Susan Joyce of Job-Hunt.org on Personal SEO and Privacy #132

In this episode, Marc gives Susan Joyce the stage as she presents her webinar called “Personal SEO: Being Found and Protecting Your Privacy.” This is a recording of the webinar Susan gave to the Career Pivot Online Membership Community, with important links included. Listen in for expert advice on managing your online presence in social media, getting the most visibility from your LinkedIn profile, standardizing your professional name across all media and print pieces, and targeting the job and company you want.

 

Key Takeaways:

[1:17] Marc welcomes you to Episode 132 of the Repurpose Your Career podcast. Career Pivot brings this podcast to you; CareerPivot.com is one of the very few websites dedicated to those of us in the second half of life and our careers. Check out the blog and the other resources delivered to you, free of charge.

[1:47] If you are enjoying this podcast, please share it with other like-minded souls. Subscribe on CareerPivot.com, iTunes, or any of the other apps that supply podcasts. Share it on social media or just tell your neighbors, and colleagues. The more people Marc reaches, the more people he can help.

[2:07] Marc has released three chapters of the next edition of Repurpose Your Career to the Repurpose Your Career review team. If you would like to be part of the review team, please sign up at CareerPivot.com/RYCTeam.

[2:23] You will receive new chapters as they become available. Marc is looking for honest feedback and would love to get an honest review on Amazon.com after the book is released.

[2:34] Marc’s plan is to release the book in mid-to-late-September and do both a virtual and a real book tour. He will be in Austin, the NYC Area, and D.C. during the months of September and October. Marc would love to meet his readers and listeners.

[2:51] Reach out to Marc at Podcasts@CareerPivot.com if you’d be willing to give him some advice on venues or groups who would be interested in hosting an event.

[3:01] Next week, Marc will release the next chapter of Repurpose Your Career, which will be called “Building on Weak Ties.”

[3:09] This week, Marc replay a webinar that Susan Joyce of Job-hunt.org fame gave to the Career Pivot Membership Community called “Personal SEO: Being Found and Protecting Your Privacy.” This should give you a good sampling of the quality material available in the Career Pivot Community. Listen to the end to hear how to join.

[3:36] Please see the slides for this webinar at CareerPivot.com/personal-seo or see the show notes and find links at CareerPivot.com/episode-132.

[4:06] Marc welcomes everyone to the Community webinar call with Susan Joyce of Job-Hunt.org. The webinar is called “Personal SEO: Being Found and Protecting Privacy.”

[4:42] Susan introduces herself and begins. Job-hunt.org is her website and the hyphen is necessary to get to her site.
[5:00] Susan says it is hard to be purely private, but there are things to do to protect your privacy while still making sure you are found by prospective employers and clients.

[5:42] If you are currently employed, keep a low profile while looking for a job online. Susan calls it a stealth job search. You want to avoid a very uncomfortable discussion with your manager.

[6:12] Susan is a veteran and learned in the military to know the enemy. To think of it from a marketing perspective, know your customer. Employers are very worried about the cost of a bad hire. That slows the process. A bad hire costs the employer more than double the salary of the employee, assuming the employee didn’t do any damage.

[7:06] Recruiters are measured on time-to-hire. Job postings don’t work anymore. Less than 25% of applicants to a posting are qualified. Recruiters will systematically ignore candidates who apply multiple times to jobs for which they are not qualified.

[8:28] Recruiters are also measured on the quality of the hire. The look for the best candidates and hope they will become the best employees.

[8:39] The safest way to hire is through the employee referral program. Most of the Fortune 500 companies have employee referral programs and so do many smaller companies. Each employer has their own set of rules for the program.

[9:17] Employers research candidates. They search Google and LinkedIn, looking for qualified candidates. When they have an applicant or a candidate, they research the facts on the application or resume. Employers assume the facts on your LinkedIn profile are correct because anyone can see your profile.

[10:19] Susan gives a typical example of an employer starting a search for a candidate on LinkedIn. They will start with the job title and city. Make sure your job title and city are in your description. No one will search for “Experienced medical professional.” They will search for “Pediatrician.” Having the right keywords (search terms) is very important.

