Organised criminals are on Linkedin and out to get you

By Neil Patrick

Inadequate cyber security has enabled an explosion of online fraud. Yesterday the BBC reported that online fraud and computer misuse is now the largest category of crime happening in the UK today. There were over 5 million cases reported in the last year and probably many more which went undetected.




Social media is the new hunting ground for criminals and fraudsters. And they are exploiting it with virtual impunity because the platforms are simply not doing enough to counter this threat to users.

Worse, police resources are just not large or capable enough to combat a problem which is often conducted from outside their jurisdictions. So we have to take care of ourselves and do our bit to protect our online friends as well.

Criminals are lurking even in places we’d not expect to find them. Like Linkedin. Here, fake or misleading profiles are used to create aliases that are then used to commit fraud on unsuspecting victims.

Security specialists Symantec recently investigated LinkedIn. Its investigation uncovered dozens of fake accounts on the social network, across a variety of industries.

I was shocked. Not that they found some. But that they found so few. I’d expect them to do better than this because even my cursory review suggests there are not dozens of these but thousands.

Depending on the nature of the fraud intended, the fake profile will vary. Some aim to acquire sensitive intelligence information from government employees. Others have more humble crimes in mind such as phishing or email scams. But one which has had fatal consequences is sexploitation. This has already resulted in at least one suicide by the victim.

I don’t know how extensive Symantec's project was, but it took me about 5 minutes to uncover a whole heap of fake profiles without any of Symantec’s technology or resources.

You might think that anyone stupid enough to get caught like this deserves all they get. That you’d never be lured into such a trap. But it’s happening all the time. So much so that the government have invested in this film which warns of the dangers:

An increasingly common tactic is to set up a fake profile as a recruiter. Posing as recruiters, the fake accounts enable hackers to see your personal network and gain the trust of those in it.

By making these connections, criminals can entice users to give up personal details, direct them to malware-laden websites and, if they can get their email addresses, launch phishing campaigns - targeted emails that aim to steal personal information.

Linkedin is simply not doing enough to combat this problem. When challenged about it, they said:

"We investigate suspected violations of our Terms of Service, including the creation of false profiles, and take immediate action when violations are uncovered.

We have a number of measures in place to confirm authenticity of profiles and remove those that are fake. We encourage members to utilise our Help Center to report inaccurate profiles and specific profile content to LinkedIn."

Linkedin’s processes are clearly not working well enough to eliminate this problem. They say they ‘encourage members to report inaccurate profiles’. I’ve not once seen a message from them about this. It’s clearly something they’d rather not talk about more than they must, because it reflects badly on their platform.

So we should follow some basic common sense rules to avoid being scammed:

• Treat all invitation requests from people you don’t know as suspicious until you are satisfied they are genuine. Look for them on other social media sites. Google them. See who else they are connected with. Only accept the invitation when you are satisfied they are genuine.
• If you are still not sure, cut and paste their profile summary into Google. This way you can see if it has been lifted from someone else’s (a common trick).
• Understand if your work makes you potentially a high risk person. This includes if you are employed by a large organisation, including government agencies; if you have a position of seniority and influence; if you are a high net worth individual.
• Review the settings on your Linkedin connections. In your profile privacy settings, you may choose to make your connections not visible to anyone else.
• Treat invitations to connect from alleged recruiters with caution. Few recruiters that are genuine actively seek to connect with jobseekers. They just don’t need to because they can see all they need to without actually being connected with you.
• When you encounter a suspicious profile report it to LinkedIn. They do take such things seriously and they will take action. I know because I’ve done it.

And if you need any more encouragement to improve your LinkedIn profile, this has to be it. Often the first suspicious aspect of a fake profile is scantiness of information (or clothes). Putting up information which is verifiable and credible about yourself is one way to distance yourself from those you really don't want to know or resemble.

The secret to HR success on social media

By Neil Patrick

I spend far too much time highlighting and criticizing the poor treatment of people by businesses and organisations. So for a change I am delighted today to present proof of how actually caring about people delivers the sort of profile and positive attitudes that most marketing and HR teams would kill for.

It's nothing fancy. It's not done by a big and clever marketing company. SYLKA Carpets, in Chelmsford is a 3 year old company making carpets for hotels and large houses.

Right now on LinkedIn, Sylka Carpets are getting HUGE profile simply because they cared enough to give a guy called Frank a job:

This post on Linkedin has received over 16,000 likes and over 1,000 comments every one of which (okay I haven't checked every one, but I'm confident this is so) is praising SYLKA Carpets for doing something decent to help someone out when they lost their job.

You simply cannot buy or make this sort of social media success. Not unless you are willing to behave in a decent way towards people. And next time I am talking to someone about HR and social media, this example of truly best practice will serve me well I think.

Thank you SYLKA Carpets. And good luck Frank!

Computers are learning to read our minds and why this changes everything

By Neil Patrick


In the digital age everything is reduced to numbers. Big data counts everything that can be counted.

But big data conceals as much as it reveals. Big data scientists argue that their algorithms enable fine judgements to be made across billions of pieces of data. Yet there is idiocy embedded within many algorithms.

Many of us find ourselves enraged by the clumsy ways simplistic counting algorithms determine who gets noticed online and who doesn’t.

This quantitative analysis is the strength of big data and currently its main weakness. But most algorithms cannot count the things that are often most important, i.e. the qualitative aspects. Like value, trust, goodwill, personality.

But this is about to change…

IBM Watson has already built artificial intelligence that does exactly this. It’s called Personality Insights. Follow this link and you can try it out. Just load a thousand or so words of a blog post or something you have written and the programme will analyse and quantify your personality.

I put it to the test with one of my own blog posts. This is what it said about me:

You are inner-directed and skeptical.

You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. You are philosophical: you are open to and intrigued by new ideas and love to explore them. And you are calm-seeking: you prefer activities that are quiet, calm, and safe.

You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider independence to guide a large part of what you do: you like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them.

I could pick faults with this analysis maybe. But broadly speaking, I was impressed by how well it managed to interpret who I am and how I think.

The Personality Insights programme isn’t the end of the road. It’s the start of it. AI is going to become perfectly capable very soon of understanding the very essence of who we are, how we think and what motivates us.

Imagine the implications of how when sooner rather than later, software such as this is incorporated into social media platforms, into blog platforms, into LinkedIn?

The currently clumsy counts of likes, followers, shares etc could be supplemented by rich data which permits far more nuanced metrics about us.

The way will be open for platforms to group, sort and rank us in ways that they have never been able to do before.

And the gamers who exploit the clumsy metrics will be put in their rightful place.

But only if the platform owners recognize and seek to rectify the simplistic and unhelpful ways they use big data to judge who is important and who isn't.

We have to hope they use this power for our good and not just theirs.

Why Linkedin best practices are a myth

By Neil Patrick

There’s no universal social media best practice, so stop looking for one

Last weekend over coffee, Gary Sharpe of Blue Dog Scientific and I were discussing LinkedIn Pulse. I think it is fair to say Gary has established himself as something of a renegade authority on LinkedIn.

He is an agent provocateur, evangelist, firestarter. He’s also a champion of fairness, a scientist and a driven man. He has an uncanny knack of spotting elephants in rooms that only when he points them out, do the rest of us recognise them.

