how to create your linkedin profile - solo show

full transcript

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All righty. Good morning. Good morning. Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Happy. Happy Tuesday, y'all. Got the candle going. I trim my wick, by the way. I trim my wick. Everybody's watching since I got yelled at. about my wick usage yesterday. But happy Tuesday, excited for this one. We're going to break down LinkedIn today. So if you are tuning in, please say, hey, we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to see you again. You know, I tell people this. This is just a way for you to network with others. Right. I mean, really, you know, doing these live shows, it really allows you to get connected with others.

So please say, hey, there's no way that people know if you're watching unless you comment. So. Also, let me know when you are – let me know where you're tuning in from. I always love – we had some people in, like, Africa tune in last week. So definitely let me know. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate it. Just Jason's here. I love it. Just Jason. You know what, Jason? I'll just talk to you. And we can do that. So, oh, look, look, we got Ricardo. We got Ricardo. What's going on? You did the right candle etiquette. Yeah, yeah. I almost bought another candle yesterday. I was at a shop.

Not that y'all care, but we're just yapping as people tuning in. But I almost bought another. I have... I have a major candle problem. I'm a big fall scent guy. I'm not a big let's burn candles in the summer, but man, once there's a tinge of coolness coolness in the air, fall candles come out immediately. But again, good morning, y'all. Doing these solo shows, if you are tuning in or you're coming across LinkedIn, you're like, what is this thing? Basically, I've been doing Guidance Counselor for five years now, almost six years. In back in COVID when I was, when I was heads down recruiting engineering talent day in, day out.

And, and I realized that the market was shifting, right? So a little bit about me real quick is, is I was recruiting in Nashville specifically. I was recruiting all types of engineers in Nashville. And then when COVID hit, I saw the writing on the wall that, that, that essentially the engineering industry was going to change forever. And that is going to be a more global workforce. And so I was like, hey, a lot of the conversations I'm having with local Nashville talent is pretty applicable to the globe. So I was like, I need to just start yapping um and uh so i started to do the show i got on linkedin live super early you actually had to apply to get linkedin live when it first came out so i got on it early and i really been doing it ever since and so um you know it's it it started with just me myself and i and then it kind of morphed into me interviewing people on the show Um, and then, you know, you know, some people asked me yesterday, you know, over the last hours, you're like, why are you going back to just doing you?

Um, admittedly, admittedly, I've just been so busy. I haven't done a great job of like reaching out to people to come on. Um, but it also just kind of coincides to, um, you know, one of the things that we want to do at Torque is, is really provide a catalog of content. You could say, to really allow you to navigate the job search easier and more effectively. And so I'm really just going to take this time over the next two months before my baby gets here. Baby number three is going to get here at the end of December. So super pumped about that.

um so you know my goal is is really from now until baby gets here is to do a lot more um solo shows and really just walk through the job search right um you know i did a quick call with the director of engineering yesterday and and we kind of went over some stuff and he was like man like this type of stuff like you know what nobody talks about and so that was again really a reinforcement to me personally to keep doing these lives just myself right now and really walk through the job search so hopefully by the time christmas gets here my third

third kid gets here um you we will have developed a catalog and we're going to host this stuff on the platform the tort platform once it's live which should be very soon but my goal is is for you to be able to watch these videos and be able to navigate the job search um uh on your own with these videos and so that's kind of the reason why i'm doing these solo shows but again keep continuing to let me know if you're tuning in um would love to see y'all we do got some people here mark it's good to see you i love it ryan

it's good to see you sally toron it's great to see your brother danny it's good to see you and just always wonderful to see you man um so all right well let's go ahead and get started um and and i'm talking about linkedin's today right so um let me let me pull up i need to find Need to find.

