Episode 46
Learning to Love LinkedIn
ThinkingAhead ace recruiters Alex Grove and Kadri Lumsden explain how utilizing LinkedIn can help elevate your game, not only with visibility, but credibility as well, and share some tips on the easiest, low-stress ways to work the powerful platform into your schedule.
Transcript
We're gonna talk about why it's important to kinda use LinkedIn, how it's helpful, and then we're gonna go into our specific practices that we've found to be worthwhile.
Speaker:So visibility, literally, I don't want to be a stranger when I reach out.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:That's the whole thing.
Speaker:And my BD always starts with a cold connection request to someone in my market because when I call, best case, they already recognize my name.
Speaker:Second-best, after we talk, they go to LinkedIn and think, "Oh, cool, that was her who I talked to." And at the same time, it kinda make cold calls a little bit more fun because when I call people now, I literally say, "Hey, we already connected on LinkedIn." And I talk to them like they already know me, and I mean, in a way they're, they do because they have seen my face, they have read my message, and at the end they, they are the one who chose to connect with me, so they already said yes once.
Speaker:I have to explain less, and overall the conversation just feels warmer.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In the realm of visibility, it's a huge thing that's working in the background that we don't always necessarily realize is working in the background when we're using LinkedIn.
Speaker:One thing that I'm reminded of is in my industry there's a lot of recruiters.
Speaker:It's a very candidate-driven market.
Speaker:It's so annoying.
Speaker:Every candidate in my space is hit up five times a week by recruiters.
Speaker:And so if there's anything that I can do on LinkedIn that'll kinda make the connection warmer when I am sending them an email, voicemail, whatever, you know, that only helps.
Speaker:I think it's good to chase impressions, not necessarily likes and comments, 'cause for me, out of, I would say about 30 to 40% of my impressions are from people in my industry.
Speaker:Which means in a post that had 10,000, about 3 to 4000 of those impressions were from people I recruit or, you know, market to.
Speaker:So you are getting your foot in a lot of doors without quite realizing it
Speaker:So next one up is credibility.
Speaker:I personally, I'm trying to let my profile do a lot of explaining for me, meaning if someone looks me up, they can immediately see what market I work in, how I think, how I talk about hiring.
Speaker:And the thing is, I, I cannot control whether people look me up, but what I can do is I can control what they see when they do.
Speaker:My POV, my tone, my market, probably a little bit of my personality, too.
Speaker:And the cool part about this is it even works when people never like or never comment or there's no interaction whatsoever.
Speaker:And quick example from last week, I, I was on a call with a VP of sales I work with, and I know her, like, three years, and at the end of the call she goes, "Hey, Kadri, I really enjoy your LinkedIn posts." And I was honestly surprised because she has never liked a post, has never commented before, never even mentioned LinkedIn before But she also told me that they help her think differently as a leader, even give her ideas she use or she uses with her own team.
Speaker:So at this point, it's not just a compliment, but it's the quiet side of visibility.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, you know, by being constantly present on LinkedIn and stuff, you, you are boosting your credibility in another way.
Speaker:Uh, Kadri and I were talking about this earlier, where when we think of one of the world's greatest chefs, right, a name that commonly comes to our minds is Gordon Ramsay, right?
Speaker:But we don't actually know if Gordon Ramsay is the best chef in the world.
Speaker:He's just really good at marketing himself.
Speaker:He's the most present.
Speaker:He's- he has all these TV shows, so we just kind of assume he's one of the best of the best.
Speaker:But I'm not a chef.
Speaker:I don't really… I, I can't really explain why he's better than X, Y, Z other chef.
Speaker:And a similar thing applies kind of here.
Speaker:If we're constantly present on candidates' minds, on client prospects' minds, they're constantly seeing the value we're adding on LinkedIn through our posts, they will kind of associate us with a higher level of service.
Speaker:So that's kind of another hidden benefit behind constantly being, uh, on the top of people's minds there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:This isn't about going viral, or it's not about going to have the most likes and, and comments and impressions, but it literally is the repetition, name, face, tone, point of view over and over and over again.
Speaker:So when the timing is right, meaning the search opens or the candidate is ready, leader needs help, I am already familiar.
Speaker:And with that part, honestly, it's already something we are all doing.
Speaker:With our marketing calls, voicemails, emails, LinkedIn is just another place where that repetition can live.
Speaker:So it's not about doing more, it's about making the work I am already doing travel just a little further.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Everyone has their own love languages when it comes to how they're best sold, right?
