At this time of the year, at my daytime job and elsewhere, many gifts are exchanged. Some of them are not only easier on the waistline than the inevitable holiday goodies, they also each carry a unique value of their own. I am talking about holiday greetings with notes of sincere appreciation and gratitude for someone’s business or services in the year that was.
 
It may be late in the game by now, but just in case you have been putting off those holiday greetings to some professional contacts because you weren’t sure what to say: here are some pointers that might be helpful.
 
1. Christmas? Hanukkah? Festivus?
 
If you know which of the holidays your contact celebrates, and it is the same as yours: name it! They will feel more like you are speaking to them, personally, if you identify “their” holiday. Plus, if you share the same holiday, it will add to the human connection between the two of you.
 
If you know which of the holidays is “theirs,” but you don’t share it, then it might be better to settle on “happy holidays.” If you say “happy Hanukkah” when you don’t celebrate it (and especially when your contact knows that), it may be perceived as not authentic, not coming from the heart. (Granted, that depends on a variety of other factors, such as the rapport between the two of you.)
 
If you don’t know which of the holidays they observe, then “happy holidays” definitely seems like a ready option. You don’t want to assume anything that can cut to the quick of something very near and dear to them. Going beyond that, the even more generic “season’s greetings” will cover anything, including the possibility they don’t really celebrate any holiday at all.
 
2. Exuberant cheers or quiet reflection?
 
It can be kind of important to get the mood right when sending holiday greetings. Consider how your contact’s year went. The way it may have been marked by fortune or misfortune (professionally or personally) may affect profoundly the mood in which the holidays find them.
 
A reference to Christmas bells ringing after tragedy has struck may come across as callous. When particular sensitivity and tact seem to be in order, it may be best to say something like, “Wish you strength to keep the faith,” “Find a season of renewal and peace,” or “Look ahead to a brighter New Year.”
 
3. Who is included?
 
On the occasion of the holidays, perhaps it is important to you to show you are thinking not only of that one person but also of those close to that individual. Oftentimes, people come up with the phrase “you and your family.” That is all good, provided they do happen to have a family—one of their own, that is (“your” family).
 
It might not be the wisest move to just assume, out of the blue, they have family to be with for the holidays. (As this Dilbert cartoon shows, addressing this when you don’t really know the terrain you're treading on can lead to awkward moments, even in everyday work situations.)
 
Maybe you can keep it in the business realm by extending neat and clean-cut holiday wishes to “you and your staff,” “you and your team,” or “you and your associates.” When in doubt, “you and yours” is the safest bet.
 
Still not sure what to say for the holidays?
 
How about bypassing the holiday frenzy altogether and targeting the New Year instead? At least the Common Era calendar is something we all agree on! So, to those of you who were able to keep reading all the way through here:
 
Happy Winter Solstice! May your days get longer from here for the next six months!

Many LinkedIn members rail against the privacy-control feature “Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile.” What bothers them is the option “You will be totally anonymous.” They compare it to the kind of real-life scenario where you walk into someone’s house and take a close look around all rooms while you, yourself, remain completely cloaked.

There seems to be a valid point here. So why would LinkedIn even offer the option of “totally anonymous” profile viewing? Are there any scenarios that would make fair-minded people think it can be justified, or at least excused?

You are a new LinkedIn member.

If you joined recently, you want to explore how people in your field present themselves. Viewing enough profiles will give you some guidance about the way you want to tweak your own profile.

But perhaps you are concerned about how people view your profile while it is still very much under construction. You wouldn’t want people to think there was nothing more to be said for your experience besides that skeleton information, and those 26 connections were as much effort as you were going to put into your networking. Therefore, you’d rather stay anonymous until you feel comfortable showing your profile to new contacts, as a first impression of you.

Fair enough, for now—as long as you do get your profile up to par reasonably soon, and then change your visibility back to the name-and-headline option.

You have concerns about LinkedIn-style networking.