[11:18] Once an employer has researched a candidate, they may contact the candidate. If they don’t pay for LinkedIn’s recruiter service, they may try InMail or email, but they really want a phone number so they can call right away and find out immediately if you’re interested.

[12:17] Of course, contact information in public is not a good thing. Fortunately, Google has provided a solution, Google Voice, which is free in the U.S. and Canada. You set up the number, pick the area code you want, and you have a choice of a few numbers. You can forward it to as many as six phones. It will also take a voicemail and email it to you.

[13:29] Google Voice allows you to put a phone number out there without putting your real phone number out there. Marc notes that Google just added it to their Enterprise package. Susan highly recommends it. She uses it for her business.

[14:45] With your relatively private contact information in place, you can start working on your online reputation management or personal Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Author Dick Bolles once told Susan that Google is the new resume. Whatever is out there associated with your name is part of your Google resume.

[15:24] According to a CareerBuilder’s survey from August 2018, 47% of employers are unlikely to interview a job candidate if they cannot find the candidate online. Don’t try to be invisible online! The smartest approach is to manage the online visibility you have and emphasize the things you want to emphasize.

[16:11] Employers want to confirm the facts on your resume. They also want to observe how you communicate, your knowledge, your skills, and your attitude. They can learn quite a bit through social media and other public visibility you have. They search to contact you. They may be searching for you or someone else like you who is qualified.

[17:04] Your most important keywords are your name. If your resume says William J. Jones and your LinkedIn profile says Bill Jones, that’s not a match. Susan is Susan P. Joyce, to differentiate herself from other Susan Joyces. Be consistent in using your name the same way on your LinkedIn profile and all your profiles and stationery.

[18:33] On your resume and any applications you submit, include the URL for your LinkedIn profile. The vast majority of hiring managers will want to see your LinkedIn profile.

[19:01] If you have a cranky side, don’t put it online. Don’t rant about sports, politics, religion, or anything else you want to rant about under your professional name. If you must rant, use a different name than the name you use for your professional visibility.

[19:30] Susan shares a homework assignment: Defensive Googling. Search your name inside quotation marks and see what you find. You need to be near the top of the Google results. Watch out for anyone else with the same name. Susan tells of a man who had the same name as a deceased porn star. Add your middle name, if needed.

[21:07] Susan recommends doing this on a regular basis as people with similar names may end up in the news for breaking the law.

[21:21] You want to consistently use that professional version of your name. You want to maintain a positive presence for that name. The best information to go with that name is a job title. Like your name, your target job title and your current job title are very important keywords.

[21:53] You control what LinkedIn tells the world about you. Recruiters depend on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn Recruiting Service is more than 50% of LinkedIn’s income. Google trusts LinkedIn. Usually, your LinkedIn profile is on the first page of Google results. This may not be true for a relatively famous person if they have LinkedIn.

[23:00] Marc reads a question from Matt, who wants to use his nickname on LinkedIn to appear more approachable. Susan answers to use the best version of your name and use the same version of your name everywhere. LinkedIn has a nickname field.

[24:10] Matt also asks how different should alternate names be on non-career social media, such as Facebook? Susan says Facebook is a problem because close to 54% of recruiters will check what you put on Facebook. Susan suggests making sensitive topics private on your Facebook page.
[24:43] For non-professional visibility, maybe use your first two initials, a nickname, or something that is different enough from your professional name so nobody would connect the two easily.

[25:16] Susan shares a scenario: A recruiter has 10 qualified candidates but can only interview three of them. None were recommended. Three have good, complete LinkedIn profiles. Three have scanty LinkedIn profiles. Three only have Facebook visibility. (Susan recommends adding your resume to Facebook.) One has no online visibility.

[26:13] You would interview the three with the complete LinkedIn profiles because you would have a better idea that they are qualified for the job. The others could be as qualified but they haven’t made it clear. So, you go with the safe choice, the ones with the good LinkedIn profiles.

