LinkedIn Workforce Report: Women Advance in Winemaking Careers

Take a look at this article by George Anders on LinkedIn about careers where women are advancing.  Many of the top 20 careers where women are getting ahead are in STEM.  Winemaking came in at number 18. 

Fields can open up to women for more positive reasons, though, including standout successes by early female entrants. Amy Gardner, president of WineTalent, a wine-industry search firm, takes note of the way female winemakers Heidi Barrett and Celia Welch won worldwide acclaim for their work, starting in the 1990s. 

“They had to fight hard to be recognized for what they do,” Gardner says. But with successes like Barrett’s ability to repeatedly win perfect 100 scores from wine critic Robert Parker, Gardner says, the wineries that she works with have become “very receptive to female winemakers.” 

Megan Brodie has seen this transformation play out in the past decade. When she studied winemaking at the University of California, Davis, “I don’t think I met a single other female in my first two years of classes,” Brodie recalls. But by the time she graduated, Brodie says, the gender ratio “was close to 50/50.” 

“I still get some people who visit us at Karah Estate Vineyard, start a conversation and then ask if they can meet with the winemaker,” Brodie says. “I tell them: ‘You’ve been talking with her for half an hour.’ But most people are excited to realize that a woman can be the winemaker.” 

Happy to see winemaking is gender inclusive!  

You Can Do It: Writing your LinkedIn Profile

Last week I posted about writing your own resume.  Yes, you can do it!  Here's how.  You can also write your own LinkedIn profile.  A good LinkedIn profile is becoming as important as your resume.  There are a lot of similarities, and if you can write your resume, you can definitely write your own LinkedIn profile.  Here are my notes on how to have an effective LinkedIn profile.

Make it look a lot like your resume:  You just spent all that time working on your resume, now incorporate that into your profile.

Photo:  Put up a recent photo that looks professional and engaging.  No, not the photo cropped from your wedding with someone else's cropped torso in the periphery.  Also, not one of you in your car.  (A Cranky Recruiter aside:  I see so many LinkedIn profile photos from the vantage point of a car's dashboard.  Makes me wonder, was someone so mad, they ran out to their car and snapped a selfie so they could start looking for a new job?)  Take a photo of yourself when you are looking good, have good lighting and can say cheese for the camera.

Contact Info:  When setting up your profile, make sure you put complete contact information on your profile.  This can be kept private, but if you want someone to find you here, it is good if they can contact you.  The email you use is the one InMail messages will be routed to, so use one that you can use for LinkedIn messaging.  Your work email might not be best, but if you only look at your work email inbox, putting a secondary, unread email address could backfire too.  I experience this all the time--especially when I have found the ideal candidate on LinkedIn, but have no way to contact them.  Maddening!!!

Background photo:  Find a picture you can put up that reflects something about you.  My profile has a vineyard scene behind me.  I think that makes sense.  The default background is fine, but very uninspired.  Doing a random scan of my connections, approximately 90% of profiles use the default, so that is quite functional.  If you have a social media presence, I think you can find something to put up for your background picture.  You would be in the 10% club of unique background photo profiles.

About:  Write a summary of your experience and what types of positions you are looking for.  Of course, you are probably gainfully employed, so write the summary with that in mind.  Make it sing the praises of your work accomplishments, without it sounding like you are looking for a new job.  Adding a skills section is smart, as is adding information about your educational background, if applicable.

Experience:  This will be pulled straight from your resume.  Put company, title, employment length, and work location.  Then add relevant information within each job.  This can be a paragraph per role, or a paragraph per key responsibilities, depending on length of employment in each role.  Keep it relevant.  If you've been working for 20 years in the field you want to continue in, you don't need to list old, irrelevant jobs outside of your industry.

Education:  List school, degree, any additional accolades (Summa Cum Laude, president of student government, study abroad courses, etc.), and if relevant, date of graduation.

Licenses and Certifications:  Are you an MS?  Put it on there please.  Just got your WSET Level II?  Put it on there.  Are you a certified Cicerone?  Put it on there.  CPA:  PLEASE!  Put down relevant licenses and certifications that add to your marketability.

Skills and Endorsements:  List relevant skills.  Now for endorsements, I think this is a bit of crowdsourcing, but once you put your profile together people can endorse you on the profile.  So put down skills, and hopefully the endorsements will follow.

