It used to be common for job seekers to spell out what they were looking for. The place to do that was the “objective,” oftentimes an entire paragraph with earnest-sounding statements involving the likes of “grow in synergy with the rest of the team” and “take my potential to new levels of achievement.”

That was yesterday’s approach! Today, the common understanding is that the “objective” is to get the job; that hardly needs to be expressly stated, right? And what is more: the “objective” is all about what you want, and what you envision for your career.

But the job opening doesn’t exist to satisfy what you want. It exists because the company needs something done, they need it done the day before yesterday, and they weren’t able to fill the position internally.

That’s where you come in: the product that is you, with all the wonderfulness of you. Now allow the company to see how their team is going to be better and stronger for having you be part of it. Speak to their needs!

Instead of an “objective,” give your résumé a succinct professional headline. The headline should capture the role you are going for—it should suggest a close match between you and the position. Your professional headline probably is the first thing employers notice about who you are professionally, so let it be the first thing to identify you as a match for their needs.

Generally speaking, the vantage point you want to adopt in the entire application and interviewing process is that of a consultant: Make it a point to elicit and qualify the employers’ needs, then shift gears and discuss how you can help the employer with those needs. Adopting this type of a consultant’s approach will also help avoid making you look like another desperate applicant begging for a job.

Again, job openings exist because employers need things done. These things usually fall into one or more of the following categories:

1. Make (more) money
2. Seize an opportunity (or solve a problem)
3. Save money, time, or both
4. Recruit, train, and develop staff
5. Develop relationships with other organizations or the general public
6. Retain existing markets and customers
7. Develop new markets and customers

In all regularity, it comes down to a combination of several of these—all the while keeping the boss and other team members sane.

Design the presentation of your relevant qualifications and accomplishments to show you understand the urgency on the employer’s part. That goes a long way in sending the right general message to the employer: instead of communicating desperation (“I need a job! You get it?”), you will be communicating assurance (“You need xyz. I get it!”).

Yes, being in need of a job is not pleasant. For employers to hire you, though, they first have to see you are actively aware of their needs. That will give them the confidence that you will turn out to be a good hire—someone who doesn’t just show up for the paycheck but someone who will take on each new round of challenges.

Some of my LinkedIn workshop participants proudly show me the logos they have in their profiles of all the groups they have joined. And yes, it is a good thing to have groups to go with your profile. Groups boost the size of your network, and whoever visits your profile can see that at the very least you know about this LinkedIn feature. The groups you choose also provide clues about subject-matter areas you find intriguing.

But joining a group only is the beginning of the beginning. As with all things networking-related, the key to getting the most out of your LinkedIn groups—up to and including, ideally, your next professional purpose—is to give it a fair amount of time and thought.

Create an intelligent presence on the group page.

Here is your chance to be visible to other people who share key interests. Join discussions where you can contribute value. Reinforce and validate, or urge caution and moderation, but don’t publicly vilify or deride someone else for their contribution.

Many groups allow polls. You can cast your vote, and look at aggregate results—the percentage of votes for each answer option, and the distribution of LinkedIn member demographics across poll respondents. No one, however, will know how you voted—unless you also post a comment and choose to have the comment display what you voted for.

You can post your own discussions and create your own polls; the latter is done by clicking on the three gray horizontal bars you find in the right-hand corner of the “Start a discussion…” field. Here is your chance to position yourself as committed, proactive, original, and intelligible (and whatever else you want your brand to be recognized for). If a discussion you start garners enough comments from other group members, you may even be showcased as one of the “top influencers in this group.”

Target, and approach, contacts of value to you.

You are interested in contacts at XYZ company. You spot people on LinkedIn who work there. If you are not yet connected, then for the most part your only option of approaching another person directly is through a personalized invitation to join your network.

The effectiveness of invitations for the purpose of first building rapport is questionable. The subject line is fixed here (“Join my network on LinkedIn”); the personal note has a 300-character limit (that’s barely more than two Tweets); and the core message inevitably is to ask a stranger for a leap-of-faith acceptance of you into their network. This all can add up to a certain awkwardness.

