LinkedIn as your new digital resume

This post is Day #5 in a series called Personal Branding for Software Developers.

The rise to prominence of LinkedIn as the tool of choice for people looking to switch jobs and careers is no coincidence. In the current economy where everyone must do more with less, human resource workers are searching for viable candidates rather than spending big bucks at sites like Monster.com and Dice.com to post a call for resumes. By spending time on LinkedIn they can filter through thousands of resumes instantly and find a suitable group of candidates to contact.

Now before we get down to building our LinkedIn site we need to describe what LinkedIn is and is not. I have often heard LinkedIn described as Facebook for grownups or Facebook for your career. Both of these are fairly accurate but it is also so much more than that. I would describe it as a virtual resume service and networking interface for professionals all wrapped into one site. It is a place where you can create a profile, establish your credentials, develop a viable network of colleagues and expose your professional life to the world.

Some people might be asking themselves why they would want to do this. If they are not on Facebook why would they want to be on LinkedIn? The main reason I would say to join is to get exposure for yourself. You need to get your name out there. When you do a Google search for people their LinkedIn profile is often the first item in the list. This is an excellent place for a recruiter to begin their background research on you.

To get started with LinkedIn browse to the LinkedIn site. You can register yourself here. Because this is going to reflect you in your professional life you want your profile to be perfect. It will take a fair bit of time to develop your profile so that it is reflective of who you are. There are many sections to fill out and I recommend that you take the time to fill them out in length. I often composed my information beforehand in Microsoft Word and only transferred it to my LinkedIn account once I was happy with it.

The goal of filling out your profile is to achieve 100% completeness. Keep in mind that according to LinkedIn users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn. A complete profile used to be a lot more difficult as you would need to fill out your various sections and have three recommendations from others. LinkedIn in recently made changes to what 100% complete means. I would recommend you put as much info on your profile as you are comfortable doing. Also keep in mind that LinkedIn does have privacy controls that will allow you to filter what people can see.

However, if you are not comfortable with putting everything on the site then I would focus on putting keywords or descriptors in the following sections: Headline, Summary, Position Titles and Position Descriptions. By adding keywords to these areas you increase your chances of being found within LinkedIn when a search is done. Finally I would add a professional looking headshot to your profile.

As software developers another section I would think about filling out is the Projects section. This area allows you to toot your own horn about personal projects that you have been working on. This could be links to websites you built, apps in a mobile marketplace that people can download or open source projects you contributed to. It could also be a link to your GitHub repository. This section acts as a portfolio of the work you have done over the years.

Once your profile is established you then want to develop your network. You can do this two different ways – searching manually for people you know or by importing your email contacts into the site. Importing through your email is a good first step since you can get the majority of people at once. You will basically be sending them an invitation to join your network and confirm that they know you. You can then add other connections manually through a search.

A question I often see being asked is who should I network with? With this there are two schools of thought – anyone you can and only the select few you want. Some people say your network list should include anyone you have ever met – even in passing. This way you build your network and increase your chances of landing your next opportunity. I think this strategy works well for people in sales and especially people like realtors. My opinion is that software developers should keep it to people you know really well. You want that referral for your next job to come from people who can vouch for you. I heard one person say they only add people that they had dinner with. You can implement a similar set of criteria for yourself as to how you will add people.

One of the neat things about LinkedIn is that other users can write recommendations about you. These were essential to completing your profile not too long ago. However, they still carry some weight with people looking to hire. A recommendation is someone going on the record to salute you for the work you did for them or with them. They generally describe the work you did and how well you did it. It can give you an edge over others if you have a lot of them or if they come from high profile people.

