How to Land A Data Analyst Job Using AI & LinkedIn

All right, wait till folks come on in. Let's see. Okay, we are up and running on YouTube, and oh, let me join the LinkedIn. Let's see, are we on LinkedIn yet? It looks like we are on LinkedIn. All right, we're gonna wait till folks roll on in, uh, and post in the chat where you are. Calling from, or where you're watching from, and if y'all can hear me, right? Do a little sound check there. Yep. All right. Rebecca's in the house. We can be heard. All right. Sounds good. Okay. The techie nerd from Australia is here. Listen, I— United Kingdom is here. England is in the house. England's in the house. Nigeria's in the house. Oklahoma is in the house. So Sylvester can definitely hear us. All right, Florida is in the house. Norfolk is in the house. Okay. Norfolk. Hey, I wonder if that's Jonathan. Is that you?

Michigan, Midwest represent. Love it.

Well, we, we, we— I don't think there's been this many people this, this early. Okay, y'all listen. Y'all gotta listen. Folks are— folks, listen. This is the— look, look at the chat. New Jersey.

North Carolina.

Ohio. Okay, another Australia. Oh my goodness, I think this is the most I've seen from Australia. Uh, yeah, yo, this is the most people this early, okay, on both LinkedIn and YouTube. This is a, this is a record-breaking— and all right, listen, we got to make sure we deliver here. Toronto is in the house. Okay, okay. Well, a little bit more folks coming in. Canada. All right, a lot of Canada's here. Okay, first Australia here. We got a lot of folks from the Midwest, so that's cool. No one else from Alabama. Should I be surprised? I don't think so. Houston's in the house. Okay. All right, y'all, it's five after, and it looks like you know it is popping in the chat. So you know folks don't want to wait much longer. Another Texas Round Rock. All right. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of rocks over there. Other than that, otherwise it'd be a weird. Rare, like, you know, name for a city. Um, okay, y'all, so for those that are seeing, um, y'all for the first time, um, but, you know, I'm sorry that it took us a while. You know, y'all's favorite team of recruiters and career coaches are back. Um, the dream team is back together. Um, and if for those seeing y'all for the first time, y'all introduce yourselves.

Sure. So I'm Emily. I am a former BI recruiter for Wayfair. After doing that, I moved to Mexico where I am right now, and I decided to pivot into career coaching. So I've been helping data and business professionals and tech professionals land roles in tech for the last couple years now. Pleasure to be here.

How do you follow an intro like that? Good Lord. So I think this is my maybe 5th time on with Kedisha. Yeah, something like that. So you can see my name on the screen, Pedro. I'm a technical recruiter right now for an agency that's headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee. We support both technical and non-technical roles. Prior to that, you know, was in the Marine Corps, retired from the Marine Corps. I did recruiting in the Marines, so talking and helping people is not a foreign thing to me. What has been the biggest blessing though is coming into the world of tech and then being just immersed with all the professionals that are out here doing things that are amazing. And sometimes you just do not get all of the appreciation that you deserve. So I'm excited as always to be on here with, as Kadeesha said, the dream team. And I'm located in Rockwall, Texas, not Round Rock, although Round Rock is beautiful. Uh, I'm in Rockwall, Texas.

Is there a huge rock wall? What's up the name there?

I don't know, it's just close to a lake and apparently it was just a good name to have.

All right. Okay. Alrighty. Um, so, all right, well, let's get started. I know the folks are, are waiting. Uh, so, uh, should we, uh, share, uh, and we want to share the thing now?

Um, so I think that Pedro was wanting to start out, um, first by talking about, you know, what it is that recruiters are looking for. And then after that, I'll, I'll put my stuff up. I'm gonna be quiet for now.

No, I appreciate that. Yeah, so for everybody who's on LinkedIn, everybody who's on the platform, it's, it's kind of tough to imagine what is the right way for your profiles to look. And then what are recruiters or anybody who works for an organization, what are we searching for? So I can't speak for the masses, but I can tell you for myself, Something that I immediately look for on a profile, number one is— and you're going to hear a lot of this when Emily comes through and starts giving the prompts— I search for actual photos of yourself and not, not some image of a tech product. Um, searching and seeing if your resume matches your work experience that you have listed. Are the dates all correct? You know, and obviously we're looking through the About section. I'm checking all the entities to make sure that it's a real profile. You know, a lot of times we get caught up in receiving resumes for professional, and we're getting fake, fake resumes for fake profiles. Why? I don't know. So it just heightens the suspicion in someone in my position's, uh, senses when it comes to seeing a resume connected to a LinkedIn profile that has all the wrong things. Uh, I mean, I even go as deep as to try to look through your post history to see if you ever place a photo of yourself on there It's fantastic to share items that are from your organization or from, from other data analysts or professionals that you're following and you share to your page. However, I've come across pages that are even fake profiles because they continue to share for someone else but never for themselves and never see their actual face aside from their profile photo in their feed and in their post history. Biggest thing that we're going to cover, I believe, that's going to come out today And at least what, what I have shared with Emily and with Kedisha is that LinkedIn is the platform right now that you need to begin to leverage to create your brand for your personal self, of your experience and who you are. And you need to tailor it to mirror what your resume says because people are going to go check. But then you also need to begin exposing them, everyone on the platform, to you as a person. You know, there's some, there's some items that you can see a profile and you're like, this person hasn't posted for a couple of months. How active are they on this platform? Are they just submitting resumes through the easy apply and just waiting for somebody to call them back, which is the biggest no-no you should ever do? Or are you actively on the platform looking to engage with other professionals who may be in your same line of work? Or are you connecting with those other companies that you want to actually break into and starting to build those relationships. But for me, perfect example, first thing I get a resume, I'll go check to see if they have LinkedIn. I'll go on the LinkedIn, got a good profile picture, cool, that's a good thing. About section is kind of weak, I'm like, oh well, maybe they haven't tailored it, they haven't gone in there and done that yet. Experiences don't match on the resume, maybe it's a brand new account. I'll start checking dates. If all of those things are checking out, but then I get to the post history and I don't see any posts that have your actual, you know, beautiful smile in there that has nothing to do with your profile, I'm still screaming that it could be a legit account. But I have been burned with fake accounts and it was just like that. So I think a lot of what we're going to cover today is to help you not be that version, but be the one that actually gets validated when we're looking at your resumes so that we can reach out to you and really get in contact with you to see about how to leverage your skills and experiences to try to get a job opportunity with the company that we're hiring for.

Right. And Pedro, do you do any sourcing? Like, do you actively source and search for candidates on LinkedIn?