Dr. Gary Sharpe of Blue Dog Scientific

Gary and I have shared values and core beliefs about things like authenticity, trust, collaboration, transparency.

We have also independently evolved entirely different ideas about how we use social media platforms in our day to day businesses.

It’s not that we disagree about much, but rather that we have totally different manifestations of our online presences.

Gary’s online presence mirrors who he is, what he cares about and what he wants to achieve. And so does mine. Neither of us copied any best practice or more prominent thought leader. We each figured out our own strategy that was right for us.

So who is right and who is wrong?

The answer is that we are both right. Because there is no such thing as a one size fits all solution.

But as friends and collaborators, we thought it would be interesting writing some content for each other. Gary has posted about our shared ideas and beliefs here. If you want to get some really authoritative insights into Linkedin, then you'll find much of interest on Gary's blog.

Why it is good that we are different

Gary has a great deal more courage than I in how he has taken on his mission to improve everyone’s user experience of LinkedIn. He ribs me that I am risk averse. I rib him that he plays with fire too much.

The fact is that we are each being true to our own personalities and backgrounds. If I tried to be Gary, I would inevitably be at best a weak impersonation and at worst, come over as a complete fraud. And vice versa.

Why I don’t post on LinkedIn Pulse

I write a lot of blog posts – there are around 400 on this blog alone, not to mention a ton of others scattered all over the web. But you won’t find me posting on LinkedIn Pulse. Gary on the other hand posts on Pulse almost daily. Often with biting critiques of the very platform he is publishing on.

My rationale for not posting on Pulse is this; I believe that LinkedIn like any corporation serves its shareholders first. Second it serves its customers. At best, its members (that’s us) come a very lowly third.

And as Gary has consistently reported, we users are getting an increasingly poor deal as LinkedIn continues in its quest to drive up revenues and profits. Worse, when we publish on Pulse we are providing our labours to LinkedIn for peanuts.

They acquire our content by the bucket load every day. We get an increasingly paltry compensation for our hours of toil. Our work may bring us a few comments and plaudits from our friends. We may trigger the odd new contact who likes what we have said. But this is a very poor ROI in my view.

My mantra is this:

Don’t build your house on rented land. Especially when the landowner has absolutely no vested interest in retaining your goodwill.

How I connect with people without using LinkedIn

We all want to find and build worthwhile professional relationships. This makes LinkedIn the natural platform choice for most of us. And just as Gary has built his following and network through his blog, LinkedIn and Google plus, I have built mine through my blog and Twitter.

I consider LinkedIn “high stakes” social media. The most senior people are rarely on the platform. They are too busy being successful. And most other people don’t want to be pestered by strangers. Either to connect or to read our latest musings, however profound or insightful they may be. People want choice and they want control. I get that. And I respect it.

Send out too many invitations to connect with people you don’t already know and you’ll potentially be classed by LI as a spammer, especially if you trigger a few IDKs (that’s when an invitee responds with the “I don’t know this person” button).

So I never invite connections from someone on LinkedIn I don’t already know from somewhere else. And the result is that I may have a smaller LI network than some, but it’s with people I like and who hopefully like me. This is the foundation for relationships which are meaningful and valuable.

Twitter on the other hand is low stakes. Every day I gain about 30 or 40 new Twitter followers. Most are what I call ‘randoms’ – people whom have absolutely no reason to follow me, because we have nothing in common. Yet within those 30 or 40 will always be 3 or 4 people I do want to get to know better. Many of these people subsequently request to connect with me on LinkedIn because I am nice to them on Twitter – I comment and interact with them. I share and favourite their posts that I like. Everyone is happy.

Why LinkedIn is still immensely valuable to me

A few weeks ago, the CEO of a business in my locality posted on LinkedIn he was looking for a board level marketing consultant. He wasn’t a first degree connection of mine, so despite this being exactly the sort of work I specialize in, I never saw his post. The first I knew about it was when people I was connected to started recommending me.

Within a few hours, four people who knew me well had all put my name forward. And sure enough this led to a meeting and the start of a valuable business relationship.

None of this happened because I had posted on Pulse. It happened because people in my network thought enough of me to put me forward. For all sorts of reasons, they had goodwill towards me.

We win goodwill not by brilliance, but by caring about others

The thing that each of the four people who recommended me for this gig had in common was that in different ways, I had helped every one of them previously with their work. In some cases, it had been advice, or I had previously worked with them. In others, it had been simple friendship and encouragement.

This was no clever strategy on my part. It was no brilliant post which established my authority. It was just people being nice to me, because in the past I had been nice to them.

My approach to social media works for me because it reflects who I am and what I want to accomplish. Not because I have copied anyone else’s strategy. And Gary does the same thing. So we are entirely different but also entirely the same.

Vive la difference!

Is social media a bubble and what does that mean for us?

By Neil Patrick

I love social media. But I’m worried it's becoming a bubble. Over the last couple of years, it’s been displaying some typical features of bubble-like behaviour.

We’re witnessing endless expansion of the main platforms. A rush of investor cash into ‘the next Facebook’. Irrational IPO valuations. A sense that we must get in or miss out. The rise of exploiters and gamification. Rising quantity but falling quality of content. And an ever rising number of scammers, fakers and fraudsters.

Gary Sharpe posted his take on this phenomenon the other day:

The evils of the social media scene have made the networks places of corruption, vice and crime. The levels of fraud, returns-on-incompetence, digital de-reputation, self-servicing, rip offs, anti-knowledge, time wasting, money-down-the-draining, preying on the weak/naive/desperate, copy-cats, liars, cheats and ill-informers has reached epic proportions.

Gary never minces his words!

I track stock market sentiments about social media platforms and there’s some definite nervousness showing especially around Twitter:

Only one platform, Facebook has managed to deliver the sort of revenue growth that investors expect to see. All the other platforms are struggling to meet this key objective.

Another of my respected online friends, Jesse Colombo, Forbes columnist, analyst, and bubble expert had this to say about LinkedIn way back in 2012: 

The general public, in my view, still has irrationally high hopes for the commercial success of social media companies and LinkedIn, one of the last vestiges of the social media dream, is expected by many to carry the torch for the sector going forward. These irrationally high hopes can certainly be seen in LinkedIn's astronomical 1,000 P/E ratio (source), which is far too rich even when taking into consideration the company's healthy expected 5-yearearnings growth rate of 64.69%. Richly-valued growth stocks, such as LinkedIn, have a strong tendency of plunging if there is even a slight disappointment in revenue and earnings growth.

Jesse’s cautiousness about Linkedin has proved to be well founded. Just look at the stock value since he wrote this in 2012:

Now I am assuming that you are neither an investor, nor a shareholder in social media.

But you are probably a user.

And if your use of social media has any sort of connection to your business or career this stuff matters.

So this post is about my take on what I see ahead and what we as users should do about it to protect our vested interests.

The outlook

First I see some consolidation ahead as undercapitalised platforms get acquired by others who see potential synergies arising from such acquisitions. The struggling share valuations make such acquisitions more and more likely. The worst case scenario is an event triggering total collapse of investor confidence in the sector. If you think that’s unlikely, think Lehman Brothers.