So I actually helped this guy specifically write his LinkedIn. And I want to go ahead and share it with you all this morning. Let's go ahead and dive in on how you write a good LinkedIn. Also, Lawrence, it's good to see you, brother. So again, if you have any questions, please ask them in the chat. I will get to them again. Please keep saying, hey, we'd love to hear from you. Let me pull up. clint all right so let's see here so y'all can see this i'm gonna work on oh no hold on there we go i like this this is better i like this all right now can you see that that's really small here we go hold on right so can y'all can y'all see that uh let's go in a little bit more oh okay all right all right so clint is up here right all right so uh linkedin lags so far behind the twitter stream yeah yeah yeah it's it's it's really bad i feel like linkedin's kind of gotten worse anybody from linkedin product streaming with that watches us now in the future please fix your streaming fix your streaming please um because i honestly love streaming on linkedin but dad gum i keep hearing complaints about it all right so uh let's let's go over clint so uh i worked with clint specifically um clint does not know i'm sharing this um but clint's a great guy so if you're in the data space highly recommend reaching out to clint he's great he's probably gonna get a flood of dms and be like uh uh, why are people reaching out to me?

Um, so if you want to reach out to Clint, um, tell him I sent you, he is a great, great dude. Uh, can we do Tago on the solo? Sure. Sure. Emory. What do you do? Do whatever your heart desires, man. And because of baby three, you're going to get a torque onesie. Uh, sure. Yeah. We, we, we need a torque onesie. That'd be great. That'd be great. I'll, I'll get Brianna on that. Um, all right. So let's talk about, let's talk about this banner section thing, right? I think it's fascinating that LinkedIn, uh, Allows you to customize a banner up here at the very top of your LinkedIn.

I think it's a very interesting tactic, right? And so for me, one of the things that I would say is I would really use this as a way to draw people in to who you are. I would actually use this as a way to tie in your personal and professional together. I told Clint this. Clint got a job after we did the LinkedIn review. I don't know if he specifically got the job because of the banner. I do know that I've had somebody in my past. I did his LinkedIn years ago and he reached out to me and he was like, you know we we were doing our session together and and i was like well man tell me about yourself he's like well i he goes i'm an audio engineer he goes i recently did he goes i recently did a a concert for backstreet boys like i did like the audio engineer for backstreet boys i was like man like that's that's really cool i said you should put that at the banner at the top of your linkedin profile and he goes really i said yeah because you have to understand something like In the sea of the AI world we're in, and I talked about resumes yesterday on my live stream, so go check out on the Torque YouTube.

I went over how to write a resume. But what I talked about is adding a hobby section on your resume now. I used to be against it, but now in the sea of AI resumes and just a slop that's out there, allowing people to connect with you on a more personal level and making you look more human I think is incredibly important and will continue to be so moving forward. And so I really think... that using the banner portion of your LinkedIn, the top portion of your LinkedIn, and allow to pull in some of your professional life into your personal life and your professional life is huge, right?

So Clint loves the outdoors. Clint has invited me to hike a few times. I am not an outdoorsman. Like I told Clint, Clint, I love you as a person. You will never find me outside hiking. So but Clint loves the outdoors. He loves the outdoors. Right. So what Clint did is he goes, you know, he's a data outdoor enthusiast. Right. One thing I would edit probably on Clint's profile. I don't know why. Clint, I love you. If you ever watch this, I don't know why Clint put the LinkedIn link of his LinkedIn, because if you're on LinkedIn. like you don't need the link to linkedin but like what i would put here is is you know data outdoor enthusiast um passionate about uh building blah blah blah blah right i i would get rid of this linkedin link but again like you know if so if i hit so if i'm an outdoor enthusiast like clint is and i'm a recruiter or a hiring manager um uh you know i'm immediately going to want to talk to clint uh about his outdoor you know, adventures.

Right. Uh, I think it's a great way to draw people in. Right. So whether you're like a former, uh, like, like a former chef, um, whether you're a, you're, you're passionate about cooking or like, for me, it's like, you know, honestly, if, if I was on the job search again, I'd probably make it something around. Um, uh, I'd probably make it something around, uh, like, you know, college football or South Carolina football or ice hockey or, uh, being a dad and being a husband, right? Or owning a miniature donkey, right? Again, drawing somebody into your profile is incredibly important. So that's what I would do on the banner.

