Summary Sunday Think About How You Come Across to Others!

Summary Sunday Think About How You Come Across to Others! Sunday is when I share some of my favorite career and job search posts. They all come from colleagues and friends I interact with on Twitter. This virtual community is fast-paced and cutting edge! I love learning and being able to share what I find! Did You Hear the News? The Pros and Cons of the New LinkedIn Endorsement Feature by Barbara Safani of Career Solvers Barbara Safani reviewed the pros and cons of the new LinkedIn endorsement feature. Perhaps you are getting emails from LinkedIn stating someone has endorsed you. This new feature is the reason! Here are just some of the positives to this new feature according to Barbara: Colleagues can recommend additional skills that may be added to a user’s profile. This is a nice way for people to help each other build a more digitally distinct presence and generate additional interest from recruiters and employers. Endorsements help job seekers by offering more regular prompting to examine the skills section, an area of the LinkedIn profile that has become increasingly more important over the past few months. Having skills endorsements may help with profile optimization and SEO making it easier for people to be found. Barabara says these are the downsides to this new LinkedIn feature: Endorsements might not be viewed with the same “street cred” as recommendations. Someone willing to give you a recommendation is really taking the time to advocate for you and document specifically the value you bring to an organization. Someone offering an endorsement is basically “checking a box”. Endorsements may actually erode the networking process rather than build it. Authentic relationships are built over time. You need to feel very confident in your relationship with someone in order to request a recommendation. I don’t believe there is the same level of entry for requesting endorsements. Endorsements smack of a “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” mentality. Just because someone gives you a recommendation it doesn’t mean that it is appropriate to return the favor. But with endorsements those lines may be blurred.   Be prepared to see a lot of reciprocal endorsements on LinkedIn over the next few months. Be your own judge of this new feature being introduced. See what you think! Are You Employable? 5 More Critical Attitudes for Employability by David Schindler on Learning to Leap David Schindler is an employability specialist. This is a second post of his on five things that make someone employable. 1.   AWARE self-awareness, empathy, listening, understanding, asking questions 2.    OPEN â€" to ideas, people and opportunities, honesty, vulnerability 3.   COURAGEOUS â€" brave, taking a risk, entrepreneurial, thinking the unthinkable 4.  DRIVEN â€" direction, purpose, initiative, movement, energy, pace, will 5.  COLLABORATIVE finding solutions to problems, trusting, learning from others, honest feedback, confidence in and dependent on others Re-Inventing You Job Seekers: Be Like Q-tips on Mark HR Happen by Tom Bolt Toms post has four very practical and real ideas on how to re-invent or re-brand yourself. Tom concludes his post with this: How useful are you and where do you get ideas for reinventing yourself? It’s all around you. Leo Gerstenzang invented Q-tips in 1923 after seeing his wife wrapping a piece of cotton on the end of a toothpick. Researching yourself on a daily basis and keeping in touch with the environment is like looking through a transparent mirror…your image is projected on the world around you. If the image doesn’t fit neatly into the picture, make the necessary changes in yourself to create one that does. EQ Just How Much Does   Emotional Intelligence Matter by John Keyser on Glasshammer Not enough has been said about Emotional Intelligence yet (in my opinion). It still is off on the fringe of important topics to address. Any chance I get to share information on EQ, I take. In this post by John Keyser, has defined EQ skills as these: The four main skills of emotional intelligence are: Self-awareness â€" our ability to perceive our emotions and understand our tendencies to act in certain ways in given situations Social awareness â€" our ability to understand the emotions of other people, what they are thinking and feeling Self-management â€" our ability to use awareness of our emotions to stay flexible and direct our behavior positively Relationship management â€" our ability to use our awareness of our own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully Go check it out!