Using LinkedIn for your job search

Ayush: It works.

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Jennifer: Okay, so it has been live streamed but I'm also going to record it just in case [Music] 

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Ayush: I can see how the livestream looks, I'm gonna copy the link. Oh yeah, I can see both of us okay (Laughs)

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Jennifer: Okay so it’s being live streamed. Oh now I can hear my echo on your end but basically if anyone's watching the stream right now we're just getting it set up, errm,  before the event starts so we gotta wait like five minutes. 

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Ayush: Only one person was watching me at the time I was speaking

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Jennifer: That was me watching!  I was awesome (MN chuckles). Okay, I'm gonna replace the link so that everyone gets that email on YouTube [Music] oops, hopefully people don't get confused about whether to tune in via zoom or YouTube because even though we got a lot of signups I feel like there won't be as many people. Okay, I'm gonna spotlight oh I don't know,  if I’ve pinned you? Do you know if that pins for everyone else?

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Ayush: No, if you have the spotlight 

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Jennifer: But I can't spotlight 

Ayush: umm, yeah 

Jennifer: There's no option to spotlight. Okay, just don't unmute yourself as well, because errm, yeah, and then I'll let you share screen but as soon as you share screen I'm gonna turn that off.  

Ayush: You can… you cannot make me co-host right?

Jennifer:  no there's only (pause) actually I could make you host but then you would have to… like, it would be weird, like because I have to record as well I don't know [Music] oh wait and then when you share screen can you disable annotation from participants? 

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Ayush: Yeah 

Jennifer: Maybe you can try sharing screen right now and then on the setting somewhere, there's like “disable annotation” yep yep awesome [Music]. Okay yeah, I don't know like it's you're pinned or me but for some reason I cannot err spotlight

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Ayush: That's okay because I think, I'll be doing like, I'll be the only speaker others can be able to see my video.

Jennifer: Okay awesome [Music]. Okay, three more minutes before I let everyone in, there's like 34 people in the waiting room but I have the email scheduled to send at exactly well, 8 a.m for me. I think it's 8 30? for you? 

Ayush: Right 

Jennifer: Yeah, so I have the email scheduled to send at exactly that time reminding everyone 

Ayush: so we might expect some people to join a few minutes late, so we'll start like a few minutes 

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Jennifer: yeah if we hit the zoom limits, like of,  I think it's a few hundred or something then..

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Ayush: You have an entry-level zoom account or a personal one? 

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Jennifer: Yeah entry level, but I don't I don't think we paid for like the enterprise one so 

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Ayush: Yeah, usually it's 100 people but in some cases it's 300 people err…, also I hope we cross that limit. 

Jennifer: I feel like we're not going to get that many but we'll see the YouTube live stream if that just in case. Oh! the YouTube is now on speaker view that's awesome errm there is a bit of a delay between zoom and YouTube though but I think that's fine errm. also I think I might share my screen to do the intro, do you want to take questions from people at the end as well? 

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Ayush: Yeah

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Jennifer:  okay yeah because I'll also keep track of all the questions I can ask them to you. I'm gonna give instructions about how to raise your hand and stuff so..

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Ayush:  If there is time you have a new question, I looked at all the questions in the, in the list. I cover, like some of them in the workshop by itself, but then there's just so many questions I can't categorize them so we'll at the end we'll wrap up five minutes early, and do question and answers.

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Jennifer: Okay, sounds good. Okay, so the first part is the presenting and then the second part, if we have time, is questions. So I'm going to be sharing my screen about, with all the intro and stuff and then I'll introduce myself after, you introduce yourself and then we can get started, I'll hand it over to you. 

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Ayush: Sounds good.

Jennifer: Wait, let me just practice presenting my screen now actually. Can you see me? I also had to disable annotations just now, but can you see my screen?

Ayush: Yep 

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Jennifer: Okay awesome yeah okay there's like 60 six people in the waiting room right now, and the email just sent nice.That reminded you now. Okay awesome, I'm gonna let everybody in and share my screen,yay, so exciting[claps]. Let me admit all. Hello everyone! Welcome! Welcome everyone[Music]. So hard to type and speak at the same time[laughs]. Hey everyone! Thank you so much for being here. Wow! we have so many people today, I'm so excited to start our workshop but before we get started errm, oh! I see a few people are still connecting to audio, so don't worry I'll put in the chat what I'm saying as well but before we get started, let's all put in the chat: maybe where you're calling in from, I want to see what time it is for you right now because for me, I am in Canada right now so it's 8 a.m where I am in Vancouver. Oh very much! Oh! I'm not American, so I don't know where that is[laughs] but it sounds familiar. Oh, lots of people from Nigeria, that's awesome. India, 8 30 pm. Oh my gosh! In UK, Gas…, I don't know how to pronounce that, I'm sorry[laughs]. 4pm daijurn…, I also don't know where that is, I'm so sorry[laughs], I shouldn't have asked this question because my geography knowledge is really bad. Oh, I do know where Atlanta Georgia is though errm. Hello everyone! Oooh I love the Nigerian flag emoji on Mr. Jay's iphone[laughs] awesome. Hong kong! Ooh 11pm! Thanks for being here so late. Brooklyn, New York, I do know that's in the east coast so that's like 11 a.m nice, nice. Thanks everyone for joining us just so everyone knows that we are recording this, even though we're live streaming on YouTube I don't know if I trust my technology enoug,h so I'm going to record it as well just in case because we have a lot of people who were interested in this event. So I'm going to start the recording now. Yeah so if you're not comfortable being recorded, just keep your cameras off I think I'm gonna get started now for the interest of time, because we have lots of amazing questions that were sent in and, yes, the recording will be emailed to you. So I'm just gonna get started and then we can jump into the presentation. Basically entry level, I'm sure you all already know what we do and who we are, but we basically help you learn and get experience so you can get hired,  so if you're telling your friends about us, you can steal this and cut. We want to reskill 1 billion people by 2030, so thank you for being here and helping us with that mission. Errm, a few rules before we officially get started with the workshop, errm, please be respectful so far we've been doing that that's great so that's amazing errm, please keep it up. errm, number two don't spam the chat: I love engagement, feel free to send in your questions in the chat but like don't send it letter by letter or anything, um, that kind of goes back to number one being respectful. And number three keep your mics muted: I don't think you're able to unmute yourself, so if you end up having a question you can raise your hand. So here's how you can ask a question: errm, I'm gonna ask you to save your questions for the last five minutes of the workshop um, just because we have so much to go through, so you can ask a question using the zoom chat, I can, I'll be moderating because Ayush will be presenting, or you can raise your hand at the end of this workshop and you can do that by pressing “Alt+Y” on windows option, “Y” on mac, and if you're on your phone, there's like three dots on the bottom right that you can use if you're calling in from your phone you can use star online. Oh okay,  so I think that's all for my intro, umm, I'll introduce myself as well, I already said I'm Jennifer from Vancouver, BC. If anyone comes to visit here, please let me know um, because it's so beautiful here I would love to show you around, I'll pass that oh! and I'm the go-to associate at entry level. I’ll pass it off to a usual presenter today to introduce himself and get started.

