Discover why The Apprentice finalists fail on using LinkedIn
So mild-manned Tom the inventor has won the 2011 series of The Apprentice and will now go into business with Lord Sugar, and after hearing how he blagged his way into Walmart with an earlier invention he deserved to win.
However, as a leading Berkshire PR and social media consultancy we wondered how the most successful candidates were faring on the social media heavyweight for business that is LinkedIn.
All four finalists are on LinkedIn and look as if they have been for some time, but none of them are displaying best practice, but interestingly it is the winner Tom Pellereau who comes up trumps courtesy of being the only one who has any recommendations, and he has five that show how well thought of he has been thought of.
In a stroke it means none of the other three have achieved 100 per cent on LinkedIn as that requires three recommendations. Is your profile at 100 per cent?
Both Helen Milligan, whose work ethic saw her win 10 out of 11 tasks, and the smooth tongued sales guru Jim Eastwood, has over 500 connections, no recommendations, scant biography, no personal details. While Susan Ma, who for me was the most resourceful and promising candidate, has a little more detail, 265 connections, but again no recommendations.
None has personalised their URL – mine for example is http://uk.linkedin.com/in/nigelmorgan whereas Susan Ma’s for example is: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/susan-ma/19/55a/77a
None has personalised the link details on their profile either. They might mention ‘personal website’ or ‘company website’, but they have not be personalised to mention the company name or something useful for search engines to find.
None has a useful SEO friendly title - they range from Managing Director (no-one looks for that), Public Speaker (bit better) and so on. Contrast this with mine: Berkshire social media consultant making sense of PR & Social Media for businesses in the Thames Valley - see what I did there?
Finally, none of them has posted an update – not even in the wake of the final. Updates, together with any changes to your profile, are updated those you are LinkedIn with.
Now obviously, these are four busy people, for whom LinkedIn is probably less relevant than their fleeting celebrity, but their omissions are a good illustration for those of us who do want to make the most of LinkedIn – if you have any of the same omissions then you should get cracking and update your profile pronto – or get in touch with Morgan PR and we can help!
Incidentally, such is the power of LinkedIn, all four finalists are third degree connection. That means that some of my first degree connections know some of the candidate’s connections, which would make an introduction possible rather than a cold call!
Incidentally, we blogged about how we soured to (the then) Sir Alan Sugar’s circus back in 2009 and only started watching the current series about five weeks ago, interest piqued by the equity deal of going into business with Lord Sugar, rather than simply getting a job.
If you have pimped your LinkedIn to look better than a candidate on The Apprentice, please comment and tell us - and you can link to your LinkedIn profile to show us how!