1. Steer your career into the right direction and find the next dream job.
2. Ensure you have what employers are looking for
3. You stay in touch with the latest developments,
4. Newest tools and general trends.
5. Keep your skills fresh and your career current.
6. Understanding the latest trends in your job and industry to identify the next best career moves to make

• Google Trends: A free service that allows you to map out how the worldwide search volume for your chosen key terms is changing. You can also compare a number of terms to see the relative trends.
• Elance: A site that helps to find freelancers for different jobs also analyses the global job market and provides trends on jobs by skills required with an analysis of whether demand has risen or fallen in the last quarter.
• ILO: The International Labour Organization (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, publishes a lot of really useful data on labour markets and global employment trends.
• Topsy: A social media search engine that features a Twitter analytics tool. You can compare up to three subjects to understand which one is trending the most.
• Google Alerts: Set it up so you get the latest news about your industry and job directly to your inbox. You can not only check out the latest news and trends but also get alerts for job offerings as soon as they come up.

Find the job opportunities

Many websites provide job offers and alerts.

Glassdoor – helps you find relevant jobs and a look inside the company. Provides data and information about salaries and interviews. Reviews of what it is like to work there. To set up a profile and relevant openings.

Make yourself visible and interesting for a potential employer

Have an online and social media presence. It is difficult to argue that you have a proven track record in your industry if no reference to yourself is found anywhere. Maintain a strong profile and social media presence.

LinkedIn  – often a first port of call for employers in their search for new talent. It is a great place to grow your network, find and interact with like-minded people. Market yourself to a potential employer. Collect data on how your network is growing, how many of your skills have been endorsed and how many people have looked at your profile, among other things. LinkedIn provides you valuable insight about how attractive you are for potential employers.

Key to increase your attractiveness on LinkedIn:

• Ensure your profile is professional and up-to-date: First, clean up any thing that is not relevant, out of date or un-professional. Then make sure your profile includes an appropriate picture and your most relevant skills are listed and endorsed: Don’t put all your skills on the list. Pick the ones you believe employers are looking for. Then ask your network to endorse those skills. Employers and recruiters are constantly trawling profiles for the right skills mix.
• Grow your network: Send personalized invitations to key people in your industry asking to connect. Even if you haven’t yet met them personally, I find that if you make it personal and explain why you would like to connect, you often get a positive response.
• Seek recommendations: These are great ways to show potential employers that you are doing a good job.
• Engage with the community (and potential employers) : Join relevant LinkedIn groups and participate in conversations. This will show that you are actively involved in your industry and will help to boost your score on Klout, which measures influence by analysing your social media activities. Recruiters are increasingly looking at social media engagement and influence when recruiting new people.

Blogging – You don’t have to be a trained writer or global guru to start making an impact in your industry. Many well-known bloggers are ordinary people that just started to share their thoughts and ideas. Even if you only do it two or three times a month, it gives you material to share with your network and increases your visibility significantly.

What do you think? Do these tips make sense? Have you got any others to add?

Please share your views and stories with us, at Pathfinders.

Suresh Shah, M.D., Pathfinders Enterprise