Linkedin: What You Don’t Know Could Damage Your Career

A week or so ago I caught up with one of my recruiter friends and as usual, our conversation turned to what’s happening in the world of CFO recruiting. Since he’s a small boutique recruiter with fingers on the pulse of his geographic area, it’s always interesting to hear how what he sees locally aligns with what I am seeing nationally.

It was an illuminating conversation. And what he said about Linkedin Recruiter lines right up with an article I saw today on Wired.com. Here’s an excerpt, but the article is critically important to read in its entirety.

Tucked behind your professional, yet pretty, profile picture, the descriptions of all your past jobs, and that column of “People You May Know” is a section of LinkedIn that most people have never heard of, let alone seen. And yet it’s the real reason why you should actually care about sprucing up your LinkedIn profile and network.

Enter Linkedin Recruiter. And apparently companies are having such success with Linkedin Recruiter that third party recruiters are being hired primarily today for hard-to-fill positions. I see a lot of hungry recruiters in the near future who will be forced to either transform their business models or change careers. Yes, even at the C-level according to my recruiter colleague.

Remember not too long ago, one of the top recruiting firms notified candidates they would no longer be accepting resumes but would be, instead, searching Linkedin profiles instead? Linkedin Recruiter is undoubtedly a part of that decision.

If you are going to be making a career move in the future (and unless retirement is your next move, that is pretty much every CFO or Finance Executive reading this post), today is not a moment too soon to either join Linkedin and/or get your profile complete and compelling. Your ability to move quickly, effortlessly, and painlessly may just depend on it.

Lest you think I exaggerate, let me leave you with the words of Ed Nathanson, Director of Talent Acquisition at Rapid7 …

In other words, Nathanson finds the vast majority of future employees on LinkedIn. And if you aren’t on LinkedIn? He’ll probably never find you. And even if he did, he probably wouldn’t hire you. “I’m always amazed at people who aren’t there now,” Nathanson says. “When I talk to candidates and they aren’t on there that’s a big red flag for me.”

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