[Note: For the first time ever, I am putting the same post on both MoveYouForward.com and YourIndustryInsider.com. Everyone can benefit from this post. Read on!]

Not long ago, I did a post on why everyone needs a resume, even YOU. It’s the single most valuable bit of career advice I give to clients, friends, and associates. Bottom line there: A resume is a priceless marketing tool one should have at the ready at all times, whether one is a job-seeker, an entrenched employee, a freelancer, or even a business owner. Read the whole post here for details.

The other top piece of career advice I give to anyone who will listen is to get your LinkedIn ducks in a row. In short, be on LinkedIn and using it in the best way to achieve maximum results.

“What is LinkedIn?”

LinkedIn is an online networking site similar in functionality to Facebook, in terms of allowing users to create profiles and interact with others online. LinkedIn is widely accepted by professionals at all levels as the place to maintain a presence and interact with others for business purposes.

“But I’m not looking for a job. Why do I need to be on it?”

LinkedIn is not just helpful for job seekers. Yes, LinkedIn is a job-search tool, but it’s also a reputation-builder, a marketing tool, and the ultimate online business networking tool.

I have personally gotten press opportunities, business partnership possibilities, and many clients through people finding me on LinkedIn. I also used LinkedIn to find and contact sources when I was doing research for the “Entertainment Career Kickstart Kit” I released through Your Industry Insider. And I have connected with people all over the world who contacted me through LinkedIn to ask a question or get help with a professional project. You never know where those friendships could lead, but for now I have a broad reputation related to what I do. If I ever need a job, I’m in good shape.

“Okay, I get it. What do I do?”

There are three elements to maximizing your use of LinkedIn:

1. Your Profile: That is your professional identity. It’s your cover letter, resume, business card, elevator pitch, and interview suit all rolled up into one. Your profile MUST have an accurate and descriptive title, a compelling summary, well-written descriptions of your current and previous positions, and an appropriate picture.

Accurate and descriptive title- This doesn’t necessarily have to be your current job title, though it can be. If you have a prestigious title at a recognizable company or if you are just representing your corporate identity, use that.

If you want to promote yourself in a broader way, you can use “Marketing Executive” or “Entertainment Industry Professional” or even “Public Relations Expert.” But only use expert if you are an expert. Billing yourself as a “PR Expert” five years out of college makes you look silly and is just plain annoying to those who are PR experts who might be in a position to hire you or refer you to someone else. (That’s where the “accurate” part comes into play.)

A Compelling Summary- If you have a well-written, targeted resume (like all of my former clients do!), you can probably copy the headline section off of the top of that and paste it into the summary section on LinkedIn. If you don’t have a well-written, targeted resume, your summary should be a few sentences on your core skills and career trajectory, with an eye toward what you want to get out of your LinkedIn profile.

For instance, if you are a Marketing Executive starting to look for your next corporate position or a former marketing executive looking for more consulting work, you might put some version of, “Innovative, forward-thinking marketing professional with experience in the hospitality and tourism industry working with top-tier boutique brands, as well as large corporations, such as Marriott and Hilton. Core strengths include branding, special promotions, and strategy.”

As you write your summary, think about who might be reading it and what you want from them. Enticing recruiters and hiring executives requires a different tone and different content then if you want to attract consulting clients, press opportunities, or VC funding.

Well-written descriptions of your current and previous positions- Again, if you have a well-written, targeted resume, the work has basically already been done and you are largely cutting and pasting, only editing due to length and formatting constraints. If not, think about your overall role in each position and what you did, emphasizing accomplishments over duties and really honing in on where you made money or saved money for yourself (as a business owner) or someone else (as an employee or contractor).

An appropriate picture- Focused, close enough to see your eyes, which should be looking at the camera, smiling (or pleasant-looking if smiling isn’t your thing), and professional. No blurry vacation photos with festive hats. No pictures of your cute kids. (Save those for Facebook.) Think about how someone might meet you at a professional networking event. Look like that.

2. Connections: A great profile without a decent number of connections (200+ minimum) is as useful as having a great collection of connections and a lame profile. Which is to say, not very useful at all.

So, if you are a rookie, you want to let LinkedIn search your Outlook or Yahoo (or whatever email system you use) to help you find people you know who are already on LinkedIn. And then LinkedIn will suggest other people you might know based on the connections of your existing connection (called 2^nd and 3^rd tier connections on LinkedIn). (Awesome, right?)

Also, get out the business cards you’ve been collecting at actual in-person networking events the last year or so and find and connect with those people. Soon you will be blowing by that 200-connection minimum I set for you on your way to being a LinkedIn pro.