Every day. Every day. I can tell you right now today, I'm working a couple of A couple of job opportunities. They're spread across the South and the East. And first thing in the morning, uh, but I was looking actually at the amount of InMails that I sent this morning and just looking at profiles. And I sent 40 messages this morning before 10 AM. And that's just looking through resumes, looking to connect to see if the profiles are active and, you know, covering all the things that I just mentioned right now. I said 40. I looked at 70 resumes. So, um, and granted, somebody's probably be like, how did you look at 70 resumes? Well, I did a bulk of the work last night. I just wanted to come through this morning and make sure those are still the ones I wanted to check off. And the screening does not take a long time. All right, I started my, my day this morning at 7 AM, so from 7 to 10 AM, yeah, I'm able to go do all that work. I mean, it's, it's the, the proof is in, in, in what I'm telling you right now. If I'm doing that, and look, my agency isn't big, it's not massive like some of these others that are out there. You can only amplify what I'm doing if there's a team of me that's like 4 or 5 deep that are doing the same thing. Imagine how much they're putting into it, because a lot of them work on massive amounts of efforts on a daily basis. I'm just one person, so if I can knock that out as one person, imagine what a team of people can do if they're doing the same thing.

Yeah, and it, uh, it reminds me of, um, you know, when I was working for Wayfair, like, there is a role in corporate that is recruiter, and that's a person who's handling like inbounds, um, sometimes doing a little bit of research on LinkedIn, um, but there are— there's also a position in companies, especially in like larger tech companies, called sourcer. And those people are basically people who just, you know, look through LinkedIn all day, every day, and they're just filtering for keywords, looking for people that, that match the roles that they're, that they're sourcing for. And then once they create a pool of candidates, they can either reach out to those candidates directly themselves. And then once they get, once they get a reply, they can pass it on to a recruiter. Or they can just generate pools of candidates that they think are interesting and just pass those on to recruiters so that they can get them into their pipeline. So I think, you know, when we talk about LinkedIn, you know, there are kind of 2 things going on on LinkedIn. You know, like Pedro said, on the one hand, you know, he, when he gets the resume in, he's checking your LinkedIn profile to see, number one, are you a real person? Number two, does it actually match? Because a lot of times it doesn't match. And that's a question mark. And when you are creating question marks in recruiters' heads, that's not necessarily a good thing because we're going to need to take some time and effort to basically answer that question, like to make sure that you're actually a good fit. So trying to avoid like creating question marks for, for recruiters is a good thing. And then number 2, it's like really gaining eyes on your profile for you passively. Because you're just sitting there and then, you know, Joe sourcer, you know, down at Google. I don't think Google does a lot of sourcing. They get a lot of inbound. Let's say Joe sourcer at Google is like looking for people just like you. And the only way that you can show up on their search is if you've got your ducks in a row and you've got those keywords in the right spot. Because when you're a sourcer or when you're a recruiter and you're using like LinkedIn Recruiter, to, you know, to find people online, basically all it is is a filtering tool. It's like a gigantic database data community, and you're just filter, filter, filter to see if those terms are there. So I think, you know, that's why I love talking to you guys. I know that you guys are super, super aware of data and how it works. I know that you guys, you know, with a little nudge here and there, you can totally rock it. Did you want to say something, Pedro?

So I know— I don't know if we're going into the comment section yet, but I see Andy put something there about resumes. I thought recruiters searching for profiles, then they ask for a resume. So Andy, a mix of what I was mentioning right now is every evening before I close out for the day, and I didn't say this earlier, I build a call list. And so that call list is built off of the resumes that have been submitted for the job opportunities that are open. So out of those resumes that I look at the night prior, have a call list already built. So those ones that I'm already targeting because of the resume submission, the others are accumulated from other roles that we're about to receive, you know, pre-sourcing for the role that's about to open up so I'm not waiting until it becomes available to try to get in contact with that professional. The next thing is I have the resumes that I'm already searching for. I have some that I'm trying to get, you know, re-engage the conversation with. So there's— they stack up in a manner to where I have resumes I'm already wanting to connect with. And then some of the other email messages that I sent today for people that I have not yet seen a resume for— I just saw a profile, it comes as a recommendation, as that person may be a great fit. I'm like, okay, cool, I'll still click on it even without a resume. And I have sent messages today for professionals who did not have a resume submitted in my hand. All I saw was a great profile and somebody who could be be great connecting to the role that I'm sourcing for. And so I initiated a message to try to get in contact with them. I hope that answers your question, Andy.

Sounds good to me. So that being said, you know, I think a lot of times people, you know, when they— when I work with job seekers, you know, a lot of times people, they start with themselves and they say, okay, this is me, I'm gonna put me down on paper and that's my resume. And I know we're talking about LinkedIn today, but it's related because, you know, you could have actually an identical LinkedIn profile and resume. It's completely possible. I wouldn't recommend it because what are we doing with these 2 different things? So number one, with our LinkedIn profile, we've got all eyes on our LinkedIn profile from all different companies. And let's say like you might be interested in like 2 different roles. So a lot of times when I work with job seekers, I have them whittle it down to to do 2 different directions. So, you know, if you're like a little bit more advanced in data analysis and you're like pretty good with Python, you know, there are some data science roles out there that might be a great fit for you. So you've got kind of 2 sets of, of eyes that are on your profile, you know, the data analyst eyes and also the data science eyes. So on your LinkedIn page, you're really going to want to use language that appeals to both those sets of people. But with your resume, generally you should be customizing that for a particular role to show that you are uniquely qualified for this role. So, you know, a lot of the things that we're going to talk about today when it comes to LinkedIn, they're super applicable to your resume too. Just always keep in mind that, that, you know, it's a little bit more general with LinkedIn and a little bit more targeted with your resume. That being said, I feel like it might be a good point to, um, to show my, my thingy now. And now I present— oh, there. Did you bring that up, Kedisha?

Yep.

