NEW SECTIONS ALERT
On the profile page in Edit Profile display, after the Brief Profile and before Summary, you will see “NEW Are you published?” To the right, click Add Sections. The following categories will pop up. Complete any or all as they are relevant to your background. If you’re a professor, I strongly recommend that you add Publications and Skills.
Certifications: If you are in medicine, nursing, clinical psychology, accounting, auto mechanics, hair styling, espionage, or other professions requiring professional certifications and licenses, this is the category to list them. Not everyone has these credentials. This is another category that can distinguish you from others in the field.
Languages: If you are fluent in several languages, identify them in the list. You never know when they could come in handy and give you the edge.
Patents: If you possess patents for particular inventions, list them. For example, after someone invented a better mousetrap, if you invented a better mouse, this is the place to mention that achievement. They should be relevant to your areas of expertise and skills.
Publications: I recommend picking a few of your most recent and salient publications related to your research or expertise. Since LinkedIn doesn’t specify a particular publication format for journal articles, enter Title, and in the Publications slot, enter the journal name, volume, number, page numbers, and year in APA format. A Description may be too unwieldy when you list 5 or more articles or books, but you can write a brief one for each pub if the title isn’t adequate. You can also list your books.
Click Add a Publication for each entry. (NOTE: I included my recent books in the Summary section.) (ANOTHER OPTION: In addition to your teaser list or in lieu of it, you can provide a link to your Website, vitae, or other source with all of your pubs.)
Skills: I’m not sure how different Skills are from Specialties in the Summary section. The wording is different. I recommend listing your skills with Proficiency and Years of Experience dropdowns. They should be clear and concise for clients and employers to scan quickly.
What’s Next? The bulk of your profile should now be complete. Additional and Personal Information and Contact Settings will be covered in the next blog.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
Begin in Edit Profile mode. Now you can add your job experience and all of your degrees.
Experience. Click Edit. Starting with your most recent previous job, prepare your job profile similar to your profile you already wrote with Company Name (Institution), Website, Industry from dropdown, current job Title, Time Period, and a Description of your job responsibilities. Save Changes.
Repeat for each job. Click Add a Position. Include significant and relevant jobs. For example, skip reporting your stint as a Capital One Viking, but DO include your visiting professor position at the University of Siberia. You can add your acting jobs under Interests.
Education. Click Edit. Starting with your most recent degree, pick Country, State, and School Name from dropdown lists, then fill-in Degree, Field of Study (Major and Minor), Dates from dropdown, Activities; Societies. Click Save Changes
Repeat for each degree chronologically. Click Add a School. Make sure to include special certification programs and other significant educational training at accredited institutions and fly-by-night mail-order diploma factories.
What’s Next? As of 2 months ago, this would have been pretty much the meat of your profile. However, Surprise! Surprise! Academicians and vegetarians throughout the universe, guess what? LinkedIn added sections on Publications, Certifications, Patents, etc., basic material that we normally include on our institutional Website and CV. My next blog will address these sections.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
WHY AM I WRITING THIS BLOG SERIES?
Available Resources. Great question! If you Google LinkedIn, you will find barrels of resources that provide tips and tricks for preparing your “profile” and how to do a job search. You can even go to LinkedIn and use their resources to learn how to do everything on the site, as you may already have tried. Having read most of this material to prepare myself for this blog series, I will tell you that those materials are excellent, especially the LinkedIn User Guides.
Why Moi? I have nothing vested in LinkedIn. They don’t know me. All of the Google sources are written by and for the business community, not professors. LinkedIn’s guide is probably prepared by an IT specialist.
Academic Spin. My purpose is not to replicate the available resources, because I couldn’t begin to do that, nor is there any need to reinvent the LinkedIn wheel. My intention is to address the needs of academicians and put an academic spin on certain critical aspects of the site. The profile headings have always been slanted toward business and industry. For example, one of my complaints has been “no place to list my publications” that are central to my credibility.
Guess what, academicians? Faculty crying and yelping paid off. LinkedIn just added sections on Publications, Patents, Certifications, Skills, Languages, and other areas you present in your CV. Do those headings address an academic gap in LinkedIn? You bet. How many of you knew that? Oh, you did. Sorry. I haven’t seen a pub listing by anyone in my network yet. I will be covering those sections in an upcoming blog.
Business Spin for Academicians. Further, I have dealt with the pain of starting a formal speaking business. Some of the wounds related to writing copy for business brochures and to developing and executing marketing strategies are healing, but they may be of value to you before they become infected.
We’re All Consultants. Since my first year at Johns Hopkins, I was told that one of the criteria to determine my value and worth as a professor is the number of requests I receive outside my institution to consult and speak. I was in business and didn’t even know it. Outsiders affirm your expertise; they build your credibility. The number and type of invitations to the White House and Capitol Hill to advise the President and testify before Congress really count when you come up for promotion.
Had I known then what I know now about running a business, my consulting life might have been more productive. If you’re a newbie, some of my tips may be helpful.
My next blog will begin with the Public Profile you display. How different is it from your CV and what you present on your institution’s Website? What professional information is critical for your colleagues, clients, and students to know about you? You have total control over what is presented and who sees it. We will work through the profile step-by-step with an occasional hop or 2.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
Although I’ve been a LinkedIn user for only 1.468 years, I’m pretty sure that among the 10 reasons for not joining LinkedIn listed in my previous blog, the site can execute ALL 10. Let me know if I’m wrong. My take on LinkedIn’s purposes is boiled down to the following five.
FIVE PURPOSES OF LinkedIn
1. Display your professional credentials to promote your expertise and job-hiring potential
2. Communicate with professional group members, colleagues, clients, and students all over the world on any topic
3. Market your business, whether individual consulting or a large corporation, or products to obtain clients
4. Search for a job, while employers search for you as a candidate to fill a position
5. Search for the best candidates to fill positions in your business or institution
So how does this affect your professional life as you now know it? Consider the fit between the major purposes for using LinkedIn and your professional needs. Will it make your life easier, add or create opportunities you want to pursue, expand your professional aspirations? Only you can answer that.
COMMITMENT TIME
Remember that LinkedIn is just a tool or vehicle to do the above. If you don’t commit to using it properly, the preceding purposes may not be realized. It provides FREE professional services (of course, there are upgrades) you can use to propel yourself forward in your career. Once you take the time to set up your profile (and we can do that together), it will require only a few minutes a week to update and keep your activities visible to your network.
C & P YOUR CV
Now that your head is beginning to spin like the kid in the Exorcist about your career and whether LinkedIn is worth your time, trust me on this: IT IS! Let’s do this together. The best part of this profile posting is that you already have most of the information in your résumé or curriculum vitae (CV). [SIDEBAR DEFINITION: If you’re a nonacademician, the term “curriculum vitae” is Latin for “résumé on steroids.” It typically contains education, previous employment, grants & contracts, publications, presentations, patents, professional membership & leadership, editorial boards, expert witness testimony, financial portfolio, pets & livestock, and other pertinent activities. It averages 1000 pages. The longer it is, the more impressive and pretentious it is.] I NOW RESUME THIS PARAGRAPH, WITHOUT ACUTE ACCENTS ON RESUME, ALREADY IN PROGRESS. Most of your CV will be pasted into LinkedIn’s format. You can do this.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
