Yes Linkedin has a new layout and we all still look the same, but prettier. However, since recruiters are paying $8000 USD annually to find us, let's do what we can to help them. In fact let's make it easy on them.

Here are 5 simple and quick things to implement that will put you in a recruiter's headlights. It will wildly improve your visibility to recruiters on Linkedin. But before you go crazy, on Linkedin go up under your name and click on Settings in the drop down menu to close down all you visibility. You really do not want Linkedin to announce to the whole world every time you join a group or add a contact. Yes, you have to set your privacy as the default is total public nakedness on Linkedin...not good.

1. Join 50 groups and, if you can find them, 50 subgroups and follow 50 companies that you would like to work for. This will get your profile out there more. Recruiters do key word searches in the search box on group member pages.
   
2. Fill in all the basic profile blanks: Summary, experience, schooling, interests, awards, contact information and personal, languages. Leave no category not filled in with some kind of information about you.
   
3. Add the Projects section and use accomplishments from your resume work experience as projects. This will increase a recruiter's key word search potential on your strengths. Don't write all those bullets in the Experience section, rather break them out and elaborate on them as Projects. That way you can make dated experience look fresh and put a more detailed description on your accomplishments without endless bullets.
   
4. Add the Skill section and list LOTS of skills: functional skills, technical skills, languages, methodologies, tools, people skills, data skills. List everything that would be of value in your next position and next employer. The Skill section is setup to provide key word searches forrecruiters. You see 88% of the people on Linkedin are really terrible at filing in and writing a compelling, complete profile on Linkedin. Even if the  recruiters wanted to hire them they can't be found because of lack of key words, or even any words sometimes. Linkedin nudges every one into creating skill lists a.k.a key words by urging everybody to endorse everybody else. Endorsing people's skills is officially now the next cool thing to do on Linkedin and it is easier that getting recommendations written.
   
5. Connect to all the recruiters you come across...100's of them if you can pull that off. Find them in those 50 groups you joined. Use the search term "recruitment" on the group's member page. Just go down the list and invite them to connect. They will NEVER turn you down. I had a client go from 50 connections to over the magic 500 in one month. He instantly looked well-networked. Since nobody saw his connections, they didn't know it was 500+ recruiter connections. 
   

These 5 tasks will not take long and the rewards you will reap will be astonishing. Linkedin is really a numbers game to be seen and found. My client who connected to over 500 recruiters on 3 continents in less than a month ended up with 2 interviews. He is at the top executive level so those searches are not plentiful. He got a good return on his investment. Further, every time he posts a blog that highlights his expertise, it goes to his Linkedin updates. His LInkedin updates remind all his recruiter-connections continually of his talents and availability. This is a virtuous circle of creating a reputation and having it be seen on

If you want help in building out the content to make your Linkedin Profile really shine, contact me at patti@careercompany.com

They have been doing the same ridiculous surveys for year and the results never change. Neither does the corporate response  to the answers. Employees want to be better paid. It is no secret that the American worker's standard of living and income has continually lost ground over the past 30+ years. The workloads increases while the wealth has not trickled down and it is unlikely to do so as globalism continues to level the employment playing field. Only the very few types of skilled professionals will be sought after and well compensated.
On the other hand, the continuous request for flexibility has shown some improvement over the years as global, distributed teams have increased the necessity to work remotely and at staggered times across borders, as has the increased cost of energy. It seems that having employees work from home saves on energy costs at work.
People have wanted the same things since serfdom ended: to be recognized for work done not micromanaged for time put in, to be rewarded fairly, and to trusted and treated as thoughtful, contributing adults not mindless drones.  

CareerBuilder Survey Reveals Most Wanted Office Perks and What Motivates Workers to Stay With Companies
CHICAGO, January 24, 2013 – .....A new CareerBuilder survey explores which job factors are most important to today’s workers. More than 3,900 full-time workers nationwide participated in the survey conducted online by Harris Interactive© from November 1 to November 30, 2012.
Nearly one-third of employers (32 percent) reported that top performers left their organizations in 2012 and 39 percent are concerned that they’ll lose top talent in 2013. While most workers (66 percent) stated that they are generally satisfied with their jobs, one in four (25 percent) said they will change jobs in 2013 or 2014.

