Megan Killion Consulting LinkedIn for Beginners Entire Video
Megan Killion covers LinkedIn profile setup section by section, from headlines to recommendations, then moves into networking strategy and career planning. She explains why each element matters for searchability, shares tactics like using Fiverr for graphics and keeping maiden names, and walks through how to connect with recruiters and bypass applicant-tracking systems.
Chapters
Hit that react button and raise your hand if you already have a LinkedIn. Okay, awesome. I share my screen. That means I don't have to walk you through the very basic. How to create a LinkedIn, but for anybody who is later watching this, signing up for LinkedIn is as basic as going to linkedin.com and hitting the sign-up button. It is not difficult from a technical perspective. It is difficult from a perspective of figuring out how to fill out content on LinkedIn. What you put on your LinkedIn depends a lot on what you're trying to accomplish. With your LinkedIn, very similar to a resume or personal website. Your LinkedIn is your personal brand for your career. So it matters how you introduce yourself, what you put there, and what you're optimizing for. The majority of people who signed up for this class are using LinkedIn to advance their career as opposed to trying to sell a specific product, trying to drive revenue for their own business, etc., but those are also very valid uses of LinkedIn. It's great for building a brand professionally as well as personally. When you take a look at my LinkedIn, there are things that are done right and there are things that are done wrong. For example, my Banner here is a bad banner. I'm covering up the K-I and half of the L in Killian, and that's like a big don't in the social media space. Now, for me personally, I threw this together on the fly, did not hire a graphic designer to do it. Um, but just a note for you guys, Fiverr is extremely cheap, like literally $5 to get graphic design work done. And it's a very valid expense if you want to brand your profile in any way, and it can be reused on other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Um, as we scroll down, I have my maiden name. If you have an existing portfolio or an existing career and you're a woman and you're married and you changed your last name, very, very good idea to keep your maiden name attached on your profile. LinkedIn is hugely about optimizing for search results, and when you're putting everything together, you want to think of things that like a recruiter would put into the search bar. Um, so if someone were trying to find me who I worked with 10 years ago, they would search for Megan Jones, not Megan Killian. And obviously I want that to show up. Um, this right here underneath my name is what LinkedIn calls your headline, and it is one of the most important features of LinkedIn because when I search for people, let's say I'm looking for sales development. Representative. And I go to people and I'm looking for them. That headline is what shows up right underneath their name. It shows up in all of the search results. When people are looking for something, that is what they're going to see. So this is a terrible headline. Sales development representative at ViewStep. Sales development representative at DocuSign. The plus side is that when I searched for sales development representative, These results came up. But let's see if we wanted to do something that's a little bit more optimized. And we want to see my connections at Gong, for example. Here is a headline that I love. Gabby is a LinkedIn rock star. She has a ton of engagement, ton of followers. And all of that kind of starts with this headline here. She's a sales development sastrice. So that shows that she's got some personality beyond her job title. And then she's highlighting her side hustle here. She's a co-host of the Women in Sales Club. When you look at my LinkedIn, I have a clear kind of call to action right up there at the top. If you're not sure how to communicate your unique value to your target audience, you should let me help. Anybody that saw me in a search result is going to see that first and foremost. You get to choose who you highlight here as your current job. And for people that have, you know, multiple side hustles or multiple jobs, it can be a little bit tough to decide which one you want to put on the top. Tomorrow is actually my last day with Cashfly, so I could still have Cashfly up there, but instead I'm highlighting my consulting business because that's what I'm really trying to push heavily on LinkedIn. Greater Orlando is what I chose for my location. Whenever possible, you want to be broad with this instead of super specific, especially if you're open to commuting or remote work. So there's also, I could put here Maitland, but no one is searching for Maitland, but people are probably searching for Orlando. You can see that I have 12,389 followers, which is insane considering that a couple years ago, zero. And that comes from posting content. LinkedIn has recently created this Open to Work section. And if you are open to a new job, this is great and important. There is also a profile banner type thing similar to the ones that are on Facebook that you can put up that says like hashtag open to work that can really feature that you're, you're actively seeking a job. I also list my provided services because I am in marketing and I'm doing the marketing consultation, but you wouldn't want to do that if you're just looking for a job. This is a dashboard which you will all get when you sign up for LinkedIn, and it just kind of tells you how you're performing. This says that I'm an all-star. I'll be honest with you, I'm not even in the top 10% of LinkedIn influencers, but it means that, you know, I've completed my profile. When you sign in, you should have a dashboard that's giving you prompts on what to do next. Featuring content is highly effective if you're working in an industry where you have content. Some of you may and some of you may not. Obviously, like, I'm in sales and marketing, so I've developed websites, put together case studies, written white papers, and I highlight that work so people have an idea of what it'll look like when they choose to work with me. One thing I highly recommend for job seekers is that you create a personal website that is your resume. There's a ton of free options out there to set one up. You don't necessarily have to buy a domain, although obviously it looks better if you have a