The implications

Weak revenue and profit growth is the principal reason for growing investor disillusionment with social media firms. This means that we can fully expect to see a steady rise in things we as users mostly don’t like – limited free access, more paid-for elements, more demands for personal data to access content and apps, more intrusive advertising, higher quantities of junk content.

More intrusive data capture

All data has value. And when you're a social media platform owner you have bucketloads of it. Better still you acquire it more or less for free. And you can secure pretty much unlimited rights over what you do with it - provided you describe these rights within a long and legally dense set of user terms and conditions which no-one ever reads, yet still clicks the “I agree” button.

More noise

We are already at saturation point. The sheer volume of content pumped daily into my social media channels is completely beyond my capacity to consume any but a truly tiny fraction of it. All our capacities to consume media are finite. But the supply is rising exponentially. The only possible mathematical outcome is a continual fall in the overall level of media consumption as a share of what’s produced. In other words, if you produce online content, you can only expect your overall consumption levels to fall in future.

What to do about it

So against this backdrop, there seem to me to be several sensible actions to take if any of your career or business interests are connected with social media:

Build real communities that share your beliefs

Having a million Facebook likes, a hundred thousand Twitter followers and 10,000 Linkedin connections, is going to become less and less valuable, unless they are a truly connected audience that has active goodwill towards you.

Earn your goodwill by being kind to your online friends

Goodwill isn’t created by people being so amazed at your profile stats, that they are wowed into following or liking you. Goodwill is created by showing people you care about them.

Focus on quality over quantity

The exponential growth of content and the finite capacity of people to consume it, means that content quality will become increasingly important.

Build trust

We don’t create trust by slick presentation, or shouting about how great we are, or bludgeoning people into submission with sales messages. We create trust by our actions that show we care about the people we are connected with. And by being willing to help them, whilst asking for nothing in return.

Own your own media

Social media platform owners have all recognised that crowdsourced content is a fabulous (free) source of assets for their businesses. By putting our work onto Facebook or Linkedin, we are surrendering our ownership of that media and placing our fate in their hands. And if you have any sort of online content, it’s essential that you own its domain. In other words “Don’t build your house on rented land.”

I’m not saying don’t post on Linkedin or Facebook, I’m just saying that if that’s all you do you cannot realistically expect to see value growth from these activities in future. The only sensible decision is not to have all your eggs in someone else’s basket(s).

Expect change - permanently

It’s easy to forget that social media has already had a string of casualties in its brief period of existence. Remember MySpace? Friends Reunited?

I believe that social media platforms have lifecycles. But because the pace of tech change is now so rapid and mature platforms so slow to change (Facebook is apparently working on introducing a ‘major innovation’ - a dislike button), I think there will be more casualties sooner than we might think.

When we try and predict the future, we are almost certain to be wrong. But I hope these observations are at least helpful in framing your own expectations and actions in the coming months and years.

I would love to hear your reactions to these forecasts!

Should we all turn off Linkedin Notifications permanently?

By Neil Patrick

The number one trap that inexperienced Linkedin users seem to get caught out by is its activity broadcast settings. In a misguided attempt to help members promote themselves, everytime you make a change to your profile, give an endorsement or follow someone, Linkedin will send an automated message to all your contacts telling them that you’ve done it.

Now I think automatic notifications are pretty annoying. But this particular one is potentially catastrophic for jobseekers.

How?

Just think about it. If you have just lost your job, you cannot show you are still employed in your old job (at least not if you don’t want to risk being caught out by your next employer or a recruiter who checks you out).

In this situation, many people engage in volunteering, contract work or consultancy whilst they are job-hunting. It keeps you sharp, earns you some money and expands your network. It also keeps the dreaded word “Unemployed” off your profile.

All good so far.

But here's where the trap surfaces.

Most people rightly update their Linkedin profile to reflect this change. And since getting hired is now a priority, it’s natural and sensible to make sure your profile is as good as you can make it. So you might update your LinkedIn profile to say something like your current position is “Owner of XYZ Consulting”. Update and expand details of your skills and experience. Reach out to people in your network and make new connections. Or whatever.

However, the moment you make a change to your job title and/or employer, the LinkedIn auto messaging kicks in and sends a message to everyone of your contacts telling them you’ve got a new job! Erm...

At a stroke you’ve broadcast to everyone in you network PLUS potential employers searching for someone with your skills that you are now off the market. But the reality is you’re just starting your job search. And that’s a disaster.

It’s often made worse by the fact that it’s fairly normal to make changes gradually over a few days or weeks as we attempt to revise and update our profile to make it more suitable for our current aspirations. And every time we do, out goes another notification to our contacts.

The problem is that the default setting for Linkedin profile broadcast setting is ‘ON’. Fortunately it’s simple enough to turn it OFF. It’s just that unless you know your way around Linkedin's settings, it’s not very obvious how to do this.

So here’s a simple step by step to do this:

1. Go to your account settings by clicking on your image in the top bar and click on "Manage" against the Privacy and Settings option:

2. Within the Privacy Controls menu, select "Turn on/off your activity broadcasts"

3. Untick the broadcast box when it opens and then click the "Save changes" button:

That’s it. You can now happily make changes to your profile without LinkedIn telling everyone about it every time you do this.

You can revise, enhance, expand, update and polish your profile as much as you wish without annoying your contacts with notifications about it.

There is an important footnote to be aware of however. Turning activity updates off will NOT stop Linkedin sending activity updates when you do these things:


1) Add or change your profile photo.

2) Connect with other LinkedIn members. However, you can effectively turn this notification off when you make a new connection by hiding your connection list.

3) Share content.

4) Follow a company.

5) Upgrade your account to premium. (However this doesn't apply to Job Seeker subscriptions).

6) Follow an Influencer, Channel, or Publisher.

7) “Like” shared content.

8)  Engage in group activity. However, you do have the option to turn this off within your Group settings; if you don’t, your activity will be posted. This is optional depending on your personal privacy settings.

9) Reach an anniversary in your career eg. When you have spent 3 years at XYZ Corp..


Nb Because I am fairly active on Linkedin, I keep my Linkedin notifications permanently OFF. I don’t want to fill my busy contacts' messages boxes with automatic notifications every time I update my profile – they've got better things to do than read automatic notifications from me I reckon…

What do you think? Is it time we petitioned Linkedin to change the default setting to Off?

Why Linkedin is stuck in the 20th century

By Neil Patrick

Yes I know. It’s a provocative headline. Sorry LinkedIn. But note I didn’t call this “Why I hate LinkedIn” (which I don’t) or “Why you should quit LinkedIn” (which I don’t think we should). But paradoxically, I do think LinkedIn is saddled with a 20th century take on the careers world. And this is why.

It all goes back to how LinkedIn was originally conceived. And that was largely as a tool for recruiters and headhunters to find people with particular skills and experience. Founders Jeff Weiner and Reid Hoffman recognized 11 years ago that the internet had yet to make much impact in the vast global business of recruitment and networking. And that the potential for an online platform that could assist this industry was immense.

It was launched in May 2003, three months before Myspace, one year before Facebook and three years before Twitter. And it reflected the world as it was then. Not as it is now.