I myself go to LinkedIn whenever I meet someone new and look them up. Not only do I usually get a better idea of what they do/have done, LinkedIn will also tell me if we have connections in common.  (Awesome, #2!) I almost always send my new contacts an invitation to connect, along with a note about our meeting. It’s a great way to follow up and also to get them into my permanent “Rolodex.”

Everyone debates about whether they should only connect with people they have met or know personally or widen the circle to include people in their industry who they have not met — or even the professional world at large. Some people are even offended when people they do not know contact them to connect.

Personally, I accept connection invitations from people in my field and others who seem interesting and somehow relevant, especially if they personalize the invitation to connect. I pass on people who have no apparent relevance to me and don’t bother to tell me in their invitation note why they want to connect. I also pass on connecting with people who tell me in their invitation message that they want to use me as a job resource. (“Dude, I can’t recommend you for a job if I don’t know you.”)

3. Outreach: Now that you have your profile in shape and are fairly-well connected, it’s time to look around LinkedIn, see who else you might know, or want to know. That’s where GROUPS come in handy. The local branch of your college alumni association, your off-line professional organization, even just a loose organization of people in your field- all of these could be helpful groups to join.

You want groups which contain professionals who might be helpful to you, and who you might be able to help by answering their questions, thus building your reputation and potentially getting relevant opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise know about if you just built your profile and gathered connections and didn’t get out once in a while.

I’m going to close (but I could go on quite a bit longer and don’t you forget it!) by giving one more example of why LinkedIn is awesome: LinkedIn automatically sends out weekly updates of what everyone in your 1^st tier has been up to. If they’ve updated any part of their profile, joined a group, made a new connection, or updated their status, it’s there.

Scanning the update is a great way to find people you might know, too, or discover groups you might want to join. But it’s also a great marketing tool for you. For instance, if you are a freelancer, whenever you add new projects to your profile, the update indicates that you have updated your experience. Potential employers and former employers who are in your first tier get the update and can see what you’ve been up to lately. Maybe they have a similar project.

Now here you are, in a completely passive way, and top of mind when they need someone like you. Awesome, right?

So, are you ready to jump onto LinkedIn and experience the awesomeness for yourself? Or maybe you are already on LinkedIn and have a great story about getting a job, a freelance gig (or five), or some other great opportunity through LinkedIn. Please share in the comments.

And if we aren’t connected already, find me on LinkedIn and send me an invitation, introducing yourself in the note and telling me why you think we should connect. I’d love to meet you.

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I have this conversation frequently these days. It’s usually with people who’ve called me to talk about my resume-writing service, so they know something is up. But this topic also comes up with friends and business associates. One of two things usually brings it up:

1)      I will mention an opportunity that would be just right for the other person. I say, “You should send them your resume.” They say, “Oh, I don’t have one.” I say, “You mean you don’t have an updated resume?” They say, “No, I don’t have a resume at all. I mean, I did at one point but…” They’re voice trails off into silence.

2)      I will say, “I went on your Linked In page and it’s almost blank. What’s the deal?” (I’ll just interject here that it’s not snooping if it’s on the internet.) “Why don’t you have your resume on there, along with a compelling summary of what you do?” “Oh, I don’t have a resume,” they say, either confidently or sheepishly depending upon their circumstances.

I want to say, “Why are you even on Linked In? You have 357 connections and no way that’s going to turn into work for you.” Sometimes I do actually say it (usually, in a gentler way), which leads to me explaining the whole point of Linked In and why having a resume is essential, even for them. (More on Linked In later.)

Yes, it’s true. In the past, lots of people got freelance work – or even permanent jobs – without having a resume. There was a time that when someone who needed a graphic designer or a copy writer or a marketing consultant or even a new VP, Business Affairs would call their trusted friends and associates and their trusted friends and associates would tell them names of potential people to hire. And then the person in need would call a bunch of the referrals and ask those referrals about their experience and accomplishments. Based on that, either finalists would be asked to bid a job or come in for an interview or one person would just be hired depending upon the size and nature of the project.

Here’s the thing: Word-of-mouth doesn’t work as the only strategy anymore. There are too many freelancers and potential employees and, due to the internet, people’s circles are too large.

And, for a big project at a big company – or a permanent position – you don’t just get hired by the person who you talked to on the phone. There are people from other departments who need to sign off on you, as well as upper management in the mix. So now, each time you are brought up as a candidate, the person trying to hire you has to regurgitate everything they know about your relevant work history. If there are follow up questions (“Where’d they get their training? Have they ever done work for our type of company?”), they have to go back to you, get the information and then report back. You could see how someone with a resume would have an advantage in this situation.

