Teachers in Transition - Episode 117- Pay Attention to Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn is a critical tool that every job seeker needs to have fully complete and up-to-date. Many teachers don't realize the importance LinkedIn has in their job search, so they overlook the need to make sure that their profiles are complete.

In today's episode of "Teachers in Transition," Kitty talks about the importance of paying special attention to certain aspects of your LinkedIn profile. Tune in to hear exactly what you need to do to get your LinkedIn profile noticed by recruiters.

The resource mentioned in the episode is PhotoFeeler.com.

To reach out to Kitty for more information, contact her by email at kittyboitnott@gmail.com or make an appointment at https://teachersintransition.com/calendar.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

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 in job search coach and I specialize in helping burnout 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 and transition.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Welcome back to episode 117 of teachers in transition, the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty Boynton and I'm the owner of Boitnott coaching LLC and the founder of teachers in transition. If you've listened to me before, you know that I alternate topics each week, when we talking about stress management strategies, because I'm a certified stress management coach and on alternating weeks, I talk about a job search strategy or a technique that I think would be beneficial in your job search. Assuming that you are job hunting. I specialize in working with burnout teachers who are ready to make a change in their career, but don't know exactly how or where to begin. And I offer a signature program called jumpstart, your job search 2.0 for those who feel like they need help and guidance in their job search in this podcast. And the YouTube channel of both have the same name. I also have a Facebook group called teachers and transition community. And if you feel like you would benefit from being a part of that community, you can apply to become a member. It's easy. Uh, I have a private membership group, but I also have a public membership group. That's just getting off the ground and I'd love to have you be part of it if you're interested. So go to Facebook and look for teachers in transition community. Um, and so today at the topic is career related topic. And I know I've probably touched on LinkedIn before and how we all again, because LinkedIn is an integral essential part of your job search strategy. If you want to be successful sooner, rather than later, now a lot of teachers have somewhere along the line, created an account and then abandoned it and never did anything with it because LinkedIn didn't feel as intuitive as some other platforms perhaps, or they weren't quite sure what the benefit of being on LinkedIn would be. So they took off and never returned. So you may have an account or you may not, if you can't remember do a search for yourself to see if it's possible that you have an account, it, you can simply reenter and you might have to do research your, your password if you don't remember it, but LinkedIn can perhaps help you with that. They're good about offering support. And when you are getting ready to write your profile, there are some essential pieces of the profile that you must must, must include. If you want it to be beneficial at all in your search. What you need to know about LinkedIn is that 94% of recruiters who've been hired or engaged by a company to look for and find suitable candidates for a particular type of position in their company, those recruiters, 94% of them. And there are a lot of recruiters out there. They are looking on LinkedIn, mostly for passive job hunters. People are people who aren't even looking for work. So a bunter is probably not the right term. They're looking for people who are going about their work, doing their job, not necessarily actively looking for new work. And the reason for that is they want to find people who are successful. And when someone is in the midst of a job laps, either a chance or by choice, there's some time, even an unconscious bias that there's something wrong. So what you want to avoid is creating a sense that you're actively looking or that you are desperate to find a new job, which means do not put on your headshot at little. Uh, I don't even know what you call it. The frame maybe that says open to hashtag open to work. I know LinkedIn put that on there for you to use. If you wanted to thinking that it was helpful, but it's not hashtag open to work. Reminds me of what a colleague of mine used to say about putting dateless and desperate on your dating site. You don't want to do that. Desperation. Neediness eagerness tends to repel people not attract them. Confidence, achievement, success. Those are attractors. So in your LinkedIn profile, you want to create the impression, at least that you are quite happily going about your life in a job that you feel very good about whether that's true or not. Because remember, this is a marketing tool. Marketing tools are meant to impress and attract. So keep that in mind. And, uh, when you were putting together your profile, you want to remember certain, the essential, vital things that need to be included in your LinkedIn account, your profile. So one thing you want to make sure you do right off the bat is make sure you have a headshot, that little empty egg head thing. That's the natural default on LinkedIn. That is not good to leave there. Nobody, no recruiters going to even bother to look at you. If you don't have a headshot, if you don't have a headshot that you feel good about it, I wouldn't recommend that you use the school, your book, or your an annual school photo, all of the same, and they're not terribly attractive. So get a friend or get your spouse to go out, dress up a little bit. Whether you're a man or a woman, you want to look professional for man. You want to wear a white or blue shirt with a tie and a sports coat, and you want the shot to be from your shoulders. Up with you looking into the camera and smiling. You want your eyes to be smiling as well as your mouth. You don't want to disconnect with your eyes. Looking unhappy in your mouth, twisted into a grant. You want it to look natural and authentic. It might take a few shots to get you to feel more comfortable. Don't face the sun. If you go outside for your shot, don't face the sun. You don't want to be squinting into the camera, but, but I also don't want the camera to be picking up the reflection of the sun. So be careful and mindful about your location. Time of day, where the sun is, all that good stuff, but pick a place where the lighting is good. Doesn't have to be fancy in front of a tree or a hedge is fine. No, no. Cut out shots that don't cut yourself out of a photo where you were attending a wedding or a graduation or whatever. And there's a shoulder in there. That's not a good look. You want it to be just a view, shoulders up, looking in camera, smiling for women, whether you normally wear makeup or not, you should wear a little bit just to take the shine off your face. A little bit of lipstick goes a long way. A little bit of mascara goes a long way. A little bit of powder. We'll take the shine off. So you want it take extra special