"Getting Started With LinkedIn In Your Job Search"

For the past month, a good deal of my time was consumed developing the November Pass-Along Materials content pack -- a special report on "Getting Started with LinkedIn In Your Job Search." This 41-page guide enables resume writers and career coaches to brand (put their name on) a step-by-step user guide for clients to help them set up their LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn currently has more than 120 million members, and they are adding new members at the rate of two new profiles per second. That's amazing.

You may be asked this question by job seekers: "Why do I need a LinkedIn account in addition to a Facebook profile?" As LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner put it in an Oct. 4 interview with Charlie Rose, "Why do you need an office when you have a house? Or why do you need a suit when you have sweat clothes?"

LinkedIn's purpose is "Connecting talent with opportunity on a massive scale," said company co-founder Reid Hoffman in the Rose interview. What else is a job search except "connecting talent" (your client) with opportunity (the ideal job)?



As resume writers, we know our clients should be on LinkedIn. But we also know that the majority of them don't know how to get on there -- or what to do once they are! (Have you read Jason Alba's excellent book, "I'm On LinkedIn, Now What?" If not, you should!)

Having a step-by-step guide for clients to help them develop and enhance their LinkedIn profile can be a valuable resource. You can provide it as an incentive to sign up for your mailing list. (I just recently uploaded a bonus -- 35 tweets you can use to promote your free LinkedIn report.) You can edit it to remove the very basic sign-up information and leave the information about importing contacts, joining Groups, participating in Answers, and following Companies and give it to clients who have purchased your LinkedIn profile development or enhancement services. You can use the report as a script and handout for a LinkedIn workshop, teleseminar, or webinar -- it's a great "getting started" guide. Or you can break it apart and use it on your blog in a series of articles on how to build your network on LinkedIn.

The "Getting Started With LinkedIn In Your Job Search" guide will only be available until Dec. 5 in the BeAResumeWriter.com Paid Member Resources section. After that date, I'll make it available for sale on Resume Writers' Digest's Store, but the cost will be substantially more than the $10 you'll pay to get it now on BeAResumeWriter.com. (Plus, your $10 also gets you access to "Resume Writer's Online Marketing Guidebook: A 21-Step Guide to Taking Your Resume Business Offline to Online," which retails for $14 itself on the Resume Writers' Digest store. You'll also get access to the complete back issue archive of Resume Writers' Digest, Expert Interview recordings and transcripts, and much more.)