branded www.yourname.com URL. But you can also use free landing page websites to create your resume as a landing page. And if you do that, you're going to want to link to that in your LinkedIn, even if no one ever clicks on it or follows it. It just makes your LinkedIn look more filled out, like you've accomplished more. There are a lot of tips and tricks for making it look like you have achieved more, done more, completed more things. When filling out your LinkedIn, it's very similar to when you would fill out like a job application. or apply to a college where you're really trying to put as much data and information here as possible. Your About section is arguably the most important section on your profile. Mine is crap right now because I quit my job at Cashfly and deleted what was essentially a Cashfly pitch, and I'm now switching over to my marketing consulting pitch. This is not the worst But in an ideal world, you really want to be using every single character that is available to you in this about section and leveraging it. One of the things that I do for clients is write custom about sections. And it's very much search engine optimization, similar to when you write your resume. Because when recruiters are looking for candidates, they're searching for key fields on LinkedIn. And if they put something in like, say, B2B technology, my profile would pop up in one of the top results because I've used the term B2B technology repeatedly in my profile. Your About section is open form. You can write anything that you want there. And that means you can optimize for whatever you want to in this system. You don't have to optimize it for, you know, to answer a specific question. You can write anything about, about yourself that you want here. If we go to my personal website, this is a much better example of what the type of content that you would want to put in your About section. Fast facts, things that make you personable, reasons to hire you, reasons not to hire you, things that you've done or accomplished. It's a completely freeform field. So you can write whatever you want here, but make sure that you're optimizing for the type of job that you want. If you're seeking remote work, the term remote work should be in your profile. If you're seeking a very specific type of culture, let's say you want to work for a company that hires a lot of women, or you want to work for a company that's LGBTQ+ friendly, or you care about inclusion and diversity, this is a good place to highlight that. Highlight the things that you're passionate about, the things that make you unique, and especially all of the skills and experience that recruiters would be searching for. Your experience. So this is a little bit different than a resume. In a resume, you're given very specific prompts as to what to put here, right? You've got a heading that's your title, then the company that you worked for, how long you worked there, and what you did, usually in bullet point fashion. On LinkedIn, you have a little bit more space to go in depth about what it is that you do, the type of value that you add, and how you accomplished your job, any things you did really well while you were there. So in this case, I've put my founder and CEO of Megan Killion Consulting at the top of my profile rather than further down. Just like at the very top, what we were talking about with picking the company that you want to feature, you want to put your most relevant experience at the top. You do not have to organize your LinkedIn by most recent to least recent. It will automatically filter it that way. But you can rearrange your experience based on what you want to highlight. You can literally drag and move every piece of this. So if you're in a job that you fucking hate and you want to get out of, do not put that at the top of your profile. Feature something that's more in line with what you want to be doing. I know Molly had messaged me before today to ask, you know, what do you do if you're, if you're not working a job right now? What, what should you put here? And the answer is, be as creative as you possibly can to highlight what you have been working on, what you have been doing. My husband and I were working together on his cover letter today, and one of the things that we really focused on was explaining gaps in your work history in a way that highlights what you did with that time that was positive, right? So For example, when I left Elm East, which is way down here on my profile, I had a 2-year gap between that and working at Cashwise. So at the time, my cover letter went really in depth about why I took that time out. I directly acknowledged that I had twins, that both of my parents died, and that I decided to take time off from the corporate world. In order to readjust to my new life, get settled, and I did some consulting on the side. But then I heavily highlighted that with that time I acquired clients, I learned new skills, I talked about the classes that I took, I talked about the fact that I had gone back to college and that I'd taken, you know, specific classes. And I highlighted all of the things I did at home as a mom. That would contribute to me being a good employee. Um, your LinkedIn is a lot like that. So you can even put in here, like, I know people who have on their LinkedIn stay-at-home mom. And but then in this section here where they're describing the work, they talk about the ways that being a stay-at-home mother set them up for success at their next job. So here are some examples. Right. Moms of multiple kids, are you an excellent multitasker? Of course you are. Moms of toddlers, are you incredible at negotiation? Hell yes, you are. Are you used to getting negative feedback? