Let's Talk LinkedIn
Presenter: Lora Poepping
LinkedIn is one of the most important and valuable tools for building your business—and it can help in a job search as well. Prospective clients use LinkedIn to find service providers. Recruiters and hiring managers use LinkedIn daily to find candidates for their open positions. If you have ever wondered how to take advantage of LinkedIn and how to use all the bells and whistles it has to offer, here's your chance to learn! Lora Poepping, president of Plum Coaching & Consulting and a recruiter for 20 years, will demonstrate tips and tricks for using LinkedIn, with a special focus on making LinkedIn useful for editing professionals. She will:
Show those of us who are business owners the value of LinkedIn and how to build our brands.
Help us create a LinkedIn profile that appeals to clients and recruiters.
Show us how recruiters use this powerful tool to find candidates.
Introduce us to the ABC’s of conducting a job search using LinkedIn.
Lora has been featured by LinkedIn's corporate organization in this video.
Speaker Bio
Lora Poepping is the president of Plum Coaching & Consulting, a firm that provides job search coaching, recruiting services, HR consulting, career transition guidance, and LinkedIn expertise throughout the United States and abroad. Since 2012, Plum has been showcased in the media for being at the forefront of job search services—for both job seekers and employers. Lora is a frequent contributor to MariaShriver.com and has published articles in USA Today, The New York Times, Real Simple, and BusinessNewsDaily.com.
Meeting Notes
(Written notes from the 3/13/17 meeting by Ginger Everhart)
Pm Weizenbaum opened the meeting and asked the board members to stand and wave so members in attendance will know whom they can ask if they have any questions about the guild or its activities.
Announcements:
Next meeting's speaker is Tracy Wilson, who will give an overview of corporate editing.
Next conference (Red Pencil 6) is scheduled for September 23, 2017, at Bastyr University.
Volunteer sign-up list was posted in the back of the meeting room.
Day-of volunteers will receive a discount on the conference fee.
Conference website is up (bit.ly/EdsGuild2017) #EdsGuild2017.
Keynote speaker will be announced in a couple of weeks.
Calls for sessions to be sent out early April; needed before the end of April.
Ideas needed for the Guild's blog. Feel free to email ideas to Jen Grogan (jen@eight-arms.com).
Kyra Freestar (kyra@tandemediting.com) is hosting the mentoring program happy hour at Blue Star Cafe (4512 Stone Way N., Seattle) on Wednesday, March 15 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. The next mentoring session starts April 15th.
Presentation Notes: Lora is the founder and president of Plum Coaching and Consulting. Between her time at Microsoft and founding her company in 2011, Lora led recruitment for a startup company. She is a leading authority on job seeking and LinkedIn. Lora has contributed articles to MariaShriver.com, the New York Times, USA Today, and Real Simple magazine. Lora began her talk with more information about her life and background, including a slide that displayed some of her key roles:
Deloitte (recruiter)
Microsoft (recruiter)
Plum Coaching and Consulting
When she first started the company, she had an all-women staff who all worked their own schedules on their own time at above-market pay rates. She has since added a male employee.
UCSB and Indiana University alumna
Wife, mom, pet owner
Lora then polled the audience about what they wanted to learn regarding LinkedIn. The audience-generated suggestions included:
Connecting with decision makers.
Tips for good profile pictures.
What kind of documents (and in what formats) should we upload to our LinkedIn profiles?
How to find both value and enjoyment in using LinkedIn.
What is the appropriate tone in postings?
Tone of your profile.
Which sections are crucial and which can be skipped in completing your profile?
How can the Guild most effectively use its account.
Lora spoke to this one immediately: Any page an organization starts is only as good as the content posted there. Find cutting-edge, interesting stuff to post that compels people to visit it. Encourage members to engage and participate.
How to avoid spamming your entire contacts list.
Again, Lora spoke to this one directly:
Reaching out to people you don't know on LinkedIn is okay if you tell them why you are asking to connect with them.
Do not allow LinkedIn to access all your email contact lists, which leads to the spam.
How to block people on LinkedIn.
Two options:
Keep hitting "ignore" on connection requests.
LinkedIn does have a "report spam" feature. She did not have the information with here that evening, but here is the help page that addresses this issue from LinkedIn.
What your LinkedIn profile will be judged on.
Have a profile picture.
Construct a solid summary that does not bore the reader.
Leverage the dialogue box on connection requests; you will be able to connect with just about anybody.
The overarching goal of Lora's presentation was to show the value of LinkedIn to business owners/freelancers. She loves LinkedIn because it is the only place you can create your professional brand for no charge. And it is a way to be found. However, newer isn't always better. LinkedIn recently updated its user interface (UI), and Lora is not a fan of the new layout. LinkedIn updates its UI as a way to make more money off of it. She strongly encourages upgrading from the free membership to a premium membership, and specifically suggests the "business membership" (one of the Premium options), which gives sole proprietors the best options for the money. Be sure to click on the button to get a free month of the premium membership when you do sign up for the paid version of LinkedIn. Lora pointed out that if you don't have your own website, your LinkedIn profile will be the top result for you in a web search (this SEO [search engine optimization] is paid for by LinkedIn). She went on to emphasize the bigger benefits of LinkedIn, including:
No other place on the web has such access to professional experience.
People can look at your connections.
LinkedIn posts links around the outside edges of the web page to other members whose profiles resemble yours in some way. Look at these for good connection options.
With premium memberships, you can pick and choose who sees that you have viewed something (the Harry Potter cloak of invisibility).
