navigating linkedin w/ me :)

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to guidance counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had guidance counselors in middle school. We had guidance counselors in high school, but we didn't really have guidance counselors in college and now as professionals. We don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it for it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vacovac.com is how to get and touch me old fashioned email social media at tdsintdesse. And then finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. I hope you enjoy the episode. Today we're going to go over LinkedIn. How to write a LinkedIn. If anybody wants their LinkedIn critiqued, if anybody wants their LinkedIn critiqued, please throw your link to your LinkedIn over the chat and we'll do it live. Again, I'm going to roast your LinkedIn live.

But if you want your LinkedIn to be critiqued, I would like to do that for you today. Also to if you have something to celebrate, new job, new title, a raise, or if you want to give a shot somebody else, please do that now. Again, I think too many times in this industry or too many times as humans, I was talking to somebody the other day. It's like, oh, I was talking to, yeah, I was talking about buddies the other day who scaled his small business and he was like, I just don't he said, we don't celebrate. We don't celebrate. We just kind of were always on to the next thing.

So I want to take this time. If you want to give a shot to yourself or somebody else in your organization, please do that. I love to give them some love. Also too, if you're just doing this the first time again, guidance counselor 2.0, this is a way for me to give back to the dev community. This started in COVID in March 2020 and I was talking to so many engineers and I was like, there's got to be a better way to scale these conversations. So I started to go live every day two years later and over 100 or so 200 guests. This thing is basically turned into a place where you can come and hang out with hiring managers and job seekers alike.

So all that being said, Christina, congratulations. Celebrate and I close a training contract. That's awesome girl. Proud of you. And then also if anybody's looking for an awesome junior dev, Emmett is looking, he's fantastic. He's also kind of my twin. So hit up Emmett. You will not be disappointed whatsoever. Let's see here. What else? Oh, also to network with others. The reason why I tell people to say, hey, to comment, to engage is to bring visibility to yourself because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, we need to be to network and networking is just having something in common. And that's what I'm going to go over on LinkedIn here very soon.

So I do want to go ahead and dive in today. So we did get Matthew. Matthew, you are. Let's see here. All right. So I do realize my keyboard is down. So hold on real quick. Y'all bear with me here. Y'all bear with me. Y'all bear with me. I have some technical issues today. I haven't done just a me show for a bit. So hold on real quick. We're going to move some things and we're going to get to Matthew. Let's see here. Matthew's sabbath. Here we go. Matthew sabbath. See here. Pull it up. Pull it up. My internet slow. Why is my internet slow?

So we'll do Matthew this morning. We'll do Matthew this morning. All right. Here we go. So I'm going to go and share my screen. We'll do Matthew. So I see a few of y'all chiming this. We're going to do Matthew today. And then I'm going to get back to doing these on my solo show. So I'm going to do one a day. So I'm going to do Matthew today. And then I'm going to do the rest of y'all's end up coming days. So y'all make sure you chime in and throw your link up again. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Here we go.

Share screen. All righty. Let's see here. Share. All right. Never mind. We haven't done this in a bit. We haven't. We are just a dumpster fire today. Basically, Chrome has lost his permission. And I got to go in and do permissions. All right. So no one. So Matthew, I'm going to walk through your profile with my, I'm not going to share the screen because I can't share the screen. And so let's do this. First and foremost, so vault systems. So Matthew, the top of your profile banner, it doesn't really tell me anything about you. The banner photo is incredibly important when it comes to telling about yourself.

So the vault system, what is vault? I would put something up there to describe yourself. Your profile picture is great. Your, your title portion, people leader, technology leader, VPE, Disney dad, retro gamer, Lego. You know, here's the deal, man. Like I don't hate it. I don't hate it at all. But the thing is though is I just don't know what you do. Right. So, so we need to talk about that. The about section, I'm going to be honest with you, Matthew, there's a lot of words in the about sections. Let's, let's maybe stream it down to about three bullet points because you got to remember y'all, people like glance at your profile.

And they want to get the most part information to move on. Your LinkedIn profile does not need to be a book. It does not need to be a book. Short to the point, very applicable bullet points. All right, here we go. Here we go. So Matthew, so I'm going to be honest with you. I did not know your VP of software architecture and development based off the top of your profile. Right. So that's what we're trying to get to. Right. So what I would do in the title portion is instead of putting the people leader, technology leader, I'm fine with that, but I would also put VP of software architecture focused on Azure and .NET.