That’s where groups come in. LinkedIn users who share a group can message each other directly with full-fledged InMails (although this has to be done through the group page). See if you and the person you would like to get in touch with already share a group. If that is not the case, look at the groups this person is part of, and join one of those groups (preferable an “open” group—one where you don’t have to wait for manager approval of your request to join). Once you, too, are part of the group, you can approach that person, and build rapport without the initial “gamble” of asking to be a connection of theirs right away.

Use the “proprietary” job/job-discussion postings on the group page.

Recruiters sometimes make it a point to avoid the big-ticket job sites such as Monster and CareerBuilder. Job postings there often result in a deluge of responses, with many job seekers submitting applications in a manner equivalent to throwing pasta against the wall, seeing what sticks.

That’s where profession-specific LinkedIn groups come in. Recruiters sometimes figure that job seekers in LinkedIn groups make for higher-“quality” candidates than the general job-seeker population “out there”: the pool of group members is essentially self-selected. Moreover, in the case of “closed” groups (those requiring manager approval of your request to join), members presumably have undergone a minimum of vetting.

The LinkedIn group, therefore, may be one of the few places a job opportunity gets publicized. What is more, you can see who posted it. View that person’s profile to see what their role in the application, interviewing, and hiring process may be. Look also at the “Viewers of this profile also viewed” box; it can provide you with leads to people with a key say in the process.

And when you see an “Apply Now” button in the job posting, it means your application will go directly through LinkedIn, rather than be redirected to some black-hole application website. That is off the beaten path by comparison with applications submitted the (by now conventional) online way.

Then, suppose a recruiter finds your application interesting, looks you up on the group page via the “Members” tab, and clicks on “See activity.” It can only work in your favor when your activity shows you have been contributing with quality and consistency.

People experience successes as well as setbacks, and form explanations for both. According to Martin E.P. Seligman, a thought leader in the psychology of optimism and pessimism, this happens along three basic dimensions:

1. Individual causation:

• Internal—I made that happen.
• External—Other people or circumstances made that happen.

2. Stability over time:

• Permanent—It always happens that way.
• Temporary—It only happened that way this time.

3. Consistency across types of events:

• Universal—That’s the way it happens in all areas of my life.
• Specific—It only happens that way in this one area of my life.

Imagine the following scenario:
You have been working very hard to show the higher-ups at work you are ready to take on a dangling multimillion-dollar account. Eventually, the higher-ups do assign the account to you.

So how do you explain that? Maybe something like this:

• Internal—I was the best choice for this account.
• Permanent—I am skilled and resourceful at overseeing big accounts.
• Universal—I can compete successfully for many big projects.

That sounds very favorable in terms of your own contribution to this success. It also sounds like you are on track for continued success. This explanation is pretty optimistic.

Then again, maybe your explanation sounds something like this:

• External—Maybe the others didn’t try very hard.
• Temporary—Maybe I was this lucky just this once.
• Specific—I certainly wouldn’t have that kind of luck at other things.

That doesn’t sound too favorable in terms of the role you, yourself, played in this success, does it? That diminishes the chances of future success right there. This explanation is more pessimistic.

Now imagine the scenario going differently:
You have been working very hard to show the higher-ups at work you are ready to take on a dangling multimillion-dollar account. Eventually, the higher-ups assign the account to someone else.

So now here you are, explaining a setback instead of a success. Let’s see how the first approach (internal, permanent, and universal) is working now:

• Internal—I went about it the wrong way.
• Permanent—I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out.
• Universal—Anything competitive doesn’t work well for me.

Oh. That’s not very uplifting. What worked well in explaining a success seems to backfire when explaining a setback; not exactly what would motivate you to try again.

Let’s see about the second approach (external, temporary, and specific):

• External—Other, more urgent matters kept distracting me.
• Temporary—I don’t usually get so distracted from things that are important to me.
• Specific—This is the one goal I did not attain.

Hmm…this time the second explanation sounds friendlier; you are more encouraged to keep at it, despite the setback. In this case, the second explanation allows you to keep up an overall optimistic attitude.

There clearly is a pattern here. How much you weigh your own contribution can turn out very favorable in explaining a success: you, yourself, made it happen; the outcome is the rule, not the exception; and you have a similar competency level in other important areas.

