The Job Search Solution
LinkedIn Mistakes When Looking for a Job Part I
Terry Sullivan Interview with Terry Sullivan: Terry discusses some blatant mistakes people make on LinkedIn when looking for a job.
Welcome. This podcast is sponsored by the jobsearchsolution.com. America's only 60-hour program of everything you could possibly imagine about how to find a job. The jobsearchsolution.com has successfully helped more than 100,000 people find a job as fast as possible. The jobsearchsolution.com. Welcome back. And as we do every other Friday, at least every other Friday, we like to welcome Terry Sullivan. Terry is the co-founder, President, Chief Cook, Puddle washer, Puba, BuzzPro. It's an organization that does marketing, particularly oriented to the LinkedIn profiles of people. He was a director of marketing at Verizon, and he spent years and years in the marketing business where he helped people at Verizon generate more than 456,000 new programmers. In 2010, he became an expert with LinkedIn. He's traveled the world teaching people how to manage LinkedIn. He comes to us particularly talking about LinkedIn success for the job seeker. It's turned out that LinkedIn has changed itself so much that it requires almost monthly, if not semi-monthly, maintenance for the LinkedIn user regarding your job search. And Terry always has some interesting observations about it. What do you have for us today, Terry? Hey, Tony, I thought we could discuss, continue our discussion from the last time. What are some tips, LinkedIn tips and suggestions you may have for the job seekers who are a little older and struggling to find a job? I will tell you that every time I present and the people I work with, they're all so concerned about their age and how they believe that affecting their job search. I just wanted to have some discussions with you here just to kind of go over, what are some tips that we can include? I'll just give you a start off by giving you a couple. Number one, I had a lady last week that she didn't have a profile photo and I said, "Why don't you have a photo in there?" She goes, "Because I'm older and I don't want them to know I'm old." I said, "Well, you need to put a picture in there because if there's a company out there that's not going to hire you because of a perceived age issue, then you need to find out sooner rather than later. Don't waste a second of your time talking to that company that's going to be an issue. Put your photo in there and then make your photo, get a recent photo, but look right in the camera, put a big smile on your face like, "Hey, I want to talk to you. Let's have a conversation." We have a branding headline that really makes you stand out. The great thing about older employees is that they have a great success story in many cases with a lot of great experience and you need to make sure that you showcase that experience so it really pops in your LinkedIn profile. Do you agree with me on that, Tony? Absolutely. First of all, when you don't have a picture and you're looking for a job, that's the first thing they eliminate. They just eliminate it. They think you're trying to hide something and I don't pay any attention to it. If the candidate has some specifically narrow experience that I'm well aware of that I know what they're doing and I really understand it and it's real narrow. I might do it, but the first thing I'll do is tell them to put a photo in. Sometimes they have a photo in there. I've learned with their contacts, but not to – you can tell me if this is true. I had a person tell me a couple of weeks ago that their photo appears to their contacts, but it doesn't appear to the rest of the world. I don't know if that's true, but that's wrong thinking. I don't think you can set the privacy settings to do that. You would know it better than I. Potential employers will not bring that response to that little figure. They just won't do that because you've got to remember they're comparing you with 45 other people and they want to know what you look like, whether you like it or not. LinkedIn provides the feature of being able to see what somebody looks like, so they're going to use that feature and if they don't like what they see, they move on to someone else. You may not like it. You may think it's goofy. You may not think it's a good idea, but they do and everybody else uses it, so you might as well do it. You may and smile. It's like your resume people say, "Well, I cut my resume off after 15 years, so they don't know my age." They're going to find out your age anyhow, even when they interview you. They're going to find out. This is real important to emphasize. It's It's not your age. You think it's your age because you think, well, that's the only thing that stands in my way that I know I've had four jobs in two years, but that shouldn't be a reason. There are good reasons that I had four jobs in two years. It must be my age. It must be that I'm short. It must be that I'm fat. It must be that I'm bald. It must be that I wear glasses. It must be. No, no, no. You had four jobs in two years. People think that's not good. Because it's you, you think that's the reason. That's not the reason. Now, do people take that into account? Maybe. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. I had a client yesterday tell me, we don't want any kids. We want older people in the job that we do because we're selling to older people. We're selling to older people that own companies that have had companies have owned companies in their family for a number of years. They aren't going to tolerate some 30 year old kid coming in telling what they ought to do. They don't like it. We want older people. It's not what you think it is. You think that there's a prejudice against that because it happens to be your prejudice, but it's not. It's nowhere near as much as you think of what it is. Do people discriminate on that? Yeah. Do but they discriminate on lots of other things like for jobs in two years. Keep that in mind and as far as a picture goes, you got to use it. As far as the time goes, we got to take a break. Stay tuned. Don't go away. This is Tony Besher along with Terry Sullivan here on the Job Search Solution. This podcast was sponsored by thejobsearchsolution.com is the world's most successful online job search program. My expert in the trenches advice has been used by more than a hundred thousand people to successfully find a new job. So go to thejobsearchsolution.com and start today toward a better job.