On outdoor lots at car dealerships, you will see a few car shoppers driving past every car on display very slowly, stopping every so often, but never getting out of the car or even rolling down the window, lest they get “pounced on,” and then high-pressured, by a car salesperson.

Some LinkedIn members seem to have similar concerns about the “lot” that is LinkedIn. Here the equivalent to staying in the car would be staying anonymous, lest you get on the radar of some aggressive service promoter—or of some creep looking for information to use in identity theft or some other type of cyberspace foul play.

Yes, some people will try to sell their services, including career coaching, business consulting, or enhancing your LinkedIn profile (!). As long as you haven’t specified any contact information, all they can do is approach you through LinkedIn. And if your gut tells you they really are after your money (usually after some initial “free review”)—don’t even hit Reply. Think about it: you are not even under pressure to say no or to start walking away.

And remember you can flag InMail as spam, and now you can even block or report LinkedIn members. Actually, to fully understand your privacy and member-communication options, be sure to explore all “Privacy & Settings” features. You can access those by mousing over the small profile-photo icon in the far right corner of your LinkedIn toolbar. (Since you will be entering a sensitive area of your profile configuration, you will probably be asked for your LinkedIn password again.)

Once you have found you can deal with these concerns, I suggest you give up your anonymity. Don’t you think other LinkedIn members deserve the same sense of transparency as you—by being able to see who it was that visited their profiles?

You are a recruiter.

If you seek talent, you will probably search LinkedIn profiles. Quite a few of those whose profiles you visit are probably looking for a job with growing desperation. If they see a recruiter affiliated with the company of their dreams has visited their profile, then it is not hard to imagine they will start chasing you.

And of course you don’t want to set yourself up for being stalked, or your inbox for being clogged up. Sorry, job seekers, but in this case, I do get the potential survival quality of the “totally anonymous” option.

You may still have ethical concerns about needing to be visible at least some of the time. Let me just mention I know people who have alternate profiles. Those profiles don’t receive the same degree of “marketing upkeep” as the primary profiles; meaning, those profiles are less likely to trigger the same “chasing” response from job seekers, even when fully visible.

You have fear of rejection.

So those movers and shakers see you viewed their profiles. Now what is the worst that can happen? They won’t return your profile visit. Or—not much better—they do visit your profile back, but don’t follow up with any communication. If you stay anonymous, at least you can avoid setting yourself up for that frustration, right?

Think again. Yes, rejection can be frustrating, but isn’t it just as frustrating for others when they check who viewed their profiles, and time and again a viewer “chose to be shown as anonymous”? Moreover, bear in mind that if you change to full visibility later, then your anonymity cloak will be removed from any past profile visits.

In short, as has been so often said: don’t take it personally. Maybe they just have a gazillion other things on their plates. Furthermore, take a look at your headline and profile photo—they are the first impression people get when they check who has viewed their profiles. (Maybe you can do better than that cliché “Results-Driven Strategic Thinker” headline alongside that happy-hour selfie.)

You are, or have, something else.

Imagine you are at a major networking function, with hundreds of people in the room. Everybody is engaged in conversation, trading business cards and other information. And then there is that one figure who looks and acts like “Spy vs. Spy” right out of MAD Magazine—unrecognizable features, always keeping mum, never offering any information, but peeking over everybody’s shoulder and eavesdropping on every conversation.

And you find that type of behavior…rude? Selfish? Creepy? Of course you do—all of the above, and then some! And chances are just about everybody would agree with you on that.

All right, that scenario was set in a brick-and-mortar environment, and obviously, LinkedIn is Web-based. Even so, many LinkedIn members get ticked off about anonymous LinkedIn profile viewing, because they think of profile viewing as essentially the same thing as a networking function. After all, signing in to LinkedIn can be compared to checking in at the door.

And if you are going to check out profiles because you want to get back at someone for something in the past—ugh! LinkedIn really isn’t the place for any sophomoric agenda and antics. There are other online environments that seem to “align” better with people who are looking to act out certain things.

