Happy Holidays! Job Search and Networking Tips for December

Brand Career Management Monthly Tip Sheet – December 2018

Hello Everyone,

Happy holidays! No matter what occasions you honor this time of year, many people are celebrating. We send along seasonal wishes and hope you enjoy spending time with family and friends as 2018 comes to an end. An ongoing debate that continually comes up this time of year, is whether or not you should stop your job search efforts during the holiday season.

Along with many of my colleagues, I am a strong proponent for not slowing down your career management and job search efforts right now. There are opportunities abounding if you make the time to find them. The articles shared and the LinkedIn Tip of the Month in this issue are meant to encourage you to make the most of your career and job search right now.

On another note, I want to give you a heads up that next month, you will see some changes to our Monthly Tip Sheet. We will be changing the name and frequency for 2019 (to every other month). Toward the middle of 2019, we will survey readers to ask for your input, so we continue to send a newsletter that meets your needs in 2020 and beyond.

Happy holidays,

Paula

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LINKED IN – TIP OF THE MONTH
  Reach Out to Say Hello Through LinkedIn We encourage you to set aside 30 minutes each week this month to reach out to your 1st degree contacts on LinkedIn. You can easily find these contacts by clicking on My Network on the main dashboard after logging into LinkedIn. When you arrive on your network landing page, you will see the word Connections with the total number of all of your contacts to the right. If you click anywhere on the word Connections or the number next to it, it will display all of your 1st degree contacts. Once on the page of your contacts, you can order them by most recent, first or last name. You can also search by name (type the name in the search box). To the right of each name listed, you will see the word Message in a blue box. If you click on that icon, you can write privately to that person. Take a few minutes to send some holiday greetings out to your network. This is a great time of year to reach out to contacts and let them know you are thinking of them. To save time, draft a short note in Word that explains what you have been up to during the past year and asks how that person is doing. You can cut and paste this verbiage into each message and then customize it for each specific person. This will allow you to be efficient but also keep your messages personal and authentic.
USEFUL ARTICLES WITH LINKS
  There are many things you can do around the holidays to further your career and job search, as you can see from the posts below. Look for ways to network with others and seek opportunities within the hidden job market this month. Career expert Alison Doyle shares eleven reasons you should search for jobs during the holidays. My esteemed colleague, Barry Davis, says it well on a recent blog post about the holidays and your career development. Next Avenue contributor, James Hu, wrote a Forbes post sharing even more tips for job searching during the holidays. Stacey Lastoe of the Muse, gives advice on pain-free ways to help your career during this time of year. I wrote a blog post in 2016 sharing four things to consider during your holiday job search (this advice is still true).
UPCOMING EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
  On December 5, I presented “Helping Women Succeed in Salary Negotiations to Move Their Careers Forward and Create a More Diverse Workforce” at the Middle Atlantic Career Counseling Association (MACCA) Annual Conference. On Thursday, March 21, I will be speaking about “Figuring Out Your Next Career Move” at the Broadneck Branch of the Anne Arundel County Public Library from 7 to 8:30 pm. This event is free and open to the public.
Paula Brand - MS, GCDF, CPRW, JCTC
Paula Brand – MS, GCDF, CPRW, JCTC, Global Career Coach & Consultant | LinkedIn Expert | Speaker, Trainer, Facilitator 
As an experienced Career Counselor & Coach, my mission is to inspire you to manage your career by embracing LinkedIn! Reach your career goals faster by letting me show you how to use LinkedIn more effectively. By staying on top of the constant changes, I can save you time and make this process much easier. Write to: paula@paulabrand.com or call me at 443-254-8173. If you received this from a friend and would like to receive your own Monthly Tip Sheet, please click here to sign up.

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