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you know how to coach people to be their best versions of themselves? I mean, that's the whole point of being a parent, right? So if you highlight those things that are skills that can convert to a real job in an office, that's where you're going to see value. And if you have some type of side hustle or you worked on something, even if it feels small to you, like let's say you had a really small business creating the logos that go on tumblers, right? A lot of people do it. The Cricut thing, super popular right now. That should be on your LinkedIn, especially if you don't have a lot of other content to put there. Um, because it looks like more stuff, it adds searchability, and it leaves you with less obvious gaps in your employment. So that's, that's your whole work history section. There's gonna be plenty of time at the end for you guys to ask specific questions and we'll, we'll dive into your use cases. Then there's also an education section here. Now, raise your hand if you do not have a college degree. Hit that react button for me. Molly. I don't have a— I don't have a degree. I am 3 credits away from my associate's. So I have future dates here on my associate's and bachelor's based on when I think I will go get those things. I also have highlighted all of these stupid little technical certificates and accomplishments that I have from various educational institutes. All of these things are small. There is nothing here that I'm actually genuinely proud of that I would go brag to my friends about. But it makes my LinkedIn look like I've accomplished more, done more. And very few recruiters are really drilling down into this. They're just looking to see that the section is filled out. Licenses and certifications is a place to really make your profile shine, especially if you're in the tech field. It's also a really good opportunity for you to make your resume stick out is to take relevant coursework online, even if it's a free course. And if you're in like technology, there are a ton, a ton of little bundles that you can buy. On low-cost e-learning websites that'll teach you CSS, HTML, JavaScript. Let me tell you, I have not used CSS, HTML, or JavaScript in about 10 to 15 years. 15 years ago, I was doing small business websites. Now I completely outsource that to developers. I'm not that great at it, but it's still here on my profile because there are things that I accomplished. I haven't used Surfshark or TIPS. And again, at least 15 years. The HubSpot and Salesforce certifications are relevant to what I do today. Volunteer experience. I volunteer a lot, and I actually don't have all of my volunteer experience up here, but at one point I did go through and add everything because this is another place where you can highlight skills that might not have been paid. Like I've been a director of communications and information communication and a social media strategist. And those things are not things I could put on my profile at the time if I was exclusively talking about paid gigs. Skills and endorsements. So the skill quiz piece of LinkedIn is new. This did not exist 2 years ago. A couple years ago, LinkedIn acquired an e-learning platform called Lynda, and since they did that, they've refocused around a lot of professional development features of the website. So these skill quizzes initially were part of that push, but they're also a really, really good way to make your profile stand out to recruiters. And in fact, once you take a couple of them, Jobs will specifically be advertised to you where recruiters have listed a skill that you've passed the quiz for as, as a key skill for the job. So I think I passed a couple of Adobe ones, HubSpot, SEO. And so very often, jobs that are listed, the recruiters will reach out to me directly because I passed that skill test asking if I want to apply for the job. Endorsements are also key and can really help your profile to stand out. When, when someone is talking to me about a business development job and they see that I have over 99 endorsements for business development, that's a very key indicator that I'm capable of that job. It's important to make sure that you're featuring your skills and endorsements based on what's most important to you for a couple of reasons. One is that only the first 3 are going to show up on your profile if someone is scrolling. And so that means that's the ones that recruiters will see, but it also means those are the ones you're the most likely to be endorsed for. So your top 3 should be the ones that you want to be endorsed for right now. If I go into edit this, I can kind of show you. How this works. You're going to pin your top 3 to the top. Then it automatically filters these by interpersonal skills, tools and technology, and other skills. And the more recommendations or endorsements you can get for each of these, the better. You want to make yours about you. So if you're trying to get a job in, say, coding, you would want to put all the different languages that you speak in here, as well as some of the interpersonal skills that would be important for a coder working at a larger organization. Recommendations. This is one of my favorite features of LinkedIn. Because I don't know about you guys and how organized you are, but, you know, 15 years ago I had a bunch of paper recommendations that I carried around with me, and I have lost them all. Don't ask me, you know, what my high school teachers had to say about me or my first couple of employers, because I no longer know. I lost the paper. But LinkedIn keeps that information forever, so I have 21 recommendations that I've received. And you know, some of these are from clients that I've consulted for, people that I have managed, people that have managed me, people I've sold to. But when we go all the way back, ah, I have been collecting these since I want to say 2015. Let's go see if I'm right. 2016. So since 2016, I've been collecting recommendations on LinkedIn and deleting the ones that have become completely irrelevant. So what's left are the ones that I think are still relevant to my career and the things that I am working in and on. When we're done with this course, feel free to ask me for a recommendation. I am happy to be your first one. And I give honest recommendations about what I know about people, right? So in most of these cases, I have worked with these people. But there are a couple here where I didn't. And instead, the recommendation comes from volunteer work, or just knowing them personally, and giving recommendations is a really good way to get them. The same with endorsements. The first step to LinkedIn is definitely getting on the platform, creating your profile, filling everything out. The second step is engagement. LinkedIn works on an algorithm just like other social media sites, and the algorithm is heavily weighted towards people that post And engage. All right, so we've run through the profile, and I'm gonna stop sharing my screen and let you guys hit me with your questions. If you don't want to turn your audio or video on, you don't have to, but I would love to see your beautiful faces if you're comfortable with it, and then you can pop your questions into the chat. Don't make me play music up in here because it's gonna get awkward. Feel like Jeopardy? Or