Hi everyone, welcome to my channel. My name is Reni. If you’re new here, welcome, and if you’re a returning subscriber, welcome back. On my channel, I make content around finance, career, and lifestyle. So, if that’s something that interests you, please consider hitting that subscribe or like button because it really does help my channel grow.
Today, as you can tell by the title, we’re going to be talking about the LinkedIn profile that really got me jobs and opportunities on a day-to-day basis, a week-to-week basis, honestly all the time. So, if you’ve been watching my channel for a while, you know that I haven’t had to formally apply for a job since 2016. The reason for that is because I was either able to network my way into every position or I was able to just be referred to or reached out to by a recruiter or the hiring manager. I feel very blessed and fortunate to be able to not have to apply for jobs but I really wanted to share with you the secret sauce or the formula that got me here.
So, today I’m going to be walking you through my LinkedIn profile and basically showing you the things that I filled out to ensure that I’m always popping up on those recruiter um searches. So, if you are interested in this content, obviously keep watching and please hit that like button as I mentioned earlier because it does help my channel grow.
How to create the LinkedIn profile that will really get you jobs and opportunities on a day-to-day basis, a week-to-week basis – all the time.
I’ve seen many, many, many profiles that you know, some are great, some not so great, some are in the middle. So, I wanted to show you what I do. I’m not saying I have the perfect LinkedIn profile, but I definitely have recruiters reaching out to me on a regular basis.
So, to preface, recruiters have access to this thing called LinkedIn Recruiter, and it’s basically a tool which is a search engine that if they type in content marketer, it’s gonna pull up a bunch of people who are content marketers and you really want your page to be you know, at the top obviously so you are one of the first people they see, and then they will choose to reach out to you.
So, I’m going to show you basically how to optimize your profile to get those clicks and to get people reaching out to you, and overall just to enhance your personal brand and make you seem approachable and someone that people were like, “Oh, your resume is impressive or your page is so impressive, I want to work with this person.”
So, let’s begin with my LinkedIn profile. I do have my laptop right here so I will be walking you through um and recording my screen as I go. The first thing that you should really focus on is this banner. I know we all like to keep the generic banner that has nothing on it, but honestly it can, it makes you stand out just by having a simple banner on your page.
I have this banner, basically a brief summary of what my personal brand is. So, I am running the resource, which means I am someone who is resourceful and I provided resources to other people. That is basically my entire like my entire brand.
When I was working in marketing, I really focused on calling myself the “Marketing Mobilizer.” I didn’t just write that “I’m in marketing.” I added “Marketing Mobilizer” because I wanted to be known as someone who gets things done, so not just someone who works in marketing, but someone who works in marketing and gets things done.
This is, I think, one of the most simple things you can do to just elevate your profile. It can also be something that is location specific. So you can put the CN Tower, if you’re based in Toronto for example, or if you really like hiking in the mountains, some people put a picture of a mountain range. It’s really something that will reflect you and your personal brand. And if you don’t know what your personal brand is, this is also an opportunity to figure out what your personal brand is.
I would say don’t worry about hiring a graphic designer to make this banner or anything. Go on canva.com, and on Canva they have free banners where you can just customize them and create them as you wish. Some people also like to have their employer’s banner as their banner for on LinkedIn. I think this is okay, but I think that ideally, you should differentiate yourself from the company. Unless of course, your company requires you to use their banner, but I think it’s always best to differentiate yourself from the company.
The next thing that I will mention is your photo. Your photo is so important. One thing that I notice often is people do not have photos, or they have a very unprofessional looking photo. One, not having photos is really not okay. I know that maybe you don’t want to put yourself out there, but honestly, people judge you by the photo that you have on your LinkedIn, or lack thereof. They want to when they’re trying to find someone to hire or someone to network with, they want to maybe know that some they want to know who the person that they’re talking to is. Especially if you’re going for job interviews, like they want, they’re going to search you up and they ideally want to see a photo. So first things first, add a photo there that would be ideal and make sure it is a professional looking photo. It doesn’t have to be like a suit and tie. As you can see in my photo, I am not wearing a suit or a tie. I am wearing a actually very casual top that shows my shoulders. However, it is something that reflects my personality and something that truly symbolizes who I am. This is a photo that makes me seem friendly. It makes me seem open to conversations.