How important is title?
While upward mobility is a key factor in job satisfaction and employee retention, having a certain title isn’t important to more than half of workers (55 percent). The vast majority (88 percent) reported that salary matters more. Other factors that outrank job title in what is most important to workers are:



· Flexible schedule – 59 percent
· Being able to make a difference – 48 percent
· Challenging work – 35 percent
· Ability to work from home – 33 percent
· Academic reimbursement – 18 percent
· Having an office – 17 percent
· Company car – 14 percent
Read more

All resumes are digital, but people still don't seem to get that.  I don't care if you are CEO or a Barrista at Starbucks. Nobody will see your resume on a piece of paper unless : A. you carry it into them, or B. you walk in for an interview. Your resume gets passed around from computer, to tablet, to cloud database. If you are going to be networked, connected, and screened for jobs online then why not think out of the box and emulate the best at the same time?

I give you the madly gone viral "resume" for Philippe Dubost that is a direct send up of an Amazon product page. And, yes, it is being called a resume in an article by Will Oremus at Slate.com

I think Philippe is funny, brilliant, and creative. I'd buy him.
View Phil's resume here

TalentBin Takes On LinkedIn By Targeting Recruiters
By David Zax | January 14, 2013
.....That’s because TalentBin doesn’t compete with the services LinkedIn offers to the average user. Rather, TalentBin competes with the behind-the-scenes services LinkedIn offers a very specific, and lucrative, segment: recruiters.

You may not have known this, but LinkedIn makes the majority of its revenue by serving recruiters who want to scoop up talent for their companies. In the third quarter of 2012, fully 55% of the company’s revenue came from what LinkedIn calls “Talent Solutions.” (Premium subscriptions, by contrast, only make up 20% of revenue.) LinkedIn largely achieves this by digesting resumes into what Kazanjy calls “this master database that recruiters pay a pretty penny to essentially get God rights to.”

TalentBin digests data from ... many others. For hackers, it stalks sites like GitHub or StackOverflow; for designers, it scans the likes of Dribble and Behance. It even trolls the U.S. Patent Database, looking for inventive types. Most recently, says Kazanjy, the team “indexed the entirety of the PubMed Life Sciences Publication Directory,” some 20 million articles, to glean information about talented medical researchers and their interests. “It starts to show this approach doesn’t just work with software engineers,” he says. “It also works with physicians, researchers, biotech people, and so forth.” That project was just completed in December.

Gradually, TalentBin has built a “search engine for people,” as Kazanjy puts it, one which he charges $6,000 per year for the privilege of accessing (undercutting LinkedIn’s reported price tag, which can climb to $8,000).
Read more

While TalentBin may nibble at the edges of Linkedin to do specific, niche searches for gurus in the esoteric fields, Linkedin is a runaway train for talent search. The reason is that recruiters for less esoteric positions like the interactive search of Linkedin. They like being chased by candidates who may turn out to be a good fit for something. Recruiters like developing a "presence" online and a following. That makes future, non-esoteric, searches easier and quicker.

One of my executive clients literally went from 50 to 600 connections in less than a month by sending invites to recruiters in all of the 50 groups he had joined on Linkedin. Recruiters never turn down your offer to connect. We pushed him past the magic 500 number and made him look well-connected virtually overnight. Once he was over 500 then professionals he did not know more readily accepted his invitations to connect as they perceived him as a valuable networking contact.

People like communities, even recruiters, which explains why Linkedin groups, even with all their spam, are so popular. The only recruiting category killer lurking on the horizon is Facebook. And it's method for data capture has to be improved to give Linkedin a run for its money.

If you can’t get into a top-five MBA program, don’t even bother
By Jay Bhatti — January 15, 2013 Jay Bhatti is an investor and advisor to startups in New York City. Previously, he was the co-founder of the people search engine Spock.com. He also worked as a product manager for Microsoft. In 2002, he received his MBA from the Wharton School. Read more.

The extent of his understanding about MBA is  limited by his  elitist world view. His main complaints are:

• An MBA won't get you a job as easily as 30 years ago upon graduation. News flash! Nothing will do that, nothing.

