Top 5 Reasons Recruiters Wont Click on Your LinkedIn Profile [INFOGRAPHIC]

Top 5 Reasons Recruiters Wont Click on Your LinkedIn Profile [INFOGRAPHIC] LinkedIn is most professional social network on the internet but are you missing out on job opportunities? This infographic by LinkedIn in 30 Minutes and AvidCareerist  shows you the top 5 reasons why recruiters may not click on your profile. Takeaways: Is your headline too generic? Here are ten examples of headlines that stick out from the crowd. Are you on LinkedIn? That would be a good start Do you have a profile picture? Its one of the most fundamental parts however here are 7 pictures you should never use! RELATED: Four LinkedIn Mistakes That Could Hurt Your Career

Choose Your Boss Not Your Job - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Choose Your Boss Not Your Job - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career When you go to a job interview, you get the chance to meet with the people you will potentially be working with and have an idea of the culture of the company. Therefore, it is very important to work with coworkers that you can connect with since you will be spending time with them at least 40 hours a week in the same building. Many job seekers think that the boss chooses them when they go to an interview but don’t forget that you can choose as well. If you choose your boss wisely, you can progress in your career much faster and unlock your potential. Below you can find some tips which will help you choose your boss in your future workplace: 1.  Connection: You immediately know if you connect with a person or not. During the interview, you can have an idea how that person behaves, talks and even you can understand his/her sense of humor. Therefore, you can feel if you can work with that person over the next two to four years. If you click right away, lucky you! Otherwise, it is best to consider other options. 2.  Background: Ask the hiring manager his/her background. Why did s/he choose this position? How long did it take him/her to become a manager? What s/he likes and doesn’t like about the company? These answers can give an understanding of the career path within the company. Also, ask about his/her goals. A good manager should have a vision. If s/he knows where s/he is heading, as s/he moves up the ladder, you can move up as well. 3.  Communication Style: During the interview, pay attention how the manager speaks. Does s/he often start the sentence using the word ‘I’ or ‘we’ meaning the team or department? Does s/he talk about others working for him or compliment them or is s/he pretty self-focused? You can realize if the manager is a team-oriented or self-oriented person with the help of these questions. 4.  Work Style: By asking the right questions, you can have an idea of the manager’s work and management style. Ask what his/her priorities and expectations are. Look for clues to find out if s/he is micro-managing his/her employees or more of a hands-off style person. Also, try to learn if s/he is willing to teach you new skills. Otherwise, it would be difficult for you to move forward in your career.

Personal Branding Interview Susan Gunelius - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Branding Interview Susan Gunelius - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Today, I spoke to Susan Gunelius, who is the President CEO of Keysplash Creative.   She is also the author of Building Brand Value The Playboy Way and Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon.   In this interview, Susan talks to us about branding lessons that shes learned from two mega brands (Harry Potter and Playboy), the future of media and a lot of branding concepts that work. What branding lessons can we learn from Playboy and Harry Potter? I think the biggest similarity between the Playboy and Harry Potter brands is the importance of having a brand champion and brand guardian at the helm. Both Playboy and Harry Potter have two of the strongest brand champions and advocates leading the way Hugh Hefner and J.K. Rowling. Both resolutely defend their brands just as much as they promote them. Second, there is no doubt that allowing consumers to take control of your brand and experience it in their own ways is essential to building brand value, particularly in the 21st century. The Harry Potter brand grew at the hands of the social Web and word-of-mouth marketing among consumers who wanted to talk about it and find new ways to engage with it together. The Playboy brand grew at the hands of branded experiences that allowed consumers to engage with it and share it with other people. The tactics were a bit different, but the strategies were similar. How does a brand (Playboy) associated with sex survive and flourish after all these years? Thats actually one of the most interesting aspects of the Playboy brand story. Who would have thought over 50 years ago when Hugh Hefner launched Playboy (during a highly conservative time) that it would be such an immediate success and ultimately, become one of the most recognized brands in the world? The truth of the matter is the Playboy brand might be most closely associated with sex, but thats really just a very small part of the full brand promise. In fact, thats how Playboy has positioned itself against more sexually-explicit competitors over the years. Furthermore, today, more Playboy merchandise is sold to women than men. Thats something most people would never have expected 50 years ago, but it shows the broad appeal of the brand. Different segments of Playboy consumers support the brand for different reasons. Thats why Playboys strategy to provide multiple ways for consumers to engage with the brand to meet their needs and wants has been successful for so long. What do you think about the future of media? All online, all of the time? I think there will be a place for print, audio and broadcast media for many more years, but the shift in accessing timely information has certainly taken hold. At the end of the day, different people still like to consume information in different ways. Certainly, the popularity of traditional media forms is waning as high-speed, widely available Internet access becomes the norm in modern countries. I think of it this way as email, instant messaging, text messaging, and so on become more popular, people use the phone less frequently. However, phones arent going away anytime soon. People like different forms of communication and information consumption for varied reasons. I think we still have some time before a one-stop-shopping world of communication and information consumption exists. What are the top three ways that Playboy built its brand? The Playboy brand grew first through the innovative creation of branded experiences. Playboy Clubs, Playboy Casinos, Playboy Resorts, Playboy Stores, and more allowed people to self-select how they wanted to experience the brand and share it with others leading to the second way Playboy built its brand through relationships. Playboy is one of the strongest relationship brands, which people choose to experience in their own ways and to share with other loyal consumers as they choose. That leads to the third way Playboy built its brand, which is through extensions. Not only were the branded experiences in clubs, casinos, etc. perfect ways to further build relationships between consumers and the brand, but further extensions into movies, DVDs, television, the Internet, merchandise, and so on shifted a 2-dimensional print publication into a full-scale lifestyle, which is exactly what Hugh Hefner envisioned for the original Playboy Magazine. His goal was to create a lifestyle magazine for men (nude photos were just a very small part of the original magazine concept) that depicted the lifestyle he wanted to live. Surrounding consumers with branded experiences and extensions and allowing them to take control of the brand and self-select how they wanted to engage with it further created the attainability of that desired lifestyle for consumers. How did the success of Playboy build Hefners brand? The two worked together interchangeably. Very early on in the Playboy lifecycle, Hugh Hefner made a conscious decision to live the brand promise of Playboy. He reinvented himself from a shy, private man to become the living embodiment of the Playboy brand. The reason I wrote this book was because I think Hugh Hefner is one of the ultimate brand champions and brand guardians that has ever lived. Its quite possible that Playboy would not have survived and thrived into the 21st century had it not been for Hugh Hefner as the ultimate brand champion and guardian. Of course, it could also be argued that with Hugh Hefner as the face of the brand, the company suffered (Hef has said himself that he is not the best business decision maker). However, his unwavering advocacy and protection of the brand he created was contagious. Even though the print magazine is suffering and a haphazard business plan has plagued the company in recent years, the Playboy brand remains one of the most recognized brands in the world. Without that recognition and value, the company would probably not still be standing. The truly interesting thing will be what happens to Playboy over the next 5 years. Can the powers that be at Playboy Enterprises leverage that brand equity to rebuild the company? It should be interesting to watch. Susan Gunelius is the President CEO of Keysplash Creative.   She is the author of Building Brand Value The Playboy Way and Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon.   With nearly 20-years of marketing, branding and copywriting experience, Susan is a seasoned corporate professional having spent more than a decade developing and executing marketing programs for global and national organizations, including divisions of ATT and HSBC. Susan’s corporate roles provided her with a solid background in various forms of writing. Some of the largest companies in the world have trusted her to write compelling advertising, marketing and business communications messages, and so can you. In addition to owning KeySplash Creative, Susan is a published author and active blogger (Susan owns one of the leading blogs for business women, Women On Business). Susan is also a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com where she writes about copywriting and marketing communications, and her mark eting-related articles have appeared on a variety of business media websites, including MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, FoxBusiness.com, WashingtonPost.com, and more.

