2024-05-23 TJ Walker LIVE on YouTube

It's not live. There we go.

How do you compete in the modern world when everyone has access to the very same information? Everyone has access to LinkedIn. Everyone has access to every news story about a company that you might be applying to. What is the best way to compete in the modern world when you're on the job hunt? Hi, I'm TJ Walker. That is one question I'll be answering here and plenty of others as well. We are here today. This is an open session. Coming up at the top of the hour we have an interview with a major international journalist who's going to give us perspective on reporting and anchoring in in Europe and dealing with royals there and elsewhere. It's going to be a lot of fun and a lot of action packed adventure. I'm going to be taking your questions. Many of you were nice enough to write in questions. My colleague Barb Tomalin is with us as well. And a special hello to to Barb. Thanks so much for joining us. I want to get your opinion of this first question, Barb. This comes from Lakunti Mendez who says since everyone has access to the main job platforms like LinkedIn and others, what advice would you give people who are looking for a job to stay ahead of the competition? I know you know an awful lot about building relationships online, being a part of a community as opposed to just seeing a job posting somewhere. So I would like to get your opinions and advice for Lacuni Mendez on how to deal with this issue.

Well, the very first thing I would do is suggest that he get involved with your courses if he's in there already. I mean, you have courses to address the networking issue. The thing is on YouTube. I'm sorry, not on YouTube, on LinkedIn they've now they're really pushing audio, live audio and giving updates via that way from your profile. So I mean most importantly, you know, you got to get your profile spiffed up right away and have a professional presence on LinkedIn. And by that I mean if you know, certain, just like you can see my avatar here, it's not, you know, game day, I'm not playing baseball, football or flying a hot air balloon. But the image itself sends the message of let's do business. And you want to think about that. There are all kinds of applications you can use to help you set that image. But the, and there's, there's tons of help from LinkedIn itself in that space. But I find that the number one thing that especially students, it's their first time around, some are shy but some are just actually introverts and they just, they wait till somebody asks them a question. And so in understanding that, first just make sure you have your professional presence set and then look for that opening at opportunity. You can comment if you know someone else is, especially in the live space, because LinkedIn is favoring that now, both video and audio. I have loads of friends on there that are going live on LinkedIn, you know, Monday through Friday. And it's really picked up steam lately because of the audio, the emphasis on live audio. So that would really help you as an introvert, just taking that step in there. I will let you know that I, because I have in my sphere of influence lots of LinkedIn gurus. So, I mean, LinkedIn has recognized them as being real gurus on their platform. And the thing is, is you just have to be upfront. You introduce, you know, I'm Barb Tomlin, you know, that's, that's my name. But, you know, and I'm at a point where I'm changing my story and I'm looking for something in this field, whatever that field might be, introducing yourself that way, but do it and you can practice that when you're not connected to the Internet, that introduction yourself so that you become relaxed with it and segue into that type of an introduction and joining LinkedIn groups that are related to the field that you're seeking a position in.

Great advice, Barbara, great advice. I'm going to try to weigh in and see if I can come up with anything additional. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to try to kill two birds with one stone here, which is answer your question, but also make a video that could be used as a long form, video that could later be produced and help other people be distributed throughout social media. So I'm going to, we're going to keep you here with us, Bar, but I'm going to go full screen. I'm going to hit record. And again, the question is, since everyone has access to the main job search platforms like LinkedIn, how do you really stay ahead of the competition? So I'm going to try to frame it that way and come up with something that I think could be useful to people. We live in a world where everyone has the same access. Everyone can access LinkedIn, everyone can access all the other job websites. How do you get a competitive edge? Well, the way you do it is by not using LinkedIn and all these other job sites the way everyone else does. If you simply wait to see, oh, here's A job posting. Send your resume. You're competing with everyone else for maybe 3% of the jobs out there. Most jobs in the world, the best jobs in the world, are not officially advertised. The best time to make a connection with someone, to get the inside track is before they even know there's a job opening. What you really want to do is build relationships with people in the industry you're either in or you want to be in. And to build knowledge, to build expertise, to be seen as a thought leader. And these days you could be 17 years old. If you're putting out more content, more insights, more information about a particular industry, you can be seen as a real thought leader. You don't have to wait till you have gray hair or no hair. You can start positioning yourself as a thought leader today. So if you see someone posting on LinkedIn and they're a CEO of a mid sized PR firm that you'd like to work for in your town, don't just write, hi, will you be my friend? I'm looking for a job.

Can you help me?

Can you give me an interview? That's the wrong way. Start off by following them. Don't even ask them to be your friend at this point or to connect. Comment and make intelligent comments on their post. Occasionally ask questions. People like that, it gets gets their attention. Be a part of what they're doing. They're promoting a new campaign that you happen to like. Share it. Let them know why you're sharing it. Add commentary. Ask questions. Give value before you ever ask for the first thing. Give value to people before you ask if they can introduce you to anyone or get you a job interview. Next thing you need to do is put value out to the world on LinkedIn, other social media sites where you are either putting forth your own original ideas or you are curating other ideas and putting a spotlight on them that people in your industry would know. Make yourself seen as someone who is a thought leader. Now I like the form of video and you can certainly post videos. Sharing expertise. You want to make video, okay. You don't have to make it audio. LinkedIn likes audio. You think of yourself as more of the quiet introverted type. Okay. Post a text blog post. Figure out a way of creating content. Regularly attract people to you because of your ideas and your expertise. And at some point they're going to reach out to you for a job. Make yourself attractive to others in your industry because you are a part of their conversation. If you do that, you will be ahead of the competition in the job hunt. Every step of the way. Okay, I'm going to hit stop on that one. Okay. So that was my take. Le Cooney, I hope you got some value out of that. Mansoor is with us, joining us today, I believe from Afghanistan. Hope you're doing well. If you have any comments that you want to bring to our attention or questions, feel free to do so. We are looking forward to very shortly we are going to be speaking to Julio Zava, who is A seasoned journalist, 20 years of experience in the media and in Europe. She has interviewed former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. She has interviewed soccer stars like Leo Messi. She's going to be sharing with us some of her insights on how you can really communicate in the specific form of television journalism. So I'm looking forward to that. Mansoor, did you have any quick questions, comments, thoughts you wanted to share with us today?

