Saturday, March 22, 2014

LinkedIn Job Title: "Blacksmith" or "Equine Accessories Professional"?



On your LinkedIn profile, let your Job Function be your Job Title. Or at least your Function should be a part of the overall Title you should use on your LinkedIn profile.

Why is it important?  Today, companies seem to create titles on a whim.  A Sales Representative becomes a Client Executive, or Area Business Manager, or Manager of New Business Development, or Regional Account Manager, or Account Manager, etc.

Titles used to be more straight-forward: Blacksmiths were “Blacksmiths”, not “Equine Accessories Professionals”.

Why the titles are getting so complex and confusing isn’t important.  What is important to Job-Seekers on LinkedIn is that recruiters are searching for people who do what they do - their Function – not their company-issued Title.

Ask yourself, if you were searching for a “Sales Representative”, would your search criteria be “Area Business Manager”?  That’s not too likely.  Therefore you may not find the perfect person whose Function is “Sales Representative”, if their Title is “Area Business Manager”. 
If you are the perfect person for a position do you want your title to help you “be found”, or “be ignored”?

Let your Function be your Title, or at least a part of the overall Title. 
In LinkedIn the field length for Title is 100 characters for each position you have listed.  I don’t recommend using all 100 characters, but use what you need to increase your chances of “being found”.

Here are two examples of Title revision that would help an Area Business Manager “be found”:

Function                    Title                               Revised Title for LinkedIn Profile
Sales Representative  Area Business Manager   Area Business Manager–Sales Representative
Sales Representative  Area Business Manager  Sales Representative/Area Business Manager

A profile using either of the revised Titles will appear in “Title” searches using either “Area Business Manager”, or “Sales Representative”.

After you add your new revised Title to your LinkedIn profile, be sure to test it to make sure you are appearing in search results for both components of your new “Title”.

Evaluate all the titles you have for all of the positions you have listed on your profile, and make the necessary revisions. 

If you “let your Function be your Title” you will dramatically improve your chances of “being found”.

There is one more reason why it is important to “let your Function be your Title” - it will be covered in a later post.

I do have one request of my readers.  My blog is new, and my web site will be up next week.  If you feel like you receive value from my blog, tweets, LinkedIn tips, etc., please "Like" it, follow it, tweet it, and help spread the word.

Thank you, Dan Stiffler

MaxOut LI™, LLC is not affiliated with LinkedIn®.  We are committed to providing services, tools, training and insight for LinkedIn members to advance their careers - obtaining Maximum Results with Minimum Effort – while removing the enigma of LinkedIn.  Be sure to visit our web site: www.MaxOutLI.com, follow us on twitter: @MaxOutLI.






 

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