Writing Skills vs. Presentation Skills

I’ve always been told that I’m a good writer.  Throughout high school, my teachers told me I had great writing skills and throughout college, I always got A’s on papers and essays.  This whole blogging experience has been great for me, as it’s given me an opportunity to write, a lot.  I’ll be honest, for a guy who got his degree in Supply Chain Management, writing 500 words two to three times a week is a LOT of writing.

I’m now embarking on a new adventure, a little thing called video blogging, which I’m sure you’ve already seen.  I’ve done two videos so far, neither of which I’m really proud of, and I’ll tell you why.  I hate presenting.  It’s one of those things that scares the hell out of me and I don’t know why.  Every presentation I’ve done in school was actually very good.  I always have someone tell me afterward, “You did great! Probably the best in the class.”

Every time I have presentation, the same thing happens.  I get nervous, my hands start to shake, my palms get sweaty, I start saying “umm” a lot, my voice sounds shaky, my mouth starts to dry out and I always forgot to stop and take a sip of water, which I have with me every time I present.  The funny thing?  The same exact thing happened the other night when I recorded my first video blog.  Why?  I don’t know.  It’s not like I was in front of a group of fellow students.  I was in my home office talking to a crappy video camera sitting on top of seven books and binders because I couldn’t get the camera to point at my face without them.  It took me over an hour to make it through a full run without screwing up and completely botching the entire video.  Maybe it was the thought of all the people out there who might actually watch my video on YouTube or my blog.  I don’t really know, but I do hope that video blogging will help me overcome my fear of presenting.

The reason for writing this post was to bring up the question: which is more important, writing skills or presentation skills?  Personally, I think it all depends on what you do.  If you work in sales, I would think presentation skills are more important.  If you work for a newspaper or magazine, writing skills are obviously going to be very important.  In most professions, though, there is a middle ground between the two.  It’s important to be good at both and not limit yourself to one or the other.  Besides, why wouldn’t you want to be good at both?  It’s one more thing you can add to your list of skills.

Now it’s your turn to answer the question: what’s more important?  Share your opinions below!

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Professional Diversification Online: Using LinkedIn to Promote Yourself

If you don’t know what LinkedIn is, then you better listen up.  LinkedIn is an all business-related social networking site.  It allows professionals to connect with other professionals and share information.  The unique thing about LinkedIn is that it’s like an online resume, a very versatile online resume.  You fill out your profile, which includes information like your work history, education, honors and awards.  Sounds like a resume, doesn’t it?  What’s unique about LinkedIn is that you can recommend people you’ve worked with and they can recommend you.  Now here’s the most important part of LinkedIn that relates to Professional Diversification: your skills.  LinkedIn recently added a skills section to your profile that allows you to choose what you’re good at and share it with the world.  You get to pick your skill level and how many years you’ve been doing that particular thing.

Now that we all know what LinkedIn is, I’m going to give you a few tips to get your profile up and running:

1. Grab Your Vanity URL.

The first thing you want to do is, obviously, sign up for an account.  Go to http://www.linkedin.com/ and click the “Join Today” link.  The first and most important thing you want to do is grab your vanity URL.  What the heck is a vanity URL, you ask?  A vanity URL is what makes your profile unique to you.  Most social networking sites allow you to pick your own and I advise you choose your own full name, like I’ve done below.  Why is this the most important part of your profile?  Because when people search for your name in Google, they can find you!  DUH!

 

2. Fill In Your Resume Information.

The next step is to fill in the bulk of your information.  It’s all that boring resume information, like where have you worked, how long did you work there and where did you go school and when.  Obviously, this is the most essential part of your profile, just as it is your resume.  The nice thing is you can copy it straight from your resume, so you better dust that thing off.

3. Fill In Your Skills.

Now we get to some of the fun stuff.  If you read my post on Interests, Skills and Inexperiences, and actually took my advice, you should have a nice list of skills that you can put in this section.  If you don’t have a list like that, please take a look at that post to help you get started.

