The 5 Most Effective Ways To Use Social Media To De-Risk Your Career Change

The 5 Most Effective Ways To Use Social Media To De-Risk Your Career Change Expert Advice > How to move into your new career The 5 Most Effective Ways To Use Social Media To De-Risk Your Career Change * Image by TheSeafarer Social media has revolutionised how we can access information on people and career paths. But what can you do to discoverwhether the new career you’re looking into is going to be right for you? Chris Platts outlines histop ways to findthe information you need before you make the move. 1. Visit job review sites Checkout review sites such as Glassdoor, or the popular UK version The Job Crowd. These are the perfect places to start and should give you a fairly good insight as to what working life is like in a certain industry, company and/or job role. The average pay charts are really helpful too if you’re concerned about the financial implications of your career move. 2. Check out QA sites Secondly I’d recommend the QA site Quora.If you need answers that you can’t find online, it’s worth posting your question here or searching for existing answers to similar questions. I’m pretty sceptical about QA sites in general but Quora has an incredibly lively community and fiercely loyal users so you tend to get well thought-out, researched and articulated answers. For example, have you ever wanted to work at Google? It’s worth thinking twice, check out the great answers to the question what’s the worst part about working at Google? 3. Go toevents The odds are there are people like you looking to make a similar transition andit’s worth seeking them out online to meet up in person. Find or create a group on the popular events site meetup.com. If there are any events or groups in the industry you want to break into, then start going along and meeting people in your new sector. You’ll be amazed how much free content there is out there. 4. Identify and approach your targets through LinkedIn The quickest way to mastery is to find someone who’s already achieved what you want and copy them, so seek out people who have already made the change you’re looking to make. There’s only one online platform worth considering for this and that’s LinkedIn. Take a look at the companies you want to work for and look at their current and past employees. Does anyone have a similar background to you? If so then don’t be shy, send them an InMail or connect request. Using LinkedIn’s advanced search functionality and you can shortlist and categorise your advisors/mentors/helpers in no time. I recently did this when making the transition from recruiter to tech start-up founder and, since June,I’ve managed to secure meetings with VCs, Non Execs, Angels and a whole raft of entrepreneurs who can help further my understanding of the market. I also recommend LinkedIn for the initial approach. If you can get an intro from a shared contact that’s a massive help. Here are some tips on how to maximise your chances of a response: Don’t mention the “J” word! Few people would walk into a business meeting and ask for job leads, but many professionals commit the online version of this faux pas regularly. No matter how panicked you are about finding work I’d rarely mention a job hunt in an initial note to anyone I didn’t know on a social-networking site. You’ve got to think of all the people who are looking for jobs right now; they’re probably being overwhelmed. Instead, offer some praise or acknowledgement or, even better, a well-thought-out meeting suggestion with no strings attached. In my experience people are very responsive to the word “help” so ask for advice and guidance rather than play the job card. Find a clever way in Think about where your target subject is going to be. Are there any trade shows/events that they’ll be at which you also have access to? Try and make meeting up as frictionless as possible; if it’s a phone call suggest you speak on the way home from work, if it’s a meeting suggest a pre/post work meet up or a working lunch. If you’re asking someone for their time be prepared to pay for it. Buying the coffee, lunch or beers is your way of saying thanks. Add value Unfortunately people don’t always have time for a free lunch these days and you need to be careful they don’t assume you’re going to just pump them for information and never see them again. Therefore it’s critical that you can demonstrate a way that helps your target mentor in their day-to-day life (whether now or in the future). For example, I’ve got a headhunting background so if I need to meet with someone first I’ll try and find out if they know anyone who needs a new role and I’ll offer them some free career coaching or CV advice. If they need to hire I’ll pass on names of top head-hunters in their space or even give them some advice on their recruitment strategy. Whatever your skills are, try and