Laura's Winning Ideas

LINKED IN – 20 minutes

Recruiters hang out at LinkedIn. You and your colleagues will scatter to the winds over time and LinkedIn is a good place to find them again. So, create a profile on LinkedIn.com. Get the free account.

Keep it basic at first. You’ll be able to enhance it and change it as you perfect your offering. For now, just get it on-line. You will receive a URL for your own page. Put this on your business cards (see above).

GET THIS BOOK – 5 minutes and $12.00

Damn Good Resume Guide by Yana Parker

There is an industry specializing in books on job searching. You can look through those later. For now, you need this slim volume so you can get help writing your best resume.

LINKED IN Stage 2 -  2 hours plus occasionally  over time

Start acquiring connections. Search for your current firm, and other firms for which you’ve worked. Invite people you know to link to you. DON’T invite folks who won’t recognize your name. Anyone you invite can click a button to say they don’t know you, and LinkedIn will ban you with just a few of these.

Then search your alma maters (you can search by the years you were there) to find classmates.

Send me an invitation to link.

I always write a personal note when I send an invitation. I don’t want to take chances that my name isn’t an immediate trigger for them. Just a sentence about finding them on LinkedIn and remember when you worked together on the widget project, or commiserated over the term project in Econ class.

For the time being, accept all invitations to link. There are some folks who work LinkedIn very hard to acquire links. Having a few of these folks in your network will be helpful when you start using LinkedIn for your job search.

Later, you’ll be more selective. I tend to reject invitations from recruiters, but then, I’m not using LinkedIn for a job search. Your experience may vary. Needless to say, meaningful links are more valuable than strangers. You will have difficulty using a recruiter to get your job inquiry forwarded to someone, which is the purpose of having a link. (more on this later)

Who is important?

Writers craft an email for distribution to their mailing list, and then send it around for comments and suggestions. Edits are made, the letter is still within a reasonable length and ready to go.

Everyone who reviews the very last version is under 26 years old, and your audience of customers averages 50+ years old.

The new logo is prominent. The letter is tweaked to fit, and the font is squeezed down just a smidge. The merge file is tested, and everyone will be greeted by their first name.

The message is sent out and folks wait for the phone to ring.

Some days I’m not in the mood for squinting to read email, and this is one of those days. If someone wants my attention, they are competing with the other 200 messages I get each day. If I have to stop and monkey around to enlarge the font on a message, it had better be from someone paying me, not someone soliciting me.

And if the font is less than 8 points, they are toast. In this letter the font of the message renders between 6 and 7.

The legible parts of this letter are the logos at the top, and the author’s very important name, title, address, phone, email. Oh yes, and then there’s the Mission Statement at the bottom in nice large text. I get the message, and I didn’t even have to squint to read the letter.

Don’t do this.

Your fortune may be changing.

If you sell to the Federal Government, your firm may have been rebuffed in the past with ideas to help the agency.

However, the time to polish up those new ideas is upon us. The new administration has made it clear they will reward new ideas and encourage change. I expect this is not the usual political rhetoric and will be backed up with funding.

Times are ripe for change. Goodness knows, we are in some trouble and need to find new ways to do many things if we are to succeed. Agencies willing, but suffering from lack of an environment to entertain change, now have their chance.

Even the folks reluctant to consider new ideas will feel pressure to build a political cover for themselves as a change agent. You may be surprised by who is willing to hear you out, and help you.

State and Local government agencies may feel this wave later, and it may be less strong, but infrastructure will see increased funding as the federal government prints money to get people moving and back to work.

If you chair or attend your business development meetings, consider whether your firm should re-consider promoting new ideas NOW to your clients and customers.