Don’t Forget to Update Your LinkedIn on the Way Out!

When you change positions – whether it’s to move on to a new opportunity or to go sit at home while trolling the job search sites – you have a million and one things to remember.

I covered a few of them here, but now that I’m just a few steps away from the door it’s time for me to update my LinkedIn profile.

Many people only think about their LinkedIn profile when they get those pesky emails reminding them that people are trying to connect with them. However, there are so many more uses for LinkedIn that can be beneficial to you and your business.*

When you change jobs, your LinkedIn profile can be an easy way to let people know that you’ve moved on. You can link to your new job’s website, add in your new position description, and even connect with new industry groups that might now interest you. If someone in your business world is trying to track you down, this gives them an easy way to find you.

If you’re looking for a new position, your profile serves as a great platform to let your network know. By posting status updates on your job search, you’re reminding people that you’re out there looking. Also, by updating your “Summary” and “Experience” areas, you’re making sure that everyone has the most current information on the skills that you offer a potential employer.

Every contact you have – from clients, vendors, colleges, former coworkers, friends, and current & prior employers – can have the potential to help you find a new job. Also, many recruiters search LinkedIn for people with relevant skill sets and experience pertaining to specific positions available.

Quick tips for using LinkedIn to Find a Job:

  1. Create a profile if you don’t already have one. Be sure to fill out all the sections (or at least as many as you can). It also helps to include a photo so that your contacts can easily recognize you.
  1. When completing your Experience section, be sure to use keywords and skills that are relevant to your job and industry.
  1. Grow your network by connecting with other members. Search for connections from all areas of your life; your alumni network from college, previous coworkers, vendors, etc. The more connections you have, the better chance that someone will know of an opportunity.
  1. Ask for recommendations. Yes, I know I need to work on this one myself!
  1. Post status updates about your job search.
  1. Use LinkedIn’s job search page. It’s a bit clunky to use, but it shows if you have any connections in common with the company who posted the position. Speaking of connections, when you find any job take a minute to check LinkedIn to determine if you have any connections there.

So, on that note I just updated my own LinkedIn page to reflect my new job situation: click here to see my updated LinkedIn page.   

If you have any questions or comments, let me know. Also, if you’ve worked with me at one of my previous positions I’d love it if you’d write me a recommendation!

*I smell a new blog post coming…

Like what you see? Share me with your friends!

Saying Goodbye

Today marks the start of my last week at my current job. After almost exactly 6 years of working for this company, it feels a bit bittersweet to be saying goodbye.

At this point, most of my loose ends are wrapped up. I have exit interviews scheduled for Thursday afternoon and will not be returning to work on Friday due to out-of-office meetings.

So it would be appropriate for me to send out a “goodbye” email to the employees within the next couple days. Which gets me to thinking, what on earth am I going to say?

I certainly can’t tell the truth! Talk about burning bridges, if I unleashed the bitterness of my feelings on losing my job it would be like shooting a missile at bridge and obliterating it! In my imagination, my farewell email calls out those people who have wronged me and brings to light a bunch of dirty secrets I’ve been sitting on for years. There are lots of stories about people who do just this, including this one.

The email is entirely inappropriate. However, it also has a lot of really great points (cough, cough).

Anyways, my desire to “Keep it Classy” means that I’m stuck writing a polite and non-inflammatory email to my co-workers.

For anyone else who needs to write this type of email, here are some tips:

• Keep your message short and sweet. If you’re losing your job and not leaving on your own accord to go to another company, don’t bother going into details. There is really no way to keep it nice when referring to a lay off, so take my advice and avoid it altogether.

• Say something nice about your co-workers. Even if you hate them all and hope they go down in a fiery blaze, pretend that you like them. Mention projects you worked on or events you enjoyed together. Say something simple like “I’ve enjoyed my time with [company] and have appreciated the opportunity to work with you.”

• Give them some way to contact you. If you don’t want everyone to have your personal email address, that’s fine. However, I think it’s a great idea to include your LinkedIn account and encourage them to connect with you. I also plan on including my Facebook account link, so that interested people can ‘friend’ me if they’d like.