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Ayush: Hey everybody, welcome to this linkedinworkshop. I'll start sharing my screen and I'll introduce myself once we get to that slide, err,  jennifer can you give me a thumbs up if you can see my screen? 

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Jennifer: Yes I can see it 

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Ayush: Awesome! Perfect! Uh hey everyone, welcome to “Using Linkedin Effectively For Job Search”. Uh, this is our first workshop that we're organizing at entry level so, thanks so much for being here. We've already done this group checking tell us the city you're joining us from, but just to get a wide check and see how everyone's feeling and doing, I would love for everyone to message in the chat once again how they're feeling right now uh just use one word to describe how you feel in the moment and uh, let's get some comments running I'm quite excited as well uh jennifer is excited and uh linkedin can definitely be overwhelming so uh good on you for making to this workshop and getting started on your job search. All right while we keep on err,  keep on with the comments, I'm gonna move ahead. In today's workshop, the agenda is to cover a lot of things. We'll be focused on, focusing on some things a bit more than others and feel free to, at the end, raise your hand and ask questions. I'll be available after the workshop, as well via email, in case you have any specific questions from the workshop, but in today's session we'll be talking about why build a personal brand?, what is exactly a personal brand?,  and why to build one. Then we'll be defining your objectives: why is it important to have some specific objectives on umm, when you're using linkedin for building your personal brand. Then we'll talk about profile optimization; what are the things that you need to optimize for on your linkedin profile, becoming more stalkable how can you get more recruiters or just anybody in the world to get excited and to look at your profile and reach out to you. we will also talk about profile reverse engineering a little bit if time permits, but we're going to focus more on connecting with your audience; what are the different ways you can connect with your audience and grow your network and lastly how all of this relates to your job search. Errm, before we jump in to the session, I want to introduce myself; hi everybody, my name is Ayush. I am a learning designer at entry level so all the courses that we guys offer at entry level me and Michael Caleb, we are in the programs team; we work on ensuring that we work on, we work with the instructors to design those programs umm, and create those programs for you. It's great to be here. Why am I running this workshop? Am I an expert at linkedin? No I'm not an expert at linkedin but I have used it to get my last three jobs,  for the last three years so I've switched this is my fourth job and all the jobs that I've gotten are through linkedin without even sending my resume, I did not even apply for those jobs.

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Jennifer: Wait, did you get your entry-level job through linkedin?

Ayush: No no no. Not the entry-level job but the previous three jobs before that. 

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Jennifer: Wait, was that..? I'm sorry, because I kind of did. Because I saw the posting on linkedin and then I started messaging the ceo and founder of entry level through linkedin and I guess he was like “ let's hop on a call”, like “do you have time right now”, and I'm like “sure!” 

