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You have a “brand” new resume that targets the job you want, illuminates your personal brand, key drivers, and pivotal strengths, and clearly differentiates your value proposition over your competition.
Don’t stop there. A great "paper" resume is not enough any more to land your next great gig. You’ll need a strong, on-brand online presence so you’ll be found by recruiters and hiring decision makers searching for candidates like you.
Start with LinkedIn. Many savvy executives competing for the jobs you want have already embraced all that LinkedIn has to offer. At the very least, you have to have a great profile there, just to keep pace with them.
Recruiters and other hiring authorities routinely search LinkedIn for viable candidates, and even have special applications designed for that purpose. If they don’t find you on LinkedIn, you may not exist at all to them.
Extend the value of your branded resume. Transform it into a winning LinkedIn profile.
Merely throwing together your LinkedIn profile without strategizing its impact on your target audience may render it ineffectual or even a detriment to you. Your profile needs to be searchable, immediately capture the attention of your target audience, and brand your unique value proposition.
With a little editing and juggling, everything in your branded executive resume, plus some extras, can be used in appropriate sections of your LinkedIn profile. If you need help branding your resume, see my blog post for executive branding - Best of Executive Resume Branding Tactics and Advice.
Here are some tips, working down from the top:
- Brand your professional headline (directly below your name)
Pump it up with the relevant key words your target audience will be looking for. You can pack quite a punch with the 120 characters allowed.
Which of these headlines, for the same executive, do you think will make her profile more searchable and compelling?
CEO - [Current Company]
OR
CEO - Global Operations Change Agent | Entrepreneurial Startups | Crisis, Recovery & Turnaround Management
Choose your photo wisely. This is the first thing people are likely to see when they open your LinkedIn profile. Go with an appealing photo that strikes the right image and professional tone for your industry and niche. Use the same photo everywhere else online.
Update this powerful feature often to keep your LinkedIn network and those viewing your profile current with your latest activities. LinkedIn notifies your network whenever you refresh this section (along with any changes you make elsewhere to your profile), which keeps you and your brand value top of mind with them. This area also represents another opportunity to brand your profile with relevant key words. Include a link to more about the update, if possible.
Keep building up brand and value-reinforcing recommendations within each job you’ve held. Nothing speaks to your unique value proposition better than what others who know your work best have to say about you. If they’re amenable, it’s okay to help them write a brief paragraph or two by providing them a little information about the kinds of positions you’re seeking, so that they can align what they write with what hiring decision makers will be looking for.
Opinions differ on whether it’s more important to amass a lot of connections or concentrate on building quality connections. That’s up to you, but doesn’t it make sense to surround yourself with people you actually know (at least somewhat) and with whom you can build mutually helpful relationships?
Include links to up to 3 web pages. If you don’t have a blog or website, this is a great place to put a link to your VisualCV, online career portfolio, any notable press about you, a white paper you published online, etc. You may want to link people to “Follow [your name] on Twitter”. Lead people to more brand-reinforcing information about you.
- Personalize Your Public Profile URL (immediately above the summary section)
The default URL ends in an indistinct jumble of letters and numbers. Change that to your name. This is what my LinkedIn URL looks like: http://www.linkedin.com/in/megguiseppi
If you have a common name or one that’s already taken, you’ll have to play around with this. Include your middle initial, or just use your first initial, or first and middle initials.
Working from a text version of your resume, you can copy and paste blocks of information into this and the following appropriate sections of your profile. It’s really as simple as that. Remember to let people know right away what differentiates you from your competition. Load the Specialties section with searchable relevant key word phrases that represent your key functional areas of expertise.
Plug in appropriate information from your resume for both sections. Remember to lead your achievement statements with the WOW result first and surround each with white space for better visual impact.
- Additional Information (at the bottom of your profile)
Include select information from your career bio. Highlight your commitment to community and interesting hobbies or pasttimes. Tell a story about one of your passions. The companies you’re targeting are interested in your whole brand picture. Chemistry and good fit are very important to them. Slices of your personal pursuits can give them an idea of what kind of person you are and whether you’ll fit their corporate culture.
Also include academic and employment awards, honors, and recognition, along with affiliations with relevant professional associations.
Some General Tips:
- Pay special attention to all that lands “above the fold” in your profile - whatever is on the screen when you open your profile. This is what people will see first, and can make or break your chances to be considered. Capture their attention and make them want to scroll down to read your entire profile.
- Remember that LinkedIn notifies your network whenever you make changes to your profile. Regularly refresh “What are you working on?” and other parts of your profile to stay top of mind with them.
- Once your profile is all done, LinkedIn has a feature to let you easily convert it to a PDF file and save a copy, just in case.
- Include a link to your LinkedIn profile on your resume, along with your contact information at the top. Include a nifty LinkedIn badge in your email signature, on your blog, website, and VisualCV, and elsewhere.
Bottom line:
These tips will help you extend the value of your branded resume and bio, while building your online presence and brand reputation. If all of this is beyond your capabilities, consider working with a professional job search strategist who knows how to leverage these tools to best position your unique value proposition.
© Copyright Meg Guiseppi, 2009. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
--------------------------------------------- Meg Guiseppi, Job-Hunt’s Personal Branding Expert and 20-year careers industry veteran, holds 7 certifications, including Reach Certified Personal Branding Strategist, Reach Certified Online Identity Strategist, and Master Resume Writer. Meg is the author of the ebook, "23 Ways You Sabotage Your Executive Job Search and How Your Brand Will Help You Land." Connect with Meg at Executive Career Brand, on LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com/in/megguiseppi), and on Twitter (@megguiseppi).
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