Teachers in Transition

Teachers in Transition - Episode 53 - Do Not Include These Items in Your LinkedIn Profile

April 01, 2020 Kitty Boitnott Season 1 Episode 53
Teachers in Transition
Teachers in Transition - Episode 53 - Do Not Include These Items in Your LinkedIn Profile
Show Notes Transcript

Whether you are working from home or you've been laid off or furloughed during the pandemic, because of the "stay at home" order that many of you have been given, you now have some extra time on your hands. Like it or not, you can't go anywhere except the grocery store and drugstore, and there's only so much Netflix one can watch.

Might I suggest that you use this time to work on your LinkedIn profile? You may have a profile that now needs to be updated. Or you may have set up an account that you never got around to completing.

If you do choose to work on your profile, I want to suggest several items that you should not include if you want to make the best possible impression on viewers. Listen in to learn what those items are.

#LinkedIn, #LinkedIn profile, #professionalprofile #jobsearchtips #jobhunting; #careerhelp

Kitty Boitnott:

Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Hi, this is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition," the podcast and the YouTube channel and I hope you are well wherever you happen to be, whether you are staying in place or you are considered essential and so you're out and about and going out about your regular job. Thank you for all that you do and if you've been asked to stay at home unless you are an essential personnel, please stay at home and keep yourself safe and those you love safe. That is my reference to what's going on in the world around us for today. My topic for today is a career transition and job search tip and it's specifically what not to include when you are building your LinkedIn profile. There are lots and lots of things you should include but there are certain things you need to completely steer clear of and I want to offer those today. In case you have been working on your LinkedIn profile while you're stuck at home and looking for things to do or whether you need to go back and adjust your LinkedIn, because of maybe what's going on in the world right now, or maybe you never got around to creating account before and now you have time to think about LinkedIn, wherever you happen to be in the spectrum of LinkedIn users from novice to experienced. These suggestions are for you. The first one probably shouldn't have to be said because I would hope that we're all professionals and that we would keep in mind that we need to keep LinkedIn, especially as our professional platform. But you know, in today's social media world, we seem to have gotten very relaxed about the way we express ourselves. Um, almost to the point of way too much information. Um, whether you get on Facebook to go on a rant about something or you get on Twitter and start a rant about something, people's emotions are heightened and we're all feeling a little uncertain and there is a lot of emotion foiling around roiling within us. But that doesn't give us a license to just cut loose and say anything that we want. And unfortunately we are living in a uh, atmosphere in which a lot of people feel like they have a license to say anything they want. And I would like to at least pose the proposition that if you are eager and serious about promoting yourself in a professional manner, you don't have the luxury of letting loose, firing off an ill thought through immediate retort to someone who has said something. You don't want to be mindful of the repercussions of an thoughtlessly phrased Facebook message or rant of video that you might in a moment of pique record. And then don't, you don't know how to, I mean in some cases you can't even bring it back even after it's been deleted. It's still out there and it still can be shared. So, my point is you want to keep your LinkedIn profile, your profile completely professional and if you are looking to climb a professional ladder of sorts, uh, when all of this is over, we will get back to some sort of semblance of normal. We will still be looking for leaders in our organizations and in our businesses. If you want to be considered a leader, you will want to have comported yourself as such during, even during this time of upheaval which means no rants. After that little rant, um, one of the things that I would urge you not to do on LinkedIn or anywhere else for that matter, whether it's Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, any of the other places where you can go online and let your feelings be known, no complaining about a current or previous employer about your boss, about the people that you work with or about the company you work for. No matter what may be going on in your work world, if you want to be considered a leader, someone who would someday be granted the responsibility of leading other individuals in your business or organization, then you are being urged not to indulge in complaining because that reflects worse on you as the complainer than it does on the people about whom he may be complaining. So no complaints. And like I said, that should go without saying at least for your LinkedIn profile. But I think that that's a guideline rule, if you will, that you should keep in mind for all of your public, um, correspondence or postings or communications. No complain about your boss, your company, your colleagues organization that you work for. No complaining. Because I'm serious. It reflects worse on you as the complainer than it does on the people that you're complaining about. So that's the first rule. Secondly, you want to make sure that you leave off anything in your LinkedIn profile that isn't related to the kind of work, to kind of jobs, professional endeavor that you are interested in pursuing. In other words, if you're looking for a position, let's just say as a human resource officer, you don't need to include that first job you had back in the old days as let's just say as a teacher even or as a busboy at a restaurant or waiter at a restaurant, whatever it is. And then that would include