5 ways to build your career strategy on LinkedIn

As an executive coach and career strategist, I strongly recommend that professionals experiment with the formats that are unique to LinkedIn’s platform.

By Jennifer Lewi

Any successful career strategy involves taking intentional steps now to create a more meaningful future. As an executive coach and career strategist, I encourage my clients to embrace LinkedIn when looking to change jobs, build thought leadership, and grow their personal brands. With more than 900 million members worldwide, LinkedIn is perhaps the most powerful professional networking and recruiting platform available to job seekers.

The primary way to stand out on LinkedIn is not to try to game the algorithm, because it changes. In fact, LinkedIn recently changed its algorithm to focus on knowledge sharing. Instead, use LinkedIn to support your career goals and strategy. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish professionally: Switch to a new job? Stand out to recruiters? Attract more clients? Establish thought leadership?

No matter your goal, you can use these five proven techniques to build a career strategy on LinkedIn.

1. Establish a strong profile 

To build your career strategy on LinkedIn, you should start by Googling yourself. Most people’s LinkedIn profile first comes up in a Google search. 

Consequently, someone looking to learn more about, or hire, you will likely start on LinkedIn. Your profile should tell your professional story and weave together your experiences and skills to set you up for what you want to do next professionally. 

Be selective about what to showcase. LinkedIn is not your résumé or a laundry list of all your professional experiences. “Think of your profile as your professional portfolio that reflects your unique accomplishments and career goals to potential employers,” recommends Rohan Rajiv, director of product management at LinkedIn.

Ensure your headline is compelling, concise, and highlights your unique skills and expertise. Optimize your profile to align with the desired job or area of expertise for which you seek to be recognized. For instance, if you are a marketer interested in transitioning to human resource management, find a way to showcase expertise in both areas. Don’t limit your headline to your current title (like vice president of marketing) unless it accurately represents what you want to do next. 

Include a good headshot. Members’ profile pictures “get 9 times more connection requests, 21 times more profile views, and 36 times more messages than LinkedIn members without profile pictures,” says Lydia Abbot, senior content marketing manager at LinkedIn. Your headshot should be well-lit and professional, and it’s best to avoid personal elements like kids or pets.  

2. Boost your discoverability

Highlight your relevant skills to maximize your profile’s visibility and attract recruiters and other professionals seeking those specific skills. Rajiv recommends emphasizing your skills because recruiters and hiring managers often use the LinkedIn Recruiter tool, which leverages advanced search filters to discover candidates based on the skills listed in their profiles. It’s worth noting that over 45% of hiring managers rely on skills when searching for candidates using LinkedIn’s skills menu. 

Incorporate relevant keywords from job descriptions that align with your skills. “Look at job descriptions for roles you’re interested in and include any skill, education, or experience requirements you have, along with a summary of your career goals in the About section of your profile,” recommends Rajiv. “This will help ensure you’re using the same keywords recruiters would search for, increasing your chances of being contacted.”

By using keywords that support your expertise and professional brand, you effectively associate yourself with the topics you wish to be recognized for. Apply this strategy to stand out in your area of expertise. Taking cues from search engine optimization (SEO) commonly applied to websites and articles, Melanie Borden, Managing Member of The Borden Group, a social media consulting agency, advises that applicants “make sure your profile is optimized for SEO for maximum visibility for the LinkedIn search engine.”

You increase your discoverability by strategically integrating the keywords that meet your professional objectives throughout your profile, including in your headline and within your “about” section.

Techniques 3-5 and the complete Fast Company article 

4 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile (with Prompts)

ByAlli Tunell

First impressions matter—especially when it comes to your LinkedIn profile. Because you only have a few seconds to catch someone's attention, it’s imperative that your profile is solid and engaging.

But that’s a lot of work, right? Not anymore. 

Enter ChatGPT. It’s an AI (artificial intelligence) tool you’ve probably heard about via friends, the news, or social media. While the enhancements of AI and, specifically, ChatGPT, are SO intriguing, many people still are unsure what it is, if it’s safe, and if it can even be helpful to them. 