Finally, I want to end with a list of some of the tips I have found helped me in the year that I have been on LinkedIn:

1. Your LinkedIn public profile address will be a lot of letters and numbers. Within the Settings area you can replace your current address with your name. This is called a vanity URL. So instead of having a link like http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-cenerelli/##/##/#?# I changed my link to http://www.linkedin.com/in/kencenerelli. This way I have a distinctive URL to promote myself. I could include this link on a business card or send it to prospective employers. It also makes for a clean URL within the Google search engine.
2. You can make a connection between Twitter and LinkedIn within your page settings. This will allow you to post status updates to your LinkedIn profile page using the #in hashtag. This is a handy thing to have so that you can create some symbiosis between your sites. For more information on this see my previous article on Using Twitter to promote your blog and your personal brand.
3. Contributing to conversations in the Answers section will also raise your profile. It shows your expertise in various areas and that you are willing to take the time to help others.
4. LinkedIn has groups for all kinds of interests. Joining one or several in the areas of your interests will also allow you to connect with like-minded people. This can lead to more contacts for you network and also help establish you as an expert.
5. Use Applications within your pages. Applications are like widgets that you can embed in your page to add more dynamic content. Within my site I have a widget that pulls in my SlideShare files. There is also an Amazon widget where you can mention books that you are reading or have read. You can also write a recommendation on the book.
6. Within the Additional Information area of your profile you can add links to three external sites you may have. I recommend you take advantage of this. As well, replace the default names of Personal Website, Blog, etc. with the name of the actual site. This will create awareness of your personal site/blog name. Also add your Twitter handle there as well.

With this article I have only begun to scratch the surface of what can be done with LinkedIn. I suggest you Google articles on how to improve and then optimize your LinkedIn profile. By putting in a little bit of effort now it might pay off big later on in terms of landing your dream job.

Using Twitter to promote your blog and your personal brand

This post is Day #4 in a series called Personal Branding for Software Developers.

The next tool every developer should have is a Twitter account. In this article I will tell you why Twitter has become such an effective tool for social networking and personal branding.

I admit that I did not see much benefit to Twitter before I joined. I thought the micro-blogging site was all about people talking about what they had for breakfast and other non-essential postings. I did not realize the amount of information one can attain from those little 140-character posts.

Twitter has two uses: as an information stream and for promoting yourself & your actions. With the latter though come some hidden pitfalls. Whatever you post on Twitter is out there forever and you cannot take it back. Thus you need to be careful of what you post on your feed. It is with this in mind that I have kept my Twitter feed on a strictly professional level. I only post and re-tweet items that relate to my experiences in software development. If you want to post more personal items I suggest you have dual feeds to separate your business and personal lives.

To get a Twitter account you need to go to Twitter.com When registering for an account I suggest you use your own name. You want to associate the account with yourself. The only instance where you might not do this is if you are well known under your company name or some other nickname within your profession. By having your name on the account you are indexing your Twitter account and all your tweets within the various search engines. For more on creating a unified identity on the web see my article on identity consolidation.

The first use for Twitter is as an information stream. You can have a Twitter account just to monitor other Twitter feeds. There are no rules saying you must Tweet just because you have an account. In fact I suggest you create your list of people to follow before you tweet. This way you can see how people are tweeting, re-tweeting and what people are talking about.

You might be asking yourself who I should follow. Well that is going to depend on the information you seek. You might want to search for colleagues in IT that are on Twitter. Are they posting interesting items about software development that you might want to know? Then there are also companies you can follow. For example Microsoft has an official channel as does each department within Microsoft. Perhaps you want to follow the ASP.NET tweets or the SQL Server ones. You can choose from any number of tweeters to follow.

Note though that some people tweet – A LOT. Yes, I am looking at you Scott Hanselman. For people like this or for subjects that you may want to group together you can create lists. A list will allow you to segregate tweeters so that you can access them but they will not appear in your main timeline. Lists can be both public and private. This can be a handy feature to monitor certain tweeters without seeing all their information every time you got to Twitter.

One final word of warning is that everyone can see which Twitter users you follow. So be wary of following people that use a lot of profanity and touchy subject matter. You need to think about the image you want to present. Following these types of tweeters using a private list might be a better alternative.