Setbacks, on the other hand, are more tolerable if: you can identify causal factors outside your person; those factors don’t usually affect you that way; and those factors wouldn’t be an issue in other areas.

As Seligman points out in his book Learned Optimism, people form habits of their patterns of explaining things. These habits can cause a person to generalize explanations in a more optimistic or in a more pessimistic light, and these generalizations can become pervasive across areas of life.

For people at certain career junctures, maintaining optimistic habits can become especially crucial, as pessimistic habits can become especially detrimental. Mind you, this is not to say you should be in denial when faced with roadblocks. “Optimistic” does not mean you should whitewash difficult realities.

What does “optimistic” mean, then? That becomes apparent when you consider its relation to “optimal”: this means “the best under the circumstances.” Circumstances, in turn, often come with a great deal of ambiguity, especially in things career-related. Whether you feel encouraged or discouraged overall can go a long way in how you deal with such ambiguity, and how you take action on it.

How about you? Do you tend to get mired in pessimistic explanations for successes? For setbacks? Maybe for both?

Then the good news is: habits can be re-learned! Try the following sample successes and setbacks.

• Success: You won the chess tournament.
• Success: Someone who works at one of your target companies accepted your invitation to connect on LinkedIn.

• Setback: You came in last in the mile run.
• Setback: You never heard back from XYZ Company after applying for that job.

Challenge yourself to explain successes in the most internal, permanent, and universal way possible, and setbacks in the most external, temporary, and specific way possible. And feel free to leave a comment, too!

It was sometime in the 1990s that hiring managers were looking for more effective ways to identify strong candidates by their résumés. That’s where soft skills—personal skills you use in approaching your work and the people you work with—made their big entrance.

Soft skills have always been of major importance on the job, and have always factored into performance reviews big time. So it would seem logical to trumpet these important skills on your résumé. Right?

Not so fast. There are a gazillion résumés out there these days, with job seekers professing qualities such as: “bottom-line–focused”; “results-driven”; and “customer-service–oriented”; not to forget “excellent verbal and written communication skills.”

The trouble with flat-out claims like these is (at least) twofold. For one, employers regard most of these competencies as a given; most people would list these claims as assets for most positions. Meaning: claims like the ones mentioned above are going to do little to set you apart from the rest.

More importantly, though, they hardly sound convincing by themselves. Employers who first read your résumé haven’t seen you at work—in real time, with real people, on real challenges. They will read a soft-skill claim such as “proactive self-starter” and think: “Says who?”; or, “Duh! What job seeker wouldn’t describe him- or herself that way?”

The trick is to choose—and embed—soft skills wisely. Start by googling lists for soft skills (a.k.a. personal skills or people skills), then identify some four skills you feel you possess in particular—skills that distinguish you.

Next, look at your executive summary (or summary of qualifications, or whatever else you call the “mini-résumé” section immediately following your professional headline). Here you already provide a broad overview of the more or less tangible and verifiable aspects of your profile. Now make sure they also reflect your distinctive competencies you just identified, so the reader gets clues about the way you approach your work and the people you work with.

Sometimes you don’t even have to expressly state the soft skill in question; the presentation can be more effective if you can point at results stories, which imply the soft skills behind them.

Here’s one example:

• Developed staff potential to increase productivity by 25% per year and staff retention by 40% over 8 years.

The soft skills are between the lines: It takes astute judgment of employees’ strong suits, considerable capacity for maintaining motivation and enthusiasm, and a significant amount of persistence to achieve results like these.

Here’s another example:

• Advanced community projects by initiating and fostering purposeful networking among 30+ local businesses, institutions, and government agencies.

The soft skills behind this accomplishment: a great deal of proactivity and tenacity, superior rapport building, active listening, the ability to elicit and qualify the needs of others, and persuasive and convincing communication to get the movers and shakers from other organizations enthusiastic about joining in concerted endeavors.