offer them to solve a problem they may already have. If it’s a big enough one then you’ll find people have more than enough time to meet you. Approach in private, not in public If you’re using social media, it’s more effective to approach in private rather than public. Commenting on a post or on their Facebook wall is too intrusive. Try a LinkedIn InMail or connect request. Twitter is OK but I’d rarely contact someone on Facebook about a professional matter, full stop. Remember if you decide to connect with someone on social media then explain in the message specifically why you want to reach out to them. Always give a get out clause As a recruiter, I’ve approached people everyday for sevenyears, so you get immune to rejection. You have to recognise that people are busy, make sure your request is important, personal, relevant and potentially interesting for the subject. No one will have a 100% success rate of getting a ‘yes’ to a meeting, so don’t take rejection personally. In order to maximise your response rates, it’s wise to give the subject what I call a “get out clause”. Provided you’ve already found out a way to add value (see tip 3) it’s fine to write something like, “If you’d like to help me with this request then I’d love to buy you lunch or a coffee on day X at time Y, I know we’re both busy people so I’ll email you the day before and if that’s still free then great, if not we can re-arrange. How does that sound?” If all else fails, pay for the bestadvice Sometimes you have to pay for advice. Clarity.fm is a new start-up that helps people seek out their preferred mentors and advisors and schedule phone calls in with them. They’ve got an impressive roster of thought leaders, guys like 500 Start-ups’’s Dave McClure, Greylock Partners principal Josh Elman, Start-up Weekend CEO Marc Nagar, Color and Science co-founder Peter Pham, start-up guru Eric Ries,and many others. 5. Pay it forward Finally, if someone’s helped you out in the past, don’t forget to return the favour. If you’ve managed to secure your dream move don’t forget to reply to someone who messages you through social mediaasking for help. Who knows whom you could be inspiring to at the start of their journey. I know I won’t forget those that have helped me at this early stage in my career change. Chris Platts is an executive recruiter turned tech start-up founder. He launched the company discovery and career management site TalentRocket. Chris helps people realise their career ambitions and manage their career in their own time. He writes about following your dreams, reinventing recruitment and start-ups. Follow Chris on twitter@chrisplatts_. 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4 Ways to sidestep corporate hierarchy

4 Ways to sidestep corporate hierarchy Most people stay at a company less than seven years. Most young people stay at a company less than two. So why are companies still set up for people who stay 40 years and climb the ladder? It makes no sense, and frustrates nearly all workers. Well, all workers who arent at the top of the ladder, anyway. Those at the top surely think keeping the ladder there is a good idea, because what was the point of their climb if no one is climbing up after them? Fortunately, there are ways to circumvent this way of thinking. You cant change corporate structures and procedures, but you can sidestep them in a way that gets you more interesting work and higher pay without having to trudge up an anachronistic ladder.  Here are four: 1. Get on a team. Teamwork is one of the big corporate buzzwords of the last two decades. This is because companies with effective teams  do better  than companies without them. The problem is that baby boomers never learned to play on teams. Theyre the consummate competitors, born into a demographic in which there were always too many candidates for every position. Boomers are thus keen competitors, measuring each other up for everything. So the data that showed the importance of teams was followed quickly by a round of consulting companies specializing in teaching people how to be in multidisciplinary, non-hierarchical teams. Then came Generation Y, the  best team players  in history. They did book reports in teams, went shopping in groups theyre so team-oriented they even  went to the prom in packs. Put these two groups in a room and tell them to be a team, and you know what happens? The young people run circles around the older ones. The older workers try to establish a hierarchy while the younger ones are oblivious because theyre busy tossing out ideas. A messy scene, for sure, but this is the way to get heard, and this is the way to shine outside the hierarchy: Get on a team, speak your mind, and implement your ideas all while the baby boomers are worrying about hierarchy. 