The second use for Twitter is for self-promotion and for driving traffic between your sites. I will often post a tweet on Twitter after I have added a new post to my blog. Case in point is the tweets I have issued for the previous blog posts in this series. For these posts I have used the format of [Series Name] | [Series Day Number]: [Article Title] [Article Link] [#hashtags]. If you scroll down you can see the format I use for my general blog post tweets: [BLOGGED]: [Article Title] [Article Link] [#hashtags]. Both formats alert people to the fact that I have a new article in my blog and I provide them the link to it. Twitter will automatically shorten the link to resemble links from Bitly. Hashtags are used to mark keywords or topics within a tweet. Clicking a hashtag will take users to all the tweets with that tag. Note: anyone can make a hashtag and they are also case insensitive.

You may have also noticed that the last hasthtag on my previous tweets is usually #in. This is a feature within LinkedIn (a tool which I will discuss in my next article) that creates a connection between the two social networking sites. LinkedIn looks for tweets with this tag and then uses it as my status update. It means a tweet will appear exactly the same way on my LinkedIn page as it does within Twitter. This is another way to drive people between your sites.

Mentioning your blog post is only one way to tweet. You can talk about an interesting article you read, a new developer tool you used, send a message to another Twitter user about one of their Tweets or re-tweet someone else’s tweet to your followers. All of these actions can demonstrate your interest in an area and help showcase you as an expert. It also adds value to your followers.

You may be asking yourself how I get people to follow me. Generally when you follow others they tend to start following you. It is one of the courtesies of being on Twitter. You can also ask your friends to follow you if you want to build up your numbers. However, the best way is to tweet interesting content on a consistent basis. Once people recognize that you have something to say you will gain followers. And if you choose to specialize in an area like I mentioned in my second article on developing your personal brand you will see that you will gain followers who are working in the same development environments as you. You can then start following them to increase your own information stream.

Creating a developer’s blog

This post is Day #3 in a series called Personal Branding for Software Developers.

In this next article in my series on personal branding I want to talk about the first item every developer should have in their toolbox – a blog. I say the word blog but what I really mean is a website about your professional life. I will discuss the differences below and why a site is so important.

A professional blog or website allows you talk about all the things you find interesting, frustrating or funny about your profession. This site should be exclusively about your work as a software developer. In trying to project a professional image I would not suddenly take your site about funny cat photos and start promoting it as your professional site. While your colleagues might find this amusing the HR person who Google’s your name will probably not.

So, you know you need a blog/site but you are unsure of where to start. Now because we are software or web developers you think ahhh… I got a leg up on everyone else. I can create my own site. Not so fast. You might be a web developer but how are your design skills? Are they just OK or do they really rock everyone’s world? The role of a web developer has changed over the years and specialization has come to the fore. Designers should definitely develop their own sites. Developers who are design challenged like myself should leave it to the professionals.

If you would rather focus on your site’s content instead of its design then you can use a service like Blogger or WordPress.com. There are also other sites like Squarespace that provide templates to create a personal site.

As with either method there are some trade-offs you need to explore. With a personal site that you create and maintain you can generally have your own domain name. It is still impressive to see JoeSchmo.com as someone’s personal site. You can go there and learn all about them. If you code and maintain your own site it shows people that you have the level of technical proficiency to do these tasks. However you will need to find someplace to host your site. It could be hosted by you or through a third party. Whatever you choose you will need to factor in the cost of the domain plus the hosting fees.

If you use a site like WordPress you can buy your own domain and host it there but more likely you are going to go for the free option. So your domain will be something like YOURNAME.wordpress.com. While this is not a bad thing you do not get the instant name recognition you do with a personal domain. However, where these sites shine is that you get their themes and page layouts to generate a unique UI in a short amount of time. You also get a platform to create new pages and posts quickly. Plus there are lots of plugins like polls, Twitter feeds and word clouds of article tags that you can add to your site to provide an extensive amount of user interaction.

With whatever method you choose you will be providing information about yourself and demonstrating your knowledge about the topic you have chosen to write about. The site can serve as a centre for information about you. You can post a resume or you can share source code of some projects that you worked on. In your blog you can talk about methods or workarounds that you learned to solve certain coding problems. Whatever it is you are writing about the blog serves as a forum where you can establish yourself as an expert. You can demonstrate here that you can learn and that you have a willingness to share your knowledge – an important attribute for team leaders. It also allows you so showcase your skills and shows that you can communicate your thoughts in a professional manner.

