1.  In Profile Settings:  Make your profile public

For job searching – you will need to open up your public profile so that prospective employers and recruiters can find you.

Make your profile photo visible and display the full profile information.  On the next page, you will see which items you can check off for public publishing.  I recommend checking off EVERYTHING while you are job searching.  Once you have a job – you can scale it back.

2. Network updates: Maximize your view on what your network is doing

In your home page settings area of your account settings – you can manage your “NETWORK UPDATES”.   This area is where you control what updates you receive on all your connections.  If you are job searching – then choose a high number of updates that you would like to see on your home page (see below little pull down menu with the no. 25).  Then choose to see all the updates.

Networking in 2009 is about interacting and engaging.  Good interactions have good graces; engage about other people’s new news.  You see someone get a new job – congratulate them.  Increase your network size by following what others are doing.

3. Privacy Settings:  Manage what others see about your activities.

This section holds some of the most important settings.  You want to control what changes or activities other people can see.

3.1  Profile Views:  Who views  your profile?

On your home page, linkedin tells you how many people have viewed your profile.  Watch these numbers improve as you develop your profile and connections!

Beyond recruitment searches, the viewings are also driven by your status and news updates, your participation in any questions & answers as well as key terms that are picked up in key word searches (in your profile, in the summary, in the specialties listing).

When you click on “see more” – you can see five profiles of who viewed your profile.  How much you see below depends on the privacy settings for the individual.

4. My Network:  Using your network

The last setting is under “my network”.   At an initial pass, some recruiters or opportunities filter out those who are not looking for a job or contract positions.  Leave yourself open.

Good luck in your job search.

I trust that you’ve found this file helpful in setting up your Linkedin account.  Please feel free to drop me a line on how you are doing.

-        Laurie Dillon-Schalk  @ldillonschalk

This handout was prepared by Laurie Dillon-Schalk to share with newcomers to Canada and people in transition for employment resource agencies funded by Employment Ontario.

As an indication of how heavily demanded this learning is, the course was signed up overcapacity (again!) at 35 individuals and ten more on the waiting list. (the room was small and so very hot). One of the nicest things said to me at the beginning of the course was from Eddie who grabbed my hand in hello and said “I’ve been looking forward to this ALL month”. And I believed him. What faith!

I mean to upload my current presentation and tools in my linkedin profile (coming!) and still – I wanted to share a very neat video link to anyone drifting through..

As you may not know – $405 is the maximium unemployment benefit you can receive in New York State.   So for those who were earning over six figures – its a pretty big fall during a great recession.    The Gotham Gazette, NYC paper, wrote an interesting article about the realities of being unemployed in New York.

I was contacted by Garrett to see if I would be a contributing writer for the blog.   I wrote back asking if he says this to all the blogs but Garrett confessed to liking my writing style and being serious.  AH .. his timing was wonderful and the news brighten my day.

I am pleased as punch to contribute.  The move make more of my volunteer work.

My only professional hesitation is that I really want to be much more than just ‘using social media in job search’ – I want to be about using social media to rock your customer, change the game, create idea jams and engage with customers on levels not yet imagined by most.   [not just me - many of my colleagues in social media pine for this]

The changes that I see that – for the home building industry, for retail, for insurance, for government, for every industry!  And yet – my work in social recruiting 2.0 and job search seems to be hitting a wild nerve – not surprisingly given the market realities.   So as much as I want to talk about how the condo market should be using social media more, or how under utilized youtube is, I continue to talk about jobs.

Now.. if I could just figure out how to get Employment Ontario and the federal government to fund my work…

I’ve been volunteering/consulting in social recruiting lately – a high demand and growing area – playing both sides of the fence between consulting with HR/recruiters & execs and volunteering with the painfully transitioned in Toronto.   I wanted to offer suggestions to those who choose not to open up their chest cavity and explain why they are out of work…  AND give a new blog post to the 405 club:  NYC’s official unemployment network who’ve just asked me to be a contributing blogger to the site. <blush>

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Perception is Reality

Picture it – you’re sitting in the first interview you’ve managed to get in weeks, its a job that matches your working desires and the promise of pay is in line with your old self – the one that used to work.

The fumble you are trying to avoid is not whether or not you qualify for  the job.  NOOOO its whether or not to pretend that you are not the active job searcher you are.   Damn the stigma of being an active job seeker.

I touched on this in an earlier blog post - social recruiting 2.0.   Quickly – recruiters and hr managers break job searchers into three main groups -

1. non-seekers – those who have a job who aren’t looking,
2. passive job searchers – have a job and are mildly searching, and
3. active job searchers – say no more.

Active job searchers are, at times, avoided under the belief they constitute the undesirable; the belief that they will jump at any job opportunity – qualified or not,  suitable or not and desert jobs when they find what they really want.   I’m sure this stigma is grounded in some reality and yet, in a great recession, employers should not ignore quality candidates regardless of situation.  [Excellent article on out of work stigma fading.]

So.. back to business – HOW TO PRETEND YOU AREN’T ACTIVELY SEARCHING WHEN YOU ARE:

• Build your own website – not a online resume, a small business site.  Consider using free blog publishing to get up and running fast.
• Invest in your own domain name.   I wouldn’t necessarily go with your personal name as a domain but if you can’t dream up something cheap and available as a .com, then go for it.  Some instructions in a previous “how to” blog post of mine using godaddy.
• Volunteer in a relevant capacity and make an “in-kind” deal allowing yourself to claim the organization as a client, and get website or other exposure for your business.
• Make the bloody most of every volunteer/contract experience – blog about it, status update it, twitter it if you are on twitter, talk about it.  Use popular tag words in your blog title post so that your post gets auto pulled into silly blogs that add posts based on key word terms rather than content.
• Update all social networking sites to your new business - linkedin, etc.  [I'm assuming here you are on linkedin.. and you should be]
• Use a powerful signature linking back to profiles, @twitters or blog posts.  Start commenting as the president and chief pipeline filler in relevant forums, questions & answers paying attention to well attended blogs, websites, facebook fan pages or linkedin discussions as they will feed back traffic through the comments you make.
• Cross pollinate your social networks.  Add linkedin applications that display your blog in your linkedin e.g. wordpress app, then add linkedin badges to your blog.

At the end of the day – an hr mgr and recruiter will still ask you why you are applying for full time moving away from your business.    My response has always been about the opportunity.  Personally, its hard to fill a pipeline as a small business and work on it.  But being committed to playing in a field you love means that you may have to take on different roles to do it.  Some of those roles are full time – others are contract and others are volunteer work.

Good luck.