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Ayush: Exactly. That's how it works that's what I did for my previous job errm. Three years ago when I was living in melbourne, I I was looking for a job I had just graduated from uni and I was applying for a lot of jobs through the different job platforms but no success, so I started using linkedin and just like followed a lot of people, messaged a lot of people to meet up for coffee and just talk to them, and then sometimes I would see job postings by people and I would just, instead of applying for the job, I would just reach out to them and tell them that this is what my background is and I'm interested in the job so would they be willing to have a chat about it and errm,most,  most of the times they would be interested in, they would be interested in doing that, just a second let me make my notifications, they would be interested in doing that so it would work out really well, and today we'll learn what were the steps I took before that, before actually reaching out to people, and what to say even when you're reaching out to either a recruiter, or a ceo, or a founder of a company, or maybe a colleague that you would like to talk to to get some insights about working at an organization.And like really simply, how to get a job through linkedin; it's, you have to optimize your profile and then second is to connect and engage with people, because linkedin is, even though there are jobs on linkedin, and you can apply for jobs through linkedin, it's basically a social network so you have to work on socializing; writing a post commenting on other people's posts or growing your network, and that's how you increase your chances of getting a job. Which brings us to personal brand, because personal branding is something that's on top of everyone's mind and mouth as well it's like what is a personal brand? You should focus on your personal brand in all the, like, courses that you do on self development they talk about defining your personal brand so but what exactly is it? A personal brand is a unique combination of skills and experiences that make you who you are. So it's it's all about you that's why it's personal and brand is, brand is just something that how, how you, other people remember you. So it is how you present yourself to the world and sell yourself to other people but why exactly is it important to focus on your personal brand and create one? Because people's attention spans are getting shorter by the minute, they, it's, it's really important to make an impression now more than ever because even when you apply for jobs through a resume or a cover letter or on linkedin, you have to stand out because for a single job there's hundreds of thousands of people applying. The best way to do this is by creating a solid and memorable brand identity of yourself so whenever someone reads your name they remember you for what you stand for. It helps you stand up from the groups, it leads to more opportunities, people will trust you even more if they recognize your brand your personal brand  people will always screen you online even if you apply for jobs through some other platforms people are still going to check other link, then check out your consistent image shown to the recruiters or to your colleagues, and lastly you can control your narrative and your own story so you can tell people what are the things you are passionate about, what are the areas you want to work in, and that really helps on linkedin. But most people are unclear about their personal branding because they don't set clear objectives they don't really know what they want, or who they are helping, which is why it's really important to define your objectives before you do anything else. For personal branding you have to answer these two questions: who are you like?: what's your title?, what's your role?, what are you? what are you doing here?, what are you doing on linkedin? and who could benefit from you?, who are the people that would benefit from connecting with you?, from reading your posts? or from watching your videos if you put videos on YouTube?, and who would benefit from hiring you?. And similarly for job search, you have to first identify what do you do: if you are currently looking for your first job, if you already have a job and if you're looking to move to a different company, then you already know what you do or a different list of jobs that you would not mind doing, like you might be interested in three or four different things. And then you write down your dream companies, the companies that you would love to work at, and then find out people who could get you an interview so let's look at [Music] example of both and these are both my personal examples when I did this the left one is my personal example the right one is just a sample, so for personal branding, my objective is to build my personal brand. who am I? I am, this is not exactly who I am right now, but this is what I had aspired to be when I was writing, writing up, my objectives so I am a learning designer, which I currently am, I was not a learning designer when I wrote this down; this was two years ago, but I became a learning designer a year later when I got my job at entry level, so writing these things down really helps to get the jobs that you eventually want. So who are you?: learning designer slash lifestyle code, slash I love to read, slash I use no code tools. Who could benefit from me?: so people, graduates who are figuring out what to do next in their life, I can help them; family business, kids who are working on personal development, and using different tools and people who just love to study, read and create. So this is my target market; these are the people who would benefit from me and then I would craft my profile to suit these people, and similarly for job search, you have to first, like, your objective is to get hired; what do I do? This is a sample example I am not a data scientist but maybe let's say I am interested in data science so I would look for jobs related to data analyst, data scientist, and everything that's related with data. My dream companies, maybe these four companies are listed on slides, and who could get me an interview; I look through my network maybe, I have some people who already work at these companies and then I can make a strong linkedin profile, and then reach out to them because, even if you know people working in good companies you need to have a strong personal brand or a strong uh, strong experience so you can tell ,that's like, hey I am interested in this job, can you connect me to someone? Can you get me an interview? They would definitely look at your social media, and they will look at your linkedin, and then make a call on whether they want to introduce you or not. 

So one of your first tasks, after this workshops, should be to define your objectives for both your personal brand and if you are looking for a job, I realize not everyone might be looking for a job right n, your goal might be to get a job later in life ,maybe you're happy where you're working right now or maybe you're a student, if you're a student you can still fill up this uhm, fill up these prompts and uh gets, get ready, get your linkedin profile ready for when you actually launch, you start your job search. Now what we're going to do for the next 10 to 15 minutes is [Music] errm, it's going to be a lot of me talking this workshop because there's a lot of information to go but in, in like about 15 minutes,  there will be a small task for you which will be like a breather for me talking, and a small task for you to do as well which will be related to this particular slide. So now when, when you're optimizing your profile on linkedin there's so many things that you can improve and we're gonna cover a couple of them in detail and, and others I'm just gonna list out that you should have, they're nice to haves if you have them optimize great, but if you don't it's not really in, in like so important to have any information there. Optimizing your profile helps you become more searchable and uh,  more clickable when people see your profile in the search results and more approachable, because more people will reach out to you. Now, these are the most important things that you should take care of: first of all, your headshot. It should be professional looking–you don't need to pay a photographer for that you can just get your friend to click a nice picture of you–should only have your head and shoulders with ideally a white background, and a smile there as well. Then the next second most important thing is your headline which is right below [Music]. I'm gonna move to my linkedin as well and show you live example of my own profile at the moment so that, that's my headshot, this is the headline so right now my headline says: learning designer slash edtech, social enterprise, crowdfunding coach, this, this is all that I do and this is all that I work around, so it should be specific and informative to your audience it should ideally focus on things that you want out of your job or that you're currently an expert in. So I am, I, I worked in crowdfunding before, and I still help out people with crowdfunding campaigns, so that's why I have these things written. Then, the next thing is having a custom url, a nice background image, and your contact information, so let's go back to my profile again—this is the background information—I used to write a newsletter and what I wanted people to do, when they click on my profile, is to sign up so I wanted to give them a call to action so I added this [Music] banner background image there. 

For you, you can have anything that represents your work ethics; maybe it doesn't have to be a picture of yourself, it can be just like a picture of like your workspace, or that if it's presentable enough it should be, if you give presentations, it can be a picture of yourself working in a student group with other people which shows that you work like working in some sort of environment, or it can just be a picture of, like, anything that represents your personality, your personal brand. Then, one of the, another most important thing is editing your custom url, so if you can see at the top, the url for my profile is linkedin.com/in—because I'm in india–/ayushthanjin.js,and that's like really simple, but some people have a lot of weird numbers there. What you can do is simply go to your profile page and click on this button “Edit public profile & url”, once you click that, over here you can edit your custom url and I highly suggest if it's available keep your name there or maybe your first name and last name or maybe like add a couple of numbers there if, if your preferred name is not available. But I really highly suggest having a custom url it becomes really easy to share with other people and for others to find you on linkedin as well. Now, let's look at some other examples of images and [Music] the headlines now you can see on the left, there are the two, two pictures on the left and two on the right  the ones on the left are a big NO; you should not have pictures like that and the ones on the right are more these right examples of picture that you should have a linkedin profile. 