In this post here I talked about the zero marginal cost society and the things we need to do to have a chance of career survival in it. The pace of technological progress is outstripping the abilities of humans and society to develop fast enough to keep up. And that’s a problem.

But let’s get back to why I think Linkedin is stuck in the 20th century.

It’s simple really. Linkedin mandates that we can only be one thing in our professional lives. We can only have one career and can only be specialists in one field. Of course I know that we can display all sorts of competencies on our LinkedIn profile. And sometimes this solves the problem. But not always.

Let’s say for example you are both a copywriter AND a chef. Not an unlikely possibility in this age when neither of these occupations pay especially well for most people. You can put both things on your profile. But you are immediately forced into a compromise. Are your a chef or a copywriter? Your networks for these two areas of your life are virtually completely separate. The skills for both have few overlaps. And the result is that you are forced into a compromised profile, in which you cannot shine neither as a writer, nor as a chef.

Linkedin only allows any of us to have one profile. That’s it. We cannot be more than one thing at one time. It’s like the old Russian proverb which says, ‘If you chase two rabbits, you’ll catch neither”.

This may be a constraint for us, but it suits LinkedIn’s business model and their main customers (recruiters). It also is a throwback to what I called the "world of ones" which I described here. In essence, the world of ones is a 20th century hangover in which everyone was expected to serve one career, one employer, one partner, one monarch and one God. And today, Linkedin wants us all to be just one thing at a time in our careers.

The zero marginal cost society, the second machine age, or the third industrial revolution, call it what you will. But the 21st century world requires adaptation,flexibility and rapid skills acquisition from its people. This means that overlaps in our career activities will become more and more of a necessity.

Not the one label, one specialism box that LinkedIn wants us all to fit neatly into. That’s a 20th century viewpoint and one which I think is passing its sell by date fast.

I suspect that one reason that LinkedIn wants things this way is to try and keep its network clean of imposters and fake profiles. That’s good for the whole community.

But it’s not helping the increasing numbers of us who are trying to succeed in more than one field simultaneously. Those of us who have more than one competency. And those of us who are attempting to build a wider and more diverse skill set to try and have a chance of becoming flexible and multi-skilled enough to survive in the 21st century.

And that's why I think LinkedIn is out of date already, just ten years or so after it's creation...

Ironic isn't it?

If you have any thoughts about this topic, do please share them in the comments below.

How to be perceived as a real leader

By Neil Patrick


Leadership is the number one competency employers seek today – but how can you prove you have it?

I've been investigating the data about the most desirable competencies employers are seeking today. Here is Indeed.com's list of the top 10 professional attributes that employers want to see in their employees, in order of importance:

1. Leadership skills

2. Interpersonal skills

3. Problem-solving skills

4. Self-motivation

5. Efficient

6. Detail-oriented

7. The ability to prioritize

8. Team player

9. Reliable

10. The ability to multitask

The list wasn’t particularly surprising. I suspect most people could second guess most of this even if it might be a little harder to guess the exact priority order the data reveals.

But the question this prompted in my mind was:

“If leadership skills are the most desirable competency, how can an employer discover what an applicant’s true leadership skills are and more importantly, fairly assess and rank competing candidates against this criteria?”

Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama in 2014 by Pete Souza 

Mike Sweeny at MAS Recruiting provides this answer to the question:

Organizations use a variety of assessment tests and/or tools to attempt to determine leadership as well as other personality traits in candidates. Overall, the results are very mixed.

Recruiting is not an exact science. You can't "test" your way to hiring people with strong leadership skills. I advise your hiring team to focus on a candidate's leadership track record. Ask each candidate to relate how they demonstrated leadership in various scenarios during their job history. Prior to the interview, have your team develop specific examples that relate to the job at hand. For example, the position being interviewed for may be a production supervisor in a manufacturing facility that has a poor quality record. During the interview session, have your team probe candidates to discuss their history at solving similar problems.

Past work history, combined with solid reference checking, is the best way to hire people with leadership skills. Assessment test may provide additional data to help in your hiring decision, but they are no substitute for probing past work history.

Fair enough, but this approach has several weaknesses:

1. Only candidates selected for interview are assessed against the number one competency

2. The measures are subjective and not quantifiable

3. References are unlikely to be able or willing to provide a great deal of reliable data on this characteristic, they after all are unlikely to have any data which records, let alone quantifies their employees’ leadership skills.

So job seekers are left with a quandary:

The number one most desirable personal attribute has no independent meaningful measure attached to it. And this means there is little we can do to provide independent verification of our leadership competencies.

To look at this in another way, there is no way currently in which HR and recruiters can reliably measure candidates against their most desired attribute.

This is a catastrophe. Especially when we consider that real leaders are not usually those who shout the loudest about themselves. The greatest leaders influence not by shock and awe tactics, but by a consistent influence, inspiring those around them by their behaviours and attitudes in a humble and collaborative way.

But there’s good news. Things are changing and they are the greatest opportunity yet for employees to demonstrate their leadership in a way that no-one can ignore.

Time and again, it is repeated that job seeking is a sales and marketing job, and the most successful candidates approach it in this way.

The rise and rise of digital and social media and ‘big data’ (I promise that’s the last time I’ll mention that in this post) are at last reshaping how HR and recruiters approach their hiring processes.

This revolution is having profound impacts. And it has given rise to something that it’s of immense value to marketers and job seekers alike.

It’s called social proof.

Businesses now use this all the time to prove their credibility in their online and offline marketing. The types of proof vary according to the nature of the business. And the immense value of social proof is deployed within the marketing tactics of most leading businesses today.

Hotels and restaurants covet their user ratings on online media. Writers seek favorable reviews of their books on Amazon. And at a more personal level, we all wish to achieve and retain a good feedback score from our buyers on Ebay.

The huge value of social proof resides in that it reflects what others think of us, not what we say or think about ourselves.

HR and recruiters are at last waking up to the potential this unlocks for them to get better and more quantifiable insight about candidates.

And it’s not rocket science to work out what this means.

Let’s work through a simple example. Faced with two otherwise identical candidates, which person would you assess as having the greater leadership skills?

Person A

• LinkedIn : 800 connections, 12 recommendations and 250 endorsements

• Twitter : Following 300 people, followed by 1500 people

• Klout score : 60

Person B

• LinkedIn : 200 connections, 1 recommendation and 30 endorsements

• Twitter : Following 750 people, followed by 150

• Klout score : 35

At this point I am sure that some of you will be howling in protest along the lines of, “these measures are unreliable and misleading because…” (place your protest of choice here).

And I would probably agree with your arguments assuming they relate to the facts that these measures are all prone to weakness and exploitation or gaming.

But I’d remind you of my opening point:

Presently there is no measure of leadership that is helping recruiters and employers reliably assess, measure and compare candidates against their expressed number one competency – leadership.

Yes the metrics I have selected are flawed. Yes they can be manipulated – (if you spend a really long time doing so) and yes they don’t tell the whole story.

But in the absence of anything better, what will employers do? My prediction is that these metrics will become more and more important. And therefore we ignore them at our peril.

As I have said repeatedly here and elsewhere, there’s no quick fix. The only way to capitalize on this situation for employees and job seekers is to invest steadily in building your online profile.