There is a way to be anonymous and still keep good netiquette—but….

If you are going to look at profiles and don’t want people to know you did—don’t sign in! Stay signed out and stick with people’s public profiles. As long as a LinkedIn user has a public profile, it is fit for viewing by—well, the general public. That way, not only will you stay anonymous, people won’t have a clue their profiles were looked at in the first place.

With that said: If you want to get the most out of LinkedIn, then sign in, and be visible. Networking is about being visible and approachable. Getting your brand out there is the idea. If you do something to defeat that purpose, you will only have short-changed yourself in the end.

As the astute networker you are, you certainly have a business card. Even more certainly, your business card is a snapshot of the solutions you stand ready to deliver today—and tomorrow. And most certainly, your business card is not heavily laden with your every past move.

Résumés have long become extended business cards. Long gone are the days of the boilerplate résumé listing everything you have ever done, beginning with flipping burgers while in high school. Nobody these days expects a résumé to be a complete account of anything anymore.

With that said: business cards can be vibrant or dull, and the same is true for résumés. Relatively subtle features can cause a branding message to shine as they can cause the best intentions to go awry.

Is your résumé a dynamic showcase or a static inventory?

There once was that hardware store in my neighborhood that kept the same mundane commodity items on display in the storefront for weeks. Weeks turned into months, then months turned into years. The slow death that this store suffered was kind of painful to watch.

Had that hardware store paid more attention to varied promotions, with different merchandise emphasized at different times and speaking to a more targeted clientele—who knows…that store might have held on.

Like a storefront, a résumé needs to move its front-and-center display around. It needs some variation in what it emphasizes and what it promotes. It makes all the difference between a fresh and a stale brand message and between a glossy and a dusty portfolio.

Does your résumé invoke a bright future or enshrine your glory days?

Some ten years ago, Chevrolet ran a series of commercials for its Silverado trucks using the tune, and sung title, of Bob Seger’s hit song Like a Rock. But if you knew the complete lyrics of that song, you knew they could be interpreted as a nostalgic look back of an aging guy on his fading youth:

“My hands were steady, my eyes were clean and bright”—Oh…they no longer are, you mean?

“Twenty years now, where’d they go?”—Into the sunset, leaving once-proud run-down, rusty equipment behind.

Check your résumé for any stagnation or nostalgia, and change the lyrics where necessary.

Dust off that business card that is your résumé, and get over that which you hold near and dear. Although it is normal to be proud of everything you have ever done: the way to communicate your value is to take a fresh spotlight and zero in what your clientele likes to see in you.

One of the reasons I started myprofilemybrand.com was to offer another resource for (self-) help in the career reality of the 21st century, which differs dramatically from the more (pre-) set ways of career paths even a generation ago. Today, employment at will has largely displaced employment contracts. More gainful work is done through temping, project work, and freelancing.

Turn necessity into a virtue.

In addition to the above, career professionals are confronting the disproportionally rising cost of housing, education, healthcare, and self-reliant retirement planning.

Responding to this new reality—or better yet, proactively meeting it—requires a nimble frame of mind that, fortunately, has emerged in the wake of another megatrend: employer demand for lifelong learning and professional development.

Rethink your career as a protean career.

Douglas T. Hall first introduced the concept of “protean careers” (as opposed to “traditional careers”) in 1976. In today’s reality, this approach can provide a certain inoculation, an option for transforming uncertainty into opportunity.

A protean career is a process masterminded and managed not by any organization and its agents but by the individual. Projects and assignments come and go, and although you can certainly make some noise about the value of your contributions, it is not up to your supervisor to identify your potential for career mobility; it is up to you.

Success in your career endeavor, then, is not so much defined by your moves up the corporate ladder; it is defined by the sense of purpose you find in your work—success is first and foremost internal-psychological.

Trade loyalty for mobility.

Interestingly, in Richard L. Knowdell’s card-sort assessment Career Values (©2005), loyalty is not even part of the set of value cards. Some of my clients who take this assessment don’t even notice unless afterwards they happen to come across loyalty as a value in some context.

