. They defined themselves.
Don’t let adversity define you. What matters is what you do with it.
Instead of saying, “Nobody wants me; I must suck,” start saying, “I believe in myself. It’ll all work out.”
Here’s how to pull yourself up — and start moving again:
- Stop catastrophic thinking
Your mind will make you as crazy as you let it. Learn to recognize when you have slipped into “catastrophic thinking” mode and fight back.
If you are out of work and not finding a job, your mind might put you in this loop: “I’m spending my savings. I am going to run out of money. I’ll never get any job. I’m going through my savings. I’ll probably have to go work at the supermarket. Will the supermarket even hire me? I can’t live on that salary. I can’t feed my family. We will be homeless . . .”
Replace your catastrophic thoughts with more realistic thoughts. Train your mind to say, “Well, this is tough, but I’ll find a way.”
The worry about being homeless and broke is common, especially when we’re forced to start over or reinvent ourselves. Self-doubt feeds on itself and you lose perspective, which makes you lose hope.
You may beat yourself up because you didn’t see this situation coming or you feel you could have done more to prevent it. You may kick yourself for not saving more or failing to network better. You may think that others are laughing at you. Or, maybe you’re just really, really mad. But how are any of those thoughts helping you?
When you’re being pulled under by a nearly crippling brush with adversity, many tips and suggestions on managing worry fall flat.
Your brain will do a number on you if you let it. You can slide into a negative loop that will tell you that you are a worthless, stupid loser, because, for some reason, the brain will let you get away with that kind of self-mutilation.
Instead of saying, “Nobody wants me; I must suck,” start saying, “I believe in myself. It’ll all work out.”
Another thing to say: “What if my greatest success is still ahead of me? I’m not done!” Then say these again. And again. And again and again and again.
- Attack worry
I know you are worried right now — that’s because we’re all worried. I think of Linda Cruz, who had a stellar career in the pharmaceutical industry before going through one crucible moment after another until she finally got a job where she was making less than one-third of what she once made. She told me: “You know what you can do, but nobody wants you anymore. It is very lonely. They don’t value what you have.”
For the last two years of his job as an analyst in the insurance industry, Chuck Leonard said he felt humiliated — knowing he wasn’t wanted there — and certain he would be fired. Which he finally was.
“It was humiliating on every level,” he said. “For two years, I was demoralized. Then I had no job, no insurance, no dignity, no hope. I felt like I had failed everybody, and I couldn’t get an interview — no matter how many jobs I applied for. It took me nine months, the longest nine months of my life. I had one company that interviewed me four times, and I thank God they hired me. I’m so grateful.”
There are endless online posts of people venting about what is not working in their careers. I promise you: Read that stuff for 10 minutes and you will feel depressed.
When you’re being pulled under by a nearly crippling brush with adversity, many tips and suggestions on managing worry fall flat. So how do you put worry in its place when your entire life is out of control?
Get some exercise. Research has found that exercise boosts your alertness, concentration and cognitive function while also reducing fatigue. Physical activity produces endorphins and helps us sleep, which definitely cuts stress. Your health will improve, and your anxiety will diminish.
Volunteer. When you feel useless, go be of use! When you help others, you feel better about yourself and the negatives in your head get quieter. It feels good to know that you matter and that you are contributing to a purpose.
Do one thing. When you feel stuck, do one thing that gives you momentum toward fixing your situation. Even if there are 10 things you must do, focusing on one is doable. Instead of focusing on 10 problems, pick one. You may need to focus on all 10, but that is impossible. Better to accomplish something than to paralyze yourself with fear.
- Stop complaining with others
There are endless online posts of people venting about what is not working in their careers, how poorly they are being treated, how they can’t find employment anywhere, and how they can’t catch a break. I promise you: Read that stuff for 10 minutes and you will feel depressed.
When things get rough, you can take steps to keep yourself from sliding into the depths.
While you sort out what you are going to do next, don’t forget to live it. You don’t know how much time you have left, so it’s your choice how you use the time you’ve got.
The more you let yourself wallow, the darker things will seem. Don’t talk about your situation endlessly, and don’t let others wallow, either. Don’t keep telling “the story.” If you have a friend who is going through the same thing, decide whether you can keep each other on track to feel better or whether you are bringing each other down.
- Never surrender
No, you aren’t enjoying this. But have you ever enjoyed those painful moments when someone or something has forced you to pick yourself up and figure out what you are going to do with the rest of your life? What did you do then?
