The Top 3 Mistakes Job Seekers Make On LinkedIn - CareerEnlightenment.com

Mistake 2: You are NOT Your J-o-b“Systems Engineer”“Marketing Executive”“Fundraiser”These appear under people’s names in their LinkedIn profiles. And they tell us nothing about who this person really is.They are a commodity.Quick story. I had a client, a network engineer, who wanted to work for a very large shoe company. No, not Nike, but good guess.He knew they had two problems. First, they had no internal network. Second, their external network was so broken that it was affecting supply chain.So in order to really appeal to this company, we needed to directly address their biggest challenges challenges that he had the capacity to solve.So his headline went like this, “Powerful Intranet builder | Supply Chain thought leader | Project management guru”You have 120 characters to tell the world who you are and what value you bring.And every communication you generate on LinkedIn will have this professional headline attached to it.So choose wisely.Hint: don’t use you r job title as your headlineMistake 3: Don’t Look Like an Axe MurdererEvery single time I speak about social media in the job search, someone always comes up to me afterward to ask me this question, “But I’m just not that comfortable putting my picture up.” They are either too young or too old or too something.Yes, ageism, racism and sexism are very real. It’s sad and terrible that they still happen in our society. But using a black and white photo, or zooming way out to try and hide something about ourselves is not going to solve the problem.The only thing we can do is put some time and effort into our photos, to reflect who we are honestly. And to make a nice looking photo.All too often, people will put up a mug shot, and wonder why they aren’t getting call backs.This happened to a friend’s client. And the day he changed his photo, he got a job offer. No exaggeration. (I can hear the HR people cringing from this story, but it’s true).So the lesson from this is that it is worth getting a professional headshot taken if you are serious about getting a job.