However, the site is not just a demonstration of your writing skills. It can also act as a way to promote all of the things you have done on the internet. You can list the websites you have built, the open source projects you have contributed to, the apps you have built and added to mobile marketplaces. You could also list links to your profiles on GitHub, Stack Overflow, CodePlex, etc. You want to demonstrate that you are an active programmer and that you are contributing to the internet.

Finally, when you have your name on your site or blog you start creating an online presence for yourself. The blog and its contents will be indexed by Google. This means when people search your name you will start showing up. You will also start to appear in searches when they look for items related to your field of specialty. This connection can quickly establish you as an expert. With your name now out there you also want to keep people coming back. Thus, content is king. Creating the blog is in some ways the easy part. Maintaining it and coming up with fresh content is going to be the tricky part as time goes by.

Developing your personal brand

This post is Day #2 in a series called Personal Branding for Software Developers.

As I stated in my first article in this series everyone should have a personal brand. And most of us already do. We have a career history in which we have interacted with dozens of people. Their opinions of us and our own knowledge help define us as our personal brand.

However, before we dive into using some of the tools needed to develop your brand through social media you need to step back and think about what your goals are for the future. You need to think about where you are now and where you want to be. Your brand can evolve over time and most likely it will, but you want to make sure that it does so on a logical path.

Let say today you are a junior software developer in a large company. You are the proverbial small fish in the big pond. You do not want to remain unnoticed forever and you know the career path you want for yourself. Perhaps you are looking to move up to intermediate and then senior developer all within the next 3-5 years. You are unsure if this will be in the same company or if you will move around. If it is the latter then you will definitely need to promote yourself.

The whole idea for this junior developer is how do you want others to see you? This is one of the main tenets of personal branding. You need to single yourself out from the pack. You need to choose an angle or a technology to focus on. An angle could be that you always deliver on your deadlines or that you are the best problem solver within your team. You can also focus on a certain technology. If you are brilliant with Microsoft SharePoint then you could become a SharePoint guru. The same with Ruby on Rails, PHP, etc.

This leads into another main point about branding yourself and that is focus on what your brand does for others. You want to be able to demonstrate to others what it is you can bring them. Your brand is all the experience you have gained in a specific area and it is this that a prospective company is hiring your for. If you are excellent at SharePoint your rates might be higher but it also means you can work faster and get the job done to their specifications. The same is true for our junior developer. His lack of experience can be offset by his willingness to work cheaper but diligently.

The third thing you want to think about before getting started is how will you keep your brand updated? The logical starting place for creating your new brand image will be your resume. It is your listing of all the skills you have attained up to this point. As you develop your brand you will need to keep your various social media platforms up to date. Tools like LinkedIn and your blog will need to be constantly revised to reflect your new skill levels. So a mind shift needs to take place because instead of updating your paper resume before your next job search you will update your profiles as your skills grow.

Working on the previous three points of your personal brand before working with the social networking tools can save time later and it can give your branding more focus. You can think about things in the abstract and then in fine detail before you execute on them. You thus get a more consistent brand image.

By taking the step of developing a personal brand you are taking charge of your career path. You are not relying on a company or manager to choose your route for you. In essence it makes you responsible for the success or failure of your career. If you have a brand and are well known for it you will find that companies and recruiters will start coming to you. And whether you are looking to change jobs or not, the feeling of being wanted is a nice feeling to have.

Car Lease Calculator – my new Windows Phone 7 app

My latest Windows Phone 7 app entitled Car Lease Calculator has been published to the Windows Phone Marketplace.

The Car Lease Calculator can help you calculate your monthly lease payments. The app also includes a definition of terms page to inform the user on how to use the calculator.

Use the Car Lease Calculator to:
- Confirm the calculations of a leasing agent
- Determine your automobile leasing budget
- Compare offers from different dealerships
- Save money and time
- Make informed decisions
- Increase your purchasing power

Click the button below to download it today!