The green is very warm. And one more thing along with this is that some people have a photo, but their photo is only visible to people they are connected with. Again, this is not the way to do it. If a recruiter is looking for you, most likely they are not connected with you already, so I would say make sure that you go into your settings and make sure that your profile is visible to everyone, not just the people you are connected to. Because it kind of, to me, it kind of defeats the purpose.
If you want to see that you can just click on me, click on settings, click on visibility, and then right here, edit your public profile. So this is what my public profile currently looks like. I can say, okay, I don’t want anyone to see it. I can say I only want my first connections to see it, only in my network to see it. I think personally, everyone should say that it’s public so anyone can see your profile at all times.
The next thing to include is a stellar tagline. So I think a lot of people have taglines that are just their title, strategic marketing manager at private wealth, and put that as my tagline. Well, that is good and it still defines your title, but you don’t want to really limit yourself to the job that you are at currently. I would say use something that is who you are. For example, I am a strategic marketer and content creator. I’m also a diversity inclusion and belonging advocate. These are things that represent me outside of me working at a specific organization. This allows people to find me and especially if you, for example, when I was working as a business analyst, I put that I was a strategic marketer, even though I was working as a business analyst, and that’s because I wanted to get into marketing.
Use your headline or tagline to your advantage and basically use it to craft who the world sees you as, because you’re not limited to just your title. And in my past video, that I’ll link up here, Janie let us know that your title is fleeting. Your title can change at any time, but what is important is your skills and what you want to be known for, and that’s exactly what you should have in your headline.
So here are a few examples of people who have good taglines or headlines. Here is Lisa. I actually worked with Lisa on this one. Her previous headline was vice president of xyz at global asset management. While that is good, we changed it to idea broker, turning ideas into actions through collaboration, analysis and timely execution. It’s easy to find what her title is by looking on her page, but now we know a bit about who she is and that she’s a strategic and driven person. The next person we have is Demi Elera, the startup brand master, an author, security awareness leader, and she’s passionate about xyz.
So, these are things that represent br dammy outside of just her title. We know that she cares about security awareness, so if you’re looking for someone who knows about security and cyber security demi is your girl. We also know she’s an author. We also know that she helps people with their startup. This is a great well thought out brand and obviously dany is actually a personal branding expert. So, if you want to know more about her check her page out.
The next person that we have is arthur. While arthur does have his title in his name, this is a good example of how you can do both have your title and a descriptor of your personal brand. So arthur has that he is the executive director at y id which is what he is his title but then he also has a descriptor he is the global youth mobilizer. So, I know that if I need someone who can mobilize youth who is passionate about youth who cares about youth engagement arthur is a person to go to. This is a great descriptor and a great tagline and I know arthur personally and I think it represents him pretty well.
This brings me to the importance of using keywords in your sentence and in your statement or in your profile in general. As I said in linkedin recruiter which is what recruiters are using, they are using a tool that is basically a search engine and it basically picks up keywords and then ranks them in order. If you are someone who is a content marketer have content marketing and related terms throughout your entire profile so that your profile will pop up on their home page.
The next thing that you should include is your contact information. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been looking for a speaker for an event and I find them and then there’s no contact information other than their LinkedIn profile and sometimes they even have their DMs blocked on LinkedIn so only people who they’re connected to can message them. So, it’s kind of like okay you just lost cell on a great speaking opportunity because you simply did not have your phone number or your email or some kind of contact method in your in on your profile. So, this is the contact info section here I have my email and here I have my LinkedIn profile name very simple. I don’t really want to put my phone number online so I don’t have that there but I am fine with people having my email and that’s how I would like to be contacted. You can add a website when you have it, you can add your address that’s a little personal but you can add your birthday. So, there are so many opportunities to add content to your page that will allow people to reach out to you.
