Just joined LinkedIn or is your profile in need of a makeover? Start making LinkedIn work for you!
1. Update your SuccessFactors and Workday profile
Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and comprehensive. Be nice and specific and mention the skills you’ve developed on projects. Imagine yourself looking at your profile from the outside – are you a multi-skilled generalist or are you the ultimate specialist? If a recruiter or potential employer is going to find you in a search key words are essential. If you have worked on cloud integration mention the interface by name ‘BOOMI integration experience’ is more specific and clearly identifiable than ‘cloud integration’. From a recruiter’s point of view, we are given a brief we need to fulfil so don’t hide your skills behind vague terminology.
2. Join groups
For a start join the SuccessFactors and Workday Contract Jobs – Freemont Associates LinkedIn Group! We post the latest contracts but we also want to hear your news, start conversations and answer questions. We’ve got over 700 members, all of whom are SuccessFactors and Workday / HRIS professionals sharing knowledge, experience and opportunities. There are, of course, plenty of other relevant LinkedIn groups out there like the SuccessFactors and Workday Global Community. Look for the frequency of posts and the content to gauge the active groups – many groups are quickly started and abandoned so don’t automatically join every ‘relevant’ group. If you want to build your SuccessFactors and Workday network you need to join the conversation – post relevant articles, ask questions and comment on other members’ postings.
3. Be active
Consistent posting of updates on your own feed or in groups is a great way of demonstrating your engagement in the industry and your own expertise. Often people feel that they need to post daily or even hourly updates! This strategy (unless you are a total social media addict) is doomed to failure. Work and life tend to get in the way and then you realise after a burst of fervent posting you haven’t posted at all in the last month. A better, more sustainable plan is to post weekly. Add a diary entry that on a specific day of the week you will go on to LinkedIn and interact in some way. Post a link to an interesting, industry relevant news item, comment on a post in your groups or even just ‘like’ a post. Make LinkedIn a habit, ensure your profile is constantly updated and engage on a regular basis.
4. Be discerning
There are some people on LinkedIn with thousands of contacts and although it’s tempting to connect to as many people as possible, a truly valuable SuccessFactors and Workday network should be rather more discerning. From a point of view of self-interest you would ideally like to go to your home feed every day and see a great variety of industry news relevant to you. The wider your network, the less relevant the news is likely to be. To get the best out of LinkedIn go for quality, not quantity. Recruiters will want to link with you but check out their profiles. Are they SuccessFactors and Workday or SAP recruiters or are they a general IT recruiter? Recruiters do abuse LinkedIn and you don’t want your inbox filled with technical support jobs. Always go with the specialists, and we’re not just saying that….. Why not link with Richard Mulley, Freemont’s Sales and Operations Manager?