For people who are so smart, many of you forget the key element of how to manage your career and how to use LinkedIn to support it.
I'm Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I'm the head coach for JobSearchCoachingHQ.com. That's a site with curated information you can watch listen to or read that will help you find work more quickly. The way I haven't set up is that if you purchase a lifetime subscription for $299, you get an hour of free coaching with me, that makes the website free, that makes the coaching free because it's the same price $299 for an hour of coaching, so you get access to the website where you can work on your own to improve your game, improve your job search, get better at search, because the skills needed to find a job are different than those needed to do a job. Right?
So this is a video for senior professionals to talk with you about the biggest mistake that I see that you make. Now, a lot of job hunters who are more junior than you do this as well, but I just see it so often with folks at your level because you just think that you can put your head down, work hard, and everything's going to take care of itself. But what happens is, with LinkedIn, in particular, you forget that the person who gets ahead isn't always the smartest, they don't always work the hardest, although those are great qualities to have. People get ahead by being alert to opportunity. Sometimes those opportunities are internal to their organization, but most of the time that they're external.
So, from a tactical standpoint, that's the strategic message. From a technical standpoint, you create a profile and you become invisible. You become invisible because the profile is little more than a list of companies that you've worked at and dates of employment. Maybe you don't even put contact information in it like someone connects with you but you don't provide a way to connect off the platform. There's no email address or phone number. No nothing. You don't SEO optimize your profile.
Now, when you have just company names and dates there, obviously you haven't. But you haven't SEO optimized your profile. You haven't talked about your successes. You haven't keyword optimized. There's no photo there that lets people know what a good looking man or woman you are. There's nothing there. You're basically invisible.
You don't network, you don't connect with people and by network. I don't mean just connect on LinkedIn as though that's networking. You know what the real thing is. You don't develop relationships with people and you don't sustain relationships with people. The result winds up being LinkedIn as a platform is doing nothing for you to advance your career.
Now, I want to say "advance your career" because I believe that search firms reach out to people. LinkedIn is the new database for not simply contingency firms, but executive search firms, an enormous repository of information-- 650 -700 million people on the platform, by the way, I was LinkedIn member 7653. That's a fact.
So, I'll simply say you have to use it and you have to put yourself in the position where people want to find you. It's really that simple. Unless you do that, unless you work the system, unless you get so engrossed and allow yourself to get so engrossed in the job, LinkedIn isn't going to do much for you because your profile doesn't do much for you.
And I haven't even gotten to writing for the platform. I haven't gotten to commenting on people's posts there. I haven't gotten involved with groups there. I'm just talking about some of the basic things as I've said.
So, get involved. Treat it serious because resumes are for when you want to be the aggressor. LinkedIn is for when you want to be hunted. And I think,, frankly, you want to be hunted all the time, not just when you're actively looking for work, but you want to have opportunity presented to you (I could do the old "KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. That's opportunity knocking" joke, but I'm not).
It's a fact. Opportunity will present itself if you allow it to come to you. It's like the old joke of the person praying to God to win the lottery. Eventually, after weeks of begging and pleading, the heavens open up, there's a thunderclap, lightning, thunder and suddenly the booming voice says, "meet me halfway; buy a lottery ticket." You don't buy the lottery ticket for people to discover you and you do nothing. Nothing to promote yourself.
Get active there. I'm not talking about daily. Although, if you had the time on your commute, respond to people on messaging. Discover it's an interesting place to be. But, I understand. Every few days, log on, connect with people actually connect with people. Make sure your profile's up to speed. You'll discover the folks will start reaching out to you and, obviously, you don't have to say, "yes." But, right now, all you're doing is saying, "No."
