Contrary to popular belief, introverts are not shy individuals who do not like people. Rather, the 52% of people who categorize themselves as introverts simply find many social interactions draining and need time to recharge after being around people. These people can find the job search norm of “getting out there and meeting people” at networking events particularly challenging. However, like it or not, networking events are a key component of a successful job search and being an introvert in no way means that you cannot be a skilled networker.
Here are some tips to get the most out of networking events, particularly for the introverts out there:
Generally, introverts prefer to have time to think ideas through and organize their thoughts before speaking. While a networking event with continual introductions to new people might not immediately seem like the obvious place to be able to think things through, you can minimize your stress by researching prior to the event. Most networking events will have an online registration page, confirming the schedule for the evening, any guest speakers, and often even a list of those who will be attending. Take the time to review this information beforehand, familiarize yourself with other registrants and plan possible conversation topics.
What do you want to get from the event? Do you want to meet potential employers? Gather industry information? Or, source candidates for informational interviews? Either way, setting your agenda before the event will increase the likelihood of meeting your personal objectives.
If you find networking events draining, you may be tempted to leave after 20 minutes or speak to one person and then secure a lone position at the bar. If this sounds like you, set yourself some targets before the event. Decide the minimum amount of time that you can stay for and/or the minimum number of people that you can have a conversation with – you never know, you might even exceed these!
Approximately 80% of people feel uncomfortable at networking events. If this is you, you are not alone. If nerves get the better of you, it is too easy to convince yourself that: everyone there knows everyone else; no one would want to talk to you; or you cannot bring any value to the conversations. This is not true. Event attendees are all at the event for the same reason, to talk to people. Practice makes perfect – the more you network, the more comfortable you will become.
Once you arrive at the event, who are you going to talk to? Look for other individuals who are standing alone (usually by the bar or the food table!) or chat with the event organizer(s) who will usually be happy to introduce you to another attendee. Another good place to position yourself is close to the registration table, as people arrive they will also be looking for someone to engage with.
It is important that you don’t only talk to one person at the event. If you are nervous, you may be happy to stay with that one person so that you don’t have to start over again. However, this is not the purpose of networking events and won’t help you meet your objectives. After a short conversation, thank them for their time – arranging to stay in touch if appropriate – and move onto another person.
While networking is an essential part of job search and career management, you should not only be talking about business. Be aware of current events and local, uncontroversial news so that you can make small talk. The weather is always a popular conversation starter, as are questions about the venue and whether they have been to the event before. Avoid conversations about politics or religion, and never put anyone on the spot by asking for a job.
Many events will offer appetizers and alcoholic drinks. If you are nervous, don’t over indulge in the wine or beer for some “Dutch courage” – you don’t want to be remembered for the wrong reasons. Limit yourself to one or two social drinks or stick to the club soda. Similarly with any food, ensure that you don’t opt for any items which will be difficult to eat when having a conversation (e.g. anything with gravy/sauce) or will leave unsightly green bits in your teeth!
You might be nervous, drained and/or ready to go home but make sure that you keep smiling! Friendliness is incredibly influential to your likability, and ultimately, your employability. If you are standing on your own, someone is much more likely to approach you and start a conversation if you are smiling genuinely and standing with open, welcoming body language.
As I said, being an introvert does not mean that you cannot be a skilled networker – you simply develop these working relationships in a different way. If you met someone interesting at the event, reach out to them and invite them for a coffee and follow-up conversation. This one-to-one networking is often where introverts thrive, able to strengthen relationships through in-depth and thoughtful conversation.
Dorothy is a certified résumé writer with 25 years of experience in providing career advice and support to 5,000 professionals in diverse industries including technology, science, gaming, trades, finance, manufacturing, warehouse, and administration to find fulfilling careers. Through her work she has gained a solid understanding of the needs of British Columbia’s dynamic labour force. Her expertise in developing résumés, LinkedIn profiles, and cover letters has helped her clients move forward in their careers. Contact www.fwt.bc.ca or dorothyk@fwt.bc.ca
Everyone talks about the hidden job market and how many jobs are not even advertised. So how do you find these hidden jobs? Where are these jobs? Having worked in the employment industry for over 25 years, and helped thousands of people find jobs, I wanted to share what I have learned with you.
