Are You Linked In?
If Facebook was the place to destroy your career a few years back (an inappropriate post could ruin your chances at that great job you were hoping to get, or worse yet, get you fired!), LinkedIn is now the place to be if you want to get hired and promote your career.
It always was a career-boosting, job-related site, and started rather modestly as a place to post your resume basics, and network with online friends. The idea was that if a friend of a friend was looking for, say, a caterer, your friend could send his friend to your LinkedIn page as a recommendation. There, this person could get a look at your qualifications, and maybe make a connection. Nice, simple, easy.
At the time it was introduced, there were a number of sites like this that aimed to keep business contacts informed about where you were, what you were doing, what you'd accomplished, and give them access to your latest resume.
As seems to happen with some apps, LinkedIn has suddenly caught on, and if you don't have a LinkedIn page, you will be seen as lacking by potential clients and employers. That's been the case for a while now, and though I've been on LinkedIn for several years, I'm just now being asked by people--lots of people--what it's all about, how to do it, would I look at their LinkedIn pages, and so on.
And not too long ago, I learned that there are people marketing the "how to play the game" of LinkedIn!
Needless to say, there is an arc here that seems to be followed by all of the "latest and greatest" apps. Certainly, the same thing happened with Facebook. First, it was just for college kids. Then it was for many graduates (of certain universities). Then it opened its doors wide open, but still catered mainly to younger people. Eventually, though, teens and twenties were horrified to discover than mom and dad had a Facebook account, and were - shock, horror - asking to "friend" their kids! Slowly but surely, Facebook became ubiquitous.
Then, of course, the marketers moved in. If everybody was flocking to Facebook, then Facebook had our attention. If something has our attention, well, then that's a good place to put marketing. And Facebook owners weren't so foolish as to not see profit staring them in the face. There had to be a profit model in there somewhere.
I've actually written in this space that I don't disapprove of Facebook or Google ad words type marketing. You've already expressed an interest in a subject, so it's not unreasonable to conclude that you might be in the market for related goods and services. Naturally, that's sometimes stretched a bit, but by and large I find the ads that I'm served up by both services to be inoffensive at worst.
But soon, Facebook was inundated with corporate pages and product pages. Hit "like" if you like string licorice! Like us on Facebook! Please, please, please like us! Strategies were devised, experts cropped up, pages, instead of being those delightful collections of whatever happened to catch our fancy that we wanted to share with our friends, became designed, dwelt on, thought over, micro-managed large, complex ads. Now, none of this matters if you don't "like" a corporate entity, unless your friends do (which is the whole point!), in which case you'll often get their "like" on your stream. Again, it's not all bad. I've found music and products through friends "likes" that I've actually been glad to find.
But, as I noted, once this type of activity proliferates, people often get tired of the whole thing and move along to the next bright shiny object that appears to be "free."
So, as I said, what I've now discovered is that there are people out there selling LinkedIn strategies. How many links do you need? Are you a "super connector?" If you don't have at least 500 connections, potential employers are going to think you're lame. What should your description line be? For only $250, we'll help you write your description line. Which jobs should you list? Should you start your own group, to show that you "own" your expertise? (For example, I belong to a couple of Voice Over Artist groups; then I discovered that there are dozens and dozens of them, many containing only a few people, including the person who started it. If you start a group, you must be "somebody," right?)
There are literally online classes you can take to show you how to game LinkedIn so that you'll "get that job you're looking for!"
Well, I don't know about that, but what I do know is that I am still using LinkedIn for one simple purpose: a place to direct someone who wants to know about my experience and expertise. But if the next thing they start doing is trying to sell me microphones, then, I'll know it's, to use a far-too-overworked phrase, "jumped the shark."
It always was a career-boosting, job-related site, and started rather modestly as a place to post your resume basics, and network with online friends. The idea was that if a friend of a friend was looking for, say, a caterer, your friend could send his friend to your LinkedIn page as a recommendation. There, this person could get a look at your qualifications, and maybe make a connection. Nice, simple, easy.
At the time it was introduced, there were a number of sites like this that aimed to keep business contacts informed about where you were, what you were doing, what you'd accomplished, and give them access to your latest resume.
As seems to happen with some apps, LinkedIn has suddenly caught on, and if you don't have a LinkedIn page, you will be seen as lacking by potential clients and employers. That's been the case for a while now, and though I've been on LinkedIn for several years, I'm just now being asked by people--lots of people--what it's all about, how to do it, would I look at their LinkedIn pages, and so on.
And not too long ago, I learned that there are people marketing the "how to play the game" of LinkedIn!
Needless to say, there is an arc here that seems to be followed by all of the "latest and greatest" apps. Certainly, the same thing happened with Facebook. First, it was just for college kids. Then it was for many graduates (of certain universities). Then it opened its doors wide open, but still catered mainly to younger people. Eventually, though, teens and twenties were horrified to discover than mom and dad had a Facebook account, and were - shock, horror - asking to "friend" their kids! Slowly but surely, Facebook became ubiquitous.
Then, of course, the marketers moved in. If everybody was flocking to Facebook, then Facebook had our attention. If something has our attention, well, then that's a good place to put marketing. And Facebook owners weren't so foolish as to not see profit staring them in the face. There had to be a profit model in there somewhere.
I've actually written in this space that I don't disapprove of Facebook or Google ad words type marketing. You've already expressed an interest in a subject, so it's not unreasonable to conclude that you might be in the market for related goods and services. Naturally, that's sometimes stretched a bit, but by and large I find the ads that I'm served up by both services to be inoffensive at worst.
But soon, Facebook was inundated with corporate pages and product pages. Hit "like" if you like string licorice! Like us on Facebook! Please, please, please like us! Strategies were devised, experts cropped up, pages, instead of being those delightful collections of whatever happened to catch our fancy that we wanted to share with our friends, became designed, dwelt on, thought over, micro-managed large, complex ads. Now, none of this matters if you don't "like" a corporate entity, unless your friends do (which is the whole point!), in which case you'll often get their "like" on your stream. Again, it's not all bad. I've found music and products through friends "likes" that I've actually been glad to find.
But, as I noted, once this type of activity proliferates, people often get tired of the whole thing and move along to the next bright shiny object that appears to be "free."
So, as I said, what I've now discovered is that there are people out there selling LinkedIn strategies. How many links do you need? Are you a "super connector?" If you don't have at least 500 connections, potential employers are going to think you're lame. What should your description line be? For only $250, we'll help you write your description line. Which jobs should you list? Should you start your own group, to show that you "own" your expertise? (For example, I belong to a couple of Voice Over Artist groups; then I discovered that there are dozens and dozens of them, many containing only a few people, including the person who started it. If you start a group, you must be "somebody," right?)
There are literally online classes you can take to show you how to game LinkedIn so that you'll "get that job you're looking for!"
Well, I don't know about that, but what I do know is that I am still using LinkedIn for one simple purpose: a place to direct someone who wants to know about my experience and expertise. But if the next thing they start doing is trying to sell me microphones, then, I'll know it's, to use a far-too-overworked phrase, "jumped the shark."
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