Why? Because on the left, you don't really need a full ,full full-length picture of yourself you can't really see the face of the person and the background is also very disturbing with like the trees, even at the bottom you can't really see the image of the person; you can just see the big building behind it might even look like it's a linear profile of that building,  but on the right you see for these two people it focuses on the face; it's just covers their head and shoulder, they're smiling, and focus so that makes up for a good, good linkedin image and you can also see the headlines over there, so for the person on the top—the bottom–right, you can see she's looking, I, I know this person, so I know that she's looking for a job but she's still written here— software developer to be—so that she's not yet a software developer but she's, she wants to be a software developer, and she is tech driven, and she works in marketing analytics, and for other people you can see what they are doing; maybe they're employed or they—on the left—you can see this person is building a startup of his own and went to london business school; if you went to a reputable or, like, a really famous university you can definitely mention those things there. If I mention my school and, like, not many people know my university, so it's no point putting that but—if you—london business school is quite famous and, even I am calcutta, is quite famous in india so this person put it in there and that really helps when other people are looking at your profile and see hey this person went to this school, so let's explore their profile a bit more. Here are some more examples of what headline like ,for, for the headline, for different people in different industries. So as you can see, it can be just like a full sentence as the first one that someone is an environmental analyst and a sql expert, they're also seeking opportunities—so they have also mentioned that—in not-for profits, so they are quite specific and the last one you can see someone has written that they’re a treasury manager, they can speak spanish, french, and german; this is useful if they're looking for jobs in different countries which requires language requirements so initially the recruiter will see that this person already speaks three languages, so these are some examples of headlines later on ,in, in a few minutes, we'll do a task where you will write a headline for your own linkedin profile.

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Next is your summary and the personal introduction story—which is ideally written in first person. What we would like to— what recruiters or what people who are visiting a profile like to—see in the summary section is who you are: if you're looking for a job, what type of position you're looking for?, if you're already employed, what do you do?, what does your work involve? A little bit of your background and which can talk about, like, why you choose your particular field of study in university or talk about any other experience that you have other than professional work experience. You can talk about any other work that you've done; summer jobs, you can talk about any co-curricular involvements that you have, other things that you're passionate about because linkedin is not only about talking about your work—it's also about other things that you're passionate about because employers want to see what else do you do after you go back,like, home because they usually ask you what your hobbies are because the person's hobbies also tells the recruiters what this person is interested in and why they're applying for a specific job and just because the employers are not only looking for a skill fit they're also looking for a culture fit, so they also look at other information. So again, going back to my example, I'm not gonna read it here but a good summar, this is probably like a bit longer—my summary is a bit longer—it should probably be almost like a little half or three fourths of this, and you can read mine later when you connect with me because that's one of the action items as well. So that's the summary. Then you talk about your experience, ideally something that's field related. So if you're looking for a job in product management, if you have product management experience, you should put that up first. If you don't list everything else, but, make sure the most relevant ones are definitely listed there. It doesn't have to be paid employment; you can, in linkedin, you can write your class projects, you can add your research projects, you can, like, volunteer opportunities that you have done—you can add those as well, and it really helps to write the description in the description area, highlight anything that you've done: how you were a great team leader or a team worker, what areas did you help the organization improve in, so having those numbers really help to show your future employers what you can do.

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Next we'll talk about education—definitely higher education in there—which university you went to?, what degree did you study?, you don't have to write your school details—no one really cares about school so much—but if you think it's important or you're a really fresh graduate you should put that up as well especially if you did something, like, something that you're proud of in your school, you should definitely share that, like, if someone was played tennis ,for the, for the country, or in high school, or in the national levels, they should definitely mention any such achievements. You can also add the courses that you took in university—on linkedin and definitely add any co-curricular activities and organizations that you were part of, maybe you joined the the cultural team, or the, or the debating society. If you don't and if you're still in school, I highly recommend taking part in such activities so you can show them off, and also have fun, and make new friends. I'm gonna skip this, and then the rest of the things are that you fill, as, as you can, as you grow your linkedin profile. These are not important; these are optional to start with—the first few things that we discussed were important to have before you actually start growing your linkedin, before you send invites to other people, or apply for jobs that's important. This is useful but not really important—you can join a lot of groups, you can endorse other people, or try to get recommendations for yourself, add your volunteer services, any publications or research material that you have published, any awards that you have received, or interesting hobbies, and you can write down your interesting hobbies in the summary, but adding it at the bottom; it takes a few seconds to do that, so you can do that, but it's not super important because it's at, the, these things are also at the bottom of the profile and if I am looking at someone's linkedin profile I usually look at the name, their headline, their summary, their experience—I don't go much down—it's nice to have a complete profile, but as a person who are looking at someone else's profile, I don't really go all the way down. 

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Now, for the next three to five minutes—maybe three minutes—because we don't have a lot of time in this webinar, your task is to write your linkedin headline and some tips are:  use a headline that describes the job that you want and your key skills—if you already have a job you can just write down your role which company you're working at—the best approach is to imagine what a recruiter might type into the search box and use some of those words. So if I was a recruiter and I am looking for something, imagine yourself as a recruiter and think what would he write if he's looking for candidates on linkedin search? So, we have, I'm just going to start a timer on my phone for the next three minutes and when you have your headline—if you already have a headline, if you're happy with it, share it in the chat so others can also see what everyone else is up to and what their headline is; if you don't just take this next three minutes to write down your headline.  Awesome, I can see the headlines rolling in. I remember when I was in uni, I would change my headline every week because I was applying for different jobs. Each week, like, sometimes I was applying for, like, yeah finance jobs, and the other week I was applying for customer service jobs, and uhm…

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Jennifer: But what if the finance job you applied to looked at your profile the week you changed it? 

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Ayush: Yeah I mean, I, I was quite, they weren't getting back to me for a week. I just assumed that they're not, interested in, interested in hiring me or,---I don't—I didn't pass their, the, application so I would change it quite often and—I—so if you, if you are applying for a lot of different jobs, instead of writing, I mean, you can say you are a journalist and you're looking for opportunities in a high growth startup and you are open for any type of roles, so you can mention that if you're looking at applying for a different sort of roles because even now, I work in, like, I work in education and learning design but I also work with social enterprises in crowdfunding and those are two unrelated fields.

