What if you could always have a job and never ever ever ever have to worry
What if you could always have a job and never ever ever ever have to worry about looking for a job again? What if jobs came knocking on your door? How to exploit Google to guarantee yourself a job?
Last time we talked about visibility and how visibility can insure that jobs come looking for you.
A quick recap:
Visibility is being ‘findable’ and ‘plastered’ all over the place in your field. It is also about how you are automatically perceived favorably by others due to your name being associated with other notable people in your field.
Visibility: is who you know but more importantly it is who knows of you. This requires emphasis -it is not who knows you but who knows of you.
Who is your best friend when it comes to being ‘visible’? Well you knew this right? Google! Your visibility is directly proportional to the square root of your years of experience divided by your compensation. Hell no! It is simply your high Googlability. According to our friends at Wikitionary, Googlability is ‘The ease with which something can be found using the Google search engine’.
Now of course we want that ‘something’ to really be something …to be you.
The goal is when anyone is searching for an employee or the media needs an expert, you pop up high in the search rankings …at the minimum on the first page of the search results. That my friends will guarantee that you will always be in someone’s sights –you will be amazed by how many people from far flung places will be contacting you.
SEO- search engine optimization is a term used for describing the process by which one makes an internet item rank higher or be ‘most findable’ by a search engine-like Google or Bing. I do not use Bing – so ‘I have not Bing there done that one’ yet! But I know a thing or two about how to ‘get it up’ in Google.
The average person thinks they are doing great when it comes to Googlability because they say to me “When I enter my name in Google I rank high.” I say who cares…who’s searching for your name? Who’s looking to ‘hire a name’ anyway?
The first thing to realize is that your name does not mean much when it comes to search engine search. Why? Because Searchers, Human Resources, Managers and Recruiters/Head-Hunters, who are seeking a target to recruit, do not search you by name but rather they search you by specialty, geographical region and frequently in combination with the first two, by company name. They usually don’t give a hoot what your name is rather what your title/specialty is and where you are located.
SEOing yourself is not difficult. Showing up high in the rankings through organic means takes some time that is because of the way search engines work. So now is the best time to start and to be smart and learn how to jump ahead of your competition quickly without waiting for organic SEO ranking.
So what are some real valuable shortcuts to getting high ranking quickly? Answer: joining or ‘posting on’ high Googleable ranking web sites, like LinkedIn, YouTube and believe it or not Kijiji (which can be used strategically and simply to bolster ranking and visibility, more about this one later).
When it comes to professional career visibility nothing beats LinkedIn.
LinkedIn ranks so high in Google, it is a wonder it does not need oxygen.
A well thought out profile and title in LinkedIn with the right keywords is worth tons of easy attention. If you are not on LinkedIn then when you are done reading this get on it ‘tout de suite.’ www.linkedin.com
Let me give you an example: if you enter these 3 words into Google: operator lcmsms Toronto (which means an operator of a mass spectrometry instrument in Toronto) the third and the fourth non-paid Google results are Alpana Parikh – Canada | LinkedIn. This is what I am talking about! This person is a category killer because whenever anyone is looking for an LC-MS/MS Operator in Toronto …guess who they are going to find.
The key here is that the key words in her profile show up more than once. LC-MS/MS shows up 11 times and Operator shows up twice, and ‘LC-MS/MS Operator’ (the words in combination) shows up twice. For your information, Google makes no distinction between lcmsms, or lc-ms-ms or LC-MS/MS it is all the same to Google; dashes hyphens etc… do not mean anything to Google –Google does not distinguish them. Lastly she also has joined a LinkedIn Group that has LCMS in its profile. She is doing everything right except for one very important strategy she is not using if she wants to rank first.
If she wants to rank first for that search all she has to do is change her LinkedIn title from ‘Experienced Pharmaceutical Professional’ to ‘LC-MS/MS Operator’. This a classic mistake most people make -they want to look like they have a broader appeal in fact that works against them, because a searcher never looks for an ‘experienced pharmaceutical professional’ as a keyword search. It is just too general a search. I am not criticizing this person’s entry rather she has an excellent profile from a keyword perspective- if she wants to improve it she can change her title.
So now it is your turn to be a category killer. Think like a searcher. What would he/she be Googling when looking for someone with your expertise? Make sure you enter your keywords over and over again in your LinkedIn profile.
The idea is you want to dominate the top 5 or 6 search results. You can do this by signing up to YouTube with an account title like ‘lcmsmsoperator’ and then posting a number of videos about yourself –i.e. for instance 2 or 3 minute videos about yourself and your experience. Of course make sure you edit them so you look good and sound good. Then put the right tags in your video description and tags like “lcmsms operator Toronto, Toronto lcmsms operator, operator lcmsms Toronto etc…” and I guarantee, you will dominate those top spots in Google.YouTube and videos are loved by Google since Google owns YouTube.
Lastly if you post your resume on Kijiji you will also get high ranking. I recommend you take your specific address off and just put your city, for instance in the above example – the city would be Toronto, and also use a new web based email address for your resume on this posting because you will get a lot of spam. There are pros and cons to posting your resume on the Internet, if you do it right by guarding your privacy and do it strategically to get ranking it can really pay dividends for you.
