Don’t despair. It may take some extra effort to land a job after a long period of unemployment, but it is absolutely possible. Here are five Es to guide you:

1. Explanation

First and foremost, it is a mistake to hope that employers won’t notice that you are currently out of work. A gap in your LinkedIn profile or your resume is certain to raise a red flag. You need to address it directly.

Depending on the reason for your time away and your personal comfort level, you can either explain the gap at the beginning of your LinkedIn profile Summary or in your InMail correspondence or cover letters to recruiters when you apply for positions. In whichever place you choose to give your explanation, do it quickly, honestly and positively.

Here’s an example if you stopped working because of a layoff:

I am a creative, client-focused public relations professional with deep experience in the financial services industry. Since ABC Public Relations closed its financial services practice in June 2012, I am currently seeking a new opportunity to join a large agency.

Here’s an example if you stopped working for personal reasons, such as childcare:

I am a corporate generalist attorney with substantial in-house legal experience. For the past three years, I have focused on raising my family and I am now eager to commit my substantial energy to a full-time position as an in-house counsel for a small- to medium-sized company.

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With those goals in mind, here are three career trends I’m predicting for 2013 and tips on how you can incorporate them, with the help of LinkedIn, into your New Year’s job search:

LinkedIn profiles replace resumes
We’ve seen this happening for some time — people leading with their LinkedIn profile vs their resume. I believe 2013 is the year that many employers will rely more on LinkedIn than traditional resumes to make their hiring decisions. Employers may still request traditional resumes, but those will take a backseat to your LinkedIn presence. The reasons why are numerous: a LinkedIn profile provides so much more information and richer context for one’s career path, skills and experience; a resume limits you to one or two pages while a LinkedIn profile is unlimited; and your LinkedIn profile is public, so employers consider it to be more trustworthy (i.e., very few people lie on their LinkedIn profiles because their connections would quickly call out any untruths or exaggerations).

In some ways, your LinkedIn profile needs to mirror your resume. Factual information, such as your job titles, dates of employment and educational credentials, need to match exactly. And your overall skill set, experience level and areas of professional focus need to remain consistent so you don’t appear to be two completely different job candidates.

Beyond those basic similarities with your resume, your LinkedIn profile is completely customizable. To make your profile most appealing to employers, first craft a compelling, keyword-rich headline, such as “Big Idea Salesperson with Track Record of Success in the Construction Sector.” Not sure what to say? Gather inspiration by researching the LinkedIn profile headlines of some successful people who have the type of job you want.

Next, add a professional photograph to your profile to help recruiters match your name with your face when they meet you in person. Then, make sure that the rest of your profile acts as a more comprehensive version of your resume, including all of your experience, unique accomplishments, measurable results (e.g., “decreased average customer service call wait time by over 2 minutes”) and recommendations from former colleagues and managers.

Once you feel your profile is the best it can be, tap a few trusted friends or family members to review it with a critical eye. Specifically, ask them two questions:

1. Is it clear from my profile what kind of job opportunities would be a good fit?
2. Is it clear what makes me unique and valuable?

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If your friends can’t answer these questions, or their answers are not what you’re hoping for, then go back to the drawing board.

One last point: remember that your LinkedIn profile is a living, breathing representation of you, so regularly revisit your profile to make sure it’s up-to-date with new accomplishments. You can also keep your profile fresh and appealing to recruiters by frequently sharing interesting articles or brief commentary about topics that matter to you. These shares appear right at the top of your profile in the “Activity” section, so they will keep your profile looking active and compelling.

Read the rest of this post on the LinkedIn Blog…

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I love the mission of the organization — Levo is the Latin root of the word “elevate,” which captures the organization’s mission for professional women to ascend together and achieve their career dreams – and I had fun answering questions from Levo Leaguers about social media and personal branding.

