03: 6 key LinkedIn features to update NOW for a career change

Which key features on your LinkedIn profile should you update NOW for your career change? And which ones can get you noticed by your target companies? Is it always better to have more LinkedIn connections? 

Here to tell us is LinkedIn expert Louise Brogan, host of the weekly podcast, “LinkedIn with Louise”, where she shares her best tips and advice for using LinkedIn to make a career switch. 


Find Louise Brogan at: 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/louisebrogan

Podcast: www.louisebrogan.com/podcast

Twitter: www.twitter.com/louisebrogan_

YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/socialbeeni

For a free download on how to use LinkedIn, go to: www.louisebrogan.com/download 

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi everyone, I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you've been considering or are working on. In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on issues that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. So. I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of wisdom that'll spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

It's episode three and I need to make a confession. Before my layoff in 2018, I rarely used LinkedIn. I had about a hundred connections and they were mostly my friends, former coworkers, and current colleagues. That all changed once I was let go and decided to make my career switch. I updated my LinkedIn profile and started connecting with everyone. When I met people at career seminars, I connected with them right after on LinkedIn. In fact, at most of the seminars, I remember we were encouraged to open the LinkedIn app on our phones and connect with each other right then and there. That's how important LinkedIn can be when you're looking for a job, but especially when you're making a career switch. 

So what are the key features that help with a career switch that you should update on your LinkedIn profile? Here to tell us is LinkedIn expert Louise Brogan, host of the weekly podcast, LinkedIn with Louise, where she shares her best tips and advice for using LinkedIn. She also runs a consulting and training company that helps entrepreneurs and businesses to raise their profile and profits through LinkedIn. Hi Louise, welcome and thanks for joining us. For someone who is thinking about making a career change or a career switch, when should they start using LinkedIn?

Louise: Okay, so I actually think that even when you're in your career, you should be using LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a networking platform, first and foremost, so you want to connect with people that you are working with currently. See, one of the things that people say in corporate is that they think when one of their colleagues is ramping up their activity on LinkedIn, it's because they're thinking of leaving their job. Whereas actually, I've just been speaking to a lady this morning and she works in the law. primary reason she wants to use LinkedIn is to raise her profile and raise her visibility. So even if you're listening to us, and you are currently in a career, and you're maybe thinking down the road, you might want to change careers, using LinkedIn to talk about things that you're involved in, that you're interested in, that you find engaging, will help raise your profile, even in your current career. But if you're looking at changing career, having that really strong network of people who already know who you are is going to be so helpful when you do make your career switch.

Lixandra: What are some of the key things that someone should update on their LinkedIn profile if they're thinking about making a career switch or have started the process?

Louise: The very first thing is make sure that your photograph is up to date. head and shoulders photograph of you smiling is really helpful. So you look approachable. And then having a headline that really talks about what it is you're interested in. So for most people, what they have is they filled in their LinkedIn profile whenever they got it, and they wrote in the experience section and they treat it like their online CV. And quite a lot of people will have their headline as simply their job title. For example, account executive or founder of blah, blah, blah. But what you really want to do here is use your headline to attract people to connect with you, find out about you. It really is like a marker. If someone types into LinkedIn or even to Google that they're looking for someone who specializes in what you do, your LinkedIn profile is one of the first things that comes up in the search results. So photograph a good headline that isn't just your job title as an example. So if you were, let's just go with a legal angle. So instead of saying financial lawyer, it could be financial lawyer based in New York City specializing in whatever. You can see how that makes you stand out above someone who just has lawyer as their headline. Then you want to look at your About section, which is a summary of what it is that you do, who you work with, and you can add a little bit of personality in here. So, you know, if you love to go out at the weekend and run marathons, have that in your section so when someone connects with you, they have a conversation piece that they can talk to you about. Underneath that, you do have your actual experience section. And if you are in a career and you're staying within corporate careers, you want to make sure that you highlight all the top skills and experience you have in the experience section. And then below that, having your skills in there as well. One of the things I noticed quite a few people doing Lysandra is they don't have their skills up to date. So they might have created their account five years ago and added in lots of skills about the job they did then, and they've never gone in and updated it. So they might be getting fined for things like Microsoft Office skills or presentation skills that was part of the role that they did five years ago, but it's nothing to do with what they do now. So you need to go in and update that section so that you're being fined for the skills you currently want to showcase. And then the recommendation section underneath that, which is really powerful. If you can get people who've worked with you across projects, maybe your team lead, somebody you've worked with in a client's company to give you a recommendation, that's a really powerful testament for your LinkedIn profile.

