Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Using LinkedIn to Build Your Expert Brand

Have you Googled yourself recently?  Does what you saw reflect what you do best?  Does it even reflect you personally, or someone else with your name?

Even if you are gainfully employed, a robust online presence is astronomically important for networking and career development purposes.  This online presence should ideally include content that showcases why you are an expert in a particular area so that whoever happens to be looking wants to know you and work with you.

I used to exclusively recommend that people purchase their domain names (e.g. alexandralevit.com) and develop full-fledged personal websites.  I still think that’s a good idea, but for those of you who are resistant or just don’t want to pay the $20/year, the good news is that LinkedIn, which I first wrote about here in 2010 has evolved to serve the same purpose.

To tackle the question of how to use LinkedIn to build an expert platform, I tapped Glenn Raines, who does this for a living via his business, Social Media Moves.  Here are his best tips for getting started:

Devise a content strategy

According to Raines, you must first consider the art, which is shaping a narrative that conveys one’s value to a potential employer, partner, collaborator, or client.  The science, on the other hand, involves adding frequently searched subject matter keywords into your LinkedIn section titles and skill descriptors.  Use LinkedIn to share material related to your subject matter expertise, such as a new blog post, a new book you’re reading, or a key takeaway from an industry conference.  Post an activity update at least once a week to stay on the radar of your LinkedIn followers.

For more from Raines, check out my full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Rule #1 in Business: It’s Not About You

Every day, I get at least three requests from people who want to write guest posts on my personal blog.  I have given up responding to these people.

Why?  Because looking at my blog for 30 seconds will tell you that I don’t do guest posts. I have never done guest posts.  I may include tips from other experts, but the writing is always my own.

Yet people continue to ask me, because THEY want to do a guest post.  They are making this initial interaction all about them.  It doesn’t matter what I want or need.

This is not a good strategy for building relationships with people, especially managers and co-workers who have no vested interest in doing what you say.

What’s in it for them?

You might have heard the story of the salesman who greets a prospect by announcing, “I want to tell you about a great new product that has a thousand new features, all for the low price of…” The prospect stops listening as soon as she hears the words I want and slams the door in the salesman’s face.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to enter a negotiation or interaction with someone by expressly stating what you want. As I said in this post back in 2010, no one cares – they want to know what’s in it for them.

For my advice on how to proceed, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Book Review: Dorie Clark's Reinventing You

I first met Dorie Clark at a Deloitte-sponsored talent management conference last summer.  Since then, we have kept in touch, and I am continually impressed with her insights around career development and personal branding. 

For those who don't know, Dorie is a former presidential campaign spokeswoman and a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and the American Management Association's publications. At the young age of 18, Dorie graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College, and two years later received a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.  She's currently a marketing consulting for companies like Google, Yale University, and the Ford Foundation.

As you might gather, Dorie has reinvented herself professionally a bunch of times, and there's no one more qualified to write the book, Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. 

Some of you might remember that I also wrote a book on career reinvention called New Job, New You. I like Dorie's addition to the field because its strategies are easily accessible to anyone and everyone.  Career change and even personal branding can be daunting propositions, and people may hold off on both thinking that they have to involve a major life overhaul.  Dorie shows that this is not the case. 

One of my favorite recommendations in the book involves a personal 360 review.  Dorie suggests learning about your strengths, passions, and areas for development by gathering a group of friends in your living room for a few hours one evening.  By asking the people close to you for their honest views about your potential, you will receive the gift of a fresh perspective far more powerful than simply relying on soul searching.

Dorie Clark has gone places, and she's still going places.  Let her take you along for the ride and show you how to go places yourself!

Are You Selling Yourself as Well as You Could?

For several years, I’ve been recommending that people focus on being able to succinctly and effectively highlight their accomplishments because others (i.e. recruiters, managers, partners) will judge them mostly based on their past track record of success.

It turns out that’s not exactly the case.

What You Could Do is Better Than What You Have Done

According to Heidi Grant Harvorson at the Harvard Business Review, when we are deciding who to hire, promote, or do business with, it turns out that we don’t like the Big Thing nearly as much as we like the Next Big Thing. We have a bias — one that operates below our conscious awareness — leading us to prefer the potential for greatness over someone who has already achieved it.