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Jennifer: I have a personal story to share. Actually I was learning UX design a few years ago and I sought a volunteer position. It was a small organization so I grew pretty fast in it and then became the senior UX designer of that organization even though I was still a beginner, so I had that on my profile as the job title, and then on my profile headline I think I wrote UX designer or something, and I had recruiters message me like “hey we're looking for senior designers” and I was like “I'm not qualified”, but it's nice to know that the words on my profile helped.

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Ayush: Absolutely! It's a great story and I actually love your headline right now. I think it's say something around, like you trained—let's let's look at Jennifer's profile while we're waiting for other people[Music]. 

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Jennifer: [laughs] My linkedin is not great in my opinion,but thank you 

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Ayush: I think, I think  the headline is great. It says “product-led growth, social impact startups, adviced 1000+ people through events, presentations, and mentorship, so I know that this person works in the growth side of things, and is passionate about social change, and there's numbers there's like, advice 1000+ people through events, presentations, and mentorship, which is very impactful when a recruiter is visiting. And the same thing happened with me when I changed my title to learning designer—usually I did not—like because I work with small startups, I don't get a lot of recruiters reaching out to me but the last six months so many recruiters have reached out to me just because I changed a few keywords on my profile. All right, I see a lot of people have shared their headlines which is great. We don't have the time to look through all of them, but I can see most of them are very well written— just one tip I will have is because I saw one in there which  someone wrote down the tools that they work with like Excel, SQL, and Power Bi I think which is in data science. So instead of just writing other tools, maybe you can say that expert in data analysis—data analysis is using the most up-to-date tools—something like that, something that's more unique than someone who has just written, uh, see like the names of the tools that they know. Even for like UX designers, if you know a lot of different tools, if you know figma, adobe, in or like for videography if you know adobe premiere pro, envision, anything, so you can definitely write those tools and you can use the name of the tools in your summary section where you can write, how, what is your level of expertise for different tools, but in the headline—because you don't have a lot of space—you can simply say expert in photo or the adobe creative suite for example, or expert in data analyst—data analysis tools— whichever the tools that are….cool.

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Let's move ahead. Now, the job search—the basics—I'm just going to do a basic walkthrough of linkedin job search, it's, it's pretty straightforward and easy to use so…. here…All right, what, what is great with linkedin now is that they have all these new things which are the skills assessment, the interview prep, and resume builder, and even job seeker guidance, and I was looking at this interview prep yesterday—most of it is only available for people who have linkedin premium—and they have all the questions that you might be asked in an interview, and the resume builder is quite cool as well and it can help you prepare for different interviews. You can also take skill assessments for things you are an expert in, and linkedin will now just say that, you are, you you did pass that assessment and show it on your profile which is which is really cool, though linkedin premium—or we can we can talk about linkedin premium in the q a section at the end if it's useful or not, but what you do is—I was just looking at some jobs earlier to test out this myself, but let's say someone is looking for a product manager job in…. What's great in linkedin is the filters that they have and you can just click on all filters, and have so many filters. Yes, I want to see a jobs which were posted in the past week—I want fresh stuff—because sometimes, there are jobs which were posted a month ago. I want something entry level, I don't want the company name selected because you can also search by companies. I want a full-time job, I want an on-site job, and I want it in Bangalore. I can also select industries so, this, this is great about linkedin because you can have a lot of specific stuff—and then it—after adding so many filters, so right now you can see there's —60—16 000 results, but when you, I added all these filters, I get 56 results so it helps you narrow down as well…and then you can see all the jobs that are available. What's, unfortunately, not the best in linkedin is that it doesn't—it might even show senior roles at entry-level roles, it can, like, say entry level here but when you read the description you will see that it requires—so over here, it says 3+ years of experience in an engineering or a product role but over here it says entry level. So, some, some things you need to be careful about and see when you're applying for jobs is to make sure it's actually fits the requirement of, your, your seniority. And another cool thing is that you can set an alert—you can just swipe this up, and alert on—so whenever a new job is posted in this category, I will get an email about it. Ideally, I think there's an email which comes daily with new jobs that are being posted for product managers in india or in bangalore so that really helps[Music]. What we do after—one second—so usually what will happen is you can also see the person who posted this job; I'm just going to find the job which hasthe person's—the recruiter's name—as well.Ralph lauren is hiring in india, I can't find that for the roles here… well, but usually you can see the person who is hiring for that role… maybe because these are, like, all the big companies, they haven't listed who's the recruiter but generally you can see that.

