Last week I had an anniversary related to one of the collaboration projects I am involved in. It is listed on my LinkedIn profile. When this happens all of my 1st connections are told either on their home page under ‘Ways to stay in touch’, or now in their messages area it welcomes you with the ‘Hi Paul. Some ideas for conversations’ LinkedIn makes it very easy for these connections… Read More »Congratulating Me on LinkedIn is a Mistake
“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” – Bob Dylan
The Fall is a busy time for everyone. Many companies view the last 4 months of the year as an opportunity to spend the years budgets, or individuals look to make that all important career move, ready to start the new year in a new opportunity.
Recruiters are also very active, between now and the end of the year can make or break their commissions or bonus, and for some those payments can be significant. Unfortunately that can sometimes mean they lose sight of what is best for the candidate.
A word to the wise when you get that next headhunters call!!
I am reminded about a certain recruiter who I think only ever worked for one client and therefore when he was contacting people to talk about a great new opportunity he could really only have one ‘sales pitch’.
One September he called a friend of mine who had, to that point, a successful career in sales in consumer goods and proceeded to tell him that industry was dying, no future, consolidation was happening everywhere – to an extent it was true. He went on to say Now if you want to get in to a growth industry do I have the opportunity for you – I’m thinking of you and I’m thinking – aluminum extrusions, was how he described it – we knew it was double glazing!
Three years later, again in September, my friend, who had by then switched to the medical industry, had a call one evening from the same recruiter – his opening line after finding out what my friend was doing was “That’s a dying industry, lots of consolidation – now if you want to get in to a growth industry do I have the opportunity for you – I’m thinking of you and I’m thinking – aluminum extrusions……..!!!!!!”
You should not be leaving your next career move to the whims of anyone else, it’s up to you to own the definition of who you are.
Here are 5 ways to ensure you have better control of your career;
Read More »Don’t Leave Your Personal Brand to Chance – 5 Tips for Success
This weeks tip comes via a reader question “I’m wondering why sometimes I can do a “connect” invite to some secondary connections (without having to say how I know them), but not others? Thanks Paul” – Joe This is not something you can control because it is how others have their settings on accepting invitations. It is something that you want to check for your own profile so that if you ensure you… Read More »Why can I only make connect automatically with some 2nd connections on LinkedIn ?
Pulse is one of the most useful areas on the LinkedIn platform to read longer form articles, thought leaders and find useful insights and information. For some bizarre reason LinkedIn decided a few weeks ago to ‘hide’ the Pulse channel and I shared how to now find it, – read Are You Getting the Full Story on LinkedIn? Hopefully you are now regularly reading various articles (including mine 🙂 –… Read More »How to share content directly from a LinkedIn Pulse article
Time magazine gushingly reported this week that “Gwyneth Paltrow Has a Seriously Extensive LinkedIn Profile”. But on closer examination her profile may not even reach ‘All Star’ status, which is the ideal minimum that you want your profile to be. You can view her profile by clicking here. There are several good things to notice; Well taken headshot, interestingly using black and white which is different. Good use of a custom header… Read More »The Good & Bad About Gwyneth Paltrow’s LinkedIn Profile
Just in case you are not familiar with hashtags, on social media you have likely noticed the # pound symbol with a word or words after it – that is a hashtag! Their use is extremely popular on social media networks such as Instagram and Twitter, who’s own research suggests that using them can increase engagement for you by 2x and for a brand or company by 1.5x. Previously when… Read More »Should you bother using hashtags on LinkedIn?
A client contacted me this week because for the first time they had seen the notice, whilst doing LinkedIn searches, “You are approaching your limit for searches”. One day later they were told that was it for this month unless they wanted to upgrade to one of the top end accounts. This seems to be happening more and more, which suggests that LinkedIn is changing the way free accounts can… Read More »Have you reached your commercial limit for LinkedIn searches?
This past weekend I had the opportunity to speak again at the Discover Your Personal Brand Conference. DYPB 2016 was different from 2014 in a number of ways.
The focus was more toward small business and the caliber of speaker, panels and attendees was awesome. There were many inspiring young Canadians in attendance that really gave me a lift about the future of our country. All held within the back drop of Telus’ state of the art office in downtown Toronto, an environmental LEED building, bursting with technology and balanced with space and light.
The opportunity to attend conferences is always a big investment, even if its local so it was great to get such a rich experience.
After introductions from the motivating conference organizer and founder Bobby Umar and keynotes from the always excellent Mark Bowden and inspiring Real Food for Real Kids founder Lulu Cohen-Farnell the highlight of the first evening for me was the Personal Brand Leadership All Star Panel. They were;
Cameron Gordon, Head of Communications, Twitter – Moderator
Erin Bury, Managing Director at 88 Creative
Jennifer Ettinger, Founder & President at Fit Your Style
Jagmeet Singh, MPP, ONDP Deputy Leader
Bobby Umar, Founder, Raeallan & DYPB
Full bios and more details on the schedule http://www.dypb.ca/schedule/ and other speakers can be found here http://www.dypb.ca/speakers/
Here is a Summary of the questions and panel answers;
Read More »Lessons From Discover Your Personal Brand Conference – The All Star Panel
Travelling to my first European speaking engagement in Slovakia really opened my eyes to the benefits of being a ‘Conference Guerilla’. I was travelling almost 14,000 km in the space of 4 days to speak for approximately one and a half hours. Just like when going on vacation, I tried to clear the decks before I went. In the end a few things had to get left unfinished and I had to accept that.
It was most important to me to ensure that everything was taken care of back home. This was key to being able to focus on the conference and my wonderful girlfriend really stepped up and took on the responsibility for my two kids. I am really grateful because I knew they were in good hands.
There are three distinct phases of conferences – Pre, During and After. In ‘How to be a Conference Guerrilla – Part 1’, we looked at the pre-Conference activities and in ‘How to be a Conference Guerrilla – Part 2’ we discussed optimizing the time while at the conference.
Overall I felt that Pre & During I did a fairly good job. What I tend to find though is that once I return home, it can all start to fall apart.
So what happens once you get back home or to the office?
“Have you been published? Do you have a book?” are common questions I am asked when I deliver keynotes and workshops. I should collect my approach to personal branding into a book, and the idea has crossed my mind a million times, but I seem to have as many excuses not to.
I had an interesting discussion with a fellow speaker at a recent conference when we talked about this whole notion that a book does not generate significant revenue, but can help clarify in your own mind what you stand for and can help clearly position your expertise and knowledge.
My first ever blog post was December 2003, so it’s not that I don’t like writing or run out of things to say! I am also one of those people that prefers the kinesthetic feel of a physical rather then digital book. Market research suggests that the old fashioned book is not the rapidly dying media that some would have us believe.
But our social media streams are increasingly becoming a visual collection of videos, high quality images, You Tube links and GIF’s (Graphics Interchange Format).
“Visual media is the new headline.” – Unknown
The poll that I ran in one of my articles showed the following results when it came to the various visual media that people used as part of their publishing;
Read More »Are You Ready to Hog the LinkedIn Publishing Limelight?