“Jeg har stor erfaring med at passe 0-6-årige børn.” Sådan står der i en ansøgning, jeg lige har modtaget.

Problemet er bare, at jeg søger en receptionist til en finansvirksomhed midt i København.

Når du opbygger din profil er det vigtigt, at du overvejer, de signaler du sender til omverdenen. Jeg skal for eksempel ikke bruge en pædagog-receptionist, som kan holde styr på en flok skrigende unger (receptionisterne her i huset er nemlig slet ikke med til direktionsmøderne :-) ).

Men hvad så med Linkedin, Google+ og alle de andre gode steder, hvor jobsøgende netværker med fremtidige arbejdsgivere?

Man kan jo sagtens stå i den situation, at man “bare skal have noget at lave.” Der findes jo en del mennesker, der er ligeglade med, om deres stillingsbetegnelse er kreditorbogholder eller pædagogmedhjælper. Bare der er noget at stå op til om morgenen.

Hvad gør man så?

Svaret er simpelt: Man træffer et valg.

Når du skal opbygge en profil omkring dine faglige kompetencer, så er du nødt til at vælge, hvad du vil være for hvem. Det skal ikke forstås sådan, at du ikke har et vist spillerum. Det har du selvfølgelig. Man kan sagtens spænde over regnskabsassistent, regnskabsansvarlig og bogholder. Men man skal tænke sig rigtigt godt om, hvis man vælger positionen som pædagog-receptionist.

Det er hele tiden afvejningen mellem den meget snævre profil og den brede. Hvordan håndterer du den udfordring?

De fleste kender det. Man har sat sig for at skrive sit CV i forbindelse med en jobansøgning eller måske et oprids af kompetencer til en potentiel kunde eller samarbejdspartner, og så sidder man der og bryder sin hjerne for alle guldkornene, og man stykker måske lidt sammen fra ting, man tidligere har skrevet. Det værste er, at man ofte glemmer noget, men sådan behøver det ikke være. Du kan gøre det meget lettere for dig selv ved at oprette et godt brutto CV og lægge det på nettet fx i form af en Linkedin profil.

Cloud computing giver i dag mange gode muligheder for at gemme dokumenter på nettet, som man kan få adgang til fra en snart sagt hvilken som helst internetforbindelse. Google Docs, Dropbox og Apple’s kommende iCloud tjeneste er gode eksempler. Her kan man have sit brutto CV liggende og finde det frem, når man får brug for det, hvor end man befinder sig. Det er smart, men ville det ikke være endnu mere smart, hvis dit brutto CV arbejdede for dig på egen hånd?

Det er i princippet netop det, en udbygget og opdateret Linkedin profil gør. Som Jacob skrev i sit seneste indlæg om Linkedin Signal, så rekrutterer flere og flere virksomheder gennem Linkedin. Der er dermed meget hente med en relativt begrænset indsats. Du skal bare sørge for løbende at opdatere din Linkedin profil, hver gang du tilegner dig nye kompetenceområder eller har præsteret et godt resultat.

Gør Linkedin til dit nye brutto CV. På den måde har du det altid ved hånden, og det søger job for dig, medens du sover. Linkedin har tilmed en funktion, hvor du på et splitsekund kan producere en pdf af din profil og dermed får et opdateret CV, som endda er ganske pænt opsat. Det er ikke dårligt i en snæver vending, og man har tilmed alle sine kompetencer og resultater med.

Når vi søger nye folk i Habro & Finansgruppen, bruger jeg altid Linkedin, før jeg slår stillingerne op et andet sted. Det, tror jeg, der er mange, der gør.

Derfor skal du have lært at bruge Linkedin Signal, hvis du vil forrest i køen.

Når jeg går på Linkedin Signal og søger på “kandidat”, får jeg – bare på den første side:

.NET-udvikler, Sharepoint Solution Architect, Business Intelligence analytiker, Webmaster hos Microsoft, Mijø- og kvalitetsingeniør, Projektleder.

Jeg kunne også søge på “job”, “regnskab”, “chef”, “leder” – ja, det er vel egentlig kun fantasien, der sætter grænser. Så er jeg helt sikker på, at jeg ville finde i hvert fald et par interessante stillinger, hvor jeg kunne komme først i køen.

Så hvis du er jobsøgende, er det måske en god ide i hvert fald én dag om ugen at bruge dine daglige 10 minutter (som du kan læse om i: Fundet!) på Linkedin Signal.

Sådan gør du:

• Gå på Linkedin
• Find “News” i højre hjørne og tryk på “Signal”
• Brug søgeboksen til at lave dine søgninger
• Brug check boxene til at sikre, at du søger der, hvor du rent faktisk gerne vil arbejde

Og find en masse jobs.

Bonusinfo: Der er en ekstra fordel ved at finde jobbet på denne måde. Du får nemlig samtidig at vide, hvordan du og dit netværk kender virksomheden. Det kan være, at der er en personlig indgang.