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Never mind, let's keep moving forward. What actually is useful on linkedin is not the job search functionality, but how you can score a job through other ways—by talking to people, by messaging people, by posting content even if you are not an expert in something, by posting content, and we're going to talk about what to do if you are not an expert in a particular field or if you're, if you're an entry level person. So that's great about linkedin, as I said earlier,(43:19) I did not get my jobs on linkedin by applying, applying for a job and sending my resume, I got it by talking to people and messaging people— so the first thing you need to do is grow your network. There's two ways to find people on linkedin; the first one is the linkedin search, the easiest way—you type in a name and you can find people. The second is other people network which is for short form, “OPN”,so what you can do is look at other popular people's likes and then connect with them. So if you follow someone who is an influential influencer in your region or in your industry—maybe he's a product manager, maybe he's a data analyst who's really popular—you can, you can ensure that the people who follow him are the people you want to be connected with because they can get your job. So you can look at the likes—the post likes, or you can look at the network and you can find people who are interesting and reach out to them, you can join a lot of different groups on linkedin and find interesting people to connect with there, you can connect with of course your students and people you already know as well. Another thing on linkedin is that you can simply search for a company and find—that's what I did a lot for when I wanted to talk to people where I wanted to work, so let's say I, well, I know this company right now; Opay is a company in nigeria so, [Music] I can just go to their page, and click on “people”, and then I can even search people—but they have 1800 employees— so I can find which school the people went to, which jobs they do, what title they have…. So I can just search “product” (pause) and wait it's not working right now…. yeah, over here, so I can see all the people that are working at Opay—-turns out linkedin is limiting my search because I've reached the monthly limit for profile searches, it's the end of the month my limit will reset tomorrow—-so I can't show you how it works but I've been searching for a lot of people as you can see…. and over here you could see about 1800 people and you can just connect with them. Okay, over here I can see that the HR comes first, so I can send them a message. So you can find a lot of different people for the companies you want to work at by just using linkedin search and connect with some people there. Always, always add a custom note to people that you are reaching out to, and do not do more than 100 invites per day because Linkedin will think that you are a bot and you're spamming people and it might deactivate your account. So another task for you after the end of this workshop, ideally today if you have time, is to find at least 20 people and connect with them with a custom message. Some examples of custom messages: the first one is for reaching out to a recruiter which you can read—-it's like someone reaching out—-and the second one is to someone reaching out to someone whose work that you like, and you just want to connect with them, and get advice on working in a different field. So what's really important to include in these notes is like, a little bit about you—-there's not a lot of text space there so just like keep it really brief—- it's like why are you reaching out, how did you find them, if you have some common touch, common connection, what you are interested in talking about, and just having a small ask; so you can see in the bottom one, it's like “I'm really impressed by your work, I particularly loved your dash campaign. If you have 20 or so minutes, I'd love to hear more about how you started working in the field and what skills you believe are most relevant to the profession.”  So this is how you can even not only connect with people but actually like talk to them, get some get a coffee or maybe talk to them on zoom which will eventually help you, which will eventually help you grow your network because growing your network does not need to happen only on linkedin; it needs to happen on a face-to-face or a personal basis so you can actually talk to people. When there's a job opening—-maybe in the company down the line—-they will think of you and reach out to you. You can copy these templates or just search on Google like how like “custom message templates for linkedin”; do not copy-paste and make sure, make sure you change the name of the person you're reaching out to—-I have made the mistake of copy-pasting and reaching out to someone without changing the name and that person actually was kind enough to accept the request and point that out. I'm sure they were pissed but they were kind about it, so make sure you change the name of the person but we all learn through mistakes. Now, becoming more stalkable: you can, for that you need to use keywords and you need to write on Linkedin—- you need to after growing your audience, the next step is to write. First, keywords—-what does, what do I mean by keywords? it's using the terminology that is common in your workspace, in your profession, in your profile. So putting it in your experience description—-like professional descriptions—-what your job was, putting it in your summary, putting it in your headline, so that when someone is searching for that specific keyword—-when I am searching for data analysts in Nigeria—-your profile should come in the first top 10 to 15 not someone else's, that's how you build your profile. Now the next is writing, you need to write about things that show your abilities….and and that's true, like I can't even begin to tell, like so many people come to my profile even though I don't post a lot, they come to my profile just from my post when I was active on linkedin. Right now, I don't have a goal to get hired or grow my personal brand because I feel I've done a good enough job to keep it as it is for the time being, but if you're growing, like starting in your field or trying to switch jobs, you should definitely post a lot and a lot of people will come to your profile. What you can talk about: talk about some problems that you have solved, talk about solutions that you created, and why those solutions worked or did not work—-you never know who is seeing those posts. Now I know some of you might be thinking that “I am not an expert, what do I write about?: You do not have to be an expert. There's generally two types of content; one is for your own profile that you write and another one is for other people's profiles—so when you share content or commenting on other people's profile, engaging with your target audience, commenting actually helps a lot because there's a lot of linkedin influencers now as you would definitely know. When you comment on their profiles, your comment is shown to thousands of other people who are looking at that post and if you make an insightful comment, someone will like that comment or maybe even connect with you by looking at the insights that you posted on someone else's post. So if you don't have anything to say, comment on other people's posts. There is no magic formula for creating content, and ideally you should post at least three to four times a week for a month before you start to see any results and identify your voice on linkedin as well. Written posts work the best compared to images of videos or even pdfs—- now you can post pdfs on linkedin. Images usually fail—I mean images work but then ideally not recommended—it's best to have a written content try to stay away from images—-they do well in cases where you can't convey something via text and our image is required to understand the context behind your posts. Videos are also useful because people will remember your face after seeing your video, even if they watch like 10 seconds of the video, they will remember your face and lastly there are carousel or pdf posts which are not that popular but they're still quite new and early on, so you might get the early mover advantage by posting [Music] carousel posts on linkedin. I personally don't like them because it takes a lot of time to create them so better to stick with the basics written posts. Now the content that works really well on linkedin is stories—-people love and relate inspiration from stories—-so share your stories, share stories of people you know, who might not be sharing it, share something that you learned in your work or in your studies. Trend jacking, so add your perspective—-maybe something is happening in the world in your profession—-add your perspective and your comments on it which is voicing your opinions so you can capture the trend. Because something is trending, linkedin will show your post to a lot of other people and your profile will come on top, and then talk about case studies; mostly about your business or your profession—- so how did you help others? How did you solve a problem? How did your company tackle the challenge? and if the result can be positive or negative but you need to talk about it because people love that kind of content. Generally avoid long and bulky paragraphs and do not share the links in the posts, and these other tips you can read more. These tips when because we'll be sharing the slides later on so you can read them there. Now for getting—-I want to wrap up in the next five minutes so we can say take some questions and answer so you're almost at the end—--another task for you is: research the companies you are interested in and follow them, so linkedin makes it really easy to find those companies and follow them; make a list if you haven't already done that and follow those companies because you will be notified by their posts and see whenever they have a job or any other things that's happening there. I started from like—-and don't expect instant results—-when you follow a company today you might like, I mean, if you follow Facebook now, you might work with them like few years in the future, if you and if that is one of your dream companies and if you're working on that, but the companies hire—-small companies usually hire—-without any specific schedule, so make sure you follow them, make sure tonight after this workshop, you find and follow at least five companies you want to work at—-my apologies for this huge block of text, I just said don't have bulky text and I have bulky text on my own slides, but we already covered this but again reinstating that ,use the advanced search on linkedin it's really wonderful. You can search for people also using the advanced search—-not only for jobs and—-so and you can reach out to these people depending on their connection with the company you want to work at, if those people work there you can ask them questions about the company culture, if those people provide services to the company you want to work at, you can ask them what is it like do business with them if you are a freelancer .So you can get creative and have fun doing your own research, so simply when you search for someone—-like you you can search for product manager job— so you can just search for let's say a product manager, and I can click on “jobs” or I can click on “posts”, “groups”.

