This is unusual for me as you probably know. I like to share positive career and job finding experiences and tips with you. Yet LinkedIn’s recent sneaky tactics have let me down.

Last year I spent a lot of time promoting LinkedIn to hundreds of individuals facing major upheaval in their careers through job cuts and company closures.

How many other career management tools enable you to promote yourself, find jobs, network with decision makers and do market research all in one place? For FREE.

But is LinkedIn free?

What is your reputation worth?

A few weeks ago I was sent an email from a coaching colleague asking me if I was aware that LinkedIn had quietly introduced new settings with the default set ON which allow them to use your profile information, name and photo in third party advertising.

My initial reaction was disbelief – this was a Facebook tactic!  Would that explain why I had been starting to receive unwanted e-mails and spam from people I wasn't connected to?

Within a few minutes I had alerted my entire LinkedIn network of 422 contacts (which is not inconsiderable) and changed my settings to OFF.

Is the price of “personal branding” our privacy?

Sara Maim’s article in today’s Independent shrugs off privacy concerns claiming that we are all becoming individual brands, selling ourselves online.

“Welcome to the lives of anyone under 23. We are the social networking generation. Our lives have been played out online since before we hit our teens.”

You have to smile …

If I think back to my early twenties when my career was a series of jobs to earn money to pay back student loans and save up for a mortgage, I might have said the same thing.  Shrug off the future you can’t imagine.

Yet we are all living longer. And the Facebook and LinkedIns of the world have elephant memory banks that can come back to haunt us just when we want to get serious about our careers.

Would I suggest you use LinkedIn to promote yourself online – YES.

However, have your eyes wide open and recognise that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Social networks will always find ways to make money – with your data – so check your privacy settings regularly and create a personal brand that will contribute to your career success, not destroy your reputation.

Katherine Wiid, founder of Recrion, is a Career Management Coach and Behavioural Specialist.  Helping you to move away from uncertainty towards clarity in your working life. Telephone 01780 484910.

If the candidate has made the effort, why shouldn’t you?

Few employers enjoy the recruitment process. Some are more thorough then others, but it is rarely anything other than a long-winded, stressful process.

Are you performing as an interviewer?

The problem many find is that, at a time when unemployment levels remain high, businesses can be unrealistic in their expectations, or attempt the en-masse interview approach when attempting to find the right candidate.

For example, is it really fair or worthwhile to make graduate-after-graduate traipse down to your offices, for a 10-15 minute interview?

And, just because there are stacks of candidates, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to find the perfect candidate. You’re not. Because they don’t exist.

The point is, whether you have 5 or 500 applications for your position, you need to know that you’re getting the best candidate out there.

And you can only know you’re getting the right candidate by ensuring that you are using all of the tools at your disposal.

With the help of social media tools such as LinkedIn, recruitment can now be a much calmer, simpler process. LinkedIn not only enables you to make a ‘passive’ (someone who’s not applied) candidate ‘active’, but it also now gives users an ‘apply for job’ option.

Better still, is their recently unveiled Talent Pipeline, a tool which instantly gives Recruiters and Hiring Managers their own FREE CRM tool.

This will make recruitment on LinkedIn easier than ever, giving recruiters an ‘Add’ button that provides them with easy-to-use access to over 116 million CV’s.

So, finding candidates is easy.  However, deciding on the right candidates to interview can be difficult. Why not make it simpler?  A conversational insightful tool such as LAB Profiling will tap into a candidate’s mindset and motivations at work, giving you a clear idea on whether they’re exactly what you’re looking for.

Recruiting the right candidate can be time-consuming and, at times, expensive. But, when a candidate has spent lots of time and money of their own ensuring they give you the best possible interview, surely the least you can do is return the favour?

Sound interesting? Why not find out more about LAB Profiling and see how it can improve your recruitment efforts.

Recrion is a specialist in career and talent management, and works with organisations to retain and motivate their employees. For more information, contact us on 01780 484910 or email katherine@recrion.co.uk. 

I am guilty of this, and perhaps you are too. We become so occupied in the pursuit of achieving our career goals that we do not look back at the climb and how we got there.

Until we are faced with major events like sweeping job cuts and economic instability over which we have little control. Within the space of a few weeks, our seemingly secure jobs and businesses no longer exist and we are competing with several others for the few openings in our field.

At these times, it is important to go back and revisit the small steps that got you where you are now and ask yourself:

• Did you create a lasting impression?
• Did you make the right connections?
• Did you go beyond your job description and really touch someone?
• How would someone finish this sentence about you? — “The thing that I remember most about XXX is?”

If the answer to some of these questions is NOT what you would like to hear, then it is time to take some steps to change this.