Here are other people who need resumes:

People who have had jobs for a long time who would be open to moving on. I’m not saying you have to be actively looking. These are people who want to be ready when opportunity knocks, because they know a good opportunity won’t be available long enough for them to get a great resume together after they hear about it.

Most business owners. Yes, you are your own boss but how do people know they want to use your service or invest in you or come to you with a great offer to collaborate on a project?

Stay-at-Home Moms who need to make some cash while junior is napping. We all know those work-from-home ads are a scam. Network marketing is almost always the fast track to… making next to nothing while pissing off all your friends. But if you have a successful blog or were a very effective PTA president for three years, you could parlay that into a paid social networking or community advocate position that works for your schedule. If people know about you and what you’d done.

YOU. Even if you are 100% happy with your current situation and you do not need nor want any additional income, you still need to be establishing and maintaining your professional reputation. There will come a time when you will need or want to make money some other way than you are now. Your job will end, your current freelance income stream will dry up, etc. You will not want to be starting from scratch.

Here’s where Linked In comes in:

Your resume no longer sits in a drawer or gets passed from fax machine to fax machine or even by email address to email address. It lives on the web! Linked In is the best professional tool to come out of the internet age. You create an identity from yourself simply by having your excellent resume copied onto Linked In, along with a compelling summary of who you are and what you do. You build your reputation by commenting in relevant Linked In groups you belong to. You connect with people in your field. You help them, they help you. 

If someone hears your name as a potential hire and Googles you, your Linked In profile will come up and they don’t even need your resume sent to them. And sometimes people just stumble upon your profile on Linked In and contact you for work. (It’s happened many times for me. It can happen for you.) Which is why…

A blank or incomplete or badly-written Linked In profile is almost worse than no Linked In profile at all.

So if you don’t have a resume – or if your resume is not a strong representation of your career in terms of where you want to go with it – it’s time to put some time into it. And then get it onto Linked In. It will pay-off. Trust me.

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A couple of weeks ago, a producer from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” found Sarah Auerswald through her blog, Mar Vista Mom, as a potential guest on an upcoming show (which she did end up being on and which airs on April 27th).

It was a validation, to say the least, of the path she has been on for the last year, but for Sarah, the mother of two elementary school-aged boys, Charlie and Oscar, the journey started twenty years ago, in a world before blogs. Dare I say it– in a world before The Oprah Winfrey Show.

We caught up with Sarah recently to ask her about her two careers, before and after motherhood.

What was your pre-motherhood career?

I was a script supervisor, mostly on episodic TV, some movies.

Describe a typical work day at that time.

Arrive at work at 6am, assemble the day’s scenes for note-taking. Start prepping camera roll numbers and sound roll numbers with those departments. Watch rehearsals with the director and actors, do camera blocking. Make sure all departments know the scene numbers and take numbers as we progress through the day. Keep continuity on the actors’ movements and wardrobe and props. Relay all information regarding printed takes to the camera and sound departments and to the editors. And all the while paying rapt attention to the scenes as they are filmed.

We worked minimum six hours before a lunch break and then another six or more after that lunch break was over. There were moments of downtime, where I could get up and stretch, but mostly I sat in a chair and wrote down notes on what we filmed all day.

At times, I would have to negotiate personal politics when I performed my job duties, as some actors preferred not to hear when they had said a line wrong, and some directors preferred not to hear when what they shot wouldn’t cut together.

At the end of the day, I filed a report with the production staff to let them know how much work we completed and then I turned in all my notes to be copied for the editors.

Were you happy with it when you left?

No. Would you be? Did you read that list??? But seriously, no. I had become very burned out. I loved it when I started out, but by the end of 14 years, I was really done.

When & why did you leave?

I left in 1999 when I was pregnant with my first son. The hours were just too long for me to stay away from my son, and at the time I got pregnant, I didn’t actually have a job, so since my husband did, it made sense for me to stay home, on many levels.

When & why did you decide to return to the world of work outside the home?

Well, I started trying to make a business a few years ago, I guess about 6 years ago. I wanted a creative outlet and some income. We needed the money, as it had been a hard transition from 2 to 1 incomes. But that business limped along and I had another baby as well, so it didn’t get off the ground in the way I needed it to. It also needed so much hands-on time from me — I couldn’t keep up.

What do you do now?

