“If you want to stand out from the crowd, give people a reason not to forget you.” Sir Richard Branson
In such uncertain times and with record numbers of unemployment, you may find yourself in a situation where you feel a bit lost about how to move forward in life, let alone how to stay current and competitive in the workplace. From my perspective whether you’re still in work or not it’s always best to take time to yourself to understand where you want to go in your career and how you want to get there and part of that story resides in the way we present ourselves to others through maintaining a strong social and professional presence.
Here are some useful insights to help you on that journey…
Refocus and re-imagine
At the start of any journey you need to understand where it is you want to go, so taking some time to refocus your perspective is initially key. Set a goal and be open minded about the obstacles you face along the way. This will help you evolve and grow whilst still keeping the end goal in sight. Whatever you want to achieve, whether it’s to change direction in your career or become a respected thought leader in your current industry, it’s important you put your end goal at the start of your journey.
Breathe life into your profile
As a job seeker there are a variety of different social channels you can use to help you achieve this, however none are more professionally respected and as well connected than LinkedIn for the job seeker and head hunter. In order to place emphasis on your LinkedIn profile you will need to:
- Summarize your work experience into clear and easy to understand bullet points – for an employer there is nothing worse than someone who writes a dissertation about each role they have ever had. Summarize your key responsibilities and duties as well as any achievements into clear bitesize pieces.
- Think about your top 3-5 skills and be honest with yourself, if you’re naturally unorganised and you place organisation and planning as a natural skill then you’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot later on down the line.
- Create an interesting and yet humble professional summary. An employer is not only investing in your skills but your attitude and personality, you want to show off without showing off. A great way to do this is by letting you flow through your writing to shape what you’re trying to say.
- Upload a current photo of yourself that creates a confident persona – this means no snapchat filters or pictures of yourself from the Christmas party 5 years ago. You want a picture that captures what you’re like as a person but more importantly what you’re like to work with.
- Be human about the content you share and be proactive about creating discussions. It’s often more useful for people and yourself in terms of social growth and learning when you create content around discussions rather than statements. This also helps you see issues from a different perspective and not just your own.
Get the best out of your content
The best way to catch someone’s attention is often by being yourself and when it comes to your social and professional online profile the same is often true. Share current topics that interest you and think will benefit your community of followers. Here are some stats and facts you can use to superpower your profile:
- 90% of information that comes to the brain is visual
- Make your content visually appealing, images that accompany articles get 94% more views than articles that are just written
- Posts with videos attract 3 times more inbound links than plain written posts
- 78% of Chief Marketing Operators think custom content is the future of marketing
So if you want your social and professional content to stand out, stick to the following rules of thumb:
- Be original
- Make it visual
- Create discussion on current topics