Oh, awesome. Thank you. I thought I was magical for a minute there. Okay, great. So today we're really gonna focus, or I'll be focusing on, you know, a couple of different sections that, um, that we identified as really important for you guys, especially when it comes to sourcing and getting that resume match down. And then I think Pedro is going to talk later a little bit about posting and, you know, the magic that, that gets even more eyes on your profile outside of just your profile. Okay. So actually today I would like to start with something else. So, you know, AI is here to stay. It has invaded our lives. We can use it for anything and everything. And I personally was one of those people who, you know, the day that, well, I don't know what it was, GPT-2 or whatever from OpenAI launched, and you could like, for the first time as like a regular human being, you could access an LLM, like have it on the screen in front of you. I was clicking refresh to try to get into that because I was so curious. I was dying to see what it was. And, you know, as I've been using it for a couple of years, and I thought, I can prompt, you know, I, I get good results. I ask questions. I feel like I have a lot of— I give it a lot of context. Awesome. But then, so I would say mentor and good friend of mine, his name is Fadi, running the consulting lab over in North Carolina, gave a prompt engineering class. And I was like, yeah, I'll take it. I'll definitely learn something good. I was blown away by how much more effective I've become in prompting after I took that class. I can see a notable difference. So I would say to anyone in any field right now, if you're not using AI or you're using it, but you're just kind of cruising along, you're not getting like awesome results out of these LLMs, prompt engineering, take a class, you will thank me later. Okay. So that being said, you know, this is one of the main insights that I had, that I had from the course. So they gave us, or, you know, Professor Fadi gave us a prompting structure of, you know, what are the components of a good prompt. So I want to just briefly talk about those before we go into the individual prompts that we have, so that you can see like how they're put together and be able to make effective prompts yourself. You can also absolutely use the prompts. They'll be up on the screen. So feel free to take screenshots of those and, and use them when you are creating your LinkedIn profile, but also applicable to other areas. Just feel free to use what's good and leave the rest. So the, the structure is called R squared G C squared, which is 2 Rs over here, role result. And then the G is for goal. The first C is constraint. The second C is context. So what do each of those things mean when it comes to the role, what you're going to act as? I think everybody's heard this. So in our context for today, you're going to be a LinkedIn expert. The results. So what do we want to have generated? As an example right now, write a LinkedIn headline with the goal to land a role in data analysis constraints because, you know, when you're adding stuff to LinkedIn, you can't write a novel there. It's got like certain parameters that you have to remain within. So for example, the headline is 200 characters maximum. So the constraint here is of no more than 200 characters maximum. And context, so we really like, context is super important, you guys. The more context you give it, data people, context is data. Good data in, good output out, right? So for here, the context is you're gonna give it your resume and your existing LinkedIn profile. And for additional information, we're gonna have the GPT ask us, follow-up questions one by one to clarify before generating. So this is something that I would also recommend that you do when you're setting up like a custom GPT overall for the job search. But this is kind of general purpose today. So let's start out by talking about the headline. So let's talk first of all about what constitutes a good headline. What do you need to have in there? And Pedro, if I'm missing anything, if you could just like interrupt, that would be great. So the headline, I want to see your job title in the headline. So if you are pivoting into data analysis right now and you don't currently have a data analyst role, that is okay. You can still put data analyst. It is the role that you are aspiring to and it reflects the skill set that you have right now. Later, you know, lower down in your experience section there, it will say your current role. Or it will reflect if you're not in employment right now, that's totally fine. But if your headline— and this is one of the things that appears in almost every, you know, every, every time that you pop up on LinkedIn, like if you make a comment on somebody else's post, they'll see the headline, at least like the first like 30 or 50 characters. So that's like super important and just use that to the best of your ability. So start with your desired job title. Then this is like awesome for data people, especially pivoters. We want to be highlighting those skills. So, you know, 2 or 3 relevant tools or skills. So for you guys, that could be Excel, it could be SQL, it could be Python, it could be Tableau, Power BI, you know, whatever you guys are kind of working with in your stack. Then any associated brands that you have behind you. So if you've got anything, you know, that people are going to know without giving them extra context, like Google. You know, if you've got Google on your resume, you're probably in a different chat right now, to be honest. But, you know, universities, even if you studied like English literature and your university is a well-known university, put it in the headline because that is something that people are going to recognize and automatically associate you with. So we want to keep it, you know, short. It can be long, like you can use the entire 200 characters, that's totally fine. But especially like when we're thinking of that initial view with like the 30 to 50 characters, that's where that the highest impact language needs to be. Buzzwords generally don't help anybody. So let's keep it impactful and clear, confident, and keyword rich. So here's an example following that structure. Data analyst with SQL, Tableau, Excel, consumer insights, UCLA alum, and ex-teacher edtech. So I am getting like a lot of context about someone's profile in these very few characters here. So this is something that I would love to help you guys achieve as well. So that being said, we're gonna use our structure to generate a prompt that is going to help you achieve a headline like this with honestly very little effort on your part. So the first thing that we're going to do is upload a resume that you have. If it's an updated resume, fantastic. And if you guys have like a master resume, that's not a resume that you're like submitting to, to roles. It's just basically like a really long list of everything that you've ever done in your career. That would be amazing for you to upload because why? The reason is that the more data you give to the GPT, the better results you're going to get out. So there is going to be stuff in there that you are going to think is irrelevant, and it does not matter. It will disregard that, and it will pick out the nuggets. So the more data in, the better. So going through our structure, act as a LinkedIn expert. Write a professional LinkedIn headline for a job seeker targeting a role in desired job title. So you guys can kind of copy and paste what you're looking for there. Let's say data analyst, the headline. And now we're going to give it some context and some parameters here. So what constitutes a good headline is what we're going to tell it. So the headline should start with the desired job title and include 2 to 3 relevant skills or tools such as SQL, Tableau, Power BI, Python, etc., and optionally include one associated brand For example, a past employer or school, optional. Keep it under 220 characters. Avoid listing a long string of tools. Use my resume and LinkedIn profile below. And for any additional information, and this is key, ask me follow-up questions one by one to clarify before generating. So this really helps you kind of expand the kind of data that you're putting into it because it's going to have questions. It's going to say, okay, I'm missing brands. Okay, I'm missing industry match. I'm missing a tool. So it can ask you if you don't have SQL on your resume. Let's say you upload an old resume and you're, you're in the process of updating your LinkedIn account right now. So it's not up to date and you don't have SQL anywhere. So then it can ask question number 1, do you have any experience with SQL? And then you can just say, yes, I do. And then it can say, okay, and add it into the headline. So having it ask you questions will get you much better results than just you putting in what you've got right now. Okay. So I hope everybody's had some time. If you're wanting to use this, take a screenshot, it'll be up on YouTube and on LinkedIn and video later. So you can always come back to it. When it comes to the about section. So this is what I've kind of compiled. And, you know, I think, you know, Pedro kind of alluded to that earlier that, you know, there isn't like one size fits all. I always say like asterisk, it depends. And there are like, there's, you know, different people want to see different things out of your LinkedIn profile. So there are different approaches that you can follow. It doesn't have to be exactly that headline. Structure. It doesn't have to be exactly this headline, this about content. But, you know, one thing that I really like about LinkedIn is that it's, you know, it is a social media platform. So, yes, we do want to keep it professional, but also like we can go a little bit more personal because at the end of the day, you know, hiring decisions are made by, you know, what skills do you have? And also, is this like a person that I'm going to want to work with 40 hours a week. So, so feel free to show a little bit of personality here. I mean, Pedro, maybe you can speak to that, but I feel like people, you know, they really, really appreciate seeing a little bit of personality.

Oh yeah, the personality. I mean, I love that you just said that right now, Emily. You know, having observed interviews for hiring managers, directors, Um, sitting in on some virtual interviews, there's times where I'm like, oh, they're definitely going to pick this person. They have such awesome skills. They're just— their resume is amazing. And that person don't get hired for the job. Hmm. I've been, I've been wrong because I'm like, I, I think this person's like fits the role completely, everything that they wanted. And it An organization will go to someone because they have more of a personality. And the real, the real talk is like what, you know, Emily said. Organizations hire people that they like, that they could see themselves working with every day. If the bulk of their time is going to be spent around you inside the office, connected to a project, uh, maybe some after-hours pieces, whatever that may be, They're looking to see, are you a good fit for the team? Is the culture going to mesh well when you come on board? So showing some of your personality is a fantastic thing to do. Now, there is a blurred line, okay? You don't need to go out there and do some wild stuff. And, you know, it's— I don't think it's the time to, at least in my opinion, okay? I don't believe it's the time to start saying some outlandish things. But to reveal some of your creativity, show that you— show that you do have more than just what's on your resume, because your resume and your profile tells half the story of who you are. So you, you want to make it interesting enough to where when someone reads it, they can begin to be opened to the person that's behind the profile. So creativity does go a long way inside the About section, and I love the call to action piece on the bottom. You know, you're advertising yourself. That— I come from a sales background. A lot of people like to believe like, oh, I'm not good at sales, I don't know how to sell. That's a lie. You sell yourself every day on whether or not you're going to want to get up and go to work, do a good job, or give your full effort. You sell yourself on, on what you're going to do in your efforts, but you also sell to the public of who you want to be perceived as. So We're all in sales in one way or another. This is an opportunity for you to sell yourself in some manner to the public and especially to the next team that could be the team that you end up joining.

