Professionals turn to LinkedIn to make connections and search for new opportunities. Knowing how to make your profile stand out is the key to getting noticed. So, if you’re struggling to get noticed, these LinkedIn profile tips should help you attract recruiters.

1. Make Your Headline Specific

With millions of people on LinkedIn, you need to stand out from the crowd. So the first of our LinkedIn profile tips concerns headlines. When you show up in a search, a recruiter will immediately see your headline underneath your name. It’s the sole deciding factor in whether someone will click on you.

If you’re a writer, you won’t want your headline to say: “Freelance Writer.” That’s way too vague. Instead, go with a more detailed headline that clearly states what you do. Use a descriptive headline like “SEO Marketing Copywriter with experience increasing web traffic” would make a recruiter more likely to click on your profile.

2. Get LinkedIn Recommendations

LinkedIn recommendations are a great way to show that you’re a reliable worker. If you don’t know what recommendations are, they’re a positive remark that a coworker, boss, or client writes about you. It gets displayed on your profile for other companies and potential clients to see.

Overview of Accounting & Finance in Banking Recruitment

Banks increased their recruitment of temporary Accounting & Finance professionals across both Regulatory Reporting and Product Control as the summer hiring lull ended.

A number of external factors have played a key role so far this year, not least Brexit uncertainty and the impact of IR35 on longer term contract opportunities. Despite this, the flow of jobs for various finance roles has been consistent across different sized banks.

The only regulatory concern has been the growing consideration for IR35 and how it will affect contract hiring for the rest of 2019 and into 2020. Some banks have been hiring employees on Fixed Term Contracts or permanently rather than contractors in an attempt to protect themselves, whilst others have maintained their hiring of contract professionals, with contracts in some instances running until the latter half of 2020.

Prominent Roles

Banks’ requirements have varied enormously, looking to hire across numerous disciplines. The smaller banks have been concentrating within Financial Control, from Finance Business Partners to low level accounts processing roles. In contrast, larger banks have focused on Regulatory Reporting jobs, Accounting Policy and Performance Management roles. Product Control has remained an area of consistent hiring and we expect this to continue as investment banks spread their presence across new products.

New year, new hiring push — and your efforts probably include Generation Z. This generation of digital natives is the newest to enter the workforce, bringing 61 million potential new hires who are expected to comprise 36% of the workforce by 2020. But how do you bring them into your company?

First and foremost, don’t get mired in the same myths over this generation as you might have with millennials. Now the largest demographic in the workplace, millennials are not the self-involved, short-lived cohort some asserted, and neither are Gen Z. 

While this generation does bring a whole new sensibility and digital savvy, you don’t have to change your work culture or employer brand just for them. Instead, focus on these five factors to attract and engage this growing demographic:

1. Brand and culture

Make sure your employer brand aligns with your workplace culture. While the workforce itself may be new to Gen Z applicants, they may already be aware of your employer brand, and that may shape a preconceived notion of your culture and company values. That perception could determine the kind of applicants you get: Gallup finds companies with a powerful and positive work culture attract the top 20% of candidates. 

However, don’t try to craft a specific perception of your company; make sure your brand authentically aligns with your internal culture. Gen Z candidates want the story they hear during the recruiting process to match the day-to-day reality when they come on board. If it doesn’t, they will be a lot less likely to stick around.

Although most managers would agree that it is important to hire people who fit in, the idea of hiring for culture fit has become controversial. Our work suggests it need not be. Most of the controversy boils down to a single key issue: the wrong definition of culture fit. The confusion over what culture fit is has given rise to a number of common misconceptions. Clearing these up can help managers improve their talent strategies.

Misconception #1: Culture fit is a “nice to have” but not a necessity.

