LinkedIn: Busting 8 Damaging Myths About What It Can Do For Your Career

By Kathy Caprino, M.A.

As a career and executive coach, speaker and recruitment consultant, I use LinkedIn (LI) extensively each day, and I truly enjoy it.  I’ve found that building my network to over 1,000 direct contacts (accessing 10 million+ indirect contacts) has been well worth the two years of time and energy.  I’m a big fan of LI – and truly appreciate the power of the tool and all the opportunities, gigs, partnerships, insights, information and support that have come my way from it.

I like LinkedIn so much that I often refer to it as the “great cocktail party in the sky.”

The analogy of the cocktail party truly fits.  LinkedIn has the following aspects in common with an awesome cocktail party:

You get the chance to connect with like-minded people who you may otherwise never have had the chance to meet

By investing just a bit of time each day, you can learn a great deal that’s of interest and use

It’s a blast to connect to people that you admire from afar, and who can teach you vital things about how to be more of what you want to be

You can determine in an instant if you want to invest any more time and energy in getting to know new folks you see

Socializing beyond your limited sphere helps you build a powerful community that supports and enriches

You can add great diversity to your pool of colleagues and peers by branching out and connecting with new people across the country and globally

Meeting new people who are doing amazing and inspiring things in this world is exhilarating

But after two years of using LinkedIn for several hours each day, and after counseling others on how to build their personal brand on LinkedIn for professional advantage, I’m witnessing some negative effects of the misguided notions people have gleaned about what LinkedIn can do for them.

I’d like to share what I’ve observed to be the Top 8 Myths about LinkedIn as a professional tool, and offer some straight talk about what you can expect it to do for you.

Here are the Top 8 Myths we need to bust:

Myth #1: LinkedIn will get me a job

Nothing is going to “get you a job” but you.  Yes, you can search new job openings in your area, and discover who posted the job, and connect with these folks.  You can find people who work at companies posting jobs, check them out, and ask their help to introduce you.  But these steps aren’t going to land you a job.  You must still do the rigorous internal and external work of knowing what you’re great at, communicating your talents, finding strong-fitting positions, then get on the radar of the hiring manager or recruiters involved, and present yourself as a highly qualified and desirable candidate.

Myth #2: LinkedIn will replace recruiters

There’s a growing fear out there that LinkedIn will replace recruiters as conduits for connecting talented candidates to leading employers.  It’s just not so.  There’s an important personal dimension to recruiting that a tool such as LinkedIn simply can’t provide.  From critically sifting through hundreds of resumes, to understanding the components of true “fit” for the hiring company, to personally interviewing and filtering candidates, and doing the extensive legwork of communicating “fit” to both employer and candidate — recruiting is a labor-intensive job that requires expert, personalized skill and attention.  Again, LI is a powerful tool that certainly has changed the recruiting landscape, but recruiters remain vitally important in the process.

Myth #3: There’s no need to fully flesh out my profile – a brief line or two is fine

OK, this one makes me nuts.  Here’s this vastly powerful free networking tool that allows you to tell the world who you are as a professional – what you stand for, how you’re different from all the rest, what you’re passionate about, and how you’ve contributed in the workforce.  And yet thousands of folks simply don’t spend any time to articulate who they are, or present themselves in a compelling, engaging manner.  As a recruiter, when I view a poorly executed profile, I see a lack of interest in promoting yourself that speaks volumes about how committed and excited you are in your professional endeavors overall.

Myth #4: Because I have over 100 (or 1000) connections, new opportunities will come easily to me

As in everything in life, quality matters over quantity.  If you have scores of folks in your community who have nothing to do with anything you care about (or who aren’t interested in what you’re doing), then your connections will not generate productive or beneficial results for you.

Myth #5: When folks accept my LI invitation, they want to partner with me or connect more deeply

I’ve learned this the hard way in my recruiting work — just because people accept your invitation to connect, doesn’t mean they care about being in connection with you in any deeper way.  It may simply mean that they saw your network as something advantageous to THEM, and they linked in for their own professional gain. Connections are interesting as far as they go – but it’s you who must make something positive of them.

