Skills for the Recovery with LinkedIn.
Together with the LinkedIn Team, Luigi Centenaro, founder of the BigName consulting company specialised in personal branding and personal innovation participated in the session held on November 21 for The Job is Yours – Skills for the Recovery. Centenaro has taught Personal Branding and Career Design at prestigious institutions including SDA Bocconi, ESSEC in Paris and Singapore, and WHU ion Düsseldorf. His website states: “Today, unfortunately, being simply good is not enough. It’s fundamental to be relevant, to become a significant signal and be able to communicate this to the right people. The most important asset remains trust, especially in a volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, and complex context like today’s.” We asked him to share some advice for efficient personal branding on LinkedIn.
If you think of a young person who is joining the working world for the first time, what advice would you give them, considering their inexperience in organising their profile?
I often find myself in front of senior figures at work. However, in many cases, their attitude is similar to that of neophytes, in terms of LinkedIn. The first piece of advice is the same that I would give to a young person who is just starting out: discover your role model, search for it on Google and study their personal branding. The first three results of the search engine will probably include their LinkedIn profile. You will immediately want to establish contact! And so here we are. LinkedIn is "the" platform where one communicates in a professional manner. It’s the tool for meeting the right person to find a job. However, do not mistake it for an on-line showcase of CVs! LinkedIn is a technological tool that suggests contacts based on how your presentation. This is why it is important to organise your profile with the best keywords. You have to make sure that when you respond to a job ad, your counterpart will think that you are the right person for that role. And this is possible if you have a goal and a strategy. This is where the difficulties begin.
What, then, is the toolbox of those who manage to position themselves efficiently on LinkedIn?
First of all, it is important to know where you want to go. I am talking about a future horizon that is often not clear even to those who enrol in a master's degree! I have been teaching personal branding at SDA for 15 years and I still wonder why 90 percent of the people I meet do not have a better idea of their smart goal, that is, the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and scheduled objective that they intend to pursue. Even those who think they have very clear ideas, often only have generic aspirations. I am referring specifically to the next step that one must make to pursue their career, not the generic desire to get rich, to get a promotion... in reality, almost no one has a specific position in mind that they would like to work at for the next few years. Very few have a precise strategy. LinkedIn is a useful tool to create the future that we have decided to design. The platform opens up real possibilities to those who have a clear and concrete plan. Of course, I admit that to those who are looking for their first job, the boundary between objective and aspiration is often rather thin.
So how can a young person who is just entering the working world get closer to achieving their goals?
Those who are developing their professional skills surely already have interests concerning a specific topic or application. We need to start nurturing these aspects. What would I say to a young person? Show others that you are studying to become an expert on a given topic. Those who are enthusiastic and interested are contagious! ONe needs to attract people to their network through a positive attitude, visibility, comments, and connections. If you achieve this, you will be noticed and pointed out to others.
What advice would you give to those who wish to reposition themselves, or change sector and career?
Often the platform itself suggests a new direction, providing ideas on how to train, thanks to its micro-didactic activities that are useful and immediate. Reskilling is possible thanks to training and a good community. If you follow the right profiles, you will manage to keep up to date. Networking is not about collecting contacts but forming a community around your interests. This concretely produces a human exchange of value, which gives energy and does not drain it! A few hundred, well-selected contacts are better than five thousand.
What must be avoided in developing the right profile?
First of all, “serendipity” is not a stroke of luck, but requires constant support! LinkedIn shows content that is in line with your interests, so it is important to post and share topics that attract like-minded people. However, be careful. “Popularity contests” on LinkedIn are harmful. Think about those who share posts that attract thousands of “likes” in a few hours. In all likelihood, this is content with little added value. These actions only attract people caught in an emotional wave. “Fragile,” extemporaneous, aggressive shares and comments do not help to structure a truly interesting community for your goals. Being popular is not an absolute evil, but it will only be functional to those who wish to propose themselves as creators or influencers.
Interview by Onelia Onorati, Press Officer for the Fondazione Mondo Digitale.