[26:39] Marc reads a question from Brian: I’ve never had a Facebook account; is that suspect in today’s culture? To a certain degree, Susan thinks that’s smart. If you are an attorney, recruiters would be glad you don’t have a Facebook account. If you are a social media specialist, they would want would be disappointed you didn’t have one.

[27:13] To a degree, it depends. Susan barely has Facebook, and she has it because she has to for her family. Brian replies that he is an attorney. Susan agrees it’s not a bad idea for him to avoid Facebook. Susan’s husband, an attorney, does not have a Facebook account.

[28:15] Susan gives advice on finding your keywords. Don’t use generic words. “Experienced marketing professional” is not good. Skip words like “professional” unless your field is professional development. Keywords are specific. They are the job titles employers will search for to fill that job, or they are requirements for that job.

[29:03] If something has a standard well-known abbreviation, like PMP (Project Management Professional), or CPA, you don’t have to type out the whole term, but it is a good idea to use both the full term and the abbreviation. Susan shares examples of unhelpful keywords she pulled from actual profiles. You have to be specific.

[31:05] Susan breaks it down into three parts. The first part is the most difficult.
[31:11] Part 1) You have to have a target job. Being flexible; avoiding being pigeonholed — these instincts don’t work. A target job gives you keywords. Have target employers so you know what they call the job. Susan shares a case study. Use your current title, a slash, and your target title. Use all the keywords.

[33:12] Have a professional online presence. LinkedIn covers it, but professional associations have directories where you can be listed. Look around and see what’s relevant to your target job or employers.

[33:56] Susan recommends having at least 20 target employers and possibly more. The idea is to know who you want to work for. It makes it easier to learn about them and network into them. You may know people there, or make connections there. It is essential for a successful job search.

[34:41] Marc adds that having a target employer lets you see the exact title of the job you are targeting at that employer. Marc gives a client example.

[35:14] Marc reads another question: What if you already have an established Facebook account? My creative life is very different from my business life, and Facebook only allows one account per person. Susan says recruiters want to see what you’ve done on Facebook, but it’s OK if you don’t have a Facebook account.

[36:36] If you have a Facebook account that’s in sync with what you want to do professionally, that’s helpful. If you post “crazy things” on Facebook, it can hurt you. Be very careful with Facebook and if you want to use that for a different side of your life, then use a different version of your name there that is not your professional name.

[37:12] Most social media platforms do not want you to have multiple profiles.

[37:24] Part 2) You have to use the keywords recruiters use. Look at the job descriptions the target employer uses; what are the job titles? Look at the locations. If you want to relocate to a different state or city, use that as your official location. Use a Google Voice number with the area code for that location.

[38:15] Recruiters are interested in skills and experience. The LinkedIn recruiter’s service offers skills as one of the top sorting filters. It finds the skills in the Skills and Endorsement section.

[38:41] Education, certifications, and licenses are all important. Depending on the field, past employers can be very important, especially if it was a major company.
[39:00] Use the keywords carefully, with perfect spelling. Susan gives examples of unfortunate spelling that would not be caught by spell check. You could make an actual wrong word by misspelling the word you intended. Use the best grammar you can. It helps to print the pages and read them a few hours later to catch errors.

[39:57] Use current terminology. If your MBA is in MIS, no one will look for you. Use the title IT. That’s the current term. Do searches on your skills and certifications and look at what people are calling those jobs. Don’t write Sr. if you mean Senior unless that’s how the title is written of the job you are targeting.

[41:22] Why be on LinkedIn? Invisibility doesn’t guarantee privacy. It makes you look out-of-date. Recruiters who can’t find you will assume you have changed your name or are hiding something. Or they may find someone else with your name.

[42:19] Information aggregator sites take your information from Facebook, especially your birthdate. You may be better served to provide a completely different date for your Facebook account. When you search for your name, if there is not a lot of information about you online, you will see the aggregator listings.