is that Wheel of Fortune? Come on, guys, you know you have questions. Should I call on somebody? Okay, photos for your profile. Remind me again, Molly, what are you targeting? Some type of developer, right? Okay, front-end web developer. So your picture should be authentic. And when I say authentic, I mean it should be true to your— the business version of you, right? And some people have selfies like this is a selfie of mine. It's pretty close up, so you can't really tell that there's no professional background or anything. I have had at least 25 headshots taken over the years. I hate every single one of them, and I would rather have a selfie on my LinkedIn than a picture that I hate of myself. You want your photo to represent you and the vibe that you're trying to put out there. So Molly, for you, I would honestly say like a selfie of you in your gaming chair with your gaming headset on, it's not a bad idea. It actually could, could be exactly the vibe that's going to attract the right people for you. Now, if you wanted to apply for like the finance department, that would not be my recommendation. Um, But it's really about what you're targeting. How about you, Melissa? What are you targeting with your LinkedIn? Let me go see if I can find your form submission. I think you answered that question there. Wow, I have a lot of emails. What to add or not add to your LinkedIn search for in the field of dental hygiene. Okay, so for dental hygiene, I would try to get like a here-up picture in scrubs against probably like a white wall or something. Because I think that's probably like the vibe you'd be going for in dental hygiene. Ben, I know, works in customer support in Dell, so for him I would probably recommend literally anything. I know people that are in customer support that have soda cans as their profile picture. There's a really wide range of people that work In like the tech customer support field. So you've got people who are super, super professional and into it, and other people who very rarely even check their LinkedIn. So it's all about what you're optimizing for in terms of your goals. Let's have— let's use a specific use case. Okay, so Molly is looking for front-end web development. So one thing I didn't previously mention is the existence of groups on LinkedIn. There are probably like thousands of LinkedIn groups. Um, so if we're looking for— let's see. Yes, Molly, you can ask a question about my website style resume as well. Sure. I can see you. I love it. Okay, so we've got front-end web developers that are LinkedIn members. Let's see if there's groups. Oh, website. That's not great. Okay, front-end web development, 6,700 members. I'm gonna copy that for you, drop it into chat. But this is all websites, website design, front-end design, web technologies. Front-end developer network, this one is 34,900 members. That's an incredible network. And the number one way to get a job is from an in-house referral. And you can send 1,000 applications, job applications, and never get a response. True life, actual statistics from job seekers. You know, it ends up in the bin. No one ever reads it. The best way to get your resume looked at Is to have someone on the inside who's willing to say, I would love for you to look at my friend's resume. A lot of companies have referral programs where they pay their employees for references. You know, if you stay with the company for 3 months, 6 months, whatever, they pay out a bonus. So joining these groups where the people are doing what you want to do, and then messaging them and talking about other things, and then asking Hey, could we meet up for a virtual cup of coffee? I would love to pick your brain about working for Amazon to see if it might be a good cultural fit for me. And then you're going to, in that conversation, organically uncover the culture of the company that you want to apply to, whether or not they like their job, and whether or not you're going to be a good fit. And then at the end of the conversation, it's super easy and comfortable to say, Hey, would you mind sharing my resume with, with the hiring manager over there? After this conversation, I'm feeling really pumped up and I would love to work with you. I hope you feel the same way. Like, you know, I could fit the culture inside there. If you feel comfortable, I'd love for you to give me a referral. And that is how you get your resume viewed and you get interviews. Without an insider getting someone to look at your resume, You're really putting too much pressure on your resume to get your foot in the door. Most recruiters now use software that scans your resume for search terms and then tells them whether or not they should call you. It's so easy to get overlooked in that system. All right, let's see. Molly had a question. Yes. That is an amazing idea, Molly. You absolutely want to have a written About Me section, and it is great to put that in video content. I actually recently did a poll on LinkedIn about the types of content people like to consume. And it was very split. The number one response was people still prefer to read content. But video was our— the second top response. With like audio and podcasts kind of trailing behind. So the fact of the matter is everyone consumes content differently. Some people would prefer to read something, some people would rather listen to it, others would rather have a video where they feel like they're getting a sense for you. And you want to optimize for the best possible results. So hitting all of those is the best way to connect with somebody in a way that they appreciate. I have a couple of these that I've recorded over the years. Like, I have one that sits just on my website that's like a, hey, this is me, let me tell you a little bit about myself type thing. And I've gotten a lot of responses from that because people also want to know you. Part of a good resume, a good, like, career website, a good LinkedIn, is overcoming objections before they even come up, right? So a lot of the objections you'll get from a recruiter are things like, well, I'm not sure if you're the right personality for the job. And recruiters are busy. Hiring managers are busy. They don't really want to spend the time to get to know you. They want it to just be super obvious. Immediately. That's why writing your cover letter specific to every job, sending like a personalized video to the hiring manager, those can get you in the door when otherwise you might be overlooked just based on your resume, especially in