Have you ever been in a meeting, sales presentation or conference and found your mind wandering off onto other things? Wandering minds is a common trait in all of us, but it can have disastrous consequences for any meeting.
The reasons can be many. The mobile phone rings just as you are explaining the finer details of your new product. Everyone in the room focuses on the person taking the call; they are all curious to know what it is about. Then again it might be that someone comes in to the room, perhaps to prepare coffee for the break, or to whisper a message in to the ear of one of the attendees.
Whatever the reason, wandering minds are a serious cause of communication breakdown. They can’t be helped, they can’t be avoided, but they can be handled.
Preparation, as always, is key to the solution. If you are about to attend an interview, give a sales presentation or deliver a project proposal to senior managers then prepare well in advance.
Find out where the meeting will take place. If it is in the person’s office then be aware that they will be concentrating on the papers around them and not you. So whenever possible hold the meeting on neutral ground. If there are windows then close the blinds to prevent outside distraction.
If at all possible try and find out who will be attending. Find out as much about them as you can. The more senior the person the more likely that they will have half a mind on other things as you are delivering your message. Get to know their likes and dislikes, try and find something that you have in common and watch out for the time of day.
The time of day you are speaking can be critical. If you have a choice then make your presentation mid morning or mid afternoon. First thing in the morning they are keen to answer all those emails that came in overnight. Late morning they are thinking about lunch, after lunch they are sleepy and late afternoon they are panicking about all the jobs they haven’t done. Perhaps an oversimplification, but timing is everything to gain attention.
If you are expecting to speak for fifteen minutes, then aim for ten to twelve minutes. Don’t cram too much into the presentation. People only take in about 40% of what they are told. So it is better to concentrate on three key points, say them clearly and often and then repeat them (by saying them in slightly different ways).
Make sure that you get your key points made within the first three minutes, the optimum time for holding attention. This is most easily done by using the old technique of telling them what you are about to say, then saying it and at the end telling them what you have said.
Remember KISS – Keep It Short and Simple. Short, simple and to the point presentations are easier to follow and much easier to remember.
If your listeners are interrupted then take them back to the key points you had been making before the interruption. Help them to re-engage by giving them a summary of what you had said before the interruption.
If they look worried or absorbed after the interruption, then pause. Give them time to think about the problem and wait until they re-focus on you. Then repeat again what you were saying.
In extremis abandon the meeting and try to rearrange. You are a busy person too. If they clearly show little interest in you and your product then withdraw politely and find a better time or place when they are less distracted.
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In the first two blogs on finding a job through LinkedIn we reviewed your profile and how to search for job advertisements through LinkedIn. In this final part the aim is to raise your profile to ensure that you are noticed by more people.
There are three ways in which you can be more active on LinkedIn which will help to raise your profile; they are through adding more connections, joining groups and answering questions.
LinkedIn, like most online social media, can absorb a lot of your time and it needs to be carefully managed. Whilst out of work, it could be worth your while giving an hour a day to using LinkedIn, more than that and the potential returns drop off quite quickly.
Moving on to the three methods outlined above, the most obvious first move is to increase your connections. Again, be careful and be sure to develop a strategy. Some people work on the basis of getting lots of Connections; anything over 500 and you are designated a LION or LinkedIn Online Networker. If you go down this route then you will be connecting with anyone and everyone that approaches you as well as spending a lot of time seeking out other people.
Alternatively keep your connections limited and professional. That means deciding on what sort of person you are happy to have as a Connection. Almost certainly people in the same profession; definitely people who are opinion formers and influential in your line of work. Probably not more junior people than yourself. Avoid adding lots of friends and family, use your Facebook account for those people.
If you are starting out then prepare a list of people you know with whom you would like to connect. Then go up to the Search box (top right on the top navigation bar), type in the name and see if you can find them. If you can, then go in to their profile just to check that it is the correct person. You will see a yellow button to the right of their profile box, it says ‘Connect’, press that and you will be invited to connect with the person. Complete the box and click on ‘Send Invitation’. If they don’t wish to connect with you then you will hear nothing further. If they do connect then you will get an email telling you as much from LinkedIn.
Another way to add connections is to use the top right hand box on your home page entitled ‘People You May Know’. Click ‘see more’ and scroll down to see if you recognise any names or see any useful job titles. To the right of each name is a ‘Connect’ heading. Click on that and then follow the simple procedure.
Using these two methods you can quickly build up a useful Connections list. On your home page you will see what it is that these people are doing once you have connected. Equally if you have a Twitter account, a blog or just by using the ‘Share an Update’ box at the top of the main column on your LinkedIn Home Page you can tell them what is on your mind.