Depending on the size of your company, it is up to you whether you decide to send the email to everyone, or just those who you are close to. In my case, I’m going to pick and choose my recipients and then keep the “To” list as a BCC.

Here’s my email that’s going out on Tuesday:

Hi everyone –

You may have already heard the news, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know that this is my last week here at [company].

I have enjoyed the last 6 years here and appreciate having had the opportunity to work with each of you. Thank you for your support over the years and I wish you all well in your future endeavors.

Please keep in contact, by connecting with me on LinkedIn here:
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=26067821&trk=tab_pro

You can also “friend me” on my Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/julie.dellinger

Thank you all,

Julie

Short.
Sweet.
To the point.

Now that’s keeping it classy.

Like what you see? Share me with your friends!

I’ve scheduled time to relax… in 3 days

Sorry I’ve sucked at blogging for the past week or so – the Big Move totally took over my life. In fact, it’s still dominating about 85% of my thoughts and 100% of my free time.

To sum it up, I’m exhausted.

I’m not just a little tired – I am mentally and physically exhausted to the point of nonsense.

I’m so tired that I closed my eyes for about two seconds and almost fell asleep in 695 traffic. I almost cried while reading my friends Facebook updates about dogs about to get euthanized (ok, that would have probably happened anyway). I’m breaking into giggling fits for no reason. Ditto with the wanting to bite people’s heads off. When I answer the phone, people immediately ask if I’m sick or crying.

You get it; I need a nap and a vacation.

The good news is that after weeks and weeks of sorting/organizing/packing, we’re finally moved into our new place. Even better, all of our furniture fits. And as of about 10:00 pm last night, we have working Fios TV and internet. So let’s all give a big cheesy group ‘high five’ for that.

There is still a ton of stuff that needs to be done before I can really call the new place “home” or even “temporary home” for now. I’m one of those people who can’t relax until everything is in its place and we still have stuff to do before my shoulders can leave their new favorite spot by my ears.

Old House
We’re almost totally done with the old townhouse. My husband needs to go by one last time to pick up a few things left in the shed tonight. The huge pile of trash behind the house also needs to be dragged out to the curb for tomorrow morning’s trash pickup.

The new owners will be doing a walk through tomorrow morning, so hopefully they find everything to their liking. It is super clean, since I spend about 5 hours cleaning the place from top to bottom after we moved out. The lawn and front flower bed also looks fantastic, since my husband dealt with them yesterday.

We did have a bit of a stress/scare when it came back that the townhouse deck is a few inches too long and goes into the ‘no building zone’. This is news to me, since the deck has been there for at least 15 – 20 years (I’ve only been there 8). I wasn’t really sure what they wanted me to do about it, but I did offer to take a chainsaw to the side of the deck to shorten it if that would make them happy. Apparently it didn’t because I haven’t heard anything about it since.

Settlement is TOMORROW! Part of me (ok, about 82.5%) feels like something is going to happen and the contract is going to fall through. It’s like I can’t really let myself get excited until I exit that building tomorrow afternoon with a nice check in my purse. Yes, that’s true, we actually MADE MONEY off this house sale even though the market is crap right now. Amazing. 

New House
As I said, the furniture is in place, which is a huge help. Also, most stuff is unpacked since I did that little by little when I started moving a week ago. However, we still need little stuff done like: hanging curtain rods and curtains, put together a snazzy kitchen cart from Target that comes in about 10,000 pieces, putting  up pictures, cleaning out the spare room (currently a home for orphan boxes and miscellaneous that needs a home), etc.

The most important thing is that I need to find time to go to the grocery store. We have no food at our house and you know it’s bad when it’s gotten to the point that we’re actually sick of eating out!

So by the end of the week (most definitely by the weekend), I should be able to finally sit down and put my feet up. I have some TV to catch up on, some books calling my name and a comfy blanket to curl up in. After weeks of work, it sounds like heaven to me. Then, next week (my last week at my current job) I can throw myself back into my job search.

Like what you see? Share me with your friends!