Over the past few weeks, I have had a couple of my friends reach out to me looking for LinkedIn tips. I spent the past couple of years working on my resume and my LinkedIn profile after I received some advice from, Jaevin Reed, who at the time was taking an internship at a tech recruiting company. Along with this, my undergraduate experience at Texas A&M instilled in me the idea that LinkedIn is not only a social networking tool, but also a modern-day superpower. Today’s blog post is going to be a short list of accumulated tips that I have received over the years. Now, this post is concentrated in the field of tech, and more specifically software engineering, but I’m positive that the majority of the tips will help work in any field (I’m almost 100% certain, because when I was working in medicine LinkedIn was rather useful for networking, despite a large lack of medicinal professionals on the platform). Regardless, here is the reason I believe utilizing LinkedIn to the fullest, can become your superpower.
Growing your LinkedIn Network
- Post more.
- Slide in the DM’s
- Keep your profile up to date
- Stay Consistent
Sounds easy on the surface, and in all honesty, it really is—it just requires a lot of effort and time.
Post More
Now, when I say to post more I don’t exactly mean it turning LinkedIn into a normal former social media. With LinkedIn, we are lucky to understand that people genuinely love watching success and hearing about one’s own stories. I find it very important to keep the world updated with what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. The best piece of advice I can give with posting things on LinkedIn is being able to post what matters to you in the way that matters to you, whether that is technical blogs, projects, professional thank you’s, or just everyday updates with your current job search—I think that this will lead to unimaginable success with creating your community. The content of these posts does have to be intentional and genuine to enact a certain purpose of you trying to achieve your goal.
Slide in the DM’s
Now, continuing on that idea of being very intentional. This is what matters the most. You want to be able to slide into a large number of people's DM’s on LinkedIn that way you can make genuine connections through coffee sit-down-talks (whether in person or on zoom). Here is a basic template that I typically follow:
Hi ____!
My name is ____, I’m reaching out because I noticed that we had a mutual connection! I wanted to see if I could ask you a couple of questions about your journey to ____ and what you think of the company, I’m planning on applying so I just wanted to learn from someone in the position. Would love to connect regardless as I can see you’ll do amazing things in your career and because you were also involved with ____ too! I understand you’re busy, so no worries if not.
Thank you.
____
I recommend sending something like this to perhaps five recruiters per day, five software engineers, five hiring managers, or five Boot Camp graduates per day. This way you’ll be able to build a solid network of connections with people in the industry that you want be in. It’s very important that when you do this you are not making a transactional relationship, you do not want to act as if you only want a referral code from these individuals. Though that may be what you want, it is much more important to build a long-lasting relationship with someone through the aspects of social media that are available to us.
Now, how you cultivate and expand on this is through something that can seem very basic. What are you going to be doing is continuing to stay in contact through LinkedIn by interacting on social media, this can include liking a photo tagging or mentioning and even updating them with how you’re doing in your career search. Though you’re technically not asking for a referral or connection, more often time is it not this person will come back to you in your career search to help you figure out your situation and what you want to do.
One tip that I can add that always seems to work on zoom calls only:
Have your projects ready and pulled up.
More often then not someone may ask you about your project, though you can simply describe it, try this scenario when asked, “Hey, you know, I actually have my project pulled up on my other monitor, I could share my screen real quick if you wanted me to talk you through it this way.”
I have seen so much success with this technique. Very rarely will people ask to actually see your projects, so you need to make it your mission to show and tell them how much of an amazing developer you are!
Keep your profile up to date
Update your profile with key buzzwords, make sure that you are including your projects and relative work experience. You’re work experience is so important, understand that there are transferrable skills in every single field when relating it to tech! Every single section is meant to be very detailed (for ex., when you make a post, add it to your featured posts so that others can see it when they see your profile).
Make sure that you are keeping your network in the loop with what is going on with your day-to-day wins. It’s important, and honestly—people really do live to see it.
Staying Consistent
Much like anything in life, one of the biggest pieces of advice I can say is to stay consistent. Consistency breeds success. When you’re able to do something over and over again, you’re telling yourself that committed to the process and actually able to make that change. You are also showing potential employers how willing you are to stay committed to learning something new and acting on that challenge. When you post consistently, write a blog consistently, or code consistently (get those green squares on github!) you are developing great habits, that are easily transferrable to any endeavor.
Questions to Ask along the Way
I really do hope this drop of information was able to provide some tips and tricks to your journey!