teaching. If you're interested in pursuing a position in HR, you keep all of your experience that's relevant and pertinent to that position and that goes for whatever the position might be. So don't include anything that's not relevant to the kind of work that you are interested in pursuing. Don't treat LinkedIn like it's Facebook. LinkedIn is not Facebook and I have noticed over the course of the last maybe couple of years, maybe more that increasingly people are relaxing their standards around what they include in LinkedIn and there are times when I look at LinkedIn on my wall because I'm connected to a lot of people and it's hard to distinguish is this my LinkedIn wall or is it my Facebook wall? Because sometimes people get carried away and they post pictures of the grandkids or pictures of the vacation. Those are not appropriate pictures to include on LinkedIn. Keep those for Facebook. Keep those for wherever you're posting for your friends and your family and don't include on your LinkedIn profile or on your wall or in your postings comments, anything that might be political in nature or might have a particular religious overtone. Keep the politics and the religion off of your LinkedIn profile in the same way that ideally you would keep those topics out of your work environment. Make sure that you are including relevant topics that are relevant to the kind of job that you want next in your career. It doesn't even always have to be about what you're currently doing if you're looking to make a career transition. I have taught courses in LinkedIn classes and LinkedIn for years and the main piece of advice that I can leave with you about how to build your LinkedIn profile is to build it with an eye toward your future self, not your past self. And if you're looking to make a complete switch, like I coach teachers who are looking to break into brand new fields like HR or instructional design or curriculum development. If you're looking to make that kind of a switch, you want to write your resume, not your resume, your LinkedIn profile, which is kind of like your online resume. You write your LinkedIn profile to the job you want, not the job you have or the job you've had in the past. And finally, please, please, please hear me about this because I see it all the time. It's a huge mistake. So don't you be guilty of it? Do not publicize your current job search. No"looking for new opportunities," no"open to new job offerings," no. Um,"available for opportunities to talk about a career change," none of that and do not do not, do not include a resume that's attached to your LinkedIn profile. And the reason for that mainly is that your resume needs to change for every job that you apply for. So it's that it isn't something that you want to paste and leave on your LinkedIn profile. It needs to be changed up. Your LinkedIn profile is supposed to be in sort of synchronized with your resume, but it's not an exact duplicate of your resume. So don't include a PDF or a JPEG or any reference to a resume. Leave that off. Consider your LinkedIn profile, your let's, let's look at it as your dating profile for business. Not as in going on a personal date but you, you, most of us have created a dating profile at some point in our past. Even if we rather forget that part of our past. Most of us have done that. You want to put the best stuff, the most attractive stuff on your dating profile, so do the same for your LinkedIn profile. Include the best stuff, the professional stuff, the stuff that might get you noticed by a recruiter or a hiring manager or an employer who was looking for someone who has your unique set of skills, talents, abilities, aptitudes and education. And only include those items that put you in the best possible light and advertising that you're open to opportunities does not do that. I had a coach colleague once who used to liken that to saying"dateless and desperate." You don't want to do that, so keep it professional, keep it polished, keep it to the two directed toward the new job that you want to have as opposed to old job that you no longer want and whatever you do, make it as professional as possible. And that way you can be assured that you are making the best possible impression on people who may either deliberately come to your profile to look at you because they received a resume and they're interested in learning more from you or about you or they stumbled across your profile and they were, they were lured in by something that they saw that looked promising or interesting. Your LinkedIn profile can be a link to the future job that you want, but you will ruin your chances if you miss. Use your LinkedIn profile by using it for things that it's not intended for like family and friends stuff, vacation stuff, pictures of your, of your children. Don't include any of that stuff. Think of your LinkedIn profile as your online resume for the future job that you want and put everything in that profile aimed at the person that you want to be professionally moving forward. That's it for today. Good luck building your LinkedIn profile. If you'd like some help, need some some hand-holding as you build a professional looking LinkedIn profile, please feel free to reach out to me. I help people with their LinkedIn profiles, whether you're job searching or you're a business person wanting to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is synched with your website and the other online presence that you have. I can help with that as well. This is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition," the podcast and the YouTube channel. Please reach out to me, Kitty Boitnott@boitnottcoaching.com If you have questions, comments, want some other direction about your LinkedIn profile and as always, if you have questions or comments about this podcast, please offer a review. Send, send some comments that will help other people to find this information. The more sharing that we do, the more people who will be able to find the information that they need. And that's it for today. Have a great way, a great week. Stay safe, be well. I'll see you next week. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."