So I know there is a lag. So let me know if you have any questions and I'm gonna move on. So the next thing I wanna go over is your profile picture, right? I think you have to understand something. Everything you put out online, everything that you post, every profile you have online is a potential data point for an employer, right? So if your profile picture is like a MySpace picture, it's probably not going to come across well, right? We don't need any bathroom selfies, right? We don't need an artistic moody picture with a bunch of gradient or editing, right? Like don't overcomplicate it. I think, and this kind of went back to my resume conversation yesterday, too many people get too fancy when it comes to resume writing and LinkedIn writing.

Again, it needs to be very simple, very straightforward, right? Like the job search is not the time, unless you're in design or creative, is not a time for you to get fancy, right? So I like Clint's profile picture. He looks happy. He's smiling. He has a professional shirt on. Great profile picture. I know who he is. I think also making sure you're not catfishing employees, right? There's no need to put a profile pic from something. Fifteen years ago, right? Because what's going to happen is the last thing you want is like put up a profile picture from fifteen years ago and then somebody gets on a Zoom call with you and you're like, this isn't the right person, right?

It just comes across as a little weird. So make sure your profile picture is updated, accurate. I think, you know, if you want to stand out, you know, maybe have a colorful shirt on with a plain background or maybe an interesting background with a plain shirt. My wife's in photography. Natural lighting is huge, right? Make sure, again, I don't want to harp on this too much longer, but just make sure your profile picture is you. You look happy. You look presentable. Because again, if I've never spoken with Clint before, My initial impression with Clint is, oh, he looks like a nice guy, right? So again, very, very important.

Next thing, moving on, right? I really want to take time to focus on this right here, right? So the words under... I'm trying to think for the people who listen to this from a podcast form perspective. The words under your name on the LinkedIn, right? I call it the title portion of your LinkedIn. I don't think there's any specific actual... like a technical term for this. I call it the title portion. This is, again, the words that go under your name. This is incredibly important. The reason for that is when recruiters search for skills, the thing that pops up on the search are these words, right?

So like, for example, let's say I'm trying to find a .NET developer in Nashville, right? So I'm going to go to LinkedIn. I'm going to type in .NET developer. I'm going to go to people. um and then i'm going to go to locations and i'm going to go to nashville and again one of the lives i'm going to do here soon is really how you navigate why why isn't this working okay that's not okay all right so let's just go let's just let's just do this right so if i search a dot net developer right the title portion of your resume are these words right here right so spencer cto ai architect.net developer microsoft mvp i love that right carlos it just has a.net developer right for carlos i'd love to see senior.net developer with angular and aws right or same thing with bill way right here right.net developer with something you need to you need to put the main skills you have and or are targeting at the top, right?

I like Tulasi's post here, .NET full-stack developer, C-sharp, ASP.core, MVC web API, .NET Angular, I'd probably even shorten this up. There's no need to, I'd probably just put .NET developer and then put these, because this shows me you're a full-stack developer. I think saying .NET full-stack developer and these skills are a little redundant, right? So again, like Naga right here, he just has full-stack developer. right i would love for you to be able to expound on this a little bit more recruiters aren't going to search through forty pages of search content they're just not and so for me if you can put the keywords that you're skilled with or want to be called for um you are uh they're they're going for all the keyword searches yeah yeah no i hundred percent all i'm saying is just get rid of the full stack just keep all the technical terms right and so for me i think it's incredibly like senior.net developer at london stock exchange right like i don't i don't really necessarily care for like with kirti I can find out she's at London Stock Exchange when I click on her profile.

I would want to know Kirti's main skills as a .NET developer up here, if that makes sense. Again, incredibly important part that nobody really talks about because again, like you need to be able to get caught up because again, if I search .NET developer here, right? Let's say I'm doing a global search. There's a hundred pages of LinkedIn content. or a hundred pages of linkedin profiles recruiters and hiring managers do not have time to sift through all these pages so what we're going to do is we're just going to look at your name and we're going to look at the title portion and we're going to look at your location right so again incredibly important there all right Let's go back.