You can do this. YOU. ARE. NOT. DONE.
And, look — by now, some of your family, friends and acquaintances have been hit by a terrible health crisis. One minute, all was well with them. And then it wasn’t. It just changed forever. In an instant.
So even if you are staring down at some serious career challenges, do not forget what you’ve got. You’ve got your life. And while you sort out what you are going to do next, don’t forget to live it. You don’t know how much time you have left, so it’s your choice how you use the time you’ve got.
Excerpted from the new book Coming Back: How to Win the Job You Want When You’ve Lost the Job You Need by Fawn Germer. (Source ideas.ted.com)
The Downsides of Making a Counteroffer to Retain an Employee
During the Great Resignation, many have said “I quit” and moved on from their organisations. As the talent pool shrinks, leaders are prepared to do just about anything to keep good employees from walking out that door. The counteroffer is one retention tool at leaders’ disposal. In fear of losing an employee, a leader may counter with a promotion, a merit increase, a one-time bonus, equity grants, or an opportunity to move to another team. But leaders, beware the perceived power of the counteroffer. Based on her experience leading teams, the author presents a number of downstream consequences you likely haven’t considered if the employee accepts. Here’s why making a counteroffer to an employee who has resigned can do more harm than good.
To read the complete article please click:
https://hbr.org/2022/05/the-downsides-of-making-a-counteroffer-to-retain-an-employee
5 Questions to Ask When Starting a New Job
The actions you take during your first few months in a new job have a major impact on your success or failure. The biggest challenge leaders face during these periods is staying focused on the right things. So it helps to have a set of questions to guide you. Here are the five most important ones to ask…and to keep on asking on a regular basis: How will I create value? How am I expected to behave? Whose support is critical? How will I get some early wins? What skills do I need to develop to excel in this role? Set aside 30 minutes at the end of each week to reflect on these questions and whether the answers are still clear or have changed in any way.
To read the complete article please click:
https://hbr.org/2019/04/5-questions-to-ask-when-starting-a-new-job
Staff wellbeing: ‘The important thing is how people work, not where they work’
“What the last two years have demonstrated is that there is no longer a clear roadmap, and every organisation must spend time understanding the needs of their workforce in a way they never had to do before.” These are the words of Lisa Stevens, an industry veteran of 30 years and now the global chief people officer and head of human capital solutions at professional services firm Aon.
“The more agile and flexible organisations are, the better they’ll be at winning the war for talent,” she says.
Aon employs 50,000 people across 120 countries, including more than 700 in Ireland. Stevens believes a holistic approach to employee wellbeing, which covers people’s emotional, physical and financial health, will play a critical role in helping organisations keep on top of their personnel needs in the future.
To read the complete article please click:
Hybrid and remote working require a shift from managing to leading
One of the things that drives employees crazy is a boss who micromanages them, yet it is still common practice from the C-suite down. Micromanagers parse their role in terms of two main functions, direction and control, and believe they add value by getting involved in everything.
Not so, says Frans Campher, CEO of Integral Leadership Dynamics, who has over 20 years’ experience in executive education, leadership development and as a business coach for senior blue-chip executives. In his view those who hang on to the direct and control model of people management are going to struggle to bring employees with them in a hybrid working environment.
Campher, who is also a visiting fellow and director of the executive education programme at Imperial College business school in London, says companies are only beginning to realise the scope of the challenges posed by hybrid working and that the consequences, good and bad, won’t really become apparent for another two years. In the meantime those that want to thrive will need to transform from organisations that manage people to organisations that lead them.
“What’s not going to work is managers who feel they have to control the heck out of everything, and who see hybrid as a loss of control,” he says.
“I actually find it scary that technology providers are saying we can build programmes so you can monitor your people. This completely misses the fundamental point that if you treat people as adults, they will show up as adults. If you set high expectations and ask for their input into those expectations, they will come to the party and give you discretionary effort.”
Side effect
Campher notes that one of the common side effects of climbing the corporate ladder is selective amnesia.
“Someone lands a promotion and suddenly thinks they have to control everything,” he says. “They forget that when they were being led, they appreciated their freedom and being seen and heard. They also appreciated knowing that their ideas mattered, as did the opportunity to grow and develop.
At its simplest leading is about being, whereas managing is about doing. The typical focus of managers is the nuts and bolts of daily tasks such as budgeting, planning and organising. By contrast, leaders deal more in strategy, developing the organisational culture and motivating and inspiring those around them to keep the show on the road.