And for most of us this means a fundamental reassessment of how we prioritize our daily tasks. Yes it’s another thing to add to your already too long to do list. Yes it won’t deliver instant results. But it’s the only way you’ll become person A instead of person B.

Like it or not, your whole career future may hinge on this.

Why more and more people are dishonest on their resumes

By Neil Patrick

Are you more honest than a banker? Under what circumstances would you lie, or cheat, and what effect does your deception have on society at large?

Over the last couple of weeks, I've looked at the rise and rise of lying. Specifically on LinkedIn and then last week on resumes.

And I suggested why I thought this might be happening. But I’m not a psychologist and I wanted to understand better why people lie about themselves more and more in their professional life.

After a little more research, I think I have found some answers. And here’s what I think is going on.

Most people are mostly honest most of the time

There are very few out and out frauds and cheats. People who deliberately set out to deceive and cheat at every single opportunity. Equally, there are very few people who are scrupulously honest in every single aspect of their lives. And if you don’t believe me, think about the last time a friend or spouse asked you for feedback on something they had made or done. Are you always brutally honest?

Of course you are not…your wish to make the other person feel good (or at least not so bad) far outweighs your worries about being slightly deceitful in your response. Which brings us to the second point which is that: 

Lying is circumstantial

The situation we are presented with may increase or decrease our propensity to lie or gild the truth. And the factor which has a profound effect on this is the perceived distance between our actions and the people that our lies affect. The greater the perceived distance and noise that obscures our vision, the greater our propensity to lie.

In the job hunting situation, this is why so many lies are exposed at interviews. It’s much easier to tell a lie on LinkedIn or our resume, than it is to repeat that lie face to face when questioned about it. The evidence shows that time again, when challenged face to face, people ‘fess up.

The growth of digital media opens up our ability to communicate with more and more people. But it also creates a sense of greater separation between us and others when for example we are looking for a new job. If we see a job vacancy online, do we feel as close to the employer as we’d do if we saw a card in a shop window asking for new staff to help out? 

We try to rationalise our lies

Most people wish to think of themselves as being good and honest. But when the temptation to lie becomes too great to resist, we try to make ourselves feel better about it, through rationalization. Like, saying to ourselves, “How much harm can it really do?”, or “It’s not really anything much”.

The stakes influence our choices

In a low stakes situation, our propensity to lie is also low. But as the stakes increase, so the propensity to lie does also. And if we are desperate for any reason to get a new job, the stakes are high. So our propensity to tell lies is increased. Ironically, this fact actually supports the choice that recruiters and HR people often make to choose only from the ranks of those currently in jobs. I still don’t think it justifies such a policy, but it does have this attraction to employers.

The stakes were also high in the financial world pre the 2008 collapse. The distance between the lies and those it affected were great. The actions which we now know caused the collapse could be rationalized however spuriously. So we had a perfect set of conditions for cheating. Overlay incentives which reward the wrong behaviors and we have the perfect recipe for the 2008 meltdown.


Online job applications and Linkedin are a perfect set of conditions to encourage lies

Looked at in these ways, the epidemic of resume and Linkedin lies can be explained and understood: 

• The deception is thought of as small and therefore can be justified 
• The distance between the liar and the people it harms is seen as great 
• The rewards for getting away with it are high 

And last but not least, if we are told that everyone is doing it, then there’s a peer pressure effect which creates a vicious circle. If everyone else is cheating, then I need to as well, or I'll be disadvantaged.

What do you think? Are we headed towards an ever increasing downward spiral of lies, or is there a hope for a return to greater truthfulness? And if so, how might it be achieved in the digital age…? Do please post any thoughts below.

I'll return to this topic again after I have gathered some reactions and ideas.

Finally here’s some really insightful background from Dan Ariely, one of the world's leading authorities on human motivation and behavior, which amongst many other insights explains just why so many financial people deceived us and themselves for so long.

What’s the best way to write your LinkedIn Profile?

By Neil Patrick

The web is full of opinions about the best way to write your LinkedIn profile. And they mostly make one big mistake. They assume that there is a single ‘correct’ way…

Last night I enjoyed a great debate with two friends who I think are well qualified to give an expert view about the best way to write a LinkedIn profile.

One has over 10,000 connections on LinkedIn, so you might call him a power user. The other is a full time professional resume writer and LinkedIn profile writer.

Our discussion was all about the best way to present a LinkedIn profile. Is there a single best way, or does it depend on the individual, i.e. different strokes for different folks?

Should it be written in the first or third person?

Of course we’ve all read and written a good deal about the best way to write a LinkedIn profile. We also have between us many years' experience of helping others with their profiles. So we compared notes and experiences and set out to debate some of these ideas and hopefully arrive at some fresh conclusions.

The debate started with the question, ‘What’s best, writing a LinkedIn profile in the first person, i.e. I am..., or the third person, i.e. he/she is...?

We focused not on the mechanics of content as an SEO-orientated writer might, but rather the impression a profile makes on its readers. At the core of this question is a dilemma:

How can we show off our accomplishments and expertise without sounding conceited and frankly like a bit of a jerk?

The first opinion that tumbled out was that if someone is making great claims about their successes, and uses the first person, then the reader is given one of two impressions. Either, if they have reason to trust the profile, they believe it and think “Wow, this person is a real high flyer”. However, if they are a more skeptical reader, they are inclined to think, “What an arrogant show off…I don’t believe half this stuff!”

But if we have genuinely achieved some amazing things in our careers, then it’s only right that we should present them on our LinkedIn profile. So how can we do this without appearing conceited?

Using the third person dissolves skepticism

We felt that in this case, using the third person is a better tactic. Whilst we still may never satisfy the biggest skeptics, at least our profile reads as if it were written by someone other than ourselves. So that’s a way to appear less conceited. The downside however is that it makes us appear less approachable and somewhat aloof. But if you have a great many outstanding achievements in your career, this may be the best compromise.

Facts are facts, adjectives are merely opinions

The second idea we debated was the issue of fact vs. opinion. I happen to believe that a fact-based profile is a good choice for those who have significant career accomplishments.

So what’s a fact-based profile? Well it contains nothing but simple facts of course. It doesn't have hyped-up meaningless adjectives like ‘driven, results-focused, inspiring, dynamic’. As I wrote about here, I think these words are really dangerous, unless they can be backed up by independent evidence.

If you say you are dynamic, what is your metric for measuring that? Compared to whom are you dynamic? Might it just be a lazy way of trying to spin the fact that, “I get bored easily, rush about and neglect details?" So the best way to turn this weakness into a strength is to say I’m ‘dynamic’? Sorry I’m not convinced!

So the second point is that adjectives are really risky. Careless use of ones which are simply there to puff up the impression you create can very easily do the exact opposite and just make you look arrogant and/or sloppy.

But I really am an authority and expert…

But let’s say you are a genuinely highly respected expert in your field and people think very highly of you. Well don’t say it yourself, use what others have said instead. Eg. ‘Described by xyz magazine as one of the foremost thinkers on renewable energies’. Doesn't that sound a whole lot better than, ‘I’m a leading authority and expert on renewable energies.’?

You might be thinking, "that’s fine, but no-one has written anything favorable about me ever." Really? I think you are deceiving yourself. Think back to your appraisals when you were given positive feedback. Remind yourself about how you were introduced last time you spoke at a big meeting or conference. Think hard enough and you’ll find plenty of true and relevant material.

