Being responsible, creative and motivated means you aren’t!

Your LinkedIn profile is not a beautiful or unique snowflake.

If you try to stand out from the crowd by describing yourself as “creative”, “motivated” or “responsible”, you’re actually making yourself look like you lack creativity and aren’t motivated enough to take responsibility for your career by penning a cliché-free LinkedIn Profile.

We make that assertion on the basis that LinkedIn’s annual list of buzzwords in its members’ profiles includes those three terms among the top eight words that members use to describe themselves.

First conducted two years ago, this year’s effort saw the seriously-social network comb through profiles penned by over 187 million members to find the most-used words. Entries in languages other than English were translated and the whole lot poured into a big data melting pot that spat out the following eight terms as the most-used:

• Creative
• Motivated
• Multinational
• Responsible
• Experimental
• Effective
• Specialized
• Analytical

LinkedIn argues that using those words in your profile makes you stand out from the crowd in the worst possible way – as someone who can’t articulate your values in anything other than words devalued by overuse, or lacking qualities that can be accurately described without resorting to blandishments.

There’s at least one piece of evidence out there to suggest employers already see through these words, as those of you who recall our story from early this year about a job ad for ‘mediocre developers’ may recall.

Check out the original article, by Simon Sharwood, over at The Register.

60 Second Recruitment Interview – Jacco Valkenburg, Recruit2

Under the spotlight is Jacco Valkenburg, founder of Recruit2 and Recruiter University, and an international recruitment expert, trainer and author of two books about LinkedIn.

Q – How long have you been in the industry, and what is your current job title ?
A – I started in 1996 working on (global) recruitment strategies and execution, spanning numerous countries for leading companies. I prefer to call myself a Recruitment Architect because, as founder of Recruit2 and Recruiter University, I provide companies with recruitment consultancy and talent management solutions and expertise. My mission is helping companies to improve the results of their recruitment efforts.
Recently I launched Refer2, a full service provider for recruitment solutions such as referral campaigns and mobile Apps.

Q – Do you have a mentor and if so who ?

A – I’m very active on social media, managing a group of 100.000 Recruitment Consultants on LinkedIn, and having my own recruitment blog www.GlobalRecruitingRoundtable.com. I still learn every day from the readers feedback and the news that they share.

Q – Are you by nature a pessimist or optimist ?

A – Optimist by nature. Every challenge is an opportunity to learn.

Q – What’s the biggest lesson you have learned in your career to date ?

A – Get the basics right first, before buzzing off to new horizons. A lot of companies think they understand recruitment but do the basic things wrong such as a poorly defined recruiting strategy, no planning, using out-dated practices, weak execution process, or because they don’t measure results (and make continuous improvement). A great hiring process, that has the potential to create the highest financial impact, is relatively simple; all that is lacking is creative recruiting’s leadership.

Q – What’s your favourite business quotation or life motto ?

A – My own favourite business quote: ‘Pray that I never become your competitor’s recruiter’.

Q – What’s the best business book you’ve ever read ?

A – My favourite business book is ‘From To Good Great’ by Jim Collins that aims to describe how companies transition from being average companies to great (financial performing) companies and how companies can fail to make the transition. Since then I’ve made it my goal to help companies from good to great staffing.

Interested to learn more about LinkedIn for finding new work or assignments ? Or want to make best use of this online professional network for recruiting ?

www.CareerManagementviaLinkedIn.com

www.RecruitmentviaLinkedIn.com

This article has been re-posted, you can read the original article over at Here Is The City