Lixandra: Do you think the recommendations you ask people to write should be broader instead of focused on what you currently do?

Louise: That's such a good question. Yes, if you're planning to move out of your industry and switch your career, then maybe you're looking for recommendations about how professional you are, how you show up and you're consistent in your delivery of your work and you're reliable, as opposed to Louise is really, really good at delivering software programs for nurses, which is what I did before. It's better for me to have a recommendation that says that I am professional, that I deliver what I say I'm going to deliver, et cetera, et cetera. So when you ask for somebody for a recommendation, you can tailor that request to say, would you mind writing a recommendation about my work in general or how I show up at work in general? And when someone sends you the recommendation, you actually can go back to them and say, would you mind not mentioning that specific program about MS-DOS that I don't do anymore? Could we just take that out? The only thing, for someone to actually write you a recommendation, it's quite a big step. So going back to them and asking them to change it, they might not be too keen on that. You're putting somebody out a little bit by asking them to do something for you. So probably best to ask specifically for what you want in the first place, I think.

Lixandra: Is the About section a good place to mention the industries and type of companies or actual companies that you're targeting for your career switch?

Louise: So if you're actively looking for a new role, one of the things LinkedIn have at the top on your profile is you can click a button that says you're open to work, and it puts a green ring around your profile photograph. It literally says open to work. If you are looking to move into the accountancy field or into specialist forensics or whatever it is, you could put that in your headlines. You could say financial lawyer working in New York City, looking to move into whatever you're looking to move into. And then yes, why not put that in your right section? Because it's your activity on LinkedIn that makes someone see your name in your headline. The headline is what attracts them to go and click onto your profile. And then in your profile, it's the about section that really makes them take notice of what it is that you're trying to do. So if you are very keen to move into a particular area, yes, I would have that in my about section.

Lixandra: So in the headline, you could mention where you live specifically.

Louise: Yes, so the only reason I would put my location in my headline is if I wanted to be building a network in that area. In the US, if you're currently based in New York City, but you're open to job offers across the country, then I would not have any location in my headline. But if you wanted to stay in the New York City area, then I would have that in my headline.

Lixandra: LinkedIn regularly adds new features. Which ones can especially help with a career switch?

Louise: In 2020, they added so many new features. One of my favorite ones is the featured section in your profile. And that is really where you can highlight or showcase your top things that you want to be known for. So if you've written a blog post, if you have a podcast, if you have appeared on stage somewhere, If you have spoken at an event, an industry event, put those into your featured section. It's wonderful. If you're scrolling down someone's profile, it's like a big block of color across their profile, and they can click on whatever you've got in there to see more about you and to see that you are the expert in the area that you say you are. Because we can all say that we do something, but if you've actually got the articles or the video or the images in your profile, then it gives you more credibility. Lots of other things that came out last year. There are features such as events. You could host a webinar. You might go to your own company and say, I want to be really establishing myself in this area of our industry. And how do you feel about me hosting a webinar on behalf of the company or something? So there's lots and lots of ways you can really raise your profile that can get you noticed by people within your industry, whether you are wanting to build the career that you have or whether you want to make a switch in your career.

Lixandra: What if there's a particular company you're interested in? How can following it help you get noticed?

Louise: If they're sharing posts about news at their company or products that they're developing, then I would absolutely be commenting on those posts because that is going to raise you above everybody else who's also interested in working at that company.

Lixandra: Since starting this podcast, I've joined quite a few podcast groups on LinkedIn. Would you recommend joining LinkedIn groups for people who are looking to switch their profession, industry, or location?