2. Job hop. The rules for when you can be promoted, when your salary can increase, and when youre eligible for training are all strict and senseless and essentially a waste of your time. Why should you wait for these things when youre not staying with the company more than a few years anyway? If your learning curve is flattening because your company cant promote you to another level, take things into your own hands and go to another company. That is a fast way to give yourself a promotion without having to endure the duress of a corporate structure. Job-hopping used to be the sign of a disloyal employee, but today we know better. In todays workplace, frequent job change is a way to stay engaged in your work, and job-hopping among positions youre good at actually builds your skill set and network much faster than if you stay in one job for a long time. This is why  job hopping is a great tool   it can actually provide your career path with  a stable, upward slope. 3. Start your own business. You dont need a lot of money to start your own company, because most of the tools to open up shop online are free. And in most cases, marketing is cheap and easy if you can establish a viral networking effect among your friends. This is why, in the short time that Generation Y has been in the workforce, theyve already made a mark as  a generation of entrepreneurs. In addition to being fast and easy to do, starting a company lets you do interesting work you can control without having to wait to get to the top of a corporate ladder. Some people quit their jobs to start a company while others run theirs on the weekend. Increasingly, however, people are running a company from their corporate cubicle. 4. Be nice. You know who gets promoted the fastest? The person your boss likes the most. So why not spend your time making sure youre that person? Dont dish out any excuses about how you wont kiss up a kiss-up is someone who tries to be nice but is instead insipid. Im not recommending that you be insipid. What I am recommending is that you genuinely try to figure out what your boss needs from you and how to give it to him. Determine how to make extra time in your day to help your boss out, and figure out what she needs help with before she realizes it. And then be there. Office politics is often a way to sidestep corporate hierarchy, and the great news is that if youre nice this will be right up your alley. Because  office politics is about being nice. And how can you resist training yourself to be nice at work?

Brag is not a 4-letter word

Brag is not a 4-letter word Peggy Klaus flits around the crowded room of 40 women like a fairy. She wields a silver-plated backscratcher and strokes the unsuspecting on a wrist, a neck cooing, Doesnt that feel good? This is how Peggy warms up the party to get everyone to start bragging. My friend Liz is horrified. Liz cant believe I dragged her to a party where everyone is supposed to brag. She cant believe the chief bragger is also a scratcher. Peggy is a communications coach who is going to teach this group how to talk about career achievements in a way that captivates other people. One of Peggys favorite phrases is, Brag is not a four-letter word. Another favorite phrase is Buy my book, which she is hawking at brag parties all over the country. Brag! is a good book, which is why I wanted to see her in action. According to Peggy, hard work and humility might be rewarded in heaven, but not in the work place. Promotions come to those who tout their own achievements. In order to get noticed in this world, you need a spunky four or five sentence answer to the question: What do you do? In fact, you need to be selling yourself at all times, because if you dont then no one is. Peggy drops her scratcher by her side and approaches Liz, who has been hovering in a corner ever since I broke the final piece of news to her: That there will be role playing. Peggy asks Liz the question that reveals all to a brag coach: What do you do? Liz looks down and says, Im a psychologist. Thats it. No sales job. No passion. Barely a full sentence. I cringe. Peggy says, You will hate tonights party, but you will learn a lot. Then she gathers everyone into a room and starts her coaching. Peggy coaches men and women, but tonights party is women only. Peggy tells us that women are not as good as men when it comes to selling themselves. For one thing, men job-hop more than women, (hard to take a day off for a sick kid if its your third month on the job). So men interview frequently and get practice talking about their greatness, while women are better at talking about their kids and pets and other objects of nurture. Peggy says the most successful components of a brag are excitement and a good story. If you have those, everyone will want to listen to you. She says that most fears of bragging stem from parenting factors. She confesses that her father told her, Dont toot your own horn. If you do a good job people will notice you. So Klaus