Speaker:There are some people whose love language is calls and voicemails.
Speaker:There are other people who are only gonna respond to you by email, some by text, and some by LinkedIn.
Speaker:So these people are seeing your stuff even if you don't necessarily know it, even if you're not getting that feedback.
Speaker:So you wanna cast a wide net of love languages in how you're outreaching people, 'cause there are some people that you're only gonna be able to reach using the, the LinkedIn platform.
Speaker:So I'm gonna start off by kinda giving some, some of my workflow.
Speaker:First and foremost, I don't overwhelm myself with making LinkedIn part of my job.
Speaker:I do two posts a week.
Speaker:That's it, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker:I block it off and I schedule it out.
Speaker:What I mean by that is I am, I'm not on LinkedIn during prime time calling hours.
Speaker:I have a one-hour block every Monday, I call it Meme Monday, and I just create LinkedIn content for that one hour, and then I schedule out the post for that Tuesday, that Thursday.
Speaker:And if I'm doing really well, I'll schedule it out for weeks in the future.
Speaker:It just relieves a lot of stress.
Speaker:It makes me not having to do a bunch of silly urgent tasks in the time being.
Speaker:Another thing that's really important is that you diversify the type of content that you're putting out.
Speaker:So that means, you know, sometimes it's just gonna be a body of text, sometimes it's gonna be a picture, sometimes it's gonna be self-promotion.
Speaker:But the point is is to diversify it.
Speaker:It's important to chase impressions, not likes and comments.
Speaker:And for impressions on LinkedIn, you're sort of beholden to the algorithm of LinkedIn, and what you find is that when you're constantly promoting this is what I'm working on, this is what I'm working on, this is what I'm working on, the impressions on those posts are gonna be a lot lower.
Speaker:But if you're hopping on, like, the latest AI trend, for example, those impressions are gonna be a lot more.
Speaker:But by diversifying your content you're gonna see it more.
Speaker:So example can be industry insights.
Speaker:It can be recruiting insight.
Speaker:A way that you can add value just by virtue of your job.
Speaker:I think we all take for granted the amount of value we can add just by explaining part of our process, just by explaining part of the interview process.
Speaker:Uh, we're kind of numb to it because we deal with it on a daily basis, but- For any candidate, I mean, they go through this process a few times in their lives a- at most.
Speaker:And so anything that you can say that's taken directly from the Style Navigator, directly from your conversations, that's a post.
Speaker:Have something personal.
Speaker:What you find is that by making yourself more of a person, you're just giving yourself more of a window into your life, and it helps make warmer connections when you do catch up with people 'cause they're gonna view you as that individual, not the recruiter that's just constantly selling them something.
Speaker:Obviously, stuff that you could post for your desk, what you're working on, MPCs that you're working with.
Speaker:Just as, like, a reminder, MPC posts are, are really helpful, too, if you're in a candidate-driven market.
Speaker:I see a lot of posts about, um, kind of searches, but MPCs can be a really good content machine, too.
Speaker:And then lastly, and I love these, polls.
Speaker:Post polls.
Speaker:Polls are huge, especially if they're good.
Speaker:You're gonna get 100 names on them.
Speaker:When you get a lot of feedback from a poll That's a really good pool to source from, and you don't have to call through all of them.
Speaker:But you could go through the people that respond to your polls, and if anyone's fitting a search that you could work on and you reach out to them, you know you're gonna, you're gonna be received a lot more warmly.
Speaker:I say real questions, not obvious bait.
Speaker:A bad poll question would be- … would you ever work with a recruiter?
Speaker:Yes or no?
Speaker:Maybe, right?
Speaker:Like, if I'm posting a poll just so I could reach out to you and say, "Hey, I heard you're interested," that's a bad poll question.
Speaker:But ask things you're genuinely curious about, and then source from the engagement.
Speaker:For me, LinkedIn is part of my daily workflow, so it's not a separate task.
Speaker:And I committed to post about three times a week and intentionally split them.
Speaker:I do one or two posts that are industry or market insight to build credibility, and these posts are directly pulled from life calls, something I'm hearing or seeing or, you know, something, like someone quotes something.
Speaker:The second type is personal or human to build trust and familiarity, something that keeps me relatable and not just transactional.
Speaker:But another huge part of my LinkedIn, uh, is outreach that ties it all together.
Speaker:So what I do, I send about 10 targeted connection requests a day.
