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Building Your LinkedIn Network – How to Build Your Career

LinkedIn: it’s an unavoidable part of your professional life in 2020. With 575 million members and countless opportunities, you can’t afford to stay away, even if the notifications do become a bit much after a while.

Are you new to LinkedIn and wondering how to use it to your advantage? You already have what you need to get started. Here’s how to build your career using LinkedIn.

Create a Full, Engaging Profile

Your first stop is your profile. Your profile is public (unless you decide otherwise), and it’s easy for potential contacts and recruiters to find you both through LinkedIn and on Google.

Putting together a full, engaging profile is the number one hack for making the most from LinkedIn. You have a headline, summary, work history, and image to work with, which you can use to show off.

Do spend time building out your profile to create as complete a picture as possible for visitors. And if you are job hunting and want to be extra visible, use keywords related to your job title (or hopeful job title) to help stand out from the crowd. If you’re looking for a job as a Network Engineer, you might sprinkle in keywords like Network Communications Engineer or networking experience.

It’s a chance for you to tell your story in your own words — so make it a good one!

Join LinkedIn Groups

While you might use LinkedIn to search for jobs, there’s a whole world on the site that’s waiting for you. LinkedIn groups are a great place to start.

Join groups related to your industry, role, and career goals. But don’t stop there: participate in the group. Comment on posts. Share your thoughts. And don’t be afraid to send a direct message to get conversations going.

While LinkedIn groups are a great place to get talking, remember that you’re still in a professional environment. Act the same way you might at a networking event or conference and remember how you might portray your organization through your posts.

Accept More Requests than You Deny

“You have a new request.” You’ll get these emails more frequently than you might realize, and more often than not, and you might wonder whether to accept.

Only you can decide how and when to grow your network. But don’t be so hasty in hitting the decline button. New connections can lead to professional awareness, referrals, or even friendship.

So before you make a decision, check out the sender. They could be your next big opportunity.

Are you on the hunt for your next big opportunity? RightStone is placing qualified consultants like you with excellent employers. Get in touch to learn about the RightStone 360 process and see a list of current jobs.


Looking Beyond the Resume – The Benefits of Hiring an Underqualified Candidate

In your quest to find the best candidate for your role, you likely have a long list of boxes to tick. There are certifications, education, and technical skills that your candidate needs to do the job well. Or are there?

Sometimes, finding the right candidate means looking beyond the resume and worrying less about qualifications. What are the benefits of hiring an underqualified candidate? They could add far more to your organization than you think.

They Automatically Push Beyond Their Limits

Someone who applied for a job that they aren’t technically qualified for may not have the technical skillset you desire. But they do have a skill you can’t teach: the desire to reach beyond themselves and push their own limits.

Finding employees who want to learn and grow in their field is far more valuable than finding someone who ticks all the boxes but enjoys the comfort of staying at the same level. A candidate who has been in the same role and held the same responsibilities for years may not be willing to grow with your company!

They Are Inherently Trainable

When you have a candidate who comes in and requires some additional skills, you have a unique opportunity: you get to mold them in a way you can’t with fully-trained ‘qualified’ candidates.

Having the opportunity to train them according to the latest information and your organizational processes will help them fit in quickly. It will also attract hungry learners looking for opportunities that they may not have had at their last place of employment.

Plus, as too many managers know, it’s far easier to teach an employee new skills than to help them un-learn old or incorrect ways of working. When someone “isn’t qualified” they don’t have giant egos or bad habits.

They Often Bring Unique Skill Sets

In today’s world, workers change jobs every 4.2 years. In some cases, they don’t just leave for a promotion: they go for an entire career change.

Career-change candidates are invaluable. They have experience in the job-market, a foundation of core training, and often unique skill sets picked up from other roles or careers.

It’s not just the soft skills they bring. They also have technical skills that may translate or inform their work and a valuable outsider’s perspective that allows them to use them.

Unqualified Candidates Add Value to Teams

Every job post comes with a list of duties and responsibilities and skills required to perform them. There’s no need to pass on the resumes that don’t quite tick all the boxes. Underqualified candidates often possess other value-adding qualities that may be what your organization needs to take the next steps.