You can use the search to identify specific people:
with specific experience.
in specific industries.
who have attended specific schools.
who have specific training.
You can see who is looking around.
It's easy to use.
Lora then discussed LinkedIn usage from a recruiter's perspective, noting that most corporate recruiters have a dashboard. Each day, bots crawl through the web and fetch profiles, bringing them into the recruiter repositories. Because of this, it is crucial to understand the keywords you need to put in your profile. Another point to remember: The more eyeballs on you, the better. If you reach out to connect with someone, that person will view your profile (whether or not they choose to accept your invitation), adding both a possible new connection for you and a boost in your profile-view rankings. Lora pulled up LinkedIn and encouraged the audience members who had the technology with them that evening to follow along with her online. She reviewed some example profiles of her clients and people who work with her at Plum. Her first example client was an Amazon employee whose goal was to work for REI. Lora pointed out key aspects of his profile summary that helped him achieve his goal:
Used an outdoor scene for the top of his profile page.
Free membership has some stock backgrounds, premium allows you to put your own photo in as background.
Profile photo is professional, using a coordinated background for an outdoor look.
Capitalized the entire caption and is specific about what he does.
The summary has lots of white space.
Bottom of summary is a bulleted list of key terms and words:
Can repeat what is in the prose paragraphs above
Needs to be readable in six seconds (average amount of time a recruiter's eyes are on a profile summary).
Numbers and symbols draw the eye, so include them—particularly in the middle area of the summary.
Lora responded to a question on whether it is more important to mirror or to differentiate between your LinkedIn profile and your website content. To her, the most important thing is knowing what you want to convey very quickly in your LinkedIn summary. Recruiters and potential clients are not likely to do a line-by-line comparison between your LinkedIn profile and you website. She often uses an exercise with clients of writing an introductory summary paragraph about who they are and what they do. Then, using that, they parse it out to create the summary bulleted list for the end of the profile. Lora's next sample profiles exemplified slightly different approaches to the overall look by:
Using a simple, clean solid color for the background.
Noting there are different ways to approach the profile summary:
Direct vs. third-person POV
A conversational tone
A winning opening sentence
Lora pointed out that there are no bullets in LinkedIn's text editor. If you want them, she recommends copying and pasting them from a word processor document. Other recommendations regarding profiles included:
Have a good photo.
A professional photo is usable for up to 10 years. This photo should show the people who are looking for you what they want to see—it's not for you.
Invest in yourself—hair, makeup, clothing, professional photographer—so people see you as approachable and competent. If a professional photographer isn't in your budget, then find someone you know with a good camera, take a lot of shots (like 50), then send them out to friends to get their opinions.
The profile title should explain exactly what you do or what you want to do.
Do not put "Looking for a . . ." as the lead sentence in your profile.
Have a rockin' Summary.
Use keywords that attract employers by reading job descriptions and leveraging the vocabulary.
Don't click the "Activity Broadcasts" button until you're all done editing.
Make all major and minor edits to your profile with the updates muted (Settings & Privacy >Sharing Profile Edits>No). When you add a final, important edit, such as a new profile photo, switch the Sharing Profile Edits to "Yes" before making the edit. Then your connections will only receive one notification for the changes you've made.
Spelling. Spelling. Spelling. (Ha! You are editors . . .you know that!)
Don't ever, ever use the default dialogue box: Create your own message for connection requests.
Be specific. Be friendly. Be nice. Be appreciative . . . and don't be afraid!
At this point, Lora compared herself to a personal trainer: She has pointed out how everything works in the gym and how to use it, but we have to do the work (on our LinkedIn profiles).From her live LinkedIn feed, she pointed out that:
Reading through the feed often uncovers job opportunities because recruiters will post job openings as updates instead of or in addition to using the "Jobs" tab.
If you decide to post an update, be sure to have some visuals.
With the recent design change, the profile summary is truncated after just a couple of lines, requiring readers to click "see more" to see the rest of the summary. This makes the headline portion of the profile critical. Get everything that will grab attention into that headline.
You can add media to every section of your profile. Use it to show that you're an authority or thought leader.
In your job history, do not use the "month" option. Just leave it "choose" as this makes for a cleaner appearance. Again, use all caps, bullets, and numbers or symbols in the middle of each large section.
For consultants, to keep your job descriptions to a reasonable length, use "Select Client Engagements," or whatever phrasing would be appropriate to your business model to highlight the breadth and depth of your experience within a single "job."
Editors, list the books you've edited. "What's the sexy?" What have you done? What can you showcase?
References and recommendations: no one looks at the skills endorsements (they are the LinkedIn equivalent of a "Like" button on Facebook or Twitter). However, personal recommendations often are read and can be helpful to have.
Following groups, schools, etc. adds content to your feed. It can also be a shortcut to connecting with colleagues or potential clients. Once you join a group, you can view all the members and can then directly connect or converse with any individual members you choose.
There's a better way to apply to work for the companies you are interested in working for than going through the official job postings and using the "punch and pray" method of hitting the apply button for a posted position—a method that has about a 20 percent success rate. Instead, Lora recommends:
Search for the profile of the company you are interested in
On the right side of the profile will be a link to "view all employees"
Once you're in the list of employees, use the filtering tools on the page to find the employees with the job titles that will be in a position to potentially hire you
Select the employee(s) you feel would be likely to have work in your field and ask them to connect.
If your invitation to connect is accepted, then follow up right away with a LinkedIn message directly to your new connection that is both appreciative and reinforces that you are looking for work that may be available in his or her company.
Don't be shy about posting, commenting, and sharing content found on LinkedIn or other sites.
Handouts