care with your hair, your makeup, and you need to wear, uh, either a suit jacket with blouse underneath and you know, nice press color or a dress that you feel comfortable wearing into an interview. But you don't want, again, you don't want a picture of you at a graduation or wedding with somebody else cut out of it. You don't want to look like, um, a Facebook page photo. You want to look professional again, shoulders up, looking into the camera, smiling. And there's a tool you can make an account for called word. I'm sorry. Photofeeler photo E P H O T O F E L E r.com. photofeeler.com. You can go to that site, create an account, upload a picture. And if you'll first be asked to give impressions of the number of other people's resumes, headshots, you want to pick the business level. They offer services for dating and casual and Facebook, I guess, probably in business that you want to pick the business. Cause you want feedback on the best headshot for your LinkedIn profile. So you offer feedback. You can buy credits where you can build up credits on your own by offering your feedback on other people's headshots in return, they will give you a full 24, 48 hours of time to get feedback on your own headshot. And they will grade you quote unquote, on various domains, confidence, competence, influence, and likeability. And you may think why else can he buy deal with unlikeable from a headshot? You'd be surprised. Do it yourself a few times. You'll see what I mean. You can tell which people you feel attracted to and which ones you feel turned off by. So likability that those are the people you feel like, yeah, I could have a beer with that person. You know, I wouldn't mind working with that person. They look like they can take a joke, influence and competence are a little less important in this particular exercise you want likability to be at the top competence. Certainly you want to look like competent and able to do the job influence. Maybe not so much unless you're looking for, you know, a manager's position or a fortune 500 company level position, but the sure it's you include a headshot. If you want to go to the little extra step, be sure to include banner background. You can change that or offer some options from within LinkedIn. Most of the time you want to use something that's unique to you. A picture that you've taken don't use a shot or a photo that you might need to be paying royalties on. That's expensive, you know, and do that. So take a picture, you know, from a vacation that you enjoyed and upload that as your background, I've used ocean shots, beach shots, all kinds of different things. Before I had a professional painter made for my business. So you can do lots of different things with the banner, then the headshot, the banner, the headline, you want to be sure under your name, that you don't let the headline, which is the wording directly under your name. You don't want to let that go to the default, which is the current job title that you have. And the good news is you can change it. You can change it easily. You want to change it thinking in terms of what it is that you're trying to position yourself to do moving forward. So I recently talked to someone who finished her HR certification, but she still had teacher at such and such district in her current location. So I advised her to change that so that now it reads human resources and professional development. So you can change those words, keywords use keywords that are going to be searchable so that you make yourself find-able for a recruiter and to use multiple keywords. You want to separate them with what is called on your keyboard, a pipe standard, at least someone you told me that it was called that a long time ago, but it's a straight up and down mark, a punctuation mark, I guess, on your keyboard. And it's the key directly above your inter key on your keyboard. If you shift and hit that X slash key, you'll get a straight up and down. Mark. You want to put a space that mark, that pipe stamp a space, and then the next keyword that you want to use, and you can use several because you have lots of space. There used to be 120 characters. I think they've increased it. So be sure you include that as far as how you list your name listed the way you think people will find you, but avoid the Mo the alphabet soup at the end of your name, unless you have a PhD, an EDD, a J D, and there was one other one. I think those are the main ones. You don't have to include a PMP. For example, for project management, um, NBCT national board certified teachers. You may want to use that as a distinction that only a few number of people relatively have. So I wouldn't object to you using that, but I frankly, I took off all my alphabet soup years ago because it can be confusing and it can actually interrupt your being able to be searchable. And finally, because I don't want to go on too long about all of this. If you really want more information about LinkedIn from me, let me know. I can, I can certainly help you with finding resources, but make sure that you customize your LinkedIn URL. And there are directions on how to do that. You can, you can Google how to, how to customize my LinkedIn URL and you'll get step-by-step instructions, but you don't want to overlook that important step. Either lots of people do you shouldn't, it shows that you don't understand how LinkedIn works when you don't customize your LinkedIn URL. So those are just some specific basic tips for how you should approach your LinkedIn profile. I hope you will have found them helpful if you are in the job market, you definitely want to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up to date and you want to follow their instructions, their guidance, to help you to get to the quote unquote, all star level. If you only get to the all star level, once you have filled out a requisite number of I refer to the Ms elements, I don't know what the, whether they're called sections or elements or what, but there are certain number of parts of the LinkedIn profile that you need to fill in and make sure that you have completed in order to get to the all star level. Once you're an all star level, you can count on it. That recruiters are going to start looking and finding you before they can do that. You have to put in a fair amount of work on your end to make sure that everything's in place, that it conveys the value that you have, that it conveys who you are in your about section, and that it conveys what you can do in your skills section. So that's what I have to say about LinkedIn job search today. I hope you will have found this helpful. If you'd like more information you can reach out to me at kitty boy, not@gmail.com. You can find me@teachersintransition.com. If you'd like to make an appointment, you can go to teachers in transition.com forward slash calendar. I would love to chat with you about how I can help in my program. Jumpstart your job search 2.0 can help you in your job search. Especially if you're teacher looking to make a change in your career. That's it for today, have a wonderful week and weekend, and I will see you next week.

Speaker 1: 19:53

So there you have it. An episode of teachers in transition. I hope you enjoy 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@kittyboitnottatboitnottcoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm kitty Boitnott. And this is teachers in transition.