National Career Development Month and managing your career well

Brand Career Management Newsletter – November 2020

I know with so much going on right now, it can be hard to focus on your career, but you could say that managing it well is more important now than it ever was. November is National Career Development (NCD) Month and November 18th is NCD Day. To honor this holiday, the articles shared will focus on career development topics. In addition, I recently wrote a blog on actions you can take to enhance your career, even during trying times like these.

Warm regards,
Paua

P.S. Please forward this to a friend, if you like what I have to share. Anyone can sign up for the Brand Career Management Newsletter by going to the bottom of this page.

I’m excited to say that this past summer, I was invited to a webinar run by LinkedIn staff for career professionals. At this event, they shared resources, data, and new features with a focus on helping job seekers. For this month’s Tip of the Month, I will relay what was shared that day.

First off, if you didn’t know, LinkedIn has been on a mission to build an Economic Graph that maps a digital representation of the world’s economy They have a related portal that provides a variety of analyses and reports including their Workforce Confidence Index. There is a wealth of data related to today’s world of work in these two places.

During the webinar, the presenters shared evidence connecting LinkedIn profiles to positive outcomes:

• Your profile will receive 21 times more views with a picture
• If you have at least five keywords in your Skills section, you are 27 times more likely to have your profile viewed by others
• 87% of recruiters agreed that skills listed on a profile are a “critical factor” when sourcing candidates
• You are 30% more likely to get hired through LinkedIn if you have skills on your profile

Specifically, for job seekers, LinkedIn teamed up with Microsoft to provide a variety of new features. This portal connects you to its three highlighted offerings:

• Free learning on job search topics
• Interview preparation tools that offer AI powered feedback on specific interview answers
• Free learning tied to jobs that are currently in-demand

Other enhancements to assist job seekers in landing the right opportunity include:

• LinkedIn now tags remote jobs so you can narrow your search using this filter (the number of remote jobs listed on their site increased 155% from March to July)
• To save time and focus your efforts, you can target companies that are actively recruiting and urgently hiring and filter jobs to identify those using LinkedIn’s “easy apply” process
• You can take professional skill assessments and display your results. So far, they seem limited to technology skills (for example Adobe software and AutoCAD)
• An “Open to Work” badge is available to publicly display that you are open to opportunities. They said they have been getting a great response from employers about this new feature.  I think I’ll need to see how it plays out as, I’m not sure that plastering your availability is going to work well for job seekers

Finally, there are two new features that are only available on the mobile app and not specific to job search. One offers the ability to have your name be spoken out loud so others can hear how to pronounce it. Another allows you to post stories using images and videos.

I truly appreciated being invited to this webinar and I hope that it might happen again in the future. It’s my hope that you benefit from these features so please try them out and see which might help you.

With so much uncertainty these days, it can be tempting to think that you shouldn’t make career plans. However, I suggest taking time to reflect on where you are in your career right now. If you are not where you would like to be, think about what you would like to be different. These articles can help get started in this process.

Let’s start with Laura Garnett’s post in Forbes on five questions you might ask yourself about your career and this 4-minute post by Anisa Purbasari Horton in Fast Company sharing five signs that you may need to change your career plan.

If you like to influence children’s careers, this article explains why you shouldn’t ask kids what they want to do but what problems do they want to solve. The same rationale could be applied to adults as shared in this post on figuring out your next move by Dr. Dawn Graham in Forbes.

Finally, careers are very important, but they are only one aspect of your life. For those who lean toward overcommitting to your job, Janna Koretz of HBR shares advice for not letting work take over your whole identity, especially in high-pressure fields.