Well, we’re here to help! In this article, we’ll dive deep into ChatGPT, whether you should be using it as a working professional, and one of the easiest ways to start using it (hint: it’s LinkedIn!). 

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT, short for Chat-based Generative Pre-trained Transformer, uses natural language processing (NLP) to quickly and accurately generate texts from your conversations. Using simple commands such as “summarize my resume” or “highlight my experience,” ChatGPT can automatically create compelling descriptions in just a few minutes without manual editing. 

Not only does it provide convenience and efficiency, but it also ensures your written content is grammatically correct and concisely captures your accomplishments and ambitions. With ChatGPT at hand, you can be sure that your LinkedIn profile will stand out from the competition.

What are the benefits of using ChatGPT as a professional?

As a business professional, you or your company are probably already thinking about how ChatGPT could benefit your day-to-day operations. It makes many processes simpler by automating tedious tasks quickly and accurately. 

And as a networking, working professional, there are multiple other ways you could use ChatGPT for your benefit without having to jump through as many hoops. 

For example, you can use ChatGPT in your job search to write resume bullet point achievements, a professional summary for your resume, or written copy for your portfolio or professional website. You can even use ChatGPT to write your cover letter or help with interview preparation. 

ChatGPT allows you to spend far less time on repetitive and often time-consuming tasks and instead use that time for more strategic work. 

Why is LinkedIn the best place to get started with ChatGPT as a professional?

LinkedIn hosts more than 875 million professional profiles. Because of this, you can reach out to a nearly unlimited supply of network connections and future opportunities. Everything from seeking a new job to maintaining your brand is possible with the help of this platform.

And if you already know this, maybe you’ve been telling yourself that you need to update and utilize LinkedIn on a deeper level for quite some time now. Or perhaps you have a very well-optimized, updated profile ready to go and know how time-consuming it can be to keep your LinkedIn in that state. ChatGPT can help with either of these scenarios! 

LinkedIn is the ideal platform to test out if you want to get comfortable with ChatGPT as a professional because it’s approachable, requires a significant amount of copy to be successful, and can be executed without the need for an employer, peer, or tech review.

How to install and use ChatGPT on your LinkedIn profile

Enhancing your LinkedIn profile with ChatGPT technology is easier than you think, and it’s also completely free. Below, we’ll get into all the ways you can use ChatGPT with many LinkedIn features.

To get started, you need to access ChatGPT via OpenAI. You can sign up for a free account by visiting chat.openai.com. Simply provide an email address, Google account, or Microsoft account to complete your signup. There's a free version of the website and app, but it often gets overcrowded at peak times, so a paid plan will give you preferred access to the AI tools during those windows.

Four ways to use ChatGPT for your LinkedIn Profile

And now for the fun part: tangible tips on how to use ChatGPT for your LinkedIn profile.

Before we get started, we would like to add a word of caution. ChatGPT is a VERY new technology that is constantly evolving and in testing. Currently, the platform is trained to decline inappropriate requests but explains on its site that it may occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content. Additionally, it may unintentionally generate incorrect information and needs to gain more knowledge of the world and events after 2021. We suggest you proceed with caution and, to be extra safe, review the company's privacy policy to ensure you're comfortable with how they use personal data.

Now that we’ve gotten past the formalities, let’s dive in!

3.) ChatGPT for your LinkedIn resume achievements

Next, we’re going to talk through how to use artificial intelligence to help us craft the first draft of your LinkedIn resume achievements. 

For this example, we’re going to pretend we’re showcasing the achievements of a Senior Marketing Manager.

1. For the prompt, write: "Write three resume achievements for Senior Marketing Manager and include success metrics with brand awareness.” (Feel free to replace that title and the keywords with ones relevant to your role or industry!)
2. Type “Shift” + “Enter” to create a new line. 
3. From here, you can either find your old job description, provide a quick summary of your work and results in that particular role, or use existing copy you already have to highlight the work you did.
4. When you get your result, save it in a separate area (like Teal's free Resume Builder).
5. Click "Try again" to generate two more versions. Remember to save ChatGPT’s response each time.
6. Sort through the options, pull what you like from each generated version, customize the metrics as needed, and adjust to make it sound more like yourself.
7. Repeat steps 1-5 for each of your previous roles.
8. Paste the final achievements into your LinkedIn profile. Achievements are equally important on your resume as they are on your LinkedIn profile. 
9.  
   