Recommendations:  If you can, ask former colleagues and managers to recommend you on LinkedIn.  The request process is pretty easy, and if they do not want to do it, they can easily ignore the request.  If you are asking for recommendations, be good and give recommendations for others when asked.

Groups:  Link to some groups of interest to you.

Following:  Get some follows on there for organizations, celebrities, or companies that interest you.

Accomplishments:  If you hold a board seat, have published an article or research paper, have secondary language skills or are hold a patent, put it down.  There are several things you can list, so use this area to enhance your profile.

Interests:  Are you part of a trade group?  Do you like to follow Mr. Wonderful?  Show your interests here.  Yes, just like on your resume make sure they are relevant and give a positive impression of you.  But some personality is good to show here too.

Connections:  Once you've put your profile together, link up to your friends, family and colleagues.  The more connections you have on LinkedIn, the more likely you will make more.  The funny thing people like to say is that they are very promiscuous on LinkedIn.  They connect with anyone and everyone.  Doing this,  you'll be more easily findable by recruiters, like me!  Isn't that one of the big reasons you are on LinkedIn.

And keep it current!  Go into your profile from time to time to make sure it is up to date and relevant.

Desperately Seeking YOU: Passive Job Seekers Need to be Found Too

With the continued need for top-notch talent and tight labor market, we recruiters are working overtime to find the right people for the job.  Time spent in front of our computer terminals is increasing, and our searches in LinkedIn, Facebook and our other toolboxes are our lifeblood.  Recruiters need to find passive job seekers, those of you who are possibly interested in a new job, but are fairly content in your current position.  So it is heartbreaking when one of my searches turns up the ideal candidate, but there is no way to reach this person.

My Mission:  My mission today is to get people to put their personal contact information into their professional profiles.  Whether that is in my main tool, LinkedIn, or if you are an active user of Facebook, CareerBuilder, The Ladders, or another online site, make sure you are reachable.  I know you want to control your privacy settings, but if you lock me out I can't reach you.

Here's my action plan to be found if you are possibly thinking about a new job:

1. Make a LinkedIn profile that is similar to a resume.  
2. On your LinkedIn profile, use an email that is active and you will receive messages for.  Seems simple, but too often we set up our profile with an old address, or that personal email we seldom check.  Well, guess what, if I send you a message in LinkedIn, probably you won't ever see it.  Opportunity is knocking.....
3. Check your LinkedIn messages often.  Respond to them, including the best way to reach you if you are interested in hearing about possible opportunities.  I do encourage you to use a personal email account so that there is no issue with your current employer.
4. Add contacts that you know.  The larger your network is in LinkedIn, the more likely you are to be found in a search.  

Help me out!  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  This post is completely self serving.  In turn, I look forward to helping you out with a great career advancement opportunity.  

Tips for your LinkedIn Profile

Fortune Magazine recently profiled Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn.  Story Here.

I did find out that recruiters are LinkedIn's number one customer.  As a recruiter, I use LinkedIn daily to find new candidates, to network with others and to stay up to date to industry happenings.  The article also included the CEO's recommendations on building a perfect LinkedIn profile--a must for anyone keeping their career on track.

Managing Your Online Identity

Whether you are a former CEO looking to make a company change or a recent graduate figuring out the first step in your career, you need to actively manage your online identity. No doubt you know that this is the information age, since you did receive this message in cyberspace. Make sure others find you too.

When you are beginning to build your online profile, make sure you get a LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter account.

From my perspective, LinkedIn is the most important for your career identity, but maybe not the most fun to use. This probably is a good thing. Go on, put your profile together as if it is your resume. You don't need to put as much detail as a resume, but put your titles, companies, years of service and education on there. Major achievements are helpful too. I recommend editing it carefully so it looks professional. Use any of the option to have an online ID so that your information gets pulled up as often as possible when someone is searching for you. Now, see who you know on there, and ask them to link up. Also, join groups. You can be selective, but try to get the industry networks that would help you. Often you can build your network through people who are in your groups.