Linkedin er blevet lidt mere fleksibel. De har nemlig tilføjet nye sektioner ud over de gamle Experience, Publications, Education og Recommandations. Det betyder, at man nu kan beskrive sig selv mere nuanceret ved at bruge:

• Certifications
• Courses
• Honors and Awards
• Languages
• Organizations
• Projects
• Patents
• Skills
• Test scores

Læs hvordan man tilføjer de nye sektioner på Linkedins egen blog: http://blog.linkedin.com/2011/07/15/student-profile-sections/

Every networker and active LinkedIn users worst nightmare must all most certainly be getting shut out of their account. Which was exactly what happened to me a couple of weeks ago. All my 350 connections, 12 recommendations collected since 2006… all in jeopardy!

This can happen in many ways, mine is a bit more mysterious, but one that often comes into play is if you use your company email as your primary. When you change jobs, your mail goes inactive, and you loose access to your LinkedIn account, and LinkedIn does NOT care.

This blog post describes the painstaking process of loosing access to your LinkedIn account and trying to regain access, just to summarize, this includes:

- Writing tons of emails to LinkedIn supporters
- Standing in line at a “government institution”
- Shading stuff with a pencil
- and even sending a fax!

To avoid this, do yourself the favor of checking which emails is your primary and add a couple of extra in case of emergencies like the above mentioned:

1. Click, your name in the top right corner of the screen
2. Click Change, Just below your profile picture next to Primary Email
3. Make sure your primary email meets the following criterias:
- You alone own it, not the company you work for
- Make sure it is the email address which you intend to use for a VERY long time, so don’t use your school mail, or something temporary.
4. Add extra email addresses, as backup, these could be company mail accounts and so on.

Part II: This is the story of how I lost access my account… and 3 weeks later got it back.

As a part of my daily routine I attempted to log on to LinkedIn, but was greeted with a Captcha prompt and the message:
“The email address or password you provided does not match our records.”
I tried desperately, with every password/email combination I could think off – No luck.

Well nothing else to do but to try and reset the account. But… The email with the verification never showed up! – Not good.

Next stop was customer support, I provided as many details as possible to bring down the Q&A session, but instead of reading my email they gave me this:

—

I believe the link below from our Help Center might best answer your question regarding security verification prompts.

If this doesn’t provide you with the information you need, please let me know and I will be happy to assist you further.

Regards,

LinkedIn Customer Service

—

Thanks. Reply. Copy. Paste, add: “Please read my e-mail before replying with a standard referral to your FAQ.”

This type of dialog proceed for a couple of days, they replied but the reply seemed useless. I was still shut out of my account.

Finally after several attempts I got through to them, and by deduction, from their cryptic non-disclosing automated responses, I figured that somehow my primary email address must have been changed somehow.But how did that happen? – No clue. Since its the exact same email i attempted to login with was the same one i opened the account with, and the same one i was writing Customer Support with.

LinkedIn has a very strict policy regarding accounts, and I certainly respect their concerns regarding identity theft. But since this was not my own fault, how could Ii prevent it? – No clue.

BUT the process of getting LinkedIn to verify my identity seems medieval for an online service, check this out:

I was presented with 2 options:

—

Option 1: Regain access to the account by signing the following affidavit of identity before a Notary Public. Once notarized, this form can be faxed back to me or scanned and attached in your response to this message. Once received, I will submit the form to our Privacy Team to begin the account recovery process.

Note: A Notary Public is a public servant appointed by state government to witness the signing of important documents and administer oaths. You can find a local notary at any financial institution, public library, U.S. Post Office, local court house or any attorney in your area. Depending on your state regulations, a minimal fee may be involved to procure this service. Should your state requirements include an embossed seal by your notary, please be sure to shadow the seal with a pencil prior to scanning or faxing.

Option 2: Create a new LinkedIn account and then request the old account be closed.

—

Great, so either I spend an afternoon, paying for their mistake with my time and money. And literally standing in line at a government institution, to get access to an online service… this seems hopelessly outdated, (and quite possibly very humiliating if the lady at the other side of the counter doesn’t want to sign it!) . But IF i get it signed I then have to “Shadow the seal with a pencil” (not even sure what that means?!) and then … wait for it… Fax it back to LinkedIn!! Wow… Not very Web 2.0 is it? Im mean I has been years since i have actually even seen a fax machine!

Wait. It gets better!

Option 2, they are actually telling me that if I create a new account, I can request the old one be closed!? The bright and attentive reader will now wonder, how that fits in with the concerns about identity theft?! – No clue. Get this, if the bad-guy-hacker out there opens new account in the same name, ask LinkedIn to close the other one, you skip option 1, go directly to identity theft. In my case? Well, I just loose everything I spent 5 years accumulating.

I didn’t like either of the options so, Instead I sent them every thinkable link, domain registration, phone number, so if they still doubted me, I could be contacted directly. This seemed to work. A couple of days later I got reply that I could reset my account.

To my big surprise “my”  primary email was set to: ivanivan6640@gmail.com , an email I never heard of, used, written to, got any google results on ect. So what the hell happened LinkedIn? – No clue.

So my best advice: Keep your account safe, add emails, and change your password to a strong password.

Please post other helpful tips and tricks on the subject of keeping our accounts safe!