Any questions, please ask. So like right here, right? So Clint data, right? So, so if I'm searching him, he's got data architecture, ETL modeling, BI analytics, governance, AI data readiness. I think all of those are very, very impactful things. um parts of data that he wants to get called for for jobs right which is incredibly important tomas it's good to see you brother good to see you this morning all right so moving on again if you have any questions please ask we're trying to move through this as quick and efficiently as we can so let's talk about the about section right i think the about section I think there's two ways to view the about section, right?

I will say this. You are not going to lose out on a job because of your about section. But I do think going back to what Lawrence is saying, you want your LinkedIn to have a lot of keywords in your profile because that is what gets caught in the LinkedIn search algorithm, which bubbles you to the top of the search when I do a search like .NET developer, right? So now another thing to think about is, A lot of people never click see more, right? So what I would do is I would play with the sentences that are visible until you click the see more, right?

So for Clint, he goes, I'm an experienced executive and data leader with a proven track record transforming data into business value. Right. One of the things I would say is I still would like to see without pressing see more the technical skills that he has under his belt. Right. So what I would say for Clint is I'm an experienced executive and data leader with a proven track record of transforming data into business value using technologies like X, Y and Z. Right. Incredibly, incredibly important. And then and then right here. So then we click see more. I do like what he has here. Right. So he highlights his data experience.

He highlights his systems integrations experience and he highlights his global scale infrastructure experience. i think that is an incredibly and that is a great way to br and his leadership experience right so i think he hit his four pillars here right he he is a leader he's deep in data he's deep in systems and he's deep with global scalable infrastructure and he highlighted those four key pillars in the about section right so with me my four key pillars would be recruiting community building content creation and marketing and brand awareness right and so that's what i would put so if you're a java developer who specializes in back-end systems cloud systems and maybe some embedded that's that's where you put that on there right so you outline your embedded you outline your cloud experience you outline your job experience or if you're a front end developer, right?

You outline your front end experience, right? Breaking down maybe your React experience or your Angular experience or your design experience, right? I love the way Clint broke down his four key pillars in the about section. Now, will I click on the see more? Probably not. right but what he put in the about section is all of the technical jargon that is going to get caught up in the keyword search when recruiters are running searches in linkedin which is incredibly important we got some more people tuning in kelly it's good to see you alex good to see you so let me know if you have any questions there again the about section not going to make or break you i think again going back i think the title portion of your resume is the most important part that no one talks about but the about section is good as well especially to get caught up in uh the keyword searches all right let's go into activity listen i think posting again we're going to talk about i'm going to do a session on posting Um, and curious what's visible above Seymour.

Yeah. So to answer Lawrence's question. So if we refresh this page here. So this is the only thing that I see with see more, right? So what I would like to see from Clint is a little bit more technical jargon or even just breaking down as four pillars in the about section. I think that's incredibly important. So let me know if that answers your question, Lawrence. All right. So moving into activity section, I'm going to have an entire session dedicated to um to uh i have an entire session dedicated to posting i'm not going to get into posting on linkedin but i will say this being able to see people's posts is incredibly important or what they engaged with especially if you're trying to dm them and uh engage with them right so if you're trying to get to clint's dms right and again this is going to go on another show i'm going to do But you see that Clint reposted about this post right here.

You could message Clint and be like, hey, Clint, I saw you reposted this post about this. I find it super interesting. Would love to chat about this if you have a few minutes, right? Use this as a way to network with people. I think it's incredibly important. um and does what is shown it may change based on device but i think going back to lawrence the lie the about me that top part before the c more has to be perfect and value impacting i totally agree with that incredibly incredibly important Um, all right, let's go to your experience portion. All right. So here's, there's some, there's some differencing of opinions on how you write a LinkedIn, right?

Um, some, some, some of my, uh, opinions on writing a LinkedIn is I think a LinkedIn should be a summary of your resume. It should, it should include, it should include like the really like key moments right almost like an almost like an expounded cover letter i do see the argument of like well why don't i just put everything right i see both i think for me i think very rarely am i clicking through somebody's linkedin to really uh to to really like i'm looking at their resume if that makes sense like i'm not The purpose of a LinkedIn, you're not going to get hired off of a LinkedIn, right?