Louise: Yes, if you can find a LinkedIn group that is full of people in the industry that you want to move into, or a LinkedIn group for people who are in your current industry, I really recommend it. The tips I would have for that are to go in there and ask and answer questions from the other people in the group. It's not about going in and just highlighting yourself. It's about networking and building a community around, or in your example, around podcasting. So it's not that you're going to go in and say each week, here's my new episode. It's going to be more about having conversations around the whole podcasting industry, maybe sharing events that are going on or best practice tips you have learned from somebody else. So that'll be a really good use of groups. There are so many groups that are enormous, and I think those will be quite challenging to really make good use of. I'm in quite a few groups, but the ones that I really spend any time in, there's only three or four of them, and I find them really beneficial. I have my own group for my podcast, about 70 people in it. Tell us about your podcast. I host a weekly podcast called LinkedIn with Louise, and I share tips and advice on how to use LinkedIn. It's as much about raising your profile online and mixed in with your some of the features and functionalities of LinkedIn, along with the small business owner who wants to raise their profile and win business on LinkedIn. The key to LinkedIn is treating it as if it is an online version of your industry conference. So imagine you and I went to an industry conference together, and we walked in the door, and we might decide to go and see some speakers. So we decide where we're going, so that's you going in and reading some articles on LinkedIn. You might then take a break and go for coffee, and you're standing in the line for coffee, and you meet somebody, and you introduce yourself and say, why are you there? And what are they doing there? And you ask them about themselves. That is your connection requests. I honestly think you should always send a message to say why you're connecting with somebody. You would never meet somebody at a conference and immediately try to sell them your product or service, so don't do it on LinkedIn. Keep in touch with people. After the conference, after you've connected with people, keeping in touch, commenting and engaging on each other's stuff, and really building a network that turns out to be of value to you and that you enjoy interacting and engaging with. Honestly, it's about engaging with people. Most people just scroll through the feed and never interact with anything. Actually, if you take time to build a network of people you're interested in, you'll see content that makes you want to react or engage with it. And you build those relationships and networks with people as a result. So that is really the best way to use it, I think.

Lixandra: What if someone is hesitant to use LinkedIn? I know someone who is looking for work, but is turned off to using LinkedIn. She doesn't like that strangers asked to connect with her and she's gotten spam from her connections. What is your advice?

Louise: The way I recommend to my clients to use LinkedIn, I talk about four key pieces. One is making sure that your profile is written in a way that people will connect with you over what it is that's in your profile. So write a really good, strong LinkedIn profile. Then start building your network for the people that you want to engage with and connect with. So that means if you get a connection request from somebody who's working in a software company and you're not interested in building your network for those people, just ignore those connection requests. Build a network for people that you genuinely want to engage with. Every single social media platform is full of whatever we have agreed to receive. apart from advertising, obviously. In other words, if I only connect with the 100 top-performing women in my city working in accountancy and law, then that's all I'm going to see in my LinkedIn newsfeed. Whereas if I accept 1,000 connection requests from anybody and everybody, then those 100 women are going to get lost in my newsfeed with all the other people talking about themselves and their businesses. You can build the news feed that you want to see and say there's five people that you really admire and you always want to see what they're talking about. If you leave comments and engage with their posts, you will see their next posts. The algorithm on LinkedIn will show you content from people you're interested in because you've shown them you're interested in seeing that content by engaging with it. So your friend needs to go clean up her network and remove some people and be far more choosy about who she allows to accept connection requests from would be my advice.

Lixandra: Thanks so much, Louise, for all your great tips.

Louise: Hopefully this has been helpful to people and if they want to connect with me on LinkedIn, I'd be delighted. It's linkedin.com forward slash in forward slash Louise Brogan and the way to connect with me is to send me a message and say you heard me on Career Switch podcast so that I know where you're coming from.

Lixandra: Great. One more thing before we go. You also offer a LinkedIn guide.

Louise: Yes, I do. I have a, it's like a six or seven page free download and it's advice on what to do on LinkedIn on a daily and weekly basis. So there's weekly tasks and daily tasks if you want to really build your profile on the platform. So that's at louisebrogan.com forward slash download and everybody's welcome to grab a copy of that.

Lixandra: Thanks again, Louise.

Louise: Excellent. Thank you so much.

Lixandra: Thanks to Louise Brogan for being our guest career expert today. You can find Louise at her website, louisebrogan.com and on LinkedIn, of course, at linkedin.com slash I N slash Louise Brogan. Get more LinkedIn advice on her weekly podcast, LinkedIn with Louise, and in her free guide called LinkedIn Checklist, daily and weekly tasks to help you build your business on LinkedIn, available at her website. You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. While you're there, join our mailing list and follow us on Instagram and Twitter at careerswitchpod. So what's your career switch? Are you excited to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. We're a new podcast, so please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time. The music heard on this podcast is by Tim Moore from Pixabay.