Life Lessons in How to Use Recruiters to Accelerate Your Job Search
I'm back with another mentoring moment and today we're talking about how a recruiter will not save you from a failing job search.
I know that a lot of women desire to make more money and have more impact. Having a successful job search—one that results in callbacks from employers, conversations with recruiters, job offers at the desired pay level, and a successful job offer—is the goal. However, just knowing a recruiter or having conversations with one, or being on LinkedIn where recruiters work, will not save you from a job search that is failing.
So today I'm going to talk about some actual strategies that will help you get in front of top paying employers and actually leverage recruiters, human resources managers, and organizations to advance your career.
Ensure that your LinkedIn profile speaks to your skill set and the organizational problems that you solve.
I think too often LinkedIn profiles are just a replica of someone’s resume which is not good enough. What I want you to know about recruiters is that most of them find and source potential candidates on LinkedIn. So if you are not on LinkedIn with an optimized profile, or if you are not sure that your LinkedIn is actually attracting recruiters and employers, you are in a dangerous position because those recruiters live on LinkedIn.
That's where they source their job candidates and where they look for top talent. And this is true across every single industry.
Share more publicly about your value than about your needs.
It's not enough to just say, ‘I need this in a job, I'm looking for this in a job, and you better hire me for this.’ You need to be able to speak to your value in being hired in an organization.
Speak to those values publicly.
You can share articles on LinkedIn but sharing your values on LinkedIn will need to be a priority for you to make sure you're showing up as a top candidate for recruiters. If you are using LinkedIn only to encourage or motivate yourself into getting a new job, you're using it wrong.
LinkedIn is not the place for you to bash recruiters or talk about how annoyed you are with the last hiring manager who didn't hire you. And LinkedIn is not the place for you to talk about why these jobs won’t pay your rate.
LinkedIn is the place for you to talk about your value, your expertise, what you're good at, and the problems that you solve. Talk about the change that you enact based on your skill set and the value that you can bring to an organization. Do this so that when a recruiter sees your profile, they see your skill set and that you're open to work. Then they will want the opportunity to work with you or to hire you within their organization.
If you're a professional woman working in corporate, nonprofit, or educational leadership who needs support implementing these strategies, I invite you to work with me. Maybe you understand the strategies but realize you need somebody to plan with. You could benefit from having someone with experience walk you through rolling out these strategies. If you could use the confidence and assurance of working with a professional who can guide you as you make an ask of your supervisor or prepare to apply for higher-level roles, then you're in the right place to get that kind of mentorship. I'm accepting new mentees right now and I invite you to apply to the Mentor Me Accelerator.
Check back each week with the newest blog post from Mentor Me!