So you can join groups, you can join events that are happening, you can see courses as well, you can see people—-people is the beauty of linkedin, because you can see your first connections, who are already connected to you but I don't want people who are, like it to be, I want second degree connection; second degree connections means you have some common mutual connections. Then I can also add locations—-these people are at or companies they're working at, and have more filters, and then you reach out to them and ask, ask them for advice, add them to your network because if I am looking for a product management job and I want to be connected with all the product managers that are experts or top of the field—-who might be hiring for other product managers—-so I want to grow my network that way, that's how linkedin helps. You find common connections; you can ask for introductions for people if you already know someone, you can ask for introductions and introduce you to someone who is interviewing, you can also look for alumni who are associated with your college or university—-so imagine you did an entry level course and if you see a company where someone who also had an entry level course is working at you can reach out to them and say hey I did the same course as you did and I would like some advice or if you could introduce me to someone at your company that's how it works. To start wrapping up, your action items for today after this workshop is to connect with me and Jennifer, but we will only accept your request if there is a personal message, that's the deal. So there should be a personal message in there, connect with us, follow entry level for more updates on what's happening with our programs and courses and workshops like this, and follow other companies as well, and then comment on our next post—-I was supposed to write our next post—entry level is active on linkedin, so comment on our post whenever you see the next post so we can…. we can, we can look out for that post as well. Now before question and answers, well actually let's do question and answer first and then keep this as the nice last task, where you tell us how you feel about your job search. Jennifer, we can do Q and A now.

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Jennifer: Okay wait before we do Q ‘n’ A, I want to mention one story that I had. I think it's important while you're reaching out to companies to try to delight them and be creative, don't just ask for things; you want to be respectful, you want to bring a smile to their day. So, an example is I was interviewing for a time tracking app, and I asked them what's the most unique way somebody has used their product, and then I shared a unique way I use their product—-not for time tracking, but for creating art on the calendar, on the calendar view, so that's one way that you can stand out is by doing unique things that give them delight like that. Okay I know we have a lot of questions so, I wanted to ask what—-first of all you can put your questions in the chat but I'm going to go by questions that were asked earlier—-”so Ayush, will this work for any type of job or is there any job that this wouldn't work for?” 

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Ayush: That's a great question. I mean linkedin works, linkedin works for any job per se but it depends what kind of field you're in—-if you are a really specific–-like maybe you're a marine scientist or a biologist, you might definitely need a lot of, like a uni degree, and like specific connections, and work research publications that you've done to find a job but for jobs in the tech world that, that for example would you, the courses you would learn on entry level: data, web development, software development, marketing, anything other which is not super technical, this would definitely work. 

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Jennifer: Awesome thanks for answering that. Okay, so someone is asking “what if they don't have any experience but have skills in project, how do I get a job?” 

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Ayush: How do you get a job? Keep up, I mean there's no right answer to “how do you get a job?”, these are the initial steps you would take at that position. Everyone starts without a job like you—-you have to find the first job—-but if you have projects that you've done, and research things you've done, completed courses or certificates, talk about that on linkedin. What I did was attended a lot of events after graduation for the industries I was interested in, I would connect with people there and add them on my linkedin and tell them after I met them it's like, “hey I'm a graduate, I'm looking for a job in this field, so thank you for like, meeting with me, and if you're like, if you ever look find a job that meets my profile, please send it my way”, and people would actually like, send jobs when they're doing, something interesting that might suit your profile, so get started and keep applying for jobs, and keep doing side projects, and internships, until you find a full-time job. 

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Jennifer: That's awesome! Next question is “About your projects and resumes, where should we add a resume on linkedin?” I have a quick comment, I think he should be posting everything you're learning and doing, so if you have a project you're proud of, make a post and then you can pin that on your profile and it's pretty close to the top. Ayush, you have anything?

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Ayush: Absolutely. Like what I have done myself is….Linkedin has this featured option now, so you can have featured posts here; so that, this is a blog I wrote. So I wrote it in the featured section, this is another blog I wrote, I put it in the featured section so people can see that and definitely post about this, but also what you can do it's not so, like for each job you have done, and if you have done a project, you can add, you can add your portfolios and reports there, you can do that for the university as well, you can upload your worksheets or you can go at the bottom and add your projects as well, so over here, I haven't written down all the projects, I did, I yeah, so that is something that you can do, and resume, over on linkedin you can also like, for example, you can see there's a personal link here so it leads to my personal website so you can just edit your profile and add a link it's it's there's ,like, you can easily add a link ,and you can link it to your resume, you can link it to your website, you can link it to your anything you want to link it to maybe your YouTube channel or your instagram or your instagram influencer. 

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Jennifer: Yeah awesome, thanks for answering really quick. Another question, “what tips do you have for drafting a connect message for people without experience?” I think you covered this but do you have anything to add? 

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Ayush: Can you repeat that? 

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Jennifer: “What tips do you have for drafting a connection message for people without experience?” So, like if you have no experience, what can you ask for? 

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Ayush: That's the thing, the, it's that you are more likely to get people to accept, like you just ask for advice you say that “hey I really appreciate I really love the work you do and I'm a beginner in this space and I would love to ask you some questions, what skills do you think I should develop?”. You should ask questions like this and that should be your connection request, and then that person will, people usually love to help so they will most likely accept the request.

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Jennifer: Perfect. Another question is about changing your profile weekly; “Is it better to have different Linkedin accounts for different roles?”

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Ayush: Not at all no, a big direct, like ,oh only one linden, linkedin profile.

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Jennifer: But then, what if you're like HR, and then also school master? and then like all these different skills that you have and might want to work in, then what would you put on your profile?