So the purpose of the LinkedIn is to give enough to where the person goes, this person's got enough of what I need. I'm going to message Clint for his resume, right? So again, I do like the way Clint has written his LinkedIn. He has overall his goal of what his role was at Snapped as a director of technology. he includes three main bullet points of what he did and then the tech again he listed technologies used right again i talked about this in the resume review yesterday incredibly important to include as many technical skills as you can in your resume and your linkedin having a technologies used bullet points incredibly important i don't know if these bullet points.

So, or, or if these, so for the people who listen to this in the future, there's a part of your LinkedIn where you can like select skills to add to your profile. I don't know if those are searchable. I do know that the actual words you put in your profile are searchable. So that is something to keep in mind. If Clint, just like, for example, Clint put, you know, these, you know, data engineering, business intelligence under these like pre-automated skills that you could pick i don't know if those are searchable only the things that he posts are searchable right so uh again going down here with american addiction centers right you know a few bullet points outlining what he did again technology is used incredibly important to get caught up Again, the purpose of the LinkedIn, in my opinion, is to put enough content on here to where I go, oh, I like Clint's background.

I'm going to message him to get his resume right now. If you are more junior in your career, as always with your resume and your LinkedIn, I would have as much as you feasibly can on your LinkedIn and your resume. If you are zero years to about three years of experience, you need to put as much content on your resume and on your LinkedIn as you feasibly can. If you are a director level, VP level like Clint, there's no need to expound on everything that you did at every job. Three to five bullet points with each LinkedIn I think makes a lot of sense. Make sure you include the technical skills to get caught up in the search engine.

And that is how I would write the body of your LinkedIn, all right? um good morning linkedin user um all right so uh let me know if you have any questions there we're gonna continue on here um education important licenses certification is important as well um and then i mean all this stuff is fine but it's not important to me right like i would say like if you have licenses or certifications that should probably be in the about section or in the title section right like this is this this area and again this is just me this is just me But basically anything under your work experience aside from recommendations is kind of falls on deaf ears for me, right?

So like, I don't really look at licenses and certifications. I don't necessarily look at volunteering. Again, I would maybe put a hobbies or volunteering section on your resume because again, that's where the conversation happens. Skills, that's fine. I do have to say, I think recommendations are important. Now for me, For me, recommendations are not a make it or break it. However, again, I'm thinking of it from a recruiter perspective, right? If I don't, if I didn't know Clint, right? If I didn't know Clint and I was looking through his LinkedIn, I was like, man, Clint's pretty good. And then I go to, I go to his recommendations and see like Clint's got recommendations from a senior director of IT, a cybersecurity, and he's got ten recommendations.

I'd be like, all right. I think Clint's pretty good, right? And again, you're probably like, well, Taylor, that's dumb. I can ask anybody for recommendations, I know. But the thing is, is again, like I talk about this all the time, with your resume and your LinkedIn, narratives are created in seconds for the reader reading your profiles, right? So for me, yes, Clint could be a terrible person. He's not, he's not, he's a great dude. He could be a terrible person. But the fact of the matter is, if I'm seeing his LinkedIn profile and he has over ten recommendations he's received, in my mind, that immediately signals to, ah, Clint must be a pretty good guy and pretty technical to allow people to write ten recommendations for him.

I always talk about recommendations are like going to a restaurant, right? When you go to a new restaurant, where do you go when you're looking to see if they're good? I go to Google reviews. I just booked a hotel in Atlanta next week for our Torque All Hands. What did I do on this hotel? I literally went to the reviews just to see what people are saying about it. And I booked the hotel because the reviews were good, right? So again, it's not a make it or break it, but again, it's helping craft that narrative in the person's brain who's reading your profile. Also, it's very easy to ask for a recommendation, right?

So we're gonna go to my profile. If you go down here, If you go to recommendations and you go to ask for it, you click the plus button and you do ask for a recommendation. I know Lawrence is on the call right now, so I'm going to go to Lawrence, right? I'm going to go to Lawrence Lockhart, right? And then I'm going to continue. You select your relationship. I'm just selecting whatever, selecting whatever. And then you can tell the person what to write about. So for me, right, if Lawrence and I were working together, I'd probably message him like, hey, Lawrence, can you talk about my leadership skills?