The core assumption here is that employees’ skills and competences matter more for organizational effectiveness than how well they fit in. While we’re not disputing the importance of having a highly skilled workforce, a large body of scientific evidence has shown that culture fit—which we and others define as how well one’s values adhere to the values of the organization or team — matters significantly for how people act and behave at work. Meta-analyses have found that people whose values are more aligned to those of their organization are more committed to the organization, more satisfied with their job, and less inclined to leave. Studies show that value fit also relates to actual job choice decisions, in the sense that people with higher value fit stay longer and perform better than people whose values fit less. So if leaders want to have an engaged and motivated workforce — as well as the ability to attract and retain the skilled employees they want — culture fit is essential. It is not a luxury; it is as important to overall organizational functioning as hiring for other qualities.

2020 is under way, but unfortunately, 2019 problems still exist. For instance, unemployment remains low and candidates still have the upper hand in picking who they work for. On top of all this, the skills gap continues to grow and educational institutions are doing little to prepare students for the new world of work. As a result, the onus is now on employers and hiring managers to reevaluate which skills are necessary to get the job done. 

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s new report, “Hiring in the Modern Talent Marketplace,” employers and hiring managers are preparing for a world where competencies—not degrees—are the most important factors when filling a job. The findings show that employers are working with higher education to align what is taught in the classroom with the needs of the economy.

Competencies Become a Major Factor in Hiring

The study surveyed 500 hiring managers, and respondents acknowledged the need to overhaul their hiring practices to focus on competencies over formal education credentials. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents agreed that there has been a lack of skilled talent among the available workforce in recent years.

The top three goals for hiring managers in 2020 reflect this challenge: retain more talent (41%), recruit top talent (35%), and reduce the time to hire new talent (26%).

Though advances in technology are rapidly changing the skills needs of the business community, more than half (58%) of respondents believe automation is an opportunity and will likely create the same number of new roles in the workforce as those it eliminates.

“As a nation, we need to move toward a skills-based approach for educating and hiring where the skills taught in the classroom directly align to the skills required for a career,” says Cheryl Oldham, Senior Vice President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Center for Education and Workforce—in a press release.

What do you get when you combine radical honesty with grace? You get the chance to create a powerful culture for your company and a successful career track for your employees.

That’s the theory behind the career of my guest on this week’s “Aim Higher” podcast, Patty McCord. She was with Netflix when it was a start-up as its Chief Talent Officer and helped create their now famous “Freedom and Responsibility” PowerPoint deck. That deck was a fairly massive set of slides that Netflix published, openly, on the web in order to let people know, “This is what we value here, and this is how we reward it.” As she tells me, it was a short-cut to finding great employees. You could read the deck and get a real feel for whether or not Netflix was a place you’d fit in. If it wasn’t? You weren’t going to show up for an interview… which saves everyone a whole lot of time. That’s radical honesty—and grace—right there.

We got the chance to talk through a number of important, and often difficult, subjects ranging from leadership to growth to recruiting to compensation. But the one that really got me thinking was this simple yet hard-hitting nugget:

“Happy employees is not a goal.”

People often wonder why they never hear anything back after they hit ‘send’ on the email with a resume attached or on the on-line job application. If you’re very lucky, you might have a preliminary email exchange with a recruiter and then never hear from them again. It’s a depressing experience and one which also casts a shadow on the hiring company’s reputation. So why does it happen? Is it you, is it them, or is it just something every candidate must prepare for in the hiring process?

An oft-cited recruiter’s complaint is that as many as 50 percent of people applying for a given job simply aren’t qualified. Adding to the challenge, most large companies – and many smaller ones – use talent-management software to screen resumes, weeding out up to 50 percent of applicants before a human even looks at a resume or cover letter. The deck is definitely stacked against the job seeker. So how do you breakthrough?

Here are my top 5 reasons you’re not hearing back after applying for a job, with five suggestions for ways to avoid the resume black hole.

Diversity is not about your skin colour, heritage or age.  It is about the ability to embrace differences and accept ideas, people and things that don’t fit into your traditional way of thinking or behaving.  Maximising opportunities to enable diversity requires an open-minded approach to things. It can be acquired as any other skill as I discuss in an article on how to be a  more open-minded leader.