10. With Teal’s free Resume Builder, you can skip the middleman of ChatGPT and access free AI-generated resume achievements created with the help of your previous work history.

 

4.) ChatGPT for your LinkedIn messages 

Our final LinkedIn tip involves using AI to write LinkedIn messages to new connections. This is especially helpful when you’re in a job search and connecting with hiring managers, and potential team members. 

1. For the prompt, ask ChatGPT: "Write a LinkedIn message to thank the hiring manager for her time for the interview for the senior marketing manager role at Amazon.” You can use a similar prompt in regards to checking the status of your application, or expressing initial interest—just be specific. 
2. When you get your result, save it in a separate document, then click "Try again" to generate two more versions. Remember to save ChatGPT’s response each time. (You can save them in the Notes section of your Teal Job Tracker!) 
3. Sort through the options, pull what you like from each generated version, tweak to make it sound more like you, and eventually, finalize a perfect follow-up message that reflects you best and send it.

Read the full Teal article to get ways 1,2 and more tips.

 

 

24 LinkedIn Profile Tips to Make You Stand Out in 2023

What is an optimized LinkedIn profile?

Having an optimized LinkedIn profile means you have a complete and updated profile with the right and relevant industry-specific keywords recruiters look for and a strong professional online brand that ranks high in LinkedIn searches.

Why you should optimize your LinkedIn profile

LinkedIn has revealed that having a complete and optimized LinkedIn profile alone makes you 40 times more likely to receive opportunities and be found.

Additionally, having an optimized LinkedIn profile helps you:

1. Appear in more LinkedIn search results and become more visible on LinkedIn.
2. Build and strengthen your professional brand.
3. Get more opportunities, from jobs to connections and networks.
4. Position yourself as an expert in your field or industry.
5. Establish your credibility.
6. Stand out if you apply for a job via LinkedIn.
7. Build relationships with other professionals and even with recruiters

How do you optimize your LinkedIn profile?

To optimize your LinkedIn profile, you need to:

1. Make sure your LinkedIn profile sections are complete and regularly updated.
2. Ensure that you appear on LinkedIn searches when recruiters look for people like you by adding relevant keywords to your profile.
3. Make the recruiter want to click and view your profile once you appear in LinkedIn search results.
4. Hook the recruiter’s attention so when they view your LinkedIn profile, they’ll want to read more about you.

24 of the best LinkedIn profile tips that work

Jobscan has compiled a list of 24 LinkedIn profile optimization tips to guide you as you leverage the largest and most powerful networking platform in the world.

2. Think like a recruiter

Now that you have pinned down your LinkedIn goals, you need to switch hats and think like a recruiter. Because ultimately, it is the recruiters and hiring managers who call the shots.

So you must be strategic about what you include in your profile to solidify your professional brand and impress recruiters.

Here are some questions you need to ponder:

• What type of job candidate would the recruiter like to hire for the position you are interested in? 
• What skills would the recruiter or prospective employer want you to have to succeed in the job?
• What problems would the recruiter want you to solve?
• What information on your profile would the recruiter love to see?
• What keywords or skills would the recruiter most likely search for?

You may also go so far as to seek help from real recruiters and ask them what they would search for to find the candidate for the specific role. Like your goals, you can use this information to guide you as you build and optimize your profile.

6. Use a great LinkedIn headshot

Having a professional LinkedIn profile picture gives you 21 times more profile views, 36 times more messages, and 9 times more connections.

Additionally, in less than 100 milliseconds after looking at your profile picture, a hiring manager or recruiter will form their impression of you.

So make sure you have a recent, decent, crisp, well-lit, and professional profile picture. Ideally, the size of your profile picture should be 400 x 400 pixels. 

8. Create a strong LinkedIn headline

Your LinkedIn headline is one of the heavily weighted sections of your LinkedIn profile, so you have to put careful thought into crafting one that helps you appear in recruiter searches. 