However, the transition demands more than a change of job description. It’s about recognising that now more than ever companies need leadership and organisational agility that’s equal to the growing complexity of the business environment.
Types of leader
An agile leader is someone who can operate on more than one level. In Campher’s view, it demands the ability to operate on three and the skill to combine them. He describes these three levels as expert leader, achiever leader and catalytic leader.
“As an expert leader, I’m very good at command, control, directing, planning and organising. I have one-to-one relationships with the people I work with but I don’t create a cohesive team,” he says. “An achiever leader is one who starts to work through others and builds a team.
“An expert leader will look at the next two to three months and will deal with the urgent things in front of them. An achiever leader probably has a one year horizon, they use the team more effectively and have some organisational mission and purpose. The next level up is the catalytic leader, whose job is no longer to command and control in the short- term but to totally embrace the enterprise view of the business.”
The majority of leaders fall into the expert or achiever categories, with catalytic leaders, who know how to influence, work with stakeholders and lead change, much thinner on the ground. What Campher tries to do through coaching and executive education is help people lose their direct and control mentality and see the bigger picture.
He calls it filling the “expansion gap” and he doesn’t underestimate the shift in identity this requires, pointing out that when you ask someone who has spent their career micromanaging to stop doing so, they often panic because they don’t know what to do instead.
Catalyst
“It’s asking people to accept that they are no longer the expert driving their particular function, but someone who catalyses the whole culture of an organisation,” he says. “However, you often have leaders that don’t understand this third piece. It’s not that they only hang out there. Rather they have the range to be an expert, an achiever and a catalyst and can shift up and down depending on what’s required.”
To make it easier to understand the process of moving from managing to leading, Campher draws on the work of Benjamin Zander, orchestral conductor and author of the Art of Possibility.
“Zander has a TED talk on the transformative passion of music and he talks about leaders needing to make the shift from playing an instrument to becoming the conductor,” he says. “The job of the conductor is to create shiny eyes in the orchestra so that there are shiny eyes in the audience. That’s a wonderful metaphor to use for leaders too: I need to become a ‘conductor’ who creates shiny eyes in my people.”
(Source: The Irish Times)
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection
Research shows the habit of reflection can separate extraordinary professionals from mediocre ones. But how do you sort which experiences are most significant for your development?
- To answer this questions, the authors asked 442 executives to reflect on which experiences most advanced their professional development and had the most impact on making them better leaders.
- Three distinct themes arose through their analysis: surprise, frustration, and failure. Reflections that involved one or more or of these sentiments proved to be the most valuable in helping the leaders grow.
- Surprise, frustration, and failure. Cognitive, emotional, and behavioural. These parts of you are constantly in motion and if you don’t give them time to rest and reflect upon what you learned from them, you will surely fatigue.
To read the complete article please click:
https://hbr.org/2022/03/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-self-reflection
Congratulations Rebecca Aspell on your promotion to Recruitment Partner
The Great Resignation Didn’t Start with the Pandemic
Covid-19 spurred on the Great Resignation of 2021, during which record numbers of employees voluntarily quit their jobs. But what we are living through is not just short-term turbulence provoked by the pandemic. Instead, it’s the continuation of a trend of rising quit rates that began more than a decade ago. Five main factors are at play in this trend: retirement, relocation, reconsideration, reshuffling, and reluctance. All of these factors, the authors argue, are here to stay. They explore each in turn and encourage leaders to examine which of them are contributing most to turnover in their organisations, so that they can adapt appropriately as they move into the future.
To read the complete article please click:
https://hbr.org/2022/03/the-great-resignation-didnt-start-with-the-pandemic
Onboarding Can Make or Break a New Hire’s Experience
Poor onboarding can leave your employees with lower confidence in their new roles, worsened levels of engagement, and an increased risk of jumping ship when they see a new, more exciting position elsewhere. On the other hand, companies that implement a formal onboarding program could see 50% greater employee retention among new recruits and 62% greater productivity within the same group. Given that how you onboard your employees will determine their experience, managers can take the following steps to ensure they set their new hires up for success: 1) set clear goals and measures for success, 2) create a multi-departmental onboarding team, and 3) provide support throughout the onboarding journey.
To read the complete article please click:
https://hbr.org/2022/04/onboarding-can-make-or-break-a-new-hires-experience