4. Fill In Your Profile Summary.

This is something you really don’t get to do on a resume.  It’s where you get to talk about yourself!  Everyone’s favorite thing to do.  Some people are really good at talking about themselves, but me on the other hand, can’t stand it.  I have such a hard time talking about myself, which is one thing I have to get over if I want to be successful.  There are a number of great resources online that teach you how to write great summaries.  If you can’t find any, you could use mine as a template.  Your summary should include who you are and what you want to accomplish, a little something about your education and where you excelled, and where you’re at in your professional career and where you’d like to go.

5. Interests = Potential Careers.

In addition to your hobby interests that you’ve identified from above, I encourage you to list your potential careers as interests on your profile.  If employers are looking for people who want to be stock brokers, they can see that you’re interested in the stock market and investing.  There’s really no other place to put it on your profile, because it’s not necessarily something you studied in school and its not something you’ve done as a profession.

6. Join A Couple Groups.

Groups allow you to get together with other people who are interested in the same things.  You can learn a lot from the people in these groups, so I encourage you to join a few that might interest you.

7. Ask A Question.

LinkedIn has an interesting feature that allows you to ask any questions you might have.  Let’s say you want to know everyone’s opinion on Bank of America’s stock price.  You could ask a question on LinkedIn Answers and have highly qualified people answer your question in minutes.  Make sure you give credit to the person who provides the best answer though.  It’s common courtesy on LinkedIn.

8. Answer A Question.

Once you’ve put your own question out there, it’s time to show people what you’re made of.  Find a topic that you believe to be an expert on and answer someone’s question.  If your answer is the best, you’ll be credited with badges that show you are an expert in certain fields.

9. Ask For A Few Recommendations.

Now that you have your profile all up and running, the last thing to do is to ask for a couple recommendations.  Some people are against asking for recommendations.  They think recommendations should not be asked for.  I disagree with this thought though, because I find people won’t recommend you if you don’t ask for it.  So don’t be afraid.  Find some coworkers, classmates, or bosses that you think would be willing to write nice things about you and send them a request for a recommendation.

10. Go Mobile.

If you didn’t know, we’re living in what’s called the “Instant Generation.”  We now live in a world where waiting for information is unacceptable.  That’s why I encourage the use of mobile apps, and LinkedIn has a great one.  When you’re on the go, it gives you the opportunity to respond to messages and check out what your connections are up to.

If you follow these 10 steps, you’ll have a fully functioning LinkedIn profile where people can find you, connect with you, and could help you get a job.  If you have any additional thoughts you’d like to add, feel free to comment below.

Identifying Potential Careers by Leveraging Your Skills and Interests

Job searching can be a stressful process.  Think about how hard it would be to find a job if you didn’t know what you were looking for.  Imagine logging on to a job search website, selecting “Browse All Jobs,” and searching through pages and pages of jobs, of which you might find one or two reasonable offers.  Now, think about how much easier it would be if you knew exactly what kind of job you wanted.

What I’d like to discuss today is leveraging your skills (and interests) from your Professional Portfolio and learning how to turn them into potential money making opportunities.  Identifying and analyzing potential careers is the most important aspect of your Professional Portfolio.  Yes, it’s great that you know what you’re good at or what motivates you, but all that stuff is useless if you don’t know how to use it.  Following the guidelines below, you can put together a list of potential careers that will help you prepare for uncertain times.  It’s as easy as answering the following questions.

1. What?

What is the career you have identified?  What types of job titles are associated with this career?

2. Why?

Why would you want this career?  Why would you be good at this career?

3. Where?

Is this a career you would have to move for?  Or is this something you could do from home?

4. When?

When would you be prepared to start this career?  Do you need additional training or experience before you would be qualified?

5. Who?

Who can you talk to about this career?  Who can help you get into a career like this?

6. How?

If you were to lose your job this week, how would you go about getting into this career?  This is the most important question because it identifies your plan.

Now that we have the guidelines under our belts, I’m going to start blogging three times per week.  Starting this week, I will be adding a new category of posts called Potential Careers.  These posts will provide you with my own personal examples of how to properly use the guidelines above to prepare for uncertain times by engaging in Professional Diversification.

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