The next thing I think you should include on your profile is the open to work symbol. This is very underrated and a lot of people don’t utilize this feature. This is what recruiters are literally looking for.
So, you can say that you are open to work. You are open to providing services or you’re open to hiring. This shows, like for example, if I’m a hiring manager, I’m currently hiring for these roles. People will reach out to me for that. Or, if I am providing services, I am a speaker. So this is the hire me for speaking. Or, if you’re someone who’s just in the job market open to work. I suggest everyone has this on all the time because you never know what opportunities will be there for you. So, even if you joined the job like one month ago, I would say still have it on just because what if your dream job comes and the recruiter sees your page but it says you’re not open to work. So, they don’t reach out to you.
So, if you want those opportunities, keep it on at all times. Even if you don’t take the jobs, you still have the opportunity to get practice your interview skills or just learn about what other people in other industries are doing. And also what they’re paying in under in other industries because I find that sometimes when we’re not applying to drugs we don’t see that like the same job is paying a lot more at another company and we don’t realize what we should be charging or what our salary really should be.
So, if you keep yourself open to work, people will tell you we’re hiring this job at ninety thousand dollars are you interested and you’re kind of like whoa I do that same job for seventy thousand dollars let me consider this opportunity or let me negotiate with my manager because you know there are other opportunities that are available and are paying at a much more competitive rate.
When you do enter your open to work details just make sure you fill out this entire section of your job preferences. So, for example, I would only be open to remote work at this point in time. I would like marketing manager roles, strategic marketing manager roles, senior marketing manager roles, content marketing manager roles anything that pretty much put anything that’s related to uh what you’re interested in. People will be able to find you through this. Especially if you’re a student make sure you’re utilizing this internship feature. People as I said recruiters are looking specifically for interns sometimes and if you put that you’re an intern or are looking for only internships it makes it a lot easier for you.
You can also change your features to all LinkedIn members can see that you’re open for work versus the recruiters only can see that you’re open to work. I would say do the recruiters only just so that your management is not seeing that you’re like always open to work. Um and then it also adds this like green frame around your profile not really the biggest fan of that.
The next section that we have is the about section and this section is where you put your bio and you are basically giving any details that you want about yourself. Again, I would make sure that you are heavy on the keywords in this section.
I said, “I’m interested in strategic marketing, content creation, strategic thinking. These are things I wanted that strategic marketing manager roles. I was making sure to put as many strategic titles in my in my bio. I would also use a section to not just talk about what you do professionally but also talk about what you do personally if you want to.”
I spoke about how I am passionate about social justice and women’s empowerment and opportunities came to me that were not only just paid opportunities but also volunteer opportunities that knew I was passionate about were women’s empowerment, for example.
The next section and this is a section that’s a little bit more advanced when you do start posting a lot. This is the featured section and the featured section is essentially where you can put any things that you are very proud of, any key like important things that you think you did that you want to showcase to everyone. So these will all show on the very top of your page. So for example, I won an award at work. This would be an example of something I would add on to my page. So anytime a recruiter comes and they see oh look she won an award. She’s probably a great performer at her office. We should probably reach out to her. So this is kind of like social proof, basically like oh they have done the work they are capable and other people have rewarded them for it. So I think we should also hire them. I also took part in a confidence series so I just added that and I basically discussed what I spoke about in my confidence career confidence series.
Lastly, I want everyone to know that I did leave my role so I made sure to add that and into my feature section. But of course, do whatever works best for you. If you have a piece from your portfolio uh add that into your pro your your page. If you have a website that houses your portfolio add that into your featured section. All this is very important and key when you are speaking about yourself and trying to promote yourself in the best way and obviously show the best things you know we want to make sure it’s positive or anything that’s vulnerable that you’ve shared online. These are things that like humanize you and enhance your personal brand.
