by Brand Strategist Wendy Pavey*
Executives who are looking for a new role can take advantage of LinkedIn’s open publishing platform to quickly raise their profile in front of the right people and turbo-charge their outreach to employers of choice, helping to secure their next role.
Publishing articles is a simple but powerful way to demonstrate your knowledge, prove your credibility and get noticed.
Here’s how.
Publishing can positively impact recruiters and decision makers
Publishing on LinkedIn is a highly effective way to support your personal brand. Sometimes, I see executive brands that are just window-dressing. Mr A might have branded himself as a specialist in a certain area, but there’s very little evidence of this special knowledge on his LinkedIn profile. In fact his efforts at branding are actually hurting his chances, because the lack of support for his positioning makes recruiters and decision makers doubt his substance.
Contrast that with Mr B, who supports his claim to expertise with a series of posts on LinkedIn. Immediately, a recruiter can read more about his experience, learn more about his leadership style and – if they’re looking to fill a role – understand more about why he’d be a great hire. The extra time taken to read his posts hugely increases the recruiter’s exposure to him and positively influences their perception of him.
I’m sure you’ve heard recruiters say they only spend a few seconds glancing at a LinkedIn profile. That’s not surprising, given a search on the LinkedIn database will yield dozens – even hundreds – of results. Posts sit right near the top of your profile, so even if they’re not read, they are seen and they instantly present you as sufficiently knowledgeable about your area to write about it.
Publishing can lead to a job offer
In Arete Managing Partner Richard Triggs’ book “Uncover the Hidden Job Market”, he advocates an outreach program, using LinkedIn to directly contact people at your employers of choice and seek to engage with them. I know many of you find this a daunting prospect, even though it is a strategy with proven effectiveness.
I’ve found the most successful approach to this outreach is to use the connection request to draw your target’s attention to one of your articles.
It feels like you’re providing something of value to them so your request to connect feels much less opportunistic. The article shows the value of your experience and makes you look credible, so your ‘target’ is much more likely to connect to you. You can repeat the contact when you publish your next article, and ask for their opinion and feedback. This lets you learn more about them and about the company.
This is a no-risk strategy that allows you to engage in a professional dialogue that can become a trust-based relationship with a key person. From this point, you can ask your contact for their advice on joining their company, or ask them to introduce you to someone else who can advise you.
Your article leads to a valuable connection that can lead to a chat, an interview and a job offer.
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In the next article in this series, I’ll present my three step process for writing your first article. It’s critical that the content of your article is aligned to both your career objective and your personal brand.
In the meantime, if you want to pursue writing but feel you need more information to get started, Arete Executive and Wendy Pavey are accepting expressions of interest for a workshop and a webinar on “Publishing on LinkedIn for the Executive Job Seekers”. If you are interested please email [email protected]
* Wendy Pavey is a leading personal brand strategist who works with executives to build them a compelling digital profile to help achieve their career goals. She specialises in developing key points of differentiation as the basis for a powerful personal brand that effectively sets a person apart from their peers and competitors.
Wendy has an outstanding track record in creating brands and is best known for the GoVia trademark brandname for Brisbane’s toll road network, used for 90 million journeys annually. She co-founded the multi-award-winning brand consultancy Lumino®, which is now part of the international Fleishman Hillard network.
Prior to Lumino, Wendy enjoyed a stellar career in marketing communications, advising iconic global brands such as Apple, Nokia, PepsiCo, Gatorade, Gillette and Raid.
Her book Executive Brand: How to Build a Powerful Digital Profile will be published in 2015.
