By Walter Sabo
Sabo Media
CEO
NEW YORK — LinkedIn is the “serious” social site that lets clients, employers and financiers get a snapshot of your professional life. Review your LinkedIn profile. Use these simple steps outlined below to make it a powerful tool for getting you more work.
Know your audience. Today, employers and clients don’t want cute, funny, vague or egotistical. They are looking for service, knowledge, courage, dependability and prudence.
Every entry needs to be figuratively wrapped in a Brooks Brothers suit regardless of your skills and position.
Six action steps to a stronger LinkedIn profile
- Never be out of work. Start a company. Have a project. Whatever is listed as your CURRENT activity, be busy.
- When citing your past jobs list very specific achievements, not just your job titles. The achievements should indicate skills, growth, profits, rating shares, sponsors or clients satisfaction. Use clean, sharp photos with each job position if possible.
- Do not be cute. You are not a “guru,” a “dude,” a “master,” “a fill-in” “a weekender,” a “substitute.” You are not a “DJ.” To the rest of the world a DJ is a person who works at a bad club or wedding hall. You are an executive or a creative executive. You are an “air talent,” an “audience engagement expert” a “star.” You didn’t do “air shifts” you are a “show Star.” Serious money goes to serious individuals.
- Associate yourself with the biggest names and brands possible. When you starred, produced, promoted, did you work on a campaign or promotion for a company like Pepsi, Chevrolet, Walmart? If so, say so. List every major brand you honestly helped to make into a bigger business. You tagged commercials, conceived promotions, wrote copy, sold copy on the air and made appearances for those brands — that’s how you helped them grow. Claim credit.
Was your company run by Mel Karmazin, Lew Dickey, Bob Iger, Les Moonves? Say so. Those are brands and executives that transcend radio and put you on a much larger corporate stage.
In the job headline, use call letters and ownership, not station slogans. “WXXX-FM, Miami. Cox Radio, South Florida” not, “Zeta 4, the Gables.”
- Employers and clients are looking for results. They want to see how your actions improved the business. The more results you show, the more companies will find you to be an attractive candidate including companies far beyond the radio industry.
Did you hire people who did a great job? Spell out the positions you filled and the goals that were met as the result of your initiatives. No one knows unless you tell them.
You may not think your skills are not applicable beyond the radio industry but they are, You know how to make phones light up, engage a crowd, drive eye-balls to social media, spot crowd trends, sell any product, write compelling copy, record audio books, teach a language, run complex audio software and entertain a million people while you’re alone in a room. That’s a big deal. Be a big deal.
- Since most people in radio have worked for quite a few companies, explain the transitions. Spell out that you moved to a larger city, a more competitive salary, a better situation for your family.
CONTACT INFO. Stunning how often I’ve checked for CONTACT INFO on LinkedIn and it’s not there. If the CONTACT INFO is blank, you can’t be trusted and you won’t get hired. Look for that tab and fill it out including an address and a phone number, not just an email. If someone likes your profile, they want to call you right now.
PROFILE PICTURE. Get rid of the bargain store clothes and the bad haircut and have a professional photographer take professional, tight headshots. Focused, sharp, neat. Then give it to a real graphic artist and let Photoshop do what nature did not. Use the same picture on every social site.
And I hope you call me: 347-380-1581. Thank you very much.
Walter Sabo of CEO of New York City-based media consultation firm, Sabo Media. He can be phoned at 347-380-1581 or emailed at walter@sabomedia.com.
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