It's a fact. Most people just don’t give enough thought to their profiles. They rush through them, eager to get on to the next task in their to do list. Don’t. Give it quality time and care. But don’t worry you have to get it perfect from the start. Make it as good as you can. And come back to it to refine it when you next have some downtime.

Early stage career people can still have content rich profiles

The third point was that for those people who are early on in their careers, they’ve simply not had enough time to rack up extensive accomplishments. But even so, there’s still plenty of keyword rich material you can use in your profiles. Like the name of the software you used on your final year college project; the name of the business you worked for in your summer vacation, the cities you spent time in during your gap year.

The bottom line we concluded is that there is no ‘correct’ one size fits all answer. And then because we all had beers in hand, our discussion turned to other subjects not so relevant to this blog!

So next time you read a load of tips about the best LinkedIn profile, I hope these points help give you some perspective. If you agree or disagree with anything in the post, do please post your thoughts in the comments below.

The easiest LinkedIn search rank tune up …ever!

By Neil Patrick

Want to improve your LinkedIn search rank without spending a heap of time? Here’s the best tip I know…

Most professionals I work with want to have a high ranking on LinkedIn search against the keywords that are relevant to what they do.

That’s a good goal and one that is worthy of pursuit.

The trouble is as I have talked about elsewhere on this blog, there are not too many shortcuts to achieving this. You need to build a sizeable quality network. You need to share content. You need to engage. All this takes time.

And because time is at a premium for almost everyone these days, this goal gets little or no attention dedicated to it. And the result is that most people’s profiles stay stuck on page 9 or whatever of a search.

But there’s a simple and powerful way to increase your search rank position on LinkedIn, which takes no time at all.

Whilst I cannot tell you the precise workings of the LinkedIn search algorithm (and outside of the LinkedIn organisation, neither can anyone else), most search algorithms include components which count and appraise the number of links from elsewhere on the web that a page has.

And your LinkedIn profile page is no different.

Now you say, “Ah yes, but I’m not famous or high profile enough to have such attention”.

Well neither am I!

But my name appears all over this blog. And a few other people have been kind enough to mention me on their blogs and websites.

All I do is try and make sure that everytime my name appears elsewhere on the web, it appears as a link to my LinkedIn profile page.

That’s it!

It’s not a spammy SEO trick. It’s not deceitful; it’s even helpful to anyone who might want to know a little more about me for any reason.

So everytime your name is about to appear online in the context of you as a professional, just take a couple of extra seconds to convert it to a link to your LinkedIn profile page.

If you do this as matter of routine, over time the links will mount up. And unless your Linkedin peers also know this, your search rank will be on a steady upward trajectory!

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

How recruiters use LinkedIn to headhunt

By Neil Patrick

What goes on inside the head of a headhunter?

Last week I met up with a recruiter who is an old friend of mine. He’s been a recruiter for over ten years and for once we had time to just chat. That’s a rare situation, so I took the opportunity to quiz him about how he and his colleagues use LinkedIn to search for job candidates.

Here’s what I found out:

Recruiters use LinkedIn all the time to find the candidates they seek

If you want to be recruited, you need to be on LinkedIn. But that’s simply not enough. You need to be an active rather than a passive user.

According to a survey carried out by Bullhorn, 48% of recruiters ONLY use LinkedIn for candidate searching vs. 1% that use Twitter and Facebook.

So it’s clear which social media platform job seekers should prioritise.

What’s more, on average, recruiters add 18.5 new LinkedIn connections every week. And you want to be one of them.

ACTION: If you’re not already on LinkedIn, set it up now. If you already have a LinkedIn profile, the following tips will tell you what to do to become more visible and impressive to recruiters.

So how do you go about this?

LinkedIn isn't everything, but it is more or less universally used by recruiters. Recruiters often have several thousand first degree connections, which expands to an immense network of people at the second and third degree.

ACTION: You need to have your relevant recruiters in your LinkedIn network. I know that’s harder to do than say, so I have provided a cunning strategy to help you do this here.

Recruiters use keyword searching by geographic location

Recruiters use LinkedIn's Advanced People Search function to find people within a certain geographic radius who possess the skills, education or experiences they are seeking for their clients’ roles.

Now if you perform a search yourself using keywords, your results will be different to a recruiter’s because the LinkedIn Search algorithm customizes your search results to you based on your network.

A partial solution to this is find a friend that doesn't have your in their LinkedIn network, but is a member of LinkedIn and ask them to search the keywords relevant to your area and find out where you come in their search results.

Next look at the top half a dozen results and see what their profiles, group membership and postings look like. These will give you a template to apply to your own profile and activities.

What matters is that within a radius of say 50 miles, you rank on the first page of Linkedin results when someone carries out a search for your key skills.

ACTION: Don’t just fill your profile with keywords. Instead, incorporate them into the bullet points that describe who you are, what you've done and how you have achieved it. Monitor your rank position, and aim to get to page one. If you are on page one, already aim to get as close to top as you can.

Recruiters join industry and skill-based LinkedIn Groups, and monitor the discussions

They use this tactic to quietly observe what leaders are talking about, and who else contributes to the discussion. This way they can see who really has the knowledge and the skills that they seek. Moreover, they can see who is actively sharing it.

ACTION: Join LinkedIn groups relevant to your skill set and industry to keep up with what is going on, and make constructive contributions to the discussions.

Recruiters follow thought leaders and key influencers

A significant part of a headhunter's value is knowing "who's who" in a particular field.

My friend freely admitted that his biggest personal asset was his huge network of contacts. But he doesn’t just build contacts randomly. He targets people that he can see are the thought leaders and biggest contributors to specialist insights.

So recruiters collect contacts and this is a key reason that you should always aim to nurture your relationship with a recruiter, even if you have an experience which doesn’t initially result in you getting hired.

ACTION: Follow the people whose status and specialism will reflect well on you. Don’t worry if you are not a thought-leader yourself…yet. Your association with those that are will build your profile and make you more visible to recruiters.

Recruiters follow their connections' LinkedIn behavior

Part of the headhunter’s art is understanding the timing of what is going on in people's lives, and the signals they give off which demonstrate that they are open to an approach.

Recruiters are alert to people's LinkedIn behavior patterns to determine when someone is about to begin a job search. Sometimes, a tip-off is obvious, like when a person checks out a recruiter’s profile… or, when someone who has been quiet suddenly starts making frequent status updates.

ACTION: Often people are nervous about letting their current employer or others know that they are in the market for a new job, for good reason. Get smart. You don’t have to proclaim “ I am looking for a new job” to put the right signals out to just the people that matter.

Not all recruiters ignore those who are currently unemployed

Yes it’s true that many recruiters are only interested in those that currently have jobs. It’s unfair and it’s not the best decision in my view. But it’s a fact.

But not all recruiters think like this, especially in the wake of the recession, when so many talented people found themselves unemployed through no fault of their own.

ACTION: Whatever your situation might be, focus on the positive. Demonstrate your knowledge, and your leadership. Capitalize on the fact that you probably now have more time than usual to invest in some powerful personal brand building. 

You can use the latest features of Linkedn to upload presentations and videos that showcase your skills and insight. These can really set you apart, so use them.

