LinkedIn for people not looking for work.

I am still amazed at how many people do not have their professional information updated on LinkedIn.

Whether or not you are looking for a new job is beside the point.

It is essential to have a decent on-line presence.

It is about personal branding and letting people know who you are.

LinkedIn is not just used by people looking for work.

The people that fail to realize that will be left behind.

A classic example of how LinkedIn is used outside of a job search occurred just last week.

I had a candidate who asked me to introduce him to a V.P. of Operations contact that I have because my contact had successfully implemented a new program for his company that my candidate was about to implement for his company.

During their connection, my candidate not only got valuable technical information, but he also got a list of items that my contact instructed him to avoid during implementation that would save a lot of time and money.

Is that not a nice gift that we could all use in our current jobs? In addition to the benefit in this particular situation, both contacts now have another person and resource that can possibly assist them if either one of them was ever in a job search mode.

Even if you are happy in your position and have no time to proactively use LinkedIn as a tool, the very least that you can do is make sure that your professional information is updated

.

This is the equivalent to a talking business card.

PLEASE DO THE FOLLOWING AND YOU WILL BE DOING YOURSELF A FAVOUR:

- Enter your current job title, description and the successes that you have achieved in your role.

- Enter your education.

- Enter the past companies that you have worked for as well as their job titles.

- Upload a picture.

- Get your profile to 100% complete.*

*LinkedIn will clearly guide you as to what you need to do in order to achieve 100%.

This acts like a Google ranking and a more complete profile will outrank an incomplete profile.

WHY DO I WANT MY BRAND TO RANK HIGHER?

I will answer that question with another example.

I have a V.P. of Marketing candidate at a CPG company who wanted to initiate a unique marketing opportunity for a seasonal promotion.

This promotion involved working with an unusual industry partner for them.

He did a keyword search on LinkedIn to find a V.P. of Marketing contact name in the industry of interest to him.

As it turned out there were two companies that are considered market leaders in this unusual industry.

One had a V.P. of Marketing profile on LinkedIn and the other did not.

Guess which person was contacted regarding the marketing opportunity?

The end result was a very successful promotion for both companies and they plan to continue to partner with each other moving forward.

Remember, networking is not just for the unemployed.

It is how business is done today.

If you wait until you are unemployed before you start networking it will be much more difficult to start.

Farewell,

Mike