Myth #6: LinkedIn is the best professional networking tool for all businesses or careers

LinkedIn is not the best tool for all businesses, jobs and careers alike.  Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can be more powerful and effective, and reach more of your target audience.  Know your audience and their tastes and behaviors, and select the best tool to connect with your prospective clients, colleagues and partners.

Myth #7: The more updates I post the better

Again, quality reigns supreme here.  Choose carefully what you put out there in the world, and be respectful of the time and energy of those who read your updates.  Make sure what you share performs at least one of these important functions:  1) informs, 2) entertains, 3) enlivens, 4) supports others, and/or 5) adds value.

Myth #8: Being highly connected on LinkedIn is a sign of professional success

Having hundreds (or thousands) of connections does not necessarily equate to financial success, business prowess or entrepreneurial acumen.  It means only that the user has spent time and energy to build his/her network, and that others have felt it of some value to mutually connect.  Don’t mistake volumes of connections with professional credibility or success.

*  *  *  *  *  *

In the end, while the LinkedIn “cocktail party in the sky” has had a dramatic impact on how we connect and engage with each other professionally, it’s not able, on its own, to bring your career to the level of success, fulfillment and reward you want.

LinkedIn is only a tool, and is only as effective, engaging, and productive as the user behind it.

Facebook-Proof Your Job Search: Sanitize, Secure and Repeat

Is Your Online Identity Spoiling Your Chances?
by Phyllis Korkki, published in NYT 

YOU looked wonderful on your resume.  Your references raved about you.  The interview went swimmingly.  Yet you didn't get the job.  Oh, no: did they see that Facebook photo of you dancing on a table?  Or did they find out that you're six months behind on your mortgage payment?

You may never know why you weren’t hired, but be aware that background checks can make or break a job application. And in a data-rich world, the person with the fewest red flags may get the job.

Little hard research has been done on how hiring managers use the Internet to vet applicants. But you should assume that they are at least looking you up on search engines. So it’s wise to review the results of a quick search of your name.

It is very hard to remove anything questionable about yourself from a search engine, but you can at least push it lower by adding positive entries, said Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers, a career management business in New York.

Ms. Safani says she aims to help clients create a positive professional identity on the Internet through Googleprofiles, LinkedIn and ZoomInfo, for example, as these tend to be among the first to appear in search results. Adding such entries can also help people who have little or no presence online, as that can be viewed with suspicion these days, she said.

Job seekers should also give their Facebook page a close look. “How private is your Facebook page, really?” said Lewis Maltby, founder of the National Workrights Institute, an advocacy group. Despite privacy settings, he said, it’s not inconceivable that a potential employer could become a friend of one of your friends and thereby gain access to your page.

If you are showing or saying anything on Facebook that you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see, “take it down, now,” Mr. Maltby said. The same goes for friends’ posts that mention or “tag” you.

Mr. Maltby said he started his group “to extend protection for civil liberties to the world of employment because it doesn’t exist there.” But, he said, he also once ran a human resources department, and “you can’t blame H.R. people for looking at social network sites because hiring the wrong person is a very expensive mistake,” he said.

His concern is that some hiring managers may be disqualifying candidates “for ridiculous reasons that have nothing to do with the job” — for example, pictures of them drinking beer.

Chances are that employers wouldn’t tell you that a Facebook picture of you with a lampshade on your head was the reason you weren’t hired. But even if they did, they can generally refuse to hire you for any reason that isn’t specifically excluded by federal or state law, Mr. Maltby said. Such reasons include race, religion, disability or age.

And other online dangers may be lurking. You may continually be dropped from contention for jobs because of something about you on Internet databases, said Michael Fertik, founder and chief executive of ReputationDefender. His company, in Redwood, Calif., offers services aimed at helping people improve their online profiles and maintain their privacy. “Do not mistake the fact that you’re a decent person for the notion that you’ll look that way online,” Mr. Fertik said.

Without question, more data than ever is available on individuals. Hiring managers, if they were so inclined, might be able to learn about your political leanings, buying habits, hobbies and interests. But would they bother to do so? And would they hold that against you even if it had no bearing on the job?