Here are some of the tips I shared for networking and building a strong personal brand through social media:

• Take a “clicks and mix” approach to networking online. “Clicks and mix” is a phrase I borrowed from my friend and social media expert, Diane Danielson. It means to combine the online and offline in your networking efforts. For instance, you can get an introduction via social media, but then make a date to meet for coffee. Never hide behind your computer screen.
• Get serious about your LinkedIn profile. The very top of your LinkedIn profile is the first thing people notice. Make sure you have a great professional headshot on your profile, and make sure your profile headline is a broad description of who you are, including keywords that a recruiter or client might use to search for you.
• Use Twitter as a research tool. Think of Twitter as your own personal news feed. Create a stream or list) where all you’re following are companies you want to work for or clients you want to pursue. Have a stream or list that is totally career related. (You can follow Ashton and Lady Gaga elsewhere!)

Click over the the Levo League blog to read more tips!

If your dream employer appears on this list, you’re certainly in good company. But it also means you’re up for some intense competition. What does it take to land a job at one of the world’s most sought-after employers? Here are some tips:

It takes confidence. Yes, it can be challenging to apply to a top organization, but don’t take yourself out of the running before you take the first step. The very first step in landing a job with your dream employer is believing it’s possible. You’ll never get a job you don’t apply for.

It takes a good fit. That said, you have to be realistic about what opportunities you pursue. Just because a company is popular doesn’t mean it’s the right career or cultural fit for you. Take time to thoroughly research a potential employer by exploring that organization’s website and reading through its LinkedIn Company Page. The “Careers” tab of any Company Page will provide information about that organization’s culture, and the company’s status updates — which you can follow by clicking the “Follow” button in the upper right hand corner of any Company Page — will alert you to the organization’s current news and priorities.

I also recommend following a potential employer’s competitors (which you can generally find under the Insights tab of the Company Page under “People Also Viewed”). Research how a potential employer compares to its rivals in terms of culture, services, career opportunities and more. If you prefer another organization’s activities and positioning, then perhaps that company is your dream employer instead.

Read more on the LinkedIn Blog…

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For job seekers, this sense of a new beginning can inspire you to inject new energy into your hunt. In particular, the fall season is a nice time of year to reconnect with members of your college or university alumni community, who may be feeling nostalgic for their school days as well (particularly if you have a good football team!).

Here are some tips for connecting and reconnecting with fellow graduates of your alma mater:

1. Join your alumni community. The first essential step is to become a member of your university’s alumni group on LinkedIn. Virtually every college and university in the world has one or more, as do many high schools as well. Go to the Groups Directory and search for the name of any educational institutions you attended. You’ll find that some schools have multiple groups, so join as many as appeal to you.

Once you’re a member, scan the group’s Discussions, Members and Jobs for networking opportunities. For instance, join a discussion of fellow alums talking about your industry, comment on an article someone has posted or introduce yourself to the Group Manager, who is often a representative of the Alumni Association (often a very connected and helpful person).

You can also start your own discussion, perhaps posting an article with a few personal comments or posing a question to group members. Or, you can introduce yourself and your goals: “Hi fellow Tigers: I’m new to the group and excited to connect with fellow alums. I’m currently looking for a job as a graphic designer and eager to connect with any other job seekers or design folks. Happy to help anyone I can. Thanks!”

Remember also that LinkedIn permits you to send a message or connection request to anyone with whom you share a group on LinkedIn (as long as that person has opted to accept such messages), which will help you build one-on-one relationships with individual group members.

Read the rest of this post on the LinkedIn blog…

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If you are a recent or soon-to-be college graduate, you are probably getting a lot of bad advice.

For instance, at some point a responsible adult—a professor, your dad—may have encouraged you to continue your education after college. What about law school? Stable, prestigious, high salary, what’s not to like?

Here’s today’s reality: According to the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), only 65.4% of those who received JDs in 2011 were practicing law nine months after graduation. Which you need to do to pay off the loans: those graduating from private law schools in 2011 had an average debt of $125,000. Even if you do get a job your salary isn’t likely to be up to the task of paying that off anytime soon.