Benefits of Diversity

The benefits of a diverse workplace include an increased ability to solve problems, innovate, meet customer requirements and collaborate effectively.  For innovation and creativity thus to thrive in an organization, diversity is a useful tool.

Much like a tree requires new shoots to grow in order to stay alive, so too an organization needs new thinkers who challenge the status quo.

New brooms sweep clean for the simple reason that they are not yet indoctrinated into the existing culture.  A new team member sees things in a fresh way.  A diverse and open-minded workforce takes this new-broom phenomenon one step further.  An open-minded workforce introduces new thought patterns, tools, and skills to the workforce.

Diversity enables teams to see a problem from more unique perspectives, allowing a more complete, comprehensive, effective and creative solution to any problem.

Regardless of your industry or team size, being a leader is no easy task. You have to be a counselor, a disciplinarian and a source of encouragement all at once. Finding a balance between those roles — some of which at first seem to conflict — requires a crystal-clear strategic vision, passion for your people and a commitment to developing your own emotional intelligence.

It’s possible to replace employees, but you can never precisely replicate an individual’s specific skill set. In today’s knowledge economy, the old adage that employees are your biggest asset rings true. One of the most important things you can do as a leader is show your employees you understand this, as well as the value they bring to the table — that you have confidence in their skill sets and expect great things. 

Setting high expectations not only inspires employees, but it also helps you get the best work from them. At the end of the day, your team’s success equals your success. Below are a few key ways to keep your team motivated and, ultimately, help your entire organization succeed.

In past generations, you could expect to be loyal to a company, stay there for 25 years, and you would have job security. The recession of 2008 changed everything and now, that is no longer how job security works. In our new economy, you may find yourself looking for a new job when you least expect it. The quantity of opportunities available to you is great, but at the 200+ level they are hard to come by, miss out on one and your professional relevance will suffer.

Here is how and why the average executive role is only 18 months:

• Your current employer is purchased by a larger company out of state.
• Your employer’s product, service or business model no longer is relevant in today’s market. The money runs out with no more investors interested and no additional financing options available.
• You are making more money than market value for your current duties and responsibilities. Reductions in workforce are now done from a fiscal perspective and no longer LIFO (last in, first out).
• New PE investors with a new plan and their own people.
• The new biggest career mistake is not consistently keeping an open mind to opportunities that will keep you in the highest demand in your industry and/or discipline.

Here Are the Top 3 Reasons You Should Look For a Job While You Don’t Need To:

1. The odds are not in your favor. Statistically speaking, what are the odds that you will find your dream job when you need it or when you are not busy at work? In case you haven’t realized it yet, you rarely get less busy. The second issue that stacks the odds against you is that at 200k+ salaried roles, there are fewer opportunities available due to the supply and demand nature of the job market. We call it the Job Opportunity Bell Curve.

A hungry-to-learn, tech-savvy workforce is taking over, and these workers already make up 35% of the workforce. But there is a catch: This new kind of worker is one companies are having a hard time understanding and an even harder time attracting with the usual business perks.

The newer generations are not amused by the same perks and benefits that attracted Baby Boomers. Instead, their mind-set is uneasy when looking toward the future. According to Deloitte’s 2018 Millennial survey, the younger generations are more pessimistic when it comes to political and social progress, expressing concerns about safety, social equality, and environmental sustainability.

As employers, there is an opportunity to change that in order to modernize your recruiting to attract eager, young talent.

Company culture has long been relegated to the “fluffy” side of business in the minds of many corporate veterans and observers. An engaging, a friendly, a welcoming, or even just a pleasant place to work is often thought of as something nice to have … as long as the company is making money.

But companies are increasingly seeing a robust company culture as a means to achieve those more concrete goals rather than as just a nice-to-have as long as the concrete goals are met.

Henry Albrecht, the CEO of employee experience company Limeade, says culture will be king in the years to come. Limeade believes culture will rise on the priority list of CEOs, getting closer in terms of importance to board-level metrics like revenue, profit, and market share.