You can still expressly mention some of the critical soft skills by name; chances are your résumé will first be read by screening software, and that software will have been programmed to screen for specific soft skills. But the way of intertwining soft skills with (hints at) results stories is a very effective credibility builder. And it has another benefit:

Soft-skills presentation will pique the readers’ curiosity if it is connected to results stories. In the interview, they will probably follow up on that at some point:

“Okay, so tell me about a time you built staff to meet your department’s needs”; or, “Give me an example of how you developed a network within the community, and what effect that had.”

This type of behavioral question (recounting how you have done something in the past) is increasingly popular with interviewers. And since you should anticipate this type of question anyway, won’t it be kind of smart to feed the interviewer exactly those questions you want to be asked?

The other week, I received a LinkedIn invitation from someone in Singapore and another from someone in Cape Verde. Great! I am generally happy to connect with people from every nook of LinkedIn’s global village. In fact, I find that idea kind of cool.

Still, I clicked “Ignore” for both of those, just as I had done in response to that invitation from someone in the Netherlands several months earlier. Why, you ask? How does that jibe with the open mind I just paid lip service to?

Well, for one, those invitations were generic, containing nothing more than the default “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” For another, I didn’t know those people, and it didn’t help that their profiles still didn’t tell me why I should connect with them. All that added up to break the deal.

A lot has already been said about how to invite people “properly” on LinkedIn. (Actually, here’s a recent thought-provoking article that has spawned some outspoken comments.) Mind you, not that I was offended by the invitations I mentioned; just as I don’t want anyone thinking I mean to offend by clicking “Ignore” as I see fit.

It seems the discussion is nowhere near settled—and how could it be, since we’re all coming from different cultures in LinkedIn’s global village. So I guess now would be the time for my two cents.

1. Inviting people you haven’t met before (in person or online) is generally fine.

LinkedIn is about visibility, approachability, and fruitful professional contact. Of course there will be new people turning up on your radar. How you approach them can make or break the invitation.

Perhaps most importantly: If people you haven’t met pop up under “People You May Know,” don’t just click “Connect.” Doing that sends a generic invitation immediately, which preempts any customization and thereby defeats the purpose. Click “Connect” on the person’s profile page instead, and take it from there. See below for more specifics.

2. Don’t say you’re a “friend” if you really aren’t.

So you haven’t been “colleagues” or “classmates,” and you haven’t “done business together.” (I once got an invitation from an insurance professional who said I had done business with their insurance when that wasn’t the case at all.) That makes it tempting to just claim to be a “friend,” right? Once you do that, LinkedIn won’t ask any more questions, and the invitation will be sent.

The thing is, many people (myself included) are taken aback by an unsubstantiated “friend” claim. Worse yet, it leaves the impression you were too lazy to do some legwork. The least you should do is find out the person’s e-mail address and use it when you choose the option “Other.”

The option “Groups” can work well. If you don’t already share a group, join a group the other person is part of. Specifying a shared group can immediately establish common ground.

3. Invitations should generally be personalized.

Allow the person to see what makes you want to connect with them specifically. If you don’t include a personal message and your LinkedIn profile doesn’t make it obvious enough why you should connect, then you may look like a “connections mill” who really just cares to make it past the magical 500+ connections quickly.

Unless the person is someone you are already pretty close to, with regular interaction, you should add a personal message. It doesn’t have to be long—in fact, it can’t be: there is a 300-character limit to that message. That’s two Tweets and some change. Give the person that two Tweets’ worth of your time. They will appreciate it.

If you haven’t met (in person or online), point out what you have in common (especially any shared connections). If you have met once, reference the occasion: e.g., “It was great to meet you at the Chamber of Commerce event last night/on the webinar yesterday.” Not only will that refresh the person’s mind quickly, it will show them you saw value in the encounter (meaning, in the person).

4. Don’t approach the person in real life about why they haven’t accepted.

Give the other person an out. Maybe your boss is the other person’s ex-boss, and they don’t see eye to eye. Maybe there is a perceived conflict of interest in the picture. There really could be the most miscellaneous reasons the other person wouldn’t connect with you.

In any case, pushing the other person in real life about connecting on LinkedIn is poor style and will effectively lower the chances of your invitation being accepted. Leaving it alone, on the other hand, can work in your favor: in one instance, I had a person accept my invitation after…wait for it…seven months!