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When my wife and I moved into our new home in Portland, OR, we couldn’t have been more excited. Then, after three months, our dryer stopped working well. It was taking us two or three cycles to get the clothes dry. It got so bad that I remember hanging clothes on my office door, the back of the couch and
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I’m sitting in the Minneapolis airport when this tweet came in from Erin Perry, Student at St. Cloud State University, with this cute doodle. I guess this is something I must have said at yesterday’s talk on campus, “LinkedIn is crack for recruiters” I told the story of how I had to hire two people this winter and got a great
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Last week, LinkedIn sent out emails congratulating the top 1% and top 5% of their most viewed profiles. Before you start jumping up and down with a sense of accomplishment, consider this. LinkedIn now has 200 million users. 1% of 200M= 2 million 5% of 200M= 10 million When was the last time you were excited to be one out
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Every year LinkedIn analyzes all of their millions of profiles, translating the non-English ones to English, and tries to identify the most used buzzwords. It’s always interesting to see what words left the list and what new words were added. The key for you is to make sure you avoid these words like the plague. They are cliches and don’t
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Everyone has their own personal social media policy. One friend of mine told me that he was a “Facebook prude and a LinkedIn whore.” In contrast, I’ve met people who won’t even consider accepting a LinkedIn invitation until they had at least a 15 minute conversation. Many LinkedIn trainers tell people how to run their own personal social media policies,
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In 2006, when I still worked at Cisco, I started a little LinkedIn Group called “Cisco.”  Okay, not very creative or original. But I thought it was a good idea at the time to help Cisco folks leverage our mutual LinkedIn networks for career opportunities. HR didn’t like the idea though — which only made me want to do it
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I recently read a Forbes article, For Job Seekers, Is LinkedIn Worth Paying For, and I found myself asking, “If I were a job seeker, would I pay for it?”  My short answer…no.  The article listed several reasons as to why upgrading LinkedIn membership would be “worthwhile” for a job seeker; however from a recruiter standpoint, here is why I
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Ever had an experience like this one? You hear from a former colleague or long-lost friend out of the blue, only to discover they want to “network” with you because they’re looking for a job. This was my experience back in 2008. At that time, I made a decision: I will build and serve my network now, rather than waiting
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In all of the conversations I’ve had with recruiters and hiring managers, I’ve never once heard that a weak recommendation cost a candidate consideration for an opening. It’s not likely that a silly recommendation on your profile will damage you. However, when considering candidates, recruiters do say that they notice these three things about recommendations on LinkedIn: They count to
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