The Empowered Job Seeker Series, v.9 - Helping Ghislaine to Understand the Importance of Developing an Effective LinkedIn Profile

As an HR professional, you understand how drastically recruiting has changed over the last few years, and that technology has played the greatest role in how employers find new candidates – and how candidates search for new work.

It is our job at CMS to ensure that our job seekers are well versed in how to use that technology to their advantage – especially when it comes to using LinkedIn.

As a social networking site designed specifically for the business community, it is imperative that all job seekers have a presence on Linkedin in order to enhance their networks, and their career opportunities.

This was especially true when working with Ghislaine.  Ghislaine was a Director of Sales for the province of Québec and had worked with her previous employer for over 30 years.  Ghislaine had never had a need for or used LinkedIn. Although she had heard of it, she was unfamiliar with what it was and how it could help her future job prospects.  So, once we had finalized her résumé, we started the process of teaching her about its benefits and developing her online presence.

We explained to Ghislaine that if her credentials were not online, she would be missing out on prime job opportunities. That generally, employers will use online resources first to search for candidates that fit their requirements and that accessing the resources available through LinkedIn is vital to connect with them.

Ghislaine’s CMS program coach worked closely with her on each section of her new LinkedIn profile; ensuring it was in alignment with her new résumé, that her job search objective and availability for work was clear, and that the presentation was both friendly and professional.

Once her profile was complete, we needed to teach Ghislaine how to get the exposure needed to help grow her network of contacts – and ultimately, her hiring audience.  That meant advising her on how to make connections with her peers, friends and potential employers, how to join groups of interest and those related to her field, how to follow companies, search for and reply to job postings, send in-mail messages, invite prospects to view her profile, ask for recommendations from her past colleagues, why engaging with articles and posts was important.  Basically, we explained why and how to build her online presence with confidence– and consequently open herself up to new career opportunities.

Just like Ghislaine, all full-service CMS outplacement program candidates work with their program coaches through the process of developing an effective LinkedIn profile if they don’t already have one established or work with them to update their existing profiles. Ensuring that all CMS outplacement program candidates make full use of one of the most powerful job search resources available today is imperative to the success of our job seekers.