028 Martin Pierce: LinkedIn

Career Tips & Trends with Tom McDonough & Deborah Burkholder

12/15/12 • 40 min

Internet radio for savvy professionals –
doing work you love, work that matters.

Our guest, career coach Martin Pierce, believes that “15 minutes a day on LinkedIn can revitalize your career”. He joins us to talk about how.

For the vast majority not having a LinkedIn presence is not an option if you want to be taken as a serious professional. At this time LinkedIn is the “goto” platform for building business relationships, research and access to professionals.

And having a profile is just the beginning, how do you take advantage of LinkedIn’s vast resources, and also become part of those resources.

Martin has worked in corporate and private outplacement, corporate recruiting, and job placement programs for nonprofits. He has delivered scores of seminars on Resume Writing, LinkedIn, Job Search Networking, Interviewing and Salary Negotiation.

Recent LinkedIn presentations include Boston Medical Center, Suffolk University, and WIND Professional Networking. Known for his networking expertise, he currently maintains a private career coaching practice in Arlington, MA, where he specializes in LinkedIn consultations and profile writing, career changes and resume writing. Martin also does coaching and training at Career Source Career Center in Cambridge.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.

From the show

LinkedIn is the world’s largest business networking site.

It’s the number one social media site used by recruiters. In fact 95% or more of recruiters and hiring managers use LinkedIn to get candidates.

People how are hiring expect people to be on LinkedIn if they are serious about their careers.

People are realizing that it’s very important to have a professional presence on LinkedIn.

Common mistakes... One of the biggest is not posting a photo.

Networking is all about putting the other person first and how you can help them with their needs and let your needs come later.

Optimize your headline...

In fact along with the photo and the headline, the summary is one of the most important part of the profile . It can have up to 2,000 characters and it is important to optimize that summary...So similarly in a LinkedIn profile it is very important to show that your clear about what you want to be doing and why and how you can offer value to an organization.

As far as the number of connections, I recommend getting to 100-150 first degree connections on LinkedIn.

Networking is about relationship building and it’s a two way street and these relationship theoretically are relationships we plan to have a long time in the future.

Well I think part of what you are saying is how to have people stand out from the crowd. One way is to have a well branded summary section, where they really talk about their passions and includes success stories about achievements they have had. A lot of people either don’t have a summary or have a very boring kind of summary. It can really come alive and to make it stand out and make people want to get to know you better. But if you take that opportunity to make it compelling. Another way is to actively participate in LinkedIn groups.

Don’t get overwhelmed by it. It can be overwhelming. Take it one day at a time. Take a work shop , read a book. I have a couple good ones in the resource lists. Budget your time. Plan a few hours to get a good profile going and then set up a strategy for fifteen minutes a day, and how are you going to use that time. Stick to it and honor it. Don’t get so distracted.

Listen to the full interview by clicking player above.

We’d love to hear from you in terms of your actionable takeaways from this episode.