didnt vote for herself for class president. (Dont worry, she won anyway.) This monologue opens floodgates: Lizs parents were handicapped so she never wanted anyone to notice her. Another woman says her Mexican immigrant family told her to blend in. Someone says, Im from Canada, and for us its not a parenting issue, its a national issue. Then Klaus says, What about Catholics, do I have any Catholics in the room? Hands shoot in the air. Everyone wants to talk about how Catholic school squelches the instinct to speak up about ones achievements. According to Peggy, good communication is much more than just good jokes or good body language. This is good news for Liz, who is definitely not funny and has the body language of someone who is going to vomit. Liz did not realize she would have to be excited. Peggy has everyone find a partner who we dont know. We have 30 seconds to tell each other about ourselves. Then Peggy announces that we did a bad job. There is no excitement in the room, she says. If you are not excited about what youre saying then no one else will be either. She teaches us how to be excited about the hors doeuvres we just ate (and believe me, they were not exciting.) Then she pairs us up again to talk about ourselves and she reminds us that if we can be excited about pigs in a blanket then we can be excited about our careers. Once we get our excitement level up, she tells us that a successful bragger tells a story. When you want to impress someone, a story is more memorable than a list of achievements. When you want to establish a connection with someone, a story provides social glue. We each work on the 30-second story of our career, and then we tell it to a new partner, with our new, excited voices. After an hour of Peggys coaching, everyone realizes that a good bragger is actually a pleasure to listen to. Even Liz has made improvement: She has glimmers of excitement when she talks about her career, and she has a much more interesting answer to the question, What do you do? But the art of bragging is not easy, and old habits die hard. I tell Liz I am going to write about her brag because its so impressive and she says, Oh god. Dont write about my career. I dont want anyone to know.

What Makes Someone a LinkedIn Super Connector

What Makes Someone a LinkedIn Super Connector How many super connectors do you know on LinkedIn? Are you one of them? What is a super connector? Lets start with the basics. A super connector is basically someone that is very well connected (no surprise here). The author Keith Ferrazzi uses the term in his book Never Eat Alone, heres his definition: “Super Connectors are people who maintain contact with thousands of people in many different worlds and know them well enough to give them a call. Restauranteurs, headhunters, lobbyists, fundraisers, public relations people, politicians, and journalists are the best super-connectors because it’s their job to know  EVERYONE.” I think we all know people like these, people whose name keeps popping up here and there in different contexts. So who is a super connector on LinkedIn? Some would say that anyone with 500+ connections is a super connector. I would probably say 1,000 makes you super at connecting. The poll below used 3,000 connections as the threshold into super connectivity. If you feel like checking out some real life super connectors on LinkedIn, have a look at Neal Schaffers post listing  10 LinkedIn LIONs and Super Connectors. But hang on, its not about the size Let me add the obligatory disclaimer here so I dont get too many angry comments about quality vs. quality, engagement vs. broadcasting, farmers vs. hunters etc etc etc. This post is only about the numbers, what you do with your connections is another matter. The fact that someone has amassed thousands of connections does indicate that they have an ability to connect with other people (or they just trawl LinkedIn 24/7). What percentage of LinkedIn users are super connectors? A LinkedIn poll conducted by Michael Field Pty Ltd has identified LinkedIn super connectors (with at least 3,ooo connections). They asked 1,006 LinkedIn members exactly how many connections they have. The findings: 54% of respondents have less than 500 connections 27% have between 500-999 12% have between 1,000-1,999 3% have between 2,000-2,999 4% have 3,000+ connections So only 4% or one LinkedIn user in 25 have more than 3,000 connections and can call themselves super connectors here. Most folks have less than 500 connections which makes perfect sense. The first 500 connections are the most difficult to get, from there LinkedIn tends to snowball in the users favor and before they know it theyve hit 1k. Where are you on this scale, how many connections do you have? Do you feel that the connections you have are enough for your networking efforts? Related reading: LinkedIn Open Networker (LION) a bad idea?