Awesome. Okay, so that being said, you know, some points that from my opinion, you know, I've kind of gone through a lot of different ways to present yourself in the About section, and this is what I've landed on as kind of a general formula. So feel free to use this, but have it contain a personal narrative, not generic. Really talk about you. Connect, especially for pivoters. So if we've got a lot of pivoters in the room today, you know, connect your old field to your new field. Let's talk about some of our transferable skills without saying transferable skills. And let's just, you know, make sure that people are aware that the things that we've done in the past were very applicable to what we do as a data analyst or a data scientist. Highlights your growth mindset and motivation. Includes again a couple of top data tools that you're— that you can use such as SQL, Python, Tableau. Make sure they're in there. Ending up with authenticity, not just a sales pitch. So, you know, make sure that you are being your authentic self because I feel like, you know, when people get salesy, you know, you know, Pedro said that he worked in sales. You can kind of tell when people are like being a little bit phony and just being a little bit salesy. Just be your genuine self. And if you can end on a call to action, I mean, at the end of the day, we're here on LinkedIn to connect. So you can tell people that, you know, if you've got some, you If you got something that you'd like to connect with me about, you know, let's chat. And then, you know, the link to your email if you feel like it. Otherwise, they can just send you a DM, you know. There are constraints here as well. So the character limit in the about section is 2,600 characters. I feel like that gets a bit long because, you know, we need to optimize for people. You know, the sourcers are the ones who are going to be, who are going to be like searching for you. They're going to be filtering through. Through, you know, the millions of people on LinkedIn to be able to get to you. And we want to make sure that, yes, our keywords are there, that they're being able to find us through filtering on keywords, but also they're going to want to read what we put out. So keep it, keep it to a manageable chunk. That being said, here's the prompt. So again, role, act as a LinkedIn expert. There are different things that you can put. I just kind of repeated myself and these are standalone things. So if you're doing it like in Align, your prompts will be different. This is just like if you need to change your About section today, just like pop this into ChatGPT and you'll get pretty far. So act as a LinkedIn expert, write a personal and professional About section for a career pivoter targeting a role in data analysis. Let's say this section should include a short hook about your pivot, a summary of past experience and transferable strengths, 2 to 3 relevant tools or technical skills. I won't repeat them again. A forward-looking career goal and a warm invitation to connect. Use my resume and LinkedIn profile below for additional information. Ask me follow-up questions one by one to clarify before generating. Here, the follow-up questions are going to be key because I guarantee you those personal stories about why you love data analysis, you know, the first time that you that you use data in an effective way and you change the outcome of something because of your excitement and your utilization of data, that's not going to be something that you probably already have on your resume. So asking, like answering those follow-up questions are going to get you really far when it comes to your about section here because of the personal nature. All right. Comments, questions, screenshot. Okay. Let's move on. Experience. Okay. So now this is where we're going to get to a point where we're like a little bit more similar to what's going on in your resume. It's super important that, you know, we're not wanting recruiters to have any question marks in their brain, right? So, I mean, Pedro, some of the things that, that bring question marks to my mind is if in the experience section on your resume, there's a different job title than the experience section on your LinkedIn. And also if the dates are different. I don't know, what do you think about that?

100%. It's, you know, it's too simple to mess up. Just, just ensure you, you audit your, you audit your profile and you audit your resume each time it goes out. Um, it's, it's your name's on it, so you got to make sure that it, it all connects Because a lot of what we're wanting to do, and perspective-wise, right, like you want, you want to be able to represent yourself well and you want us to be able to receive you well. So therefore, just eliminate all the simple questions. It's make sure it all matches, the dates are the same, the company's titles are the same. Because perfect example, I had an organization that was listed on a resume today. I don't know who they are. I'm I don't have all the answers. So I know that that company is also on LinkedIn, and I wanted to understand it better. I went and I clicked on that company's logo that was listed on this person's profile on LinkedIn, um, and it matched. And it was fantastic because then I learned more about what they did and their background. Um, if it didn't, I could only imagine what I would have thought otherwise. But that's not to say that it's it's 100% proof with every resume that we receive because we do see some that have all the, the, you know, the discrepancies. And, and once you start to have discrepancies on your resume that connects to your profile, what that says to somebody else who wants to be an advocate for you is that you don't really care about making everything coincide with each other. And therefore, if you don't really put enough effort into caring about it all being correct Don't expect somebody else to do it on your behalf when they don't have any— they really don't have any need to do so. So yeah, make sure it matches.