We’re going to skip over the activity section very quickly and go into the experience section. This section is something that I see so many people doing very very wrong. So your experience section is basically an overview of what you have done professionally and then there’s also a volunteer section and education section with your exp work experience section. Please fill it out and fill it out in detail. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it filled out and it’s just the title that you had and that’s about it.
Again with the LinkedIn recruiters who are searching for you, you want to make sure that your profiles are like tip-top and they are pulling into the whatever and they’re optimized to be pulled into their search engine. So use as many keywords as possible. For example, I included social media management, content creation, and different things content strategy in my bio and my description of each job because I want people to be able to find me if you’re looking for those roles.
Another mistake that I see here is that people use the job posting that they had and then they basically repost that into this section. While it’s good to show the skills or the tasks that you do at your job, what’s more effective is if you show the results of what you do. So here in this section, I could say okay I’m self-employed and I basically make videos about career finance and lifestyle. That’s good, but I also added that I have generated over 600,000 organic views in the past year and I’ve been able to reach people in dozens of countries worldwide and built a community of 17,000 people across my social media platforms. Doesn’t that sound a lot better and show that like oh people are like oh wow that’s amazing like I want to I want to meet this person I want to get to know this person I’m you know things like that.
I also include a link to something that I’m proud of or a piece of my portfolio so that it showcases what I have done in the role. Another example would be working as a marketing manager. I said that okay I led a five-month long education series for the frontline sales force. That’s good, you know that tells me exactly tells everyone exactly what I did, but then I went in with the results and I said this resulted in an increase of active users by 34%. That is a huge growth in active users and something I’m very proud of so I want to showcase that and basically show I get results, I don’t just do my job, I get results and you should hire me because I get results.
One last thing is I think a lot of people add experiences here that have nothing to do with the job they are looking for. Although it’s great to have all your as many experiences as possible, if you worked at McDonald’s in high school, you probably don’t need that if you’re working in marketing at a bank. Like they don’t really have anything to do with each other unless it’s one of your first jobs and you are an intern or something. But once you have a few pieces of experience under your belt, just drop off the ones that are no longer relevant.
Continuing on is the education section. Again in this section, you want to show all the education that you currently have and the years that you graduated and anything that you achieved during those times. So for example, I went to school in Thailand for five months, so I included that.
I completed a semester abroad at this university and here are some of the courses that I took while I was there.
I also went to York University. I went to the Schulich School of Business, so I included that while I was there. I was part of these four associations, and this is what I did while I was there. So, those are examples. It doesn’t have to go too in-depth, but you can also add like a short paragraph about the things that you learned while you were there and how they apply to the roles that you were looking to take or what you specialized in or something along those lines.
Similarly, the licenses and certification section. Any license, any certifications that you got, include them in that section. It is important. It does give you a bit of legitimacy if you’re in an industry that requires these licenses. So, why not add them here. Certifications will take you a very long time to complete. I want you to brag about them and I want you to include them in this section.
So, this is the same thing with your volunteer experience. And, the volunteer experience does not necessarily have to do with your work experience. For example, I volunteer at the Schulich School of Business, and I’m on their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion working group. And, I’m a like one of the alumni representatives. So, this has nothing to do with my job at my previous job, but it does help show that I’m passionate about diversity and inclusion. And, it also just helps to basically round out my profile and give it a little show that I’m multifaceted and it’s not just all at work, but there are also other things that are important to my personality.
The next section that I have is the skills and endorsement section. This section is where you include any and all skills that you have. I would say max out this section as much as you can. As you can see in my profile, I have a lot of skills here. But again, this is what helps me get pulled up on those recruiter search engines. So, include as much as you can here. And, another thing that you can do is take skill quizzes. So, I recently got an email saying that my skills are in high demand. I got a skill badge on my profile. These are things that basically add more legitimacy to your page. So, if you have the opportunity to add them, I do suggest adding them. And, how you do that is you just click take skill quiz and you can take a skill quiz for any of the skills that you have. Another thing you can do is endorse other people. Go on other people’s pages and endorse them for some skills. And, they are likely to endorse you back. Again, just adding a little bit of legitimacy to your profile. And, if you know the key word that a recruiter would be looking for in the industry or role you’re looking to get into, add those skills to your profile.