Present yourself as a professional (who happens to be currently unemployed), rather than as a person who used to be whatever and is now out of work.

Recruiters don't want to guess

Don't make recruiters have to guess about who you are and what you have to offer. You know exactly who you are but they don’t. And they don’t have time to solve riddles. But avoid the temptation to try and present yourself as someone you are not. Sooner or later you will get found out and you’ll be wasting everyone’s time including your own.

ACTION: Be completely clear about who you are and even more clear about what value you can deliver in your LinkedIn profile. Keep your profile up to date and build long-lasting relationships with quality recruiters.

I have written a post which reveals some secret strategies for using social media to build valuable relationships with recruiters here. Just remember that everything you do online is key to building better professional relationships in the real world.

See it as nurturing your career asset rather than just solving today’s problem and you’ll not only land your next job faster, you’ll be creating a long term career asset which will pay you back over the long term too.

How to make LinkedIn deliver what YOU want

By Neil Patrick

Linkedin holds the key to a world of opportunity for all of us, if we can just learn to accept one simple truth...

I discuss LinkedIn a lot with my offline network.

I also chastise many of my professional friends for their failures to take it seriously. The main reason I do this is that they only think about it when it is too late. Like when they lose their job, or are struggling to progress some aspect of their career or business.

LinkedIn cannot and will not deliver benefits for you if you only turn to it when you desperately need help…unless you have invested already for months and years beforehand.

But if you have already made that investment, then you’ll have a network of relevant connections that can you can turn to. People who know something or someone that you need.

And if you have paid it forward, investing in helping others in your network, with absolutely no demand for anything in return, you’ll have their goodwill too.

But it’s not a mechanical process. It has an element of randomness about it for sure.

A few months ago I happened to see a particularly erudite and insightful comment posted on LinkedIn. I wasn't in any way connected to the poster. So I simply clicked ‘like’ and wrote one sentence of praise.

Total time invested? About 60 seconds.

The poster happened to be a very senior investment banker. He invited me to connect which I did. Several emails and phone calls flowed from this over the following weeks. We had an easy rapport. We got to know each other properly. We discovered how we could collaborate and be of value to each other.

We now have a very productive business relationship, where we provide real value to each other.

In the real world, our paths would never have crossed.

Today, I know I can pick up the phone to him at any time and discuss anything where I think he can be of help.

That’s just one example. I have dozens more similar stories I could tell you. Every relationship is different, but they all started in the same way…a more or less random encounter on social media.

And this is why I think people struggle with seeing the value of social media for their careers. If you’re in manufacturing, you think in term of raw materials, processes and the value of goods you can sell. If you are more financially focussed, you want to see the return on every investment you make. If I spend this…what do I get back?

But this misses the point entirely. I accept that 90% of the connections I make on LinkedIn will never create any value directly beyond some friendly exchanges and perhaps a tip off here and there. But by the same token, 10% of them will be priceless. I just don’t know which ones. And I never will.

Pharmaceutical firms view their businesses in a similar way. They invest billions every year in research and development of new drugs. And they know that 90% or more of them will never get to market, let alone earn them any revenues.

But they also know that they only have to have one which does make it through to generate millions or even billions of revenues in the future. And so they continue to invest steadily in potential new treatments, in the full knowledge that most will fail.

It’s exactly the same with LinkedIn. You only need one job, one person, one exchange to transform everything and change your prospects. One change to your profile can transform how others see you. One comment can lead to a world of opportunity.

And the only way that will happen is if you invest steadily every day in a way which makes sense for the outcomes you are seeking.

If you are mindful and focussed, you will achieve the outcomes you seek.

Just don’t expect LinkedIn to deliver unless you have committed to it with a purpose from the start. And paid your dues.

How to get your social media working for you in your job search

By Neil Patrick and Marcia LaReau

What does your online profile tell people about you?

I think by now, everyone knows that when you are job hunting, you need to make sure that your social media profiles contain nothing that might show you in an unfavourable light.

That’s the trouble with social media. Because it’s in the public domain, what you post there can and most likely will be examined by the recruiters and HR people you come into contact with.

Don’t let it ruin your chances of securing that job!

In case you have any doubts about why this is vital, the stark facts are that today, 92% of companies use social media for recruiting and 3 out of 4 recruiters check candidates’ social media profiles at some stage in the recruitment process.

So this isn’t optional anymore. It’s mandatory.

If you want some tips on cleaning things up, this post by David Hunt contains some useful (and amusing) tips on what to do.

But that’s just the first step. You also need to make sure not just that your social media doesn’t embarrass you, but that it works hard for you to make you stand head and shoulders above your competitors.

This means you must understand what recruiters are looking for when they search your social media profiles.

And it’s not what you might think.

Misunderstanding this is what tempts many people into either telling lies on their profiles (especially LinkedIn), or trying too hard to turn their profiles into advertising copy which is full of overblown adjectives about how great they are.

Both of these tactics are a bad idea. Do not fall into the trap!

A commonly overused adjective is the word ‘passionate’. You’ll see it all the time on Linkedin profiles which are trying too hard.

My good friend Marcia LaReau at Forward Motion US explains how this backfires:

“I have a passion for project management.”

Hiring professional thinks:

“Really? Is that the message I’ll find when I check you out online? Is that what you talk about to your FaceBook friends? Is that the kind of books you are reading? Do you go to the PMI chapter meetings? (PMI=Project Management Institute) No? Well … as a hiring professional, I thought you said it was your passion. Hmm … I’m not seeing it so that raises questions for me. I’d better take a closer look.”

So what ARE they looking for?

Simple: hiring professionals are looking for a consistent message. When inconsistent messages are found, it brings up questions that beg for answers.

For fun: Check out some of the FaceBook timeline covers and see if that content matches what the owner indicates they want to do next in their career … be prepared for a shock.

So the good news is that you don’t need to come up with some fancy sales copy, or try and inflate your achievements and status.

Back to Marcia, who provides this great step by step process anyone can follow:

First, answer these questions: 

• What kind of job do you want? Teacher, Marketing, Theatre Technician, Retail Operations, Medical Office Manager, Finance, Engineering, Business Analyst, Writer? 

• In what kind of a setting? Large corporation, non-profit, small business, manufacturing? 

• Do you have specifics about how you work best? Work-at-home, small team, large division, lots of direction, minimal direction? 

• What is most important to the companies that you want to hire you? Make a list. Don’t be tempted to think you can skip this step. 

Next: 

Check your cover letter and résumé.Do they both send a message that you are right for the jobs for which you are applying?

Now:

 

• Find three LinkedIn profiles of people in your industry that are doing what you want to do. The closer the match, the better. Take time with this step. Find people who have been careful with their profile. They should be profiles that make you think, “Wow. I’d like to look like that! I’d hire that person in a second.” Use what you learn to create your profile. 

• Be completely honest in your content. And remember that hiring professionals look first from 5,000 feet and then focus on what’s most important to them with regard to skills, experience, and cultural fit. 

Finally: 

Positively expand your online image: 

• What books are you reading about your industry/expertise, career? Not reading – why not? Post on LinkedIn (look at what others in your interest groups are reading.) 