After you have downloaded it, please go to the app’s About page to add your rating/review.

Finally, visit my page in the Windows Phone Marketplace to see a listing of all my other Windows Phone 7 apps available for download.

Personal branding thru social networking for software developers

This post is Day #1 in a series called Personal Branding for Software Developers.

Personal branding is not a new phenomenon. In fact the phrase was coined back in 1997 by Tom Peters and popularized by Dan Schawbel. However, the prevalence of the topic has skyrocketed in the past few years and now everyone is developing their own brand. But what is it exactly?

It can be defined in many different ways but essentially it is the act of marketing yourself and your career as a brand. It has as much to do with what you have done or are currently doing as with how other people see you in your profession. So even though you may not market yourself as a JavaScript guru others may see you this way and come to you constantly for help.

Social media is defined by Wikipedia as “media for social interaction as a super-set beyond social communication. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media has substantially changed the way organizations, communities, and individuals communicate.”

The combination of using social media to create a personal brand has only become more prominent in recent years. Through the mistakes of many people we can see how slip ups in social networking can impact a personal brand. We can also see how a person can create a large following through the various social media outlets to become a well-known expert on a subject. It is the latter that you should strive for.

Many people can see the need for a personal brand for celebrities and for other professions who are constantly in the public eye. Jobs like sales people, realtors and health professionals rely on a public image to attract clients and to keep their name on the tips of people’s tongues. It allows then to set themselves apart from everyone else in a crowded marketplace.

Software developers, web developers and people in IT are in a different world. A great many developers want nothing more than to go about their business and be left alone to code. They want nothing to do with clients and they leave all handling of the client to the project manager. However this insulation comes at a price when it is time to change jobs. The old ways of blasting people with resumes and hunting through listings on sites like Monster, Dice and Workopolis are not cutting it anymore.

Today’s developers need to be online and connected. Everyone needs a social network and to work that network. Creating a network when we are unemployed or underemployed is starting too late. You need to build and maintain that network when everything is flowing smoothly. In fact, according to a recent study 80-85% said they found a job through a referral from a personal friend and 15% said they found a job through a social network.

By developing a personal brand you can attain the career goals you have set out for yourself. Perhaps you want to go from developer to senior developer to team lead to software architect. This could happen all within the same company or you may need to move around to do it. Along the way though you are going to meet and connect with people (your personal network). You will learn new things and become known for your knowledge in those areas (your image). You may then want to disseminate some of your knowledge (through a blog, Twitter, speaking engagements, etc.) and along the way you will be putting yourself out there as someone who is passionate and knowledgeable about their craft. And from there the sky is the limit.

In this series of articles I am going to talk about how to develop a personal brand through social networking tailored towards software developers. I will draw upon my own experiences of emerging from the background to developing my own blog, Twitter feed, LinkedIn account, about.me page and connections with other services. I will share why I made choices to use certain products over others. I will also share some of the tips and tricks I have collected since I have started.

The articles in this series are listed below and I hope to publish one a day to this blog. Please follow along as I chart the creation of a personal brand:

Day #1: Personal branding thru social networking for software developers
Day #2: Developing your personal brand
Day #3: Creating a developer’s blog
Day #4: Using Twitter to promote your blog and your personal brand
Day #5: LinkedIn as your new digital resume
Day #6: Facebook – for personal or professional contacts?
Day #7: Using Google+ as a placeholder service
Day #8: Getting the most from your about.me page
Day #9: The many benefits of speaking at conferences
Day #10: Expanding your personal network
Day #11: Establish a uniform look for all your social media profiles
Day #12: Publicizing yourself on the web

Personal Branding for Software Developers

Welcome to personal branding for software developers! In this series of articles I am going to talk about how to develop a personal brand using social networking tools that is tailored towards software developers.