Red flags galore. Awesome. So that being said, super important that the job title and the dates are the same. However, you know, your bullets can differ a little bit. And why? Because you've done so much stuff in these roles And for a particular role, you know, some project that you worked on might have been super relevant to that industry. However, you know, when we're here on, on LinkedIn, again, we've got all eyes on that LinkedIn account. So we've got to make it kind of generally applicable to a lot of, you know, to a couple of different audiences. Right. So that being said, I like to use more or less a same, like a similar, a similar approach to, you know, the bullet structure that we've got on the resume. I do. I do like bullets here because it's just easy for people to read through bullets. You can also write it out. There are different approaches. This is just the one that I prefer and chose for the purpose of today's chat. So that being said, 2 to 5 bullets per role, I would say, you know, the more experience or the more recent experience you've got, the more bullets, because that's probably going to be super relevant and also what people see, see first. And then each bullet should— so use the XYZ format. So if you go to Google's hiring page, this is the format that they talk about that they want to see on your resume. You know, you accomplished X measured by Y by doing Z. So what are we doing here? We're highlighting an impact. We are, you know, being quantifiable. What kind of metrics did we use? Were we aware of the metrics? Can we showcase, you know, that we're aware that we've had an impact? We're not just sitting there filling a chair doing like, you know, a manual task over and over again. Like, we feel our place in the organization. Also, the tools again that you use in different roles, you might have used different tools. So feel free to list those out in your bullets here. And then keep it kind of short because we're optimizing, you know, number one, we want people to find us through, through the keyword search. But number two, humans' eyes are going to be on this. So make sure that you're not making like really super long sections and You can make the bullets longer than 25 words. This is just kind of like a sweet spot where I found like I don't wanna go too much longer because it'll start looking weird on LinkedIn and it'll be hard to read. So here's an example that I came with, I came up with. Built dashboards in Excel and Power BI that reduced inventory delays by 35%. So we've got our metric, we've got our tool, and we've got our result. Okay. That being said, prompt. Get out your screenshots, guys. Again, act as a LinkedIn and resume optimization expert. Rewrite my LinkedIn experience section for the role of job title because you'll have to do this for each individual job. For each position, generate three to five bullets. Sorry, I said two to five before. Three to five bullets, bullet points using the XYZ structure. Clearly state what I accomplished, how I did it, and what tools, teams, or strategies I used. Each bullet should be no longer than 25 words. Include measurable results, action verbs, relevant tools such as blah blah blah blah blah, and cross-functional collaboration where appropriate. Align each bullet with my target role of data analyst. Use my resume and LinkedIn profile below for additional information. Ask me follow-up questions one by one. to clarify before generating. So again, you know, getting that extra, extra data in there. Screenshot. Good. All right. And very last, I'll do this like super briefly when it comes to recommendations. Recommendations are important on your LinkedIn profile. If you don't have any, any former colleagues that you can ask, it would be definitely to your benefit to have, to have some, some recommendations on your page. So, you know, what I'm wanting to accomplish with this is that, you know, when you're asking people, when you've got an ask for someone, right? You know, it takes some of their time. It's something that they need to do and you can take steps to make it as easy as possible for them. So when I reach out to somebody and ask for a recommendation, I first of all ask them, would you be open to giving me a recommendation and would it help you to have me prepare a text? And then generally they do say, yes, prepare a text because they know that I have got a certain goal in mind that I want to achieve with this recommendation. And they also, because they do want to help me, they want to make sure that they get all of those points in. So generally I say either please include these points or here is a text that you can use. Feel free to do whatever with it that you want and edit it as you see fit. But this is just kind of a format that you could use for that review just to make it easy for them and have them, you know, kind of happy to do it for you. So what does it do? It shows how the person knows you, highlights a specific project or strength, sounds natural and personal because this is something that can go super sideways when it— when ChatGPT is generating text for you. It can come out very staunchy or very like robotic, I guess. So let's try and, you know, Include that parameter there so that it sounds more natural, and it should be reinforcing the fit for your next role. So, you know, if there are things that you can be highlighting again from former roles that you, you had, you can have the person who's recommending you talk about that. So for example, Kedisha. Kedisha joined our team while she was transitioning into data, and honestly, you wouldn't have known that she was new to it. We worked together on a logistics dashboard and she jumped in right away. learning fast, asking smart questions, and eventually building something that saved us a ton of time. You can write it however you want to write. What I appreciated most was her mix of curiosity, drive, and calm focus under pressure, probably her military background shining through. She's a great teammate, and I'd be excited to work with her again. Is it true, Kedeisha? Do you think that's accurate?

Yeah, that's interesting.

Awesome. Okay, so this is going to be the last prompt that I give you before I toss it back to Pedro. Act as a LinkedIn expert. Write a LinkedIn recommendation draft that my former manager at X company or the manager of data analytics, or let's say whatever the job title was, could post about me. The recommendation should describe how we work together, highlight one project or accomplishment, and comment on my character or collaboration style. Make it 1 to 2 paragraphs long and write it in a friendly, personable, and professional tone, something that feels genuine, not overly polished or robotic. Target it to support my next role in data analytics. Use my resume and LinkedIn profile below for additional information. Ask me follow-up questions one by one to clarify before generating. So I would say if you kind of follow through those tips and use those prompts, you can get something. I'm not like— I'm not saying you should copy and paste it. Um, and always you can be iterating. So if there's something that you don't like in it, you can tell ChatGPT, hey, um, you know, edit this. Or you can open it in the canvas mode and you can like type in, um, ChatGPT if you haven't done that yet, um, and see what kind of results you get. Honestly, like if you guys use these prompts and you update your LinkedIn profiles based on, um, yeah, based on these recommendations, I would love to hear from Yeah,

I need a copy of the PowerPoint. I'm not taking screenshots.

I'll send it over to you.

It's amazing. I, I love everything you put on there because honestly, um, as someone who I would like to consider myself an advocate of AI, especially like ChatGPT, um, Perplexity, Claude, um, you know, Copilot. It's— everyone talks about prompting and how the correct prompting can, can elevate whatever type of message or story, um, that you're— that you want to put on LinkedIn. And, you know, because you— we talked about it earlier, and I know this— that's for this part you want me to bring it in, is the posting or comments, you know. Many times in the beginning, we all ask ourselves when we see somebody post on LinkedIn, like, wow, how did they come up with that amazing post, that narrative, all of the, the key points that they're talking about inside, you know, whatever the story, uh, that they want to sell? Like, you know, some pretty, pretty infamous ones that are rolling around on the platform right now, like if I could go back to my younger self, this is what I would have done differently, right? That's a, that's a huge one. Or, um, you know, 5 lessons I would, I would give to my younger self, uh, or 3 things that, that everybody does wrong when they're making the jump from being, um, let's say a teacher to becoming a data analyst, right? Like, there's a lot of those, those types of posts that are alive on the platform Well, for everyone on this call, and when I found out that it was like there's already GPTs that are created that you can utilize, that someone else has already put on ChatGPT and these other AI platforms, that you can take your thoughts, you can just type a free type of message in, and then it has certain, uh, questions that are inside each of the GPTs And you can formulate your post into whatever version you want. So if you wanted to give an example of yourself, like, if I could go back 10 years ago when I started my career, these are the lessons I would have started immediately and how this would have impacted me. It would have given me a better shot at landing that first job. And then you go in and put in your, your thoughts about what it is, and the GPTs will provide the story for the character count necessary to deliver the most impact on LinkedIn. And there's models that are already established right now as far as what days to post, what times to post, and then what post to create, whether they're going to be top of the funnel posts Middle of the funnel posts, or if they're just going to be a, just a regular, you know, like, uh, infographic. For everybody here, and, and look, when I learned it, I was amazed at how easy it was. And I used to think that it took so much time. We could literally grab the notes from this call, the, all the, the notes that are captured from the discussion, and then any answers that we have later, and we could drop that transcript into ChatGPT or Copilot and then ask it to provide, um, you know, a lessons learned model for a LinkedIn post that is no more than 250 characters with a call to action that should only have 5 hashtags. Because anything more than 5 hashtags, the, the, um, the algorithm finds it difficult to channel to get to all of those hashtags. And in the matter of 2 minutes, we could have the post generated. And then to make it and amplify it to a different level, we could drop a screenshot of a photo of everybody who's on the call, and it would tailor that post to that photo, to that topic. And then you have your LinkedIn post. The game is too simple for anybody not to post on LinkedIn. It is just too simple. Now, what I encourage professionals to do, and even the ones that I do interviews with, because I can't promise them all a job, but I can get their name to the person that's going to see if they are going to give them an interview, which is more than what most people receive these days when they turn in a resume, is breaking through the, breaking through the web of mess that's on LinkedIn. To get noticed. So for example, if, as I just mentioned right now, I wanted to drop the transcripts of this conversation and this actual, um, a photo right now, if it's just me, Kedisha, and Emily on there, and I was to put it into LinkedIn, prior to uploading that post, I would want to find at a minimum 10 professionals who are in the same industry that we're in, and I would want to comment on their posts prior to uploading my post. And each of those posts that I put on that person's page, they would need to be thought-provoking and meaningful, and at a minimum 15 words. What will happen is now that I have generated a buzz inside the algorithm and it's now on 10 different people's, uh, profiles and on their posts and on their feeds. Every time we post on somebody's feed— Kedisha, when you post on somebody's feed, um, you know, don't you usually get a message after somebody's seen it and, and they, and they post, uh, post again? So now I post on their feed, that person gets a message, a notification that, hey, I've made a comment. That most people go back and read it, or they like it, or they, they do a little comment in return. But what also happens is everybody else who's on that comment thread gets notified as well that someone else has made a comment. So if we go and do that with 10 different people, and the person who received it notices it, and then at least one other person notices it, that's now 20 people that have now been exposed to my name prior to me ever posting anything on LinkedIn. And then what automatically happens is most of us, we want to go and check that person's profile to see who they are. Now at that point, I upload my post, and within a matter of 2 minutes of posting it, I'll automatically want to go and comment on my post so that it receives another notification to the algorithm. And then it goes through levels to where now it's going to decide whether it's an AI-generated post. Is it being received? Are people paying attention to it? Well, automatically you've caused the buzz. Now people are having their eyes on your material. Is anybody engaging with it? 9 times out of 10, you make a comment on somebody's, uh, feed or their thread, they're likely to go to your page and do what? Do the same thing. So now you have all these eyes paying attention to your material. Consistency with this method now begins to generate a network of professionals that you're wanting to target that go on to somebody who— do it for professionals who may have, you know, a couple thousand followers, right? If you do it on somebody who's got about 300,000, 150,000, hey, I know when they respond you think it's them, but it's a ghostwriter, okay? So people get paid for that, but it's still good because their account pays attention to you. But what I'm trying to get across right now is that leveraging LinkedIn Utilizing AI to help you get your name and exposure to your brand and your skills and your profile is not as difficult as what most people believe it is. It is far too simple to, to not use. And I know I've tossed a lot out of it. I'm not— I didn't come well prepared with all of this like, like Emily did, so I'm gonna kick myself later and hit myself in the face. However, um, you want to walk through some of this and have a demonstration and do that, by all means connect with me. We can do it off the side. I'll show you how to do it. We can test bed some of the material you want to deliver, walk through how to build some of the GPTs or utilize the ones that are already there inside the, the platforms for you. And it's almost like a money-back guarantee, right? Except there's no money involved. There's more like an exposure guarantee to your name. It's going to happen. So the process is not tough. It's fairly, fairly easy.

