One thing research has revealed is that weak ties (connection outside your core circle) are powerful in developing professional opportunities. Those fringe touch points with people around, maybe not in, your work can open more doors for you professionally. Social Media certainly can expand our networks, however many of us “chase the dragon” as I’d like to say. We try sending professional signals to recruiters and companies by playing the algorithm games in our social profiles – loading them with buzzwords and hashtags that seem popular to the machines, and only posting what we think will raise attention but definitely not eyebrows. We’re playing the game not to lose vs. playing it to win.
I’ve been offering a service as of late on helping people humanize their profiles and provide strategies to do just the opposite – break free of the game and present your true professional interest in a compelling, honest, and inviting way. This social media make-over sends greater signals to develop weaker ties, not to the recruiters casting wide nets but rather the agendaless, real people that open you to amazing conversations. Because as James Tyer and I say in our new book, Social By Design: How to create and scale a collaborative company, it’s conversation that creates movement.
In my 1:1 make-overs and even in a recent webinar to a small group on this topic, I show how to NOT make your LinkedIn profile look like a resume and make it more of an extension of your ideal and honest professional self. From your color choices, banner imagery, statement, and activity section, the remake focuses on presenting as a real person, with distinct interests and skills that can solve another person’s problems. Definitely not a toss in the kitchen sink approach. Going niche certainly has its risks as your no longer trying to get caught in a big net but rather looking for one worm on a hook. So of course a few weeks after a webinar I did, one of the participants who took my advice reconnected and shared that since he revamped his profile, as I instructed, he had fewer hits by recruiters and he was concerned. He missed the point, however. Until then, for months he had lots of hits… but no conversations and certainly offers for interviews. The sugar rush of “some recruiter for a company I know nothing about is looking at me and/or sending me a job description for a position that has little to do with my skills and interests” is great but misguided. You might jump and then after weeks of playing the game realize it would be a bad fit, squirm from the net and fall back into the pond.
The reality is you can do both. Humanize and weave those keywords into your content… you can also attach your resume in the About section so you’re covered but make no mistake, building weak ties by narrowing your focus, being true to yourself, and exposing your real interests and beliefs is a harder approach that changes nothing overnight. But stay the course, the conversations always come and it’s through those conversations with peers on the peripheral the really good, right, and long-term opportunities may emerge.