In a series of studies conducted by Stanford’s Zakary Tormala and Jayson Jia, and Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton, it is clear that human beings demonstrate an unconscious preference for potential over actual success.

In an experiment related to the workplace, hiring managers evaluated two equally impressive candidates who varied on one factor:  one had two years of relevant experience who scored highly on a test of leadership achievement, and the other had no relevant experience but scored highly on a test of leadership potential.  Interestingly, the evaluators believed the candidate with leadership potential would be more successful at the new company than the candidate with a proven record of leadership ability. The researchers documented this preference in laboratory and field experiments, using targets ranging from athletes to comedians to graduate school applicants and measures ranging from salary allocations to online ad clicks to admission decisions.

For more, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

In the Workplace, Appearance Still Counts for A Lot

In June of 2012, the University of Virginia announced the resignation of its president, Teresa Sullivan.  Faculty members received an e-mail indicating that the dismissal was due to a “philosophical difference of opinion” with the institution’s governing board.  Sullivan had been with the university just two years, and in the opinion of some, had been let go for little or no reason.

College presidents are chief executives too

In the New York Times Magazine, Sullivan’s allies suggested that she didn’t fit the governing board’s image of a chief executive.  Sullivan’s fashion sense, which was typically academic, had apparently offended the higher-ups.  During Sullivan’s performance review, she received comments that her dress was too informal. “I don’t know what the unprofessional dress was,” Sullivan told the Times. “I do live here at the university, so when I’m working out or doing something else here, people will see me.”

Would the same criticism be given to a man? Here what I think over at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Are You Promotion Material?

According to a study from the Center for Talent Innovation, 268 senior executives cited executive presence, or being perceived as leadership material, as an essential component to getting ahead.  In fact, executive presence accounted for, on average, 25 percent of what it takes to get promoted.  Co-sponsored by Marie Claire, the research initiative was led by my colleague Sylvia Hewlett, who often studies the barriers faced by women in achieving workplace equality.

Executive presence: the two magic words

Apparently, the desire for work/life balance and other oft-cited female challenges are not actually the reasons so few women make it to the C suite.  The principal factor women are neglecting is executive presence.  The majority of female executives don’t understand it and don’t know how to display it effectively.

According to the study, the three areas that comprise executive presence are:

• Gravitas:  The ability to project confidence, poise under pressure, and decisiveness.  Sixty-seven percent of senior executives surveyed cited gravitas as the core characteristic of executive presence.
• Communication: includes excellent speaking skills, assertiveness, and the ability to read an audience or situation.  Twenty-eight percent of surveyed executives felt that good communication telegraphs that you’re leadership material.
• Appearance:  While how you look and dress does affect your executive presence, it’s not nearly as critical as the first two factors.  Only 5 percent of the executives thought appearance was the #1 consideration in the decision to promote.

In addition to having a strong executive presence, sounding educated is essential if you want to ascend to the next level.  Nearly sixty percent of executives felt that unprofessional, uninformed speech detracts from executive presence.

Check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog for more on how to learn executive presence.

The Solution for People Who Suck at Sales

Some of you know that I’ve been spending the last year honing my sales strategies, and boy has it been tough.

See, I’m not in a situation where I’ve traditionally had to sell.  My first book, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College, was released to great media attention and sales while I still had a full time job.  If someone read the book and came to me asking if I could speak at their event or consult for their organization, that was gravy.  I already had money, and I didn’t need them.

Then, however, I left the stable job and started my own business.  At first things were okay, because I was still getting a lot of inbound inquiries.  Incredibly, I still had enough to keep me busy through the first two years of the recession.  But in early 2011, something shifted.  My pipeline dried up, and I suddenly had to go out and proactively interest potential clients in my offerings.

I got turned down a lot.  I’m still getting turned down a lot.   It’s nothing personal.  I’m just “not in the budget.”  I’ve thought long and hard about why this is the case, and I’ve concluded that even though my services solve a critical workplace problem (brain drain caused by Boomer retirement, retention of skilled younger employees), my prospects don’t yet view this problem as a priority.