Alrighty. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I even teach my students how to use ChatGPT to create their own posts and also, probably more importantly, how to customize GPT, which we covered in the previous one, previous workshop. Okay, let's let's run through some some some questions. Folks got a folks got a lot to say here. All right, let me scroll on up. Okay. All right, Jonathan had a question. Yeah, for job descriptions, should job descriptions in an application reflect what's on a resume? Or LinkedIn profile. For example, my LinkedIn or application might reflect a longer description versus my resume, which reflects one or two bullet points. Does this matter?

Job descriptions, application reflect what's on the resume or LinkedIn profile. There's a danger in the job description. And you matching your profile and your resume to a job description. Like, you can have your resume show that you deliver solutions to what a job needs, but when it begins— when we start talking about match, and if I'm understanding this correctly, match is a dangerous area to play in because if we know professionals are using LinkedIn— excuse me, uh, AI to— or anything to help them amplify their resume towards a job opportunity. When a hiring manager who receives your resume, who sees a ton of resumes, when they— in their eyes, when they start to see a resume and that it looks like it's almost verbatim to what the job description is, a good amount of time that resume is not going to get called because they're, they're in fear that— hold on— if this person just wants to match it to the job description, that's fantastic or whatever, but do they really have these skills? Because most people, a high percentage of professionals, their resumes do not match what the job description asks for. They just have the necessary skills that can be transferable to what that job is requiring, and you have the background to support it, and it's supported through a few different uh, job experiences. So I'd be, I'd be real careful with the match piece. Um, now you said, you know, 1 to 2 bullet points, does that matter? If you want to pick 1 bullet point, I don't, I don't think that's a big deal. But if you start getting to the part, um, I just— when somebody says match, that's a dangerous thing to play with because I see it even from recruiters when they submit a resume to the business developers who are now delivering it to the hiring managers, they have even been asked, hey, did this person just copy the job description to their resume? Like, what's going on? Um, that looks too— it looks too similar. Um, I got questions now, and we're not trying to have questions come out. So if granted there's a way you can word it, um, to where it doesn't exactly look like the job description, biggest thing is you want your resume to show that you have the capacity and the experience for the solutions that they need. So that's just my thought on that.

Yeah, and then just little asterisk, when it comes to the LinkedIn profile, I think there would be a danger in kind of over-optimizing your LinkedIn profile for one particular role. So, you know, try and keep it a little bit more general. If you see your dream job, you know, you, you got a lot of different eyes on your profile, right? So try not to pigeonhole yourself, I guess, is what I would say.

Nice. I agree. I agree with that. Okay. What do I post on LinkedIn as someone looking to gain experience and working on projects? Is there a right or wrong way to position myself on LinkedIn?

Hmm, I believe at one point, Kedisha, you mentioned about, um, having, having work that you've done with nonprofit organizations, um, like an organization, almost like an internship. Okay, uh, if you're looking to gain experience, this is where a lot of the relation— in my opinion, a lot of the relationship building can lead to opportunities to leverage experience and grow your skills. And that through that earning an opportunity for someone that, you know, internship style, and having that person provide a recommendation of you accomplishing a project for them and the work that you did, I think that is the right way to do it. Um, there's— you have to, you have to connect before you collect. If all you're trying to do is just look to collect opportunities from people, very rarely will you get one. But if you're looking to connect and establish relationships, that relationship would then set itself up for the chance to do work with someone to gain the necessary experience that you can then put onto LinkedIn. In my eyes, that's the right way to do it so that you don't come across as the person that's always asking like, hey, can somebody give me a chance? Can somebody give me a chance? There's plenty of organizations that'll work with you to give you the chance to gain some experience. I would just work on building the relationships first, and it'll eventually lead to the time to get the experience. And then the, the prompt for the recommendation that Emily put on there, that is fantastic. I would use that in a heartbeat.

Yeah, and I would say just take the personal approach. Um, I think if you write a post like, I'm open to, you know, doing projects in XYZ sector, probably the response rate that you'll get is low from that. But if you go and you look into, you know, NGOs or nonprofits that are working on a specific, a specific field, and, um, and, you know, you think that your skill set could be of value to them, you could say, hey, you know, I am, uh, working in data analysis. Is there anything that I could do? Could I volunteer to get you guys, um, you know, some new views of your data and see if I could help you out that way? Just, you know, have that kind of like one-on-one interaction with people. I think you'll get better results that way.