Right. So again, very important there. But I do like the way your actual body of your, of your LinkedIn is written, your technologies are at the top. I know exactly the tech you're working on. And then obviously your bullet points. To be honest with you, Matthew, you could probably, you could probably stream streamline all those bullet points. It's a little long. Again, I just want to know the technology and the main project or two that you've been working on. But the rest of it's really, really good. I like it. Obviously you got some recommendations, which is fantastic. So Matthew, aside just from the top of your profile, it's great.

It's really, really good. All right. So let's see here. I want to give a shout out to some people as well. John, it's great to see you. Christina, always great to see you. Emmett's great to see you. Julia, thank you for the update. Matthew again, thank you so much. Tyron, it's great to see you as well. Let's see here. My LinkedIn's a dumpster fire. That is really funny. Chris, good morning, good morning, good morning. Milo, it's great to see you. Let's see here. John goes, I just signed for a new job yesterday. Done all through LinkedIn. And in turn, I'll recruit a reach out to me for a position.

I interviewed, did not get it. I was choice one B. But because we stayed in contact via LinkedIn about a week later, he called for a different role in another team since I was highly recommended from the first team was one interview and sign lesson 24 hours list. And I want to give props to John. John, this is fantastic. And you took what I preach all the time. First off, be kind after you get rejected. You never know what's gonna happen. Also to John did the thing that I talk about it. It's staying in touch with people. I think it's incredibly important to make sure that you cultivate that relationship.

Very, very important. And then look at that. 24 hours got the offer. That's how you do it. Kylie, it's great to see you. All right, so I can't share my screen because of permissions and it's gonna take too long for me to do it live. So we're gonna pivot a little bit. So I'm still gonna talk about LinkedIn here. And I'm gonna kind of go off of what I talked with Matthew too with his profile. So again, the hitting the high points for the LinkedIn, is the banner photo. The banner photo is the profile picture at the very, very top. That is incredibly important. Why is it incredibly important?

Because it draws people into your profile. Matthew, if you go to Matthew's profile, he just has vault systems at the top. Like I don't know what that is. That doesn't cause me to go, oh wow, tell me more, right? How do I to resume? How do I to link? How do I to LinkedIn? I've talked about this in the past. When you write a sentence, when you write a sentence in your LinkedIn, in your resume, and you tell yourself, oh wow, does that tell me more? Like if someone's gonna read this, are they gonna say, wow, tell me more? Right, that is how you need to write your LinkedIn.

That is how you need to write your resume. Basically writing things that are very important and very interesting. And if that doesn't make you say, wow, tell me more, then you need to write better. So that's incredibly important. Andre, it's great to see you, man. So I do wanna, so the banner photo, incredibly important, that needs to draw your attention. And if you go to my profile, it says like, what I say, I said, follow for advice for hiring managers and candidates that work or something like that. You know exactly what you're getting into when you follow me. And here's the deal, Matthew. Right, again, I reviewed Matthew's profile.

Matthew, I understand your engineering leader, right? I'm not saying you necessarily have to put this in. But here's the deal. If you want people attracted to your profile and read your profile, honestly, I'd probably put at the top, using Canvas, what I use. I'd probably say like technology leader, people leader, passionate about Azure and whatever at Volt Systems, right? Again, like draw the people in your profile. So the next thing I wanna go over to is the title portion of your profile, right? The title is the words under your name. That is like the TLDR. Too long didn't read of your LinkedIn profile. Recruiters like honed on that, right?

When we search and I wish I could share my screen, I should have prepped for this better, but this morning was a little crazy. But basically, when recruiters go, when recruiters plug in a search string and LinkedIn, they go line by line for your title and what does it say? So your title needs to say either what you currently do or what you want to do, right? So that's important. The third most important thing as well is to make sure you have a featured section. So again, the featured section just tells, like it directs people to something else, right? Whether it's a GitHub, whether it's a portfolio, whether it's a side project, whether it's whatever, a featured section's incredibly important.