So should you listen to your English professor and get a PhD? Not if you want to be a professor. The Chronicle of Higher Education regularly reports on the job hunts of frustrated candidates spending months or years applying for the small handful of discipline-specific positions available, jobs you’re only eligible for after five, seven, even ten years of graduate education.

What about business school? Even if an MBA program is willing to let you in immediately after college, think twice. Getting an MBA doesn’t necessarily help you compete for jobs; rather, it puts you into a new applicant pool, one filled with competitors with at least a few years of experience.

So what’s an unemployed new grad to do?

Keep in mind that what your parents and professors are probably seeking for you is stability, a soft landing for you that lets them sleep better at night. But employment stability no longer exists in most fields, including those like law or academe that historically were considered quite safe from the vagaries of the economy. Once you let go of the idea that you’re going to stay in the same place—the same job, the same organization, the same career—you may find yourself willing to consider options you haven’t so far.

Several years ago I conducted a research study on businesspeople who graduated from college during the economic downturn of the early 1990s; I was curious to see how they had navigated their career paths given their difficult launch. In the beginning, they had largely taken a path of least resistance, taking on jobs like restaurant hostess, liquor store clerk, or office temp in order to pay the bills (sound familiar?). When I interviewed them they were in their mid-to late-thirties, and all had ultimately managed to achieve career success on the surface: gainful employment, and a level of prestige and income that they could be proud to report to their alumni magazines.

But they weren’t all happy where they’d ended up. Most were satisfied, but others had continued on that path of least resistance for over a decade. They took advantage of new opportunities as the economy improved, but without really stopping to ask themselves how their interests were developing over time.

The lesson to be learned here is take what you can get for now, but keep seeking advice from people you meet who are doing things you think you might want to do. Pay close attention to how your interests grow and change, and jump on any opportunity that will teach you something you want to learn, broaden your professional network, and that will be looked on favorably by future employers (and, yes, graduate schools).

Your first job does not need to define you, and there is no reason a poor job market should rob you of a rewarding career. Take from someone who has seen the long view: You have more control over your professional fate than you think.

Sharon Belden Castonguay, EdD, is the Director of the Graduate Career Management Center at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business in New York. She also maintains a private practice, SBC Career Consulting.

However, there are some instances where you’ll want to reach out to people who are not at all connected to your existing network and are, in your estimation, Very Important People. Your VIPs may include recruiters, hiring managers, senior executives at prospective employers or “stars” in your industry.

If you’re ready to network several rungs up the career ladder, here are some tips:

1. Ensure that your profile makes a great first impression. VIPs are busy people, so if they receive a LinkedIn message from you and decide to check out your LinkedIn profile, chances are they’ll only spend a few seconds reviewing it. This means your profile has to be stellar.

First, craft a profile headline that is very specific and sells your skills and uniqueness, such as “Deadline-driven copywriter with 10+ years of experience at top-tier ad agencies.” Next, make sure your profile is 100% complete so a potential employer can quickly understand your education, experience and key skills. Finally, quadruple check your profile for typos, grammar mistakes or “red flags” such as outdated certifications or unexplained gaps in your experience.

Read the rest of this post on the LinkedIn Blog…

Perhaps you’ve recently graduated, you’ve been laid off from a shrinking industry or you just have a sense that you might be happier in a different career.

If you find yourself asking, “What should I do with my life?” this summer, I recommend this 3-step strategy for using LinkedIn to research your career options:

1. Brainstorm a big list of career options. Even if you’re really unsure of your career direction, I guarantee you have some ideas of what path or paths you want to pursue. Start collecting these ideas — job titles, potential employers, hobbies, interests that might become a career, anything — into a big list.

Ask a few trusted friends or colleagues what they think you’re good at and what jobs they think you should pursue, and add these to your list. Reach out to your alma mater’s career services office and ask if they have a career assessment test you can take, then add these results to your list as well. It doesn’t matter if the items on your list are wildly different — e.g., writing, Italy, Google, personal trainer.

Just come up with the biggest list you can and keep adding to it as you follow the steps below.