You can find a jobs before it is advertised by doing informational interviews with companies that you are interested in working for. Knowledge is power!
Basically, an Informational Interview is a conversation. These are very important in your search for a new job and help in determining if the company is a good fit for you. Informational interviews help you get an inside glimpse into organizations that you would not gain from a job interview. Simply put, it is an interview where the goal is gathering information about a profession or organization rather than securing employment (although job offers can result from the meeting!). It is a fact-finding discussion where you talk with people already working in a particular role, field, industry, or work place about:
• the tasks that they perform and the knowledge and skills that they use
• the path that they took and the experience and qualifications required to obtain their job
• the kinds of people that they serve, lead, and/or with whom they collaborate on the job
• the sort of work environment and culture in which they work
• the joys and frustrations of doing their work, in their industry and for their organization
Your aim is to get an overview of both their typical workday as well as the variety of work situations, interactions and opportunities they have encountered across the course of their career.
You can gain information aboutthe important characteristics that the different companies look for when hiring. This will help you in creating cover letters, and resume that emphasize the key attributes that you have to offer. They are also a great way to practice your interview skills prior to a job interview.
Many companies have a referral system and ask their staff if they know of anyone who they believe can be a good fit for the organization.Some even give a bonus to staff who refer individuals who are hired. However, it is important to remember that it is not a guarantee that an Informational Interview will result in the person referring you for an opening within a company.
One of my clients, who had and MBA and very little work experience as a Business Analyst, went for an Informational Interview with someone who was working at a large organization that she was very interested in working for. The two had worked together at a previous firm, and when they met for an Informational Interview the employee took her resume into the Hiring Manager and promoted her for an available position. The result was an interview, as she was recognized in the pile of 300 applicants, and ended up getting the job! This does not happen every time, but I have seen it happen enough times to know it works for many.
In another case, I had a client in the biotechnology field who was laid off in early November. Through doing a series of Informational Interviews, he landed a job in early January! He set-up an Informational Interview with someone who he had worked with ten years ago, who had recently secured funding for a new research project and was at the early stages of recruiting. Initially, the company had thought they were going to hire a junior person, but upon meeting my client who had twenty years of experience, they decided to redo the job description and hired him. The Informational Interview enabled them to realize that his skills could move the research must faster and were critical to helping them grow.
Review your network to see if you know anyone who works at an organization that you would like to work for. If not, use LinkedIn to find shared connections and ask your contacts for an introduction.
Organizations will forecast their staffing needs and often have projects that are waiting for approval. Usually, they will start to collect resumes and potential staff prior to these projects starting. During an Informational Interview, you can find out about their future needs and gain an understanding of what skills they require. This allows you to determine if you have a skills gap, and enable you to use the time prior to the forecasted position to gain the essential skills.
Consider Informational Interviews when searching for jobs or for identifying the best courses to take that will fit your interests and needs.
My next blog will provide tips on how to do an informational interview and what questions to ask.
Many people assume LinkedIn is just for people who are looking for a new job and often miss opportunities and learning. Understanding your purpose for being on LinkedIn and then creating a profile that fits is key to successfully using LinkedIn in a way that benefits you the most. LinkedIn is not Facebook it is an online business-networking source. Here are what you need to think about when creating your LinkedIn or changing the current profile to maximize results.
About Dorothy Keenan of FutureWorks
Dorothy is a professional resume writer and career advisor with over 25 years’ experience in helping people find fulfilling work at all levels of the labour market. If you think your LinkedIn profile needs a tune up or you are unsure how to even start contact Dorothy at dorothyk@fwt.bc.ca or go to www.fwt.bc.ca. Changing your profile can lead to some great opportunities for growth or career change.
Having worked in the employment industry for over twenty-five years, I have seen and used every trick there is in looking for work. When I first started helping people look for work –you went door to door and dropped off resumes. Despite being right in the office you will be asked to send your resume by email or apply online and they will refuse to take the resumes!