• Nor does it help, he commented, with follow on jobs. That's a longstanding fact.  Career management 101 says that the farther back the experience the less relevant and pertinent it is to getting hired. Otherwise pre-school would count.

• It is too expensive now to be worth it and you aren't special anymore because so many schools offer them. It used to be that knowledge, titles, degrees and other good things in life were accessible only to the ruling, upper class (example George W. Bush got a Harvard MBA). The playing field is now leveled and much more competitive globally. An MBA from IIM, in India counts the same as Harvard now. And will someone please tell Jay that a Bachelor's degree will now put you in debt for life.

• His bottomline is that you can only justify the expense if you go only to the still special top five schools including his alma mater. Nah, that's desirable but optional and maybe not even necessary. Well, we are all commodities now, even the top five MBA schools. There is no more low hanging job fruit that some special degree get's you in and ensures your ongoing promotion, advancement, and opportunities.

So, why get an MBA? For the network. Yes, the network. Example, UCLA is not in Jay's top five but it has over 30,000 alumni out there to help you with  introductions, resources, access to opportunities, and career advice. That network doesn't become obsolete over time, better still, it keep on growing. You are buying a built in database of connections better than whatever Linkedin can do for you.  Your fellow alumni are all invested in your success as much as their own as you will reflect back well upon them and the alma mater.

How should you pick the MBA school? By the numbers. How many total graduates are there? How many in the geographical area of your preference. Example, most UCLA MBA alumni are in Southern California.  How many are in the field or industry of your preference? Some schools are known for finance and accounting vs marketing and management.

Do not pick an online school and degree as there is not enough connection and loyalty to the school to be good for networking.  Pick a big enough school so that you have ample selection. Example, my degree from JFK University in Career Development was so small and niched that I practically know everybody in the alumni pool. 

Is an MBA worth it? If you want a career in business, yes, as a bachelor's degree is now the equivalent of a high school diploma for entry into the world of work.
 

Who said you can never be too thin or too rich or have too many diamonds? The whole goal of personal branding is not to limit your exposure online but to expand and control it. Linkedin, other social networks, a personal website are not either or choices. This is not a zero sum game. 

Self-marketing online (and where else is it nowadays?) is best done by delivering your message using as many platforms, tools and devices as possible. This also includes a "Presume" on Sliderocket.com and a personal Prezi presentation too. Then link them altogether. 

How weird would it be if Coca Cola used only billboards for advertising and not TV, online and magazines? Same goes for us.

When someone puts your name in google search...not only Linkedin should come up but a whole plethora of branded links about you that you own and control: website, blogs, etc.

But, like everything else online, websites are now commodities and therefore cheap, if not free.  You can build your own with little talent for design and no money and still have a passable result. I will be better than Linkedin because it is uniquely you. A personal website enables us to truly express our uniqueness compared to template-driven social sites. They all have different purposes. Linkedin and other social sites are first and foremost  connectors rather than a branding instrument. 

There are several cloud services for websites where the building and hosting is free as well is the maintenance. Try www.weebly.com . I build all my client's sites there...since 2009 almost 80. My own business and personal websites and blogs are on Weebly: www.pattiwilson.com, www.pattiwilson.net, www.santacruzcalifornia.us, www.joyousdancer.com, 

I don't think it matters in a Google search which site is point as people (especially search consultants) are curious enough to look at everything. When I sign my name in an email, I list my title, company, Linkedin, SKYPE, website URLs, my phone number. People usually copy all of it for their Outlook files or whatever. 

The web is moving towards image driven content and curated content. How better to provide both images and curated content of ourselves than a website? Although I do have my business on Pinterest too.

in addition... 
www.about.me is an online business card that will link and point to all other sites online where your profile and dossier exists. If you can only put one link under your name in an email, then use that site. It is free. The only competitor that I know of to about.me is www.flavors.com . You can do both. About.me is one page and they will provide you will a print business card that matches your about.me profile too.

Send me an email if you want to see a rainforest research science project website that a 9 year old built by herself using Weebly or some of the sites I have done. Patti@pattiwilson.com