5 Tips to Jump Start Your Career this Year

In our search for top talent, LinkedIn is a resource to Direct Search Alliance, as it is for recruiters nationwide. More importantly, is it a career tool for candidates representing their skills and talents to the online community. As a reader of the LinkedIn Blog, I wanted to share this posting with prospective candidates -- simple but powerful advice.

by Kay Luo - LinkedIn Blog
Here are five resolutions that professionals can make and keep this year, to jump start their career.

1. Build your online brand
Your online image can affect the way other professionals see you, just as much as your offline image. Create your own online professional brand by developing a LinkedIn profile. Make sure to keep information on your professional experience and other relevant information up-to-date. You may be surprised to learn how many recruiting executives use online networks to locate potential candidates. Also, if you're keen on building an impressive professional brand, make sure personal information intended for close friends stays private on the web. You don't want coworkers and potential employers looking at personal photos of your vacations and party shots. If you're curious about who is checking out your online brand, you can use LinkedIn's "Who's Viewed My Profile" feature to find out.

2. Be at the forefront of people's minds
In order to get leads and recommendations through your network, it's important to keep in touch with former colleagues as well as your present circle. LinkedIn allows professionals to remain at the forefront of people's minds by easily and efficiently keeping in touch. Using LinkedIn, it's easy to see who's been promoted, switched jobs, moved, won an award, and more. LinkedIn's InMail messaging system is a perfect way to reach out and keep your connections fresh, without cutting into your personal time.

3. Make smarter decisions
Being a great leader is not always about becoming an expert at everything -- it's really about knowing where to find knowledge and expertise when you need it. The LinkedIn Answers feature allows professionals to quickly and easily solicit input and gain perspective from their own connections or from the broader LinkedIn community. Learn how others approach new markets, revamp processes, and resolve problems. Draw on the collective knowledge of your trusted connections -- and their connections -- and benefit from the experience of others.

4. Prioritize how you spend your time
Everyone understands the importance of time management in today's accelerated workplace environment. Successful people are often sought after with requests from unknown people for meetings, events, speaking engagements, and more. The LinkedIn network can be used to quickly and efficiently check out these contacts and requests before committing. A quick search reveals anyone you might know in common, gives you a capsule impression, and helps you allocate your valuable time wisely. And if you need to prepare for a meeting, the Advanced Search feature can also save time by allowing you to find specialists on almost every topic, industry, or company you want to research.

5. Stay on top of what's going on in your world
If you want to be truly great at what you do, it's essential to stay on top of industry news at all times. LinkedIn News makes it easy for every professional to read the articles they need to read, by leveraging the power of their business connections. It starts by delivering news about key daily topics: a user's company, industry, and competitors, drawn from more than 10,000 publishers and blogs. Then, LinkedIn News uses the wisdom of each user's "crowd" of colleagues to determine the handful of articles that are the most important to their business -- the articles they need to read that day.