Reel Em In Quick Tips to Help You Catch Great Candidates

Reel Em In Quick Tips to Help You Catch Great Candidates The cost of making a bad hire can be huge; itll eat into your finances, time and energy stores. For many companies, hiring and retaining talent is the source of a major ongoing headache. While recruitment isnt an exact science, there are definitely a number of methods you can adopt as a business to give yourself the best chance at catching great candidates. When the competition for top talent heats up, its important to  reflect closely on your companys hiring processes. Small  oversights,  whether it be during the advertising stage, application process or interviewing phase  might end up losing you good candidates. To help you  assess your talent attraction methods,  Rolepoint has put together the below infographic to  help keep you on track and reel in great new recruits. Follow these tips and hopefully youll never have to say, plenty more fish in the sea! ever again: Write enticing  job descriptions A job description needs to entice  candidates, not push them away. Job descriptions that are generic and full of dot-points listing idealistic candidate requirements will be overlooked quickly. A job description should bring a position to life and give candidates a good insight into what the role entails. A great job description  should be specific enough to yield applicants from the right type of candidates, but not so niche that people feel alienated by the criteria. Clearly state what the qualifications and educational requirements are (including which ones are must-haves vs. nice-to-haves) Indicate  package details (doesnt have to be exact, but providing some initial expectations will  help the applicant decide whether it matches their  monetary  needs) Include the business mission statement / core values Contextualise the role within the wider organisation List  what skills, experience and qualities the candidate needs to have Make it clear what the next step is in the application include an obvious call to action Make your application process mobile-friendly People are always on their phones maybe youre even reading this on yours now! Simplify the application process  online so it can be accessed and completed on a mobile device Look inside your existing network In many cases its fair to assume that good people know good people, so why not tap up your existing network of employees for recommendations? Create a simple and rewarding process for employees to refer other people they know Many job seekers say that employee referrals helped them find a great job, and there are also links between longevity in a role and being referred in by someone they knew Utilise an Employee Advocacy programme having your employees share work-related content on their social profiles will help you reach people in their network organically Encourage  internal talent mobility If your business has the resources to do so,  why not encourage and facilitate internal mobility? Keeping good people in the business serves to cut down on attrition costs and keeps your top talent engaged. Make sure there are career development opportunities and programmes on offer for existing employees internally Promote your companys growth opportunities to attract top performers in the industry Dont hire the wrong candidates and stop  shooting yourself in the foot by overlooking key steps in the recruiting process! What are your best tips  for securing top talent to your business?