Okay. So, you know, one thing I love, multiple opinions. And, you know, we have another opinion about tailoring resumes for LinkedIn. All right. So we got a CEO and founder here saying tailoring your resume to the needs and wants of the employer ain't a problem. We encourage clients to match their resume and LinkedIn to the needs of the employer to present themselves as a solution to the org's problem via the job description. In other words, use the job description to the full capacity. Now, to follow up with that, Ernest did the math and said, how do I optimize my resume for multiple applications? Since I only have one LinkedIn profile and optimizing for one might affect others. This is why what Emily and Pedro said was true. I think, why would you take— I mean, especially the way job descriptions are written. Yeah, you're gonna run yourself ragged trying to optimize your LinkedIn or whatever to, you know, one particular job description. So Good for doing the math, Ernest. Good for doing the math. Y'all got anything to add there?

I completely agree. I feel like when it comes to resume level, optimize for the job description. When it comes to LinkedIn, you know that you've got all eyes on that profile. So optimize for like something that's more generally applicable. So for example, like if you are highly interested in a role in edtech, for for example, edtech is a really competitive field right now because a lot of teachers want to pivot out of, you know, educate in classroom education to working in tech because they'll earn more money, uh, they won't have kids throwing stuff at them, it's a lot less stressful. Um, so the field is kind of saturated right now with teachers who are wanting to pivot into edtech. Um, so if you are a teacher and you pigeonhole yourself into edtech, you might be losing opportunities in other industries. So just make sure that, you know, you're really highlighting your skills. And it's good to mention industry. I'm not saying that it's not, but don't make it so narrow that you're like excluding others. You know, there's kind of a fine line. It's a little— it's a— it's both an art and a science, I would say.

All right. This one's for you, Pedro. Hey, Claire's trying to find you on LinkedIn. Where you at? She can't find you.

I'm on there. You know

what?

Um, dang. No, I'm on there. I know Kadeesha is going to put something at the end, but I'm on there. I've actually ran into where— and nothing against LinkedIn user, uh, the, the one, the CEO founder of, um, CHRO. I mean, I hope it's a real person. Anytime I see LinkedIn user without a picture, I'm like, fake account. But don't knock me, man. I'm just, I'm just trying, I'm just trying to be legit. Like, if I see something without a photo, I'm like, fake account, man. Show your face. But my face is all over LinkedIn, and it's also been used for fake profiles. So if you look on there, you might see someone actually post about this. week ago where there's a guy impersonating me and saying my, uh, my name was Christian Zambrano. And you know, my name's not Christian Zambrano, but I'm on there, Claire. Um, Kadeisha will put it at the end. And, and, uh, but yes, it is under Pedro Zambrano. I believe when you do the actual search for my profile, if you put in Pedro Z, there's a few numbers after it, it'll pop up. But I'll make sure we get connected after this.

All right, we solved the mystery there. All right, Andy says, is an open to work post important to see? I haven't made one yet because my current employer, uh, doesn't, uh, know I want to leave. Now one thing— well, that's one thing too. And then I also want to add to the side, I— there's, there's this, um, I guess, uh, what do you call it, uh, debate of The, uh, of the banner being, uh, a detractor or not. And so I'd also like to, you know, hear y'all's thoughts on that as well.

Open to work— I honestly don't see anything wrong with an open to work, um, banner on your— or open to network, however they call it on there, um, because there's even ways for you to set your profile to open to work, open to network. and recruiters can see it, but it's not publicly on a banner on your name. So that's just really based— and that's really based from what I believe upon your preference. If you want to put the banner around your name so that everybody sees it, or if you, you just want to do it to where people who are sourcing and recruiting see your, see your name in your profile in that manner. Uh, there's, there's plenty of people that when we do— for me, for example, when I do a project and I'm searching for professionals who may fit a role or maybe great recommendations or candidates for it, um, that they do not have the OpenTo network around their name. And they're, they're doing it because number one, they want to stay private. Um, some people just don't like it, and others, they're with the company and they don't want the company to know that they're out there trying to test the waters a little bit. So, um, I don't think it's bad. You know, when I was When I got laid off, uh, after being a project manager, I put open to network on my profile, and it was actually a great thing because I was able to connect with some, some amazing and wonderful people. And it actually, you know, led me into the conversations to help me to get where I'm at right now. So I don't think it's a bad thing.

Yeah, you know, it is such a debate. And Andy, if your company doesn't know that you're open to work, to Don't tell them because you might find that you're really open to work a lot sooner than you thought you were. So don't put that banner up. Just, uh, select the option, um, open to work visible to recruiters only outside of your organization, and that will probably get you the results that you're looking for. I don't want to get you laid off. However, like Pedro said, if you get laid off, um, that's an amazing moment for you to put up that open to work post. You can see like whenever there's a big round of layoffs, for example, you know, the beginning of the year, the Wayfair Berlin office shut down and everybody put a post up like, oh, I was affected by layoffs, open to work, and reaching out to their network. That's a great moment to do that. There are people who think it looks desperate if you haven't been in, if you haven't been in employment for a while. Honestly, I don't see any problem with it. Just kind of depends. So Asterisk, think about it, go into yourself and see how you feel about it because out there in the world people will see that differently. So I personally, when I work with people, I generally have them keep that banner off. I don't know, it is what it is, you guys decide. But Andy, not now.

Okay, okay. Deborah asked, what is your take on this? I use I use ChatGPT to optimize my resume, and it got a 90%. When I went to JobScan, it gave a 46%. How could I be sure AI did the best work optimizing my LinkedIn? Ah, well, before y'all take on this, I think a lot of those resume scan things are. I already saw an article in a study on how, um, one of those scan sites scanned their own, uh, resume that they made and rated it low. So I, I, I put no trust. I would not put any trust in any of those scores. Um, uh, but what, what is y'all take on that?

I mean, I work with people who are getting resumes out there on a daily basis. A lot of A lot of my job seekers do use those tools. And I actually very recently worked with a data analyst who I met on these very calls. And he was using a product I'm not going to name that does a matching service. And I helped him set up his custom GPT, giving it, you know, lots of data to get started off with. And, you know, the structure for my resume template. And I asked him in a 1-hour call, so with the information that I had available to me, I asked him, is this output better than what you got through the tool? And he said yes, hands down. So right now, I, I haven't found one, um, that I recommend. And for that reason, watch this space, guys. You might see— That's all I've got to say about that.

All right, all right, let's, uh, let's, let's, uh, let's see what else. Uh, yeah, Jonathan said kind of makes you look desperate. Um, I've— I mean, I've seen that stuff for that too. Um, I don't think so though, but, um, I think

everybody's got their own opinion about that.

Oh yeah, yeah, same with, uh, cover letters. You know, it was kind of—

I've actually seen people post on LinkedIn when they take down the green banner. Oh. And when they take down the green banner and they create a post for it celebrating the fact that, you know, they've gone through the job search journey, they've had a few bumps and bruises through it. And when they take it down because it's been up for, you know, a little bit, they do a celebration post that is coming down and have gotten engagement through conversations in the chats and There's, there's some good things and some, some, some other things about it. You either like it or you don't. Um, I, I think everybody, you know, uh, I'm a fan of it, so I think it's pretty cool.