“Employment at will” is reciprocal: just as the organization can terminate the relationship, the employee can move on at any time. In fact, an increasing number of recruiters and managers suspect complacency when someone stays put in any job for “too long” (vague as that notion may be).

“Mobility” today is not so much about going upward within an organization; it means going wherever there is a good place for your next step. I know several publishing professionals who have switched jobs in the same metro area back and forth among three major companies, with no apparent hard feelings on anybody’s part.

Trade advancement for growth.

In traditional careers, mentor relationships are about getting the individual ready for set career paths with defined positions. “Advancement” is achieved when the individual climbs a rung in the organizational hierarchy and is a capable performer in the higher-level position.

In protean careers, mentor relationships are about fostering the individual’s capacity for resourceful delivery of solutions. “Growth” is accomplished when the individual achieves incremental competency building and attains recognition for these competencies by internal or external clients.

Communicate your own identity, not your organization’s.

Your current employment relationship is subject to change, so there may be a different organizational culture to assimilate from one job to the next. Moreover, you might start freelancing, or otherwise start your own business; in that case, there wouldn’t be any employer to define who you are professionally.

In the 21st century, you as a career individual mold your own substance by integrating the various sources of educational background, training, and experience. As a business of one (and current or potential job seeker), you need visibility in your own right. It is for you to communicate your know-how, your passions, and the solutions you provide. That is who you are, separate and independent from any past, present, or future employer.

Ah, to chime in on the subject matter of buzzwords. That word itself is just that—a buzzword. So which ones “qualify,” and when should they be used? This salary.com article, Bypass the Business Buzzwords, provides great examples of not-so-great examples:

“Disintermediate. Recontextualize. Envisioneer. … You try to process…all the lingo. ‘You mean we should triangulate meaning-centered cohorts?’ you ask in vain, ‘Or focus more on synthesizing technology-enhanced convergence?’”

And the list of baffling monstrosities goes on. The article was well-deservedly cross-posted in many other forums everywhere from Greenwich, CT to San Antonio, TX to Seattle, WA. The takeaway: hard-to-understand fluff does not a buzzword make. Just drop it.

You might also want to check your choices against top-ten lists of overused buzzwords, such as the one on LinkedIn’s official blog. Buzzwords making those lists are often vague in a sense that most people would be able to tack them on to most roles and occupations. In that case, they would probably do little to distinguish you and the way your brand is unique.

Buzzwords are a little like cholesterol: there are “bad” ones and “good” ones. The above should provide good pointers to be wary of the “bad” ones. But how do we know the “good” ones?

A good buzzword is a word that “sprouts” in the mind of the recipient, even “mushrooms” in meaning like some atomic bomb.

In other words: a good buzzword has added-value meaning to industry insiders and other informed audiences.

Example: here is a printing-press operator with in-depth skills using “Heidelberg and Komori printing presses with Coater and Perfector.” Now you and I may not know what any of that is, but an industry insider familiar with the machinery will immediately associate these names with certain specifications and technological capabilities, and the operator’s skills with the capacity for accomplishing such-and-such projects.

Another example: Here is this publishing professional, saying: “I know my way around Chicago.” You and I may think: “Chicago? Why is this person talking about the Windy City? We’re nowhere near Chicago here.”

But a publishing professional knows “Chicago” here refers to the Chicago Manual of Style, a style guide used by many book publishers. On more than 800 pages, it provides many elaborate guidelines for: spelling and capitalization; grammar and usage; punctuation; how to create good bibliographies; and a lot more.

One word—“Chicago”—carrying more than 800 pages’ worth of meaning…how is that for a powerful buzzword. You put it on your résumé, or on your LinkedIn profile, and it “sprouts” in the mind of the targeted recipient, even “mushrooms” in meaning like some atomic bomb.

So if you are looking for a good buzzword today, why don’t you go find whatever your “Chicago” is.