Try a very simple, ‘Hi Everyone, I have just left XXX and am looking for my next big opportunity.’ It will reap rewards.
To join groups, all you need do is go to the top navigation bar on your Home Page, find Groups and then click on Groups Directory. LinkedIn will give you some suggestions based upon your profile, but better still use the Search box on the top left. Where it says Keywords, type in your professional keywords. Account Manager, for example, brought up 97 groups. You can click on a group to find out more about them before you make your decision.
Don’t join too many groups, about six or seven is more than enough. Join the right groups for you and then get involved. Answer questions, pose questions and most of all, keep yourself informed about the latest developments in your particular professional domain.
Groups are also a good way of connecting with like minded people who may know about jobs. Beware joining too many recruitment agency groups; you will find yourself inundated with information about jobs that are of little interest to you.
Finally, it is worth exploring Answers. Go to the top navigation bar once more and find ‘More’; now click on ‘Answers’. This will take you into the public arena for LinkedIn where anyone can ask or answer a question. A golden rule is to answer more questions (ratio about 10:1) than ask questions. There are plenty of silly people on LinkedIn and you will quickly identify serious questions from the flippant and attention grabbers.
In the right hand column you will find a section entitled ‘Browse’. This has a broad list of professional types. Find your professional interest and then narrow down your search. You will find a rich seam of questions and some interesting answers. By answering questions in a knowledgeable way the person answering the question can nominate you as an expert which will raise your profile further.
In each of the three methods mentioned above you will need to find your niche, decide on the amount of time you want to commit to the project and then be consistent. If you use all three methods then you will widen your network, get connected to people with the same professional interests and, as a result, get noticed.
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In the previous blog we looked at how to make your profile ideal for the work search. In this blog we look at how LinkedIn helps you to find a job fast.
You need to start on your LinkedIn Home page. In the right hand column you will see a section entitled ‘Jobs you may be interested in’. In the box there will be a selection of three or four jobs.
It is worth checking those jobs every day. The jobs will be targeted towards whatever it is that you have populated your profile with in terms of key words and industry sectors. That is why so much emphasis was laid on getting your keywords right in the first blog of this series.
If you click on one of the jobs in the box you will go into the advertisement page for that job. Usually it contains a job description or detailed description of the job.
If you look to the top right of the script in the advert you will see a small box that says ‘Posted by’. This is a useful tool which ordinary jobsites don’t give you.
By clicking on the name in the box you get to find out something about the person who filed the advertisement. You could, if you felt inclined, make a connection with that person or get an introduction through your contacts. As a minimum, it will be worth looking over the person’s profile to see what you can find out about them.
The person concerned will almost certainly have the name of the employer and possibly their website address on their profile, which in turn means you can check out the organisational site and find their website very easily.
If you can find the website for the organisation then check out if they have a careers or jobs section. If they do then that is always the better way of applying. Better still, get a telephone number from their ‘Contact Us’ page and ring the person direct to see if you match their requirements. The personal contact always works best when searching for a job.
To go back to the LinkedIn site, you can decide if you are a good match for that job and if so you could select to apply for the job by clicking on the ‘Apply Now’ button at the bottom. Ideally, have your CV and covering letter prepared and ready to attach.
At the very bottom of the page you will see two very useful additions. A section entitled ‘People who viewed this job also viewed’ and Search more jobs’. Both give you additional search options. If you look at the ‘Search more jobs’ it will help you to narrow down the categories that are most appropriate to you. This will open you out into a myriad of further jobs in that subcategory.
Naturally, the jobs you are shown are only as good as the information in your profile. Equally, the jobs categories you see in the ‘Search for more jobs’ section relate to the particular type of job you are viewing. For example, you may be looking for a job in internal communications, but the job you clicked on may be more marketing oriented. In which case the categories you will see will be more marketing focussed.
You can overcome this problem by going back to the Home page. Go to the top navigation bar and click on jobs. Put in a job title in the ‘Search for Jobs’ box. This will bring up further jobs options. Look at the left hand column on this new page and you will see that you can refine your search even further.
LinkedIn will encourage you to join up to their Job Seeker Premium service. This will cost you £12.95 a month for the basic and up to £32.95 for the Job seeker Plus. Don’t sign up for the annual subscription unless you expect to be out of work for that long. The value of this service remains questionable at present.
By now you should have found a large number of potential jobs. Now the hard work of filtering through those jobs begins.
In the third and final blog on finding a job on LinkedIn the focus will be on raising your profile even further in order to get you noticed.
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