With the recession slowing down and jobs growing – people are resolving to focus on their career and move up after sitting back these last few years. In fact, based on a new LinkedIn survey, more than 74% of us globally added a professional goal to our lineup in 2012. Rather than wanting a new job, most professionals wanted to learn new skills in the new year.
Today the first official portrait of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, was revealed in London. The duchess described the painting as “amazing”, but critics referred to the image as “evil,” “rotten” and even “dull.” As a member of the Royal Family, Kate Middleton is one of the most scrutinized women on the planet. It’s perhaps not surprising that a lot of fuss (both good and bad) is often made about the duchess. Still, many people were surprised by all of the portrait drama that infiltrated the internet this morning, but maybe they shouldn’t be. After all, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” or so the saying goes. In this day and age, the first impression people might make about you could be a direct result of a photo or your online presence.
Given all the interest in the duchess’ image today, we thought this might be a good opportunity to point out how important your image is on LinkedIn. Here are a few things that you might want to keep in mind before you click that upload photo button.
One of the old fashioned myths about job hunting is that you’ll never get hired in December. “People slow down for the holidays,” the thinking went. “Everything is on hold until the new year.”
Thankfully I ignored that advice back in 1999, when I interviewed for and was offered my dream job at a career-focused Internet start-up just a few short weeks before Christmas.
Next week, LinkedIn employees will attend an event hosted by the NFL and Stanford University. We will meet with former NFL players and coach them on how they can get the most use out of their LinkedIn Profiles as they look for new careers off the field. Some of the advice we will give the players is applicable to any professional, so we thought we’d share it with our members too. In order to have the best offense, you need to have a strong defense too. There are over 175 million professionals on LinkedIn – with two new members joining every second – so don’t let the competition stop you from standing out as a professional all-star.
Read the defense: LinkedIn counts executives from all 2011 Fortune 500 companies as members; its corporate talent solutions are used by 85 of the Fortune 100 companies. Make sure you’re following both the companies you would like to be recruited by, and those with whom you compete, in order to get the insider read on who’s coming and going. You’ll also be able to check out the LinkedIn Skills that their top players have listed.
Editor’s Note: Last week, we announced LinkedIn’s 100 Most InDemand Employers, a set of rankings based on our massive professional dataset. We are now following up with tips on how you can get a job at one of these employers. We started with Expedia earlier this week, and now we’re excited to have Lindsey Pollak.
If you could work for any company in the world, which employer would you choose? You can see the most popular answers to this question on LinkedIn’s recently released list of Most InDemand Employers, which ranks the most sought-after companies on LinkedIn, ranked geographically and by job function.