Alrighty. Um, you know, let's, uh, maybe let's, uh— oh, you know what, I should have, uh, shared, um, before my pettiness gets out of control. So let us share and see, you know, folks want to connect with you guys, real people with real faces. One second, let me share this screen. Where can they find you?

So you guys, if you want to just connect, you can find me— I think I'm the only person in the the world with this name. Thank God, because Emily Nelson is very common. But having that, adding that second last name to the end really made it quite unique. So if you search for Emily Nelson de Velasco on LinkedIn, you will find my LinkedIn page. And I'm not sure if this link, uh, this QR goes to my LinkedIn page or goes to my website. But also, if you find me on my website, you can also— there's a link to my LinkedIn page there. And also you can send Send me a message directly on the contact form on my website.

Pedro, where can people actually find you? And how can they connect with you?

Right there on LinkedIn. Hey, Claire, I found you. I sent you a request. But yeah, this leads directly to LinkedIn. I am needing to up my game. So I can be like Emily and have my, my other locations of where you could find me at. But LinkedIn is the best thing, uh, is the best platform to reach me on. So connect, send a comment, whatever. Um, but yes, by all means, I'm a people advocate, so, you know, not that hard to find.

Okay, perfect. Um, all right, so Listen, it was a huge crowd tonight. This was the biggest crowd we've had. Um, so I'm pretty sure folks would like us to be back pretty soon. All right, so, um, we will, uh, you know, be— oh, actually, very quickly, you know, what, what next topic do y'all want to see? Y'all, y'all post in the chat. What, what are the topics that y'all want to see?

Mm-hmm.

And before, and while they're doing that, I did see a question or a couple questions on, um, gaps, you know, how to really, you know, how to, how to take care of gaps on, uh, your resume or your LinkedIn. Um, I've had folks say that they've been questioned about their gaps, so, you know, how can you really, you know, attack that?

Really, you, you had any thoughts on that, Emily? I have some, but I want to see If you've got some.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like for me, when it comes to gaps, I, I think it, um, you know, number one, if like there are strategies that you can kind of use to mitigate gaps. So for example, um, like on your resume, instead of putting month and year, you can put start year, end year. Um, and that kind of, if it's, you know, the gap was less than a year, it could kind of help you, um, camouflage the fact that you are out of work. So that's one thing you can do. But otherwise, I feel like transparency is, you know, honesty is like good policy in general, especially when it comes to hiring, because you don't really want to start off with the recruiter thinking that you're a shady person. So yeah, I would say just be transparent about it. There are the options on LinkedIn to, to add a career break. You know, personally, I've had a career break. when I had my kids between Wayfair and reverse recruiting, I just didn't feel— or reverse recruiting and career coaching. I just didn't feel the necessity to put it on there because then for me, like, it moves one of my roles onto the next page that then somebody is going to have to click into. So yeah, I personally decided not to put it on my profile because it's not really relevant for me. Um, but yeah, I feel like when the question comes up, just be, um, just be transparent about it.

Yeah, and you know, when I've spoken with professionals and they have a, they have a gap in inside some type of career experience or a life experience took place, uh, so for the life experience, um, Some of— most of the professionals I've spoken with that have had a life experience, I'm like, hey, listen, we'll talk about that when we get to the chance to get to an interview. We'll speak on your behalf about it. I mean, you know, no one has the perfect path for the process to get to the next job. Nobody does. It's— everybody's got a different situation. Now, at times I've also come across professionals who have, let's say, a gap in their work experience because they were working for an organization and if there was a layoff or, you know, it was a contract was complete, something— somebody was bought out and they went into doing some freelance work on their own, then I mean, listen, you, you've been doing consulting. You've been a consultant as an independent consultant, uh, contractor. So there is nothing wrong. And, and I've done it time and time again where I've encouraged them just title it as, as a consulting time frame. Professional development and consulting. List out some of the things that you've accomplished and what you've done and some of the services you provided. And we'll just— we'll put a date range on it for how long it lasted, and then we'll move on. And very rarely has it come up as a negative thing when we do it that way, because there's, there's something on there that, that brings attention to the fact that something was being done. It can answer a question. The time that you don't want to do it is, uh, is if you have a gap and you just kind of leave it blank. So if you leave it blank, you leave it for questions, um, and if you're not working with someone to be able to help get your name to a hiring manager or somebody that's doing the interviewing, then you, you want to get to the point to where you can put something on there that answers the question for the gap, uh, which if you're working with an organization a recruiting organization or somebody that can help connect the dots and speak on your behalf when the resume makes it to a hiring member, then we're able to help support you in that manner and kind of clear up any, any questions that would come about. Um, but yeah, I mean, 9 times out of 10 when you get a job anyways, it's through a referral. You know, it's the referrals. 80% of jobs are hired right now for referrals. So relationships are important, and people that have the relationship can help you through the process.

Alrighty, perfect. Alright, so we got a good amount of ideas for next live. We got ATS, you know, landing entry-level roles without experience, niche industries for analysts that we may not have thought of, and interview prep. So we got some good stuff here. And, and I answered the question someone wanted to know really quickly, is it recommended to pay Pay for premium LinkedIn? No. And no. Why? Oh, what's the surprise word?

I actually recommend that my clients use LinkedIn Premium. And the reason is that with the free LinkedIn profile, there's a limited number of connection requests that you can send with a message. And that message is super important. Also, you only get 200 characters with the free version. but you get 300 characters with the paid version. So if you're going hard and you are leveraging your network, which you should be, LinkedIn Premium is the way to go. This is not a paid ad.

All right, y'all heard it there first. Uh, okay, I guess they're making it— I guess like they're, they're really making it so that folks buy it. Um, I actually think that LinkedIn, just by Premium alone, I think they make like a billion dollars a year. like over $1 billion just off of LinkedIn Premium, which is insane. Um, all right. Um, okay, so good stuff, you guys. Uh, the dream team will, um, connect and, uh, be back. And, uh, for next time. Um, okay, I guess everyone's on, on board with Emily on LinkedIn Premium. Okay. All right. You know, that's cool. All right. Um, I have LinkedIn Premium, but, uh, not I still, I still wouldn't recommend it, but I guess, I guess things are set up now that you kind of have no choice. But

I mean, for job search, if you're out of job search, you don't need it. You're kind of chilling, whatever. But job search, yes, invest $40 a month.

Alrighty. Um, uh, okay. Uh, All right, so we, we are going to close out. Uh, thank all of the comments, um, and, uh, questions, um, and all the responses. It's $70 per month,

is it?

I think that's like— there are— there's like the business premium and there's a regular premium, so you might be looking at the business premium. There are like different tiers. I think the current price is like $40 a month.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Okay, so we'll be back, you guys. Thank you all so much. Definitely connect with Pedro and Emily and scan the barcode and you'll see their faces, not cartoons. So we'll see you.

Thanks, guys. See you. Hey, send me your profiles if you