Then we had it where you contacted the receptionist and tried to break through to the hiring person and there job was to block everyone and protect the hiring person privacy at all costs.
Next we had the voice mail and email vacuum –you left a message and no one ever returns your call and the email you sent with the resume, and cover letter is never acknowledged and you did not know if your resume every made it into the hands of the person hiring.
Today we have the Applicant Tracking System or (ATS) with over 200 different systems and more and more companies either buying them or using third party systems. The applicant tracking system is one more roadblock for the job searcher. The ATS systems are used to screen applicants resumes for key skills and then hiring manager views those resumes that make it through the system.
So how do you break through all these roadblocks?
LinkedIn is the jobseekers dreams come true! If used correctly you can find out who the hiring person is, what their background is, what type of people they currently have on board and can determine where you skills could help them and if your skills are weak where else you could potentially be hired based on where the current staff previously worked. LinkedIn is a massive rolodex that enables your to connect with people in the organizations and gain a further understanding of what the firm requires.
LinkedIn is only one piece of the job search puzzle, having a professional resume, a network and the confidence to reach out and let people know you are working you will be surprised the response and where help in your job search comes from.
About Dorothy Keenan of FutureWorks
Dorothy is a professional resume writer and career advisor with over 25 years’ experience in helping people find fulfilling work at all levels of the labour market. If you think your LinkedIn profile needs a tune up or you are unsure how to even start contact Dorothy at dorothyk@fwt.bc.ca or go to www.fwt.bc.ca. Changing your profile can lead to some great opportunities for growth or career change.
So you finally bit the bullet and got yourself on LinkedIn. You have created a great profile. You have heard how many people have found great jobs, companies have found business partners, learned new ways of doing business and you are on and NOTHING HAPPENS! So why is that? You need to be active on LinkedIn for it to be of value. If you put up your LinkedIn profile and never go on again it won’t be very useful. Here are some quick tips that I have used and so have my clients and been very happy with the results.
About Dorothy Keenan of FutureWorks
Dorothy is a professional resume writer and career advisor with over 25 years’ experience in helping people find fulfilling work at all levels of the labour market. If you think your LinkedIn profile needs a tune up or you are unsure how to even start contact Dorothy at dorothyk@fwt.bc.ca or go to www.fwt.bc.ca. Changing your profile can lead to some great opportunities for growth or career change.
The world of looking for jobs has changed and how you apply for jobs has changed drastically. One important factor, especially in this digital, paper-free society, is to know how to craft a proper resume. Yes, we have moved on from newspaper ads and letters in the mail, with recruiters now using LinkedIn, Twitter and online job boards to find their ideal candidate, but the majority of recruiters will still ask you for a resume.
This move to e-recruiting has created somewhat of an obstacle for the traditional job hunter, however. Have you ever submitted numerous resumes to online job postings only to hear nothing back except the automated ‘Thank You for your Application’ email? Do you feel like your application is going into a resume black hole, never to be looked at by human eyes? You’re probably right.
HR robots, or “Applicant Tracking Systems,” are indeed now used by both small and large organizations to filter out applicants whose resumes do not match a specified percentage of the key words identified by the employer. This is especially true for graduate, entry-level positions with reports suggesting that up to 75% of applications are automatically rejected. So, step one to keeping the HR robot happy is to make sure your resume includes key words from the specific job description.
But that’s not all.
Can you read this sentence? What about this one? I can, you can, but the HR robot can’t. If you underline a word on your resume, the system can’t read it; it may as well not be there. The same goes for anything in italics, in a table, diagram or a header or footer.
Here are my top tips to create an ATS friendly resume:
After all that, you also need to remember that your resume also has to be suitable for human evaluation! Don’t be tempted to include key words from the job description that you don’t actually possess, or create a completely stripped down text format document. If you survive the HR Robot, it will next be reviewed by a HR professional so must be visually appealing and error free.
I did say it wasn’t going to be easy. However it is possible and people do get work you just need to learn the new techniques.