And just, you know, how I run the team, right? Or something like that. And again, what you do is when you send this, it pops up into the person's DMs and LinkedIn, they click on it, they open it up and they can fill it out. Okay. Any questions as we wrap up here? Any questions? All right. So again, again, to recap, okay. I think the banner portion is incredibly important and invites people and gets to add some personality to a LinkedIn profile, which let's face it, doesn't have a lot of personality. The title portion, the words under your name, you need to, you need to, this is like your SEO.

I would say you need to be able, you need to finagle this, see what works, see what doesn't. mess with that a little bit make sure you have the skills you either want to obtain or have for the for your next job the about section incredibly important make sure your first few sentences before you select see more highly impact for it highly impactful that make the person want to click into your the rest of your about section make sure keywords are there to get caught up in the keyword search Um, when it comes to writing your experience, if you're more senior in your career, you can give a little bit more of a high level three to five bullet points of your main accomplishments.

Make sure that you list technologies used again to get caught up in the search results. Um, again, for me, licensed certifications, volunteering skills, not a huge thing. I'm just going to blow past this if I'm a recruiter. I'm going to go directly to recommendations and see how much you have. That's going to allow me to create a narrative in my mind of who you are. So all that being said, let's see here. Okay. All right. I'm wrapping up here. So ask questions. How do you feel about adding recommendations ourselves from company internal feedback? I don't know how you do that. Is that, can you even do that?

I don't think you can even do that. Let me see. You cannot do that, Jeff. There's no way for you to manually add something yourself. So again, I would encourage you to get that person, just send them a recommendation and be like, hey, I know you said this internally. Can you just throw it up in a LinkedIn recommendation real quick? It does not look like you can manually add recommendations yourself. Do LinkedIn recommendations from fifteen years ago still hold water?

David, I will tell you, if it's the only recommendation you have, probably not if you have multiple recommendations and it dates back to fifteen years that's probably better but let me ask you this if you were to go to a restaurant and the only review that was there from a review fifteen years ago is are you gonna want to eat there probably not right and so again do recommendations make or break your linkedin profile no no it does not but it just helps it just helps uh oh good i didn't miss anything love you too jason all right cool awesome any last questions before i

wrap up again uh yesterday's live stream was uh how to write a resume it's on the torque youtube go check it out today we're doing linkedin this is the last stream uh that i have this week um and then next week we're going to continue on with the curriculum uh next week we're probably going to start looking at outreach on how to use linkedin effectively to network um and dm people does it make sense to say intermediate software developer section under our name or does it make sense but the skill level to put senior that section i'm fine with intermediate software developer but i would

even i would even focus demetrius on uh intermediate.net engineer or i would but also intermediate's very vague right so what i would put is your years of experience like three plus year and i would use the word dot net developer or java developer or whatever your skill is intermediate software developer i don't know what that is is it you java python front end back like what do you do right so for me i think it's incredibly important to specifically specifically say I'm a three-year.net developer with angular C sharp Microsoft SQL server that is what I would do um all right let's see here gotta work

on some recommendations yep um let's see here enemy adds nothing just say I would say not even software engineer just give me like three plus years of.net with MVC vs code whatever right uh i missed the first half no i did not review uh i i i did not review any resumes i went over my friend clint's linkedin who i helped write that i think is really really good um and luca yes i gotta bounce on the call i have a call right now uh with uh two people on my team team lou um so all right any last questions as as i wrap up

here any last questions on LinkedIn.

I know there's a lag. Again, this is the last live for this week. If you want to go check out my resume review, it's on the Torque YouTube. Go check that out. Then we will have this on the Torque YouTube as well for you to go back and reference. Cool. All right. No questions are coming in. Thank you guys for hanging out with me today. Appreciate it. Hopefully this helps. If you want to share this with somebody in your network, obviously would love the reshare. But again, y'all have a great week and we'll see y'all back next week. Y'all have a good one. Peace.