What do Career Experts Have to Say Regarding Finding the Right Job CareerMetis.com

What do Career Experts Have to Say Regarding Finding the Right Jobâ€" CareerMetis.com Photo Credit â€" cheatsheet.comJust after you reveal that you are searching for a new gig, you get bombarded with the shells of some unsought job search advice.Right? Well, some of the most common ones include: “Revise your resume,” “Talk to my best friend’s brother who used to be an intern there” and what not!No doubt, all the people who share job search advice in this way are your well-wishers and friends but not the career connoisseurs. Thus, the quality of their suggestions is often not up to the mark. They are indeed the right people with whom you can celebrate a new job but not the ones who can help you find a perfect job for yourself.evalFor this, there are some credible sources available from whom you can get such advice which are worth your time. They are none but the professional career coaches, HR consultants, and experts in various subject matters.Do you want to know what they have to say? Here are some clear and crisp job searching tips by the famous career exp erts out there:1. Make a Plan evalMary WarrinerBefore you start the process, it is very crucial to identify some vital features like the importance of finding a new job for you, the right time-frame to look for a job, types of companies you would prefer, your timeline for updating the resume and cover letter, etc.Just include all these specifications and make a perfect job search plan. Now, post it in such a place where it can be easily visible. Also, don’t forget to mark the critical dates in the calendar. With the right plan, you’ll not be haphazard and stay ahead of the game. Planning your search indicates that you’re sticking to the idea of finding a new job. Thus, it is pretty sure that you’ll find the one that you are hoping for.2. Opt for Informative Interviews April Klimkiewicz, a career coach and founder of Bliss EvolutionIf you want to know the decision makers, it is crucial to ask for some informational meetings with them. Just saying that you’re looking for a j ob change and if the person knows about anything would be merely a ‘hard sell.’If ‘soft sell’ is something that you believe in, ask for specific information and let them share their stories. It will help you to be ahead in the path of your career. It is a fact that people who are happy with their work like to talk about the strategies which made them successful. Hence, arranging some informational meetings with decision makers will prove to be something beneficial for you.3. Excel in Your Current Job Aurora Meneghello, career coach and owner ofRepurpose Your Purpose.Who doesn’t know his/her work? All of us do. Right?evalHowbeit, the one and only significant differentiator which can let you become a right candidate for your new gig is your proficiency in the current job. You should portray yourself as a positive, collaborative, and reliable co-worker or boss in the position that you are already doing.It is evident that like attracts like. So, the authentic and trustworthy p eople who are hiring will always like for working with the same kind of individuals who are committed to a positive mentality at work.Hence, be dutiful and sensible in your current job, show the same gesture during an interview, and that’s it. Focus on how you are as a professional presently and future opportunities will automatically open up to you.4. Build a Comprehensive Network Jill Santopietro-Panall, HR consultant and originator of21Oak HR Consulting, LLCThe right kind of networking is not the connection which you have with the Bigwigs. Instead, the most effective one is the natural kind which can happen anytime, anywhere. How does it work?evalFor example, you are at your kid’s golf game, and someone asks you, ‘what is your profession?’ You can answer a little tactically and say, ‘I’m working as a software engineer in a huge IT firm, but I am looking for a job change and want to move to XYZ, is there any of your known ones in that industry?’No doubt, there’s an undeniable chance that you’ll be punched with some of the most irrelevant information in the universe. But, honestly, you can never predict who might have the right connection for you. So, it is always smart to work all the angles.5. Make Use of Resume Keywords and Ask for Referrals Mikaela Kiner, Founder of Uniquely HRIt is not just your resume which is going to land in the HR’s desk of your desired company. There are hundreds of more candidates who will apply for the same position as you have done.Hence, recruiters often use online applicant tracking systems to make the sorting process less tedious. It means that your resume might get unnoticed by the hiring manager if you’re not using the right keywords.So, make sure that you include them in your curriculum vitae to let it stand out. Also, if there are some accompanying referrals from influential people in your resume, then it will increase its possibilities to get viewed by the recruiter.Don’t feel embarrassed to reach out to anyone for a reference. This is entirely professional and people will certainly back you up if you are worth it. In case, you are lagging regarding personal connection; social media is there for you to figure out who give such referrals.TAKEAWAYSo, this is what the virtuosos think about how one should prepare to get his/her dream job. If you were still stuck with the wrong approaches, it’s time to take the right step in the right direction now. However, be creative and smart enough to find out your potent and innovative job searching tactics, mix and match them with the aforementioned proven ways, and there you are!