So now I’m a blogger and a Virtual Assistant. I am so happy with them! I am so flexible now. I can do so much of my work whenever I can fit it in, the computer is very portable, not like a sewing machine. Much better! So actually, I mostly still work IN the home. I love blogging and the community I’ve joined on mom bloggers on the internet.

How, if at all, is it related to what you did in your previous career?

Not related at all.

Describe a typical day.

Get up, start the computer, check emails, see what needs to be done today. Get the kids off to school, then write and make calls, then I’m available for the kids in the afternoon for snacks and homework and hanging out and making dinner. I love being there for my kids AND being able to get blogging done. We all do our homework together now!

What’s the best thing about what you do now?

The flexibility.

What’s the worst thing about what you do now?

I guess it’s the fact that I have so much to learn about the internet and computers that I’m constantly being challenged to learn a new skill, like installing google analytics code, sometimes it hurts my brain. But a challenge is good. It’s better than being bored by it.

Where do you hope to go with your current career?

Writing can lead so many places. I haven’t seen that far in the future yet, but I do know I hope to make more money as I go. I’d love to be able to support the family with my writing.

Click on the logo below to visit Mar Vista Mom:

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Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life by Barbara Stanny is not just for women, but it’s well-established that women are more likely than men to fall into the trap of working in jobs with low pay ceilings OR working in jobs where they allow a low-pay ceiling to exist because they are too scared, for whatever reason, to ask (demand) to be paid what they are worth.

This book is for any chronic underearner, as Barbara Stanny terms herself (at the time) and anyone making well below their earning potential. She interviewed over 150 women and identified the issues and road-blocks they had (or did not have) to making over $100,000 (and often a lot more).

She names the “must-haves” for busting through a low earning ceiling: a profit motive, audacity, resilience, and encouragement, and provides relevant stories from the interviewees lives in their own voices. In some of the cases, the women had a transformation that took them from an anemic paycheck to big bucks and in others, the women knew they wanted to make a lot of money from the beginning of their careers and went for it. Both types are instructional.

The book has a very readable, conversational format. Barbara’s own story of financial transformation, depicted along with those of the interviewees, gives the book an intimate, personal tone, and there is something for anyone looking to break through any barrier to six figure (or seven figure) success.

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One of the cliche interview questions that recent grads are told to prepare for is “Where do you see yourself in five years?” When I was a recent grad, I found that type of question a puzzle, if not a trick. Though I don’t remember actually answering it, if I did, it was some lame “best guess” I presented because honestly, I had no idea where the next five years would lead me. Plus, five years seemed an eternity.

After the first few years of ones’ career and certainly when one is well into mid-career (and perhaps middle age, for that matter), I firmly believe one can and should should have an idea of where they want the next five years to take them. Creating financial, professional, and personal growth benchmarks are key for making progress in the long run and making decisions day-to-day based on overall priorities and desired direction.

So if you don’t have one, get a notebook out and start working on your five year plan and interim goals. It will be a roadmap to get where you want to go. After all, at the end of that time, wouldn’t you rather get where you intended to go than get nowhere at all?

Photo by brain_farts.

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Okay, people. This will probably be my last blog post of 2008. I know it’s a bit early, but nonetheless, it’s true. I’m taking this opportunity to introduce my recurring theme of 2009. I know some of you might get tired of hearing it, but others need to hear it as often as I can say it. Here goes:

There are jobs out there.

I say it a lot lately in person to clients, friends, unhappy grocery store checkers. I’m going to say it again with emphasis.

There are jobs out there.

Good jobs. Jobs you want. Better jobs, even, then the one you have or the one you are losing or have already lost.

And I am not saying this to make those who have been looking without success so far feel bad. Depending upon what you do, this can be a challenging market- but for others, there will be a brief period of un- or under-employment and then you will find something else. Something good. Something that maybe even pays more or gives you more responsibility or more fun or even all three.

Let’s get crazy while we’re talking here- it’s just us, right?- if you are unhappy with you current job, you can find another one. Even if you have a decent, secure job, you can actually hunt for a new job RIGHT NOW (well, wait until after the holidays– everyone is scrambling to get where they need to be with the appropriate gifts in hand) and be SUCCESSFUL in relocating to a position that is more fulfilling.

NO, you are not STUCK. YES, you have OPTIONS.

Take an honest look at your resume and call me if you need help with it. Think about what you want to do next and call me if you need help with that.

Let me help you make a plan to make a move in 2009 and then successfully execute that plan.

In the meantime, I am wishing you & your family happy, healthy holidays!

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