I wanna give another tip on LinkedIn as well. If you have gone to any software school, any college, any university, or if you are a part of any large groups, you need to start networking there, right? I preach all the time about networking with strangers, slide into the DMs, network with strangers, go be fearless. I talk about that all the time, but I've really started to be a little introspective recently about when it comes to finding a job you're most likely, most likely gonna find the job from people in your circle, right? So for example, for me, story time, when I moved to Nashville, I was serving tables, I was losing money, I was at my wits, and I, so what I did, there was a group of us from my hometown that all moved up to Nashville together.

We all kinda hung out in the same circles, and I asked everybody, I was like, hey, who do you know, right? There was this one girl who manied for my first boss, and I was like, man, like if this person can afford a nanny, I wanna do what they do, right? And so we did that in the sense of I asked that girl, hey, can I meet this person? What does this person do? And I got the job at Vaco because of it, right? And so I wanna encourage you, a lot of times, I always preach about going to network or strangers. If you've been a part of a club, if you've been a part of a university, if you've been a part of a boot camp, if you're a part of a professionally networking event, start there, right?

Go to LinkedIn, go into the search bar, type in the organization that you most likely are part of, or you know, can resonate with, and start networking with people in those organizations. Again, networking, networking 101, networking, is just having one theme in common, one thing, theme, thing, same thing, right? Having one thing in common, that's what you need to focus on, right? So when I go to a LinkedIn page, if I were you, if I were the job seeker, I would go to everybody's LinkedIn page and try to find something other LinkedIn page that resonates with you, right? So if you go to my LinkedIn page, you go down to my interest, I have Guy Ross and Gary Vaynerchuk.

Guy Ross is a podcast host, and obviously everyone knows who Gary Vaynerchuk is, right? If you messaged me about any of those people on my LinkedIn profile, I would message you back immediately. Hey Taylor, do you see the latest episode from Guy Ross, how I built this on X? Hey, did you see that Gary Vaynerchuk, right? That is gonna make me messaged you. That is incredibly important, right? So there's two ways to really do a DM. That's the first way, just to say, hey Taylor, I saw your big fan at Gary Vaynerchuk, I am to what are your thoughts when he did this, right? That's the one way to DM somebody.

If there's nothing in common, the second way that I always preach for DMing is admiration, a specific amount of time to ask the person to meet and then a specific question, right? So admiration and flattery, hey Taylor, I love what you're doing in the community with content. Can I talk to you for six minutes about this question? Because the thing is, people wanna know what they're getting themselves in. So listen, we're all busy, COVID, we're all overworked, right? We don't have time to do anything. So if you let the individual know how much time they're getting themselves into, that allows them to be more comfortable.

So if you say six minutes, if you say nine minutes, that's in current point. I don't know if you'll caught the episode with Connor Bush on Monday, Monday, Tuesday. He got a job at Netflix. He wasn't looking, he DMed a higher manager at Netflix about his team because it align with what he was doing to ever know. And the higher manager, was down to talk, they talked for 30 minutes and then literally, literally, he got the job at Netflix because of that, right? And kind of like John, kind of like John, he was second choice, but they loved him enough that he got the job in another department.

So again, it pays to be kind, even if you get rejected, you're still probably gonna be considered in one way, shape or form down the road. We got a few more people tuning in, again, Andre Tre, Collie, thanks for the daps. John, right here, now working got me my first and second jobs in tech. I love that, again, right? I think there, I talked to so many people who are so tired, who are so tired of the applications, the easy apply, the easy apply to be quite frank. If I was on a job and I was easy applying, like I would feel so out of control and not connected to the job search, right?

Try to meet people, try to hang out with people, try to talk with people, people love to talk, they just do. Part of the reasons why I have this show is I just love to run my mouth every morning to y'all, right? So people love to inherently talk and run their mouths. And so that's where you need to take advantage of that. Slide to someone who's DM, ask them questions about stuff. Don't ask how you can get, if you can get anything from them, just ask about them and get off the call and move on. What do you think of providing cowling links? So what are my buddies?

I'm in a podcast with unicorn finders called Dan Thompson. Dan said he felt it was a little weird as a job secret to go, hey, I want to talk to you. Here's my cowlingly. I think that's a little weird too. What I would do is this, is if I was a job secret trying to network, like for example, for me, I would give them the option. Be like, hey, Taylor would love to chat with you for six minutes. Great, that sounds great. Would love to do that. I would mess with you back and be like, do you have a cowlingly? I can do 10 10 AM tomorrow.