We’re almost done now. The next thing is accomplishments. Same thing, this is just another way to add legitimacy to your profile. I know it may seem like a lot and like I’m telling you to fill out your entire profile, but basically anytime that you can fill out your profile it really does you know bring up a few notches.
So, an example is I won two awards over the past few years at my previous company. So, I just added them. If a recruiter is looking at my page it basically again it’s a way up to legitimize you and say that okay this person knows they know what they’re doing, they’re capable and they know what they’re doing.
Another thing, if you speak another language this is perfect opportunity especially if you’re bilingual. If you’re in Canada and you’re bilingual in French and English add that you are bilingual add French here. And another thing you can actually do is add a whole other profile in front to do so. All you would do is click add section supported languages and then click add profile in another language. And in this section you basically do the same thing but in French or Spanish or Arabic, whatever language. This can help if somebody’s looking for someone who’s bilingual. This is a great way to to get noticed.
The last thing that I’m going to recommend that you do on LinkedIn is to fill out the activity section. So, it’s one thing to have your profile pulled up and finished and like it’s great and everything that is amazing. You know we like to see a fully completed profile. However, we need to go the extra mile and when I say go the extra mile I mean post content on LinkedIn. There are many ways to do this.
The first most low effort one is to engage with other people’s content. So, if someone else posts something reshare it, like the post, comment on the post. Those are simple things that you can do. That’s the first level. The second level would be to create your own post and just take an article an existing article and just re-share that article and add your own commentary. So, when kobet first started there was a lot of marketing pieces around should people use fear-based marketing or not. So, this is an example I just added my two cents and asked the questions that people would interact with me in the comments section. It got 2,000 views and basically I didn’t even write the content right I just reshared someone’s post. You can do this for things that are relevant to your industry like I just did or you can do it for things that are not so relevant like here was something I’ve a resource that I found that was 450 ivy league courses that were free during the pandemic.
So that’s another thing. Uh, it’s it has nothing to do with the industry I’m in, but it really was interesting to me and I thought I would share the resource with the others.
So let’s go on to the third and last level. The last level would be creating your post from scratch. This is important because, um, it shows your voice and your personal brand. Of course, commenting on other people’s posts shows your thought train of thought and things like that, but there’s nothing like posting your own content.
So I post my own content pretty often. Stuff about diversity inclusion, especially. That’s something that’s very important to me. I post about cool features I see. I post about any speaking engagement that I have. I post about my accomplishments at work. Like there’s so much that I post online and I want you all to take the plunge and do that yourself.
If you want a full video on how to post and what things to post, I can do that. And you can also just look at my LinkedIn and see things I posted in the past. But I would have a post that would get thirty thousand views, twenty thousand views. And think of it, that’s twenty thousand people that now know my name and when they think of me, they’re like, “Oh, Renny’s Renny is known for xyz.” As I said, I get messages from recruiters all the time and it’s simply because my profile is optimized and I’m active on social media.
For posting on LinkedIn, you don’t need to post on a daily basis and you don’t need to post fake stories like we see all the time. Like, don’t do that. But you can post things that are interesting to you. And the most important thing with all of this is for you to be authentic. Don’t try and be someone you’re not just because you want to post on LinkedIn. If posting once a month is sustainable for you, if posting once a week is sustainable for you, do that. Don’t post just to post because it can come off as inauthentic and not genuine.
So I hope this was helpful. Let me know if it was by leaving it in the comment section below. And let me know your best tips. If there’s anything I missed, I really want everyone to win. So let me please know in the comment section below. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoy it, and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye.
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