situations where you have gaps in your employment or you don't have a really strong history of working in the field. Because you're— there's not really a way to optimize your resume for what you haven't done. You can only optimize it for what you have done and the opportunity that's there. So in a cover letter, you really want to address like the why. Why do you want to work for them? Why would they want to hire you? And like, why weren't you working before? Answer all their why questions before they can ask them. Anybody else got questions? Okay, so some big ones that have been like commonly asked recently are remote work optimization. Of your LinkedIn. There's a couple of key skills and personalities that companies look for in remote workers. So they're looking for people that are self-starters. That are organized, that are good at interdepartmental communication, people who are really good at written communication, who are good at asynchronous communication, which is communicating in a way where we're not both present. So making sure that you're sharing all the information in advance. They're looking for people who have a home office space that they can use. And specifically, there are a couple of courses you can complete on LinkedIn that are remote work related. I think there's 39 of them. And LinkedIn gives you a free month Of their courses. So I highly recommend checking a couple of these out because they're specifically optimized to LinkedIn. Time management is one that's heavily, heavily important. There's also definitely a mental health aspect to remote work. So you probably want to overcome that objection before you encounter it, which is like, well, how do you deal with Not interacting with people? How do you make sure you're taking movement breaks? Talking about the ways that you are prepared for the job is super, super key. There's a ton in here of like strategies for success, so I would recommend taking a couple of those and the skill assessments that I was talking about earlier, and you can add those right to your LinkedIn profile and say like, I've already completed This training, that training, and taking the skill assessments associated. When you are setting up a LinkedIn from scratch, there can be a lot of questions about who you should connect with. You should connect with all of your previous coworkers and ask them for recommendations. Send them a recommendation, ask them for a recommendation. You know, unless they hate you, but you actually, when you ask for a recommendation, you get the opportunity to ask for edits, post it, or delete it. So if someone gives you a recommendation that you don't like, you can respectfully ask for edits, or just don't highlight it on your profile if you feel like it's not worth it. You want to connect with the people that you already know. If you've sold something to somebody, if you've worked with them, even like your professors from college can be a really, really good map because one, you can ask them for a recommendation and they can recommend you based on how you were in class. Additionally, professors have huge networks and they can often facilitate introductions to other people that you want to target. From there, you likely want to add a lot of recruiters in the field that you're looking at. More and more today, recruiters are specializing. So there are, are less in-house recruiters that just work for a company and hire everybody, and more recruiters that say exclusively hire for like SaaS sales jobs, exclusively hire VP and above marketers, exclusively hire developers or engineers. Or dental hygienists. Um, it is a hyper-focused career these days. So by simply like putting into the search bar the type of recruiter that you're looking for, you can find lots of people to connect with. So for example, if we wanted to find You're gonna get a lot of results. And here's where things can sometimes get interesting is looking at these taglines, right? So Ramandeep Dhani is urgently hiring for R Shiny developers in the US and Canada. And then we've got— this guy is representing executives seeking opportunities. One thing to know about recruiters is that they typically come in a couple of different flavors. You have recruiters who are in-house direct employees of a company, and their top priority is hiring and retaining top talent for that company. They're looking for people that are cultural fit, um, and who are going to stick with the job because that's how they're measured. Then you have recruiters who are specifically headhunters. Those are the ones I was talking about before who are looking for people in specific roles. They have clients. That are the companies, and then they're recruiting from a huge network of people, and they're constantly trying to build that network. It is great to send your resume to these people, but keep in mind that they do not represent you. They represent their clients, the people who pay them. So they, they really work for the company that's doing the hiring. However, sending your resume to as many of these people as possible can be a really good way to optimize for interviews. Because they want to put forth candidates very quickly on the roles that they're assigned. So even if you're not a perfect fit, if they don't have anybody else in the database that is, they're going to put you forward because it's better than saying we don't have anybody for this role. The third type of recruiter that's really common is the employee representative type. Now, these guys can be a ripoff if they're not good at what they do. But they essentially have different business models for you being the person that pays them to get you a job. They do a bunch of different things. Some of them rewrite resumes, some write LinkedIn. But more often than not, they just have a network of companies that they're going to take and introduce you to and try to get you a job. For someone with the right network, it's a valid expenditure. Sometimes they charge a percentage of whatever Your total comp packages. It can be valuable if that's the model. That can be very valuable if you have never negotiated your salary before. Um, raise your hand if you've taken every job offer you've gotten at the salary or hourly wage that they offered you. Yeah. Yep. Okay, you don't have to take the wage that they offer you. You should absolutely negotiate your pay, even if you're just starting out, even if it's your first job. They expect negotiation. You want to negotiate. Um, but if you're not comfortable doing that and