Mike Aitken, director of government affairs at the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association, is skeptical that many hiring managers have the time or inclination to investigate applicants on the Internet in any serious way — except, perhaps, when filling very high-level positions. Employers could even open themselves up to litigation by doing so, because candidates might contend that they were rejected for a job for a reason like religion that was revealed on a social network, he said. He also noted that such searches are costly.

Most employers contract background checks to other companies, he said, and these usually focus on things like whether a résumé is accurate, Mr. Aitken said. For certain positions, employers may also perform criminal and credit checks, he said.

Employers must obtain your permission to check your credit, but turning them down doesn’t bode well for your application, Mr. Maltby said. And if the employer rejects you for the job, offering some credible reason, he said, who’s to say it wasn’t actually because of the credit report? That’s a strong argument for checking your credit report for mistakes, and developing a good explanation if your credit score is genuinely poor (as it may well be if you’ve been out of work for a while).

Clearly, it can’t hurt to do a little research on yourself before sending applications. What you learn may surprise you. As Ms. Safani said, “Taking control of the situation is always a better strategy than sitting back and seeing what they find.”

Weekly Wisdom: Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything

by Tony Schwartz

If you want to be really good at something, it's going to involve relentlessly pushing past your comfort zone, along with frustration, struggle, setbacks and failures. That's true as long as you want to continue to improve, or even maintain a high level of excellence. The reward is that being really good at something you've earned through your own hard work can be immensely satisfying.

Here, then, are the six keys to achieving excellence we've found are most effective for our clients:

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratificationand take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That's when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.
3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.
4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously, however, can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.
5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It's also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you'll take on difficult tasks is to ritualize them--build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

I have practiced tennis deliberately over the years, but never for the several hours a day required to achieve a truly high level of excellence. What's changed is that I don't berate myself any longer for falling short. I know exactly what it would take to get to that level.

I've got too many other higher priorities to give tennis that attention right now. But I find it incredibly exciting to know that I'm still capable of getting far better at tennis--or at anything else--and so are you.

read the rest of the article:  http://www.fastcompany.com/1686337/six-keys-to-being-excellent-at-anything

This Week in Healthcare IT

from the HIMSS blog

Summer Camp Is Over for HITSC and the Homework Looks Good

Posted on September 9, 2011 by James (Jim) St. Clair, CISM, PMP, SSGB

 

After six months of extensive work, including “Summer Camp,”  the Health IT Standards Committee (HITSC) has delivered a new round of standards recommendations that significantly move the ball forward in interoperability.

As John Halamka notes in his blog, these recommendations are an important step forward in supporting Meaningful Use Stage 2.
The HITSC work groups delivered four recommended standards:

• Certificates,
• Provider Directories,
• Lab Result Reporting, and
• Transfer of Care Summaries.

At the September meeting of the HITSC, these standards will be reviewed, as well as the other efforts of the S&I framework.
Perhaps equally important is the strategy being considered to evaluate these new standards – “Best is the enemy of good” (Well said, John).

The real objective is (and should be) to move forward with standards that advance the process and allow the SDOs to continue their refinement and continue to advance health information exchange.

Lastly, a quick “well done” to the makeover of the of the HealthIT.gov website: “Putting the “I” in Health IT”. Bravo!

Share your thoughts on HITSC and other standards topics with me here on the HIMSS Blog.

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The Right Way to Come Back From Vacation

by Peter Bregman

What's the right way to come back from vacation?

Here's what I've done in the past: Stay up late the night I return, trying to go through everything, answer all my emails, and create a long to-do list of everything that accumulated while I was away. Then, the next day — my first full day of work — do my best to go through that list as I maintain a normal schedule of work, meetings, and phone calls.

But that's a mistake. A surefire recipe for wiping out the benefits of vacation within a few hours, letting the island disappear underwater forever.

There's a better way.

First, let your last night before work still be vacation, or at least your personal time. Don't open your email or check your voicemail. Unpack, do laundry, make your kids' lunches if you have kids and they need lunches — but don't get back to work until you're back at work.