Speaker:Once someone accepts, I follow up.
Speaker:I follow up, and I, I start conversation, and I'm literally trying to figure out are they hiring, are they a candidate, or are they, "I'm happy, but I'm open to have a chat." So that gives me great way to just drop my, um, calendar link to get them schedule that call with me, and I add them in the job adder immediately.
Speaker:And if there's nothing, no reply, I literally call them a week from that second message.
Speaker:And again, it's not a cold call anymore because we connected on LinkedIn.
Speaker:They were the ones who connected with me.
Speaker:And with these calls, most likely they are profile calls, but at the same time, what I do, I always flip that call so it becomes a marketing call on spot where I literally learn as much as I can about the company I'm supposedly targeting and see if there's even a point to start or having that specific company in my marketing list Next steps, just start small.
Speaker:Even one post a week is enough if it's intentional, and I think the biggest thing is just to be consistent and commit to if it's a one post or a two post or a three post, and think for yourself, like, who they are for.
Speaker:Like, who is your target when you're posting?
Speaker:The second thing is block time on your calendar where you just do everything LinkedIn related and patch the content when you can.
Speaker:And the third thing, what I started doing more intentionally this year, is commenting.
Speaker:So literally posting feels or still feels like too much, that commenting on other people's posts is the lowest pressure option, meaning thoughtfully comment on hiring manager posts, industry leaders, candidate conversation.
Speaker:And obviously not to say like, "Hey, cool post," "Great post," "Great insight." Add perspective, add your point of view, you know, add value, because comments put your name in front of the right people every day, and most often in LinkedIn, comments even receive more impression than your actual LinkedIn posts.
Speaker:So literally, comments are visibility without pressure.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, and I think that LinkedIn is an excellent platform to Add value to other people without necessarily expecting anything in return.
Speaker:You know, for me, it, you know, I, I know I post a lot of memes, but I, I do it 'cause, whatever, if I can make someone laugh for a second in the middle of their day, like, hey, job well done.
Speaker:But also, to, to Kadri's point when she's talking about commenting, you know, you can add a lot of value without necessarily introducing your candidates to, um, a client of yours.
Speaker:You add value every time you talk about, you know, salaries in the market.
Speaker:Honestly, whenever I see a client prospect that I'm not working with and they have, like, a job posting but, like, I, I do like the company, I'll share their job posting, you know, especially if it's posted by someone that, you know, I, I already kinda have a relationship with in the organization.
Speaker:Even though you could argue that, like, directly negatively impacts me, right?
Speaker:'Cause that's a position I can't fill.
Speaker:But they see when I repost.
Speaker:It just says a lot to give with little re- regard to what you might get back, and I, and that's the kind of relationship I, I'd like to have with the people I'm connecting with out there.
Speaker:Also, different people who are listening to this might be in different boats.
Speaker:I, I think it's important to do a bit of an internal audit of why don't you do more on LinkedIn.
Speaker:And hey, maybe it's just I never thought about it, I never invested the time, but you kinda get that it's important.
Speaker:Or maybe you're like Kadri and I, where you're like, "Ugh, I don't want to."
Speaker:There was just, like, a lot of imposter syndrome.
Speaker:Like, uh, what value do I have to add?
Speaker:Who's gonna wanna read my stuff?
Speaker:I, I didn't wanna feel like I was, I had a big ego and I was posting like, "Hey, listen to me," but you're gonna help a lot of people, even in the most minute ways, just by putting yourself out there.
Speaker:So last but not least, gosh it makes this job a little bit more fun.
Speaker:You know, as much as I love the conversations I get to have, the cold-calling portion of the ch- this job can wear on me, and this, this gives me a little bit of, uh, flexibility to do this job in a different way that scratches a different itch.
Speaker:So I just kinda feel like more of a whole person.
Speaker:The easiest way to do what I always try to do, like, every morning is where I go to, uh, LinkedIn on my network, catch up in job changes and see who got promoted and who recently changed jobs.
Speaker:And I always say some kind of a congratulations message in there, but trying to be more thoughtful.
Speaker:But at the same time, again, it gives me a market insight, or it gives me the reason to actually pick up the phone and call that person and say congratulations personally.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:LinkedIn's a really good tool.
Speaker:We, you know, we called it the Roomba because it's something that works in the background and, uh, makes your life a lot easier if you have it constantly running in the background.
Speaker:But it's not going to replace every other component of your job.
