In this free, 60-minute training webinar, I’ll be sharing the strategies and best practices to leverage LinkedIn at every stage of your job search. Discover how to:

• Build an online profile that attracts the attention of recruiters and hiring managers
• Expand your professional network to drive more opportunities your way
• Use LinkedIn to find job leads and get your resume to the top of the applicant list
• Access the benefits of Job Seeker Premium, a brand new LinkedIn feature
• Find expert answers to your questions about LinkedIn

Register now at http://learn.linkedin.com/jobseeker!

Alas, I am inside at my computer, occasionally staring out my window at the bright blue sky. And, after I finish writing, there is more inside work to be done today. I’ve just received a delivery of three brown boxes filled with file folders, storage bins, crates and plastic hangers. I have a stack of garbage bags at the ready. There are fresh batteries in my label maker.

That’s right; it’s spring cleaning time.

The truth is that I absolutely love organizing, filing, folding, purging and alphabetizing (my accountant told me I am her only client who color-codes my tax documents). Yes, I am a Virgo.

But I know that spring cleaning (or any-time-of-year cleaning) is not easy for everyone. It can be hard to let go of the old and make room for the new. But it must be done, and spring is a great time to refresh and renew every nook and cranny of your home, office, garage or any other space that needs sprucing up. It’s also a great time to spring clean your career. Here are three important ways to do that:

1. Clean your career (literally). When was the last time your organized all of your career documents, both on paper and on your computer? Take time now to toss or delete outdated versions of your resume, file past cover letters, put company information you’ve gathered into marked folders and organize that rubber-banded stack of business cards you’ve collected over the past several months. (Hint: if there’s a card whose owner you can’t remember, Google that person or check out his or her LinkedIn profile to see if you can jog your memory. If not, toss the card.)

Read the rest of this post on my “College to Career” blog at MyPath.com…

Image: ApartmentTherapy.com

In our first five-minute segment, we’re answering viewer questions about finding jobs on Twitter, connecting professionally on LinkedIn and surviving when you move back home with mom and dad (hint: lay off the frozen yogurt).

Watch the video here.

Have questions you’d like us to address in future CareerTV segments? Please share in the comments section below!

LinkedIn has also launched a great resource for graduating seniors (and all college students and recent grads), the ’09 Grad Guide and a discussion group featuring helpful articles, job postings and Q&As.

Here is an excerpt from my guest article, “Stop Job Hunting Like It’s 1999: Dos and Don’ts for ’09 Grads”:

Job hunting is a journey, so I’d like to begin this post by paraphrasing from my favorite movie about a journey: The Wizard of Oz: We’re not in the 20th Century anymore, Toto.

This is the sentence I find myself thinking whenever a college student says something like, “I’ve sent out, like, a hundred resumes and I still haven’t found a job!” Emailing out resumes and waiting for a response used to be a perfectly decent strategy for finding a job. Not anymore. Today’s job seekers, especially ‘09 grads job hunting in a recession, need to be more creative, more proactive and more tech savvy than ever before. We are blessed to live in a time when there are so many new job hunting tools and techniques. Take advantage!

Here are some tips: Click here to read the rest of this article on the LinkedIn Blog…

A few months later, you might have come across a group of job-hunting, 20-something recent graduates promoting their skills though sidebar advertisements on Facebook and links to their online resumes.

What intrigues me about these methods is not just the guts these job seekers displayed. It’s the different generational approaches to self-promotion. The baby boomer gravitated to in-person, face-to-face networking; the Millennial went right to the Web.

If you are looking for a job in the current recession, my best advice is to borrow from the playbook of both of these self-promoters: combine “old-fashioned” methods with new technologies. Diane K. Danielson, my colleague and co-author on the book The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking, calls this a “clicks and mix” strategy, and it’s an important marketing strategy if you’re looking for a new position.

Here’s why: Young adults are competing in the job market with much more qualified people who have been laid off and need to find any job they can. At the same time, older professionals are competing with younger workers who are willing to be hired for less money and security. And, in this economy, every job seeker has to try every job-hunting method available.

Here are some self-marketing tips for job seekers of all generations: click here to read the rest of this article on ABC News on Campus…

Job Action Day, started by Dr. Randall Hansen of Quintessential Careers, is a day of empowerment for workers and job seekers — a day “to put your career and job in the forefront, making plans, taking action.”

In the spirit of action, my post today focuses on five actions you can take right now if you are looking for a job (or suspect you might be job hunting soon). I’ve also included links to some additional career advice blogs and job hunting resources so you can find even more tips.

1. Get organized with a job search notebook. This will be your one and only place to keep track of to-do lists, ideas, company research, notes from workshops and interviews, advice from career advisors and other important information. From this point forward, keep your job search notebook with you at all times.  You never know when you might think of a new idea or hear about a company or program or person you want to look into.  By keeping all of your notes in one place, you’re less likely to lose any data and more likely to keep focused.  If you’re really hard core, you can even keep the notebook on your nightstand, in case you have any great career brainstorms while you’re dozing off to sleep at night.

For more advice on organizing a job search, check out: JibberJobber.com.

2. Call your alma mater’s career services office. Almost every college and university career services office will provide free (that’s right, free) job search support to alumni. Services that can cost hundreds of dollars in the “real world” are available at no cost from the college you attended. This includes career counseling, resume editing, interview prep, exclusive networking events, access to alumni databases and much more. If you’re not working with your college’s career services office, you are missing an enormous opportunity.