you don't have the experience to do it, paying a recruiter say 10% of your salary for the first year is a good investment if they're going to get you 30% more than what you would have gotten yourself. What isn't a good investment and what I caution you all to stay away from is recruiters that want to charge you some astronomical fee upfront to represent you. More often than not, that's indicative that they're not going to land you a high-paying role because if they were, they would be confident in saying, I just want 10% of your salary for the first year, because they would make more money that way. It is often worth it to pay someone to review or write your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn bio, etc., because you might not have a ton of experience doing it. But just look out for people that are sharks who don't have proof of their work, who can't tell you the value that they've brought to people, and definitely be wary of anybody that wants to charge you any large fees up front. Oh, I have something else in chat. Raise hand. Good job, Ben. Everybody's taken every offer they've ever been given based on wage. I have negotiated up at pretty much every job that I've been at. There are some sad statistics out there about the rate at which women take lower-paying jobs. Um, I'm sure you guys have all heard about the wage gap. In many cases, the wage gap exists because of a lack of negotiation. If you and someone else interview at the same time and you both are offered the role, and somebody else asks for 10% more and you don't, you don't really get to be mad that they're making 10% more money than you are. Almost all salaries, wages are negotiable. I literally just sent a message. I'll show you guys. Spike Jones, he was talking about a contract role on his profile, 6-month gig. that's listed at like $48 an hour. And I asked if it was negotiable for the right candidate. And he said there may be some wiggle room for the right candidate. So that means I'll continue to engage with him to see if this might be a good opportunity for me. If he had come back and said, no, there's no wiggle room, I probably would have been like, that's probably not the right role for me. $45 an hour is less than what I charge my clients. Okay, any more questions? Anything else I can help you optimize for? Feel free to pop it in the chat or unmute and ask your question. Melissa, I think you missed the kind of the beginning when we were talking about headlines. But I mentioned that you want to optimize your name for nicknames or maiden names that you might have, and that your headline, you really want to optimize for whatever it is you're looking for. So if you're on LinkedIn searching for like a dental hygienist job, you could put right in that headline like seeking XYZ like dental hygiene role. Don't be afraid to get specific about what you want in your cover letter, in your resume, in your LinkedIn. It is okay to say I'm looking for a remote job with a company whose culture is focused on growth and inclusion. That is actually going to do more for you than a generic profile that's like, hey, I'm just looking for a job. People want to know that you're passionate about what they're doing. So if there are secret dreams you have about specific projects you'd love to be working on, put that in your profile. Say, you know, I'm open to any developer opportunities, but my absolute dream passion project would be to work on a mobile gaming application for children that helps them learn languages. Because those companies exist. And when they see your profile, they're going to be like, hell yeah, we want to hire this person who passionately wants to do what we are doing, as opposed to just any old developer who wants to get paid. As much as we as employees and career seekers want to be involved in things that we're passionate about, companies actually really want to hire employees who are passionate about the things that they do. In fact, more and more companies have it right in their job listings or in their company profiles or in their core value statements that they're looking for people who love this thing, right? So like Attentive, which is a text message marketing company, they have right in their core values that they're seeking people who eat, sleep, and breathe text message marketing or content marketing, something like that. You know, Google's core values has a statement about Wanting people who are passionate about making the internet better. And more and more organizations are aligning to this because it's important. Our generation and below, and younger, I guess, is waking up to the fact that you do not have to work for just anyone. You used to, for sure. And I think we've all been there. We've all taken jobs that we knew we would hate because we needed to eat. I know that I have. But the future of work is unique abilities. It is seating yourself in a position of power. It's chasing your passion and your ambitions. It's going after the things that you want. It's being a top contributor in your org and feeling valued. That's the future of work. And now is the time to be positioning yourself to be a part of the labor shift movement that is happening right now. I'm sure you're all aware that there's a labor shortage in the United States, and that's filtering upwards. When someone can make $20 an hour to flip burgers, why would they go work and make $20 an hour to have huge responsibilities and be like an EMT or a structural design engineer? Why would I sign my name to a document that says I can be sued if something falls down when I could just hand somebody drinks at Starbucks? That attitude is shifting careers throughout the entire funnel. So even in high-level jobs, executive-level jobs, people are demanding more than they have ever demanded before. People don't just want competitive pay. That is a prerequisite. People won't even apply to the job if it's not competitive pay. But on top of that, they want benefits. They want time off. They want a culture of positivity. They want a culture where they can grow professionally. It's not just, I want a job anymore. It's, I want a job that I care about and I feel valued and where I feel like I'm advancing my career each day. And that has created kind of a vacuum in a lot of these mid-level roles where people are moving up or down, right? There are people who are high-level talent who are advancing in their careers. They're moving to director, VP, C-level. And there are people who have decided for one reason or another