Yes. Tg, good morning. How are you doing? Hopes everyone is fine and you are with a good health. Honestly speaking from this conversations myself I learned lots of things. The same I delivered to my friends, to my family, to other colleagues. So when, whenever you guys are online. So I'll take benefits and learn from everyone from each words which is communicating here. Thank you so much.

Oh well, thank you. Thanks. Always good to hear from you very much appreciate it. I know you posted a question I believe yesterday and I want to make sure I was as helpful as possible about was yours the question about how to communicate if an angry customer is, you know, shouting or being abusive to someone in customer service?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I took my questions, it was really supportive. So I learned lots of things. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Okay, great. Where if and I know you are a professional communicator and you've been in the communications business for a long time. Where are you still trying to improve? What's the biggest challenge for you? I mean, I know for me I'm trying to learn this completely new medium of digital cloning and how I can use this technology, artificial intelligence, digital cloning, to communicate to people all over the world. And it's almost mind blowingly new, interesting and exciting. But what are you focused on right now? Where are you trying to be a better communicator? And Mansoor, you may have your mic is off and you may have had to step away and that's okay if, if so but Barb, let me put that challenge to you, I guess more broadly, what are you most interested in right now with communications? Because you've certainly seen me take a strong interest in digital cloning. And you may have a completely different interest as far as new platforms for building community. What's the greatest technology issue you're focusing on right now that you can talk about that you think is relevant to communicators? Everyone's a communicator at some point, but especially people who are authors, experts, coaches, trainers, thinkers.

I really don't have anything I can talk about right now.

Okay.

This is also the season for that happening. This is the season season where new technologies trends are introduced in the technology space. Like I said, I have a big meeting coming up tomorrow. There was, you know, Google had its meeting last week. This is a real exciting time.

Lots of exciting things going on.

Totally grateful to still be participating it and invited to these sessions when I've been doing it for over 35 years. And I like what you're doing with the clone. I think that's really exceptional, the steps that you're taking. And I really think we're going to see a lot more of that. But I also work in the mental health space with folks in that field and these are human issues that will evolve when they're having to speak to clones. So it's really important because then is TJ authentic because he has the clone there, you know, is it really TJ or is it really Barb or whatever, you know.

Well, thanks to you, I do clearly identify myself as the TJ clone. Hey, Barb, we've got to say hello to our guest who just showed up.

Okay.

Julia has joined us. She stepped away first. There you are. Thank you so much for being here. We're going to start officially in just a minute or two, but we appreciate you sort of stopping by for the pre interview. Am I pronouncing your name correctly?

Yes, Julia. Perfect.

Julia Zaba.

Yes. Great.

And where are you joining us from today?

I'm from Los Angeles.

Great, Glad you're with us. And thanks for. Thanks for getting up early and having an early start.

Where are you guys located?

I am in Florida, in South Florida. Mansoor is on with us. He's from Afghanistan and Barb is in New Mexico today. Correct, Barb?

Yeah.

Great. So we're, we're all over in an international crowd. Julia, I always like to ask people, before we started, this is our pre interview which is being recorded. We may add this to the final edited podcast and video. But I always like to ask people what is it that they like, would like to be talking about in an interview that sometimes interviewers never bring up and what do we need to do in this interview? To make it really valuable to you. We, we value your time, your time is valuable, the time of our audience is valuable. What do we need to cover and talk about to really make this especially valuable to you? To the point where you know, this is the interview you want to show when you're your media bio page and on your website and things like that.

TJ thank you so much for being so considerate but I am honestly very open to the experience. I know you are a terrific public speaker, a terrific host. So I'm very, very excited to let you lead and I will just tell you a few quick, interesting facts about me and like what I would be passionate, interested. So I have an extensive, extensive background and TV news broadcasting and I only, I did not only news, I only did investigation reporting. So I work for major TV stations in Moscow like covering all of like post Soviet countries, all of those post USSR countries and I used to travel a lot and I was a broadcaster interviewing like my most prominent interviews with Lionel Messi and with Mikhail Gorbachev, the ex president of ussr. I've done a lot of investigation reporting where I would say interesting thing was I would have to get their full hearted confession of the crimes. Like I would interview serial killers in prisons like people who killed like 50 people crazy. And then you talk to them and they like complete normal. They love their wife, they love their kids and I was 18 like 19, 20 at the time. So for me it was like that was extremely, extremely unusual.

This is so fascinating. I want to keep this for our official interview. Anything else you want to promote, we always again we appreciate your time. We have your social media links. Ben will post those in our comments section in the notes on the, in the description in the YouTube video. The notes for the podcast is your One of the things I do like to do in every interview is just say hey, we encourage promotion here and self promotion and taking opportunities. I'm going to give you two minutes to promote anything you want, any business, any upcoming book, any online course, any service, your link, whatever you want to promote. I'm actually going to take my LinkedIn.

Like what are the social media.

We have all of that. Ben is with me in the green room. He will be posting that in the comments section in the description group. Okay, we're going to end right here. You have the new link to join on once we go live there we'll hop right into the interview. All right. And thanks Ben and thanks Mansoor and thanks Barbara.