Then, on your first day back from vacation, try this three-step plan for not only getting back into the swing of things but taking some of the island with you:

1. Ready: Who are you at your best? Before you listen to that first voicemail, sit quietly for a minute, and think about what you most liked about yourself on vacation. Was it the relaxed way you listened to the people you were with? Maybe it was the time you allowed your mind to wander? Perhaps it was the way you immersed yourself in each moment because you weren't distracted by constantly checking email on your phone? Maybe it was your patience, your generosity, or the ease with which you slipped into laughter?

Write down a few of your observations and keep the list close. The busier we get, the less we cultivate the aspects of ourselves we value so deeply because they aren't necessarilyefficient.

But they are us — possibly some of the most important parts — and leaving them back on the sandbar diminishes who we are. Which weakens us, reducing our energy, creativity, and effectiveness. Not to mention our pleasure.

The solution? Become less efficient. Which means you will get less done. Which, ironically, will make you more productive, as long as you choose the right things to get done.

2. Set: What Is your focus for the year? 
In order to get the right things done, we need a filter to help us decide what not to get done. Identify the most important things you want to focus on for the year. Every year I choose five major things on which I want to spend 95% of my time.

My five things form a lens through which I focus on the world. Without them, everything would be a blur. With them, I can distinguish what's important — and worth my time and attention — from what's not.

Before touching a post-vacation email, look at your list of five and connect with the priorities that will make this year productive, meaningful, and fulfilling for you. Remind yourself what's important.

3. Go: What are you going to do? It's a good idea to block out your first morning back from vacation — or the first day if you can — to go through what's waiting for you. Don't rush this — it's the most strategic thing you can do.

It will be hard to resist the temptation to try to get it all done. But if something doesn't fit into one of your five areas of focus, defer it to someone more appropriate, politely decline it, or, if you can, simply ignore it. This goes for items of personal interest as well as business. (I know Banana Republic is having a 40% off sale, but still, do you really need to browse their site?)

Your first day back will set the tone for the new post-vacation you, so build yourself into your schedule. Look at your "Who are you at your best?" list and bring that person back to work with you. Block an hour for lunch with colleagues. Take a ten-minute walk in the morning and one in the afternoon to allow your mind to wander. Listen to someone else's story with attentiveness. You'll have the time to do those things if you haven't over-scheduled that first day.

This doesn't just have to be your first day back from vacation plan; it can be your everyday plan. Each morning, look at your "Who are you at your best?" list and recommit to bringing that person from the sandbar to the office. Then look at your "What is your Focus for the Year?" list and process your work through that filter, making strategic choices about what to do, and what not to, scheduling your day so you have time to be yourself at your best.

"Look!" Isabelle screamed just as Eleanor and I approached. She was pointing to several Hermet crabs she had collected and placed on the island they had created with piled up sand. The five of us stayed there for a few minutes, quietly watching the water rush through their paths and tunnels as the crabs crawled away.

Which reminds me, there is one more thing you can do to soften your landing from your last vacation: pick a date for your next one.

source: http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2011/09/the-right-way-to-come-back-fro.html

A Few More Fine Examples of What NOT to Do in Interviews...

Today's examples are courtesy of careerbuilder.com:

Candidate answered cell phone and asked the interviewer to leave her own office because it was a "private" conversation.

Candidate told the interviewer he wouldn't be able to stay with the job long because he thought he might get an inheritance if his uncle died - and his uncle "wasn't looking too good."

Candidate asked the interviewer for a ride home after the interview.

Candidate smelled his armpits on the way to the interview room.

Candidate said she could not provide a writing sample because all of her writing had been for the CIA and it was "classified."

Candidate told the interviewer he was fired for beating up his last boss.

When applicant was offered food before the interview he declined, saying that he didn't want to line his stomach with grease before going out drinking.

A candidate for an accounting position said she was a "people person," not a "numbers person."

Candidate flushed the toilet while talking to the interviewer during a phone interview.

Candidate took out a hair brush and brushed her hair mid-interview.