Facebook can be your best friend, or your biggest enemy when it comes to building your professional profile. So, if you are considering looking for a new job, keep any racy photos off of there. This includes anything you may have in albums. That photo of my potential candidate at the party with lots of questionable paraphenalia does not make me think he is all that innocent. Clean up your profile. For those of you with squeaky clean profiles, make sure you have important information on your Facebook profile, such as your current employer, the geographical area you live in, and your education. For all you Facebook gamers out there--maybe don't have so many games showing on your profile. If you are spending that much time building your farm or putting out hits in the mafia, are you really dedicated to your current job--let alone your next one. You can also choose to remove posts by friends on your page. While this may cause tension with those friends who want to gift you something, if they know you are looking to better your career prospects, they usually understand.

Twitter is its own beast, but I think it is great to have yourself represented on there. Get your twitter username and build a profile. While I love Twitter, I think it isn't everyone's favorite social networking vehicle. Twitter is mostly a tool for you to share your thoughts, craft an identity and build a network of people. You can keep your profile locked, but this does prevent you from building a large following--which can be good and bad. Having your profile public means anyone can follow you, and they will get your updates as quickly as you put them up there. So, say you are unhappy at work and you put a mean post about your company--a public profile could be viewed by your boss, and get you in hot water. Try to keep your tweets professional and informative. But all info and no fun makes your tweeting very dull. Try to put some light, interesting tweets in from time to time to let people know you aren't just using it as a data dump.

You get out what you put into your online identity. Careful management allows you to have a well honed, professional online personality. When that future employer checks you out on Google they will be able to find you quickly, and possibly learn a bit about you. And then send you a message to connect. Could be an exciting next step.

There are many other social media applications to explore, but I think these three are the priority when you are first getting your job hunt underway. Oh, and make sure you stay on top of your messages in these social media applications. They keep you aware of any potential opportunities, and connected with your friends.

Social Networking

At Unified last week the Thursday session involved the future of the wine industry, and some of the marketing opportunities available. One of the speakers was Courtney Cochran of Your Personal Sommelier and Hip Tastes. She discussed some of the networking trends for the Millenial Generation. The Millenials are people who were born between 1978 and 1996 and are becoming adults at the beginning of the new millenium. The Millenials are the first generation who are choosing wine over other alcoholic beverages when they socialize. This is a great opportunity for wineries to attract a loyal following of customers.

Courtney Cochran brought up social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Generation Xers (of which I'm a proud member) and Millenials are using these sites to stay connected with a large spectrum of friends. Although I've written before about LinkedIn, I have finally dove into Facebook and Twitter. Getting my profile, and that of WineTalent's, complete takes some time, and then you have to figure out who you might know on these sites. It's always fun to connect with some friends you haven't heard from in awhile. Luckily some of my friends are techy, and I linked up to them very quickly. Now I'm searching the sites, seeing what else I can link to on them.

So, did I get much work done today? Questionable. I did get through a lot of emails after being gone last week, and have updated my database. I also connected with some old friends who were on Facebook. I also inadvertently got all of my contacts in my yahoo address book contacted by Tagged. I was signing up after someone linked to me, and before I even finished signing on, hundreds of my contacts were contacted on my behalf. While it is always great to connect, I like to know who is being contacted, and Tagged overpowered me. I now have tons of emails sitting in in-boxes due to a slip of the enter key. Looking over the contacts on Tagged, I quickly discovered it isn't the site I'm going to network on, and canceled my account. Hopefully I haven't done any irreparable harm.

So, get yourself out there on these sites, but don't forget to manage your contacts wisely. And always keep an eye on the content on your pages. Employers and colleagues can look you up and you want to make sure you know what they are seeing.

LinkedIn in the Wine Industry

After a quiet weekend I logged into my email this morning to several invitations on LinkedIn. If you are unfamiliar with LinkedIn it is a professional networking site. I have been using LinkedIn for the last year, and previously thought it was mostly for technology based colleagues. In the last few months, more wine contacts have been popping up on it, and I've signed up for the Wine & Spirits group.

LinkedIn is an online business networking site. You can create a free profile of yourself, your work experience, educational background and community involvement. Once you create your profile, you invite business associates to "link" to you. Through these links you can find mutual acquaintances and get introduced to people you might want to network with. You can also put in recommendations for your business partners and colleagues.

There is also a subsciption service they have where you can gain introduction to LinkedIn users and post jobs on the site. So far I haven't done that, but it very well might be a useful addition for my business.

Several job hunting articles have recently mentioned LinkedIn. I do encourage anyone to take a look at it, and create your profile on it. It can be a great calling card for you, and also may allow a hiring manager to get a better picture of you and the network you have.