that they want to give up their stressful job for something less stressful, and they're moving down for the same pay. So this whole mid-tier is having to adapt. They're having to offer higher salaries, better benefits packages. A lot more of these kind of like culture hook things that you'll hear, like unlimited PTO, lunch provided for you, VR games in the break room. And those are not end-all be-all culture makers, but there's more and more of that because the demand to stand out as an employer is stronger than it has ever been. And companies are competing for top talent. And it is creating a lot of room for people who maybe aren't as advanced in their career to get these mid-level jobs because they're essentially low-hanging fruit right now. And if you're willing to take $60,000 a year against someone who would be demanding $80,000, $90,000, $100,000, You know, jobs— companies are going to jump on that, even if it's a risk. And it is a risk to hire someone who's never done what they're applying for before. That's one of the biggest risks you can take in recruitment is hiring someone who doesn't have proven experience. But at the end of the day, if I can get you cheaper or you're willing to prove it to me, that's way better than paying— overpaying someone just because they've had this job title before. Alright, what else do you guys have? Any questions anywhere specifically that I can help? Pop it into the chat. Do you guys have specific career goals, specific pieces of your LinkedIn profile that you're concerned about? Of course, question about navigating LinkedIn and who to link to or not. Both questions are great. Pop them in the chat. I'll answer them both. Um, So who to link to or not? Like I said, previous coworkers and ask them for their recommendations. Recruiters on both sides of the aisle, whether they're representatives, they work directly for the company, or they're headhunters. Connect with as many recruiters as you can. And also connect with people who are doing the job you want to do. At companies that you would like to work at. People doing the job you want to do and their direct managers. So essentially anyone that you would interview during the whole interview process, try to connect with them in advance. Key note here, LinkedIn now has a 100 connection request a week limit. And because of that, you do want to be a little bit more picky than you would have been in the past. So if you're just starting out and you don't have a large collection of connections on LinkedIn yet, you probably want to split it about 30-30-30 and do 30% of your connection requests to previous colleagues, professors, people that you know and have already worked with. Then another 30% to recruiters, headhunters, Basically the people that you're going to send your resumes to, and another 30%, which is people working at the companies you want to work at, whether that be in the role or their managers, or even like C-levels, so that when you get to that final interview, you know that you'll at least have already connected with them on LinkedIn. Ah, Bali. Yes. Okay. I hate companies that don't list their salaries. However, it's about 90% of jobs out there, maybe closer to 80 today, don't list their salary recommendation. This is very much a bait and switch tactic to get you for as cheap as they can. So my number one piece of advice here is like, yes, you should still apply to those companies, but make sure you are going in educated about the salary that you should be targeting, because going in too low makes you look even worse than going in too high. So definitely ask for average or better for any job that you're applying to. Glassdoor has salaries on it. There are also a lot of industry-specific salary checking sites. So definitely like Google developer salary comparison, because there might be a website that specifically just looks at that. Like in sales, there's like Rev Review, which really breaks down the amount of compensation, that salary plus your variable, which is like commission or revenue sharing or whatever you get as a salesperson, plus the total benefits package. But you're actually getting total comp numbers. When you go to Glassdoor and you look at salaries, it usually just tells you like base, OTE, and if there are benefits, but doesn't do a deep dive on like what those benefit packages are worth. When I go to like RevzReview because I'm looking for sales salaries or marketing salaries, it tells me what the salaries are on average, what the total comp packages are. How much of that is benefits and what those benefits actually look like and what their value is. And who's in network and out of network. So like, I can literally go look at specific companies and see if my doctor would take their insurance on some of these salary comparison tools. So take a look around and see if they have them for the jobs that you're targeting, because that will give you a lot of revenue intelligence and salary insight. As to what you should be asking for and how you should negotiate. And Molly, did you have a question about navigating LinkedIn? Here we go. Entry-level jobs. Yes, throw your hat in the ring anyways. If you are 100% qualified for a job, you're overqualified. Jobs are about growth. So you should be applying to jobs where you hit about 80% of the required or suggested skill sets. So allow there to be a 20% factor of error for you not fitting the role. If you can already do the job, what's the fun of doing the job? You'll be bored in 6 months. Alright, any more questions about LinkedIn specifically? We've got tons of time left. So let me know if you have any questions about your resumes. Let me grab a worksheet for you guys. Okay, best form of resume. Um, so when I do resume packages for people, I make sure that it's in both Word and PDF format so that it's easy for the recruiter to open and for the hiring manager to open. You never know when there's going to be some technical glitch and they can't open your resume. That's never a good way to start off. Um, you want to upload your resume to as many places as possible for Visibility purposes, and I do think having a website is really good. There are super, super simple ones like QR code builder. I'm trying to think. Okay, let me give you guys this list of them. So I recommend these ones, and then HubSpot, who I trust emphatically. Has this list, so I would definitely trust any of these. And yeah, for you, Molly, building a cool website would be the absolute best thing you can do because it would be part