Over the next 12 days I am going to publish articles on the following topics:

Day #1: Personal branding thru social networking for software developers
Day #2: Developing your personal brand
Day #3: Creating a developer’s blog
Day #4: Using Twitter to promote your blog and your personal brand
Day #5: LinkedIn as your new digital resume
Day #6: Facebook – for personal or professional contacts?
Day #7: Using Google+ as a placeholder service
Day #8: Getting the most from your about.me page
Day #9: The many benefits of speaking at conferences
Day #10: Expanding your personal network
Day #11: Establish a uniform look for all your social media profiles
Day #12: Publicizing yourself on the web

I hope to publish one a day to this blog. Please follow along as I chart the creation of a personal brand.

Related Posts:

• Using rel=”me” to create a unified web presence
• Finding and using your Twitter RSS feeds
• LinkedIn changes rules for a 100% complete profile

LinkedIn changes rules for a 100% complete profile

LinkedIn recently made some changes to their criterion as to what it means to have a 100% complete profile.

Under the old system your profile was complete if you had the following filled out: profile summary, specialties, current position, two past positions, education, profile photo, and at least three recommendations.

With the new system you now need the following: profile photo, a list all the jobs or positions you’ve held, five or more skills on your profile, profile summary, industry and postal code, education, and 50 or more connections.

These changes to profile completeness should make it easier for people to finish their profile. And keep in mind that according to LinkedIn “users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn.”

They also say “adding a profile photo makes your profile 7x more likely to be found in searches. And that having your 2 most recent positions makes your profile 12x more likely to be found.”

LinkedIn also announced that “the Profile will put more emphasis on Skills and Expertise. This means you can showcase your areas of expertise to easily connect with people that have similar skills or with companies looking for subject matter experts.”

The complete news release can be read here.

Finding and using your Twitter RSS feeds

At one time Twitter users had full access to their RSS feeds. Since the re-design of the Twitter universe some of these features were removed. However, they were not disabled and so access to these items is still available.

In this post I will show you how you go about finding out the RSS feed for your Twitter timeline and your public facing Twitter lists.

TWITTER TIMELINE

Before the Twitter re-design all one had to do to find an RSS feed was to browse to a user’s profile page. Since this feature has been disabled we now need to do a bit of simple hacking to the URL of the user’s profile. To do this follow the simple steps below:

1. Go to Twitter.com and search for a user. Select the user for the feeds you wish to receive. You will get a URL similar to this – https://twitter.com/#!/KenCenerelli

2. To subscribe to this user’s feed we will need to modify the standard Twitter user’s RSS feed URL which looks like the following – http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/[UniqueID].rss Every Twitter user has a unique id. To find one you can use a service like http://www.idfromuser.com Searching within the site for my name I know my id is 386101798.

So when I replace [UniqueID] in the standard URL my RSS feed becomes http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/386101798.rss

I can also elect to use the Twitter user name in the URL as well. An example with my name would be http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/KenCenerelli.rss

3. You can then subscribe to this list in your favorite RSS reader like Google Reader or Microsoft Outlook. It can also be placed on a blog as an RSS feed if you do not have a Twitter feed widget installed.

TWITTER LISTS

RSS feeds are also available for your public facing Twitter lists. Note that this functionality is not available for any private lists.

1. As above we need to modify the standard URL for Twitter lists – http://api.twitter.com/1/[Author]/lists/[Twitter List Name]/statuses.atom

To create an RSS feed of a Twitter list all we need to do is change the [Author] to the name of the list creator and the [Twitter List Name] to the name of the Twitter list they are publicizing.

As an example, if you wish to see my public list on my hometown of Guelph, Ontario, Canada you would browse to
http://api.twitter.com/1/KenCenerelli/lists/guelph-ontario-canada/statuses.atom

2. You can then subscribe to this list in your favorite RSS reader like Google Reader or Microsoft Outlook.

My CTTDNUG presentation slides and source files

I have published my slides and source files on An Introduction to Configuring and Extending Umbraco CMS from my presentation to Canada’s Technology Triangle .NET User Group (CTTDNUG). The slides are also available on SlideShare.

Please contact me if you have any follow up questions.