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Ayush: That's the beauty of, like, you can you frame the story in your summary, and your headlines, like you have such a wonderful  array of roles, like you work in HR, you do scrum, as well, so that actually shows your, the breadth of skills and experience that you have, to a future employer or people who are visiting, and how you put, that is, find a creative way to write that out on a headline, maybe you can say HR, you know like HR—- company, if you're the scrum master at the same company, you can easily do that as well you can say full-time HR, part-time scrum master at another startup, if it's like a part-time involvement and then use the summary section to describe, what you, your, your background, so like if you have such a unique profile maybe, maybe you are a scuba diving instructor but at the same time you're also learning marketing and that's like completely unrelated, but you use the summary section to write that out, like how did you get started scuba diving and why, do you want to learn marketing, and why are you looking for a job in marketing, So describe that over there.

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Jennifer: Perfect. One more question is “What is the best search criteria for remote works abroad, like in the US, without work authorization?’ 

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Ayush: That… I don't know if linkedin can help with that. There is a lot of other websites which help with remote jobs and some of them are useful so you can select because, in, in linkedin there's a problem that even for remote jobs, it will show jobs that are remote in the US, or in Australia, or in the UK, so you have to be in those countries which sucks—- what I would suggest in that case is instead of using the job function; use the search function as like remote jobs for example, and then you can click on posts, and see who in your network is hiring for a remote job, and then you can find a pattern there, and use other platforms. You don't have to use linkedin job search, you can use other platforms job search and then find that company on linkedin, and then find the person who's hiring on linkedin, and then connect with them because not everyone posts on linkedin, not every, not every company would post a job on linkedin, so be mindful of that because there's a lot of, like, the company I worked for the last, like, the two jobs, they did not post online then one company, actually did not even post,  they just posted a couple of groups, and they helped the company, found someone through the networks itself, so it's that's why it's important to, like, be in groups and be part of people's network ,than with job search platforms. 

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Jennifer: Awesome, thanks so much. Okay, so someone's saying that “you're..” like “my profile is not allowing people to connect and send a personal message, so Ayush, can you show us how to send a person a note? Because I think a lot of people think that it's messaging, but adding a note is different.

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Ayush: Absolutely! Let me find someone I want to connect with,  let's say this random guy and connect with him—--san francisco—-so what happens is for some people, it's only the follow options you can….just like you can see the main action is “follow or message”, for message it's usually—-you need linkedin premium or you get one or two free messages. You probably don't want to message people unless you have linkedin premium, so what you do is click on “more” and over here you can see “Connect”, so you can click on “Connect” and over here you can add—- you have an option of adding a personalized invitation, so I can now, I'd see if you, if there's no mutual connections, I can see that I I have five mutual connections with this person so it's asking me; I can either add a note or just send a request but for some people,  if I'm not connected with them at all or no mutual connections, it will ask you to specify how you know this person—-some people have a higher profile security, you will need to add the email address to be able to connect with them which is useful if, like, some people don't want unnecessarily, unsolicited requests but over here I can just add a notes, like “hey chris”, like I mean whatever you want to write, I don't have anything right here right now because I don't know this person, so I'm gonna cancel it and probably not send him the request. Yeah it didn't go, but that's how it works or like you can simply over here; you can see “connect” as well so you can just click on “connect”----and it already sent the request, I don't know this person but I'm gonna withdraw the invitation—- it's because ,I I don't know, if I don't know this person, I didn't add a custom message so I really don’t send a request without a custom note.

Jennifer: I'm not sure what's happening—-if the note doesn't pop up and automatically sends the request… 

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Ayush: I need to open the profile to be able to like, then like if I open the profile, I need to click on “More”----Oh! I've already withdrawn my request here, so I can't resend it but usually when you connect with anyone new, it will ask give you an option to add a note, if it doesn't give you an option if the request goes, don't worry about it that person will, if that person adds you, you can send them a message after that if that, lesson, person doesn't add you, try to withdraw the request and try again after a few days.

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Jennifer: Perfect! I think that's all the questions we have for today. I'm not seeing too many from YouTube right now so, okay. Okay if you are trying to connect with me and it's not working for whatever reason, it's okay I'll recognize your name somehow, and accept but I think that's all for today.Ayush, any last thoughts before we close off?

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Ayush: Awesome! Thank you everyone for joining and good luck with your job search. Do connect with us and keep us posted about your job journeys. Be active on linkedin; in my early days, I would just post about events that I was attending, or new people that I would meet, and new stories that I would have, and at that time, at that time  doing that really really helped with my career growth and finding a job, so don't hesitate even if you're an entry level fresher, and good luck, and we'll see you in one of our programs or we have another event next month….. middle of the next month, which is on “Resume” in which we actually, we have an expert joining us who is who is a consultant or a recruiter at one of the big recruitment companies in Australia, and he's going to be giving us advice on how to shape the perfect resumes, and it's going to be more of a interactive session, so more question and answers, so make sure you register for that—-we'll email you about that in a few days.

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Jennifer: Yes, awesome! Just a few things that I wanted to promote before we end: number one, don't worry, we're emailing out the recording to you—-it's also on YouTube, live streamed. I sent the link in the chat. We're also live tweeting this whole thing—I was, like, juggling the moderation and live tweeting at the same time, so be sure to check it out for the summary of this event. Another thing to promote is our newsletter; so we actually share a lot of career tips on our newsletter called “Level up”, we also post remote jobs every week at the very end—- so I just sent the link in the chat, feel free to subscribe there for weekly career tips and job postings. So I think that's all, feel free to connect with me on linkedin, and also to use on linkedin….just search our names or like search “Entry level” and go through the employee list and we'll, well I'll be happy to help you if you dm me. Again if you're, if you came in late the recording will be emailed, everything will be sent to you so don't worry about missing anything. yeah, thanks everyone for coming, I hope you learned a lot today. 

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Ayush: Bye guys.

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Jennifer: Bye [Music]. Thanks everyone. this is the most awkward part of the meeting where you just wait for everyone to leave but I'm just gonna end the meeting to prevent the awkwardness. Thanks everyone! see you next time, Bye!

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