According to Eric Slife of SalesGravy.com, the primary reason prospects reject sales proposals is that an offering is not tied to their Critical Success Factors (CSFs), or things that keep the business afloat.  In a down economy especially, companies will do what they have to to protect their CSFs, and everything else will fall by the wayside.

We are all salespeople to some degree.  Even if you’re not selling a product to an outsider, chances are you still have to sell an idea to an internal constituency or a promotion to your boss.  Given that, I thought it would be helpful to share some of Slife’s tips for mapping your offering to a CSF and increasing its priority:

Change the perception of your offering

Too many salespeople are still selling value added benefits and opportunities.  Unfortunately, that’s not what’s making people pull the trigger on decisions now. Your prospects are focused on lost sales, lost profits, and surviving.  In other words, fear is their number one motivator.  You need to position your product or service in such a way that brings some peace of mind to your prospect’s worried state.

Head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog for lots more!

Turn Your Temp Job Into Full Time Gold

When most people think of temp work, they picture young professionals with no or very recent college diplomas working a series of low-level administrative jobs.

I’ve recently learned that this perception is very outdated.  In New York City recently, I sat down with Rebecca Cenni, CEO of Atrium Staffing, to talk about how the new kind of temporary worker is actually a mid-level professional who takes on a short-term consulting assignment in order to bolster her portfolio and fill in the employment gap while looking for a full-time job.

According to Rebecca, large and small organizations are increasingly turning to temporary workers as a way to mitigate the risk of hiring full-time employees in what is still considered a down economy.  By working with what Rebecca calls an “applicant-centric” staffing agency, professionals at all levels can assess the market and their individual options.

For many, those options might include a 2 week-3 month short-term assignment at an established company that might be more difficult to break into as a full-timer.  During the stint, their benefits would be paid by the staffing agency.

The question I’m sure you’re asking, though, involves how you can turn a temporary assignment into a full-time and more stable job. 

Understand what you’re getting into

Unlike full-time employees, you will initially lack context regarding how you are expected to perform and why.  To combat this, research the company ahead of your assignment and ask your staffing counselor or recruiter to tell you about how to get along in this particular culture.

Check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog for more from Rebecca.

Coming Up with the Idea is Only Half the Battle

Life in a large organization isn’t always easy for people who want to solve problems.  Usually, the issue isn’t coming up with a solution.  Rather, it’s convincing other people that the solution is viable and should be implemented.  And whether you’re sitting on a blockbuster idea yet or not, now is the time to consider your strategy.

Build Your Reputation in Advance

In order to diminish the perceived risk of an unusual or out-of-the-box idea, the person proposing it has to be a proven entity.  That means that you’re established at the organization and have done well there.  Your boss trusts you and you are on the short list of employees with whom everyone wants to work.  You are known as the one who pitches in during a crisis, and the one who is a champion of smart internal initiatives.

For many more ideas on selling your ideas to the higher-ups, read the full post on the Fast Track blog.

Too Much Honesty Can Come Back to Haunt You

Olivia had been working in what she termed “offensive” corporate environments for over 10 years, and she was at her wits end.  While working for one consumer healthcare giant in particular, Olivia was criticized for wearing clothing to cover a disability and pulled out of a major client account because her boss wanted it for himself.

Since the company’s HR department spent a lot of time and money developing a new employee survey, Olivia decided to be honest when she received it.  The intention seemed earnest enough, after all, and Olivia thought her feedback would help the company reach its goal of increased employee engagement.

In the comments section of the survey, Olivia noted the lack of empowerment among junior staff as well as the overly critical eye of management.  She cited examples of inconsistent expectations and unkept promises.

Although the survey was not anonymous, Olivia never imagined she would be called out for being insubordinate.  She received a “talking to” from her boss as well as her Group Head and was treated like a naughty child until the situation was so intolerable Olivia felt she had to leave.

The Truth?  You Can’t Handle the Truth!

It’s tempting to use company evaluations, your own performance reviews, or others’ performance reviews to express your true opinions about the organization or its people.  I urge you to use discretion, because blatant honest comments – especially when your feedback is negative – can wreck havoc on your career if they fall into the wrong hands.

For guidance on how to avoid getting in trouble due to too much honesty, have a look at my post on the Fast Track blog.