Like give them a time, give them a time. Or just say, do you prefer just to use cowlingly? Cause I know I do and just send it to them. What I would not do is I would not just send somebody a DM with the cowlingly. Cause that's just a little ridiculous. I'll only send a cowling when they get back to you, but give them an option of a specific time, because it still can come across as little sleazy. I actually do think that, especially from a cold outreach perspective. James Good morning, he comes in and goes also recently is, it also helps to add a question that's harder to answer.

Example, do you have versus are you opposed to hard to say, I am opposed? Yeah, I mean, listen, I think it's all crafting questions, right? Do you have versus are you opposed to? I like that. You know, yeah, if somebody has to be like, are you opposed to catching up? No, I'm not opposed to catching up. Let's do it. But instead of going, do you have time? Some people may not have time. So actually James, I do like this. This is very good. I appreciate you sharing that little tidbit of information. Samantha, good morning. And again, for those of you who are sharing your LinkedIn profile, my screen shares off, I gotta get it fixed.

Because I'm gonna give more practical advice over the next few weeks, more one on one sessions to get back to the basics. Also, too, again, just a quick back to the basics thing. I want to talk about highly. Your resume was in bullet points, great formatting. We'll go over how to write a resume, but again, I can't tell you, please use bullet points, no long paragraphs. Make sure the spacing's correctly. Make sure there's consistent font. Don't overly bold stuff. So that's my trick there. When it comes to having your resume online, I still think it's important to have your resume on indeed, on dice.com. If you don't know dice.com is a tech only platform.

I still think it's important there. Have your LinkedIn up to date. And yeah, so I'm gonna be honest with y'all. That's it today. Short and simple to the point. I don't want these solo shows that go super, super long. So again, LinkedIn, big keys here. Use it, network on it, DM people. And also make sure that you are starting with your community first, get a part of a community, start there, and then move on. So, well y'all, that's it today. That's all I have. Again, kind of short, it's kind of short, short and I want it to be, because it's my screen shares off, but I still want to give some pertinent information.

Start with your inner circle. Start on LinkedIn. Network, DM, have conversations, six, seven minutes, not super long. And just slowly start to build relationships, but start early, right? You'll never know when you're gonna be without a job. So you always need to start networking. Oh, hold on real quick. I do want to say this too, since we're on the networking kick right now. Before I wrap up, listen, I want to say this. I want to say this. Network with people internally at your organization immediately. Say it again. Network with your people within your organization as soon as you can. And here is why. I could not have gotten to where I'm at my career if I did it network and try to make friends with other people in my organization, right?

You need to do the same thing too, because I'll tell you this. Let's face it, start-ups fail, big companies fail. You got Peloton Lane people off, right? All these big companies lane people off. People like to go work with people they like. And if you are networking with other people within your organization constantly, and that person leaves, they're probably gonna take you with them, right? They're probably gonna take you with them. And so incredibly important to keep that in mind because a lot of y'all network when you're on the job search and then you get started in your job and you wear blinders. And you don't network, and that work with anybody in your organization.

And then you get laid off and then you're stuck, right? Because you didn't network with anybody. So please network. Dev, good morning, it's great to see you. How much should we post on LinkedIn? Listen, I think once a day is a great start. Once a day, document what you're learning. It's not hard. Did you learn something with React today? Post about it. Ask for thoughts and comments and concerns, right? But I would put one piece of content out on LinkedIn a day. I put four pieces. I'm not saying everyone needs to do that because this is my full-time job. At least once a day give thoughts, document, maybe even repost somebody and give them props.

But again, put yourself out there from that perspective. I love that and Simon, it's great to see you. All right, y'all, that was it today. Happy Friday, a little bit of an odd episode today. Hope you got something out of it. If you feel like you got something out of it, please share this episode to your LinkedIn page so someone else can find it. Go connect with me on Twitter. Join my texting community 615-235-5650. Network with somebody today. Slide to someone's DM's, be fearless. Go be fearless this weekend. And I'll see y'all Monday. We have a whole slew of guests next week. So very excited for guidance counts for 2.0 next week.

Y'all have a good one. Take it easy. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. Because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it. Please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again.

If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at T-Dasting on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.