• What kind of postings are you making on LinkedIn? Stop sharing pictures of animals, brain teasers and other valueless content. Start sharing the insightful content you read about your professional area of interest. 

• What industry-related meetings do you attend? How about classes you are taking. Share your activities on FaceBook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter. Can’t find a meeting – create one. Get 4 or 5 job-seekers who have your “passion” and meet weekly to keep current in your industry. Check your local Meet-up Groups. 

• Check your LinkedIn Groups – are they the groups that relate to your career goals? Are you active in your groups? If not …that’s not good. It sends a mixed message: “I like this stuff, but I’m not really doing much with it.” So much for your “passion”… 

• Check out your timeline image – what is it saying? It’s a huge first-impression-smack-me-in-the-face message. What’s yours look like? Here’s mine…while you’re there, if you found this information helpful, consider clicking on “Like”. 

• Do an Internet search on your name and derivatives of your name. If you find unwanted publicity, check out the article on Digital Dirt. 

• Check your cover letter and resume again to confirm that your online image is consistent with what you send to hiring professionals. 

This is the right way to develop your online image. It doesn’t involve lying, bragging or cheating. Leave that to your competitors, who will get found out.

In the words of a well-known vitamin ad…it’s ’You, but on a good day’.

Your Linkedin profile – why you should tell the truth

By Neil Patrick

Last week, my good friend Axel Kőster at the Manhattan Group and I were chatting about the impact of social media on the recruitment industry.

At one point, Axel mentioned that many of the job applicants’ LinkedIn profiles he sees turn out to contain inaccuracies. Usually they are small, like exaggerating the importance of a project the person worked on. But sometimes they are huge, like alleging a qualification which the person hasn’t actually completed.

He also sees profiles where the person doesn’t list their full employment history. Others add time to show a longer length of stay in their appointment and remove positions which didn’t work out. And one of the most common exaggerations is a more senior title than the person actually held.

And Axel’s experience is verified by research. A study by recruitment firm Employment Office of 300 employers, found 82% of respondents believed candidates lied or exaggerated their skills and experience on their LinkedIn profiles.

The reasons this is happening are many, but most fall under these headings:

• The jobs market remains fiercely competitive and people will try to squeeze any advantage they can even if that means exaggerating a bit on LinkedIn 

• Many LinkedIn users approach LinkedIn primarily as a networking tool. Their profiles reflect this approach and if they are not actually job hunting, merely seeking to connect with others, they see no foul in being ‘liberal’ in how they present themselves on LinkedIn. 

• There are no direct penalties for anyone who chooses to tell lies on their profile. 

This is counter-productive for both applicants AND employers.

How can this be?

Over at the Marketing Eye blog, Mellissah Smith tells this story:

A current employee brought to my attention a previous unpaid intern, who then became a one to two day per week marketing assistant during her University holidays. She was only a casual employee, yet stated the following on LinkedIn: 

I Managed up to 30 clients (the portfolio in that particular office didn’t have 30 clients, she had no management duties whatsoever and was given tasks from time to time, but was strictly a marketing coordinator who at times had the opportunity to put together the first draft of marketing copy, that then went to an in-house writer and marketing manager) 

I Managed up to 8 staff (the office didn’t have 8 staff and certainly as a marketing coordinator, with senior managers and the owner in the office, it is impossible she managed any staff at all). From time to time she gave unpaid interns work to do like following people on Twitter, search engine optimization or even having a go at writing the basis of a marketing strategy, but certainly NEVER did she manage any staff.

Since she left in January, she wrote that she worked fulltime as a marketing coordinator for 1.1 years at Marketing Eye. She has had two jobs since leaving in January – possibly the lies caught up with her but her equally impressive resume continues on LinkedIn. She had fulltime hours for 8 weeks only and that was broken up with 3 weeks holidays which she was not paid for because she was a casual.

So where’s the damage?

If the applicant gets away with their deception, then surely it is the employer’s own fault for not being sufficiently rigorous in their due diligence to verify the accuracy of the claims made? But this isn’t the point. The damage caused goes way beyond the costs of hiring a person whose abilities are not as great as you thought.

How come?

Here’s another case from Mellissah at Marketing Eye:

Last year I hired a person who on paper had exceptional qualifications and upon ringing her last supposed supervisor, received a glowing report.

We employed her, and within days, realised that she had never written a marketing strategy, engaged in any public relations activities, organised the booking of an advertisement, done any social media, direct marketing or any marketing other than working on a trade booth and coordinating companies who put their brands on Coles’ shelves.

Clearly, her reference was a friend and she did not have any experience in marketing. She later admitted to this confirming she took the job because she wanted to gain experience.

At a high-salary level and due to the fact she had worked with big brands, we let her loose after training her on the administrative side of consultancy and helping her get up-to-date with client work. She also took over from an exceptional marketing manager who excelled in every area of marketing and was completely thorough in every aspect of working with clients and in her hand-over – which made the issue even bigger.

The result: We lost clients, our reputation was in tatters with the clients she was let loose on and with some people, we will never be able to buy back that perception of our brand.

Inaccurate LinkedIn profiles do untold damage to employers and their reputations. 

The stakes are clearly high for employers. It is imperative that they do not place too much faith in a LinkedIn profile and must carry out thorough verification of the facts before hiring a candidate, even if their references are glowing.

But it goes beyond merely the hiring process. Your former employees haver the potential to do damage to your reputation AFTER they have left your organisation. So there’s a good argument for keeping on tabs on what your previous employees say on LinkedIn they did whilst they worked for you.

But what are the risks for employees of lying? 

There are no obvious downsides are there? I’d argue to the contrary:

Unlike your resume, everyone can see your LinkedIn profile … whereas the only people who see your resume are the people you choose to send it to. So if you are lying on LinkedIn you are much more likely to be found out.

Your LinkedIn profile must be treated with care and attention. Just as a sloppy profile suggests poor attention to detail, an incorrect one brings your trustworthiness into question. You are declaring to the world that this is who I am, this is my experience and these are my accomplishments.

Once you have been exposed as being careless with how you present yourself, your status as a diligent professional is at once brought into question. And that’s not helpful if you make your living based on your skills and credibility…

Finally, make no mistake that employers and recruiters are both getting wise to such tricks. LinkedIn lies might get you onto a short list, or even an interview… but you are more and more likely to get found out as recruitment processes adjust to close down this weakness. Don’t waste your time and other people’s…it will do you no good in the long run.

As for employers, it is clear that:

It’s your reputation that your former employees are representing on their LinkedIn profile. When they move to their next employer, it’s your brand that they are ambassadors of. Do you really wish to be seen as a business that for whatever reason hires untrustworthy individuals?

In this increasingly connected world, it makes sense to think not just about your own business, but the wider business community you are a part of. It pays to be a responsible citizen. By taking the time to do thorough reference checks, you are not only protecting yourself, you are also doing your bit to expose those who try to cheat and make them think twice about continuing with their deceptions.

Last, but not least, the internet is as good or as bad as the behaviours of the people that use it. See yourself as part of the solution, not a perpetuator of the problem. So, next time you are considering giving someone an endorsement on LinkedIn, ask yourself, ‘Do I really know this person deserves this?’

If you have experience of or opinions about this topic, do please share them below.