ABOUT DOROTHY KEENAN OF FUTUREWORKS
Dorothy is a professional resume writer and career advisor with over 25 years’ experience in helping people find fulfilling work at all levels of the labour market. If you think your LinkedIn profile needs a tune up or you are unsure how to even start contact Dorothy at dorothyk@fwt.bc.ca or go to www.fwt.bc.ca.Changing your profile can lead to some great opportunities for growth or career change.
We live in a visual world and LinkedIn, the professional social network, is no exception.
Research has shown that LinkedIn profiles with photographs are 10 times more likely to be viewed than profiles without. Why? First, a profile without a photograph looks incomplete and busy recruiters are not going to spend their valuable time looking at profiles with information missing. Secondly, and probably most importantly, we are a visual species with over 50% of communication being conducted through body language and appearance. We like to know what people look like in order to judge them in our normal manner, and believe us when we tell you that people are judging your LinkedIn profile photograph.
Your LinkedIn profile needs to convey your personal brand and the photograph that you use is an essential part of this. What does your photograph say about you? Does it position you as the competent, influential professional that you are? Here are our top ten tips to use your LinkedIn photograph to convey your professional personal brand.
Your LinkedIn profile should position you as a professional in the industry that you want to work in. Make it easy for people to envisage you working in that industry by using a photograph that shows you dressed as you would for an interview. Depending on the industry, this is likely to be business formal or business casual, avoiding any distracting accessories (i.e. glitzy earrings) or revealing/low-cut/sheer clothing. If you are not sure whether business formal or business casual applies to your industry, check out the ‘Meet our Team’ website section of relevant organizations website to determine what the dress code is…and copy it.
The purpose of social networking is connecting, and body language is just as important in online networking as it is in face-to-face interactions. For people to want to reach out to you, you should look approachable and likeable. The easiest way to do this is to smile and look at the camera.
We are all guilty of taking the occasional selfie. When we take a selfie, we position our head in a certain way that screams “this is a selfie!” While this is ok for Facebook vacation photographs, it is not perceived as professional enough for LinkedIn. Put the selfie stick down and ask someone to take the photograph for you.
You want people to be able to recognize you from your LinkedIn photograph. They will not be able to do this if your face is covered up with sunglasses or you upload a work team photograph or, even worse, a family photo with everyone including the pet dog in it. Your image should be a head and shoulders shot of you and only you, no matter how great your colleagues are.
The focus of your photograph should be you, so avoid any distracting backgrounds that draw attention away from you. This doesn’t mean standing in front of a plain white wall with the risk of creating a mugshot style image! Coloured or outdoor backgrounds can create a more flattering image, but avoid including distracting items such as cluttered rooms, Christmas trees or other people!
LinkedIn photographs should be 200 by 200 pixels. Uploading a photograph that doesn’t meet these requirements can result in a fuzzy image that causes people to doubt your technology skills. Additionally, avoid uploading a file that you need to zoom-in on repeatedly, as this will likely result in a pixelated image that doesn’t showcase you as the professional that you are.
Sometimes, only a professional will do and the financial investment is worth it. If you work in a particularly image conscious industry or simply want to show the best version of yourself, invest in a professional photographer to take your headshot.
You might have preferred the way that you looked 5 or 10 years ago, many of us do! However, you don’t want to be known as that person who uses an out-of-date photograph. Make sure that you are recognizable by using a current photograph that represents your current appearance.
A relatively recent addition to the LinkedIn profile is the background photograph (the same idea as your wallpaper on your Facebook account). This can be used to support your personal brand, by showcasing the company logo of the organization that you own/operate or uploading an image that relates to your industry. If you don’t have an image of your own, websites such as Free LinkedIn Backgrounds offer free images in the correct size for uploading.
While you have to be satisfied that the image that you upload accurately presents your personal brand, it is ultimately the opinions of others that count. You can, of course, ask trustworthy friends and colleagues for their opinion but there is now also an online alternative option. PhotoFeeler provides unbiased feedback on your Linkedin profile photograph with anonymous users assessing how competent, likable and influential you appear.
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