of your overall portfolio and make you look good. There's certainly Like, you have to have a paper resume. It's just expected. But in terms of like getting recruiters reaching out to you instead of the other way around, creating like a resume website and making sure that your LinkedIn is filled out really well is going to drive a lot more traffic. But definitely upload your resume everywhere, like ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder. Monster, Glassdoor, every like career-seeking community out there, pop up your resume. I still get emails from resumes that are 10 years old because I forgot that I had them listed places. And you never know, like it takes time usually to build traffic to something, but Content pays dividends. That which you create today will continue to pay you back long term. So it's always worth it to build something and put it out there because eventually, like, someone's gonna stumble upon it. The internet's a wild place. So I'm gonna share with you guys— I have to download it first. But I have this 5-day talent focus challenge, which I know both of you have already kind of decided what you want to do, but this really helps to understand your top skills that you should be highlighting against your just kind of like things you maybe know. So the 5-day talent focus challenge is just a way of breaking it down into days as a thought exercise. So that one says, you know, like day 1, figure out what your superior skill and passions are. Day 2, write down the things that you have superior skill but a lack of passion. Day 3, write down the things that you're competent at, but you have no passion for. And day 4, write down the activities that you're completely incompetent at and that are just a mess every time you try to do them. Because that helps you to better understand, you know, at the top, like left quadrant, you're going to have what's been coined as the phrase of unique ability. And your unique ability is where you're supposed to spend the majority of your time if you can. Now I'm saying this from a place of privilege, obviously, like you have to make money, you have to keep your kids fed, that's priority number one. But with time, you want to focus more and more on the things that not only are you good at, but that you're passionate about and that energize you, because that's when your career really starts to take off. And when you're a real asset to a business is when you're focused in your unique ability and you're leveraging those skills that not only are you good at them, But you're continuing education on them all the time. The types of things where when you take a class on it, you're pumped to go to that class every single day, and where when you're working on that project, you get up in the morning and you're like, hell yeah, I can't wait to get to work. The stuff that drains our energy long term will kill our careers because you're spending time on things that are draining your energy, which doesn't leave the time for the things that you're really good at. So if you have a job that's like 50% stuff you like to do and 50% stuff you hate to do, doing the things that you hate will take away from your ability to do the things that you love and are good at, and eventually will lead to burnout. So the more that you focus on the things that not only are you good at, but you're passionate about and that energize you, That's how you avoid burnout. And I say this as someone who literally just burnt out of a job that guaranteed me $150,000 a year, plus 100% paid employee health insurance, plus vision, plus dental, plus a whole bunch of PTO, blah, blah, blah. Like, it was a killer job. But I burnt out because I wasn't focusing on the things that I loved to do and was passionate and energetic about. And I was spending too much time on the things that drained me and made me not want to work anymore. And then let me share with you guys also, there's an exercise on like reverse engineering the job that you want. Go ahead. Basically do the same thing on repeat all day. Well, do you love the thing that you do on repeat all day, or does— do you hate it and it's just about making money? Oh, I don't have this in a spreadsheet for whatever reason. It's just in my notes. So these are the questions you want to ask yourself. And then you want to conduct what's called a gap analysis. And then find a mentor. Nancy's final question. Yeah. So essentially, this is just about what kind of knowledge do you need? What kind of skills do you need? How much experience do you need and where is the gap? Like, what do you need to do between here and being where you want to be? And a really, really key piece to this can be finding a mentor in the industry that you want to be in and asking them how they got where they are and what it takes. So you always want to shoot upwards, right? So you don't want to find somebody who's like at exactly your level. You want to find someone who's hella successful. And then just ask them what it takes, like how did they get there. And after you have an open dialogue and you talk to them, you can even ask them if they think you can do it. Um, there's a ton of like career coaches and mentors out there. Um, the best thing is to find someone who is not typically a mentor and ask them to mentor you, because that is going to solidify a really strong relationship as opposed to paying someone to mentor you. I am a career coach, so I say this as someone who charges people for career coaching. There is more value in reaching out to someone who's in your own industry and asking them just for some tips and tricks because you think they're talented. That inflates their ego. They're likely to say, yeah, at least I can give you 15 minutes. The type of career coaching I do is much more on like a content writing, attracting the right jobs type of thing, I can't really tell you what skills you need to be anything other than someone who's in sales and marketing. That I can tell you. All right, guys, any more questions? Any more things that you're trying to focus on? Hit me up in the chat. Or if you're done and all your questions are answered, And you're all set, just type done. Now let me know it's time to wrap up. All right, cool. Molly's done. Um, if anything comes up in the future, feel free to email me, um, with any questions. And yeah, I hope all of your career dreams come true. Hi guys, thanks for spending time with me. Let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to give me a referral on my LinkedIn. Bye, guys.
