The Art of Not Looking Stupid: LinkedIn Edition

So in this week's news, I made myself look stupid. I know. No news. That's not really news, is it? That's something you're used to. No change there, then. No. A few years ago, I got so annoyed with the ridiculous LinkedIn photos I was seeing on people's profiles, we remade some of them. You'll see in this week's newsletter. There's the, you know, the thinker face. There was me drinking a beer face, you know, looking really crap and stuff. So, yeah, no, you don't need to do it. That's one of the things. So we remade them. Someone said, well, why didn't I use the original photos? I said, well, because you could do an image search, find that person's profile on LinkedIn, tell them about me, and I'd be in court because it'd be slander or I'll get kicked off of LinkedIn. So I didn't want to do any of that. So what we did, and the post went a bit viral at the time, is I don't have a photo like this. We had squashed head. We had a kid's photo. Have a look at the newsletter, you'll see some of them, they are not me, they are remade photos by me are looking stupid and saying, right, what do you need? You need a professional photo. It doesn't need to be too. It could just be like this nice smiley one, looking professional, nice background and everything else. Doesn't take long. I did it with one of our podcast guests recently. She didn't have one. Her son took a nice photo about again. She looks bloody brilliant. And she doesn't say, oh, I don't like it doesn't matter. Yeah, she looked great. That's all it is. Five minutes. Get over yourselves. Have a good profile photo. It means also, you know, because did it with Patrick years ago. So I don't really want a photo. I said, look, when last time you walked into a bank meeting, I went, fine. I'm Mike, nice to meet you. Great. You want it to be your digital calling card on LinkedIn, so, you know, make sure that you have some good photos on there. So also another bit. Fast forward to today. Ran a session recently for Treasury Management Association, New York Team Manny, and we talked about LinkedIn profiles and updating your profile. When did you last do it? 90% of you. Yeah, 90% of you haven't done anything in six months. No, you haven't updated in six. Nine out of ten of you. One in ten of you has done something and put it on LinkedIn doesn't have to be anything confidential. You know, say something about your role, say where you've done something, where you've implemented a new system. How much money have you saved your company? How much time, man hours. Put it up on there. That was the other one and the third one was being a gray blob. Yeah. And that what that means is, and I've seen this from some other people, that when you're a second tier connection of some people, you just appear as a gray blob, which means that you're 24 times. I think it is more likely to get a connection request if you have a photo. So make sure that when you, if you're uploading a photo connect, get someone who's not in your network, maybe we'll get them to deconnect you from you briefly, just a little. Can you see my photo? Oh, yes, you can. If you can't and you can see there's a link on the newsletter you go through and just double check your privacy settings. LinkedIn Unhelpfully, a few years ago changed the settings so it was only if you were certain connections would it show your photo. So you can go on there. There's a little quick video and some PowerPoints there which will help you if you think you are a gray blob on there. So change that as well. Don't overdo it. I'm not trying to be an influencer by doing all these videos. I'm trying to do it so that I can help you guys and our, you know, attention. We get your attention. But then also I'm delivering value for my audience. My lovely Kevin Chamberlin, my podcast coach. And actually becoming a bit more than that. Becoming. He's becoming Chief Audience Officer. So big shout out to Kevin. He said there's a big difference in today's world of social media between attention and audience. Attention is someone sees it, pays attention, great, hold up and then gone. Now what we need is audience and that's why I'm here for you. And we're doing a lot of stuff with our now you get CTP credits by going to the podcast and coming to our events, you know, to help you with your cpd. So it's not just ctp. Also, if you're in the UK or you know, you've got other qualifications, you need to do CPD study, so that can count. To listen to the podcast, do a little quiz. We will record it for you to show you've done it. Well done. Congratulations. We're there to Help you, our audience of treasury professionals. That's why I do it. So we got the podcast, we've got the salary survey. Treasurysalary.com I'll come back to that in a minute. CV advice, newsletters, you can sign up for any of those on our website. That's it. Quick shout out. Frank Belluccio. Thank you, Treasure Up Horizon, Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. Yeah. Do you want to say that quickly? 15 minutes with him, our treasury career corner live in New York. A couple of months ago wasn't enough. Frank, come back on the show. I said, oh, my God, he was amazing. Last week's news, last week's podcast, and this week we have Pat Culkin coming up, the CEO, new incoming CEO of the afp. He's a great guy. Love Pat, but love Frank as well. Looking forward to seeing Frank at our next event in New York in September. As he says, think like an owner about your business, about the business you work for, and you'll never go wrong. Thank you, Frank. You're a great help for that. So the teaser for next week comes back to our salary survey. It's going to go out the end of June. So if you want to go there, go to treasurysalary.com if you haven't done it already. 1500 of you. Yes, 1500 of you have done it. Thanks very much. And we are doing the update. So you'll, if you're one of those people, you'll have seen an update in your inbox. Just go on there, 30 seconds, click on the link, you can take part and update your salary survey. But I've made a change. One of the key questions at the end is a recruitment survey. It's a salary survey rather, rather than a recruitment survey. But we asked one recruitment survey question. We've got to give us one thing at least, please, come on, give us, give, grab us a bone here. We asked before, are you considering new opportunities? 70, just over 70% of you said you. Yes, you are considering new opportunities. Just like I've done at my conferences. I say to the audience, how many of you are actively looking for a new role? One in hand, one in ten hands goes up. Okay, fine. So, okay, keep your hands up. Okay. If I phoned you with the right role. And as we've changed the question, the question now in the salary survey is, would you be open to hearing about roles that align with your experience, your salary, help you move on in your career? So what I say to the audience, who would be, who would put the hands up and who, who would be interested? Who would answer the phone? All these arms coming up. I'm like, yeah, wow. 80, 80 to 90% of the room, depending on the room, will put their hands up. And for the 10 that don't, I say to them, look, I know you haven't put your hands up because you're sitting next to your boss and I've already got their cv, so don't worry about it. So you can talk to me later. Joking aside, about 1 in 10 of you, you know, keep your hands down at those, you can put them up, you can talk to me afterwards, I don't mind. Anyway, now it says, would you be open to hearing about these roles? I'm not going to give you the numbers yet. I'll do it on next week's video. Trust me, it's been a bit of a shift. I'll reveal it all next week. Thanks very much. Until next video. And thanks very much for your support. Thank you. Keep listening, keep watching. Cheers.