2. Research, research, research. Next, take your big list of career options and start typing each idea into LinkedIn’s Advanced Search. Just see what you find and keep following links that interest you.

For instance, let’s start with “writing.”  You know you love writing and would like to consider it as part of your career, but you’re not sure what kinds of jobs exist, where they are and what kind of experience you need to get those jobs. Just type the word “writing” into the “keywords” box in LinkedIn’s Advanced Search tool and you’ll generate a listing of anyone on LinkedIn who has the word “writing” in his or her LinkedIn profile. Start to click on profiles that interest you and look for…

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This means that it’s no longer enough to have a good reputation in one’s current position. We need to think about how we’re perceived in the broader marketplace by potential future employers.

Even if you intend to stay in your current job forever, clarifying your unique value is something you need to attend to. Clients, conference planners, awards committees and other professionals may be checking you out — primarily online — and you want to make sure that they find the best representation of you.

We’re talking about personal branding, a key element of success in the Internet Age.

A term first coined by Tom Peters in 1997, personal branding includes your professional reputation, online image and personal characteristics such as your work style, community engagement and worldview.

It incorporates the particular skills, talents and areas of expertise you’ve cultivated. When I host workshops on personal branding, I ask participants the following questions to help determine the elements of their personal brands:

• How would your colleagues describe your strengths?
• On what issues are you the go-to person in your organization?
• What do you know more about (web design, compensation plans, marketing to baby boomers) than most people?

Once you’ve defined your personal brand, it’s time to showcase it to recruiters, bosses, customers and others who may be assessing you. Here’s how LinkedIn can help:

1. Be authentic. The best personal brands are genuine and honest both in person and online. It can be tricky to showcase your personality on the web (you might love puns, but those don’t go over well on a professional profile), but it’s possible with a bit of effort. For instance, if your personal brand includes a balance between your detailed accounting skills and your friendly personality, your LinkedIn profile can include both your technical credentials and the fact that you belong to several networking groups. You can also ask former and current colleagues to write LinkedIn recommendations highlighting this combination.

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First, the good news: Employers are expected to hire 10.2 percent more college graduates this year than they did from the Class of 2011, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The bad news? It’s still a really tight job market for young people, with one of every two recent grads either unemployed or underemployed.

How can you be among the fortunate ones? As someone who has guided college students to careers for the past ten years, I can tell you that it takes hard work, persistence and — perhaps most important — the guts to step out of your comfort zone. Here are some tips on how to use LinkedIn to be a courageous post-college career seeker:

1. Show your stuff. While resumes are limited to one page of standard-format, bullet-pointed information, your LinkedIn profile can go way beyond the basics. The information on your resume and profile definitely need to match (job titles, employment dates, key accomplishments, etc.), but think about LinkedIn as an expanded portfolio of who you are and what you can do professionally. Include a well-written, confident summary statement both to explain what you offer to employers and to show your written communication skills. Beneath that, fill your Specialties area with keywords representing all the skills you gained during your college years.

Next, don’t be shy about including all professional experience you have, even if that experience was unpaid or part-time, such as a spring break internship or after-school tutoring. If you don’t have much paid work experience, you can showcase volunteer work, school projects, internships and extra curricular activities.

Add additional sections to your profile in areas where you particularly excel, such as standardized test scores, volunteer work, honors or awards, or a creative portfolio of your visual work.

Finally, collect a few recommendations from professionals who are willing to publicly sing your praises, such as a professor, an internship manager or a boss from your summer job. Just remember to ask each person to vouch for you in specific and professional terms, such as “Robert demonstrated excellent attention to detail and budgeting skills as head of the student government fundraiser,” rather than “Robert is a great person and very smart.”

Although it may feel weird, it’s okay to prompt your recommender with a few bullet points of what to include in his or her recommendation (once that person has agreed). And remember that you have to be connected to a person on LinkedIn to request a recommendation (see the next tip for strategies on growing your network).

Read the rest of this post on the LinkedIn Blog…

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