[44:39] Marc reads a question from Matt. Whitepages shows my age, and that is a concern because of ageism for people 45-plus. Susan says that’s why you want a good LinkedIn profile, and Twitter, and Slideshare; make yourself visible so you push the aggregators off of the first page. Most people don’t look to the second page of a search.

[45:32] Write a Kindle book and publish it on Amazon. That will push things down, too.

[45:55] 94% of recruiters use LinkedIn as their number one search engine. LinkedIn gives you a lot of space, compared to a resume. Use it all. It is your marketing portfolio. [46:21] The LinkedIn professional headline follows your name throughout LinkedIn. You want to have a really good sales pitch full of keywords there. Susan shows some usage examples full of terminology an employer would use.

[47:06] Marc shares a LinkedIn hack published by Andy Foote. If you enter your profile on a mobile device, LinkedIn will allow 200 characters in the headline. Susan says she doesn’t think many people use that many. 120 is plenty long, but put what is appropriate for you.

[48:11] LinkedIn has an introduction card with the name, headline, location, and “See contact information.” If you’re a Premium member, more contact information shows up, but you can add it to the About area. It used to be called Summary.

[49:02] The first 50 or 60 words are the most visible. Write it in the first person. Use all 2,000 characters available.

[49:10] In the Experience section, if you’re over 40, don’t include 30 years of experience. 15 or 20 years is enough. If you have a noteworthy accomplishment from earlier, mention it in the About section, instead of in the Experience section.

[50:02] Most Contact Info sections on LinkedIn profiles only include the LinkedIn URL. You can add contact information here and also in the About section.

[50:10] Susan shows an outstanding example of an About section, broken into sections by job, including work the person did as a volunteer. He used a great number of keywords.

[50:42] Susan shows a description of a job that started more than 10 years ago, including key responsibilities and accomplishments. Use bulleted lists, and separate things into topics. Don’t make a wall of words. Break it up. You have to copy and paste in the bullets. Susan has a page of them on Job-Hunt.org she calls LinkedIn candy.

[53:04] Put lots of keywords in your Profile section. Put projects in the Projects section of the Profile section. There is a Certifications section. These are keywords in themselves.

[53:51] If you speak more than one language, you can legally have a LinkedIn profile in each language. This demonstrates that you are multilingual. Of course, you have to keep each of them updated.

[54:39] Useful links: “Eye * Candy * Adds Interest to Your LinkedIn Profile”, “Build Your Personal SEO: The 25 Best Keywords for You in Your Job Search”, “10 Steps to Outrank Your Competitors in LinkedIn Search (Personal LinkedIn SEO)”, “How Top ATS Systems Analyze Your Resume”, “7 Ways to Protect Your Privacy While Job Hunting”.

[54:57] Marc hopes you enjoyed this episode. Show notes with links are found at CareerPivot.com/episode-132. This should give you an idea of the quality material they are developing within the CareerPivot.com Membership Community.

[55:20] The Career Pivot Membership Community website has become a valuable resource for approximately 50 members who are participating in the Beta phase of this project. Marc is recruiting new members for the next cohort.

[55:31] If you are interested in the endeavor and would like to be put on the waiting list, please go to CareerPivot.com/Community. When you sign up you’ll receive information about the community as it evolves.

[55:47] Those who are in these initial cohorts set the direction. This is a paid membership community with group coaching and special content. More importantly, it’s a community where you can seek help. Please go to CareerPivot.com/Community to learn more. They are starting a group for bloggers, writers, authors, and publishers.
[56:21] Marc invites you to connect with him on LinkedIn.com/in/mrmiller. Just include in the connection request that you listen to Marc on this podcast. You can look for Career Pivot on Facebook, LinkedIn, or @CareerPivot on Twitter.

[56:41] Please come back next week, when Marc will read the next pre-release chapter from the next edition of Repurpose Your Career. This chapter is called “Building on Weak Ties.”

[56:53] Marc thanks you for listening to the Repurpose Your Career podcast.

[56:57] You will find the show notes for this episode at CareerPivot.com/episode-132.

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