A relatively quick and inexpensive way of creating an impact is through social media.  LinkedIn is currently being touted as the fastest growing Talent Management site on the internet.

If you are new to LinkedIn or have an existing profile, you have the opportunity to make an impact by connecting with the right people, getting recommendations that reflect how you went beyond the call of duty and creating a lasting impression.

Oh, and if you are thinking about NOT putting a complete profile with photo on LinkedIn, ask yourself – would you do business with or interview an individual who has NO photo on LinkedIn?

This very same question was asked on a LinkedIn group recently and received 990 comments (and still coming in!).  Here is a snapshot of their thoughts that might help you make a decision:

“I think it depends if the person in question is new to LinkedIn or has been using it for a while. A photo and/or company logo surely help but other material such as recommendations could also be used to figure out his or her worth/reputation.”

“A photo shows a person behind the profile, which in turn establishes trust. It is more difficult to have trust with someone when they aren't willing to take two seconds to pick a photo to display.”

“You are limiting your networking abilities by NOT having a photo."

“When I perform searches on LinkedIn, I perceive the person with a photo to be more open and willing to connect.”

“I am surprised by number of profiles where instead of full name profile owner lists only initials and then approach you to connect with them. Hardly any description about who they are, where they work, … , no name and no picture. What is a point of having such a profile?”

As your career evolves, don’t miss out on an opportunity to make an impact – you never know when you might need it.

Katherine Wiid is a Career and Talent Management Coach, specialising in working with individuals facing major career change.  You can contact her on 01780 484910, visit www.recrion.co.uk or connect on LinkedIn

Employers and job seekers are starting to use online networking sites to find each other and start a dialogue.  However, the increased use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can have its drawbacks.

4 out of 10 HR managers in the UK have chosen not to hire a candidate as a result of a negative online profile, according to research by Microsoft.

In the survey of 1000 HR professionals, 64% said they thought it appropriate to search the web for information on a person before recruiting them, and 41% admitted to rejecting candidates on that basis.

The challenge as a candidate is to manage your social media footprint with agility.

Being too formal on Facebook won't endear you to your school / university friends, yet discretion is the key if you want pass a future employer's scrutiny.  Better to opt for LinkedIn, a business social network where you can build a career based profile and learn from peers and mentors.

I am convinced that should Microsoft run a similar survey in 6 – 12 months time, even more HR managers will be snooping online.  Take steps to protect your online profile – there is a big difference between online visibility and online credibility!

Recrion specialises in Career and People Management.  For more information on seminars and 1:1 coaching on Social Networking for Career Success contact us on 01780 484910 or visit our website www.recrion.co.uk.

Thank you so much for giving your time and expertise to help our members yesterday.  I know from speaking to them afterwards that you certainly gave all of them something to think about.

For those who are using sites such LinkedIn already it reinforced the message that they were moving in the right lines, and for those who were not it gave them the incentive to get on with it!  Even those that were old hands at social networking gained insights they were not aware of.

Everyone was agreeing that your talk was one of the most enjoyable they had heard – they are not used to audience participation, so the novelty was very welcome.

Thank you again for a most enjoyable and informative seminar yesterday.

With very best wishes, Alan Boyer, Facilitator, Back to Business Club, Peterborough

Would you like to accelerate your career success?  Take a look at www.recrion.co.uk/career or call Katherine Wiid on 01780 484910 for a chat.

I was sent a link to a video spoof on LinkedIn touting it as a job search tool by a savvy delegate looking for my reaction.

Apart from the fact that it is a simplistic (and not entirely accurate) view of LinkedIn, it does raise some interesting thoughts:

• If you play on Facebook and LinkedIn at work all day you'll get yourself in trouble. If you wait until you get laid off to create your accounts and try to network, you'll seem desperate. However, if you keep track of all your professional associations over time, you'll build up a large group of leads to tap into when you need to job hunt again.
• The links do nothing on their own…it's what you do with them!  It's up to the user to reach out, generate connections and develop relationships.  LinkedIn is making it very easy to gently nudge people in the direction of networking.
• This video is misleading as LinkedIn never claims to find you a job. That really isn't the point of it. LinkedIn benefits people who are genuinely interested in networking for business reasons and for establishing contacts with industry people who may be able to help you with your business endeavours and/or ideas.
• LinkedIn is not an end in itself, but – if your connections, recommendations and of course your CV are up to it – it'll help you find out about open positions and land the job you're looking for.

For more information on using online and offline networks to make connections to power your career, keep an eye on our regular blogs at www.recrion.co.uk or come along on 4 February 2010 to the Back to Business Club in Peterborough where Katherine Wiid,  Career Management Expert will be talking about "Networking – the railroad that runs beneath your career".