Are you looking for that valuable ‘unqualified’ candidate for your IT role? Get in touch to learn how the RIghtStone 360 process places the right fight every time.


Leveraging Social Media to Find Top Talent

Your number one goal for hiring isn’t merely to add a new employee. Instead, you want to attract the perfect candidate, someone who also happens to represent top-tier talent in their field. Doing that requires more than posting an opening online and waiting for applications to pour in.

To compete for the best, you need to be proactive. Social media makes it easier to seek out top talent and have meaningful conversations. But it takes a different approach than you may be used to.

Here’s a quick guide to using social media to steal top industry talent.

Extend Your Network

HR puts the job on your internal site, industry job boards, and of course, LinkedIn. You’ll find job seekers in these places, but if you want to compete for top tier talent, you’ll need to court those who aren’t necessarily actively looking for a new job.

Share your job on your social media pages, including LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. If you’re looking for a wider talent pool, you can consider using advertisements to reach more people. (Just make sure to cost control before posting.)

Keep in mind that posts on Facebook or LinkedIn pages should be more than a basic job description. These are great places to sell your company culture and let more people peek through the window into your company. So, skip the technical details and use personalized posts.

Start Discussions Online

The key to unlocking the power of social media is to zoom in on the first half of the phrase: social.

For too long, recruiters used social media as a place to learn more about candidates’ personal lives or professional interests. But those tactics don’t build a connection. To connect with candidates, you need to avoid talking at them. You want to talk with them. And to do that, you need to start and engage in discussions.

HR can do this by working together with the marketing department to craft messages and engage. You will also want to get involved with hashtags related to your industry, which often serve as meeting places for industry professional and prospective candidates.

Organic discussions help your company stand out, attract talent, and give you an extra chance to screen candidates.

Encourage Current Employees to Get Involved

There’s one secret to hiring through social media that most of your competitors forget about: referrals.

Referrals take on a new life on social media.

Ask the new role’s team members to share the job with their own networks, too. Current employees are your best ambassadors, and the qualified professionals in their networks may not be scouring the job boards every day.

Are you on the hunt for the perfect fit but having no luck? RightStone can help. Get in touch to learn about the RightStone 360 process for placing qualified consultants with great clients.


You Didn’t Get Hired – Now What Do You Do?

You spotted the job post of your dreams. You thought “That’s it. That’s the role I’ve been waiting for.” So, you applied and got that first call back. After weeks of screenings, interviews, and the final interview, you find out you didn’t get the job.

Rejection stings at any point of the process. But rejection is also an opportunity. So when you’re ready, follow these next steps to make your next interview a success.

Say Thank You for the Opportunity

It’s not the letter you hoped or expected to write, but it’s important none-the-less. 

Saying “thank you” is always a smart move. First, it’s mature and it acknowledges what happened. Second, it leaves a good impression with the employer, which is good news in case the chosen candidate doesn’t work out or you decide to apply again in the future.

Either way, it’s nice to be nice. So, your first order of business is to accept the decision gracefully.

Keep It Positive

Finding out a company passed on you hurts, even if you half-expected it. While the desire to wallow is natural, you need to remember that making it through the interview process means you did succeed.

By making it through the process, you proved you were a qualified candidate. You wrote a great resume or cover letter, and the hiring manager agreed. You then made it through the interview process, which is no small feat.

Ask for Feeback

With a positive mindset, it’s time to seek out a new opportunity. The best way to do that is through feedback.

It’s important to remember that the reasoning behind the decision could be a monumental issue or a tiny, almost imperceivable difference. Sometimes you don’t get passed on for any reason other than a gut feeling. 

Your feedback doesn’t need to cover why you didn’t get the job. Instead, you should focus on getting information on your perceived strengths and weaknesses. Where did you do well? Were there any stumbling blocks?

Sometimes, feedback gives you closure, or the feedback will help you find a new path forward.

Are you on the hunt for your next big opportunity? RightStone is placing qualified consultants like you with excellent employers. Get in touch to learn about the RightStone 360 process and see a list of current jobs.