With 220 available characters, your LinkedIn headline is your one-liner resume that encapsulates your professional identity. Additionally, it’s the first section a recruiter or hiring manager sees after your name when they search LinkedIn or view your profile.

By default, your current job title becomes your LinkedIn headline. To increase the impact of your headline, you need to maximize the 220-character limit and make the headline powerful enough to grab the attention of the recruiter.

What to include in your LinkedIn headline

• Current job title and company
• Unique value proposition 
• Tangible achievements and accomplishments
• Areas of expertise or any specialties
• Hard skills
• Key certifications 
• Professional credentials
• Relevant industry-specific keywords

You may also include other things you are most proud of. Here is an example of a LinkedIn headline from a real job seeker.

In this example, the job seeker leads with “Senior Digital Marketing Manager,” which is her current job title. This is critical because the job title is actually the most important search keyword.

The job seeker then packs a ton of meaningful and frequently searched hard skills separated by vertical bars/pipes (|).

12. Add your top measurable accomplishments in the description field in your LinkedIn experience section

The mistake most LinkedIn users make is that instead of zeroing in on their key achievements while in the role, they just explain what the company does or outline their job responsibilities. 

Don’t make this mistake! Write your key accomplishments and achievements while in the role and prioritize those that are most relevant to your target job.

See all 24 Profile Tips and the complete Jobscan article

 

 

 

The 6 Best LinkedIn Learning Courses for Managing Remote Teams

BYSHREEYA DESHPANDE

LinkedIn Learning is one of the best e-learning platforms to upskill yourself with premium-quality video courses taught by industry experts. Here are the best LinkedIn Learning courses for managing a remote team.

1. Leading Remote Projects and Virtual Teams

Leading remote teams and projects requires strong adaptability to digital workflows, as well as the ability to communicate and collaborate virtually with clients and colleagues globally.

This short 29-minute video course is best to get started with learning to lead remote projects and virtual teams. It starts with a brief overview of remote projects covering different types of virtual projects, pros and cons, and must-haves for the same.

Next, the course advances towards managing remote teams, including tips for structuring your team and effectively communicating with your virtual team. Then, it ends with guiding you on various remote collaboration tools, challenges faced while leading a virtual team, and solutions to encounter them.

The instructor of this course, Cyndi Snyder Dionisio, is an author and consultant with over 25+ years of work experience in project management. The course has a 4.6 rating, and over 42,558 learners take up the course.

4. Leading with Emotional Intelligence

Developing emotional intelligence can assist you in many aspects of your life, including leading at your workplace, by building stronger relationships with your colleagues, reducing the stress levels of your team, and improving your overall job satisfaction.

Britt Andreatta, the instructor of this course and an internationally recognized thought leader, guides you in boosting your emotional intelligence for effectively leading your team. This one-hour course begins by giving you an overview of emotional intelligence and the brain science behind it. Next, Britt advances on helping you learn about assessing your as well as your teammates’ emotions, identifying triggers, and responding to them.

The course ends on understanding empathy and optimizing team performance using emotional intelligence. At present, the course has a 4.7 rating and is taken by 503,891 learners on the platform.

6. Managing Team Conflict

Leading a team can present situations where conflict arises among your colleagues. Therefore, knowing how to handle conflicts becomes an important part of your leadership process.

The one-hour course begins by giving you an overview of team conflicts—the necessity of it, and learning how to diagnose if the team conflict is healthy or unhealthy. Further, the instructor, Henna Inam, who has been a Coach, Author, and former C-Level Leader at Fortune 500 companies, guides you on the sources of conflicts and resolving different situations of conflict.

You also get to learn conflict-resolution skills, including the comparison between assertive and cooperative approaches. In the last part, the course explains various team conflict management styles to help you deal with any conflict confidently.

The course has a rating of 4.7 out of 5, and around 208,640 have started learning it.

See all 6 courses and read the complete article

 

 

 

 

 

5 Quick Fixes to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile - Make a better first impression in 5 minutes

By Josh Steimle 

Love it or hate it, there is no denying that LinkedIn is a big part of building your online platform — especially as an entrepreneur. In fact, the social media network now boasts over 744 million members, with over 57 million companies listed on the site.