3. Set up news alerts for any organization you’d like to work for. The biggest complaint I hear from recruiters is that job candidates, especially young professionals, don’t know enough about the companies to which they’re applying.  It’s crucial to be extremely knowledgeable about any company you want to work for. This shows that you’re genuinely interested in the organization and that you’re ready to hit the ground running on day one. To make sure you never miss a thing, set up Google news alerts for any companies on your target list.  You’ll then receive an email whenever that company appears in a news article, blog post, press release or anywhere else.  This will keep you in-the-know about new products or services, company announcements, industry issues and, of course, job opportunities.  This is also great info to have on the tip of your tongue while networking in your industry.

4. Join LinkedIn and use it every day. Many recruiters, headhunters, small business owners and corporate hiring managers are now recruiting solely through LinkedIn, so make sure you are taking advantage of every aspect of this social networking site. For many tips on how to stand out and get a job through social networking, check out my post on making the most of LinkedIn.

In addition to LinkedIn, lately I’ve been receiving a larger number of connection requests to other professional networks, such as Plaxo, Doostang and Keith Ferrazzi’s Greenlight Community. I don’t see any reason not to join several sites if you have the time to maintain an active presence on all of them. A job opportunity may pop up anywhere, so you want to cast as wide a net as possible.

5. Call or email 5 contacts every day. Often the job goes to the person who is in the right place at the right time.  Stay on recruiters’ and networking contacts’ radar screens by regularly reminding them of your availability and your fabulousness.  Some ideas: Check in every week or two with an additional idea for what you can contribute to the company, drop a note when you see the company or person mentioned in a news article (see #3 above), attend live events where you are likely to run into your contacts, comment on a person’s status update on LinkedIn or Facebook and check in whenever you have a new accomplishment to share.  Just be careful to remain polite and relevant: You want persist and stand out, not pester and stalk!

Click here for a list of other career experts blogging in honor of Job Action Day.

We’re doing lots of activities online that we once did in person. Shopping? Sure. Paying bills? Of course. But professional networking? You bet – and with some great advantages. Finding a job still is all about whom you know. After making a few online connections, you can multiply your network a lot faster than at a local business meeting.

Las year, I joined LinkedIn, but I didn’t really become active until a few e-mails hit my inbox – requests from colleagues asking me to link to their profile, which is a sort of on-screen résumé. After linking to only 12 people, I gained about 238,000 people in my network. Sure, they don’t actually know me. But I can easily search information about them and ask to virtually meet them through my 12 contacts, much like I would call “a friend who has a friend” to help me land a job.

I didn’t have to work hard to add 12 people; in fact, I’m only getting started.

Lindsey Pollak, speaker and author of Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World (HarperCollins, 2007), says the real benefit kicks in at about 50 contacts. LinkedIn stops counting at 500, says Krista Canfield, the company’s public relations manager. “It’s not a popularity contest.”

Read the rest of “World Wide Network” here.

Wanting to know more about LinkedIn’s features and benefits, I recently took a tour of the site with Krista Canfield, PR manager at LinkedIn. Here are the top activities she recommends for young professionals to get the maximum benefit from membership in the site:

1. Study people you admire. Want to eventually be a chief marketing officer someday? Look at the profiles of current CMOs and see how they got there, what they studied, what skills they developed, where they’ve worked, what groups they belong to and to whom they’re connected.

2 . Tailor your profile to look similar to the people whose careers you want. Once you research those people you admire, work on tailoring your profile to be similar to theirs. LinkedIn is like having a bottomless stack of resumes to look through for great ideas on formatting, key words and language.

3. Research people you are scheduled to meet. Whether for a job interview, a client meeting or a networking get-together, use LinkedIn to learn about the background and interests of people before you meet them face-to-face. (It’s not stalking if the person has posted his or her information on a public website!)

4. Ask for advice and give advice. LinkedIn’s “Answers” feature is a great place to seek advice from a wide variety of people all around the world. You can also show the world what you have to offer by answering people’s questions about a topic where you have some expertise. Asking and answering questions is also a way to build your online visibility. The more active you are in forums like Answers, the more people will come across your profile and want to connect with you.

5. If you want to increase your Google-ability, set your profile as public and choose a vanity URL. Making your profile public allows you to be discovered through web searches in a way that you control. Your vanity URL (www.linkedin.com/in/yourname) allows you to easily promote your LinkedIn profile. I’ve noticed people including their LinkedIn URLs in their email signatures and even on business cards.

If you’re interested in more information and tips about making the most of LinkedIn, check out the resources listed in my blog post “Yes, people really get jobs through social networking,” the book I co-authored with Diane K. Danielson, The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking (Or, What Would Jane Austen Do?) and Jason Alba’s helpful book, I’m on LinkedIn…Now What?

Yes.

The proof is currently sitting on the couch a few feet away from me, watching the Indiana returns on CNN. My husband Evan got his job on LinkedIn. It’s such a good story that LinkedIn featured him on the LinkedIn blog, and Alison Doyle, the About.com guide to job searching, wrote an article featuring Evan and other professionals who landed jobs through LinkedIn. Check out these stories for tips on how to use LinkedIn and other social networks to find real opportunities.

I like Doyle’s other articles on this topic, too. Check out “How to Use LinkedIn to Job Search” and “Should You Use Facebook for Professional Networking?” for more tips. Here are a few highlights:

- Be sure to include keywords in your profile that are related to the jobs you want to find. Not sure what words will pop? Grab words and phrases directly from job listings that appeal to you.

- Post content that is professional and relevant to your career, such as links to articles you’ve written and testimonials about your professional skills and experience.

- Increase your visibility to potential employers by building your network. Remember, it’s not just who you know, it’s who knows you (and can see your profile).

- Be active. People are more likely to contact you if you are actively updating your profile, updating your status and adding connections.

Have you found job opportunities, new clients or other professional benefits from social networking? Please share!