Depending on your needs, a quality LinkedIn profile can help you grow your business connections and personal brand, find new potential customers for your B2B services or connect with new talent to grow your team.

Unfortunately, your LinkedIn profile can keep you from maximizing these opportunities. By making a few simple fixes, you can ensure your profile helps your growth efforts, rather than hinders them.

4. Start providing value to your network

Your business produces a lot of content — and most likely, much of that content will have value for people in your network. Sharing case studies and other brand content gets you to show up in the news feeds of those in your network.

Don’t be afraid to share content from others that you find interesting or insightful. When you consistently share content that provides value and starts a discussion, you can also help strengthen your personal brand.

Of course, this sharing can be even more valuable when you are writing original content. While this will obviously take more than five minutes to complete, this is a great opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche and start conversations. The more you publish, the more top-of-mind you’ll be among others in your network.

5. Write a jargon-free summary

Your summary — or the “About” section, as LinkedIn likes to call it these days — shouldn’t read like a boring list of past jobs and achievements. Rewriting your LinkedIn summary so that it flows more like a story helps bring your skills to life. It shows why your experiences have made you into the person you are today. It gives connections a better opportunity to understand who you are, what motivates you, and what you hope to accomplish.

When making this update, avoid the temptation to litter your LinkedIn summary with meaningless jargon and buzzwords. You’ve seen these words and phrases countless times — passionate, innovative, leadership, results-driven — the list goes on and on.

Part of the reason why we’re so sick of seeing these terms is because they don’t really tell us anything. Avoiding overused buzzwords will help your summary be more engaging and unique by encouraging you to provide more specific details.

Read Quick Fixes 1-3 and the complete Entrepreneur Article

Unleash your LinkedIn profile’s potential

As with any other social network, LinkedIn requires ongoing attention, especially if you want to use it to grow your personal brand. Polishing your profile ensures that you’ll make a better first impression with those you connect with, regardless of why you’re trying to connect with them in the first place. Taking a few extra minutes to spruce up your profile now will pay big dividends later on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 Mistakes 99% of LinkedIn Profiles Contain

By Josh Steimle

A dazzling LinkedIn account is an invaluable asset for professionals and almost necessary for networking purposes. The website currently hosts nearly 740 million accounts, and all it takes is a few costly mistakes to make your professional peers roll their eyes and move on to other profiles.

To make matters worse, most people don’t even realize when they are making a misstep on the platform. It’s understandable as not everyone is experienced with the effective business card of the internet. Still, some unofficial rules and guidelines guarantee your profile promotes you in the best possible light.

By rooting out these common errors, any profile can be fine-tuned and become far more effective in finding opportunities and keeping your business network strong.

1. A lackluster headline

If your headline doesn’t have a hook, your profile isn’t likely to garner much attention. Just like a magazine headline or book title, a LinkedIn headline should be a brief advertisement of what a reader can expect to come in the profile. It’s the first thing people will see, so it’s important to make a positive first impression.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you should copy and paste your job title. Instead, focus on using keywords and actions relevant to your work, as this can improve your search ranking association.

The best headlines are brief — some say under 120 characters — impactful and leave the reader with a positive impression. It’s worth tweaking and experimenting with your own until you feel this has been accomplished.

5. No personal URL

Creating a personal URL for your LinkedIn profile is an easy step that adds a layer of legitimacy to any profile. Unfortunately, those who simply go with the default setting of random numbers and letters appear less professional than those who take the time to customize.

Not having a personal URL has several negative drawbacks, the most immediate being it becomes more difficult for people to remember or find your profile. It also can show a degree of laziness or technical incompetence, neither of which are helpful labels for any professional.

When taken as a whole, a LinkedIn profile is a critical step in creating an effective digital presence for your professional self. Creating a clean and effective profile isn’t that difficult, and the positive effects of doing so can connect you with global opportunities that are truly life-changing.

Read all 5 mistakes and the complete Entrepreneur article